< Previous | Contents | Next >
Chapter title: That beyondness is you
17 May 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive
code:
8705175
ShortTitle:
GOLDEN12
Audio:
Yes Video:
Yes Length:
84
mins Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
THESE DAYS, LOOKING INSIDE, I DO NOT FIND A PERSONALITY WITH
CERTAIN CHARACTERISTICS, BUT RATHER AN EVER-CHANGING FLUX, TOTALLY UNPREDICTABLE. IT MAKES LIFE IN THIS BODY FEEL VERY
FRAGILE, VULNERABLE AND MOMENTARY -- A FEELING WHICH EXTENDS
ITSELF TO EVERYTHING AROUND ME, SHAKING ME TO THE ROOTS.
Deva Surabhi, man is not one, man is many: man is a multitude, a crowd. The feeling of being a personality is a mirage. It arises because you never go in, and you never face the crowd. Perhaps to avoid the crowd, you never go in.
You are living outside your own home and the home is being occupied by your neighbors, many of whom are dead. And when I say many, I mean many! -- centuries, queues of old and dead people are living within you; hence, when for the first time one enters on the path of meditation, the first encounter shakes one to the very roots. One sees many faces and many people -- except one face, except the one individual that he is.
Most people, out of fear, simply run out again and get engaged in things so that they can forget what is happening within themselves. To find oneself alone needs such courage because the moment you find yourself alone you have to face a multitude, a crowd. Each in the crowd pretends to be your real self, and there is no way for you to find out who is your real individual. Millions of people live their lives without meditation for the simple reason that they cannot cope with this encounter.
The method is very easy. Bodhidharma used to say to his disciples, "When you enter into yourself you will find many pretenders who look almost like you. Some of them are even better than you, because they have been practicing your act, your part, for years -- or perhaps for lives. You have to behave the way the elephant behaves when a crowd of dogs starts barking: the elephant goes on without even bothering, as if there is nobody...
You have to be an elephant and treat the crowd within you as if they are barking dogs."
In India it is now becoming a rare scene, but in my childhood it was an everyday scene because all the Maharajas, and there were many, and all the great religious leaders, and they were many, all had many elephants. In fact, a religious leader's religiousness was measured by how many elephants he had, because to keep an elephant is not easy; it is very costly.
It was an everyday scene -- the elephants passing on the road and the dogs barking. A strange feeling arises when you see a dog bark at the elephant; the elephant pays not even the smallest attention -- as if there is nobody, nothing is happening. And if you look at the face of the dog, you can understand the meaning of the word `despair'..."This fellow is strange: we are barking, so many dogs, and he is going his way as if nothing is happening."
Soon those dogs start disappearing -- "What is the point? The elephant seems to be an idiot, or maybe he is deaf, but not our equal. Perhaps he does not understand our language, but whatever the reason, the task is hopeless."
Bodhidharma is right; the meditator has to behave like an elephant. And he will be surprised: all those who are surrounding his inside -- many facades, many voices -- start becoming distant. Soon a moment comes when they are so far away that it seems you have only seen them, heard them, in a dream. And as they go, receding... a great silence, a tremendous tranquillity settles in your being.
Surabhi, your question is, "These days, looking inside, I do not find a personality with certain characteristics, but rather an ever-changing flux, totally unpredictable. It makes life in this body feel very fragile, vulnerable and momentary -- a feeling which extends itself to everything around me, shaking me to the roots."
It appears as if it is a curse -- it is not.
The roots that can be shaken are not your roots, and that which is fragile, that which is momentary, does not belong to you. Only one thing belongs to you in this whole experience: that is the watcher, the witness. Who is witnessing the fragileness, the ever-changing flux of personalities? Who is watching the shaking of the roots? Certainly he is beyond all of it.
That beyondness is yours. That beyondness is you.
That is your individuality, that is your being.
Settle in that witnessing, and all that you are feeling disturbed by will disappear. It is just the first encounter of entering into oneself. Don't go back; go deeper
into it.
Ginsberg sits down in a Moscow cafe and orders a glass of tea and a copy of pravda.
"I will bring the tea," the waiter tells him, "but I can't bring a copy of pravda. The Soviet regime has been overthrown and pravda is not published anymore."
"Alright," says Ginsberg, "just bring the tea."
The next day, Ginsberg comes to the same cafe and asks for tea and a copy of pravda.
The waiter gives him the same answer.
On the third day, Ginsberg orders the same and this time the waiter says to him, "Look, sir, you seem to be an intelligent man. For the past three days you have ordered a copy of pravda and three times now I have had to tell you that the Soviet regime has been overthrown and Pravda is not published anymore."
"I know, I know," says Ginsberg, "but I just like to hear you say it!"
It is good news, Surabhi, that you don't exist as a personality. You should rejoice
--
rejoice in the fact that you are only the witness, the watcher, because that is the only thing which is eternal and immortal. It is the only thing which cannot be transcended by any more beautiful experience, any deeper ecstasy, any greater enlightenment.
Just let this personality, this fragileness, this momentariness, this fear, this trembling of the roots, not be identified with yourself. Remain aloof, a watcher on the hills, and soon the whole scene changes.
The pope lay dying. His doctor called the cardinals together and announced, "We can only save his life with a heart transplant."
"We must tell the people," said one of the cardinals, "perhaps a donor will volunteer to give his heart for the pontiff."
An announcement was made and thousands gathered beneath the pope's balcony shouting, "Take-a my heart, take-a my heart!"
The cardinals now had to decide on the person who would donate his heart to the holy father. "We will drop a feather from his holiness' head," said the head cardinal.
"Whosoever it lands upon will be the lucky person."
As the feather floated down from the balcony, from the multitudes below came, "Take-a my heart -- phew! Take-a my heart -- phew!"
It is one thing to say, "Take-a my heart," but when it comes so close, "Phew!" Everybody wants to know his inner reality, but you will have to lose something; you will have to pay for it.
There is nothing in existence available without payment. If you want to know yourself, you will have to drop all false identities. They are your investments, they are your power, they are your prestige, they are your religion, they are your qualifications. It is difficult to drop them; it feels like death.
Certainly meditation is a death, a death of all that is false in you. And only then, that which is not false is experienced. That experience is resurrection -- a new life, the birth of a new man.
Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,
I AM MOST AWARE OF A BIG FEAR OR GUILT IN ME WHEN I SIT WITH YOU, AND I AM LONGING SO MUCH TO BE TOTALLY OPEN TO YOU. RECENTLY I COULD FEEL THE SERPENT ROLLED UP IN THE BOTTOM OF ME, SLEEPING, AND THE DOOR, THE THIRD CHAKRA STILL CLOSED. MY HEART WANTS TO
FLY WITH YOU. IS THERE ANYTHING I CAN DO?
