Chapter title: The second russian revolution

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‌Chapter title: The second russian revolution‌

21 May 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive

code:

8705215

ShortTitle:

GOLDEN20

Audio:

Yes Video:

Yes Length:

82

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

A FEW MONTHS BEFORE HIS DEATH EDGAR CAYCE, IN ONE OF HIS TRANCE

"SLEEP TALKS" SAID, "THROUGH RUSSIA COMES THE HOPE OF THE

WORLD. NOT IN RESPECT TO WHAT IS SOMETIMES TERMED COMMUNISM

OR BOLSHEVISM, NO; BUT FREEDOM, FREEDOM! THAT EACH MAN WILL

LIVE FOR HIS FELLOW MAN. THE PRINCIPLE HAS BEEN BORN THERE. IT

WILL TAKE YEARS FOR IT TO BE CRYSTALLIZED. YET OUT OF RUSSIA COMES AGAIN THE HOPE OF THE WORLD." COULD YOU PLEASE

COMMENT?

Jivan Mada, Edgar Cayce was one of the strangest human beings, a category in himself.…

There have been utterly conscious people having clear visions of the world -- like Nostradamus; but Cayce was not anything special when he was conscious. Only when he was in a sort of unconsciousness, a trance-like sleep, would he start saying things of tremendous importance, many of which have come true.

Many of these are bound to happen, sooner or later, for the simple reason that whatever he has seen in his trance state is absolutely transparent, clear, without ifs and buts -- it is absolute. And because it was not coming in his conscious state, his ego was not involved.

It was coming out of his innocence; and anything that comes out of innocence has a validity, has an authority of its own.

There are thousands and thousands of pages of notes collected by his disciples from when he was speaking in his trances; almost a whole library exists containing his predictions.

When he used to come to consciousness, out of the trance, he himself was not aware what he had said -- as if it was not said by him but by an unknown source, by an unknown energy, as if existence itself had spoken itself through him. He had been only a vehicle, and a very correct vehicle, because his ego was not in the way, his mind was not in the way. He was simply transmitting whatever was coming from the very roots of life. There have not been many people like him. There have been a few people, but none has the height and the depth, and immensity of Edgar Cayce.

In one of his trance-sleeps he said, "Through Russia comes the hope of the world." Once it had already come: the Russian Revolution in 1917 was the end of an old world and the beginning of a new. It proclaimed many truths about man

-- that property should not be individual, that property is of the commune. The founders of the revolution, particularly Lenin, wanted marriage to be dissolved; because marriage came into existence with private property, it should go out of existence when private property is being dissolved.

It is a historical fact that because of private property, man became interested in marriage, in monogamy; otherwise, by nature, he is polygamous. But to protect his property, so that even after his death it should remain in the hands of his own sons, man decided in favor of monogamy -- which was not natural to him. Hence, on the one hand marriage came into existence, and on the other hand, prostitution. They both are by-products of private property.

Property should belong to all -- just as the air belongs to all, and the water belongs to all, and the sun belongs to all. Private property creates immense problems. On one hand, people go on becoming richer; on the other hand, people go on becoming poorer. And the poor man is the producer: he toils in the field, he works in the orchards -- and he remains hungry. He weaves the clothes -- and he remains naked. He makes the beautiful mansions and palaces -- and he has no house, not even a hut to hide his head in.

This exploitation was condemned by the Russian Revolution, and against this exploitation a new age of a classless society was declared, where everybody would have the equal opportunity to grow. A great hope had arisen with the Russian Revolution, but it died. The revolution fell into wrong hands. Instead of bringing a new age and a new humanity, it repeated the old game under new names. The only change was of labels: where in the past there were the rich and the poor, now there were the bureaucrats and the people. But the distinction was the same, and the exploitation was the same.

For sixty years Russia has lived in a new kind of slavery. Nobody else in the world has known that kind of slavery. The whole country has become a concentration camp.

Beautiful words sometimes prove very dangerous: instead of bringing equality to man it has taken away all freedom, even the freedom of expression. It has made the whole society a society of slaves.

For a moment in 1917 a great hope arose around the world, particularly in those who were intelligent enough to see the immense possibility that was opening up

-- but the bud never became a flower. But you cannot keep millions of people in a concentration camp forever. There is a limit to tolerance -- and that limit has come. There is great restlessness for a new revolution in the Russian youth. And Gorbachev simply represents the tremendous longing for freedom, for equality, for the dignity of being human beings, for self-respect. He has given another chance to the intelligent people of the world, for a new hope again.

Where Lenin left off, Gorbachev has to begin.

The sixty years in between have been a long nightmare -- but that which is gone is gone, that which is past, is past. And the Soviet youth, with the courage and insight of Gorbachev, is looking, not backwards to the sixty ugly years of inhumane dictatorship, but to a new future of an open society, in the authentic sense.

Perhaps Edgar Cayce is going to be true again in his prediction: THROUGH RUSSIA COMES THE HOPE OF THE WORLD. NOT IN RESPECT TO WHAT IS

SOMETIMES TERMED COMMUNISM OR BOLSHEVISM, NO; BUT FREEDOM, FREEDOM! THAT EACH MAN WILL LIVE FOR HIS FELLOW MAN. THE

PRINCIPLE HAS BEEN BORN THERE, IT WILL TAKE YEARS FOR IT TO BE

CRYSTALLIZED. Those years have passed. The principle is now crystallized. YET OUT OF RUSSIA COMES AGAIN THE HOPE OF THE WORLD -- the

second great revolution. Russia seems to be a land of destiny -- not only for its

own people, but for the whole world. It was the first to revolt against capitalism; it is going to be again the first to revolt against dictatorial communism. The future is of a democratic communism, a communism rooted in the freedom of man.

Equality is valuable, but it is not more valuable than freedom. Freedom cannot be sacrificed for it. Freedom cannot be sacrificed for anything else. It is the most precious treasure of your being. There are all signs that the Soviet Union is

going to fulfill the great hope, the great dream. Millions of people have been hoping for it, dreaming for it --

it has been the utopia for centuries. Gorbachev is in a position to make it a reality. A tremendously great responsibility has fallen on his shoulders. And as I can see, he seems to be strong enough, intelligent enough to fulfill the expectations.

Only one thing I would like my Russian sannyasins to convey to Gorbachev from me: if the dimension of meditation also opens for him, he cannot allow the opportunity to be distorted.

Joseph Stalin destroyed the whole revolution for a single reason, and the reason was materialism. He believed that man is nothing but matter. According to Karl Marx, consciousness is only a by-product of matter, and as you die matter disperses; nothing is left as consciousness -- there is no soul. Because of this wrong idea he could manage to kill at least one million Russians in the name of revolution without any trouble; otherwise even to kill one man would destroy your whole life's sleep. It would haunt you -- you would never be able to forgive yourself. But to kill one million people without any concern was possible under the umbrella of materialism.

I would like Gorbachev not only to introduce freedom to the Soviet Union and its people, but also some spiritual dimension so that it is clear that they are not just matter. Matter cannot have any dignity -- matter can be used, but cannot be respected. Matter can be destroyed, but you need not feel that you have committed a crime, or a sin.

Unless the Soviet Union and its people not only desire freedom, but also desire a search for the soul... because what will you do with freedom? Freedom for what? There are two kinds of freedom: freedom from and freedom for. Freedom from is not much of a freedom. The real freedom is the second freedom -- freedom for spiritual growth, freedom for inner search, freedom for knowing the secrets and the mysteries of life.

If Gorbachev can introduce the Soviet Union to Gautam Buddha, to Mahavira, to Zarathustra, to Lao Tzu... why be so confined to Karl Marx? Why be so poor? Why not make the whole sky yours? -- all the stars and the whole beauty of the night, yours. Why remain confined? If he can open the doors for the spiritual

search, then, certainly, he can fulfill the prophecy of Edgar Cayce that Russia is the hope for all of mankind.

And I think him a man intelligent enough to understand that materialism is as confining as Christianity, as confining as Hinduism. I am making my people available to all dimensions because the whole past is your heritage. Why remain so poor, clinging to one small tradition? Why not allow the whole sky to be yours? Why not open your wings?

Communism missed the first revolution because it was not revolutionary enough. It was a reaction against Christianity; and whenever you react to something, you start behaving in the same way. In America they are becoming more and more a closed society because of fundamentalist Christianity. You will be surprised to know that in America thousands of books have been removed from the libraries -- in this twentieth century, just now in this year -- because they do not conform with the fundamentalist Christian attitudes, with the fanatic and fascist Christian mind.

Even in American education Charles Darwin's theory of evolution cannot be taught; it has been prohibited, because it goes against Christianity. Christianity believes in creation.

Perhaps you have never thought that the idea of creation and the idea of evolution are diametrically opposite. God created the world; now there is no question of any evolution.

You cannot improve upon God.

Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution is against Christianity. In no other country is it banned. But some American states have banned it; now it is a crime to teach it. And all books -- and there are thousands of books written on the theory of evolution -- have been removed from the libraries of colleges, universities and national libraries.

A strange polarity. The Soviet Union has been up to now a closed society, and America at least pretended to be an open society. Now the Soviet Union is making every effort to become an open society, and America is becoming more and more closed.

I would like to add a few words to Edgar Cayce's prediction: If the Soviet Union

is the hope for mankind, then the United States of America is the greatest danger for mankind.

It is preparing for human death. And if the Soviet Union becomes not only politically open but also philosophically open -- not confined to the out-of-date ideas of Karl Marx, but open to all kinds of theories, philosophies, religions; experiences of Zen, and Sufism, and Hassidism, of Tao and Yoga -- it can certainly prove the savior of humanity.

Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,

I HAVE OFTEN HEARD YOU SPEAK OF ALONENESS AND LONELINESS AS

BEING OPPOSED; OF ALONENESS BEING A STATE IN WHICH ONE IS SO FULL

-- FULFILLED; OF LONELINESS BEING A STATE IN WHICH ONE IS MISSING

THE OTHER, FEELING VERY EMPTY. READING RYOKAN'S POETRY, I FEEL

SOME LONELINESS, YET THE MAN IS KNOWN AS AN ENLIGHTENED ZEN

MONK.

"STANDING ALONE BENEATH THE SOLITARY PINE, QUICKLY THE TIME PASSES.

OVERHEAD THE ENDLESS SKY.

WHO CAN I CALL TO JOIN ME ON THE PATH?"

IN THE HANKERING FOR A TRUE COMPANION, IN THE NEED TO SHARE

THAT RICHNESS, I WONDER IF IN THE HEART OF ALONENESS, THERE IS A KIND OF LONELINESS. PLEASE EXPLAIN IF ALONENESS AND LONELINESS

ARE INTERRELATED.

Kavisho, loneliness is loneliness, and aloneness is aloneness -- and the two never meet anywhere. They cannot by their very nature. Aloneness is so full, so abundantly full of yourself there is no space for anybody else. And loneliness is so empty, so dark, so miserable that it is nothing but a constant hunger for someone to fill it... if not to fill it, at least to help you to forget it.

You are quoting from Ryokan's poetry. I don't think Ryokan is yet enlightened. He was certainly a Zen monk, and a great poet, but he fell short of being a mystic. He reached very close, but even to reach very close is not to be enlightened.

I have also loved Ryokan's poetry. But beware of poets, because they appear so close to the mystics. Sometimes their words are more juicy than the words of the mystics, because the poet is the artist of words; the mystic is an expert of silence.

Ryokan was a Zen monk; hence something of the mystic echoes in his poetry. But that is because he lived in an atmosphere in communion with the mystics. But he himself was not a mystic.

These are his lines, and you can see immediately what I mean: STANDING ALONE BENEATH A SOLITARY PINE,

QUICKLY THE TIME PASSES. OVERHEAD THE ENDLESS SKY.

WHO CAN I CALL TO JOIN ME ON THE PATH?

He is still in need of a companion, and he is still searching. He is still talking of "the path," and the enlightened man knows there is no path. All paths are wrong, without exception, because every path leads you away from yourself. And to come to yourself you don't need any path: you have to be just awake and you are there.

It is almost like you are asleep in your room and dreaming that you are far away in London, in New York, in San Francisco. Do you think that if suddenly you are awakened you will find yourself in San Francisco? You were there, but that was only a dream.

Awake, suddenly you find you are in your miserable room, and you have not even gone out of the door. You may be angry with the person who has awakened you, but he has brought you back to the reality. And there was no need of booking a ticket, because you had never gone out; you were only dreaming.

You are only dreaming what you are. If you wake up, suddenly you will find all that you used to think your personality, your body, your mind, your knowledge, your feelings, your love -- they were all dreams. You are only a witness. But you cannot dream about the witness; that is an impossibility.

The witness remains a witness, never becomes a dream. Your aloneness is your witness, is your being. And it is so full, there is no need of any companion. And what is the need of a path? Where are you going? You have arrived.

Ryokan was a beautiful poet, and perhaps a very disciplined monk, but he was not a mystic and certainly not an enlightened man.

Kavisho, let this be an opportunity to remind you again: beware of poets. They are like false coins, although they look exactly like authentic coins. But the false is false, and there is no way to make it real. Ryokan has still to wake up and see there is no solitary pine tree standing alone, there is no need of a companion, and there is no path.

One is, and has always been, at home. To realize this at-homeness is aloneness.

Going around in your dreams you will always find yourself lonely. Loneliness is a misunderstanding. Aloneness is an awakening.

Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,

THE OTHER NIGHT I HEARD YOU SPEAK OF BETRAYAL, AND HOW IT

IS

IMPOSSIBLE TO DISAPPOINT YOU. MY EYES FILLED WITH TEARS. YOUR

EYES WERE SO LUMINOUS, SHINING WITH ENOUGH LOVE TO FILL THIS

UNIVERSE. I REALIZED THAT I HAVE BEEN TRYING NOT TO DISAPPOINT

THE PEOPLE I LOVE ALL MY LIFE, AND MY TEARS WERE OF GRATITUDE

FOR YOUR LOVE, A LOVE THAT CANNOT BE TOUCHED OR TARNISHED

WHATEVER HAPPENS. YOUR LOOK HAD A BURNING INTENSITY, YET A WHOLLY IMPERSONAL QUALITY TOO. WHAT KIND OF LOVE IS THIS?

Devageet.…

Two little children were playing with their dog by the sea when the dog was carried out to sea by a big wave. A passing rabbi dived in, saved the dog and revived it by artificial respiration.

The children asked, "Hey, rabbi, are you a vet?"

"Am I wet?" replied the rabbi. "I am absolutely soaked!"

I am talking about a love in which you are not only wet, but absolutely soaked.

And there is no need to make any effort for it. Just being here, slowly, slowly, you will find your hardness melting. It cannot resist the temptation, because love is such a joy, such a bliss, that once you have seen a man of love you can never be the same again.

Seeing the man of love, you have seen your own future. And things will start happening.

The hardness which prevents you from being loving, melts; the heart which you have completely forgotten is suddenly remembered. The mind which has become your permanent residence is no more your residence, but only a workshop -- useful as far as work is concerned and utterly harmful as far as love is concerned. Your heart becomes your home, and your life starts radiating without any effort on your part.

Love is a contagious disease which has no cure. The world is loveless so much because very few people are there to spread the disease.

I have heard that the doctor of Mulla Nasruddin knocked on his door. He was very angry, and he said, "I have waited for one month, and you have not paid me and I cured your child of smallpox!"

Nasruddin said, "Listen. I have been patient enough; otherwise, the reality is that you owe much money to me."

The doctor said, "What? I owe money to you?"

Nasruddin said, "Yes. Who do you think spread the disease to the whole school? My child! And from all that you have earned during this whole month, I have a percentage. I was being a gentleman and not asking for it, but you are being such a nasty fellow, so miserly, and you have some nerve, too."

Love has disappeared from the world for the simple reason that there are not enough lovesick people to spread it, not enough love-soaked people to spread it. It is something which is not taught, which is caught.

Devageet, just don't be worried about it. Being here you are going to be soaked. My whole presence, my silence, my words are nothing but to push you into the ocean so that you can be soaked.

Question 4 BELOVED OSHO,

I LOVE TO WATCH YOU RETREAT SO GRACEFULLY BACKWARDS OUT OF

THE HALL UNTIL YOU ARE SAFELY INSIDE. I WONDER HOW YOU

AVOID

THE DOOR AND THE WALL. BUT TELL ME, BELOVED ONE, ARE YOU AFRAID TO TURN YOUR BACK ON US?

Prem Sucheta, I will have to tell you a story. Mulla Nasruddin was invited to a conference where many wise people were gathered. He had his own disciples. He collected all the disciples and rode on his donkey.

But the disciples said, "What are you doing?" -- because he was riding on the donkey in the wrong way, not facing where the donkey was going. He was facing the disciples who were following him.

They said, "Mulla, we know that to go with you anywhere is to get into trouble. Now the whole city will laugh and we will feel embarrassed because we are your disciples."

He said, "Don't be worried about the city. I will see to those idiots." "But," they said, "at least to us you should explain the great principle."

He said, "The great principle is simple. If I ride on the donkey in the usual way, my back will be towards you. That is insulting you. I cannot do that. I respect you as much as you respect me. If I tell you to walk ahead of me, then your back will be towards me. That will be even worse -- the disciples insulting the master.

"I could not sleep the whole night until I discovered this great principle: I can ride on my donkey facing you; neither I am being disrespectful to you nor are you being disrespectful to me. And as far as the donkey is concerned, he is accustomed to me; he knows that I am a little crazy. He will giggle a little. As far as the city people are concerned, let them laugh. You need not feel embarrassed -

- you are disciples of a great master."

They said, "The principle seems to be great, but still we are feeling very much afraid."

And it happened just the way the disciples were thinking. People came out of the shops, crowds gathered. People started asking, "What is the matter?"

The disciples said, "It is a very complicated thing. Its name is the Great Principle. If you want to understand you will have to come to the school where our great master teaches us."

They said, "It is a strange principle: sitting the wrong way on a poor donkey. But, if he says it is a great principle, it must be" -- because they have known him, and every time he has proven himself right. He has his own way. They said, "We are going to come tomorrow to the school to understand the Great Principle."

And when the Great Principle was explained to them, they all looked at each other. Of course, it was right, because Mulla Nasruddin said to them: Unless a master respects his disciples, he should not expect any respect from them.

Prem Sucheta, it is the Great Principle. Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

The Golden Future Chapter #21

Chapter title: Sunrise in the soviet union sunset in america 22 May 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8705220

ShortTitle: GOLDEN21

Audio: Yes Video:

Yes Length:

81

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

HOW CAN THE WORLD EVER BECOME A PARADISE WHEN ALL ENLIGHTENED PEOPLE ALWAYS CHOOSE NOT TO BE BORN AGAIN?

Anand Anahad, one of the most fundamental things about the enlightened person is that he attains to enlightenment by dropping all choices; he attains it in a choiceless awareness. After enlightenment there is no way for him to choose anything.

It is not that he chooses not to be born; it is simply the law of existence that once you are enlightened you do not need the body and the mind and the whole imprisonment which we call life. It is not that the enlightened person goes into nonexistence; he becomes part of existence itself -- just like a fragrance, spread all over. In this way he helps the world to become a paradise. The more enlightened people disappear in the world as fragrance, the more light it will become... blissful, ecstatic.

And the question of making life a paradise is for you, not for the enlightened person. For him it is already a paradise. Even in this whole misery, and anguish, he remains above and beyond. He showers his love and compassion, but he is not touched by the anguish and anxiety, the misery and the hell that people are living in. His heart is full of compassion for them, and he does everything to help them to come out of their darkness.

Paradise is not a location; it is not part of geography. Paradise is a certain attitude towards existence; it is a way of life. The same energy that becomes misery becomes bliss; the same energy that creates jealousy and anger is transformed into love, into peace, into silence. It is not a question of only the

enlightened person changing the world into a paradise; everybody has to change it by changing himself.

All those people who have been dreaming of a better world can be divided into two categories. The major part of the dreamers who want the world to become a paradise think in terms of changing the world -- its social structure, its economics, its politics.

These people have been working for thousands of years.

Their intentions are immensely beautiful, but they are ignorant about the basic fact that except for the individual, there is no world. You cannot change the world because the world is only a word, it is not a reality. If you go in search to meet the world you will always meet the individual. The individual is the reality. It is not just a word; it is existential.

The small part, the minor part of dreamers who want to bring a utopia into the world have a totally different approach. Their approach is to teach you how to be silent, how to be peaceful, how to beautify existence around you, how to take everything and change it... to create a harmony, an accord.

The same orchestra, the same instruments, can be played by monkeys too -- and they will really enjoy. But music will not be born; what will be born will be a maddening noise!

Even to people who do not know the art of music, who have not learnt, who have not gone into the discipline, all those instruments are useless. An orchestra in which thirty or more instruments are being played by those who know how to play them does not create noise; on the contrary it creates music -- which is closest to silence.The higher the music is, the closer it is to silence. Listening to great music, you will fall into silence.

In the East music has been always used as a support for meditation. It is difficult to fight with the mind, its constant rush of thoughts, but being absorbed in beautiful music all those thoughts disappear. Music is sound, but sound can be used in such a way that it creates silence; that is the whole art.

Life has many components. They can all live together like a crowd -- noisy, conflicting with each other, fighting to dominate -- that's how we create a hell. Hell is your inability to bring the crowd within you to a peaceful, loving

existence. It is the inability to create an orchestra out of your being. The man who can create an orchestra out of his being --

whose mind, heart, being, are all in tune -- has created paradise for himself, and an energy field around himself, which will affect others also.

It is everybody's task; in fact it is the only task, the only challenge life gives to you --

whether you turn it into a hell or into a heaven. The man who turns his life into a heaven is the greatest artist in the world. Musicians and painters and dancers and poets -- all are left far behind. I call this man the mystic. He is the highest category.

It is up to you to see that your components are not at war, that you are at peace with yourself. One great Sufi mystic, Bayazid was dying. His old grandmother was always worried about the life of Bayazid, because he was not a traditional, orthodox, religious person; he never went to the mosque, he never prayed the way a Mohammedan should pray, five times a day -- he laughed at the very existence of God. As he was dying, his grandmother came close to him and whispered, "Bayazid, there is still time; make peace with God."

And Bayazid died with a great laughter, saying, "I don't need to, because I have made peace with myself."

Those who are not at peace with themselves are trying in every way to make peace with God, to make peace in the world, to make peace among the warring nations. But the man who has found peace within himself, radiates it. He becomes the source, triggering the same kind of music, the same harmony, and the same beauty in others who come close to him.

The enlightened man, while he is alive, works through his presence, through his love, through his silence. And when dead, he does not disappear; he simply becomes spread all over existence.

Ramakrishna was dying and his last instructions to his wife were.… In India, the moment the husband dies the wife goes through a trauma. She cannot wear colored clothes, she has to shave her head -- she cannot have hair; she cannot use any ornaments, not even the cheapest glass bangles -- she has to break them.

But before dying Ramakrishna, called Sharda, his wife, and told her, "Remember, you are never going to become a widow. I am dying, but I will be here. I will not be confined in the body, but you have not loved only my body; you have loved me, my consciousness.

So don't become a widow. Use beautiful clothes; just for my joy, use all the beautiful ornaments that I have given to you. And remember" -- he loved delicious food too much -

- he said, "Remember, don't forget to create beautiful dishes for me. I will not be able to eat them, but even the aroma of your beautiful food will be a nourishment to me. And don't forget to prepare my bed rightly, particularly the mosquito net."

His disciples were feeling very embarrassed, "What is he saying? Has he gone insane? A dying enlightened person is worried about the mosquito net "

Sharda followed his instructions for almost thirty years that she lived after him. She would prepare his food the same way she used to prepare it while he was in the body. She would take it to his room -- and nobody was there -- and she would say, "Paramahansdev, your food is ready." She would sit like the way she used to sit, with her fan in her hand.

There was nobody. The disciples tried to convince her -- "This is absolutely mad; you go on fanning and there is nobody "

She said, "There may not be for you; there is for me." She would prepare the bed the way he liked, with many covers. She would take care about the mosquito net, that not a single mosquito entered inside.

Very few people have understood Sharda, but she really loved Ramakrishna -- not the body in which he was, but him, his being. Now the body is no longer there, but the being is spread all over existence; he is more than he was before. Before he was imprisoned in the body; now he is unembodied. Now he is just freedom.

The enlightened man helps people while he is alive, and he goes on helping people while he is not in the body. But if you cannot understand an enlightened man while he is in the body, it is very difficult for you to understand when he is not in the body.

Once you have fallen in love with a master, slowly, slowly he is no more a body to you.

He becomes only a pure consciousness.

When Gautam Buddha died ten thousand sannyasins were present. Except twenty, almost everybody was crying. But what was the matter with those twenty? Were they not devoted to Gautam Buddha? One of them, Manjushree was asked, "What is the matter with you all? -- because you have been closest to him."

He said, "That is the matter. We have known him not as the body; we have known him as an immortal consciousness. We are rejoicing. Up to now he was confined in a small space; now the whole sky is his. We can touch him anywhere, we can talk to him anywhere. We know he will be available -- that's why we are not crying, not weeping.

You are crying and weeping because you have never gone beyond the body. The body was beautiful, but it is nothing compared to the beauty of consciousness."

Anand Anahad, the enlightened man naturally goes on creating a paradise wherever he is

-- in the body or not in the body. But he cannot create a paradise without your agreeing to it. Finally, you are the decisive factor. He can make all the arrangements, and you can refuse them; you can go on living in your hell. The first thing is that you are living in hell. So many times people have asked me, "Does hell exist?" And I have said to them,

"You amaze me. You live in it, and you ask me, `Does hell exist?' What is your life? It is not a joy, it is not a dance -- you are living a nightmare."

To live unconsciously is to be in hell, and to live consciously is to be in heaven. To be fully enlightened... it is not that you enter paradise; paradise opens its petals, just like a lotus, in you. It is your innermost potential.

Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,

SEEING SUCH UNBELIEVABLE CHANGES IN RUSSIA THESE PAST TWO

YEARS, DUE TO GORBACHEV'S LEADERSHIP, DO YOU HAVE A SPECIAL

MESSAGE FOR HIM? WOULD YOU AT ALL CONSIDER GOING TO RUSSIA IF

HE WOULD HAVE THE COURAGE TO WELCOME YOU AND YOUR PEOPLE?

DO YOU THINK THAT ONE DAY RUSSIA COULD BE THE COUNTRY OF THE

FUTURE OF HUMANITY?

Jivan Mada, yes, it appears as if unbelievable changes have been happening in Russia in the past two years. But as far as I am concerned, I was waiting for those changes; they are not unbelievable. Sixty years of oppression, exploitation and mass scale butchery were preparing the ground. No night is without a dawn. Sixty years was more than enough; it was absolutely certain that it would come to an end.

Gorbachev is the first ray heralding that the morning has come. Many more changes will be happening in the future. Their speed is going to accelerate, because for sixty years the people have not tasted freedom, have not tasted trust, love; they have known only a fascist regime, which was ready to kill anybody for any small excuse. They have lived under the shadow of death.

I welcome the dawn; the birds have started singing, and the flowers have not forgotten --

even in sixty years -- that when the sun rises they have to open and release their fragrance.

You are asking me, do I have a special message for this great man, Gorbachev, who is bringing a second revolution in the Soviet Union? Yes, I have a message for him. And my message is not special, but the same as it is for every human being, wherever he exists. But the situation is certainly special. You will have to

go a little bit back in the history.…

Communism is a reaction against Christianity. Christianity has done so much harm that the intelligentsia -- particularly people like Karl Marx, who were geniuses -- became so frustrated with Christianity that they created an alternative: a materialist philosophy with no God, with no soul, with no consciousness.

It is understandable -- but not forgivable -- because Karl Marx was not acquainted with Gautam Buddha, nor was he acquainted with the Eastern flowers of Zen, of Tao, of Yoga.

Without knowing anything about authentic religion -- he thought that Christianity was equivalent to religion -- he created a religionless society. This is moving from one extreme to another extreme.

It has been always my understanding that amongst all the crimes that Christianity has committed, communism is also one of them -- not directly, but indirectly. It is because of Christianity -- its stupid superstitions, its exploitation of the people, its protection of the richest and its consolations for the poor -- that Karl Marx had to say that religion is nothing but opium for the people. This is perfectly true for organized religions, but this is not true about men like Zarathustra, or Bodhidharma, or Basho. They are the pinnacles of consciousness.

Gorbachev's greatest contribution will be to introduce the people of the Soviet Union to the immense varieties of religious experiences, and not to remain confined to Christianity. Christianity has nothing of religion in it. The West has not produced any religions; its whole consciousness is extrovert.

My message to Gorbachev is: Introduce meditations in the schools, in the colleges, in the universities; open the doors for Zen, for Tao, for Hassidism, and let people see that the essential religion is not a bondage, but the ultimate freedom. All other freedoms are small

-- political, economical, social. The only freedom that cannot be destroyed by anybody, and cannot be taken away by anybody, is of the spirit. He is trying to introduce political freedom, freedom of expression. These are good, but they are not enough; they are all superficial.

The Soviet Union is in a very special state. For sixty years they have been

denied.…

There is a deep longing for truth, for freedom, for love -- it is almost like a land that has been lying unused for sixty years, waiting for its spring, waiting for someone to sow seeds. It has gathered so much potential and power that if you sow the seeds this land can produce the most beautiful flowers, the richest crops.