Sambodhi Amrita, what is fear? There are fears and fears; I am not talking about them. I am talking about the most fundamental fear -- all other fears are faraway echoes of the basic fear -- and that fear is of death. Life is surrounded by death.
You see every day somebody dying -- something dying; something that was alive a moment before is dead.
Each death reminds you of your own death.
It is impossible to forget your own death; every moment there is a reminder. So the first thing to be understood is that the only possibility of getting rid of fear is to get rid of death. And you can get rid of death, because death is only an idea, not a reality.
You have only seen other people dying; have you ever seen yourself dying? And when you see somebody else dying, you are an outsider, not a participant in the experience. The experience is happening inside the person. All that you know is that he is no longer breathing, that his body has become cold, that his heart is no longer beating. But do you think all these things put together are equivalent to life? Is life only breathing? Is life only the heartbeat, the blood circulating and keeping the body warm? If this is life, it is not worth the game. If only my breathing is my life, what is the point of going on breathing?
Life must be something more. To be of any value life must have something of eternity in it; it must be something beyond death. And you can know it, because it exists within you.
Life exists within you -- death is only an experience of others, outside observers.
It is simply like love. Can you understand love by seeing a person being loving to someone? What will you see? They are hugging each other, but is hugging love? You may see they are holding hands together, but is holding hands love? From the outside, what else can you discover about love? Anything that you discover will be absolutely futile. These are expressions of love, but not love itself. Love is something one knows only when one is in it.
One of the greatest poet's of India, Rabindranath Tagore, was very much embarrassed by an old man who was his grandfather's friend. The old man often used to come because he lived in the neighborhood, and he would never leave the house without creating trouble for Rabindranath. He would certainly knock on his doors, and ask, "How is your poetry going? Do you really know God? Do you really know love? Tell me, do you know all these things that you talk about in your poetry? Or are you just articulate with words?
Any idiot can talk about love, about God, about the soul, but I don't see in your eyes that you have experienced anything."
And Rabindranath could not answer him. In fact he was right. The old man would meet him in the marketplace and hold him and ask him, "What about your God, have you found him? Or are you still writing poetry about him? Remember, talking about God, is not knowing God."
He was a very embarrassing person. In poets' gatherings, where Rabindranath was very much respected -- he was a Nobel prize winner -- that old man was bound to reach. On the stage, before all the poets and worshipers of Rabindranath, he would hold him by his collar and would say, "Still it has not happened. Why are you deceiving these idiots?
They are smaller idiots, you are a bigger idiot; they are not known outside the land, you are known all over the world -- but that does not mean that you know God."
Rabindranath has written in his diary: "I was so much harassed by him, and he had such penetrating eyes that it was impossible to tell a lie to him. His very presence was such that either you had to say the truth, or you had to remain silent."
But one day it happened... Rabindranath had gone for a morning walk. In the night it had rained; it was very early morning and the sun was rising. In the ocean it was all gold, and by the side of the streets water had gathered in small pools. In those small pools also the sun was rising with the same glory, with the same color, with the same joy.… And just this experience -- that in existence there is nothing superior and nothing inferior, that all is one whole -- suddenly triggered something in him. For the first time in his life he went to the old man's house, knocked on the door, looked into the eyes of the old man and said,
"Now, what do you say?"
He said, "Now there is nothing to say. It has happened. I bless you."
The experience of your immortality, of your eternity, of your wholeness, of your oneness with existence is always possible. It only needs some triggering experience.
The whole function of the master is to create a situation in which the experience can be triggered; and suddenly the cloud of death disappears and there is all sunshine --
tremendous life, abundant life, life full of song and full of dance.
So the first thing, Amrita, is to get rid of death. All fears will disappear. You don't have to work on each single fear; otherwise it will take lives and still you will not be able to get rid of them.
You say, "I am most aware of a big fear "
Everybody is more or less aware of the big fear, but the fear is absolutely rootless, baseless. And you say " or guilt in me, when I sit with You."
The fear is natural, because death is known by everybody around. Guilt is not natural; it is created by religions. They have made every man guilty -- guilty of a thousand and one things, so burdened with guilt that they cannot sing, they cannot dance, they cannot enjoy anything. The guilt poisons everything.
Sitting with me it becomes more clear to you, because I am a stranger amongst you; I don't have any guilt. Guilt is an absolutely non-existential thing. It is the conditioning of religions.
Sitting with me, everything inside you starts becoming clear by contrast: Here is a man who has no guilt, a man who has no fear, a man who is absolutely alone in this whole world -- a single man against the whole world. All your guilt that ordinarily remains unconscious, because you are living with the same kind of people, with the same kind of conditioning.…
Being with me is being with a mirror.
And to see yourself and the mess that you are carrying within you, is certainly saddening.
But it is also important, because if you become aware of it, it can be dropped. Guilt is an idea accepted by you. You can reject it, and it can be rejected because it is not part of existence. It is part of some stupid theology, of some old primitive religion.
You are saying, "and I am longing so much to be totally open to You." And you become afraid because the closer you become, the more open you become, the more you feel yourself full of guilt, sadness, misery, condemnation. You have been humiliated so much.
All the religions have conspired against innocent human beings to make them guilty, because without making them guilty they cannot be made into slaves. And slaves are needed. For a few people's lust for power, millions of people are needed to be enslaved.
For a few people to become Alexander the Great, millions have to be reduced to a subhuman status.
But all these are simply conditionings in the mind, which you can erase as easily as writing in the sands on a beach. Just don't be afraid, because those writings you have accepted as holy, you have accepted as coming from very respectable sources, from great founders of religions. It does not matter. Only one thing matters: that your mind should be completely cleaned, utterly empty and silent.
There is no need of Moses or Jesus or Buddha to reside inside you. You need a totally silent, clean space. And only that space can bring you not only to me, but to yourself, to existence itself.
"Recently I could feel the serpent rolled up in the bottom of me, sleeping, and the door, the third chakra, still closed. My heart wants to fly with you. Is there anything I can do?"
There are things which have to be done, and there are things which have not to be done.
Things that can be done are ordinary, mundane, mediocre, of the objective world. Things which happen, and cannot be done, belong to a superior, higher order of existence.
If you are feeling that you would like your love to grow, to blossom, then wait with deep longing -- as a seed. The longing has to be the seed. And the waiting, the patient waiting for the time when the spring comes and seeds start changing from dormant beings into alive, active blossomings.…
The longing is there.