Gorbachev himself has to be introduced to the art of meditation, and he has to open the doors and the windows to all the dimensions that have been closed for sixty years, so people can choose the method to find themselves. A spiritual realization has to be made available to the people of the Soviet land. That will be the greatest contribution Gorbachev can make.

You are asking, "If he had enough courage to welcome you, and your people, would you consider going there?"

Absolutely, unconditionally! I would love to go there, to take my people And

if he has courage enough I would like to create a commune in the Soviet Union to show America,

"The day you destroyed the commune there, you have yourself committed suicide."

And you can see, Ronald Reagan has not the same prestige as he had when the commune was there; he cannot hope to become the president again. Governor Atiyeh of Oregon was very powerful just because of the commune -- because he was opposing it, and people were supporting him. He could not gather courage even to run for the second time.

He is no longer the governor; if we had been there, he would have been the governor still.

The politicians who had become immensely important have lost all their power. Their power was because of us. If they had real intelligence, they would have continued to be against us superficially, and behind the curtain they would have been helping us to be as strong as possible -- because we were the source of their power. The more powerful we would have been, the more powerful they would have been. But Oregonians are simply the most stupid people in the world. They destroyed their very source of power; now nobody takes any note of them.

They were trying to collect signatures to change the rule that you can be a voter in Oregon if you have stayed there for twenty days before the voting but they needed the signatures of seventy-five percent of the population. Their campaign was going great when we were there; it was because of us they were afraid of those twenty days. I have been informed by my attorneys that, "The moment you left, your sannyasins left, their campaign completely failed." They had gathered almost forty percent of the signatures, but now nobody is interested in it -- for what?

It would be a good answer to America if Russia could help us to create a commune in their land. And in fact, the whole philosophy of a commune is highest and most significant in the philosophy of communism itself; the very word communism comes from the word commune.

And our commune can become a model for the whole Soviet Union. If Gorbachev has guts enough, I will do everything to create a commune on Soviet land that will be the sunrise in the Soviet Union, and the sunset in America.

Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,

QUESTIONS ARISE AND SOLVE THEMSELVES AFTER I MEDITATE; THEN

ALMOST THE SAME QUESTIONS ARE ASKED IN THE FOLLOWING DAYS.

ONCE I HEARD YOU TALK ABOUT THE THEORY OF RELATIVITY AND ITS

DISCOVERY: IF EINSTEIN HADN'T MANAGED TO DO IT, IT WOULD HAVE

BEEN DISCOVERED BY ANOTHER SCIENTIST, BECAUSE THE TIME WAS

READY FOR IT. THOUGHT, AS FAR AS I CAN UNDERSTAND IT, SEEMS TO

BELONG TO THE SAME LAW OF EXISTENCE -- ESPECIALLY IN THIS STRONG

ENERGY CIRCLE AROUND YOU. WILL YOU TALK ABOUT THIS PHENOMENON?

Prem Adina, no man is an island. We are all connected in a thousand-and-one ways.

That's what I was saying about Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity.

Somebody had asked him, "If you had not discovered it, do you think somebody else would have been able to discover it, ever?" And he was surprised by the answer. Albert Einstein said, "It would have taken not more than three weeks for somebody else to discover it."

As it happens, in fact, it was discovered by another scientist before Albert Einstein; he was just a lazy man and did not publish his article, and once Albert Einstein had published his article, there was no point.

Our beings are connected. Of course, everybody cannot discover a theory like relativity; it needs a very refined intelligence. But there were at least a dozen people in the world who were of the same caliber, and who were looking in the same direction. It was only a question of time -- of who is fast enough to reach the conclusion.

Here you will feel it every day. A question arises in you. You can ask it, or just wait a little -- somebody is going to ask it! Here you are, all for the same purpose, the same search; you are all looking in the same direction, accepting the same challenge. It is very natural that the same questions will arise in you.

There are people who have never asked a single question because they know now so certainly, "What is the point? Somebody is going to ask it." And it is always better when somebody else asks it, and you are just listening relaxedly. The person who has asked is tense, because it is his question. I am not a very predictable man, and I answer the questioner more than the question; so he is very alert, very tense, a little bit afraid.

Everybody else can enjoy relaxedly -- that poor fellow has finally asked the

question.

And I have seen that the people who are listening to the answers of other people's questions understand more clearly, because they are more relaxed. They are almost like observers. They are more open. I am not going to hit on their head, of that they must...

they are certain; so they can enjoy the answer. And it is their question too.

And particularly because we are concerned in a single-pointed purpose -- how to know yourself and how to be yourself -- questions will be coming, and they will be applicable almost to everybody. It just depends on your attitude. You should not forget to listen to the answer thinking that because it is somebody else's question it is none of your concern, and you can enjoy having your own yakkety- yak that goes on inside you. Then you will miss. And you will miss a great opportunity. It is unintelligent.

The intelligent person will listen very carefully to any question, because it may not be significant for him today -- but perhaps tomorrow.… Perhaps he has not come to that space, but he will come; it is better to be ready for it. All that is needed is a little intelligence.

Although he was approaching eighty, the old colonel refused to accept his loss of sexual desire and stamina, so he consulted a doctor. The doctor was amused, and asked, "Why should you be so concerned? It is only to be expected at your time of life."

"But a friend of mine who is eighty-five says he still makes love to his wife every night,"

replied the colonel.

The doctor smiled, "Why can't you say the same thing? It is only a question of saying."

Just a little intelligence.…

A young boy came before the court, charged with stealing a girl's bicycle.

"I did not steal it, sir," he told the magistrate, "she gave it to me. She was riding

me home on the handlebars, and she stopped in the woods; she took off her bluejeans and her panties and said I could have anything she had. Well sir, the panties were girls' things and the bluejeans would not fit me -- so I took the bicycle."

Just be a little intelligent. Don't take the bicycle! Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

The Golden Future Chapter #22

Chapter title: The time for families is over 22 May 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive

code: 8705225

ShortTitle: GOLDEN22

Audio: Yes Video: Yes Length: 87

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

WHAT IS YOUR IDEA OF A MODEL COMMUNE?

Maneesha, mankind is at a crossroads. It cannot live the way it has lived up to now. That has become simply impossible. It has been dreaming for a better future as far back as you can conceive, but life has been deteriorating rather than becoming better. It has come to a point where we are facing either suicide, a global suicide, or a total transformation of human consciousness and its style of life.

My idea of a model commune implies the whole life of man from all the possible aspects.

First, the family cannot remain the basic unit of the society. It is the root cause of millions of diseases; it is the basic brick of which nations are made, races are made, religious organizations are made. The family has destroyed the blissfulness of men and women of the whole of mankind. Its basic structure is of possessiveness -- the husband possesses the wife and they both possess the children -- and the moment you possess a human being, you have taken away his dignity, his freedom, his very humanity. You have taken away all that is beautiful and you have given him only handcuffs, perhaps made of gold... beautiful cages in place of his wings. Those golden cages cannot give him the sky and the freedom of the sky.

So the first thing is: a model commune will not have families. The implication is clear that it will not have marriages.

Love, for the first time, should be given the respect that is its due for centuries. Love should be the only law between two human beings if they decide to live together; only joy should be their binding force. The moment love disappears.… And remember, like everything real, love also changes. Only unreal things, plastic things, remain permanent.

Marriage is permanent, but it gains permanence by killing love.

It is on the grave of love that marriage makes its house. Naturally, it brings only agony, anguish, suffering, slavery -- and a total destruction of man's spirituality.

A model commune will be a communion, a gathering of free spirits. Children should belong to the commune, not to the parents. Parents have done enough harm. They cannot be allowed anymore to corrupt their children, although their intentions are all good. But what to do with their good intentions? The results are all ugly.

Parents teach their children to be competitive, and competition brings jealousy. They teach their children to become somebody in the world, to leave a name behind themselves. That makes life a struggle, not a rejoicing but a continuous fight -- so destructive that it takes away all your joy, all your juice, all your flowers. It leaves behind only skeletons fighting for power, for money , for position. Life becomes a warfield.

The whole blame goes to the parents. They have lived as ambitious beings; they have destroyed themselves. Now they go on giving their heritage to their children -- their unfulfilled desires, their incomplete ambitions. In this way diseases pass on from one generation to another.

A commune is a declaration of a non-ambitious life with equal opportunity for all. But remember my differences with Karl Marx. I am not in favor of imposing equality on people, because that is a psychologically impossible task, and whenever you do something against nature, it becomes destructive and poisonous.

No two men are equal. But I can be misunderstood very easily, so try to understand my standpoint very clearly: I am not in favor of equality, but I am not in favor of inequality either! I am in favor of creating equal opportunities for everybody to be himself. In other words, in my vision, each individual is unique. The question of equality or inequality does not arise, because two individuals are not the same. They cannot be compared.

A real commune, a real communism, will create

equal opportunities for growth, but accept the uniqueness of each individual.

There should be no private property. Everything should belong to the commune. There should be absolute freedom of expression in words or in creativity.

Each individual should be respected as he is, not according to any ideal. His basic needs should be fulfilled by the commune, and as the commune becomes richer, every individual should be provided with more comfort, with more luxury

-- because I am not against luxury or comfort. I am not a sadist, and I don't want people to be tortured in any beautiful name. In the name of religion, or in the name of socialism, nobody should be sacrificed. No kind of self torture should be supported.

Man is here to rejoice, to live a life as beautifully, as peacefully, as comfortably as possible.

I am all for richness, but the richness will be of the commune. As the commune becomes richer, every individual will become richer. I am against poverty; I am not a worshiper of poverty. I don't see anything spiritual in being poor -- it is sheer stupidity. Neither poverty is spiritual, nor is sickness spiritual, nor is hunger spiritual. A commune should live in a way that it becomes more and more rich, that it does not produce too many children, that it does not overproduce people. Overproduction is bound to create beggars, is bound to create orphans, and once there are orphans there are Mother Teresas.

I don't want any Mother Teresa in the world. Neither do I believe in the virtue of serving the poor, because I don't want anybody to be poor in the world. And it is in our hands: we have all the scientific techniques to produce according to our needs -- or not to produce.

To produce the best possible children... there is no need to produce blind, crippled, retarded... that should be a thing of the past! Now science places it absolutely in our hands to choose how our children should be. We just have to drop our old conception.

Our old conception was: my child should be of my blood. It is sheer nonsense. What is the difference between my blood and your blood? The new intelligence should choose the right seed for the child -- from whom it comes, it does not matter.

In a commune there should be banks for semen in the hospitals, just as there are banks for blood. A couple can go and ask the doctor what kind of child is needed

-- a mathematician? a Mohammed Ali the Great? a Jesus Christ? -- because now it is possible to read the whole history of every child even before he is

conceived. Every living cell that is going to become the life of a new child has the whole program. How long he will live, whether he will be healthy or sick, intelligent or unintelligent, a musician, a dancer, a scientist... you can choose!

We just have to drop the old, stupid ideas. As far as lovemaking is concerned, you can make love to the woman you like. But as far as producing a child is concerned, your woman can provide the womb and you can find the best seed from the hospital. And it will be anonymous, so you need not be worried that someone in the street will say,

"Hello, you are the father of my child." Nobody can say that; nobody will ever know.

Finally, the children should belong to the commune as a whole. Father and mother should recede, in their place, should be "uncles" and "aunts". There should be so many uncles and so many aunts... perhaps the mother should be the chief aunt and the father should be the chief uncle, but not more than that.

Everybody should be allowed to be himself. Right now everybody is forced to be according to the ideas of others. That causes misery and great anguish, and takes all joy and gladness from life. Everybody should be himself and contribute to life according to his way -- by creating music, or by creating paintings, or by writing poetry, or by producing better fruits, better crops, making better roads.

Everyone should be allowed to have his own potential fulfilled. A model commune will give dignity to every individual. I was saying this morning that Gorbachev can invite us to have a model commune in the Soviet Union.

This is as far as human growth is concerned. One thing for the inner growth is that everybody, irrespective of whether he is a man or a woman, should be allowed to choose a method of meditation suitable to him, so that he can not only experience the joys of life, but he can also experience the joys of his spirit.

Communism is missing only one thing: a spirituality. A model commune should be a spiritual gathering of seekers, of lovers, of friends, of creative people in all dimensions of life. They can produce paradise here on the earth.

The time for families is over, and the time for cities is over, and the time for nations is over. The world should be one, consisting of small communes. Then there is no need for armies because there is nobody with whom you are to fight.

There is no need of arms, particularly atomic and nuclear, because you are not interested in committing a global suicide.

The whole energy that is being poured into creating more and more destructive weapons can be changed into creativity, and the whole earth can live as richly, as luxuriously, as no emperor has ever lived! And if we do not choose this, then we don't have any intelligence at all. Even a little intelligence is enough to show that a total transformation of the society, of the old dead and rotten society, has become an absolute necessity for survival; otherwise, if we continue to be the way we are, we can count the years on our ten fingers.

The end is not very far away, but the end can become a great beginning if we understand.

We can avoid it!

It is in our own hands, because the end is not coming by any natural calamity, it is being caused by our stupidity!

A model commune will create as much intelligence as possible and will allow people to grow intelligently, search and seek their truth. That is how one becomes more intelligent, by searching and seeking. Intelligence is sharpened like a sword.

Man has lived in unintelligence because all the religions of the world have emphasized only one thing: belief -- and belief is poison to intelligence. They have emphasized only one thing: faith -- and faith is against all growth.

The new man I conceive, will not have any belief system and will not have any faith. He will be a seeker, a searcher, an enquirer. His life will be a life of tremendous discovery --

discoveries in the outside world and discoveries in the inside too.

I want every human being to be a discoverer: a Galileo, a Copernicus, a Columbus, in the outside world and a Gautam Buddha, a Zarathustra, a Chuang- Tzu in the inside world.

My whole effort is concentrated on one thing: to create the new man as Zorba the Buddha.

In a model commune everybody will have the qualities of the Zorba and the qualities of the Buddha; tremendously interested in the outside world, and in the same way, in love with the inner search. The day you are both together you have become the new man, and the new man is going to be the savior of humanity.

If the new man is not born there is no hope for humanity. Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

I FEEL LIKE A GUEST ON EARTH, AS IF I DON'T REALLY BELONG HERE AT

ALL. IN YOUR BEAUTIFUL GATHERING, I FEEL THAT I AM ALSO A GUEST, STAYING HERE ONLY BY YOUR GRACE OR BY GOOD FORTUNE. I HAVE

NOTHING REALLY TO GIVE, EXCEPT MYSELF. IS THIS ENOUGH?

Vimal, this is more than enough. The readiness to give oneself is the greatest adventure of life. And it is not only you who does not have anything else to give, we all come naked in the world. We don't bring anything into the world. All that we really have is our own self -- everything else belongs to the world, is not ours. To give money or to give anything else is really to avoid giving yourself.

The people who give money to the poor, make hospitals and schools and universities --

and brag about it -- are unaware of the fact that all their giving is just a facade. They are hiding their nudity. They are hiding the fact that they are not courageous enough to give themselves -- because that is the only thing worth giving; that is the only thing that belongs to you. All so-called givers are giving things that don't belong to them. It is almost like somebody giving you the full moon, somebody giving you the sunrise saying,

"You can have it, it is yours."

I have heard about two drunks. They were lying down under a tree on a full- moon night.

Gazing at the moon, very poetically, in a very romantic mood, one drunk said to the other, "I would like to purchase this moon."

The other said, "That is impossible. Forget it! Completely forget it!" The first man said, "But why are you getting so angry?"

The second man said, "Why shouldn't I get angry? -- I don't want to sell it!"

Unless you give yourself, you don't give! You simply hide behind your so-called givings, your poverty and your impotence.

Vimal, there is nothing wrong. The very realization that you can give only yourself is a great realization, tremendously beautiful and intrinsically spiritual.

You are saying, "I feel like a guest on the earth." Do you think anybody else can feel to be a host on the earth? Everybody is a guest except Anando's ghosts. Only they are the hosts; otherwise everybody is a guest. But there is nothing to be worried about it. Be grateful to existence that it has invited you to be a guest.

You say, "As if I don't really belong here at all." Nobody belongs here. Everybody comes one day, and everybody one day goes away. This is a big caravanserai. Just one night's stay and in the morning the journey starts again. Who is going to stay here? Millions of people have been here before you -- not even their names can be remembered, they were all guests -- and millions of people will be here after we are gone.

Just don't use this planet like a waiting room in a railway station, particularly an Indian railway station. I have been traveling for years, staying in thousands of waiting rooms and seeing the strange scene. People are throwing their banana peels on the floor, spitting their "pan" leaves on the floor, even if I have asked them, "What are you doing!" They answer me saying, "This is only a waiting room. It is not anybody's home. And who cares? Just ten minutes more and my train is coming!" It is true your train is coming, but your train will be bringing a few passengers who will be staying in this waiting room with your banana peels!

You are a guest. Leave this earth a little more beautiful, a little more human, a little more lovable, a little more fragrant, for those unknown guests who will be following you.

An ancient Sufi story: The king of Bhagdad used to go around the city on his beautiful horse, just to see how things were going -- of course in disguise, not as the king -- so that he could see reality as it is. If he went as the king, then he could see everything that was beautiful and he would not be shown the real face

-- he would have to see only the mask.

Everyday he saw a man, a very old man, must be past one hundred years, working in the garden, putting in small plants, but those small plants were not seasonal flowers. If they were seasonal flowers there would be no question at all. Those were the plants of the cedars of Lebanon, which grow one hundred feet, two hundred feet high, just almost touching the stars and they take hundreds of years to grow to that height. They live one thousand years, two thousand years, three thousand years and they are some of the most beautiful trees.

The king was puzzled because this old man, who is one hundred years, cannot even hope to see the next spring. His hands are shaking; he is so fragile, any moment death may take him away. And why is he planting these cedars? He will never be able to see them grow, to see them come of age, to see their beauty when they start touching the stars.

Finally it was impossible for the king to resist the temptation. He stopped his horse one day and went to the old man and said, "I should not interfere in your work, but I cannot resist the temptation."

The old man said, "There is nothing to worry about, my son. You can ask anything you want."

The king said, "My question is, you will never be able to see these trees come of age; you will be gone long before that "

The old man said, "That's true."

The king said, "You know that's true and still you go on doing it?"

The old man said, "If my forefathers had not planted the seeds -- just see on the other side of my garden those tall Lebanon cedars -- I would have never seen them. If my forefathers were so generous about the children with whom they are not yet acquainted, who will be coming, who will be the visitor, who will be the guest.… Still they worked hard and they created those monumental trees. Looking at those trees I gather courage and work hard, because certainly I will

not be able to see the beautiful growth but somebody will. My children's children, or perhaps even their children, will be able to see when they come to their full glory. It is enough that I am not betraying my forefathers. If they could trust in the future, in the unknown guest, I can also trust."

We are all guests, but don't use this beautiful planet as a railway-station guest house. It is not a waiting room. It is our home for the time being and it will still be the home for somebody else. Don't be so miserly as to say, "I will be gone -- after ten minutes my train is coming, so who cares if I leave the waiting room dirty?"

Nobody belongs here, Vimal. But for the moment we are here, and for the moment we have to be here totally, intensely, and we have to make this moment as beautiful as possible. We have to live our life like a dance, so when we leave, anybody who comes after us will find that the people who have been here were not ordinary people; they have left flowers and fragrance; they have left the echoes of their songs and their dances; they have left their footprints in pure, twenty-four carat gold.

It is not unfortunate that we are guests. It is a great opportunity: the planet, the existence, has been so generous, so kind, so loving, so accepting, that it has welcomed you to be here.

Leave your mark. You may be gone, but your laughter can remain. You may be gone, but your dance can remain behind. You may be gone, but the way you lived will go on creating its own vibrations; the people of the future will be reminded, with gratitude, that they are inheritors of a great planet and of a great race of human beings.

At the funeral of one of the richest men in town, a stranger was observed crying louder than any of the other mourners. One of the townspeople approached him: "Are you a relative of the deceased, the richest man of our town?"

"No."

"Then why are you crying, and crying so loudly?" "That's why!"

Vimal, it is perfectly good just as you are. In this gathering nobody is a host -- all

are guests pretending to be hosts to each other. It is a beautiful pretension. Nobody is a host; everybody is a guest, but how can there be a guest if there is no one to host him? This is the strange fact about this gathering; the whole gathering is the host, but as far as each individual is concerned, he is just a guest. So you are both -- a guest as an individual and a host as a part of the gathering.

An American makes a bet with a Britisher that whichever of them tells the most unbelievable story, wins.

"You start then," says the Britisher.

"Well," says the American, "one day an American gentleman "

"Enough! You win!" says the Britisher.

An "American gentleman" -- you have told the strangest story.

You don't have anything to give except yourself. It is more than enough. Nothing else is asked. Even this is not asked of you. It is out of your own love. If you give yourself to the commune, the very giving will be a great reward.

Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,

WITH YOU, I AM OFTEN REMINDED OF THE FIRST GERMAN CHANCELLOR

AFTER THE WAR, ADENAUER. WHEN NAILED BY HIS OPPONENTS ON

DIFFERENT STATEMENTS HE HAD GIVEN ABOUT A SUBJECT, HE SMILED

AND SAID, "LISTEN, THERE IS MORE THAN ONE TRUTH. I MYSELF KNOW AT

LEAST FOUR: THE SIMPLE, THE PURE, THE PLAIN, AND THE WHOLE TRUTH." I WONDER HOW MANY YOU KNOW?

Anand Sadhu, the German Chancellor Adenauer, was absolutely wrong. There is

only one truth. What he has counted as four, are four aspects of it. He says there are four truths: the simple, the pure, the plain, and the whole truth. The first thing to remember is that the truth is always whole, just as the circle is always whole. You cannot have a half-circle. The moment it is half, it is only an arce, it is not a circle. The very word circle means the whole. If you say it is only a relative truth, then it is not truth because it is dependent, and truth is never dependent on anything.

The loving couple wanted to marry immediately, but the girl's strong-willed and domineering mother adamantly opposed the union.

"I can't help it," said the distraught girl to her boyfriend. "Mother thinks you are effeminate."

Reflecting for a moment, he replied, "You know, compared with her, maybe I am."

This is relative truth, but a relative truth is not the truth. Only the absolute and the whole is the truth -- and it is bound to be plain. Only lies are very complicated. They have to be; otherwise everybody will be able to find that you are lying.

You have to lie in such a complicated way, using legal jargon, logic, philosophy, law, science, and hiding the lies behind so many words. You cannot have a plain lie because it will be caught immediately.

Only truth is plain. And the truth is always pure. Can you conceive a truth which is impure? All lies are impure. There is no pure lie and there is no impure truth. And the truth is always simple, it is the very spirit of simplicity.

So I repeat that Adenauer was absolutely wrong. There is only one truth. There are millions of lies, but truth cannot be more than one. It is impossible even to conceive that there are two truths. Four is out of the question.

There was a man who had an extremely large penis and a very bad stutter. Every time he met a woman he stuttered so badly that he finally went to visit a physician. After an examination the doctor says, "Well, I can see what your problem is: the weight of your penis is so great that it is pulling on your vocal cords and causing you to stutter. I'm afraid I must remove ten inches to cure you."

The poor man was so desperate that he agreed to undergo the surgery immediately. The operation was a total success and he began to meet every woman, who all found him very charming. However, once in bed, they were very disappointed with his diminished apparatus.

Finally he goes back to the doctor and says, "Look Doc, you were absolutely right. You have cured my stuttering, but I need to have some of my penis back."

After a moment of silence the doctor says, "Er..., er..., sorry, but that is impossible, impossible!"

There are some things which are impossible. Now his vocal cords are being pulled down!

There is only one truth.

The German chancellor was a politician and he lied even about truth. I wonder... the people he lied to must have been Germans; otherwise somebody must have raised the question: "What nonsense are you talking?"

Pure truth, plain truth, simple truth, whole truth... there is only one truth. Lies are many.

That's why those who know the truth find it very difficult to express it, because it is so simple, so pure, so plain, so obvious; they have to create great devices just so that they can convey the simple truth.

If the simple truth is conveyed directly, nobody is going to listen; nobody is going to understand it, either. Just as two plus two are only four, neither five, nor six. So is the truth. Simple, pure, plain, whole -- these are all aspects. They don't make four truths; they simply describe the same truth from four different angles.

Okay, Maneesha? Yes, Osho.

The Golden Future Chapter #23

Chapter title: The five dimensions of education 23 May 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive

code:

8705230

ShortTitle:

GOLDEN23

Audio:

Yes Video:

Yes Length:

82

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

WHAT WOULD BE THE FORM OF EDUCATION IN THE NEW COMMUNE?

Maneesha, the education that has prevailed in the past is very insufficient, incomplete, superficial. It only creates people who can earn their livelihood but it does not give any insight into living itself. It is not only incomplete, it is harmful too -- because it is based on competition.

Any type of competition is violent deep down, and creates people who are

unloving.

Their whole effort is to be the achievers -- of name, of fame, of all kinds of ambitions.

Obviously they have to struggle and be in conflict for them. That destroys their joys and that destroys their friendliness. It seems everybody is fighting against the whole world.

Education up to now has been goal-oriented: what you are learning is not important; what is important is the examination that will come a year or two years later. It makes the future important -- more important than the present. It sacrifices the present for the future.

And that becomes your very style of life; you are always sacrificing the moment for something which is not present. It creates a tremendous emptiness in life.

The commune of my vision will have a five-dimensional education. Before I enter into those five dimensions, a few things have to be noted. One: there should not be any kind of examination as part of education, but every day, every hour observation by the teachers; their remarks throughout the year will decide whether you move further or you remain a little longer in the same class. Nobody fails, nobody passes -- it is just that a few people are speedy and a few people are a little bit lazy -- because the idea of failure creates a deep wound of inferiority, and the idea of being successful also creates a different kind of disease, that of superiority.

Nobody is inferior, and nobody is superior. One is just oneself, incomparable.

So, examinations will not have any place. That will change the whole perspective from the future to the present. What you are doing right this moment will be decisive, not five questions at the end of two years. Of thousands of things you will pass through during these two years, each will be decisive; so the education will not be goal-oriented.

The teacher has been of immense importance in the past, because he knew he had passed all the examinations, he had accumulated knowledge. But the situation has changed --

and this is one of the problems, that situations change but our responses remain the old ones. Now the knowledge explosion is so vast, so tremendous, so speedy, that you cannot write a big book on any scientific subject because by the time your book is complete, it will be out of date; new facts, new discoveries will have made it irrelevant. So now science has to depend on articles, on periodicals, not on books.

The teacher was educated thirty years earlier. In thirty years everything has changed, and he goes on repeating what he was taught. He is out of date, and he is making his students out of date. So in my vision the teacher has no place. Instead of teachers there will be guides, and the difference has to be understood: the guide will tell you where, in the library, to find the latest information on the subject.

And teaching should not be done in the old-fashioned way, because television can do it in a far better way, can bring the latest information without any problems. The teacher has to appeal to your ears; television appeals directly to your eyes; and the impact is far greater, because the eyes absorb eighty percent of your life situations -- they are the most alive part.

If you can see something there is no need to memorize it; but if you listen to something you have to memorize it. Almost ninety-eight percent of education can be delivered through television, and the questions that students will ask can be answered by computers. The teacher should be only a guide to show you the right channel, to show you how to use the computer, how to find the latest book. His function will be totally different. He is not imparting knowledge to you, he is making you aware of the contemporary knowledge, of the latest knowledge. He is only a guide.

With these considerations, I divide education into five dimensions. The first is informative, like history, geography, and many other subjects which can be dealt with by television and computer together. The second part should be sciences. They can be imparted by television and computer too, but they are more complicated, and the human guide will be more necessary.

In the first dimension also come languages. Every person in the world should know at least two languages; one is his mother tongue, and the other is English as an international vehicle for communication. They can also be taught more accurately by television -- the accent, the grammar, everything can be taught

more correctly than by human beings.

We can create in the world an atmosphere of brotherhood: language connects people and language disconnects too. There is right now no international language. This is due to our prejudices. English is perfectly capable, because it is known by more people around the world on a wider scale -- although it is not the first language. The first is Spanish, as far as population is concerned. But its population is concentrated, it is not spread all over the world. The second is Chinese; that is even more concentrated, only in China. As far as numbers go, these languages are spoken by more people, but the question is not of numbers, the question is of spread.

English is the most widespread language, and people should drop their prejudices -- they should look at the reality. There have been many efforts to create languages to avoid the prejudices -- the Spanish people can say their language should be the international language because it is spoken by more people than almost any other language.… To avoid these prejudices, languages like Esperanto have been created. But no created language has been able to function. There are a few things which grow, which cannot be created; a language is a growth of thousands of years. Esperanto looks so artificial that all those efforts have failed.

But it is absolutely necessary to create two languages -- first, the mother tongue, because there are feelings and nuances which you can say only in the mother tongue. One of my professors, S. K. Saxena, a world traveler who has been a professor of philosophy in many countries, used to say that in a foreign language you can do everything, but when it comes to a fight or to love, you feel that you are not being true and sincere to your feelings. So for your feelings and for your sincerity, your mother tongue... which you imbibe with the milk of the mother, which becomes part of your blood and bones and marrow. But that is not enough

-- that creates small groups of people and makes others strangers.

One international language is absolutely necessary as a basis for one world, for one humanity. So two languages should be absolutely necessary for everybody. That will come in the first dimension.

The second is the enquiry of scientific subjects, which is tremendously important because it is half of reality, the outside reality. And the third will be what is missing in present-day education, the art of living. People have taken it for

granted that they know what love is. They don't know... and by the time they know, it is too late. Every child should be helped to transform his anger, hatred, jealousy, into love.

An important part of the third dimension should also be a sense of humor. Our so-called education makes people sad and serious. And if one third of your life is wasted in a university in being sad and serious, it becomes ingrained; you forget the language of laughter -- and the man who forgets the language of laughter has forgotten much of life.

So love, laughter, and an acquaintance with life and its wonders, its mysteries... these birds singing in the trees should not go unheard. The trees and the flowers and the stars should have a connection with your heart. The sunrise and the sunset will not be just outside things -- they should be something inner, too. A reverence for life should be the foundation of the third dimension.

People are so irreverent to life.

They still go on killing animals to eat -- they call it game; and if the animal eats them --

then they call it calamity. Strange... in a game both parties should be given equal opportunity. The animals are without weapons and you have machine guns or arrows.…

You may not have thought about why arrows and machine guns were invented: so that you can kill the animal from a faraway distance; to come close is dangerous. What kind of game is this? And the poor animal, defenseless against your bullets.…

It is not a question of killing the animals; it is a question of being irreverent to life, because all that you need can be provided either by synthetic foods, or by other scientific methods. All your needs can be fulfilled; no animal has to be killed. And a person who kills animals, deep down can kill human beings without any difficulty -- because what is the difference? And there are cannibals.…

Just a few days ago in Palestine, the people demanded that the government allow them to eat human flesh, because there was not enough food -- so why waste a dead body?

Whether it has died naturally or has been destroyed by the terrorists or has been in an accident, it is good food! And the surprising thing is that the government of Palestine has agreed -- they had to. Food is short, and people cannot be left hungry. Today they will be eating the naturally dead or the accidentally dead, or those killed by terrorists; but this is not going on forever. Soon they will start finding ways to kill people -- to steal children, because their flesh is thought to be the most delicious.

A great reverence for life should be taught, because life is God and there is no other God than life itself, and joy, laughter, a sense of humor -- in short a dancing spirit.

The fourth dimension should be of art and creativity: painting, music, craftsmanship, pottery, masonry -- anything that is creative. All areas of creativity should be allowed; the students can choose. There should be only a few things compulsory -- for example an international language should be compulsory; a certain capacity to earn your livelihood should be compulsory; a certain creative art should be compulsory. You can choose through the whole rainbow of creative arts, because unless a man learns how to create, he never becomes a part of existence, which is constantly creative. By being creative one becomes divine; creativity is the only prayer.

And the fifth dimension should be the art of dying. In this fifth dimension will be all the meditations, so that you can know there is no death, so that you can become aware of an eternal life inside you. This should be absolutely essential, because everybody has to die; nobody can avoid it. And under the big umbrella of meditation, you can be introduced to Zen, to Tao, to Yoga, to Hassidism, to all kinds and all possibilities that have existed, but which education has not taken any care of. In this fifth dimension, you should also be made aware of the martial arts like aikido, jujitsu, judo -- the art of self-defense without weapons -- and not only self-defense, but simultaneously a meditation too.

The new commune will have a full education, a whole education. All that is essential should be compulsory, and all that is nonessential should be optional. One can choose from the options, which will be many. And once the basics are fulfilled, then you have to learn something you enjoy; music, dance, painting -- you have to know something to go inwards, to know yourself. And all this can be done very easily without any difficulty.

I have been a professor myself and I resigned from the university with a note saying: This is not education, this is sheer stupidity; you are not teaching anything significant.

But this insignificant education prevails all over the world -- it makes no difference, in the Soviet Union or in America. Nobody has looked for a more whole, a total education.

In this sense almost everybody is uneducated; even those who have great degrees are uneducated in the vaster areas of life. A few are more uneducated, a few are less -- but everybody is uneducated. But to find an educated man is impossible, because education as a whole does not exist anywhere.

Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,

SO NOW THIS: I'M A FAIRLY GOOD-LOOKING GUY WITH A PRETTY GOOD

TAN, AND I'M WITH A BEAUTIFUL GIRLFRIEND, AND I'M PRETTY INTELLIGENT. I MEDITATE ONCE IN A WHILE AND I CAN PLAY SOME

CHORDS ON THE GUITAR; AND I KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A PRE-FRONTAL LOBOTOMY AND A FREE BOTTLE IN FRONT OF ME; SO WHILE

EVERYONE ELSE IS TRYING TO FIND OUT WHY THEY CAN'T BE THEMSELVES, I'D LIKE TO KNOW WHY I CAN'T BE MILAREPA?

Satyadharma, you are perfectly good as you are. You need not be a Milarepa. These are the ideas which education and a competitive society have given to you. You want to be somebody else.

You say, "I am a fairly good-looking guy." Who told you that? It must have been your girlfriend -- but every girlfriend says that to every boyfriend. You should not get too impressed by such things.

You say "with a pretty good tan." Particularly here in India, a tan is not pretty good -- I hate it! -- it's just beautiful-looking people burning their skin under the sun. A tan is a stupid Western idea. If you want to rest, rest in the shade; don't have any inferiority complex about your whiteness. The blacks have created the idea that "black is beautiful."

What about white? Not a single white man says "white is beautiful."

And you say, "And I am with a beautiful girlfriend." And naturally you think these things mean you can be declared another Milarepa. But then everybody else...? Then we will have to name people "Milarepa number 1," "Milarepa number 2." And you say, "I meditate once in a while, and I can play some chords on the guitar, and I know the difference between a pre-frontal lobotomy, and a free bottle in front of me; so while everyone else is trying to find out why they can't be themselves, I would like to know why I can't be Milarepa." You can be, but you will be only number two, and that hurts.

You can be only a carbon copy, and you don't know the difficulties of poor Milarepa; you are not aware of his problems.

I have heard from reliable sources... Milarepa came home exhausted and terribly upset. "I was late for work today," he told his wife.

"I know," she replied.

"I quarreled with the boss." "I know."

"He fired me," he said glumly. "I know," she answered. "How the hell do you know?" "He told me."

"Ah, screw him!" Milarepa said angrily. "I did," replied the wife.

Hearing this, Milarepa took his guitar and came here.

You are perfectly good as you are -- Milarepa has his own problems. You have a girlfriend, he has so many -- and gets hit from everywhere. When one girlfriend throws him out, he reaches another. Finally he has a permanent girlfriend, Shunyo. When all the girlfriends are angry at him, then he reaches Shunyo. Shunyo is his last resort.

I think you should drop this idea. You just be yourself. Milarepa is quite in a mess!

Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,

PAUL GAUGIN, THE FAMOUS FRENCH PAINTER, DROPPED OUT OF SOCIETY

AND LIVED THE REMAINDER OF HIS LIFE ON AN ISLAND IN THE SOUTH

PACIFIC. SHORTLY BEFORE HIS DEATH, HE FINISHED HIS LAST

MASTERPIECE, ENTITLED "WHO ARE WE? WHERE DO WE COME FROM?

WHERE ARE WE GOING?" ABOUT THIS HE WRITES, "I HAVE PUT ALL MY

ENERGIES INTO THIS WORK BEFORE DYING -- A PASSION SO PAINFUL, A VISION SO CLEAR." THE OTHER MORNING YOU SPOKE TO US ABOUT BEING

CREATIVE, AND BEING JOYFUL WITH IT, NOT SAD. OSHO, IS THERE ANY

MORE YOU CAN SAY ABOUT THE ROLE OF CREATIVITY IN YOUR VISION?

Milarepa, Paul Gaugin had to suffer just the way every creator suffers. Creativity

is almost like pregnancy. The mother goes for nine months into deep troubled waters, and even after the birth of the child she is not free of responsibility. All creativity is a deep suffering, unless your creativity does not come out of the mind, but out of meditation.

When it comes out of meditation, creativity is sharing the joy, sharing the blissfulness that you have.

Mind has no joy -- it is really a wound, very painful.

Paul Gaugin had no idea of any meditation, but he had a tremendous passion, almost a madness to create. And just to create, he dropped out of society, forgot all about his wife and children and responsibilities. He was possessed by the idea of creating. The possession was so total that he could not allow any distraction. But when you are possessed by something, you are working almost as a slave, and slavery cannot bring blissfulness.

All the creators in the West have passed through long years of suffering. Many of them have been forced to live in madhouses, and many of them have committed suicide. The suffering became too much, unbearable; they had to end their own life. But still the Western creator, either of meditation or of music, of painting or of dance, has not become aware of why he has to suffer.

In the East, the situation is totally different -- not a single creator has suffered. In fact only the creators have enjoyed life to its fullest. Not a single creator has been put into a madhouse, not a single creator has committed suicide; but creators have moved deeper into meditation, and many of them have become mystics. From painting, from music, from dance, they have moved deeper into their own being.

Western society lives under an affliction -- their ignorance about meditation; hence, whatever they do is out of the mind.

And mind is not the source of joy.

It can only create agony, but never ecstasy. Mind is your hell.

So learn to be more meditative, and let your creativity be secondary to your

meditativeness. Then you will have a totally different state of being -- that of ecstasy; and out of ecstasy, whatever is created has also some flavor of it.

In the West, perhaps Gurdjieff is the only man who has divided art into two sections: the objective art and the subjective art. Subjective art is from the mind, and is out of anguish.

Objective art -- the Taj Mahal, the caves of Ellora and Ajanta, the temples of Khajuraho -

- has come from meditative people. Out of their love, out of their silence, they wanted to share; it is their contribution to the world.

The Western artist has lived under a very heavy burden. It is time that he should be made aware that there is something more beyond mind. First reach to that beyond, and then you can create stars; and they will not only be a great joy to you, they will also be a great joy for those who see them.

Just on a full-moon night, sit by the side of the Taj Mahal -- don't do anything, just look at it -- and you will find suddenly a silence descending on you, a peace filling your heart.

The mind is stopping its constant chattering.

An objective piece of art like the Taj Mahal is not just to be seen, but to be lived

-- and then you will be in a certain way connected with the creators of that beautiful architecture. It was created by Sufi masters. Its very shape somehow creates within you a new blissful space. But the Western tourist comes with the camera, takes a few shots from here and there and runs away to some other place. He does not know how to appreciate an objective art. One has to meditate on it -- it may be that thousands of years have passed between the creator of that piece and you. Suddenly that distance disappears; you become part of that creative joy, of that creative dance.

Milarepa, creativity is secondary, meditation is basic and fundamental; everything should come out of your meditation. Then it will give you a beatitude, your being a new song, and it will help others to experience something of it. It will depend on their meditativeness.

I would like to make one very strange statement: that a great meditator will find

more joy, more peace, more blissfulness, than even the creator himself. If a Gautam Buddha sits by the side of the Taj Mahal, then what those Sufi Masters had experienced by creating it will be left far behind. Gautam Buddha will experience something far deeper, far more truthful, far more beautiful.

Whether you create, or you observe an objective piece of creativity, meditation should be the key. Without it, mind can only spread on the canvas its nightmares. Most of the paintings of the great painters like Paul Gaugin or Picasso are almost like vomit. They could not contain their agony and suffering -- it was so much they threw it on the canvas to get relief. The real objective art is not a relief; it is not a sickness that you want to get rid of. It is a blissfulness that you want to share. And by sharing, it grows; you have more of it, the more it is shared.

Okay, Maneesha? Yes, Osho.

The Golden Future Chapter #24

Chapter title: Love will be his law

23 May 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive

code: 8705235

ShortTitle: GOLDEN24

Audio: Yes Video:

Yes Length:

75

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

WHAT WILL BE THE LEGAL SYSTEM USED IN THE NEW COMMUNE UNTIL

ALL OF ITS MEMBERS ARE TOTALLY CONSCIOUS? WILL THERE NEED TO

BE A SYSTEM OF PUNISHMENT AND REWARD?

Maneesha, all legal systems are nothing but the revenge of society -- revenge against those who don't fit in with the system. According to me, law is not for protection of the just, it is for protection of the crowd mind; whether it is just or unjust does not matter.

Law is against the individual and for the crowd. It is an effort to reduce the individual and his freedom, and his possibility of being himself.

The latest scientific researches are very revealing. The people who are termed criminals are not responsible for their crimes; their crimes are genetic, they inherit them. Just as a blind man is not responsible for his blindness, a murderer is not responsible for his murderousness. Both inherit the tendency -- one of blindness, another of committing murder. Now it is almost an established scientific fact that punishing anybody for any crime is simply idiotic. It is almost like punishing somebody because he has tuberculosis

-- sending him to jail because he is suffering from cancer. All criminals are sick, psychologically and spiritually both.

In my vision of a commune, the courts will not consist of law experts, they will

consist of people who understand genetics and how crimes are inherited from generation to generation. They have to decide not for any punishment, because every punishment is wrong -- not only wrong, every punishment is criminal. The man who has committed anything wrong has to be sent to the right institution; maybe a hospital, to be operated on, or a psychiatric institution, or a psychoanalytic school. He needs our sympathy, our love, our help. Instead of giving him our sympathy and love, for centuries we have been giving him punishment. Man has committed so much cruelty behind such beautiful names as order, law, justice.

The new man will not have any jails and will not have any judges and will not have any legal experts. These are absolutely unnecessary, cancerous growths on the body of society. There will certainly have to be sympathetic scientists; meditative, compassionate beings, to work out why it happened that a certain man committed rape: is he really responsible? According to me, on no account is he responsible. Either he has committed rape because of the priests and the religions teaching celibacy, repression for thousands of years -- this is the outcome of a repressive morality -- or biologically he has hormones which compel him to commit rape.

Although you are living in a modern society, most of you are not contemporaries because you are not aware of the reality that science goes on discovering. Your educational system prevents you from knowing it, your religions prevent you from knowing it, your governments prevent you from knowing it.

A man is attracted to a woman and thinks that he is in love. The woman also thinks she is in love. But the scientific truth is that they both have certain biological factors, certain hormones that attract each other. That's why it is possible to change the sex of one person from man to woman or from woman to man just by changing the hormonal system. A good injection of hormones and you are full of love.

The man who is committing rape perhaps has more hormones than those moral people who manage to live with one woman for their whole life, thinking that they are moral.

The real fact is that their hormones are very weak; it is enough for their hormones to be satisfied with one woman. A man with more hormones will need more women; so will be the case with a woman. It is not a question of morality,

it is a question of biology. A man who commits rape needs all our sympathy, needs a certain operation in which his extra hormones are removed, and he will cool down, calm down -- he will become a Gautam Buddha.

To punish him is simply an exercise in stupidity. By punishing, you cannot change his hormones. Throwing him in jail, you will create a homosexual, some kind of pervert. In American jails they have done a survey: thirty percent of the inmates are homosexuals.

That is according to their confession; we don't know how many have not confessed.

Thirty percent is not a small number. In monasteries the number is bigger -- fifty percent, sixty percent. But the responsibility lies with our idiotic clinging to religions which are out of date, which are not supported and nourished by scientific research.

The new commune of man will be based on science, not on superstition. If somebody does something which is harmful to the commune as such, then his body has to be looked into; he needs some physiological change or biological change. His mind has to be looked into -- perhaps he needs some psychoanalysis. The deepest possibility is that neither the body nor the mind are of much help; that means he needs a deep spiritual regeneration, a deep meditative cleansing.

Instead of courts, we should have meditative centers of different kinds, so every unique individual can find his own way. And we will have -- instead of law experts, who are simply irrelevant: they are parasites sucking our blood.We need scientific people of different persuasions in the courts, because somebody may have a chemical defect, somebody may have a biological defect, somebody may have a physiological defect. We need all these kinds of experts, of all persuasions and schools of psychology, all types of meditators, and we can transform the poor people who have been victims of unknown forces... and have been punished by us. They have suffered in a double sense.

First, they are suffering from an unknown biological force. Secondly, they are suffering at the hands of your judges, who are nothing but butchers, henchmen; your advocates, all kinds of your law experts, your jailers -- it is simply so insane that future human beings will not be able to believe it. It is almost the

same with the past.

Just the other day there was a report from South India that a woman was thought to be having intercourse with the devil. Now the devil has been almost dead for many centuries; suddenly he became alive in that small village. And the villagers took the woman to the priest who declared that she should be hung upside down from a tree and beaten: the devil is still inside her. Somebody informed the police of the nearby town.

The police arrived, but the villagers were reluctant.… Two hundred villagers were standing, stopping the police, saying, "You cannot interfere with our religious conceptions." And they were beating the woman -- they killed her! Until she was dead, they were not satisfied. They could not find the devil, but they killed the woman.

This used to be the common practice all over the world. Mad people were beaten to cure their madness; people who were schizophrenic, who were thought to be possessed by ghosts, were beaten almost to death -- this was thought to be the treatment. Millions of people have died because of your great treatments.

Now we can simply say that those people were barbarous, ignorant, primitive. The same will be said about us. I am already saying it: that your courts are barbarous, your laws are barbarous. The very idea of punishment is unscientific. There is nobody in the world who is a criminal; everybody is sick, and needs sympathy and a scientific cure, and half of your crimes will disappear. First, with the disappearance of private property.… Private property creates thieves, dacoits, pickpockets, politicians, priests.

You will be surprised to know that just a few days ago a cartoonist was put into jail in the contemporary, educated city of Madras, because he has printed a cartoon in a magazine with the caption that the man who looks like a pickpocket is a cabinet minister; and the man who looks like a dacoit, is the prime minister. There were two men in the cartoon.

Immediately, he was caught by the police -- and this is called democracy! One cannot even joke, one cannot even laugh. He has not named anybody -- but all your politicians are pickpockets, are dacoits. They also need psychiatric treatment, they also need sympathetic psychiatric nursing homes. They have to be cured of their politics.

Politics is a disease.

Man has suffered from many diseases and he has not even been aware that they are diseases. He has been punishing small criminals and he has been worshiping great criminals. Who is Alexander the Great? -- a great criminal; he murdered people on a mass scale. Adolf Hitler alone killed millions of people, but he will be remembered in history as a great leader of man.

I received a letter from the president of the Neo-Nazi party saying that I should stop speaking against Adolf Hitler because, "It hurts our religious feeling." I said, "My God!"

I had been receiving letters from Hindus, from Mohammedans, from Christians, from Buddhists, from Jainas. I have been facing hundreds of cases in courts on the same grounds, that I have hurt somebody's religious feeling -- but I had never even dreamt that to speak against Adolf Hitler was going to hurt someone's religious feelings.

And the president of Neo-Nazi party had said, "Adolf Hitler, to us, is not just a great political leader, he is also the reincarnation of the ancient, Old Testament prophet Elijah.

Now he will be remembered in history as the great incarnation of the prophet Elijah who killed forty-five million people. Certainly it must have been done according to the will of God. Who are the people you read about in history?

Napoleon Bonaparte, Ivan the Terrible, Nadir Shah, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane are all mass scale criminals. But their crimes are so big, perhaps, that you cannot conceive.…

They have killed millions of people, burned millions of people alive, but they are not thought of as criminals.

And a small pickpocket, who takes away a two rupee note from your pocket will be punished by the court. And perhaps the two rupee note that you were carrying was not authentic at all. But his mother is dying, and he has no money for medicine, and I cannot say that he is a criminal; he is simply a kind-hearted man who loves his mother.

Once private property disappears.… And in a commune there is going to be no

private property, everything belongs to all; naturally, stealing will disappear. You don't steal water and accumulate it, you don't steal air. A commune has to create everything in such abundance that even the retarded person cannot think of accumulating it. What is the point? It is always available, fresh. Money has to disappear from society. A commune does not need money. Your needs should be fulfilled by the commune. All have to produce, and all have to make the commune richer, affluent, accepting the fact that a few people will be lazy. But there is no harm in it.

In every family, you will find somebody lazy. Somebody is a poet, somebody is a painter, somebody simply goes on playing on his flute -- but you love the person. A certain percentage of lazy people will be respectfully allowed. In fact a commune that does not have lazy people will be a little less rich than other communes which have a few lazy people who do nothing but meditate, who do nothing but go on playing on their guitar while others are toiling in the fields. A little more human outlook is needed; these people are not useless. They may not seem to be productive of commodities, but they are producing a certain joyful, cheerful atmosphere. Their contribution is meaningful and significant.

With the disappearance of money as a means of exchange, many crimes will disappear.

As religions disappear, with their repressive superstitions and moralities, crimes like rape, perversions like homosexuality, diseases like AIDS will become unheard of. And when from the very beginning every child is brought up with a reverence for life -- reverence for the trees because they are alive, reverence for animals, reverence for birds -- do you think such a child one day can be a murderer? It will be almost inconceivable.

And if life is joyous, full of songs and dances, do you think somebody will desire to commit suicide? Ninety percent of crimes will disappear automatically; only ten percent of crimes may remain, which are genetic, which need hospitalization -- but not jails, prisons, not people to be sentenced to death. This is all so ugly, so inhuman, so insane.

The new commune, the new man, can live without any law, without any order. Love will be his law, understanding will be his order. Science will be, in every difficult situation, his last resort.

Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,

I HAVE NOT A POEM OF MY OWN TO WRITE TO YOU, SO I WRITE OTHERS. I HAVE NOT A SONG OF MY OWN TO SING TO YOU, SO I SING OTHERS. I HAVE NOTHING TO GIVE TO YOU BUT MY OLD DESIRES, FEARS, FAILURES, JEALOUSIES. MY HEART ACHES, FOR I WANT TO BE ABLE TO GIVE YOU

SOMETHING OF ME, BUT THAT I AM STILL TRYING TO FIND. THE HEART

ONLY KNOWS, MY BELOVED. PLEASE COMMENT.

Kendra, if you do not have a poem of your own, there is no need to write others. Send me blank sheets of paper. They will show much more of your heart than words which are borrowed.

The only book in the world that I can call holy is a book Sufis have been carrying for almost twelve centuries. The first man who had it used to read it by locking his doors, closing his windows; his disciples were always puzzled, intrigued. They tried in every possible way -- even sometimes they went up on the roof, removed a tile -- just to see what is written in that book, because that old master never used to open that book before anybody. He used to keep it covered in beautiful cloth, hiding it under his pillow, so even while he was asleep nobody could manage to get to the book.

It created more and more temptation. And the day he died, people were not so concerned with his death; they were more concerned to take out the book first and see what was there -- "As far as he is concerned, he is dead; he can wait a little for the last funeral rites, but let us see what is in that book." And they were shocked and surprised, the book was empty. Between those two covers there was not a single word, just empty pages.

They went through all the pages, there were almost three hundred pages. They thought there must be something -- that man was very clever and cunning, so he must be hiding it somewhere. But there was nothing in the book.

And the old man was really very clever, he had not died. He just opened his one

eye, and said, "Are you satisfied? I am going to die, don't be worried. I was just waiting to see the reaction."

He laughed and he died. But he had told to his chief disciple just the day before, "You will be the possessor of the book, because it is the holiest of the holies. It is just the silence and wordless interiority of your being. For twelve centuries continuously, the book has passed from hand to hand, from master to disciple."

One of the Sufis who is very well-known in the West, Idries Shah, tried to publish the book, but no publisher was ready. Every publisher looked here and there and they said,

"But there is nothing to publish."

Just to satisfy them, he has written a few lines as an introduction to the book; the history of the book for twelve centuries... the beginning, how it has been transferred from hand to hand, how it has been worshiped, and how it has been read for twelve centuries by great masters. Finally it has been published by a daring publisher, thinking that people may at least use it as a notebook.

The Western mind cannot understand a few things, a few things which are absolutely Eastern. Those who understand have been angry at Idries Shah, that he compromised. I myself am angry at the man. There was no need to compromise, the book could have remained unpublished. But just to publish it, he wrote a few pages of introduction, and destroyed the beauty of it, the whole sanctity of it.

Kendra, if you cannot sing your own song, be silent. Your silence is far more valuable than the greatest song which you have borrowed from somebody else. It will not be alive, it will not have a heartbeat. It will not be breathing.

Your silence will be breathing.

Your silence will have a heartbeat to it. Your silence will be alive.

And don't offer me dead things. You say, "I have nothing to give to you but my old desires, fears, failures." But you don't give them either. People just talk. They talk; they want to give their fears, their failures, their jealousies, their desires, but

nothing reaches to me. I go on waiting and waiting, and they go on enjoying their jealousies, and their desires. If you don't want to give, don't say it. If you want to give, then give. And you are not giving any treasures. You are giving all kinds of poisons.

But just the idea that you want to give is in itself beautiful. And I don't care whether you give poisons or treasures, but give. Just don't go on talking about giving.

You say, "My heart aches, for I want to be able to give you something of me."

Kendra, you must be very miserly... something of you? not even the totality? What will you give to me? just a hand, which will become a burden to me?

There is only one giving, it is never partial. And you cannot give yourself in installments, something today and something tomorrow... slowly, slowly gathering courage, cutting yourself into slices. You are not a loaf of a bread; you are a living being. Either you give yourself in totality, or you don't give.

This is not the case only with you, Kendra, it is the case with many people. They go on talking beautifully, "My heart aches". I suspect.

If you have a headache, I can believe it. But the heartache is a very deep, a very profound feeling. People know heart failures, people don't know heartache. You can find so many medicines for headache, but have you heard of any medicine for heartache? It is just poetry, borrowed.

"My heart aches, for I want to be able to give you something."

First you want to be able.… Can't you give yourself as you are right now -- because I don't expect from you something very refined, cultured, a diamond cut with great art and polished. No, I love you as you are raw, wild, but simple and just yourself. Don't wait for becoming able; you will never become able.

But this too has been your conditioning by the society, that you can offer yourself only when you are qualified. But in this temple of love, no qualifications are needed. Just the longing to give is enough qualification. Just give yourself, and forget all about it. Don't remember that you have given yourself, and don't remind me again and again, "Listen, I have given myself to you."

Give yourself and forget the whole matter. Giving should be simple -- so simple that no record should be kept of it, because you are not a kind of income that a record has to be kept. Then income tax officers will come, and I will have to be income taxed, because so many people are coming to me and offering themselves to me -- their jealousies, their desires, their angers and their fears. And my income is so much, that I must be taxed.…

You simply give! I have never paid any tax, and I am not going to pay any tax, ever.

When I was a professor in the university, and my income came to the point that beyond it, it would become taxable, I informed the university, "Now my salary has come to the full point."

They said, "What do you mean? Within the next month, you are going to have an increment."

I said, "Forget all about it, I will not take any increment because with that increment comes taxation. And I hate only one thing in life, that is income tax."

And I never allowed them. They were very much surprised; the vice-chancellor tried to persuade me, even the clerks, the cashiers, said, "Look, this is very crazy; what will people think if they hear about it? The income tax is going to be very little, and if you stop taking increments then your salary will remain stuck always at this point. And you are so young you can reach to the salary of the vice-chancellor without any trouble just by your seniority."

I said, "I am not going anywhere. Just keep it at this point, because above it comes income tax."

Since then, my income is of a totally different kind -- fears, anxieties, tensions, anguish; these are not taxable. Why should you be worried first to become able to give? Whatever you are, as you are... I don't put any conditions on anybody.

My love is unconditional, and my acceptance is without asking you to be anything other than you are. In this relaxed attitude, the meeting and merging between the master and the disciple happens; there is no other way.

The rabbi was distressed at the lack of generosity amongst his congregation, and he prayed that the rich should give more charity to the poor.

"And has your prayer been answered?" asked his wife.

"Half of it was," replied the rabbi. "The poor are willing to accept."

As far as I am concerned, I am willing to accept. Now it is a question of you -- are you willing to give, or are you first waiting to become able to give? If I am ready to accept right now, why waste time, and why wait for tomorrow?

Giving yourself will be such a relaxation, such a transformation, such a joy, that you cannot conceive it; you can only experience if you go through the gesture of giving.

Okay, Maneesha? Yes, Osho.

The Golden Future Chapter #25

Chapter title: You need a divine discontent 24 May 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive

code: 8705240

ShortTitle: GOLDEN25

Audio: Yes Video: Yes

Length:

87

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

TO ME, THE CONCEPT OF LOYALTY HAS OVERTONES OF DUTY AND HONOR AND BELIEF -- ALL OF WHICH REPRESENT STATIC, UNQUESTIONING ATTITUDES THAT ARE ROOTED IN OUTMODED SENTIMENTALITY. I LOVE AND TRUST YOU AS MY MASTER, AND I

CANNOT IMAGINE THE REST OF MY LIFE HAVING ANY SIGNIFICANCE

EXCEPT THAT IT BE IN THE SERVICE OF THAT LOVE AND TRUST. BUT THAT

IS NOT MY BEING loyal: IT'S SOMETHING I CONSCIOUSLY AFFIRM IN MY

LIFE, MOMENT TO MOMENT. WOULD YOU PLEASE TALK ON LOYALTY?

Maneesha, one very fundamental thing has always to be remembered: man is very clever in creating pseudo-values. The real values demand your totality, demand your whole being; the pseudo-values are very cheap. They look like the real, but they don't demand you in your totality -- just a superficial formality.

For example, in place of love, trust, we have created a false value: loyalty -- the loyal person is only superficially concerned with love. He goes through all the gestures of love, but he means nothing by them; his heart stays out of his formal gestures.

A slave is loyal, but do you think anybody who is a slave, who has been reduced

in his humanity, whose whole pride and dignity has been taken away, can love the person who has harmed him so deeply? He hates him, and if the chance arises, he can kill him. But on the surface, he will remain loyal -- he has to. It is not out of his joy, it is out of fear; it is not out of love, it is out of a conditioned mind which says that you have to be loyal to your master. It is the loyalty of the dog to his master.