Just waiting is needed.
And the waiting should not be impatient, because impatient waiting means you don't trust existence. And your impatience cannot bring the spring a single moment earlier. On the contrary, your impatience may block the door for the spring to come to you.
Just remain available, with a deep longing, just like a thirst in every cell of your body, a passion.
And spring has always come. Your spring will also come.
You need not do anything else.
Just long as lovingly, as intensely, and wait as patiently, as possible.
The religions of the world have given so many diseases to man that they are uncountable.
One of the diseases is that they have made every man ambitious for reward -- if not in this world then in the other world. They have made man so greedy, and at the same time they are all talking against greed. But their whole religion is based on greed.
Don't let your longing be a greed. Your longing should be a love affair.
Your longing should not be a sad state but a joyful state, just as a pregnant mother. Your longing makes you pregnant. You can feel the child inside you which is growing every day, and each moment becomes a reward -- not that your reward will be delivered in heaven.
Religions have done such harm that they cannot be forgiven. They have taken away all dignity of man -- his joy of longing, of love, his pleasure in waiting, his trust that the spring will come. They have taken everything away from you. You will be rewarded only if you do certain rituals which have no relationship, no relevance. Now, going around a statue seven times -- what relevance can there be
that you have earned virtue?
There are people who are continuously counting beads. I have seen people who are tending their shop and their hand is holding the beads so others should not see. It looks strange that you are haggling about the price of a certain thing with a customer and at the same time moving the beads, so they keep their hands and their beads in a bag so you cannot see. But anybody can see -- why should one have one's hand in a bag?
So the religion is going on inside the bag; outside they are haggling for the price and everything, and trying to cheat and exploit -- lying. And inside, how many times they have moved the beads -- means they have earned that much virtue. Virtue is the coin in heaven -- how much virtue have you in your bank account?
In Tibet they have done even better than counting beads. They have made small prayer wheels; each spoke represents one bead. So they go on doing all kinds of work, their prayer wheel by their side, and just once in a while they move it. And it goes on moving; when it slows down, they again give a push.…
When I first came to know a lama with his prayer wheel I said, "You are stupid. Just plug it into the electricity. It will go on eternally, irrespective of whether you are alive or dead!"
But the lama could not understand that I was making a laughingstock of him. He said,
"Your idea is great, because then we are completely free; otherwise this is a hindrance and everything -- you cannot do anything wholeheartedly." Even making love, they are moving their prayer wheel -- both the wife and the husband, they both have their prayer wheels. Now, it is very difficult: in the first place, the exercise of love is difficult -- such primitive gymnastics -- and on top of it you have to go on moving those prayer wheels.
A simple and innocent religion would have changed the whole earth. But the cunning priests would not allow a pure and innocent and childlike religion, with wondering eyes, with joy, not bothering about stupid ideas about heaven and hell but living each moment with great love.
And waiting for more -- not desiring, but by waiting, deserving, creating more and more space, silence, so that the spring comes. And not only a few flowers,
but so many flowers.…
One of the Sufi mystics has a small poem about it: "I had waited long for the spring -- it came. And it came so abundantly, with so many flowers, that there was not a place left where I could make a nest for myself."
Life gives abundantly; you just have to be a recipient. But never wait for any reward.
Three men die on the same day and go to heaven. One by one they are interviewed by Saint Peter, who asked the first man how many times he had made love: "Never! I am a virgin," is the first guy's answer. Saint Peter gives him a Mercedes Benz to get around in, and poses the same question to the second man. "Only once," he says, "on my wedding night."
Giving him the keys to a Toyota, Saint Peter turns and asks the third man how often he has made love in his life. "I have gotten laid so many times I have lost count," the fellow confesses. And Saint Peter gives him a bicycle.
Not too much later, the first man is driving around in his Mercedes Benz when he sees something so extraordinary that he turns his head to look. He crashes headlong into a tree, and when he comes to, in Heaven Hospital, the angel doctors and police are standing by his bedside, waiting to find out what caused the accident.
"It was shocking, simply shocking!" whispers the poor man, "I saw Pope John Paul on roller skates."
All your old religions are based on reward and punishment, on more and less. Even on the last night when Jesus is departing from his disciples they ask only one question --
"Certainly in heaven you will be standing at the right hand of God, but what about us?
Who will be standing next to you? And what are going to be our positions?" It is shocking to think that the man they had loved, lived with, is going to be crucified tomorrow -- it is almost certain -- but their whole concern is about their position. This is the corruption that religions have put into man's mind.
I want you to be absolutely innocent of all religious corruption and pollution. Have a silent, loving mind, waiting for more to happen. Life is so much that we go on exploring it -- but we cannot exhaust it. The mystery is timeless.
Okay, Maneesha? Yes, Osho.
The Golden Future Chapter #13
Chapter title: Nothing goes right without meditation 18 May 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive
code: 8705180
ShortTitle: GOLDEN13
Audio: Yes Video: Yes Length: 104
mins Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
I FEEL A STRONG CONNECTION BETWEEN DEATH AND MEDITATION, A FASCINATION AND A FEAR. WHEN I SIT WITH YOU, IT IS SOMEHOW SAFE
TO CLOSE MY EYES AND MEDITATE; WHEN I AM ALONE, IT IS FRIGHTENING. PLEASE COMMENT.
Dhyan Sagar, there is not only a strong connection between meditation and death, but they are almost the same thing -- just two ways of looking at the same experience.
Death separates you from your body, from your mind, from all that is not you. But it separates you against your will. You are resisting, you don't want to be separated; you are not willing, you are not in a state of let-go.
Meditation also separates all that is not you from your being and reality -- but the resistance is not there; that is the only difference. Instead of resistance, there is a tremendous willingness, a longing, a passionate welcome. You want it; you desire it from the very depth of your heart.
The experience is the same -- the separation between the false and the real -- but because of your resistance in death, you become unconscious, you fall into a coma. You cling too much in death; you don't allow it to happen, you close all the doors, all the windows.
Your lust for life is at the optimum. The very idea of dying frightens you from the very roots.
But death is a natural phenomenon and absolutely necessary too -- it has to happen. If the leaves don't become yellow and don't fall, the new leaves, the fresh and young will not come. If one goes on living in the old body, he will not be moving into a better house, fresher, newer, with more possibilities of a new beginning. Perhaps he may not take the same route as he has taken in his past life, getting in a desert. He may move into a new sky of consciousness.
Each death is an end and a beginning.
Don't pay too much attention to the end. It is an end to an old, rotten, miserable life style, and it is a great opportunity to begin a new life, not to commit the old mistakes. It is a beginning of an adventure. But because you cling to life and you don't want to leave it --
and it has to happen by the very nature of things -- you fall unconscious.