Love needs a more total response; it comes not out of duty, but out of your own heartbeats, out of your own experience of joy, out of the desire to share it.

Loyalty is something ugly, but for thousands of years it has been a very respectable value because society has enslaved people in different ways. The wife is supposed to be loyal to the husband, to the point that, in this country, millions of women have died with their husband's death, jumping in the funeral pyre alive, and burning themselves to death. It was so respectable that any woman who could not do it had to live a very condemned life.

She became almost an outcast; she was treated only as a servant in her own family. It was concluded that because she could not die with her husband, she was not loyal to him.

In fact, just think of it the other way around: not a single man has jumped into the funeral pyre of his wife. Nobody has raised the question, "Does it mean that no husband has ever been loyal to his wife?" But it is a society of double standards: one standard is for the master, the owner, the possessor, and the other standard is for the slave.

Love is a dangerous experience, because you are possessed by something which is bigger than you, and it is not controllable -- you cannot produce it on order. Once it is gone, there is no way to bring it back; all that you can do is to pretend, be a hypocrite.

Loyalty is a totally different matter; it is manufactured by your own mind, it is not something beyond you. It is a training in a particular culture -- just like any other training.

You start acting; and by and by, you start believing your own acting. Loyalty demands that you should be always, in life or in death, devoted to the person -- whether your heart is willing for it or not. It is a psychological way of enslavement.

Love brings freedom. Loyalty brings slavery.

On the surface, they both look alike; deep down, they are just the very opposite -

-

diametrically opposite. Loyalty is acting, you have been educated for it. Love is wild, its whole beauty is in its wildness. It comes like a breeze with great fragrance, fills your heart, and suddenly where there was a desert there is a garden full of flowers. But you don't know from where it comes, and you don't know that there is no way to bring it; it comes on its own and remains as long as existence wills it. And just as it had come one day as a stranger, as a guest, suddenly one day it is gone. There is no way to cling to it, no way to hold it.

Society cannot depend on such unpredictable, unreliable experiences. It wants guarantees, securities; hence, it has removed love from life completely -- it has placed marriage in its place. Marriage knows loyalty, loyalty to the husband, and because it is formal, it is within your hands... but it is nothing compared to love, it is not even a dew drop of the ocean that love is.

But society is very happy with it because it is reliable. The husband can trust you, can trust that tomorrow also you will be as loyal as you are today. Love cannot be trusted.

And the strangest phenomenon is that love is the greatest trust -- but it cannot be trusted.

In the moment, it is total; but the next moment remains open. It may grow within you, it may evaporate from you. The husband wants a wife who is a slave for her whole life. He cannot depend on love; he has to create something looking like love, but manufactured by man's mind.

It is not only in the relationship of love, but in other fields of life, also. Loyalty has been given great respect because it destroys intelligence: the soldier has to be loyal to the nation.… The man who dropped atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- you cannot call him responsible for it, he was simply fulfilling his duty. He was ordered, and he was loyal to his superiors; that is the whole training of armies.

For years they train you, so that you become almost incapable of revolt. Even if you see that what is being asked from you is absolutely wrong, still your training has gone so deep to say, "Yes, sir," that you will do it. I cannot conceive that the man who dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a machine. He also had a heart just like you, he also had his wife and children, his old mother and father... he was as much a human being as you are -- with a difference. He was trained to follow orders without questioning, and when the order was given, he simply followed it.

I have thought again and again about his mind. Is it conceivable that he did not think that this bomb is going to destroy almost two hundred thousand people? Can't he say, "No"?

Is it not better to be shot by the general for not following the order, than to kill two hundred thousand people? Perhaps the idea never occured to him.

The army works in such a way as to create loyalty -- it starts with small things. One wonders why every soldier for years has to go for parades and follow stupid orders -- left turn, right turn, go backwards, go forwards -- for hours, for no purpose at all. There is a hidden purpose in it. His intelligence is being destroyed. He is being turned into an automaton, into a robot. So when the order comes, "Left turn," the mind does not ask,

"Why?" If somebody else says to you, "Left turn," you are going to ask, "What nonsense is this? Why should I left turn? I'm going right!" But the soldier is not supposed to doubt, to enquire; he has simply to follow. This is his basic conditioning for loyalty.

It is good for the kings and for the generals that armies should be loyal to the point that they function like machines, not like men. It is comfortable for parents that their children are loyal, because a child who is a rebel is a problem. The parents may be wrong, and the child may be right, but he has to be obedient to the parents -- that is part of the training of the old man that has existed up to now.

I teach you the new man in whom loyalty has no place, but instead intelligence, enquiry, a capacity to say "No." To me, unless you are capable of saying "No" your "Yes;" is meaningless -- your "Yes" is just recorded on a gramophone record. You cannot do anything; you have to say, "Yes" the "No" simply does not

arise in you.

Life and civilization would have been totally different if we had trained people to have more intelligence. So many wars would not have happened because people would have asked, "What is the reason? Why should we kill people -- people who are innocent?" But they are loyal to one country and you are loyal to another country, and both the countries'

politicians are fighting and sacrificing their people. If the politicians love to fight so much they can have a wrestling match, and people can enjoy it just like any football match.

But the kings and the politicians, the presidents and the prime ministers don't go to war.

The simple people, who have nothing to do with killing others, go to war to kill and to be killed. They are rewarded for their loyalty; they are given the Victoria Cross or other kinds of awards -- for being inhuman, for being unintelligent, for being mechanical.

Maneesha, you asked me, "To me, the concept of loyalty has overtones of duty, and honor, and belief."

It has not only overtones. It is nothing but the combination of all these diseases -

- belief, duty, respectability. They all are nourishment for your ego. They are all against your spiritual growth, but they are in favor of the vested interests.

The priests don't want you to ask any question about their belief system because they know that they have no answers to give. All belief systems are so false that if questioned they will fall down. Unquestioned, they create great religions with millions of people in their folds.

Now the Catholic pope has fifty million people under him, and out of these fifty million people, not a single one enquires, "How can a virgin girl give birth to a child?" That would be sacrilegious! Out of fifty million people, not a single one asks, "What is the evidence that Jesus is the only begotten son of God?" -- anybody can claim it. "What is the evidence that Jesus has saved people from misery?" -- he could not save himself. But questions like this are embarrassing, and they are simply not raised. Even God is nothing but a hypothesis which religious people have been trying to prove for thousands of years, all kinds of

proofs -- but all bogus, with no substance, no support from existence. But nobody asks the question.

From the very first day of life, people are being trained to be loyal to the belief system in which they were born. It is convenient for the priests to exploit you, it is convenient for the politicians to exploit you, it is convenient for husbands to exploit wives, for parents to exploit children, for teachers to exploit students. For every vested interest, loyalty is simply a necessity. But it reduces the whole of humanity into retardedness.

It does not allow questioning, it does not allow doubt, it does not allow people to be intelligent. And a man who is not capable of doubting, of questioning, of saying, "No,"

when he feels that the thing is wrong, has fallen below humanity -- he has become a subhuman animal.

"... all of which represent static, unquestioning attitudes that are rooted in outmoded sentimentality.

"I love and trust You as my Master, and I cannot imagine the rest of my life having any significance except that it be in the service of that love and trust."

If love is asked, then it becomes loyalty. If love is given without being asked, if it is your free gift. Then it raises your consciousness.

If trust is asked you are being enslaved but if a trust arises in you, something superhuman is growing within your heart.

The difference is very small, but of tremendous importance. Asked or ordered, love and trust both become false. When they arise on their own, they have immense intrinsic value. They do not make you a slave, they make you a master of yourself, because it is your love, it is your trust. You are following your own heart. You are not following somebody else, you are not being forced to follow. Out of your freedom is your love, out of your dignity is your trust, and they are both going to make you richer human beings.

That is my idea of the new man. He will love, but he will not allow love to be ordered.

He will trust, but he will trust according to himself -- not according to any scriptures, not according to any social structure, not according to any priest, not according to any politician.

To live your life according to your own heart, following its beat, going into the unknown just like an eagle flying across the sun in utter freedom, knowing no limits... it is not ordered. It is its own joy. It is the exercise of one's own spirituality.

"But that is not my being loyal."

Certainly. I would not like anybody to be loyal to me, because I cannot destroy you, and I cannot take away your dignity. I am here to crown you with dignity, to help you achieve your potential to its fullest, to make you a master of your own destiny. I cannot ask loyalty from you, I cannot ask anything -- neither love, nor trust, nor loyalty. But if love arises in you, trust grows in you, that is a totally different phenomenon. The whole credit goes to you; it has nothing As far as I

am concerned you cannot disappoint me, for the simple reason that I am not asking any loyalty. If you fail in your love, if you fail in your trust, you are not disappointing me, you are disappointing yourself; you are not betraying me, you are betraying your own higher values.

This is a totally different approach, but this is the way of the new man. And the new man is the only hope for the future.

Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,

LATELY I FEEL MY LIFE HAS COME TO A PEAK. LIVING IN YOUR PRESENCE

IS SUCH A PRECIOUS AND DELICIOUS GIFT. EVERY MOMENT IS BECOMING

SO JOYFUL AND CONTENTED, BUT THEN OFTEN THE FEAR OF DEATH

COMES UP INTENSE AND STRONG AND THE FEAR OF HAVING TO LEAVE

ALL THIS BEAUTY, THIS FRIENDSHIP, AND LOVE. YOU KEEP ON TELLING

US LATELY THAT WE DON'T HAVE MUCH TIME LEFT BEFORE THIS WORLD

FINISHES. HOW IS IT POSSIBLE TO RELAX IN THIS CERTAINTY OF DEATH?

Sadhan, first it is possible to relax only when death is a certainty. Relaxing is difficult when things are uncertain. If you know that you are going to die today, all fear of death will disappear. What is the point of wasting time? You have one day to live: live as intensely as possible, live as totally as possible.

It actually happened in a man's life.… His doctor told him, "You have only six months more to live, not a single day more, so if you want to finish anything, finish it. If you have wanted to do anything, do it."

The man was very rich, and he always had an idea to go around the world to visit all the beautiful places, but there were so many problems that he was continuously postponing it. Now there was no time to postpone. He ordered beautiful clothes to be made for him.…

People had never known him so extravagant: he was eating the best food, he purchased the best house in the town, he closed all his businesses. What was the need to keep them?

For six months he had more than enough -- he could live like a king.

He went around the world, visiting all the beautiful places, all the beautiful people of the world. In fact, he simply forgot to die. By the time he was back home, six months had passed a long time before. He went to the doctor to thank him.

The doctor said, "Are you still alive? How did you manage -- because the disease was such that you were going to die within six months."

The man said, "Once it became certain that I was going to die, death was no longer a problem but a certainty. I had six months to live, so I wanted to live as multidimensionally as possible. And by living so totally and so intensely,

perhaps I forgot to die at the right time."

The doctor checked him -- his disease had disappeared. These six months had been of such relaxed, deep, joyful enjoyment that the disease had to disappear!

So the first thing, Sadhan: The certainty of death is one of the most fortunate things. And death has never been so certain -- so certain for the whole humanity. In fact, people should stop creating war materials. Instead of fighting with their neighbors, they should start singing and dancing with them. The time is so short, you cannot afford to fight.

People should forget all their differences of religion, and Communism, Socialism and Fascism. All these differences are good when you have enough time -- but time is very short. You cannot afford all these differences of being Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan.

Just the shortage of time and the certainty of a global death can bring a transformation.

Perhaps you may find yourself in the same position as this man, that the world stops being divided into nations, being divided into religions, continuously fighting and we start, for the first time, enjoying this beautiful planet together.

Death may not come. death cannot come to people who live very intensely and very totally. And even if it comes, those people who have lived totally, welcome it because it is a great relief. They are tired of living, they lived so totally, so intensely, so death comes like a friend. Just as night comes after the whole day's hard work as a great relaxation, as a beautiful sleep, so does death. Death has nothing ugly about it; you cannot find anything cleaner.

You are asking, "Lately I feel my life has come to a peak."

Remember, there are peaks beyond peaks -- just look ahead. Don't get satisfied with what you have achieved. You need a divine discontentment. Every achievement should become a deep longing for something more, and greater. And there are peaks beyond peaks, unending, skies beyond skies. It is just that you need strong wings.

It is good that you are feeling you have come to the highest peak, but don't make it the end of your journey. Make it the beginning of a new journey. Every peak

has to be made the beginning of a new journey -- a search for a higher peak.

"Living in Your presence is such a precious and delicious gift. Every moment is becoming so joyful and contented, but then often the fear of death comes up."

That means your joy, your blissfulness, your contentedness is not total -- it leaves spaces, loopholes, from which the fear of death comes in. The fear of death simply shows.…

Dance a little faster, live a little faster.

I have never forgotten... in Ahmedabad I used to stay at Jayantibhai's house. We had to cross a bridge, and as the bridge came near he would start driving faster, because there was a big board by the side of the bridge advertising Gold Spot. It said, "Live a little hot, sip a Gold Spot."

I asked Jayantibhai, "What is the matter? Suddenly, on this bridge, you start going fast."

He said, "Looking at that board, `Live a little hot,' I start going fast!"

If the fear of death comes in, that means there are a few loopholes which are not filled with living. So those fears of death are very indicative and helpful -- show you that your dance has to go a little faster, that you have to burn the torch of your life from both ends together.

Dance so fast that the dancer disappears, and only the dance remains. Then it is not possible for any fear of death to visit you.

"And the fear of having to leave all this beauty, this friendship, and love."

If you are totally herenow, who cares about tomorrow? Tomorrow will take care of itself.

Jesus is right when he prays to God, "Lord, give me my daily bread." He is not even asking for tomorrow, just today is enough unto itself. And you have to learn that each moment has a completion.

The fear of having to leave it all comes only because you are not completely

living in the moment; otherwise there is no time, and there is no mind, and there is no space.

For more than three decades I have never thought about tomorrow. And you cannot find a more simple life than mine. For my whole life I have been sleeping in the afternoon, and it happens often that Nirvano has to remind me when she wakes me up in the afternoon, because if nobody wakes me I am not going to wake up by myself -- why bother? She has to remind me, "This is afternoon, not morning," because I often forget.

It happens once in a while that she forgets to remind me... I have gone into the bathroom and started taking my shower, getting ready for the morning talk and only when the cold water shook me a little I remembered, "My God! What am I doing?"

But anyway, I enjoyed the shower!

Sadhan, you are also saying, "You keep on telling us lately that we don't have much time left before this world finishes. How is it possible to relax in this certainty of death?"

In fact, my continuous emphasis that there is a possibility of this whole world being destroyed is to help you to live intensely right now because there may not be any tomorrow.

You are in a very special position in the history of mankind. People have always had time to postpone -- you don't have. Your situation is unique. Use it -- not for worrying, because that is not going to stop the world from ending. Use whatever time is left to live so deeply that ten years become almost equivalent to one hundred years.

Once a merchant was asked, "How old are you?" And he said, "Three hundred and sixty years old."

The man could not believe it. He said, "Please, repeat it. Perhaps I have not heard rightly."

The merchant shouted and said, "Three hundred and sixty years old."

The man said, "Forgive me, but I cannot believe it. You don't look more than sixty!"

The merchant said, "You are also right. As far as the calendar is concerned, I am sixty.

But as far as my life is concerned I have lived six times more than anybody else. In sixty years I have managed to live three hundred and sixty years."

It depends on intensity.

There are two ways of living. One is the way of the buffalo -- it lives horizontally, in a single line. The other way is of a buddha. He lives vertically, in height and in depth. Then each moment can become an eternity. And unless you learn the art of transforming each moment into an eternity, you have not been with me -- you missed me.

The world may end, may not end, that is not my concern. But I will go on insisting that it is going to end for a simple reason: to wake you up. And don't waste your time in trivia, but live, sing, dance, love as totally and overflowingly as you are capable of; and no fears will interfere, and you will not be worried what will happen tomorrow. Today is enough unto itself. Lived, it is so full; it leaves no space to think about anything else. Unlived, worries come, fears come.

It is not only me who is emphasizing the fact that the world is coming to an end. It is just a coincidence that alongside my insistence on it, the world situation is very supportive of what I am saying. But Jesus Christ, two thousand years ago, was saying the same thing, Gautam Buddha, twenty-five centuries ago, was saying the same thing.

It is an old device to wake you up. Unless you know that your house is on fire, you are not going to run out of it. And Jesus and Gautam Buddha were using it as a device, without any corresponding reality.

I am also using it as a device, but it is not only a device. For the first time, the world is really in a position to commit a global suicide. If Gautam Buddha managed to make two dozen people enlightened, then it should be very easy for me to make at least two hundred people enlightened -- very easy, because his device was only fictitious.

My device is not fictitious, it is a reality. The reality is supporting my device with totality.

Sadhan you just live, love, and make each moment a deep ecstasy. All fears may disappear. And if the whole humanity listens to me, perhaps the world may not end, perhaps we may continue. The old man may die and a totally new man with fresh values may arise to replace him.

Okay, Maneesha? Yes, Osho.

The Golden Future Chapter #26

Chapter title: Freedom is all I want

24 May 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive

code: 8705245

ShortTitle: GOLDEN26

Audio: Yes Video: Yes Length: 92

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

THE OTHER MORNING I CAME ACROSS THIS PASSAGE FROM

RABINDRANATH TAGORE'S GITANJALI WHICH TOUCHED SOMETHING

DEEP INSIDE ME. "OBSTINATE ARE THE TRAMMELS, BUT MY HEART ACHES

WHEN I TRY TO BREAK THEM. FREEDOM IS ALL I WANT, BUT TO HOPE FOR

IT I FEEL ASHAMED. I AM CERTAIN THAT PRICELESS WEALTH IS IN THEE, AND THAT THOU ART MY BEST FRIEND. BUT I HAVE NOT THE HEART TO

SWEEP AWAY THE TINSEL THAT FILLS MY ROOM. THE SHROUD THAT

COVERS ME IS A SHROUD OF DUST AND DEATH. I HATE IT, YET HUG IT IN

LOVE. MY DEBTS ARE LARGE, MY FAILURES GREAT, MY SHAME SECRET

AND HEAVY. YET WHEN I COME TO ASK FOR MY GOOD, I QUAKE IN FEAR

LEST MY PRAYER BE GRANTED." WOULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT?

Prem Kendra, Rabindranath Tagore is the very heart of this country. He is the most contemporary man, and yet the most ancient too. His words are a bridge between the modern mind and the ancientmost sages of the world. In particular, GITANJALI is his greatest contribution to human evolution, to human consciousness. It is one of the rarest books that has appeared in this century. Its rarity is that it belongs to the days of the UPANISHADS -- nearabout five

thousand years before GITANJALI came into existence.

It is a miracle in the sense that Rabindranath is not a religious person in the ordinary sense. He is one of the most progressive thinkers -- untraditional, unorthodox -- but his greatness consists in his childlike innocence. And because of that innocence, perhaps he was able to become the vehicle of the universal spirit, in the same way as the UPANISHADS of old are.

He is a poet of the highest category, and also a mystic. Such a combination has happened only once or twice before -- in Kahlil Gibran, in Friedrich Nietzsche, and in Rabindranath Tagore. With these three persons, the whole category is finished. In the long history of man, it is extraordinary.… There have been great poets and there have been great mystics.

There have been great poets with a little mysticism in them, and there have been great mystics who have expressed themselves in poetry -- but their poetry is not great.

Rabindranath is in a strange situation.

I have heard about a man who loved two beautiful women and was always in trouble, because even one woman is trouble enough. Both of the women wanted to know whom he loved the most. They took him for a ride on the lake in a motorboat, and just in the middle of the lake they stopped the boat and they told the man: "It has to be decided, because it is heavy on our hearts.… Once we know we will become slowly, slowly tolerant about it; we may accept it. But remaining in the dark and always thinking about it has become a wound."

The man said, "What is the matter? Ask directly."

Both the women said together: "Our question is, `Whom do you love the most?'"

The man fell into deep silence -- it was such a strange situation in the middle of the lake -

- but he must have been a man of great humor. He said, "I love each of you more than the other." And both women were satisfied. That's what they wanted.

It is difficult to say about Rabindranath whether he is a greater poet or a greater mystic.

He is both -- greater than each -- and to be in the twentieth century.…

Rabindranath was not a man confined to this country. He was a world traveler, educated in the West, and he was continually moving around the world in different countries -- he loved to be a wanderer. He was a citizen of the universe, yet his roots were deep in this country. He may have flown far away like an eagle across the sun, but he kept on coming back to his small nest. And he never lost track of the spiritual heritage, no matter how covered with dust it may have become. He was capable of cleaning it and making it a mirror in which you can see yourself.

His poems in GITANJALI are offerings of songs to God. That is the meaning of GITANJALI: offerings of songs. He used to say, "I have nothing else to offer. I am just as poor as a bird, or as rich as a bird. I can sing a song every morning fresh and new, in gratefulness. That is my prayer."

He never went to any temple, he never prayed in the traditional ritual way. He was born a Hindu, but it would not be right to confine him to a certain section of humanity, he was so universal. He was told many times, "Your words are so fragrant with religion, so radiant with spirituality, so alive with the unknown that even those who do not believe in anything more than matter become affected, are touched. But you never go to the temple, you never read the scriptures."

His answer is immensely important for you. He said, "I never read the scriptures; in fact I avoid them, because I have my own experience of the divine, and I don't want others'

words to be mixed with my original, authentic, individual experience. I want to offer God exactly what is my heartbeat. Others may have known -- certainly, others have known --

but their knowledge cannot be my knowledge. Only my experience can satisfy me, can fulfill my search, can give me trust in existence. I don't want to be a believer."

These are the words to be remembered: "I don't want to be a believer; I want to be a knower. I don't want to be knowledgeable; I want to be innocent enough so that existence reveals its mysteries to me. I don't want to be worshiped as a saint." And the fact is, that in this whole century, there was nobody else more saintly than Rabindranath Tagore --

but he refused to be recognized as a saint.

He said, "I have only one desire -- to be remembered as a singer of songs, as a dancer, as a poet who has offered all his potential, all his flowers of being, to the unknown divineness of existence. I don't want to be worshiped; I consider it a humiliation... ugly, inhuman, and removed from the world completely. Every man contains God; every cloud, every tree, every ocean is full of godliness, so who is to worship whom?"

It reminds me of another great mystic, Nanak, on whose songs Sikhism is founded. He was not the founder of it -- it was not a deliberate act on his part. He simply went on singing his songs with his one disciple, Mardana, who was playing the sitar as he was singing.

Nanak is the only mystic of this country who went all over the country, and beyond the boundaries of the country, too. He reached Kaaba, the holy place of the Mohammedans.

It was evening and he was tired and his disciple, Mardana, made a bed for him. But the priests of Kaaba were very angry. They had heard about Nanak because he had been singing in the nearby villages, and thousands of people were influenced by his songs.

They were waiting for him to come one day. But they had never thought that he would do something so sacrilegious: he was sleeping, keeping his feet towards the holy stone of Kaaba. The priests came.…

The story goes this way: They said to Nanak, "We have heard that you are a spiritual man, but what kind of spiritual man are you? You can't even recognize a small thing: that your feet should not be towards the holy Kaaba." Nanak laughed. The story is beautiful; whether it is true, whether it is historical or not, it does not matter -- it is significant, immensely meaningful. Nanak said, "You turn my feet towards any place which is not holy. I am in a difficulty, I have to put my feet somewhere. Kaaba is holy, but the remaining universe is not unholy. You turn my feet."

The priest turned his feet, and wherever they turned his feet, they found the Kaaba also moved in that direction. That may be fiction, but a fiction worth loving, significant; it may not be a fact, but it is a truth. The stone of Kaaba may not have moved, but the priests must have recognized that they were being

stupid. The whole existence is holy...

what is the point? They moved in a circle and finally they gave an apology and kept Nanak's feet towards Kaaba.

Rabindranath never went to any temple, never worshiped any God, was never, in a traditional way, a saint, but to me he is one of the greatest saints the world has known.

His saintliness is expressed in each of his words.

Prem Kendra, the lines that you have quoted are very pregnant: OBSTINATE ARE THE

TRAMMELS, BUT MY HEART ACHES WHEN I TRY TO BREAK THEM. FREEDOM IS ALL I WANT, BUT TO HOPE FOR IT I FEEL ASHAMED.

He is saying something not only about himself, but about all human consciousness. Such people don't speak about themselves; they speak about the very heart of all mankind.

OBSTINATE ARE THE TRAMMELS.… The hindrances are great, the chains that prevent my freedom -- I have become too attached to them. They are no more chains to me; they have become my ornaments. They are made of gold, they are very precious. But my heart aches, because on the one hand I want freedom, and on the other hand I cannot break the chains that prevent me from being free. Those chains, those attachments, those relationships have become my life. I cannot conceive of myself without my beloved, without my friends. I cannot conceive of myself absolutely alone, in deep silence. My songs have also become my fetters, so MY HEART ACHES WHEN I TRY TO BREAK

THEM. FREEDOM IS ALL I WANT.

This is the situation of every human being. It is difficult to find a man whose heart does not want to fly like a bird in the sky, who would not like to reach to the faraway stars, but who also knows his deep attachment with the earth. His roots are deep in the earth. His split is that he is attached to his imprisonment, and his deepest longing is for freedom. He is divided against himself.

This is the greatest anguish, anxiety. You cannot leave the world that chains you; you cannot leave those who have become your hindrances in life, because they are also your attachments, your joys. They are also in some way a nourishment for your pride. You can neither leave them, nor can you forget that you don't belong to this world, that your home must be somewhere else, because in your dreams you are always flying, flying to faraway places.

FREEDOM IS ALL I WANT, BUT TO HOPE FOR IT, I FEEL ASHAMED.

Why should one feel ashamed to hope for freedom? -- because nobody is preventing you. You can be free this very moment. But those attachments... they have gone very deep in you; they have become almost your very existence. They may be bringing misery to you, but they also bring moments of happiness. They may be creating chains for your feet, but they also give you moments of dance.

It is a very strange situation every intelligent man has to face: he is rooted in the earth and he wants wings to fly in the sky. He cannot be uprooted because the earth is his nourishment, his food. And he cannot stop dreaming of wings, because that is his spirit, that is his very soul, that is what makes him a human being.

No animal feels the anguish; all animals are utterly satisfied as they are. Man is the only animal who is intrinsically discontented; hence, the feeling of shame -- because he knows, "I can be free."

I have always loved an ancient story: A man, a great man, a fighter for freedom was traveling into the mountains. He stayed in a caravanserai for the night. He was amazed that in the caravanserai there was a beautiful parrot in a golden cage, continually repeating, "Freedom! Freedom!" And the serai was in such a place that when the parrot repeats the word "Freedom!" it goes on echoing in the valley, in the mountains.

The man thought: I have seen many parrots, and I have thought they must be desiring to be free from those cages... but I have never seen such a parrot whose whole day, from the morning to the evening when he goes to sleep, is spent in asking for freedom. He had an idea. In the middle of the night he got up and opened the door of the cage. The owner was fast asleep and he said to the parrot, he whispered, "Now get out."

But he was very surprised that the parrot was clinging to the bars of the cage. He

told him again and again: "Have you forgotten about freedom? Just get out! The door is open and the owner is fast asleep; nobody will ever know. You just fly into the sky; the whole sky is yours."

But the parrot was clinging so deeply, so hard, that the man said, "What is the matter?

Are you mad?" He tried to take the parrot out with his own hands, but the parrot started hitting him, and at the same time started shouting, "Freedom! Freedom!" The valleys in the night echoed and re-echoed... but the man was also stubborn, he was a freedom fighter. He pulled the parrot out, and threw him into the sky; and he was very satisfied, although his hand was hurt. The parrot had attacked him as forcefully as he could, but the man was immensely satisfied that he had made a soul free. He went to sleep.

In the morning, as the man was becoming awake, he heard the parrot shouting,

"Freedom! Freedom!" He thought perhaps the parrot must be sitting on a tree, or on a rock. But when he came out, the parrot was sitting in the cage. The door was open.

I have loved the story, because it is very true. You may like to be free, but the cage has certain securities, safeties. In the cage the parrot has no need to worry about food, has no need to worry about enemies, has no need to worry about a thing in the world. It is cozy, it is golden. No other parrot has such a valuable cage.

Your power, your riches, your prestige -- all are your cages. Your soul wants to be free, but freedom is dangerous.

Freedom has no insurance. Freedom has no security, no safety.

Freedom means walking on the edge of a razor -- every moment in danger, fighting your way. Every moment is a challenge from the unknown. Sometimes it is too hot, and sometimes it is too cold -- and nobody is there to take care of you.

In the cage, the owner was responsible. He used to cover the cage, when it was

cold, with a blanket; he used to put an electric fan close by when it was too hot.

Freedom means tremendous responsibility; you are on your own and alone. Rabindranath is right: FREEDOM IS ALL I WANT, BUT TO HOPE FOR IT, I FEEL ASHAMED, --

because it is not a question of hope; it is a question of taking a risk.

I AM CERTAIN THAT PRICELESS WEALTH IS IN THEE, AND THAT THOU ART

MY BEST FRIEND. BUT I HAVE NOT THE HEART TO SWEEP AWAY THE TINSEL THAT FILLS MY ROOM.

I AM CERTAIN THAT PRICELESS WEALTH IS IN THEE.… In the world of

freedom, in the experience of freedom, I am certain there is priceless wealth." But this certainty is also a projection of your desire, of your longing. How can you be certain? You would like to be certain. You know that longing for freedom is there. It cannot be for a futile freedom; it must be for something rich, something priceless. You are creating a certainty to gather courage so that you can take the jump into the unknown.