Almost everyone, except those few people who have become enlightened, dies unconsciously; hence they don't know what death is, they don't know its new beginning, the new dawn.
Meditation is your own exploration.
You are searching to know exactly what constitutes you: what is false in you and what is real in you. It is a tremendous journey from the false to the real, from the mortal to the immortal, from darkness to light. But when you come to the point of seeing the separation from the mind and the body, and yourself just as a witness, the experience of death is the same. You are not dying... a man who has meditated will die joyfully because he knows there is no death; the death was in his clinging with life.
You say, Sagar, I FEEL A STRONG CONNECTION BETWEEN DEATH AND
MEDITATION. There is. In the ancient scriptures of this land, even the master is defined as death because his whole function, his whole work is to teach you meditation. In other words, he is teaching you to die without dying -- to pass through the experience of death, surprised that you are still alive; death was like a cloud that has passed; it has not even scratched you. Hence the fascination, and the fear. The fascination is to know the mysterious experience everybody has to pass through, has passed through many times, but became unconscious. And the fear -- that perhaps death is only the end and not another beginning.
It happened, just in the beginning of this century, that the King of Varanasi was to be operated on; the operation was major. But the King was very stubborn and he wouldn't take any kind of anesthesia. He said, "You can do the operation, but I want to see it happen; I don't want to be unconscious."
The doctors were puzzled. It was against medical practice... such a major operation was going to be too painful; the man might die because of the pain. Surgery needs you to be unconscious.
Perhaps the science of surgery has learned the art of anesthesia from the experience of death, because death is the greatest surgery. It separates you from your body, from your heart, and you have remained identified with all this for seventy years, eighty years. They have become almost your real self. The separation is going to be very painful, and there is a limit to pain.
Have you ever noticed? -- there is no unbearable pain. The words"unbearable pain" exist only in language -- all pain is bearable. The moment it becomes unbearable, you fall unconscious. Your unconsciousness is a way to bear it.
If he had been an ordinary man, the doctors would not have listened to him -- but he was a king, and a very well-known king, known all over the country as a great wise man. He persuaded the surgeons, "Don't be worried, nothing is going to happen to me. Just give me five minutes before you start your operation so that I can arrange myself into a meditative state. Once I'm in meditation, I am already far away from the body. Then you can cut my whole body into pieces -- I will be only a witness, and a faraway witness, as if it is happening to somebody else."
The moment was very critical; the operation had to be done immediately. If it was not done immediately, it might cause death. There were only two alternatives: either to operate and allow the patient to remain conscious, or not to operate, but follow the old routine of science. But in that case, death was certain. In the first case, there was a chance that perhaps this man could manage, and he was so insistent... finding no way to persuade him, they had to operate.
That was the first operation done without anesthesia, in a state of meditation. The king simply closed his eyes, became silent. Even the surgeons felt something changing around the king -- the vibe, the presence; his face became relaxed like a small baby, just born, and after five minutes they started the operation. The operation took two hours, and they were trembling with fear; in fact, they were not sure that the king would survive -- the shock might be too much. But when the operation was over, the king asked them, "Can I open my eyes now?"
It was discussed in the medical field all over the world as a very strange case. The surgeons asked him what he did. He said, "I have not done anything. To meditate is my very life. Moment to moment I am living in silence. I asked for those five minutes because you were going to do such a dangerous operation that I had to become absolutely settled in my being, with no wavering. Then you
could do anything... because you were not doing it to me. I am consciousness -- and you cannot operate on consciousness, you can operate only on the body."
You say," WHEN I SIT WITH YOU, IT IS SOMEHOW SAFE." There is really no difference whether you sit with me or you sit alone -- it is just a mind security, the idea that the master is present so there is no harm to take the jump. If something goes wrong, somebody is there to take care of it.
In meditation, nothing goes wrong -- ever. Without meditation, everything is going wrong.
Nothing goes right without meditation; your whole life is going wrong. You live only in hope, but your hopes are never fulfilled. Your life is a long, long tragedy. And the reason is your unawareness, your unmeditativeness.
Meditation looks like death, and the experience is exactly the same. But the attitude and the approach is different, and the difference is so vast that it can be said that meditation is life and death is just a dream.
But this is the function of a mystery school, where many people are meditating, where a master is present. You feel safe, you are not alone. If something goes wrong, help will be available immediately. But nothing goes wrong.
So meditate while you are sitting with me, and meditate in your aloneness. Meditation is the only thing with an absolute guarantee that nothing goes wrong with it. It only reveals your existence to yourself -- how can anything go wrong? And you are not doing anything; you are really stopping doing everything. You are stopping thinking, feeling, doing -- a full stop to all your actions. Only consciousness remains, because that is not your action, it is you.
Once you have tasted your being, all fear disappears, and life becomes a totally new dimension -- no longer mundane, no longer ordinary. For the first time you see the sacredness and the divineness not only of yourself, but of all that exists. Everything becomes mysterious, and to live in this mystery is the only way to live blissfully; to live in this mystery is to live under blessings showering on you like rain. Each moment brings more and more, deeper and more profound blessings to you. Not that you deserve them, but because life gives them out of its abundance -- it is burdened, it shares with whomsoever is receptive to it.
But don't get the idea that meditation is death-like, because death has no good associations in your mind. That will prevent you experiencing consciousness -- "It is death-like." In fact, it is a real death. The ordinary death is not a real death, because you will be again joined with another structure, another body. The meditator dies in a great way; he never again becomes imprisoned in a body.
An Italian missed a day at work and the foreman wanted an explanation. "Where have you been?" he asked.
"It was-a my wife. She give-a birth to a wheelbarrow."
"If you can't do any better than that," said the foreman, "I'm gonna have to fire you."
"I think-a I got it wrong," said the Italian. "My wife, she's in-a bed having a push chair."
"That's it, wise guy," shouted the foreman, "You are fired!"
The Italian went home and asked his wife, "Hey, what was wrong with you yesterday?"
"I told-a you, I had-a miscarriage."
"I knew it was-a something with-a wheels-a on it."
There are misunderstandings piled upon misunderstandings in you. Some misunderstandings can be tremendously harmful. Getting the association of meditation and death identified in your mind is one of the greatest harms that you can do to yourself.
Although you are not wrong, your associations with the meaning of death are such that they will prevent you from getting into meditation.
That is one of the reasons I want to make death more and more associated with celebration rather than with mourning, more and more associated with a change, a new beginning, rather than just a full stop, an end. I want to change the association. That will clear the way for meditativeness.
And if you are feeling, here with me, silent and meditative -- still alive, more alive than ever -- then there is no need to be afraid. Try it in different situations, and you will always find it a source of great healing, a source of great well- being, a source of great wisdom... a source of great insight into life and its mysteries.
Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,
WHEN SOMEONE LIKE NIETZSCHE OR GERTRUDE STEIN DIES -- A GENIUS
WHO WOULD PROBABLY HAVE BECOME ENLIGHTENED IF THEY HAD MET
A MASTER -- WHAT SORT OF CONSCIOUSNESS DO THEY CARRY INTO THE
NEXT LIFE, AND WHAT WAS IT THAT IN THEIR PREVIOUS LIVES ALLOWED
THEM TO EXPERIENCE SUCH A HUGE POTENTIAL, SUCH A GREAT
FLOWERING, AND SUCH A GREAT KNACK? WAS IT THE IDEA OF WANTING
TO GO THEIR OWN WAY WITHOUT A MASTER?
Pankaja, there are many things in your question. First, you ask, "When someone like Nietzsche or Gertrude Stein dies -- a genius who would probably have become enlightened if they had met a master -- what sort of consciousness do they carry into the next life?
The first thing to be understood is that consciousness has nothing to do with genius.
Everybody can be a Gautam Buddha. Everybody cannot be a Michelangelo, everybody cannot be a Friedrich Nietzsche.
But everybody can be a Zarathustra, because the spiritual realization is everybody's birthright. It is not a talent like painting, or music, or poetry, or dancing; it is not a genius either. A genius has tremendous intelligence, but it is still of the mind.
Enlightenment is not of the mind, it is not intellect; it is intelligence of a totally different order. So, the first thing to remember is that it is not only people, like Friedrich Nietzsche who have missed the journey towards their own selves; they were great intellectuals, geniuses unparalleled -- but all that belongs to the mind. And to be a Gautam Buddha, a Lao Tzu, or a Zarathustra is to get out of the mind, to be in a state of mindlessness. It does not matter whether you had a big mind or a small mind, a mediocre mind, or a genius; the point is that you should be out of the mind. The moment you are out of the mind, you are in yourself.
So the strange thing is that the more a person is intellectual, the farther he goes away from himself. His intellect takes him to faraway stars. He is a genius, he may create great poetry, he may create great sculpture. But as far as you are concerned, you are not to be created, you are already there.
The genius creates, the meditator discovers.
So, don't make a category of Nietzsche and Stein and Schweitzer separate from others. In the world of mind, they are far richer than you, but in the world of no- mind, they are as poor as you are. And that is the space which matters.
Secondly, you ask, "What sort of consciousness do they carry into the next life?" They don't have any consciousness to carry into another life. They have a certain genius, a certain talent, a certain intelligence; they will carry that intelligence into another life, but they don't have consciousness.
Consciousness is an altogether different matter. It has nothing to do with creativity, it has nothing to do with inventiveness, it has nothing to do with science or art; it has something to do with tremendous silence, peace, a centering
-- they don't have it. So the question of carrying a certain consciousness into the next life does not arise; they don't have it in the first place. What they have, they will carry into the next life. They will become greater geniuses, they will become better singers, they will become more talented in their field, but it has nothing to do with meditation or consciousness. They will remain as unconscious as you are, as anybody else is.
It is as if you all fall asleep here; you will be dreaming. Somebody may have a very beautiful dream, very nice, very juicy, and somebody may have a nightmare. But both are dreams. And when they wake up, they will know that the beautiful dream and the nightmare are not different -- they are both dreams. They are non-existential, mind projections.
When an ordinary man meditates, he comes to the same space of blissfulness as Nietzsche or Albert Einstein or Bertrand Russell. That space of blissfulness will not be different, will not be richer for Bertrand Russell because he is a great intellectual. Those values don't matter outside of the mind; outside of the mind, they are irrelevant.
This is great and good news because it means a woodcutter or a fisherman can become Gautam Buddha. An uneducated Jesus, an uneducated Kabir, who doesn't show any indication of genius, can still become enlightened, because enlightenment is not a talent, it is discovering your being. And the being of everyone is absolutely equal. That is the only place where communism exists -- not in the Soviet Union, not in China.
The only place where communism exists is when somebody becomes a Gautam Buddha, a Zarathustra, a Lao Tzu. Suddenly all distinctions, talents of the mind, disappear. There is only pure sky where you cannot make any distinctions of higher and lower.
And you are asking, "What was it that in their previous lives allowed them to experience such a huge potential?"
You are growing every moment in whatever you are doing. A warrior will attain a certain quality of warriorness, a sharpness of the sword, and he will carry that quality into the next life. A mathematician will carry his mathematical intelligence to higher peaks in another life. That's why people are so different, so unequal, because in their past lives everybody has been doing different things, accumulating different experiences, molding the mind in a certain way. Nothing is lost, whatever you are doing will be with you like your shadow. It will follow you, and it will become bigger and bigger.
If Nietzsche is a great philosopher, he must have been philosophizing in his past lives --
perhaps many, many lives -- because such a genius needs a long, long
philosophical past.
But the same is true about everybody. Everybody has a certain talent, developed or undeveloped; it depends on your decision, on your commitment. Once you are committed, you have accepted a responsibility to grow in a certain direction. Even whole races of people have developed in different directions, not only individuals.
For example, the Sikhs in India are not different from Hindus. They are only five hundred years old, following an enlightened man, Nanak. They became a different sect -- but they are Hindus. And for these five hundred years, a strange phenomenon has happened, which has not happened anywhere else in the world. You cannot find in a Jewish family that one person is a Christian; you cannot find in a Mohammedan family that one person is a Hindu. But for five hundred years it has been a convention that in Punjab, where Sikhs dominate, the eldest son of the family should become a Sikh. He still remains in the family. His whole family is Hindu -- his father is Hindu, his wife may be Hindu; he is a Sikh.
And the strangeness is that just by being Sikhs, the whole character of those Hindus has changed. Hindus have become cowards in the name of nonviolence; they are boiling with aggression within but, nonviolence is the ideal. Sikhs don't believe in nonviolence; neither do they believe in violence -- they believe in spontaneity.
A certain situation may need violence and a certain situation may need nonviolence; you cannot make it a principle of life. You have to remain open, available, and responsive to the moment. And there is no difference of blood -- the differences are such that one can only laugh at them -- but they have created a totally new race.