... AND THAT THOU ART MY BEST FRIEND. But these are all beautiful dreams, these are hopes; the certainty is your own cage, its security. BUT I HAVE NOT THE

HEART TO SWEEP AWAY THE TINSEL THAT FILLS MY ROOM. THE SHROUD

THAT COVERS ME IS A SHROUD OF DUST AND DEATH. These are

beautiful ideas in the mind.

I HATE IT, YET HUG IT IN LOVE. You know your body is going to die. In fact, your body is made of dead material; it is already dead. It seems alive because something alive is inside it. It radiates warmth and aliveness, because of a guest inside you. The moment that guest has flown away, the reality of the body will be revealed to you.

Rabindranath says, THE SHROUD THAT COVERS ME IS A SHROUD OF

DUST

AND DEATH. Our bodies are made of dust and death. I HATE IT, AND YET HUG IT

IN LOVE. But when you fall in love with a woman, then two skeletons hug each other; both know that the skin is only a covering of a skeleton. If you could see each other in real nudity -- not only without clothes, but without the skin, too, because that is the real clothing -- then you would be shocked, and you would escape as fast as possible from the beloved with whom you were promising to live forever and forever. You would not even look back; you would not even like to be reminded of the phenomenon.

It happened in the court of one Mohammedan emperor of India, Shahjehan. He was in love with a woman, but the woman was not willing to marry him.

He was a gentleman; otherwise he could have forced her. He tried to persuade her, but she was in love with a bodyguard of Shahjehan. And when he found out about it, he was really enraged. They were both immediately caught and brought to the court.

Shahjehan was going to cut off the heads of both, then and there. But his prime minister, who was a very old man -- he had been his father's prime minister and Sahjehan respected him just like his father -- said, "Don't do that. Be a little wiser; that is not enough punishment. I will give them the right punishment." He ordered that both should be tied together naked, in a hug, and then chained to a pillar in the court. The other members of the court could not believe it -- what kind of punishment is this? This seems to be a reward; that's what they always wanted, to hug each other. But they were wrong.

That old man really had a great psychological insight. Those two lovers also felt, what kind of punishment is this? -- this is a reward. They hugged each other with great love.

They were tied by a rope, so they could not escape from each other; then they were tied to a pillar. How long can you hug somebody? Five minutes, seven minutes, half an hour...? After twenty-four hours they hated each other... because they pissed on each other -- they had to, there was no other way. They were perspiring, their body smells filled the place, and there was no way to escape. After twenty-four hours the old man said, "Now give then their clothes and make

them free."

And as they got their clothes, they rushed in opposite directions, never to meet each other again; they had met enough! Twenty-four hours... it is good for half a minute to hug somebody, or maybe one minute, but more than that and you will start feeling restless.

My grandfather used to love me very much. But in the evening I started to avoid him, because he would pull me to his bed, cover me with the blanket, hug me inside the blanket... and he was very old, so sleeping was not the question. I would wait until he started snoring so that I could slip out, but his sleep was very shallow -- in old age it becomes very shallow -- and he would say, "What? Are you going out?"

I would say, "I have to live my whole life; you have lived enough. In the day your love is good, but this night affair does not suit me at all."

He was a chain smoker, so his breath was so smelly of tobacco and he would cough the whole night, and he would go on pulling me closer to him.

I said, "This is not love -- you will kill me!"

But he made me learn one lesson: never allow anybody in your bed. I don't allow anybody even in my room. My room is locked from outside; even if I want to get out, I cannot get out. I remember him and just cover myself and go to sleep.

THE SHROUD THAT COVERS ME, IS A SHROUD OF DUST AND DEATH. I HATE IT, YET HUG IT IN LOVE.

Such is the schizophrenia of man, the split personality of man. His house is divided against itself; hence, he cannot find peace.

MY DEBTS ARE LARGE, MY FAILURES GREAT, MY SHAME SECRET AND

HEAVY. YET WHEN I COME TO ASK FOR MY GOOD, I QUAKE IN FEAR LEST

MY PRAYER BE GRANTED. These lines can be understood only if I remind you of another poem of Rabindranath in the same book, GITANJALI.

In that other poem, he says, "I have been seeking and searching God for as long as I can remember, for many many lives, from the very beginning of existence. Once in a while I have seen him by the side of a faraway star, and I have rejoiced and danced that the distance, although great, is not impossible to reach. And I have traveled and reached to the star; but by the time I reached the star, God has moved to another star. And it has been going on for centuries.

"The challenge is so great, that I go on hoping against hope... I have to find him, I am so absorbed in the search. The very search is so intriguing, so mysterious, so enchanting that God has become almost an excuse -- the search has become itself the goal.

"And to my surprise, one day I reached a house in a faraway star with a small board in front of it, saying `This is the house of God.' My joy knew no bounds -- so finally I have arrived! I rushed up the steps, many steps, that led to the door of the house. But as I was coming closer and closer to the door, a fear suddenly appeared in my heart. As I was going to knock, I became paralyzed with a fear that I had never known, never thought of, never dreamt of. The fear was: if this house is certainly the house of God, then what will I do after I have found him?

"Now searching for God has become my very life; to have found him will be equivalent to committing suicide. And what am I going to do with him? I had never thought of all these things before. I should have thought before I started the search: what am I going to do with God?

"I took my shoes in my hands, and silently and very slowly stepped back, afraid that God may hear the noise and may open the door and say, `Where are you going? I am here, come in!' And as I reached the steps, I ran away as I have never run before; and since then I have been again searching for God, looking for him in every direction -- and avoiding that house where he really lives.

"Now I know that that house has to be avoided. And I continue the search, enjoy the very journey, the pilgrimage."

The insight in the story is so tremendous. There are seekers of truth who have never thought, what will I do with truth? You cannot eat it, you cannot sell it; you cannot become a president because you have the truth. At the most, if you have the truth, people will crucify you.

He is right when he says, My debts are large, my failures great, my shame secret

and heavy. Yet when I come to ask for my good, I quake in fear lest my prayer be granted --

because these things are good to talk about: God, truth, good, beauty. It is good to write treatises on them, have universities confer Ph.D.'s, let the Nobel awarding committee give you a Nobel prize. These things are good for talking, for writing, but if you really get to experience them, you will be in trouble. That's what he is saying: I am afraid that my prayer may be granted.

It is good that God is deaf. He does not hear prayers; otherwise you all will be in trouble.

Your prayer will create your trouble, because in prayers you will be so romantic, asking great things which you cannot live by, which will become very heavy, and will interfere in your so-called life -- which is going on smoothly, although in misery.

Truth becomes a cross; life becomes heavy. Truth becomes poison to a Socrates. Truth becomes death to Al-Hillaj Mansoor. Truth becomes crucifixion to Jesus Christ. And you pray, "God, give me truth. Give me qualities which are divine, godly." But God is deaf on purpose -- so that your prayers cannot be heard and you can enjoy both, your miserable life and your beautiful prayers. The prayers will not be heard -- you can remain jealous, angry, full of hate, full of egoism, and go on praying to God, "Make me humble; and becausèblessed are the meek,' make me meek." -- but on purpose.

It is not written in any scripture, but I tell you on my personal authority that after creating the world in six days, the last thing God did was destroy his ears. Since then, we has never heard anything; and since then, neither have we heard anything about him.

So it is perfectly good: in the morning you go to the temple or the church or the mosque, have a beautiful prayer, ask great things -- knowing perfectly well that he is deaf -- and go on being your ugly, miserable self. Then tomorrow morning again have a good prayer This is such a good settlement, a good arrangement.

Rabindranath in his poem is indicating a tremendous truth: Do you really want God? Do you really want truth? Do you really want silence? If you ask, and you are honest, you will feel ashamed. You will have to accept that you don't really want.… You are only pretending to meditate -- because you know you have been

meditating for many years, and nothing happens. There is no fear; you can meditate, nothing happens.

Once something starts happening, then there is trouble. once something starts growing in your life that is not growing in the hearts of the crowd that surrounds you, you will be a stranger, you will be an outsider. And the crowd never forgives strangers, the crowd never forgives outsiders; it destroys them. It has to destroy them just for its own peace of mind.

A man like Jesus Christ is a continual nuisance, because he reminds you that you can also be of the same beauty, of the same grace, of the same truth, and it hurts. He makes you feel inferior, and nobody wants to feel inferior.

And there are only two ways not to feel inferior: one is to become superior; that is a hard way, and a long way -- dangerous, because you will have to walk alone. The simple way is, destroy that superior man. Then the whole crowd is of equal people. Nobody is superior, nobody is inferior. All are cunning, all are cheats, all are criminals in their own way. All are jealous, all are ambitious. They are all in the same boat, and they understand each other's language. And nobody creates any fuss about truth, about God, about meditation.

People are happy without a Gautam Buddha, without a Socrates, without a Zarathustra, because these people are like high peaks of mountains and you look so tiny, so pygmy --

it hurts. They say that camels never go near the mountains. They have chosen to live in the desert, because in the desert they are the walking mountains, but near the mountains, they will look like ants -- and that hurts.

The easiest way is to forget all about mountains, to say, "These mountains are all mythological, fictitious; the reality is the desert." So you enjoy the desert, you enjoy your ego -- and you also enjoy the prayer, "God, please free me of the ego, make me humble,"

knowing perfectly well that he does not hear, that no prayer is answered. You can pray for anything without fear because you will remain the same and you will also have the satisfaction of praying for great things.

That's why people, without becoming religious, become Christians, become Hindus, become Mohammedans. They are not religious people at all; these are

strategies to avoid being religious. A religious person is simply religious; he is neither Hindu, nor Mohammedan, nor Christian, nor Buddhist -- there is no need. He is truthful, he is sincere, he is compassionate, he is loving, he is human

-- so human that he almost represents the divine in the world. Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

The Golden Future Chapter #27

Chapter title: I can see a shoe in your heart 25 May 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive

code: 8705250

ShortTitle: GOLDEN27

Audio: Yes Video: Yes Length: 83

mins

Question 1 BELOVED OSHO,

MORE AND MORE EASILY DO I FEEL FILLED WITH YOU DURING

DISCOURSE, AND THOUGHTS TEND NOT TO INTRUDE AS MUCH AS THEY

USED TO. STILL, THE FACT REMAINS THAT I DON'T CARRY THE SERENITY

AND BLISS THAT I FEEL IN YOUR PRESENCE INTO MY DAILY ACTIVITIES.

AND UNTIL THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HOW I FEEL NEAR YOU

AND AWAY, I HAVEN'T GOT IT, HAVE I? IT FEELS AS IF ALL OTHER

QUESTIONS ARE SIMPLY A DISTRACTION TO AVOID THIS HOMEWORK. IS

THIS SO?

Maneesha, the difference that you feel in my presence from when you are doing something alone is going to remain to the very last moment. The explosion will come, but there is no way to say when. The time will come certainly when there will be no difference: either you are in my presence or you are alone -- it will be the same. It becomes the same only when, in your aloneness also, you start feeling my presence.

When you are doing other things, they are not distractions; you are doing them for me.

Love is full of mysteries, but even this much is more than one can expect because it is a right becoming -- you have started feeling me. Now that feeling will continue to grow on its own; you have to be just nourishing it. Don't make it a problem. Rather accept it as a necessity of growth.

The first flowers of the spring have come. All the flowers will be coming soon. And one should not expect, one should rather learn to enjoy that which is happening. That allows more happenings, makes you available, and open and vulnerable for greater possibilities.

The real problem is when nothing is happening. You can feel no difference at two points: if in my presence, you don't feel anything different in your being -- it feels just the same as you are when you are alone, or with others, or doing something else -- this is the lowest point. There is no difference. On the highest point, also, there will be no difference. It is a question of how much deeper your melting and your merging becomes.

It does not depend on you. There is nothing like homework -- you cannot do anything...

you can only wait, you can only hope, you can only trust. And existence brings everything to your door.

Eighty-year-old Goldstein marries a very beautiful and attractive twenty-year-old girl. All his friends and business partners, lustlessly married since ages, declare him foolish. "How can you in your old age expect her to be faithful to you?" they ask.

Shrewd old Goldstein smiles and says, "Why shouldn't I expect it? I don't understand your concern since it has been my basic principle all my life, that it is better to have only a twenty-five percent share in an excellent business than a hundred percent share in a lousy one."

Even a twenty-five percent share in a good business is great. Don't ask for a hundred percent in a lousy one. That twenty-five percent is happening. The seventy-five percent will also follow, but it is a question of happening -- it is not part of doing. And it is good that there are things men cannot do, but can only be a recipient of. Only those things are valuable which you cannot do, but which happen. They don't have a price, but they have value. Things that you can do have a price, but they don't have any value.

Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,

IT'S HILARIOUS! I KEEP DRINKING AND DRINKING, AND YOU ARE THE ONE

WHO IS DRUNK. COULD YOU PLEASE PASS THE BOTTLE -- NO, THE WHOLE

OCEAN -- ONCE MORE?

Okay. Satyadharma... an American, an Englishman, and a Frenchman are on a boat. After a while, the boat begins to sink. The Englishman, being a gentleman, says, "Women and children first."

The American says, "Fuck them!"

The Frenchman says, "Do we have time?"

You are drunk; but no drunk accepts that he's drunk, he goes on asking for more bottles.

In a pub one night, a drunk was creating too much nuisance. He was utterly drunk, and still was asking: "More bottles."

The owner of the pub said, "Absolutely no!" and called his servants to throw the man out of the door. He said, "It is more than you can absorb. Come again tomorrow, but tonight just go home and rest."

The drunk was feeling very thirsty -- that is one of the problems in drinking: the more you drink, the more thirsty you feel. He went staggering a few steps and came back in from the back door and asked for a few bottles.

The owner said to the servants, "Throw him back out again." He said, "It is strange... do you own all the pubs in the city?"

Satyadharma, you are saying, "It is hilarious.…" It is! "I keep drinking and drinking, and... you are the one who is drunk." If I was not drunk, from where would you go on drinking and drinking?

Here you are sitting with all kinds of drunkards. Even if you come sober, just sitting with these people, soon you will start feeling something hilarious is

happening. Even the air is very heavy; just breathing with all these people is enough for amateurs to get drunk. And don't ask for the bottle; the whole ocean will be delivered to you -- just become capable of absorbing it.

Our capacity in every dimension is very limited. And as far as drinking is concerned --

particularly drinking joy, ecstasy, blissfulness -- our capacity is very limited. We soon come to a point beyond which we cannot move. The fear of being lost... one has to learn to drop the fear, and to learn the art of being lost.

When Bodhidharma reached China, Emperor Wu had come to the border to receive him because his name and his fragrance had reached far ahead of him. Bodhidharma, in the tradition of Gautam Buddha, is one of the rarest flowers... even Gautam Buddha may sometimes feel jealous of him, although Bodhidharma is his disciple.

Bodhidharma came with one shoe on his foot and another shoe on his head. Emperor Wu could not trust his eyes, and could not trust... he has heard so much about the man, and he seems to be absolutely mad. But he was a man of very great culture, etiquette; he was an emperor. He tried to avoid seeing that shoe on the head. It was not right to enquire about it, but the temptation was becoming greater and greater... what is the matter? He talked about God, and he talked about truth, but all the time inside he was thinking about the shoe.

Finally Bodhidharma said, "Don't ask unnecessary questions; ask the necessary question.

I can see a shoe in your heart. You cannot hide from me. My eyes are almost capable of penetrating into the thickest skull: `Why are you keeping that shoe on your head'?"

The emperor was amazed: This is too much. This man seems to be either drunk or mad, but certainly he has a method in his madness. He is carrying the shoe on his head.… But he is not wrong -- I am suppressing the shoe in my heart, in my mind; my whole being wants to ask only one question: "Why are you carrying this shoe?" And when he is insisting, "Ask the real question," it is better to ask it; otherwise, I will not be able to sleep.

He said, "Forgive me, it is very embarrassing."

Bodhidharma said, "Nothing is embarrassing. You simply ask."

The emperor said, "I am trying to avoid that question, and just to avoid it I'm asking all other questions -- I don't mean anything. But you seem to be a strange fellow; you have caught me red-handed. I have not asked, but you have heard the question: "Why are you carrying the shoe on your head?"

Bodhidharma said, "Now we can talk. Now you are being simple, innocent -- now you are not repressing. I am carrying this shoe on my head so that you can ask a real question.

Now there is no need.…" He removed the shoe, put it on his foot, and he said, "Now you have to understand: start from the very beginning; don't start asking questions about God.

You seem to be a born shoemaker."

The emperor was very angry and shocked. Obviously this man was making fun of him, but he still tried to hide his embarrassment. His whole court was present, and they were all trying to hide their laughter. He asked, "Who are you?" -- because that is one of the most significant and most ancient, spiritual questions.

Bodhidharma said, "As far as I am concerned, I don't know. Do you know who you are?"

The emperor said, "This is something I have come to enquire from you because I don't know."

Bodhidharma said, "You are ignorant; I also don't know, but I am innocent. Just now, go back. Sleep will not be possible because you will have to figure out why you are ignorant and I am innocent -- and for the same reason."

The emperor returned home very puzzled. The man had a charisma: he could not forget his eyes, he could not forget his presence. He could not sleep the whole night; he could not make the distinction how one person saying, "I don't know" is ignorant and another person saying, "I don't know" is innocent.

He came back again. Bodhidharma said, "You are knowledgeable; you have never recognized the fact that you don't know yourself -- you have always believed that you know. At least, you have pretended to the world that you know.

It is out of ignorance.

"I have searched deeply into myself. I don't know because there is nobody to be known. I have found the house empty -- a pure nothingness, a sky without clouds. There is no knower, there is nothing to be known.

"You are saying it out of ignorance, because you still think you are, but you don't know who you are. I am saying it out of innocence, because I know there is no one to be known, to be a knower. It is just pure silence."

The bottle will be delivered to you -- just get ripe for it. Right now, you are asking out of ignorance. The day you will ask out of innocence, the bottle...? no, the whole ocean will be delivered to you -- it belongs to you. It is already within you. Your insight just has to grow more, your awareness has to be more clear, your silence has to be more deep, more profound. And all these qualities are almost ready to explode within you -- it is just that you don't allow them, you are preventing them.

Nobody wants to be just a nobody, nobody wants to be a pure nothingness. The moment you are ready to disappear, a new presence arises in you which has nothing to do with "I"

and "me," which is part of the whole existence. And then only the thirst is quenched.

My work is to make you more and more thirsty -- so thirsty that one day, you take a jump into your own nothingness, and disappear. Your disappearance is your enlightenment.

Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,

UNABLE TO WRITE YOU A MEANINGFUL QUESTION, I AM OVERJOYED

SEEING PEOPLE LOVING YOU. BELOVED MASTER, PLEASE HELP ME TO

KEEP MOVING ON.

Nirupa, the feeling that you are unable to write a meaningful question gives you what I was calling innocence; otherwise, people think their questions are very meaningful. Out of ignorance, you cannot ask a meaningful question. It is one of the mysteries of life: the day you can ask a meaningful question, you will find the meaningful answer within yourself. A meaningful question carries as a shadow the meaningful answer.

But to be aware that you cannot ask a meaningful question is an achievement on the way of innocence. There is no need for any question, and there is no need for any answer.

Questions and answers are just the stuff your mind is made of. When you become disinterested in questions and answers, you start stepping out of the mind; and out of the mind is your glorious being, is your authentic self.

It is beautiful that you say, "I am overjoyed seeing people loving you." Ordinarily mind does not function that way. Only if you have slipped a little bit out of the mind is it possible to be overjoyed seeing people loving me. Mind is always jealous, it cannot be overjoyed. It will feel hurt that "others are loving, are ahead of me, and I am lagging behind." And it will create a thousand and one rationalizations that "their love is fake --

they are all pretending. My love is true and authentic -- these are all hypocrites."

The function of the mind is to make you competitive, to make you jealous, to make you believe yourself superior to others. Once you are just a little bit out of the mind, things start changing. If somebody is joyful, you don't feel jealous; you feel grateful that you saw a joyful man. Somebody is loving -- you don't feel jealous; you feel again grateful that you have been able to see somebody loving somebody else, and jealousy has not arisen in you.

You say, "I am overjoyed seeing people loving you." This is a good indication, Nirupa.

You have been long enough with me, and it is time for you to go out of the mind. All those who are with me, their only work is to go out of the mind, to transcend mind, to function as a no-mind, to function as a heart, and finally, to function as a being.

You are asking, "Please help me to keep moving on." My blessings are with you,

my love is with you; you don't need anything more. That will go on helping you move onwards --

just don't become too greedy. Great things come very slowly. Don't ask for seasonal flowers; they come quickly, but they also disappear quickly.

Little Moishe goes skating on the lake while his mother stands by watching over him.

Suddenly, through a crack in the thin ice, little Moishe vanishes.

"Oy vey!" shrieks his mother. "My Moishe, in front of my very eyes!" Eventually a policeman comes, strips naked, and dives into the icy water. Again and again, blue from cold, he dives in and eventually finds Moishe. The policeman manages to revive him, wraps him in his own clothes, and rushes him to the hospital where little Moishe eventually recovers.

Moishe's mother goes up to the policeman afterwards and says, "So, where is his hat? He had a hat!"

This is particularly a Jewish mind, but all minds are Jews. She is worried about a hat. She is not even thankful to the policeman that he risked his own life and saved her boy. Her concern is, "Where is the hat?"

Never be greedy and never be concerned with trivia, and your movement towards greater silences of the heart will become easier every day. Be loving, be joyous, and be always thankful for whatever is happening to you. Don't ask for the hat.

Be thankful for what has been given to you -- and life is giving you so much that your thankfulness is always going to fall short. But the thankful heart grows easily; with gratitude, you are nourished. You become stronger in moving towards the unknown.

Except gratitude, there is no other prayer. Question 4

BELOVED OSHO,

THIS QUESTION HAS COME UP MANY TIMES FOR ME, BUT YOU HAVE JUST

PROVOKED IT INTO THE OPEN. ISN'T ENLIGHTENMENT THE LAST RESORT?

Prem Shunyo, enlightenment is certainly the last resort, but not for Milarepa. For Milarepa, you are the last resort. In other words, for Milarepa, you are the enlightenment.

So don't be worried, let him fool around, but he cannot escape you. You are his last resort, his enlightenment.

They say that behind every great man there is a woman. They have forgotten to know that sometimes in front of every great man there is a woman. In your case, you are not behind Milarepa, you are in front of Milarepa. Searching you, he will grow, because you will be growing towards enlightenment. And he will stagger, somehow carrying his guitar, behind you -- it will be a unique enlightenment.

Two persons have never become enlightened together -- but in your case, it seems it is going to happen, an exception. And when you both are enlightened, he will play on the guitar.… No enlightened master up to now has carried the guitar to those heights. And his enlightenment is sure -- just you go on being ahead of him. Don't follow him; otherwise, you both will lose the path. You search enlightenment, and let Milarepa search you.

A story for you to tell Milarepa.… A proud father gave his son twenty bucks and sent him off to the local whorehouse. On his way, the boy passed by his grandmother's house, and she called him in. He explained where he was going, and she insisted that he keep the twenty dollars and do it with her.

The boy returned home with a big smile. "How was it?" asked the father. "Great! and I saved the twenty bucks," responded the boy.

"How is that?" his father asked.

"I did it with grandma," the boy explained.

His father screamed, "You mean you made love to my mother?"

"Hey, why not?" said the boy. "You have been making love to mine!" Question 5

BELOVED OSHO,

THE OTHER NIGHT, AS YOUR LEG GAVE WAY AND YOU BEGAN TO FALL, SOMETHING LIKE LIGHTNING HAPPENED. IN A MOMENT, I KNEW MY

DEEPEST FEARS, MY DEEPEST TEARS, AND TOTAL TRUST. EVEN TO TALK

ABOUT THIS AS AN EXPERIENCE IS IMPOSSIBLE. IT WAS NOT AN

EXPERIENCE AS I HAVE KNOWN EXPERIENCE TO BE. I CAN ONLY STUMBLE

ABOUT WITH THE WORDS. IT WAS AS IF THERE ARE HEARTS WITHIN HEART. MY HEART FELT AN INSTANT BEAT OF DEEP SADNESS, FAR

BEYOND ANY SADNESS I HAVE EVEN KNOWN. AND, AS IF HOLDING THIS

HEART WITHIN ITSELF, A BIGGER HEART EXISTED IN EXACTLY THE SAME

MOMENT, COMPLETELY STILL, KNOWING, WATCHING. THIS WAS TRUST.

THE WORDS FALL SO SHORT. OSHO, WILL YOU PLEASE SAY SOMETHING

ABOUT THIS MOMENT?

Satyadharma, the question you are asking may be in the heart of many other sannyasins.

You are asking, "The other night as your leg gave way and You began to fall, something like lightning happened. In a moment, I knew my deepest fears, my

deepest tears, and total trust."

One may recognize or not... deep down those who have loved me are carrying a certain fear that one day I will not be in the body -- that is their deepest fear, and their deepest tears, because they cannot conceive themselves without me, I have become almost a part of their being. It is no longer a relationship, it is a merging and a melting. Without me, they will find a vast gap in their being which cannot be fulfilled. With my disappearing from the body, they will find a part of their life has also disappeared -- and perhaps, that was the part which was the most significant, the most meaningful.

The day my leg gave way and I began to fall, all these fears and tears suddenly came to the surface. It has been tremendously good of my leg to give you an opportunity to see deeper within yourself that I am not going to be here forever.

So you are not to postpone a single moment; you have to be ready before I leave the body. Only then will you not miss me; in your own realization, you will have found me again -- more close, more fresh.

It is true: even to talk about this as an experience is impossible, because it was exactly like lightning -- not like a slow experience -- so quick, so sudden, so unexpected.

After all, my leg is a master's leg. When it is going to do something, it is going to do something really deep. It provoked in you many feelings, and the greatest of them was of trust.

While I am alive, in the body, you can take me for granted, that tomorrow morning I will be coming back to talk to you. But in that moment, you knew it is possible that any moment you may have to lose me. And before that moment comes, unless you have attained yourself, you will be in utter misery and darkness.

Suddenly, you could not take me for granted. I have been insisting, "Don't take me for granted. Today I am here; tomorrow I may not be." It is easier to attain to the truth while I am holding your hand in my hand; it will be more difficult when you are left alone.

And one never knows how long it will take for you to find another man who can love you unconditionally, who can trust you as you are. It can take lives to find such a person again. You will meet many, but they will all require that you have to be a certain way to be acceptable to them. Gautam Buddha, or Zarathustra, or Jesus Christ, they all require you to be a certain way, then you deserve to be accepted.

I am breaking a new path: I accept you as you are.

The difference is they want you to change before they accept you; I trust my acceptance.

I know that my acceptance is going to change you. They expect you to be deserving, to be worthy; only then they can shower their love on you.

My attitude is totally different from them, from anybody who has ever lived on the earth.

I will shower my love on you because I trust in my love and its alchemical qualities. My love is going to transform you, to make you deserving. It may take lives and lives to find another man. And if you cannot become enlightened with me, it will be very, very difficult with that old type of disciplehood, and the old type of masters.

The world is not a paradise yet because nobody has accepted you. First they wanted you to change according to their ideals and only then you would be accepted. It used to take five years, seven years, or even ten years to become an initiate with Gautam Buddha. Ten years you would remain a novice... just preparing, and hoping that you will be accepted.

Thousands tried, and only very few of them were accepted.

You are not new on the earth; perhaps many of you have lived with other masters, but they made the whole thing so difficult. Even the initiation requires qualities to be developed in you -- you have to be acceptable and presentable. Millions have longed for a better consciousness, but nobody was there to help them -- they were not worthy to receive help.

Your deepest fear is not an experience that can be easily expressed. It has shaken

your whole being. It has made you aware that you have to put your totality into transforming your consciousness while I am here in the body; otherwise, you had every opportunity to find the deathless, and you missed it. You will never be able to forgive yourself.

Okay, Maneesha? Yes, Osho.

The Golden Future Chapter #28

Chapter title: We have to create a golden future 25 May 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive

code: 8705255

ShortTitle: GOLDEN28

Audio: Yes Video: Yes Length: 87

mins

Question 1 BELOVED OSHO,

TOWARDS THE END OF THE FIRST MILLENNIUM, HUMANITY WAS AFRAID

THAT GOD WOULD PUT AN END TO THE WORLD, BECAUSE OF WHAT HE

SAID IN THE APOCALYPSE OF ST. JOHN. NOWADAYS, AS WE ARE COMING

CLOSE TO THE END OF THE SECOND MILLENNIA, MAN IS BECOMING MORE

AND MORE AFRAID THAT PERHAPS HE HIMSELF IS GOING TO PUT AN END

TO THE WORLD. HAS ANYTHING CHANGED AT ALL IN HUMAN

CONSCIOUSNESS DURING THE LAST ONE THOUSAND YEARS? WHAT DOES

MAN NEED TO UNDERSTAND NOW THAT HE KNOWS THAT HE AND ONLY

HE WILL BE RESPONSIBLE AND NOT SOME FICTITIOUS GOD?

Chidananda, there has been a great change in human consciousness during the past one thousand years. But the change is such that you can see it only when a real situation arises, and man responds in a totally different way than he has ever responded before. For example, there has never been so much awareness about peace, and there has never been so much antagonism towards war.

In fact, war was always respected in the past, and peace was never thought of as anything more than a gap between two wars -- nothing positive, just a preparation for a new war.