Any Hindu can become a Sikh, any Mohammedan can become a Sikh, because the change is very simple. You have to have long hair, you cannot cut your beard or mustache; you have to use a turban, and you have to keep a comb in your turban; you have to wear a steel ring, a bracelet, just to show that you are a Sikh, and you have to carry a sword. You always have to wear underwear.
How these things have changed people is a miracle, because the Sikh is totally different from Hindus in his behavior. He is a warrior; he's not cowardly. He's
more sincere, more simple, more of the heart.
It happened... I was going to Manali, the mountainous part, and it had rained, and the driver of my limousine was a Sikh. He started becoming afraid. The road was very small, the limousine was very big. The road was slippery; there were water pools collected on the road. At a certain point it looked very dangerous. A great river was flowing by, thousands of feet down -- and just a small road. He stopped the car, went out, and sat there. And he said, "I cannot move anymore, it is simply going into death."
I said, "Don't be worried, you just sit; I will drive."
He said, "That is even more dangerous! I cannot give you the key."
I said, "This is very strange, because we have been traveling the whole night, twelve hours; now we are in the middle."
I tried to explain to him, "Even going back, you will have to travel twelve miles, twelve hours again on the same dangerous road. Whether you go backwards or you go forwards, it is the same."
He said, "It is not the same, because the road that we have passed, we have survived -- I can manage. But ahead it seems to be simply committing suicide -- I cannot go."
At that very moment, the inspector general of Punjab, who was coming to participate in the camp, came in his jeep. Seeing me standing there, and the limousine and driver sitting there, he said, "What is the matter?"
I said, "It is good you have come at the right moment; this driver is not ready to move ahead."
The inspector general of Punjab was also a Sikh. He came close to the driver and told him, "You are a Sikh. Have you forgotten this? Just get into the car."
And strangely enough, he immediately got into the car. We moved. I asked him, "What happened? I have been arguing with you "
He said, "It is not a question of argument. I am a Sikh! I am supposed not to be afraid, and I had forgotten it."
Just a slight idea can change not only the individual, it can change the whole race.
We have seen how Adolf Hitler created in Germany a race of warriors as nobody has done ever before, just by giving them the idea that "you are the purest Aryans, that you are born to rule all over the world. "And once the idea got into their minds, he almost conquered the world. For five years, he went on conquering. People became so afraid that a few countries simply gave way to him without fighting. What was the point of fighting with those people? They were superhuman. These ideas also are carried from one life to another.
In India there are sudras, untouchables. For five thousand years they have been condemned, oppressed, as nobody else in the whole world. I used to go to their functions and they would not let me sit with them. I would tell them, "You are as human as anybody else, and in fact you are doing a service which is far more valuable than any prime minister or any president of any country. The country would be more peaceful without these presidents and prime ministers, but without you, the country cannot live.
You are keeping the country clean, you are doing the dirtiest jobs; you should be respected for it."
They would listen to me, but I could see that they were not ready to accept the idea that they are equal to other human beings. For five thousand years they have not revolted against such oppression, such humiliation -- just they go on carrying it from one life into another life; it becomes more and more ingrained.
Pankaja, you are asking, "Was it the idea of wanting to go their own way without a master?" No, they had no idea of the great experience that happens between a master and a disciple. They have never consciously decided to go on their own way.
In fact in the West, masters have not existed. There have been saviors. They are not masters; they don't help you to become enlightened, they help you to remain unenlightened. Just believe in them and they will save you, you are not to do anything.
The West has known prophets, messengers of God, but the West has not known masters.
It has known mystics, but the mystics have remained silent in the West seeing that they will not be understood.
It is the atmosphere of thousands of years in the East that has made a few people take courage, and say things which cannot be said. It was the long heritage that allowed a few mystics to become masters. The West has missed completely a whole dimension of life.
The East has also missed many things -- it has missed the scientific mind, it has missed the technological progress. It has remained poor, it has been invaded very easily by anybody, because its whole soul was devoted towards only one thing -- everything else was irrelevant: Who rules the country does not matter, what matters is whether you are enlightened or not. Whether you are rich or poor does not matter, what matters is whether you know yourself or not -- a single-pointed devotion. And because of this, the East has a climate of its own.
As you enter into the Eastern climate, you suddenly feel a difference. The West is more logical; the East is more loving. The West is more of the mind; the East is more of mindlessness, of meditation.
No, Pankaja, they have not missed a master; the very idea was non-existent to them. Even today, millions of Western people are unaware of the fact of masters, disciples, meditations. It is only the younger generation -- and that too a very small portion of it --
which has entered into the Eastern dimension, and has been shocked that the real richness is not of the outside world, the real richness is of the inside.
Ginsberg is dying. "Call the priest," he says to his wife, "and tell him I want to be converted into the catholic religion."
"But Max, you are an orthodox Jew all your life. What are you talking about? You want to be converted?"
Ginsberg says, "Better one of them should die than one of us."
People have lived as Jews, as Christians, as Mohammedans, but people have not lived as simply religious.
In the East also only, a very few people have lived in pure religiousness. But
only those very few people have filled the whole of the East with a fragrance which seems to be eternal.
God asked Moses to choose whatever promised land he wished. After weighing several factors, Moses settled on California. But Moses, according to legend, had a speech impediment and he begin to answer, "C... C "
Whereupon God said, "Canaan, that wasteland? Well, okay Mo. If you want it, you got it."
Poor Moses, because of a speech impediment got Canaan, which is now Israel -- its old name is Canaan.
But from the very beginning in the Western mind, the desire was for California. He could have asked for Kashmir where finally he came and died; he could have asked for the land of Gautam Buddha.
But the East has appealed only to those who are called by psychologists "introverts"; and the West has appeal for those who are known as extroverts. Going Eastward means going inward; going Westward means going outward.
For thousands of years, authentic seekers have been coming to the East. They have found a certain magnetic pull; where so many people have meditated, they have created a tremendous energy pool. Being in that atmosphere, things become simpler, because the whole atmosphere is supportive, is a nourishment.
I have been around the world, and I have seen how the West is absolutely unaware of the Eastern grace. How is it that the Western man is unaware of himself? He's thinking of the farthest star, but not about himself. The East has remained committed to a single goal --
to be oneself, and to know oneself. Unless you know yourself, and you are yourself, your life has gone to waste; it has not blossomed, it has not flowered. You have not fulfilled your destiny.
Okay, Maneesha? Yes, Osho.
The Golden Future
Chapter #14
Chapter title: The love that never ends
18 May 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive
code:
8705185
ShortTitle:
GOLDEN14
Audio:
Yes Video:
Yes Length:
65
mins Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
ONCE, IN KATHMANDU, I ASKED YOU ABOUT THE NEED OF THE DISCIPLE
FOR A MASTER. THEN I ASKED YOU IF THE MASTER NEEDS THE DISCIPLE, AND YOU SHOWERED ON ME SOME WORDS THAT I RECEIVED IN TEARS, LIKE PETALS OF AN UNKNOWABLE FLOWER. WOULD YOU PLEASE BE SO
KIND AND SPEAK TO US ABOUT THE NEED OF THE MASTER FOR THE
DISCIPLES. AREN'T YOU THE FORMLESS FORM, WITH WHOM EXISTENCE IS
FULFILLING OUR LONGING? AREN'T WE, IN SOME WAY, YOUR FOOD, YOUR
NOURISHMENT?
Sarjano, I do not remember what I said in response to your question in Kathmandu. I never remember anything I have said. That keeps me responsible. I cannot repeat, because I do not remember. I can only respond to the question, and to the questioner in this very moment.
Between Kathmandu and this moment, neither you have remained you, nor I have remained I. And so much water has gone down the Ganges, that any repetition is always out of date. Any repetition is dead, is not alive.
That's how the whole of humanity is only pretending to live, but deep down is dead, because it has forgotten the language of response. It knows only the language of reaction.
It reacts according to the memory. It does not respond according to the awareness of the moment, of the need here and now. It is full of the past.
There is no present in millions of people around the world. Millions of people live without knowing the taste of the present. And when you are full of the past you are a graveyard. Howsoever beautiful the past may be, it is still dead. And beauty is meaningless if it cannot dance, if it cannot sing, if it cannot even breathe.
I am here, you are here, why bring Kathmandu in? I don't know what Kathmandu means in Nepalese, but in Hindustani we have a phrase which immediately reminds one of Kathmandu. The phrase is kath ke ullu. It means, "You are an owl. And that too not real, but made of wood." I don't know what Kathmandu means; Kath certainly means wood.…
Why bring Kathmandu in? You really want to listen to the same answer again,
but it is impossible Sarjano. You will have to forgive me, because I don't remember a single word. Kathmandu is almost as far away as the farthest star, as if it happened in some other life.
While we are alive, why waste your time? You can ask a new question and you can receive a new response. The new will be fresher, and the new will be better. The new will be more mature.
But people have lived to live in the past. It has become almost a second nature to them. It is very difficult to drag them out of their graves and tell them, "You are not dead yet.
Start breathing, you are still alive."
An elderly Jewish man walks into a jewelry store to buy his wife a present. "How much is this?" he asks the assistant, pointing to a silver crucifix.
"That is six hundred dollars, sir," replies the assistant.
"Nice," says the man, "and how much without the acrobat on it?"
People cannot forgive the past, people cannot forget the past. Two thousand years have passed, but Jesus is not yet acceptable to the Jewish mind. Not a single Jew in two thousand years has repented that crucifying Jesus was a criminal act, and that he finds himself also part of the conspiracy. You will be surprised to know that not a single Jewish scripture even mentions the name of Jesus. It is so unworthy. Such is our approach to life.…
I will take your question as fresh, because we are not in Kathmandu. And I will answer you in this moment, responding to your question and to you. I am not in the habit of quoting myself.
You are asking, what is the need of the disciple for a master, and vice versa -- what is the need of a master for a disciple? Condensed to its essentialness, the question is, "Does love exist in the lover or in the beloved? Or does love exist in the harmony of both?"
Only in those rare moments, when there is no "I" and no "thou," love blossoms. It does not exist in the lover, it does not exist in the beloved, it exists in the disappearance of their separation.
That's why all lovers are disappointed, because they cannot remain organically one for more than a few seconds. Just a small thing and the separation returns; it was just waiting.
If in twenty-four hours you can find twenty-four seconds of organic unity and harmony, you should think yourself immensely blessed, tremendously rich.
The same is the situation between the disciple and the master. Something higher than love, something deeper than love and togetherness exists in those moments of silence, those moments of communion, when the disciple forgets that he is separate from the master, when the disciple melts and merges into the master.
The master is already merged into existence. Merging into the master you are really merging with existence itself. The master functions only as a door, and a door is an emptiness; you pass through it.
The master is the door to the beyond.
And the beyond exists in the organic unity, in the communion, in the merger, in the melting of the master and the disciple. It is the highest form of love. It is the greatest prayer, the deepest gratitude, and the most ecstatic experience available to human consciousness.
The master is missing something when he is alone; he is like an ocean into which no rivers melt. A disciple is certainly just a nobody without a master. With a master, he becomes the whole existence. Both are fulfilled in a togetherness. And because this togetherness is not of the body, not of the mind, but of that which is beyond the mind in you, it is possible to attain and never lose it.
Love is always up and down, one moment joyful, another moment sad. But the love that we are talking about -- love between two spirits, between two beings -- only begins, it never ends.
The masters ordinarily will not accept what I am saying, but if they don't accept it they are insincere. And if they are insincere, what kind of masters are they?
The masters have been pretending that they don't need anything -- they don't need you, they don't need your eyes, they don't need your heartbeat, they don't need your love, they don't need your merger and meeting. That is an egoistic attitude. And anybody who pretends that he needs nothing is only a teacher, not a
master. He himself needs to be a disciple. He has heard many beautiful truths, but he has not known anything on his own.
A true master, out of his sincerity, out of his humbleness, will accept the simple fact that he is not beyond any need. Of course, his needs are of a very spiritual kind.
He cannot live unless he can share. Even to exist is impossible for him -- he loses all meaning -- unless he can wake up people who are fast asleep, unless he can make people who are miserable become transformed into dancing roses. In their fulfillment he becomes again and again enlightened.
His enlightenment is not an incident: the authentic master is becoming continuously enlightened each moment. His enlightenment is a progress, an eternal progress; otherwise, the world would have been far more poor. It is already poor.
If Gautam Buddha needed nothing, then for forty-two years walking the whole land, talking to people, knowing perfectly well that they cannot understand, is an arduous task.
Why is he doing it? He is helpless, he has to do it. It comes as an intrinsic part of his own enlightenment.
Before, it was a longing to become enlightened. Now it is a longing to make the whole world enlightened.
Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,
I LOVE THE WAY YOU SPEAK SO INTIMATELY TO SANNYASINS WHO HAVE
BEEN WITH YOU FOR A LONG TIME, REMEMBERING VEENA WITH
PHOTOGRAPHIC CLARITY AND WHETHER SOMEONE ELSE'S HANDS WERE
COLD OR WARM, AND WHERE HE USED TO STAND TO GREET YOU.