You need some time. A war destroys so much that you cannot immediately start

another war; hence a time of peace is needed. This is not authentic peace, it is simply cold war.

The war and all its components continue underground, preparing for a more dangerous and a more destructive war in the future.

The whole past has been respectful of the warrior. It is only just now in these few past years that war has become a dirty four-letter word, and peace has become for the first time a desire and a longing of the very heart of humanity.

As far as I am concerned, war has become almost impossible.

The impossibility of war is based on two fundamentals. One is a human consciousness about the futility of war. Nobody can claim that it is something beautiful, something honorable, something which gives dignity to humanity. Slowly, slowly it has penetrated into human consciousness that war takes away all dignity. It makes man fall below animals, because even animals don't kill their own species; lions don't kill other lions, deer don't kill other deer. It is only man who kills other human beings. It is a disqualification, not a great quality to be honored.

So the first thing is that war has fallen into disrespect, into utter futility, stupidity; it has lost all its past glory and significance.

Secondly, the war materials -- atomic energy and nuclear weapons -- have reached to such a point that they have made war impossible. Unless the whole of humanity suddenly goes mad, war is impossible, because the only purpose of war was to defeat the enemy, the only purpose was to be victorious. Victory was the end. But now, with nuclear weapons, there is no defeat, no victory; no one is defeated, no one becomes victorious, all are dead. The whole life on the planet simply disappears.

What Gautam Buddha, Mahavira, Jesus, Zarathustra and the great teachers of humanity have not been able to convince man about, has been done by nuclear weapons. Now war means only one thing: a global suicide. And no man is ready to commit suicide. In fact, the closer comes the possibility of a third world war, the deeper becomes the urge to live

-- and to live more consciously, and to live more lovingly, and to live more intensely. A longing for life itself has never been so intense and so profound as it

is today.

I predict the impossibility of any war in the future. And this is going to change a thousand and one things in life, because if war becomes impossible, sooner or later the piling up of nuclear weapons will become an exercise in stupidity.

In the Soviet Union, under the leadership of Gorbachev, they have stopped creating nuclear weapons one-sidedly. They have tried hard to negotiate with America that they should both stop together. They said, "We go on creating out of the fear that you are creating; you go on creating out of the fear that we are creating -- we can stop together."

But Ronald Reagan is Adolf Hitler number one -- a very fascist mind.

Gorbachev has taken a step so revolutionary and so intelligent and so courageous and so risky that one cannot conceive of him just as a politician. He is a man of deep understanding. He stopped creating more nuclear weapons almost one year ago, and he has been cutting the budget every moment, because he can see the possibility of what I am saying: that there is not going to be any war, because you cannot convince five billion people to die for no purpose. Gorbachev has made history by taking the step single-handedly, but America is still piling up.…

The American masses should rise up in a rebellious uproar against their own government, because now even Ronald Reagan cannot say, "We have to create because the Soviet Union is creating." The Soviet Union has opened its doors to world scientists to come and examine their plants and be satisfied, because Ronald Reagan was lying continuously saying "Gorbachev has not stopped creating nuclear weapons; he is simply deceiving us."

Now the whole world is convinced that the Soviet Union is no longer interested in destroying human life.

All the intelligent people of the world should protest against this American fascist attitude, and force America to stop bringing death to this beautiful planet. And I think, as the century comes to its end, there is bound to be a great protest from all over the world.

America has to be put right -- it is already late!

I am reminded of George Gurdjieff. He used to say laughingly that America has

not been discovered for the first time, and that is true. It is a lie that is being taught in the schools and colleges and the universities that America was discovered by Columbus. In Turkey there is a seven hundred year old map in which America is completely drawn, both the Americas, North America and South America, an exact map of the whole world. When that map was discovered it was so shocking that not only was America known, it was so well known that maps of it existed. Then what had happened?

In Indian mythology, one of the great warriors of Mahabharat, the great Indian war of five thousand years before, had married a woman from Mexico. The word in Sanskrit literature for Mexico is Makshika. Mexico is a distortion of a Sanskrit word Makshika, because the description is exactly of Mexico; and in Mexico, Hindu temples have been found, and Hindu gods and their statues have been found. The Mexican temple is a replica of the Hindu temple.

George Gurdjieff used to say that America has been discovered many many times, but it becomes such a nuisance that we have to hush it up and forget all about it -- then somebody else discovers it again!

If Ronald Reagan and his fascist colleagues are not going to listen to the protest of the whole intelligent world, then the only way will be an absolute boycott; forgive the fools -

- and forget them, so they can be discovered again by some Columbus.

The steps that Gorbachev is taking are immensely valuable, and are very convincing to the whole world that his intentions are for a beautiful co-existence.

There is no need of any war. You can have your democracy, you can have your communism, you can have your own ideology -- what is the problem? There is no need to impose your ideology on somebody else. At least man's spirit should be left in freedom to choose its own ideology -- religious, political, social. No government has the right over the rights of the individual; all governments are only servants. But strangely, because of the power in their hands, servants become masters; they start behaving as if the masters are servants. But this cannot go forever.

Yes, all the predictions of the ancient seers, like Nostradamus, that the world is going to end by the end of this century, are true in a very different sense than has been understood.

The old world is going to end, and a new world is going to begin. That is my interpretation of Nostradamus.

The old man has to disappear to give place to a new man with fresh values, with one earth undivided into nations, with one humanity undivided by religions, because religions don't need to be organized. Religion is a love affair, a love affair with existence. There is no question of any organization like Christianity, or Hinduism, or Mohammedanism.

Religion is as much purely individual as love, because religion is nothing but the purest and the highest quality of love. You don't organize love! You don't say that this is Christian love, this is Hindu love, this is Mohammedan love. Love is simply love, meditation is simply meditation, peace is simply peace, enlightenment is simply enlightenment. It cannot have any adjective with it.

Changes have been happening. They will come to a peak by the end of this century when the moment of ultimate decision will have to be faced by humanity, either to transform yourself totally; drop all that is old.… Don't look backwards; start creating new values, look forward -- because the past is the past and to visit the graveyard too much is dangerous. The graveyard is a place one should visit only once, and that too is a one-way affair... you simply go there and never come back.

It is the future that should be your concern. It is the future and the faraway stars that will become your challenges. You have heard always about the golden past. We have to forget all about it; we have to create a golden future.

The decisive moment is coming close-by; either we have to decide to commit suicide.… If we cling with the past, then that is the only possibility. If we drop the past and the dead and start afresh from ABC, from the very scratch, writing the destiny of man, the days of the last part of this century will be of a tremendous revolution. The revolution is going to be so great that Nostradamus can be said to be right, that the world will end -- the world as we have known it -

- and a world that we have never even dreamt of has to begin.

Chidananda, you are right that we cannot throw away the responsibility on some fictitious God, that he will end the world. We are perfectly aware that if a third world war happens, we will be the only responsible people to have destroyed ourselves. I think changes happen only in such dangerous and critical moments.

If life goes on smoothly and comfortably great changes don't happen, but if life comes to a place where you have to choose between death or a new style of life, I am absolutely certain you will choose the new style of life rather than the old well-acquainted death.

Yes Chidananda, there is no god, and man is going to be responsible for whatever he chooses. And I trust in the deepest longing of everybody: it is for life, it is for love, it is for joy, it is for song, it is for flowers, it is for dances. It is for love.

Man cannot choose a global death. It is an impossibility.

Yes, the old world will come to an end; Nostradamus is not going to be wrong. But his interpreters are all wrong. My interpretation is: The death of the old is the birth of the new.

A man down on his luck goes home to his wife and tells her, "Look dear, we are running out of money and we are gonna have to cut down on all the luxuries." He then adds scornfully, "If you would just learn to cook we could fire the chef." "In that case," replies the woman,"if you would learn to make love we could fire the chauffeur."

In critical moments one has to be truthful, and if things are going to change, then you have to change also. Your ways of love have to change. You have to drop old kinds of jealousies, competitions; you have to drop old values of honor, respectability, royal blood... all nonsense. You have to learn that the whole humanity is one brotherhood. The black and the white and the in-between, all are the same.

I am reminded... Rabindranath was in Geneva. He had just been awarded the Nobel prize, and he was being received by the government of Switzerland in a vast welcome party.

Everybody was white. Somebody asked, Rabindranath, "What is your explanation? Why has God created such discriminations -- because you insist on one brotherhood of the whole humanity."

Rabindranath said, "God first created a man out of mud and baked him, but

being inexperienced, baked him too much. He's the negro. He created a second man. Being afraid that he may again make another negro, he pulled him out quite early, unbaked...

he's the white man."

That's why in the white man the desire for having a tan continues... a little more baking.

And baking powders are available, baking lotions are available; put on those lotions and powders and lie down naked under the hot burning sun. This desire is because they were pulled out of the bakery a little too soon. God said, "My God, I have committed another mistake."

That's why the Indian is in-between. That is the third person he baked, just right, neither a little more, nor a little less. But more than that, there is not any difference... just a little more sun, a little less sun.

There is no need for any color discrimination. There is no need to have boundaries of nations, because the earth has no boundaries. There is no need to have flocks of people gathered separately -- the Catholics, the Protestants, the Hindus, the Mohammedans; each one should be free to have his own immediate and personal contact with existence, his own prayer.

The new man is on the horizon.

All the preparations to destroy the world will only destroy the old man and the old world.

They will create the basic necessity for the birth of a new man. I can see him on the horizon already. He has arrived; it will just take some time for people to recognize him.

Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,

THE OTHER DAY SOMEONE ASKED ME WHERE I CAME FROM BEFORE

COMING TO POONA AND I COULDN'T REMEMBER. HE STARTED MENTIONING MAJOR EUROPEAN CITIES WHILE I GOT MORE EMBARRASSED. I SAID, "JUST WAIT, IT WILL COME," AND SUDDENLY

REMEMBERED SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA. OSHO, SINCE I'VE BEEN WITH YOU

THIS TIME I'M LOSING MY MEMORY. WHAT'S HAPPENING? I ASK THIS

QUESTION IN THE HOPE THAT THIS SHOWS SOMETHING TO DO WITH

MEDITATION.

Michael, you are really becoming intelligent. It is not expected from people who come from Sydney, Australia. This has never happened before! Losing your memory is of great significance. It means the energy is shifting from memory to intelligence.

Memory is mechanical; intelligence is non-mechanical. That's why computers can have memory; they don't have intelligence. If you ask them a question about which they have not been told before, you have to feed the information first, then you can ask the question, and without fail the answer will come. Intelligence is a totally different matter.

Your meditation is certainly going deeper. Leaving aside Sydney, Australia, and all the memories concerned with Sydney, Australia, leaving aside the past -- you are entering into a new space.

Only once in a while a computer has been intelligent -- only in jokes, not in reality.

A man was asking a computer, "Tell me about my father. What do you know about my father? I want all the information." The information came -- "Your father has gone fishing just three hours ago in the ocean." The man laughed and he said, "You're stupid!

My father is dead and he has been dead for three years; he cannot go fishing." The computer laughed and said, "That was not your father, that was only the husband of your mother. Your father has gone fishing; you just go to the beach and you will find him there."

I used to think that only in jokes computers can be intelligent, but just today Anando brought me the news that in Japan there are one hundred thousand robots -- just men, mechanical men -- working in factories, and not a small number, but working in thousands.… And the government has just released information that a strange thing is happening which is creating tremendous fear. These robots have suddenly started killing men. The robot is just working, he sees some man passing by, jumps, catches hold of him, and with his steel hands gives him a good hug and finishes him.

Ten people have been killed just in a few days. And if the government says ten, you can multiply by ten; at least one hundred must have died. Then governments accept, reluctantly, a small percentage. But the fear has become great, because one hundred thousand robots -- if they simply come out of the factories into the streets and start making hugging gestures to men and women These ten deaths

happened in a strange situation, because those robots work through computers, they receive orders from the computer. They are machines, but somehow it seems something strange and mysterious is starting to happen.

The government has assured people, "Don't be worried about ghosts etcetera" -- because that is the first thing that comes to mind, that Anando's ghosts, finding a perfect body.…

They have perfect human bodies, just they are made of steel; they can be good abodes for ghosts! Poor ghosts have to live on trees, in rain, in cold; this is a great opportunity! But once a ghost enters in, then there is danger. It may start doing things which the computer is not ordering, which it is not supposed to do.

You are not a robot. When you become silent, you start seeing your memories far away, as distant echoes. It is a very common experience that intelligent people have not very good memories, and vice versa; the people who have very good memories have never been found to be very intelligent. Sometimes idiots have great memories; because their whole energy is involved in their memory, they don't have any intelligence.

Intelligence is the power to face a new situation about which you know nothing. Memory is a reaction. You know the answer, the question is asked, you repeat the answer. But if any new question is asked the memory is impotent. A new question, a new situation, does not need your memory; it needs intelligence, because a new answer is needed, a new response is needed.

Linelli said to his daughter, "I no like-a that Irish boy taking-a you out. He's a- rough and common and besides he's-a big-a dumbbell."

"No papa," replied the girl. "Tim is the most clever fella I know. Why you say-a that? We have only been dating for nine weeks," the daughter replied, "and already he has cured me of that little illness I used to get every month."

Michael, don't try to cling to memory. Here nobody is bothered about where you come from; in fact nobody knows. Everybody comes from nowhere and goes on disappearing into nowhere again. Sydney or Calcutta or Bombay or San Francisco or Rome or London are all stations between two nowheres. And the trains are becoming faster; they don't stop on every station! There is no need to be worried. If you forget everything that you know, you will not be a loser -- because what do you know? It is not valuable at all. In fact it will be a great richness if you can forget all that you know, and suddenly enter into a state of not-knowing, fresh and young and innocent -- childlike. That's what meditation is, and that's what brings tremendous intelligence to you: to face every moment with a totally new response not borrowed from the past.

The most important thing... if you want to remember, if you are addicted to remembering and if you find it difficult, then don't be bothered about where you come from; then be bothered about where you are going to. That is better. At least that will keep you open, searching, hoping. Why cling to graves, and why be a digger of graves? Your memory-system is nothing but a graveyard. Try to live without memory, and see how life becomes suddenly fresh. Every face looks so new... you can even fall in love with your own wife.

Be happy! And next time when somebody asks you from where you are coming, just ask him: "From where does everybody else come?" -- nobody knows. And nobody knows where we are going.

Still, the going is good, we are enjoying. Who cares about the beginning and the end?

The real thing is in-between -- the pilgrimage.

I want to make your pilgrimage a bliss, a benediction, without any goal and without any source.

Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,

THESE LAST FEW DAYS I OFTEN FIND MYSELF BEING IN VERY DRAMATIC

AND MISERABLE MOODS. I SEE MYSELF WALKING AROUND WITH A LONG, LONG FACE AND WITH THOUGHTS LIKE, "I AM A FAILURE." THEN

SUDDENLY SOMETHING -- ANYTHING -- HAPPENS, AND I JUST STAND

THERE, WATCHING AND FEELING AN OVERWHELMING GIGGLING INSIDE

ME, WHICH INCREASES TO A BIG SMILE AND SOMETIMES EVEN TO AN

EXPLOSION OF LAUGHTER AND THE FEELING OF BEING ABSOLUTELY

HAPPY. IT IS ALWAYS SO STRONG THAT I CAN'T EVEN HOLD ON TO MY

DRAMATIC MOOD ANYMORE! YESTERDAY, IN ONE OF THESE SITUATIONS, WITH THE GIGGLING FROM SOMEWHERE DEEP INSIDE ME CAME THE

WORDS: "LAUGH YOUR WAY TO GOD." IT FELT LIKE A RECIPE FOR

GROWTH. OSHO, DOES THIS GIGGLING HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE

WATCHER INSIDE ME? WOULD YOU PLEASE SPEAK ON THE RELATIONSHIP

BETWEEN EASY-GOING LAUGHTER AND THE WATCHER?

Lokita, there is certainly a relationship between the watcher and the laughter arising in you, because the watcher can see not only the stupidities of other people, but the stupidities of your own.

The watcher could see your dramatic mood. Before the watcher came in, you were identified with the dramatic mood; you had forgotten that it is just a dramatic mood.

Just watch people. Everybody is carrying a face which is a role, repeating some dialogue inside, preparing himself -- what he is going to say to the wife, because he is late And he knows perfectly well that not even once in his whole life has

he been able to deceive her, but still he goes on doing the same stupidity.

If the watcher comes in, if suddenly you remember to witness, you will start giggling at yourself that you are such a fool. You go on falling in the same ditch every day, deciding every day never to fall again in the same ditch. But when the ditch comes close by, the attraction, the fascination, of falling in the ditch is so much that you forget all your decisions. You console yourself, "Just once more. From tomorrow, I'm going to keep my word, given to myself." But this has happened so many times. And you will do it your whole life, unless you allow the watcher to see the ridiculous acts that you are doing.

And there is certainly a deep relationship. As you watch you will start giggling about why you unnecessarily have a serious face. In fact, nobody is even looking at you; you can relax. And even if they are looking at you, a serious face is not a beauty. A joyous face, a face full of smile, radiant with some deep blissfulness, may be worth having. If you are being an actor, then choose at least some good act, some good part!

Everybody has chosen such ugly parts; their faces are dull and sad, their vibe that of a corpse. Still they want everybody to love them, respect them. And even dogs don't bark, even they tolerate; they just don't look, just "Let him go." Dogs also get tired, barking unnecessarily the whole day. They have their own fundamental ideology; they bark at people who wear uniforms -- policemen, postmen, sannyasins. They are absolutely against uniforms. They are certainly

very rebellious people. They don't want any organizations in the world; everybody should be an individual. "What is this nonsense!"

The whole army, the whole brigade is going, and all the people are in the same dress --

dogs cannot resist the temptation to protest.

You pass by; even the dog does not protest. But if you watch, you will giggle! You will giggle at yourself, "Why you are carrying such a face?" and you will giggle at the dog,

"Why are you ignoring me? You are also trying to be very serious." And you will be surprised, if you are really watching, that the dog is also giggling at you.

Lokita, if you don't believe me, you can try with Niskriya; he's such a serious man. Just look at him with a giggling face, and he is bound to giggle. Although it is against his German background -- he's a serious photographer, totally dedicated to his art; he does not look here and there -- but even he will laugh. And you will help him in being watchful too, because while you are laughing, watchfulness is easiest.

Perhaps you have not noted that fact. Next time you have a full-hearted laugh, try to see a very fundamental fact: watching is easiest while you are laughing, because laughing is not a serious act, and laughing is natural. Laughing creates in you an atmosphere of silence. If your laughter is really total, mind stops -- "Let this fool first laugh." Those are the moments when you can bring in the watcher very easily.

You heard these words "Laugh your way to God." Just remember that you don't laugh your way to a serious God, that's all. Laugh your way to a laughing God -- which is a very rare phenomenon. You will find on the way many gods who are absolutely serious, who have forgotten laughter.

Just for your giggling... and remember to watch while you are giggling: The first grade class gathered around the teacher for a game of "Guess the Animal." The first picture the teacher held up was a cat. "Okay, boys and girls," she said brightly, "can anyone tell me what this is?"

"I know! I know! It is a cat." Yelled a little boy.

"Very good, Eddy. Now who knows what this animal is called?" "That's a dog," piped up the same little boy.

"Right again. And what about this animal?" she asked holding up a picture of a deer.

Silence fell over the class. After a minute or two the teacher said, "I will give you a hint, children, listen. It is something that your mother calls your father around the house."

"I know! I know!" screamed Eddy, "It is a horny bastard!"

A sailor from the Greek navy was stranded on a desert island and managed to survive by making friends with the local natives -- such good friends, in fact, that one day the chief offered him his daughter for an evening entertainment. Late that night, while they made love, the chief's daughter kept shouting, "Oga, boga! Oga, boga!" The arrogant sailor assumed this must be how the natives express their appreciation when something is fantastic.

A few days later the chief invites the sailor for a game of golf. On his first stroke, the chief hit a hole in one. Eager to try out his new vocabulary, the Greek enthusiastically shouted "Oga boga! Oga boga!"

The chief turned around with a puzzled look on his face and asked, "What you mean,

`Wrong hole?'" Okay, Maneesha? Yes, Osho.

The Golden Future Chapter #29

Chapter title: When the archer is perfect

26 May 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code:

8705260

ShortTitle:

GOLDEN29

Audio:

Yes Video:

Yes Length:

80

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

WHEN YOU LEAVE THE HALL EVERY DAY, LOOKING AT ALL OF US, I FEEL

SO BATHED AND SOAKED IN YOUR LOVE AND RADIANCE. WHEN YOU

WERE DANCING WITH US, I EXPERIENCED THE MOST BEAUTIFUL, JOYFUL, AND ECSTATIC MOMENTS WITH YOU. I COULD NOT IMAGINE THERE

COULD EVER BE MORE. BUT NOW, WHEN YOU GENTLY WALK OUT, FACING US, THE FEELING INSIDE OF ME IS SO VAST, SO MUCH MORE

THAN

ANYTHING BEFORE, THAT I FEEL TOTALLY OVERWHELMED BY PRECIOUS

LOVINGNESS. COULD YOU EXPLAIN WHAT IS HAPPENING?

Prem Turiya, there is a music which has no sounds, and there is a dance which has no movement. They are the highest expressions of grace.

While dancing, singing, rejoicing, you were feeling ecstatic, and you could not have believed that anything more is possible. Now, you are experiencing still the same dance, just the movements have been taken out, the same music, only the sounds have been dropped. It is a purification of the ecstasy. That's why you feel something higher is being experienced.

I have always loved a Chinese story about an archer who was the greatest archer in the whole land. He went to the emperor saying that the whole country should be made aware that if anybody wants to contest with him, he's available. "If nobody turns up, then you have to declare me the champion of archery." The emperor knew the man, and he knew his art, his archery, and he knew there was nobody else who could even come close to him. His art was perfect; he never missed a target. So the emperor was willing to declare him the champion of archery in the whole land of China.

Just at that moment, his old prime minister prevented him saying, "Wait a minute, because I know a man who lives far away in the mountains. Unless this archer goes to that old man, and that old man certifies that he should be declared the champion, you should wait. You should not be in a hurry, because that old man is not only the champion of this land, he is the champion of the whole world, although he's a non-competitive man, non-ambitious, and people don't know about him. Send this archer first to get a certificate from that old man." And he gave the directions where the old man would be found.

The archer could not believe that anyone could be better; he was one hundred percent successful in hitting the bulls eye exactly in the middle, he never missed the target. It was inconceivable for him that anybody could be a better archer! But there was no way The emperor told him to go to the mountains, and bring

a certificate.

It was a difficult journey. The old man lived on a very high peak of the mountain, alone.

He was really very old, almost ancient, and he had no bow, no arrows. He was just sitting under a tree. The archer asked, "Are you the man who is the greatest archer in the world?"

The old man said, "Perhaps, because on this mountain nobody else lives. But I can't be certain because I have never been competitive. As far as archery is concerned, for twenty years I have not touched the bow, have not seen the arrows. In fact, I have lost track where they are. But what is the problem? Why have you traveled so far?"

The young man said, "I knew it before that this would be an unnecessary journey! A man who has not touched the bow for twenty years, and who has even forgotten where his bow and his arrows are "

Still, because of the emperor's requirement, he said to the old man, "I want to be declared the champion of the art in the whole country, and the emperor has sent me to get your certificate."

The old man said, "That is not difficult. But seeing a bow with you, and the arrows, makes me suspicious that you are an amateur because the old saying is:

`When the musician becomes perfect, he throws away his musical instruments; when the archer becomes really an archer, perfect in his art, he breaks down his bow, and throws the arrows.' They are good to begin with, but one has to transcend technique at a certain moment. You will have to pass two tests: one is, do you see that protruding rock over the valley?"

There was a long rock, very low, protruding over a very deep valley, thousands of feet deep. The old man said, "Go to that rock, to the very end. The test is to stand at the very end, with half your feet hanging over the rock, with just the front part, your toes, on the rock. If you can stand there without any trembling, you have passed the first test."

The man said, "My God! But what kind of archery is this? This is sure death!" But the old man said, "I will go first to show you the way it has to be done."

He could not believe his eyes. The old man went to the very end of the

protruding rock; and he stood there with half the feet on the rock, over the valley thousands of feet deep.

And there was not even a small wavering or trembling. He called the young man, "Now, come on, and stand by my side."

The young man tried just one step on the rock. As he looked downward, such fear overwhelmed him... he fell on the ground, trembling, perspiring. He could not reach the end -- he was only at the beginning of the rock.

The old man said, "What is the matter? Come on, have courage. If you are so fearful and trembling inside, your archery cannot be of great value, because it is your hands which will take the bow and it is your hands which will take the arrows; it is your heart which has to be used in it. This fear... try, make an effort."

He started crawling on all fours. Standing and moving on that rock, he found impossible.

Those thousands of feet were so dangerous; just a single wrong step and you will never be found. You will be broken into bits and pieces and thrown over the whole valley.

But he could reach by crawling only to the middle. He said, "More than that, I cannot do."

The old man laughed. He came back, supported the man to stand up, and took him back to the tree. He said, "I had said you are just an amateur; otherwise there is no need of this bow and these arrows. Now, look at me: when the archer becomes perfect his eyes become arrows, his very being becomes the bow."

He looked at a flying flock of twelve cranes, and they all fell down on the earth. He said,

"If you can make even a single bird fall down on the earth, just with your eyes, I will certify you."

The young man said, "That is impossible. How can one do it?"

The old man said, "I have just done it, and not one, twelve cranes are just dead, lying before you."

The young man said, "You are right; I am simply an amateur. I would like to be accepted as a disciple; I would like to learn archery."

The old man said, "That sounds right. Be here."

After ten years, the old man said, "Now you can go back, but don't go to the emperor; go home. The day you suddenly realize, seeing your bow hanging on the wall, that you cannot recognize it, that is the day you can go to the emperor."

The emperor was becoming very old, and he enquired again and again from his prime minister, "What happened to that young man?"

The prime minister said, "He has reached the old man; I have been watching. He's learning, he has reached his home, and now he's waiting for the sign to come."

The emperor said, "I am becoming very old."

One day, a few years after coming home, the man looked at the bow hanging on the wall, and enquired of his son, "What is that object?"

The son said, "Have you gone mad? It is your bow, those are your arrows." He said, "Bow? Arrows? Am I an archer?"

The son said, "Are you laughing at me, or kidding me? or just going senile?" He said, "No, the time has come. I have to go to the emperor."

The son asked, "For what?"

He said, "To be declared the champion of archery in the land."

He went to the emperor. The prime minister said, "Have you brought the certificate?"

He said, "I am the certificate."

They were sitting in the garden. He looked at a bird flying faraway in the sky, almost invisible. But as he looked at the bird, the bird came falling to the feet of the emperor.

The emperor said, "Is this archery or some kind of magic?"

The man said, "I don't know, but this is what that old man has taught me: that if you are a perfect archer, you don't need the bow, you don't need the arrows; your eyes are enough.

If you are a perfect musician, you don't need instruments; your silence is music enough."

It is a beautiful story, very ancient, almost three thousand years old. Lao Tzu used to tell the story to his disciples, and that was twenty-five centuries ago. The story must have been far older.

As you become more and more in tune with me, just being here with me, there is music, there is dance. Your ears will not hear it, and your eyes will not see it, but you will feel it; your being will be soaked with it.

Every art has to reach to a point where technologies are dropped. Every meditation has to reach to the point where methods are dropped. They are good for the beginners, for learning the ABC's, but when you have reached to the point of XYZ, they are of no use.

Silently, you are filled with music. Without moving, you are dancing.

Without any thought, any feeling in you, there is just pure grace, gratitude arising out of you, just like fragrance arising out of a lotus flower.

One has to reach to this point. Only then one is fulfilled. Only then, one has attained his destiny.

Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,

THOSE OLD MASTERS MADE DISCIPLESHIP LIKE SITTING IN A DENTIST'S

WAITING ROOM, FULL OF ANCIENT MAGAZINES AND WITH A

BORED, OLD

GOLDFISH SWIMMING ROUND AND ROUND IN A BOWL. YOU HAVE

KNOCKED OUT THE WALLS, REMOVED THE ROOF, AND DO YOUR SURGERY

OUT IN THE SUNLIGHT WHILE WE ALL WATCH, LAUGHING AND DANCING, BARELY ABLE TO WAIT FOR OUR TURN TO BE ON THE TABLE. THE

MASTERS WHO FOLLOW YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE ONE HELL-OF-A JOB

BECAUSE YOU HAVE SET A WHOLE NEW STANDARD OF BEHAVIOR; NOT

ONLY THAT, YOU KEEP ON RAISING IT. IT SEEMS IMPOSSIBLE, BUT IT GOES

ON GETTING MORE AND MORE. I HAVE HEARD YOU SAY THAT

ENLIGHTENMENT IS THE SAME FOR EVERYONE, BUT YOU SEEM TO BE

GETTING MORE JUICE OUT OF IT THAN ANYBODY I HAVE EVER HEARD

ABOUT. WILL YOU SPEAK ABOUT THE MASTERS WHO WILL FOLLOW YOU?

Devageet, it is true I am getting more juice out of enlightenment then anybody else who has ever become enlightened on the earth, for the simple reason that to them, enlightenment was a serious search for God, or for self.

To me, seriousness is sickness. To me, enlightenment is not a serious search, but a playful, joyful wandering into the unknown.

In the past, all the enlightened people were goal oriented. I am not. To me, the pilgrimage itself is the goal -- every moment enjoying the sun, the moon, the

trees, the mountains, the rivers, the surprising turns in life; but enjoying them with intensity and totality, squeezing all the juice out of them.

The day you become capable of squeezing all the juice out of any moment of life, so that not even a single drop of juice is left behind, you are enlightened.

Enlightenment is not a goal somewhere far away.

It is something that you have to live every moment.

Unenlightenment is a way of living -- unconscious, groping in the dark. Enlightenment is also a way of living... enjoying, if it is day, what the day brings the flowers, the trees, the sun rays or if it is night, the silence and its music, the depth of darkness, the beauty and vastness of darkness. There is no question of groping. When it is night, you enjoy the night; you are not even thinking of the dawn. When it is day, you enjoy the day, not bothering even about the full-moon night.

Living each moment as if this is the first and the last moment is the way of enlightenment.

In the past, the masters were very serious. They made the life of the seeker very arduous, torturous, unnecessarily -- perhaps those ages should be called the dark ages of the soul.

We have reached the dawn. A delightful, relaxed laughter is possible for my people, which has never been allowed in the past. We have grown up; we have come to a certain maturity.

I am the end of an old tradition, and the beginning of a new line, a new category.

You are asking me to speak about the masters who will follow me. Who bothers? I am utterly concerned with the present. Whether any master follows or not is not my concern.

That's why I am absolutely without any worry, without any tension, without any thought, and without any dream.

I am being condemned all over the world. Everyday, Neelam and Anando bring news clippings from all over the world; people who don't know anything about

me are unnecessarily freaking out. But as far as I am concerned, nothing makes even a dent in my consciousness.

Utter lies are being written about me. Just the other day there was news from Madras, in a Tamil magazine, that because of my teachings hundreds of women are running naked in California -- because I teach that man is born naked and it is his birthright to be naked.

And many of these women who are running naked in California are pregnant. I really enjoyed it! My teaching is bringing fruit.

Some other day, in a Hebrew magazine, there was a very serious article alerting the Israelis that my next target is Israel, that I am going to come to Israel. First I will become converted into a Jew, and then I will declare myself as the reincarnation of Moses; everything is planned, I am just waiting for the right time. I used to think there is a limit to lies, but I was wrong. There is no limit.

I am not at all concerned about the future. This moment is enough unto itself. I am enjoying it, you are enjoying it, and through us, the whole existence is feeling the ecstasy.

We have been showering the existence with more flowers than any communion that has ever existed on the earth.

One night, Hymie brought home a dozen roses for his wife. "How lovely, dear," she said.

"What is the occasion?" "I want to make love to you," he said simply enough. "Not tonight, dear. I have a headache," she whined.

The next night, Hymie came home with a big box of chocolates, and repeated his desire to make love. "Not tonight, lovely, I am awfully tired," said the wife.

Every night of the week, Hymie brought something, but each time his wife's answer was categorically, "No!" Finally, one night, he came home with six black kittens with little red balls around their necks, and handed them to his wife. "How adorable, Hymie," she exclaimed. "But what are they for?" "They, my dear, are the six pallbearers for your dead pussy."

Who cares about masters and disciples in the future? Right now, a joke is so

enlightening!

You all are going to become enlightened -- if you don't become serious. You all are going to become great masters if you start collecting holy jokes -- because you will need them!

A Chinaman complains to his doctor of his being constipated. The doctor prescribes a strong laxative. However, a few days later, the Chinaman returns. "Have you had a movement yet?" asks the doctor.

"No, sir, me no move-ee, me no move-ee." So the doctor doubled the dose of laxative.

Two days later, the Chinaman returns and reports no progress with his movement, so the doctor triples the prescription.

"Come back in three days," says the confounded doctor.

Three days later, the doctor greets the Chinaman. "Well, have you had a movement yet?"

"No, sir, me no move-ee yet. We move-ee tomorrow, though. House full of shit!" Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

THE OTHER MORNING IN DISCOURSE, YOU SHOWERED YOUR LOVE AND

GRACE ON US SO BEAUTIFULLY THAT I COULDN'T CONTAIN MYSELF. MY

TEARS WERE FLOWING, AND I FELT AS IF BEING LIFTED UP. IT WAS AS IF

THERE WAS NO ME, BUT SOME FEELING OF THE BEYOND. AFTER YOUR

TALK, I WAS IMMENSELY SAD WHEN I SAW THAT I WAS COMING

BACK TO

THE PERSON CALLED ME. I EVEN BECAME VERY BITCHY TOWARDS MY

LOVER, ALTHOUGH I FELT VERY RELAXED. I WONDERED THEN WHETHER

IT IS MY CHOICE TO COME BACK TO MY FORMER STATE. OSHO, IS IT MY

DECISION TO RETURN FROM THAT SOMETHING I CALL BEYOND? IS IT

POSSIBLE THAT IF I CHANGED MY WHOLE ATTITUDE TOWARDS NORMAL

DAY-TO-DAY LIFE, I COULD REMAIN IN THAT BEAUTIFUL, OPEN, AND

RELAXED SPACE? COULD YOU PLEASE TALK ABOUT OUR RESPONSIBILITY

TOWARDS OURSELVES?

Lokita, every mountain has its own valleys, and every great experience of the beyond will be followed by a valley experience. You have to learn to enjoy the valley experience too.

Nobody can remain permanently in a certain stage of experience, and it is good and fortunate because if you are experiencing the beyond continuously, it will create only boredom and nothing else. Even to be with God twenty-four hours... how long can you tolerate it? You will need a few holidays to be with the devil!

Life is a dialectical phenomenon.

Life is always moving from one extreme to another extreme. Most of us don't want to be troubled by all these changes. We want a certain beautiful state, and to remain in it permanently forever. But then you will be dead, and that beautiful space will not stay beautiful long enough; you have to lose it again and again to

keep it fresh, to keep it beautiful.

It is perfectly normal and natural that one moment you feel ecstatic, and another moment you fall into darkness. But nothing is wrong in darkness. The sunlit peaks have their own beauty, but the dark valleys have their own peace, and their own silence, their own depth, their own coolness.

Don't ask of life to be permanent at a single experience. Allow life to take you into all its dimensions. Just remember one thing: Whatever life offers to you, enjoy it. That is the golden key to transform every experience into a spiritual beatitude... not permanency but a flux, a river-like flow. Sometimes it is mountainous, and sometimes it is the plains; sometimes it is the ocean, sometimes it is moving into the clouds, and sometimes it is again raining. Accept the whole circle of life. In this acceptability is your authentic religiousness.

But I am not saying that after experiencing something beyond yourself, the next thing is to become bitchy to your poor lover, Niskriya. He's such a nice fellow, so silent, so centered in himself. I can understand that such fellows can create bitchiness in women --

just their very centeredness, their very silence, irritates women; they want to pull them down. But remember Niskriya is not the one to be pulled down. You can be bitchy, but he will just look at you through his glasses and go back to his work, just feeling amazed --

what kind of woman is this? But, Niskriya, all women of this kind, their greatest problem is to tolerate a man who is centered and silent and doing his own thing. They will poke their nose... Unless they interfere with you, unless they make you irritated, they will not find peace of heart.

Lokita, you are in a difficult position. Your bitchiness will not bring any joy to you; it will only bring frustration. But feeling something beyond yourself, there is no need to take revenge on poor Niskriya. He's the only marble Gautam Buddha here. Even I cannot laugh because of him. One just has to be respectful when you are sitting before a Gautam Buddha.…

Perhaps your problem, Lokita, is that you are the girlfriend of a Gautam Buddha. Nobody suffers more in the world than the girlfriend of a Gautam Buddha, because you can be bitchy but he will simply be a witness.

The Jewish mothers meet in the marketplace. They are all proud of their sons, and want to brag about them.

The first one says, "Ah, my son is always so very gentle and polite with my husband and me."

The second one says, "Ah, my dear, my son is so very, very sweet with me. He does the shopping for me, he cleans my house, and each day he brings me flowers."

The third one says, "Ah, my son is much sweeter than that. Each time he goes to see his psychoanalyst, he only speaks of me."

When you are coming down from an experience beyond yourself, you would like poor Niskriya to talk about you. He cannot do that. He is simply not that kind of man. You have gone beyond the "me", and you would like somebody to remind you of it. Don't expect it from Niskriya. Even your bitchiness will not help.

After coming back from the beyond, be silent. Enjoy this coming back; there is nothing wrong in it. Don't feel guilty, and don't ask for any support. The spiritual path is absolutely alone. Boyfriends and girlfriends are not allowed together; they have to go separately.

So whenever you touch a height, enjoy the height; whenever you touch the bottom, enjoy the bottom. One thing should remain continuously flowing in you

-- the enjoyment.

Giggle within yourself when you are beyond yourself, and giggle within yourself when you are within yourself -- but giggling should continue. Make life a laughter when great things are happening, and when nothing is happening, laughter should continue.

Laughter should be the running thread of the garland of flowers of all your ecstasies and experiences of the beyond. They will change, but one thread of laughter can continue within you.

Laughter is almost the shrine of the witness.

Within the laughter, you will always find the watcher. And to become a watcher

without discontinuity, without gaps, is all that is meant by enlightenment.

But don't interfere with enlightened people like Niskriya. When I first saw him in Kathmandu I immediately picked him up. He is such a silent man, never interfering with anybody -- except with my air conditioners, because they make noise, and he is a perfect photographer; that noise disturbs his photography.

I have kept watchers so he does not interfere with my air conditioners, but sometimes, when there is nobody else here, he puts them down half. Last night, he succeeded. He is not concerned that I will be suffering with hot air, his concern is his photography. But I don't blame him; everybody just has to watch him, that he never comes near my air conditioners!

Lokita, particularly for you, the instruction is that when you want to be bitchy with him, put my air conditioners on full!

Okay, Maneesha? Yes, Osho.

The Golden Future Chapter #30

Chapter title: Life is a deep interdependence 26 May 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive

code: 8705265

ShortTitle: GOLDEN30

Audio: Yes

Video:

Yes Length:

82

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

THE SILENCE I EXPERIENCE LATELY IN YOUR PRESENCE IS BECOMING

VASTER AND DEEPER; AND WHEN YOU LEAVE CHUANG TZU AUDITORIUM, TEARS ROLL GENTLY DOWN MY FACE AND I WANT NOTHING MORE THAN

TO STAY THERE. SO IT IS DIFFICULT TO BE ACTIVE AFTERWARDS BECAUSE

I KNOW SLOWLY THE EXPERIENCE WILL CHANGE, AND I WOULD LIKE TO

REMAIN THERE. BELOVED MASTER, IS LOVE SO FRAGILE THAT WE CANNOT HOLD IT EVEN WITH TWO FINGERS?

Prem Azima, everything that is of value is fragile. Beauty is fragile, silence is fragile, love is fragile. Look at a roseflower dancing in the wind, and in the rain, and in the sun. It seems it is strong enough for the wild wind, strong enough for the sun, strong enough for the rain. It is very fragile; by the evening, its petals will be thrown in all directions. But while it was, it was tremendous; while it was, it was more than any rock. The rock will remain, the rock is permanent; the flower will come and go. The higher the value, the more fragile it is.

One has to deeply understand it; otherwise you start clinging to great

experiences, and you destroy those experiences by your very clinging. They are so fragile that your clinging can destroy them, your attachment can destroy them; even your desire to continue them can be poison, destructive, murderous to them.

As you become acquainted more and more with silence, peace, blissfulness, ecstasy, you will have also to learn the lesson: enjoy them while they are at their fullest, and when they go, let them go with a joyful and grateful heart.

Yes, tears are allowed, but not tears of pain -- tears of prayer, tears of gratitude. The more easily you let them go, the more those experiences come to you. And once you have understood the science that your let-go is the way to desire them, to long for them -- not the desire, but a desireless love -- one should feel blissful enough, even if a fragile experience visits you only once. If you are grateful, it is bound to come again and again.

Slowly, slowly, it may not go at all; it may become your very heartbeat. It can your very breathing, but one has to learn the whole science.

Ordinarily, what our mind is going to do is to close the doors, close the windows, and keep the fresh breeze in, so that it cannot escape. But just by closing all the doors and the windows you have destroyed the freshness of the breeze; soon it will be stale. It will have lost its dance, it will have lost its aliveness; you will be sitting by the side of a corpse.

And people are sitting by the side of corpses -- corpses of love, which they call marriages, corpses of prayer, which they call their temples, their churches, their mosques, and corpses of authentic and sincere experiences, which they call holy scriptures. People are surrounded by corpses. And if you keep company with corpses, you cannot remain alive very long yourself; you will become a corpse amongst other corpses. It is a very dangerous friendship.

Beware of it! Learn the simple fact that truth, love, beauty, bliss -- all are very fragile, very momentary. You cannot grasp them in your fist; they are like fragrances. You cannot run after them. You have to wait and trust: the same existence that has brought an experience to you will bring many more. It is abundant, it wants to share, but it can share only with people who are not hoarders. It can share only with people who know the momentariness, the fragileness -- and the beauty of fragileness, and the joy of momentariness.

Only dead things are permanent.

All that is alive is changing, moment to moment.

All that is alive is living under the risk of death at any moment. If you want to be secure, absolutely secure, then you will have to enter into your grave; only graveyards are absolutely secure places. In a grave, nothing else happens; everything stops, time stops, nothing changes anymore. Even death cannot do any harm to you.

But if you want to be alive, then more aliveness... the more you have to be alert and aware of the fragileness of all the qualities that are not created and manufactured by man, which descend from the beyond -- unpredictable, out of nowhere, suddenly overwhelming you. Don't think about whether they will remain or go, because if you get into thinking about your future, and the possibility of the experience remaining permanently with you, you may miss everything. Enjoy it, dance with it, let time cease.

Put the mind aside. Then even a single moment is equal to eternity.

You are asking, Azima, "The silence I experience lately in your presence is becoming vaster and deeper; and when you leave Chuang Tzu auditorium, tears roll gently down my face and I want nothing more than to stay there. So it is difficult to be active afterwards because I know slowly the experience will change."

It will change. Even if you don't do anything, even if you stay here it will change. It does not change because you have to go to work, it changes because change is the nature of life. And it is good that it changes. Otherwise, tomorrow you will not have again the tremendous experience of silence. You will be carrying the stale, old experience of yesterday; you won't have space enough for the new to enter in.

Change is favorable to life. That's why even death, I say, is favorable to life -- because it is the greatest change. It brings you into new spaces, into new forms, into new existences; it keeps your pilgrimage continuously new, it keeps your excitement alive. Every moment remains always a challenge and a deep awaiting, because anything is possible. Silence can come to you, blissfulness can come to you, ecstasy can descend into your heart, truth can open its doors; life is full of mysteries, uncountable. So when it happens, be thankful

-- and move on.

And slowly, slowly, as you become more acquainted with the depth of silence, while you are working, doing something, the unknown guest may come suddenly and stand by your side.

A time comes when these experiences start following you like a shadow; just close by, you can feel their coolness, you can smell their fragrance. Just remember not to grab, not to possess, not to make the effort of changing them into your property. They come in freedom, and they remain in freedom. You cannot enslave them.

The desire, Azima, is not only yours; it is as ancient as man. Man has tried to capture truth in words and failed, utterly failed; he has tried to capture beauty in sculpture and failed; he has even tried to capture God into temples -- and has utterly failed. But such is the blindness, that nobody sees all these failures! Your temples, your churches, your synagogues are landmarks of your failures. Your scriptures are the failures of your forefathers, of trying to catch hold of truth in words.

Words have remained, but the truth has evaporated. Now they go on worshiping these scriptures, these statues.

All the religions are nothing but failures. That's why they are against a man like Jesus or Socrates or Mansoor -- because these people's crime is that they have tried to make you aware that you are blind, that what you are worshiping is not truth, but a corpse. Perhaps once there was truth... but people behave like drunkards.

An old English lady was looking through her curtains. Spying on her neighbors, she saw a man coming out of the house opposite. He rushed to the side of the road, jumped three feet into the air, and fell flat on his face. The old lady ran to his side and asked, "Excuse me, what happened?"

"I was late for work, and I came rushing out, and jumped on my bike. But I forgot -- I have not got one!"

In a hurry, it is possible to forget.

I have heard about a drunkard who was watching a man doing pushups on the

beach. For a long time the drunkard went around him, looked from every side, and finally said,

"Listen, man, I should not interfere in whatever you are doing, but I cannot resist the temptation any more. Your girl is no longer there; you are unnecessarily doing exercises.

She must have gone long ago, because I have been watching you for almost one hour; you are perspiring, huffing and puffing, and the girl is no longer there, I have looked from every nook and corner. Strange that this man is so deep in love!"

But in life, that's exactly what we are doing with all our fragile experiences. Somehow we have an unconscious desire for things to be permanent. Why this desire is in the unconscious, is something to be explored. Perhaps it is the fear of death. Most probably it is, because we are ourselves fragile. This moment you are alive, next moment you may be gone. Because of our own fragileness, we desire to have permanency in everything around us as a security, as a safety. But if we are fragile, how can our experiences be anything else?

An Englishman, a Frenchman, and a Polack have been stranded on a desert island for almost a year, when they discover a lamp lying in the sand. They rub it, and sure enough, a genie appears.

"Well, gentleman," says the genie, "traditionally, I give the finder one of three wishes, but since there are three of you, I will grant you one wish each."

The Englishman speaks right up: "I know what I want. I wish to be back on Hampstead High Street, having a pint in my favorite club."

Poof! He disappears.

The Frenchman speaks up: "I wish to be back in Paris, in a nice little restaurant, with a bottle of good wine, and a gorgeous woman by my side."

Poof! He disappears.

The Polack is thinking and thinking, when finally the genie asks him, "And what is your wish, my friend?"

"Gee, I only want to be the pope at the Vatican." Poof! And he disappears.

Many have wondered why a Polack has become the pope. Now I open up the secret.

Poof! And the Polack becomes the pope.

But that is how things disappear. Enjoy them while they are, and don't ask for any permanence, because permanence is non-existential; it is only in our desires, out of fear of death. But in existence, everything is change. Existence believes in the law of change.

Every moment, everything is changing. Our language gives us a very fallacious idea, because our language consists of nouns and pronouns, and existence knows only verbs.

When you see the river, the actual fact is that there is not a river; the actual fact is that there is a rivering, because the water is continuously flowing. A tree does not exist, there is only treeing, because the tree is continuously growing. And the same is the case with you. You won't go back from this place the same as you have entered -- so much water will have gone down the Ganges.

Gautam Buddha was the first man in history who reminded his disciples that existence consists only of verbs, not of nouns, not of pronouns. To make a language only of verbs, will be very difficult, almost impossible -- conversation will become so ridiculous -- so we have to continue to use nouns and pronouns. But remember, deep down, that there is nothing static.

Don't be befooled by the language you use. Look around, everything is changing

-- every moment, every split second. And once you understand change as the God of existence, your whole life pattern -- your attitudes, your approaches, your style -- will change accordingly. You will become more of a flow than a dirty pond.

You will become more like a river, a pilgrimage into the unknown towards the ocean, where even you are going to disappear.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

IN YOUR VISION OF A MODEL SOCIETY, WOULD THERE BE ONE LARGE

COMMUNE, OR A SERIES OF COMMUNES? IF THERE IS MORE THAN ONE, WHAT WOULD BE THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO ONE ANOTHER? DO YOU

ENVISAGE PEOPLE OF DIFFERENT COMMUNES BEING ABLE TO BE

INTERDEPENDENT, SHARING IDEAS AND SKILLS, AND WITHOUT ANY OF

THE ATTITUDES THAT GROW OUT OF POSSESSIVENESS, LIKE NATIONALISM AND FANATICISM?

Maneesha, the question raises a very important thing: the concept of interdependence.

Man has lived in dependence, and man has desired and fought for independence, but nobody looks into the reality -- that dependence and independence both are extremes.

Reality is exactly in the middle; it is interdependence. Everything is interdependent. The smallest blade of grass and the biggest star both are interdependent. This is the whole foundation of ecology. Because man has behaved without understanding the reality of interdependence. He has destroyed so much of the organic unity of life. He has been cutting his own hands, his own legs, without knowing.

Forests have disappeared, millions of trees are being cut every day. Just now scientists are giving warnings -- but nobody is ready to listen -- that if all trees disappear from the earth, man cannot live. We are in a deep inter-exchange. Man goes on breathing in oxygen, and throwing out carbon dioxide; trees go on inhaling carbon dioxide and exhaling oxygen. Neither you can exist without the trees, nor can the trees exist without you.

This is a simple example; otherwise life is interwoven in a thousand and one

ways.…

Because many trees have disappeared, so much carbon dioxide has gathered in the atmosphere, that it has raised the temperature on the whole earth by four degrees. To you it may seem insignificant -- four degrees -- but it is not insignificant. By the end of this century, this temperature will be enough to melt so much ice that every ocean will rise four feet higher. One degree of temperature more means the ocean rises one foot higher.

So the cities which are on the coast of the oceans -- and all the great cities are there -- will be flooded with water.

If the temperature goes on increasing, as is the possibility, because nobody is listening.…

Trees are being cut, without any understanding, for useless things; for third rate newspapers you need newsprint, and you are destroying life. There is a possibility that if the eternal ice of the Himalayas starts melting, which has never happened in the whole past, then all the oceans will rise twenty feet higher, and will drown almost the whole earth. They will destroy all your cities -- Bombay and Calcutta, New York,London, and San Francisco. Perhaps a few primitive people who live high in the mountains may survive.

Such is the interdependence that when your first astronauts reached to the moon, we became aware for the first time that the whole earth is surrounded by a thick sheet of ozone, which is a form of oxygen. That layer of ozone surrounds the whole earth, like a blanket. It has been because of this ozone blanket that life has become possible on this planet, because ozone does not allow in the death rays that come from the sun. It allows in only the life rays and prevents the death rays; it returns them.

But in our stupidity to reach to the moon, we have made holes in the blanket. And the efforts continue. Now we are trying to reach Mars! Each time a rocket goes beyond the atmosphere of the earth, that is two hundred miles beyond, it creates great holes. Through those holes, death rays have started entering in. Now scientists are saying that these death rays will increase the rate of cancer by almost thirty percent; and other diseases are not counted, small diseases are not counted.

The stupid politicians are not listening. And if you call them stupid, then you are

jailed, you are punished; false allegations are made against you. But I don't see what else to call them. Stupid seems to be the most gentle and the most cultured word for them. They don't deserve it; they deserve something worse.

Life is a deep interdependence.

My vision of commune, Maneesha, is that nations disappear, big cities disappear, because they don't allow enough space for every human being -- and every human being has a certain psychological need for a territorial imperative, just like other animals. In big cities, man is continuously moving in a crowd. That creates great anxiety, tension, agony, and does not allow him any time to relax, any time, any place, to be himself -- to be alone, to be with the trees, which are life-giving sources, to be with the ocean, which is a life-giving source.

My vision of a new world, the world of communes, means no nations, no big cities, no families, but millions of small communes spread all over the earth in thick forests, lush green forests, in mountains, on islands. The smallest commune manageable, which we have already tried, can be of five thousand people, and the biggest commune can be of fifty thousand people. From five thousand to fifty thousand -- more than that will become unmanageable; then again comes the question of order and law, and the police, and the court, and all old criminals have to be brought back.

Small communes... five thousand seems to be the perfect number, because we have tried that. Everybody knows everybody else, all are friends. There is no marriage -- children belong to the commune. The commune has hospitals, schools, colleges. The commune takes care of the children; parents can visit them. It is simply insignificant whether the parents are living together or they have separated. For the child, they both are available; he can visit them, they can visit him.

All the communes should be interdependent, but they will not exchange money. Money should be dissolved. It has done tremendous harm to humanity. Now it is time to say goodbye to it!

These communes should exchange things. You have more milk products; you can give them to another commune, because you need more clothes, and that commune can provide you with more clothes -- a simple barter system, so no commune becomes rich.

Money is a very strange thing. You can accumulate it; that is the strangest secret of money. You cannot accumulate milk products, you cannot accumulate vegetables. If you have more vegetables you have to share with some commune which has not enough vegetables.

But money can be accumulated. And if one commune becomes richer than the other commune, then comes from the back door, the poverty and the richness and the whole nightmare of capitalism, and the classes of the poor and the rich, and the desire to dominate, because you are rich. You can enslave other communes. Money is one of the enemies of man.

Communes will be exchanging. They will be broadcasting on their radio stations, that such and such a product is available from them. Anybody who has certain other products that they need can contact them, and things can be exchanged in a friendly way; there is no haggling, there is no exploitation. But the commune should not become too big, because bigness is also dangerous.

A commune's criterion of bigness should be that everybody knows everybody else; that should be the limit. Once that limit is crossed, the commune should divide itself into two.

Just as two brothers separate, when a commune becomes big enough it divides itself into two communes, two sister communes. And there will be a deep interdependence, sharing ideas and skills, without any of the attitudes that grow out of possessiveness -- like nationalism and fanaticism. There will be nothing to be fanatic about. There will be no reason for a nation.

A small group of people can enjoy life more easily, because to have so many friends, so many acquaintances, is a joy unto itself. Today in the big cities, you live in the same house and you don't know your neighbor. In one house one hundred thousand people may be living. A one hundred story building can contain that many people -- almost a whole city. And they are absolute strangers to each other, living in a crowd, and yet being alone.

My idea of a commune is, living in small groups, which gives you enough space, and yet living in a close, loving, relationship. Your children are taken care of by the commune, your needs are taken care of by the commune, your medical care is taken care of by the commune. The commune becomes an authentic family without any diseases that families have created in the past. It is a loose family

and a constant movement.

There is no question of any marriage, and no question of any divorce. If two persons want to be together, they can be together, and if one day they don't want to be together, that is perfectly good. It was their decision to be together; now they can choose other friends. In fact, in one life why not live many lives? Why not make it richer? Why should a man cling to a woman, or a woman cling to a man unless they enjoy each other so much that they want to be together for their whole life. But looking at the world, the situation is clear. People would like to be independent from their families; children want to be independent from their families.

Just the other day, one small boy in California did something unique and special. He wanted to go out and play. This was nothing special; all children should be allowed to go out and play. But the mother and father insisted, "No, don't go out; just play inside the house." And the boy shot both the mother and the father. He played inside the house.

There is a limit... always listening to "no, no, no!"

In America the time rate of husbands and wives changing is three years. It is the same rate that people change their jobs; it is the same time-rate people change cities. There seems to be something special about three years. It seems it is the limit one can tolerate.

Beyond that, it becomes intolerable. So people change wives and husbands, people change cities, people change jobs.

But in a commune, there is no need to make any fuss. You can say goodbye any moment, and you can still remain friends, because who knows? After two years, you may fall in love again with the same man, with the same woman. In two years time you may have forgotten all the troubles, and you want to have a taste again; or perhaps you had fallen into the hands of a worse man and a worse woman, and you repent, and you want to go back! But it will be a richer life; you will have known many men and many women. Each man has his own uniqueness, and each woman has her own uniqueness.

Communes can also exchange people, if somebody wants to move into another commune, and the other commune is willing to accept. The other commune may say, "If somebody else wants to go into your commune, exchange is possible --

because we don't want to raise our population." People can decide. You can go and advertise yourself; some woman may like you, some people may turn friends. Somebody may have been bored in that commune, and would like to change their commune.…

The whole world should be one humanity, only divided by small communes on a practical basis: No fanaticism, no racism, no nationalism. Then, for the first time, we can drop the idea of wars. We can make life with honesty, worth living, worth enjoying; playful, meditative, creative, and give every man and every woman equal opportunity to grow and bring their potential to flowering.

The scene is the crucifixion. Three huge crosses are outlined against the sky, as the sun sets. A crowd of jeering soldiers and citizens surround the dying man, Jesus. Raising his eyes, he looks to the back of the mob and sees Peter trying to hide himself.

"Peter, Peter," Jesus cries in a hoarse voice. "Come closer, come closer!"

Peter wraps his cloak around his head and pretends not to hear. Jesus with his last strength calls out, "Peter, please... come closer."

Peter, realizing that he cannot ignore his dying master, creeps to the foot of the cross,

"Yes, Lord, what do you want of me?" "Peter, I can see my house from up here!"

His house must have been deep down in the city of Jerusalem; he is dying on the cross, hanging high up, and he wants to share his experience. I have always loved the story that even at the time of death, he says, "From here, from this height... I can see my house from up here."

Jesus was crucified only once. I have been on the cross almost my whole life. Jesus was crucified in a small unknown part of the world, Judea. I have been crucified in almost every country of the world. And my crime is that I can see the new house where man will live in the future: the new man, his new house, his new commune, his new future.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

The Golden Future Chapter #31

Chapter title: Watchfulness -- the essential religion 27 May 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive

code:

8705270

ShortTitle:

GOLDEN31

Audio:

Yes Video:

Yes Length:

70

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

THE OTHER NIGHT A GIRLFRIEND OF MINE WOLF-WHISTLED AT YOU IN

DARSHAN. SHE SAID YOU SMILED, WHEREAS NOBODY ELSE AROUND HER

LOOKED LIKE THEY APPRECIATED IT. I FELT SURE THAT YOU WOULD

ENJOY IT BECAUSE YOU'RE SUCH A CRAZY MASTER. WOULD YOU PLEASE

SPEAK ABOUT THIS CRAZINESS. I LOVE IT SO MUCH. WHAT IS THE

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ORDINARY MADNESS AND DIVINE MADNESS?