THE
INTIMACY OF YOU ACKNOWLEDGING US IS SUCH AN INCREDIBLY BEAUTIFUL GIFT IT MAKES ME WEEP. COULD YOU SAY SOMETHING ABOUT ACKNOWLEDGEMENT?
Prem Pankaja, one of the most important secrets of life is that the something can be of immense spiritual value, and the same thing can be a great hindrance for your growth.
Such is acknowledgement. It can arise out of your ego -- to be acknowledged -- then it is dangerous. Then it is going to strengthen that which is false in you and block the doors for the real to open up.
But if it arises out of a simple, innocent heart -- not as a nourishment to the ego but just as a blissful recognition that you are also there, that you are also in existence, that you are accepted as you are, that you are respected as you are -- then acknowledgement can become a tremendous experience and transformation.
It all depends on you, what you make of it.
There are people whom I feel afraid to recognize -- not that it is going to do any harm to me, but because it is going to do harm to them. I can see in their eyes, in their faces, a deep desire, a greed to be recognized. I ignore it. But there are people who are simply here -- just enjoying. It is more than enough that they are breathing the same air, that they are sitting under the same roof, that they are surrounded by the same trees.
I am reminded of a strange story about Ananda, one of Gautam Buddha's most intimate disciples.
And he was not only a disciple, he was also his elder cousin-brother. Just the fact that he was more deeply related with Gautam Buddha, the fact that blood is thicker than water, the fact that, "Not only I am related, he is younger in age to me," became a hindrance.
Forty-two years he remained with Buddha, but could not attain enlightenment.
And many, many others came and became enlightened. It was the day when he was taking initiation that he had asked Gautam Buddha, "I have come to be initiated. After initiation I will be your disciple. Right now I am your elder brother." And in India, even cousin-brothers, if they are elder, have to be respected just like your real brothers.
Ananda said, "I want you to remember three conditions, and give me a promise that you will not go against your word, because after initiation your order will be my life, your word will be my law -- then I cannot say anything. So just before initiation I want three promises. As your elder brother you have to respect my desires."
Sariputra, one of Gautam Buddha's earliest disciple's, said to Ananda, "Don't be stupid, these promises will become hindrances for your growth. These conditions will prohibit all for which you are taking the initiation. You are saying, Ì am going to become your disciple,' but deep down you will never be a disciple. You will always know that you are the elder brother, and those three conditions will always make you certain about it."
Initiation has to be taken unconditionally, but Ananda was not going to listen to an ordinary sannyasin. Sariputra was one of the wisest disciples of Gautam Buddha, but in the eyes of Ananda he was nobody. Ananda was a king, had his own kingdom; Sariputra was just a commoner. Ananda said to him, "You keep quiet. It is a question between two brothers, you need not interfere."
After forty-two years Ananda wept when Gautam Buddha was dying. And he said, "I did not listen to Sariputra. I was ignorant, I insisted. Those conditions were nothing but an enhancement of my ego."
The first condition was, "I will always remain with you. You cannot send me anywhere else to spread the word." Second, "I can ask any question. You cannot say to me, `Wait, and when the time is right you will receive the answer.' No, you will have to give me the answer immediately." And third, "If I bring a friend
-- even if it is in the middle of the night, and I wake you up -- you will have to receive him and answer his questions."
Gautam Buddha laughed. There are very few occasions when he laughed -- in his whole life maybe three or four occasions. He laughed, laughed at the stupidity of human ignorance. What he was asking was just meaningless, and
what he was losing he was not aware of.
Buddha said, "You are my elder brother. I have to obey you, respect you. Your conditions are accepted. You will never find a fault. I give my promise -- but I am giving it with a very heavy heart, because you don't know what you are missing. You are thinking you are becoming special, and this is the place where you have to become humble."
But a blind man is a blind man. He took initiation only after those conditions were accepted. And he wept tears of blood, because he remained always with a subtle ego: "I have a certain speciality amongst ten thousand disciples.
Nobody has any promise from Gautam Buddha except me."
But the people who had no promise, their promises were fulfilled. Those who had come without asking anything and surrendered themselves, they attained. He remained lagging behind. He could not believe it: "What is the matter? Very junior people have attained to liberation, and I am one of the most senior persons. And I am the closest."
But closest only physically. He slept in the same room in which Gautam Buddha slept.
He moved just behind him like a shadow, and he felt greatly proud of his specialness. He was acknowledged by Gautam Buddha and by everybody else; but his acknowledgement became his fault, his failure.
Pankaja, never desire acknowledgement. Enjoy when it comes, relish it, dance... but when it comes on its own, not asked for. The master always recognizes -- but only those who will be helped by it. And he ignores those who will be helped by his ignoring them.
Perhaps they will come to an understanding of why they are being ignored: because they want to be special, because they want to be acknowledged.
Drop that! If you cannot drop, even with a master, then what kind of discipleship is it?
What kind of initiation have you taken? Now leave it to him. If he feels that you need being ignored, he will ignore you -- and you have to be thankful for it. And
if he feels you need acknowledgement he will acknowledge you, and you have to be thankful for that too. But it should not be a demand on your part.
The moment you demand you miss the intimacy, the deep spiritual connection. You fall far away, because the desire is not of your being, it is of your ego, of your personality --
which is not you, which is your enemy. This enemy has to be crucified.
Without ego, without any sense of "I", you will know the innocence of a child. Then the whole starry sky and its freedom is yours.
A smart New York career girl married Stefano, a handsome young Italian farmer. She was not too happy with his social manners, and started trying to improve him immediately. Throughout the wedding reception she continuously corrected his mistakes, telling him what to say, which knife to use at the table, and how to pass the butter.
Finally, the celebrations were over, and they were in bed at last. Stefano fidgeted between the sheets, unsure of himself, but finally he turned towards his new wife and stuttered,
"Could you pass the pussy please?"
It is better to recognize whatever you are: ignorant, uneducated, knowledgeable, moralistic, puritan, egoist -- it is better to recognize whatever you are.
There is no need to hide yourself from the master.
The function of the master is not to improve upon you, but to transform you -- and these are two different processes.
To reform you means to decorate you, to polish you; to transform means to help you die as an ego and be born as an innocent child, who knows no idea of "I- ness".
Only the childlike consciousness is capable of understanding all that is beautiful in life, all that is great in existence. And the whole existence is full of greatness, full of glories.
This is the only existence there is; its beauty, its truth, is the only beauty and the only truth. But they are available only to the innocent people.
Blessed are the innocent, for theirs is the kingdom of God. Okay, Maneesha?
Yes, Osho.
The Golden Future Chapter #15
< Previous | Contents | Next >