Anand Gaya, there is a great difference between ordinary madness and divine madness.

Although it is great, it is very subtle. There is something similar and something absolutely different. The ordinary madness means you have fallen below the mind -- but you have fallen out of it. The divine madness means you have gone beyond the mind --

but you have gone out of it.

Falling below the mind and going beyond the mind have one similarity: both are leaving the mind behind; hence, the madman and the sage in some way look similar, but their difference is great. To be beyond the mind means to be in silence, utter silence. To be beyond the mind means you become the master of the mind. To fall below the mind means you become a slave of the mind. All the whimsical ideas of the mind you have to obey; you don't have any control over your mind.

The man who has transcended his mind is in absolute control of his mind. He uses it when needed, and he stops using it when it is not needed; mind becomes an instrument in his hands. But for the ordinary man the situation is very sad. He becomes an instrument in the hands of the mind.

You are asking, "The other night a girlfriend of mine wolf-whistled at you in darshan."

You seem to be very poor. You have only A girlfriend? But whosoever is here, whether girl or boy, is my friend. I have not heard the wolf-whistle and I would like your girlfriend to do it again. I love it, because nobody does it to me. She must be mad.

As far as my smiling is concerned, she says that I smiled. Even if she had tears in her eyes, I would have smiled the same. Even if she were dead, I would have smiled the same. I don't smile at you, I simply smile; it is not addressed to anyone in particular. But if she feels good about it, there is no harm! This time I will be careful, but she has to do it a little louder that I can hear it in the whole crowd. And whether it is a wolf-whistle or ANYthing, if it is done out of love, it is respectful.

".… whereas nobody else around her looked like they appreciated it." Perhaps she does not know how to do it; otherwise, my people are always appreciating. Only when you do something wrong, utterly wrong.… She has to do some homework. She should start doing it to everyone in the ashram, whomsoever she sees, so she will become famous as the wolf-whistle girlfriend -- girlfriend of all. Why possess her? Such a girlfriend is wild and needs to have total freedom.

If this time she does it well I will specially smile at her, and wave too, because if a person is doing so much.… Everybody cannot wolf-whistle. Particularly girls don't do that; --

boys do that! She is daring, courageous -- and I love daring and courageous people. And if I wave at her, then everybody will appreciate her. But that does not mean that every girl should start wolf-whistling at me. Don't disturb the peace and the music and the silence of the place.

There were two pregnant cats standing next to the garbage pile looking for mice. One turned to the other and said, "Do you know the big ginger tomcat with the bushy tail?

Well, he's the one who put me in the family way. Who is the father of yours?"

The other pregnant cat replied, "I don't know. I had my head in an empty sardine can at the time."

There are people and people. And you have to learn... love all!

Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,

YESTERDAY I WAS WONDERING WHY I STILL GET SO CAUGHT UP

SOMETIMES IN MY GERMAN SERIOUSNESS AND WANTING THINGS TO RUN

PERFECTLY. TODAY IT IS ALL GONE. YOU SHOWERED US WITH SO MUCH

LOVE THIS MORNING THAT ALL WORRIES ARE SWEPT AWAY. SOMETHING

OPENED IN ME THAT MAKES ME WANT TO DANCE AND SING AND

EMBRACE THE WHOLE WORLD. IT FEELS SO GOOD TO FEEL SO DRUNK

WITH LOVE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY, RATHER THAN PULLING MYSELF

TOGETHER AFTER DISCOURSE AND GETTING CARRIED AWAY WITH

ORGANIZING AND GETTING THINGS DONE MORE EFFICIENTLY. BUT THIS

NEW STATE HAS A STRONG SIDE EFFECT; IT BRINGS UP MY LAZY SIDE

AND, TOTALLY UNUSUAL FOR ME LATELY, I FEEL SENSUOUS AND SEXUAL

FROM TOP TO TOE. BELOVED OSHO, ANY ADVICE AS TO HOW TO COMBINE

THESE TWO SIDES? OR SHOULD I JUST LET GO AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS?

Nandan, first your feeling sensuous and sexual from top to toe: a simple device

is to start wolf-whistling as much... I will really love it! And all your sexuality and sensuousness will disappear in it.

You say, "Yesterday I was wondering why I still get so caught up sometimes in my German seriousness and wanting things to run perfectly."

I need a few Germans; otherwise who will take care of all my lazy people? So don't be serious about it; it is absolutely needed by the commune. And particularly for a German it is so natural that not to be serious will be an unnecessary torture.

You say, "Today it is all gone. You showered us with so much love this morning that all worries are swept away. Something opened in me that makes me want to dance and sing and embrace the whole world."

All worries may have gone, but the idea of embracing the whole world is the idea of Adolf Hitler; he was also trying to embrace the whole world. People just did not like it --

that's their problem. But he made immense effort, and he had almost succeeded.

And my showering of love... these are just to nourish your roots, not to destroy them. If you have a German heart, my love will make it more German, and if you have an Italian lousiness, my love will make it really lousy. You look at my photographer Niskriya; the more I shower my love on him the more perfect he becomes.

You have to become yourself.

Whatever is your natural tendency, your potential, my love has to nourish it, not to wash it away. Of course these pre-monsoon showers are a little hard and soak the roots, but don't be worried. I take care that nobody goes astray from himself or herself. It is perfectly beautiful that something opened in you Nandan, that makes you want to dance and sing. But dance perfectly and sing perfectly!

"It feels so good to feel so drunk with love in the middle of the day, rather than pulling myself together after discourse and getting carried away with organizing and getting things done more efficiently."

Somehow you have got the wrong idea that I would like you not to have your

German quality. It has its own beauty -- to work efficiently, to organize anything perfectly. My love should make you capable of doing things efficiently with a song in your heart, of organizing things perfectly with a dance in your being. They should not be antagonistic to one another but complimentaries, helping each other. And this is for everyone. You can only be your authentic self. Once in a while you can be on a holiday -- that is not a distraction, just the weekend. Monday, you come back to your original self.

You are asking, "Any advice as to how to combine these two sides? Or should I just let go and see what happens?"

You just let go. There is no need of combining them. They are complimentaries; they will help each other and become an organic unity.

If you can watch silently, then all opposites can be supportive of each other and all contradictions can dissolve into a beautiful orchestra.

Mistress Goldblum brought her husband's remains to the undertaker to have them cremated. When asked what kind of container she wanted his ashes stored in, she said,

"None. I want them poured right into my hands."

The undertaker thought this rather odd, but did as the widow requested. Mrs. Goldblum returned home and went straight to the bedroom. She dimmed the lights, put romantic music on the stereo and whispered, "Hymie, here is that blow-job you always wanted."

And she blew his ashes all over the floor.

Now if Jews disappear from the world, something tremendously beautiful will be gone!

The world exactly needs the people there are. There are lazy people -- they are needed.

They are part of a relaxed, utterly contented flowering that is of its own kind. And there are perfectionists. They are needed, otherwise everything will be topsy turvy. There are so many kinds of people. They create a variety, and variety in itself is tremendously needed.

You should not ask that everyone becomes like everybody else. In fact, everybody should be left to be himself or herself and respected the way the person is. Variety means many, many kinds of flowers in the garden. Just roses and roses will be boring. Amongst millions of other people, everybody has an uniqueness and is not boring, but helps the world in its variety, makes the garden richer.

Particularly, my emphasis is that you should always remember that whatever is natural to you is your destiny. What others are doing is good for them. You need not impose yourself on them, and you need not allow them to impose themselves on you.

Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,

PLEASE HELP ME! NOW MY BOYFRIEND HAS BEEN IN GOA FOR FIVE

WEEKS AND I'VE HAD SUCH A GOOD TIME ENJOYING THE FREEDOM AND

INDEPENDENCE, NO NEED TO FACE MY JEALOUSY AND POSSESSIVENESS, JUST FLOATING THROUGH THE DAY. NOW IT LOOKS AS IF HE IS COMING

BACK SOON AND I'M GETTING NERVOUS ALREADY, WONDERING WHAT HE

IS DOING, HOW IT IS GOING TO BE, IF HE FOUND SOMEBODY ELSE ETCETERA. WHAT IS THIS ATTACHMENT TO A PARTICULAR PERSON

WHICH CREATES ALL THESE COMFORTABLE AND VERY UNCOMFORTABLE

FEELINGS? I'M NOT REALLY A MEDITATIVE TYPE, BUT IS THERE ANY

POSSIBILITY TO GO BEYOND THIS ATTACHMENT OF THE HEART AND FEEL

FREE, OR IS THE ONLY WAY TO LIVE IT, GO THROUGH IT, AND SUFFER AND

ENJOY THE WHOLE THING?

Latifa, I know your boyfriend. He will make anybody happy if he goes to Goa and remains there for ever. But again, you are a German; you cannot be satisfied with anything less difficult. He is a challenge. So if you are becoming nervous, it is natural.

And don't be worried about his getting involved with any girl, because no girl will get involved with him.

I have thought about him and I think that only Latifa can manage him. He's a crackpot --

but you love him. You cannot love a simple human being. You are born for each other: neither can you find another boyfriend nor can he find another girlfriend. So don't be worried about possessiveness or anything. You can be absolutely non-possessive -- still he will be your boyfriend. Where else can he go? You are in a good, secured, guaranteed, insured condition.

In the first place, it is a miracle that you have found him. When I heard about it for the first time I said, "My God! Now something mysterious is going to happen. These two people together are going to create so much trouble." But still, he's attached to you, you are attached to him.

Mostly your love is fighting, and when you are tired of fighting you love also -- but that is only when you are both tired. He will also be feeling nervous, because he has to come back. I have sent him only for six weeks. He left immediately the very moment he received my message: "Go to Goa." He did not wait even a single day. He must have enjoyed those five weeks the way you have enjoyed them. Now you are feeling nervous, and he will be feeling nervous because six weeks will finally come to an end.

But deep down you are also feeling happy that he is coming, and the same will be his situation. Let him come. He's just your old boyfriend: you know him every bit, he knows you every bit. All the fights are well known, all the problems are well known. There is no need to feel nervous because there is not going to be anything new. It is just the old chap, so let him come and start life again in the

same old way.

It is something to be understood: the girlfriend you get or the boyfriend you get, you deserve. You don't get any boyfriend who you don't deserve and you don't get any girlfriend who you don't deserve -- those kinds of relationships last for one day or two days. But your relationship has a history and it is going to last to the very end, so relax and take it easily!

You deserve him, he deserves you. And once you see the point that you deserve each other there is no question of any grudge, any complaining, any grumbling. You are strong enough, because that crackpot has not been able to make even a dent in you. He has been doing all kinds of neurotic things. But he does not know that Latifa is a psychotic, and neurotics and psychotics make good marriages. They fit perfectly.

One psychoanalyst was asked -- because those two words look so similar, and the difference is known only to the experts -- the psychoanalyst was asked, "What is the difference between neurosis and psychotics?"

"He said, "The neurotic thinks two plus two are five and, whatever you do, he never changes his mind. He's determined and committed to his viewpoint. The psychotic knows that two plus two are four but feels very nervous -- why are they four?"

Perfect marriages happen only in heaven, but once in a while on the earth too. Latifa and her boyfriend are a perfect combination. So let the poor fellow come, start hammering the old way.… You are accustomed and well trained, he is accustomed and well trained. One feels worried about a new girlfriend; one never knows what she is going to do -- freak out in the middle of the night? One is nervous about the new boyfriend, because one cannot predict what kind of man he's going to prove to be.

You are certain. In this certainty you should relax and let him come. He will bring his own question. I have been throwing out his questions, but because I have answered yours, now I will have to answer his question about you.

But I don't see that there is any problem. You are both perfectly happy in your misery; all people are perfectly happy in their miserable relationships! That's why after a five weeks'

separation you feel good. But a longer separation and you will start missing him.

I have given him an exact time so that you can enjoy freedom and he can enjoy freedom; and in the right time, when you start missing each other, he's back. Just wait! And he's not a dangerous person; he cannot harm you. He's very good at heart -- just a little loose in his head. But to have a boyfriend who is a little loose in the head is better than to have a boyfriend who is a little tight in the head. I know it is no ordinary relationship: you both are extraordinary.

What did the tornado say to the coconut palm? "Hang on to your nuts, this is no ordinary blow job." Question 4

BELOVED OSHO,

LOVE AND MEDITATION SEEM TO BE OPPOSITE POLARITIES. CAN YOU

PLEASE TALK TO US ON HOW TO GROW IN MEDITATION AND IN INTIMACY

WITH THE BELOVED.

Prem Azima, you neither know what love is, nor do you know what meditation is. Still, you are disturbed by the question. To you, love and meditation seem to be opposite polarities -- I wonder where you got that idea? If love and meditation are opposite polarities, then nothing in this world can be close to any other thing. But I know all the old religions have also been under the same fallacy.

The meditators have been escaping to the mountains to avoid love, and the lovers never bothered about meditation because they knew that if they meditated their love life would be finished. It has been one of the longest fallacies humanity has lived with. Love is a silence, a joy, a peace, a blissfulness between two persons. But because there are two persons, sometimes they don't match.

Meditation is the same experience of silence and peace and bliss -- but alone. But if two meditators are in love, then things come to the highest peak. If one meditator can reach to a certain peak in his blissfulness, in his silence, two

meditators who love each other can become an immense support to each other's flight into the unknown. Their love can become a nourishment to their meditation, and vice-versa, their meditation can become a nourishment to their love.

This is the point where I differ from all the religions of the past. They have made love and meditation polarities, parallel lines which meet nowhere.

To me a man of meditation is bound to be immensely loving. All his anger is gone, all his hate is gone, all his possessiveness is gone. If he cannot love then who else can love?

And a man of love can go deepest in meditation because love is our highest quality, our purest self, our perfect song. If two singing hearts cannot meet in deep meditation then no other meeting is possible.

In fact, the people who have escaped to the mountains to meditate, think only of women in their meditation. They hallucinate. Their hallucinations can become so real that they start talking to those women. And in the whole world, people without meditation are loving each other, but their love does not bring a paradise to their life; on the contrary, it creates hell. They are known as intimate enemies -

- enemies who have decided to live together.

My own understanding is that unless love and meditation are almost two sides of the same coin, we cannot create the new man, the new humanity, the new world.

Last night I told you the story of Jesus on the cross telling Peter, "Peter, from my height I can see, far away, my house." From my height of consciousness I can also see the faraway house where love and meditation will dwell together. We have to create that house.

Azima, don't say love and meditation are opposite polarities. That is a lie propagated by the priests down the ages. It has destroyed lovers into miserable lives and meditators into juiceless deserts. I want your life to be a garden full of flowers -- full of fruits, full of juice.

There is no question of how to create a loving, meditative relationship. Here, the people who have gathered around me are already living -- at least making an effort for the first time in the whole history of man -- to bring love and meditation as two sides of the same experience. Why should love disturb your

meditation?

In fact, love should give you the right atmosphere, the right soil to meditate. And meditation should give you the right fragrance for love to become a treasure, a glory, a benediction.

Okay, Maneesha? Yes, Osho.

The Golden Future Chapter #32

Chapter title: The new man: the very salt of the earth 27 May 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive

code: 8705275

ShortTitle: GOLDEN32

Audio: Yes Video: Yes Length: 125

mins

Question 1 BELOVED OSHO,

IT TOUCHES SO MUCH WHEN YOU TALK ABOUT THE NEW MAN. WHEN

YOU FIRST MENTIONED THIS CONCEPT TO US MANY YEARS AGO, THE NEW

MAN WAS SIMPLY THAT TO ME: A CONCEPT THAT WAS INTRIGUING, A FASCINATING POSSIBILITY. BUT LATELY, I FEEL AS IF I KNOW THIS NEW

MAN -- THIS NEW RACE OF PEOPLE -- AND REALLY CARE ABOUT HIM. IT

SOUNDS AUDACIOUS TO REPEAT THE WORDS I HAVE HEARD YOU USE: "I AM PREGNANT WITH THE NEW MAN." BUT ACTUALLY, THAT'S HOW I FEEL; NOT ONLY ABOUT MYSELF, BUT ABOUT ALL OF YOUR PEOPLE. WHAT IS

OUR RELATIONSHIP TO THE NEW MAN?

Maneesha, the new man contains my whole philosophy about life and how it should be --

lived in totality, in intensity, in wholeness, so that we are not only dragging ourselves from the cradle to the grave, but we can make each moment a tremendous rejoicing -- a song, a dance, a celebration.

The old man that has existed up to now is on his death bed. He has suffered much; he needs all our compassion. He has been conditioned to live in misery, in suffering, in self-torture. He was given promises: promissory notes for great rewards after death -- the more he suffers, the more he tortures himself, the more he is masochistic, the more he is destructive of his own dignity, the more he will be rewarded.

That was a very convenient concept for all the vested interests because the man who is ready to suffer can easily be enslaved. The man who is ready to sacrifice

today for an unknown tomorrow has already declared his inclination to be enslaved. The future becomes his bondage. And for thousands of years, man has lived only in hope, in imagination, in dreams, in utopias, but not in reality. And there is no other life than the life of reality, than the life that exists in this moment.

The new man is a rebellion, a revolt, a revolution against all the conditionings which can enslave him, oppress him, exploit him, just by giving him hopes of a fictitious heaven, frightening him, blackmailing him about another fictitious phenomenon: hell. All the old ways of life were strangely in agreement on one point: that man is a sacrificial animal at the feet of a fictitious God.

There were times when men were actually sacrificed alive, butchered before stone statues. Although nobody dares to do such a thing now, psychologically the situation has not changed. Man is still sacrificed either in the name of communism, or in the name of capitalism, or in the name of an Aryan race, in the name of Islam, in the name of Christianity, in the name of Hinduism. Instead of stone gods, now there are only phony words, meaningless. But man has accepted to live like this for the simple reason that every child finds himself born in a crowd which is already conditioned. The teachers are conditioned, the parents are conditioned, the neighbors are conditioned; and the small child is almost helpless -- he cannot envisage any other alternative than to be part of the crowd.

The old man was a crowd, a cog in the wheel; the old man had no individuality. The vested interests had taken all care to destroy self-respect, dignity, a joy and a gratefulness that you are a human being, that you are the highest creation in the long, long path of evolution... that you are the crowning glory.

These ideas were dangerous. If a man has some respect for himself, some dignity of being human, you cannot reduce him to a slave; you cannot destroy his soul and make him a robot. Up to now, man has only pretended to live -- his life has been only hypothetical.

The new man is a revolt against the whole past.

He is a declaration that we are going to create a new way of life, new values of life; that we are destined for new goals -- faraway stars are our targets. And we are not going to allow anybody to sacrifice us for any beautiful name. We are

going to live our lives, not according to ideals, but according to our own longings, our own passionate intuitions.

And we are going to live moment to moment; we are no longer to be befooled by the tomorrow, and the promises for tomorrow.

The new man contains the whole future of humanity. The old man is bound to die. He has prepared his own grave -- he is digging it every moment, deeper and deeper. What do you think Ronald Reagan is doing? -- digging a grave for humanity as deep as possible. These people seem to be afraid even of dead people -- that if the grave is not deep enough, they may come back; they may come back alive.

Nuclear weapons and all destructive measures are a preparation for a global suicide. The old man has decided to die. It is up to the intelligent people in the world to disconnect from the old man before he destroys you too... to disconnect yourself from old traditions, old religions, old nations, old ideologies.

For the first time, the old is no longer gold. The old is the rotten corpse of an ugly past. It is a great responsibility for the new generation, for the young people to renounce the past.

In the past, religions used to renounce the world. I teach you to love the world so that it can be saved, and to renounce the past totally and irrevocably, to be discontinuous.

The new man is not an improvement upon the old; he is not a continuous phenomenon, not a refinement. The new man is the declaration of the death of the old, and the birth of an absolutely fresh man -- unconditioned, without any nation, without any religion, without any discriminations of men and women, of black and white, of East and West, or North and South.

The new man is a manifesto of one humanity. It is the greatest revolution the world has ever seen.

You have heard about the miracle that Moses parted the sea in two parts. That miracle is nothing. I want to part humanity, the whole ocean of humanity divided in two parts: the old and the new.

The new will love this life, this world. The new will learn the art of living and

loving and dying.

The new will not be concerned about heaven and hell, sin and virtue. The new man will be concerned about how to increase the joys of life, the pleasures of life

-- more flowers, more beauty, more humanity, more compassion. And we have the capacity and the potential to make this planet a paradise, and to make this moment the greatest ecstasy of your life.

Let the old die. Let the old be led by people like Ronald Reagan. Let the blind people follow the blind.

But those who have a younger spirit -- and when I say "a younger spirit," it includes even those old people who are not old in spirit; and it does not include even the young people who are old in spirit. The spiritually young are going to be the new man.

The new man is not a hope: You are already pregnant with it.

My work is just to make you aware that the new man has already arrived. My work is to help you to recognize him and to respect him.

You are asking, Maneesha: "What is our relationship to the new man?" There is no relationship between you and the new man because you are the new man. You just have to drop all the dust that has gathered down the ages on the mirror of your consciousness.

The new man is not someone coming from another planet. The new man is you in your freshness, in your silences of the heart, in your depth of meditation, in your beautiful spaces of love, in your songs of joy, in your dances of ecstasy, in your love of this earth.

No religion teaches you to love this earth -- and this earth is your mother, and these trees are your brothers, and these stars are your friends.

You are not going to have a relationship with the new man because that would be a separation; all relationships separate. You are going to be the new man. In my vision you are already on the path of the new man. You have started the journey, although you are not fully awake; but as you will see the old man moving more and more towards the graveyard, it will become easier for you to renounce him and his ways of life, his churches, his synagogues, his temples, his gods, his holy

scriptures.

Your holy scripture is your whole life,

and nobody else can write it -- you have to write it. You come with an empty book, and it depends on you what you make of it. Birth is not life; it is only an opportunity given to you to create life... to create a life as beautiful, as glorious, as loving as you can imagine, as you can dream.

The new man's dreams and his reality will be one because his dreams will be rooted here in this earth. They will bring flowers and fruits. They will not be just dreams -- they will make the world a dreamland.

Realize the responsibility... man has never faced a greater responsibility before: a responsibility to renounce the whole past, to erase it from your being.

Be Adam and Eve again, and let this earth be the Garden of Eden; and this time we will see who the God is who has the guts to drive man out of the Garden of Eden! It is going to be our garden, and if God wants to be in our garden, He will have to knock on our doors.

This earth can be a splendor, a magic, a miracle. Our hands have that touch -- it is just that we have never tried it. Man has never given a chance to his own potential to grow, to blossom, to bring fulfillment, contentment, to shower the whole earth with flowers, to fill the whole earth with fragrance. To me, that fragrance is godliness.

The new man will not worship a God as a creator of the world; the new man will create God as a fragrance, as beauty, as love, as truth. Up to now God has been the creator: for the new man, man will be the creator, and God is going to be the created. We can create godliness -- it is within our hands.

That's why I say the new man is the greatest revolution that has ever happened in the world. And there is no way to avoid it because the old man is determined to die, determined, committed to commit suicide. Let him die peacefully. Those who have a rebellious spirit should just disconnect themselves, and they will be the saviors, they will create a Noah's ark, they will be the beginning of a new world. And because we have known the old world and its miseries; we can avoid all those miseries; we can avoid all those jealousies, all those angers, all those wars, all those destructive tendencies.…

We can go through a total transformation: we can create innocent people, loving people, people who breathe in freedom, people who help each other to be free. We can create nourishment for everybody to be dignified, to be respected -- not according to some ideals and values, but just as he is.

The new man is going to be the very salt of the earth. Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

LAST NIGHT, AFTER YOU HAD LEFT DISCOURSE, AND I WAS BOWING

DOWN, A FEELING CAME OVER ME SO STRONGLY THAT I COULDN'T

IMAGINE LIVING AFTER YOU DIE. I FELT THAT WITHOUT YOUR CONSTANT

SHOWERING, I WOULD BE LOST IN DARKNESS FOREVER. LATER, SITTING

IN MY ROOM, I FELT A TREMENDOUS FEAR COMING UP IN ME -- THE SORT

THAT USUALLY CATAPULTS ME INTO SOME NEUROTIC AND COMPULSIVE

ACTIVITY. THIS TIME THOUGH, I SAT, FELT YOU, AND LET THE FEELING

COME UNTIL IT WAS SO STRONG THAT I FELT ABSOLUTELY PARALYZED.

SUDDENLY, IT POPPED; AND I WAS SITTING THERE IN A KIND OF SILENCE I HAVE NEVER KNOWN BEFORE. TODAY, I FEEL QUIET AND

UNCOMPLICATED -- MY USUAL OBSESSIONS FAR AWAY, NOT ECSTATIC, NOT DOWN; JUST VERY SIMPLE AND SOBER. BELOVED MASTER, WAS THIS

AN ENCOUNTER WITH DEATH?

Rafia, there is no way to encounter death, just because death is a fiction. You can think about it, you can be afraid about it; but you cannot encounter it. Nobody ever dies --

people are simply changing houses.

What you have experienced was first the fear that: after I die, how are you going to live without me? Don't be worried about it. First, if I see that you cannot live without me, I can postpone dying -- unless you come with folded hands, and you say, "Now, it is too much -- I cannot tolerate You any more."

Secondly, before meeting me you have lived without me. If I die, it will be a shock -- for a few days, you will feel in a dramatic mood of sadness, and then life will take you over again. Millions of people have died -- every day people go on dying -- and life continues with all its songs, with all its discos, with all its music. People go on dying, but if you think before... it is the thinking that makes it difficult. Death itself is a wound that time heals very quickly. But I will not even leave that wound in you. Before I die, I will make you able to see that there is no death.

What is the purpose of all your meditations? It is a deep search to know that life is eternal, and death as such is only an observation of the outsiders. You have always seen other people die: have you ever seen yourself die? But what do you know when other people die? Only one thing -- that they don't breathe, they don't talk; that their blood circulation stops, that their hearts have no more beats.

I was telling you just a few days ago One man in the part of Kashmir occupied

by Pakistan, has played a joke on people for the third time. He is one hundred and twenty-five years old: he has died three times. This was the third time, and because he has done the act two times before, people were very, very cautious. Doctors were called, every examination was done, and when everybody agreed that this time the poor guy had really died -- it was no longer a joke -- that man opened one eye, and said, "Who is saying I am dead? At least, this time I'm not!"

The relatives had gathered from faraway villages, and they all went away in sadness: "It seems he will have a few years more, and he will again torture us into coming!" But the old man said, "Listen, this is my last act; next time I'm really going to die."

He has been asked by doctors what his secret is, and he says his secret is very simple: going deep into meditation, he realized that as you go deeper, your breathing becomes slower. When you are deepest in meditation, your breathing stops. And it is simply a knack.… Once he learned that stopping the breathing is not death, he allowed even the heart to stop -- he just relaxed. And from deep down, he was watching the whole show that was going all around: the doctors, and physicians, and the relatives.

There was one man, Bhrahma Yogi, from South India -- he did the same experiment in almost every university of the world, particularly the medical colleges. For ten minutes, it was possible for him to pretend to die. And he had certificates from the greatest authorities -- from Oxford, from Cambridge -- that he is dead; the doctors signed certificates for his death. And after ten minutes he would start breathing again, smiling, and he would open his eyes. It was very frightening.

He had collected so many certificates -- death certificates from so many authorities -- that he had challenged the whole medical science: "Your idea of death is incorrect. You simply think that these symptoms of life are life; they are only symptoms -- very outward symptoms. They show only one thing: that life is connected with the body. When the connection is no longer there, the symptoms disappear. It does not mean that life disappears."

It is almost like electricity: you can see the electricity, you can put it off, and all symptoms will disappear; but that does not mean that electricity has died. Life is nothing but bio-electricity -- living electricity -- a higher form, a refined form of the same energy as electricity.

I will not leave, Rafia, unless you have experienced that there is no death. I will ask your permission before I leave. You will have to sign your signature that you give me leave, then I can go on a holiday. And once you know that your inner life, your real life, is eternal, you will be able to have some contact with me -- although I will not be in the body.

To be in the body is not equivalent to life. It is a kind of imprisonment. You are imprisoned in the body; you can be free of the body, you can become part of the whole.

And this time I am going to become part of the whole. I am not going to enter

another womb, into another imprisonment. I have done my jail terms -- complete!

But one thing important happened that you have not been very conscious about: the moment you allowed the fear -- the darkness surrounding you -- and you relaxed into it, with no resistance, with no fight, with no desire to escape into some activity, slowly, slowly, the fear and the darkness and the death disappeared. You became profoundly silent... a silence that you have never known before.

"Today, I feel," you are saying, "quiet and uncomplicated -- my usual obsessions far away, not ecstatic, not down; just very simple and sober." This is beautiful -- this is a great experience. You have touched something deep in existence itself. Feel blissful, and remember the experience. Next time, anything that happens, allow it to happen and just sit silently in the middle of it -- a center of the cyclone. Slowly, slowly, the cyclone will disappear, and only the center will be left behind. You will feel immensely centered, silent, sober, innocent, simple -- experiences which are tremendously valuable.

We miss these experiences because we always escape. When you feel afraid, you get involved in some activity; you go to meet a friend, you start fighting or loving your girl friend, you go to the restaurant. If nothing else, you start smoking -- but you have to do something to escape from the experience. This way, people go on missing great opportunities of spiritual growth.

Whatever has happened this time should be remembered, and if another opportunity arises -- and it is bound to arise -- use it even more deeply, more joyously, with a welcome, and it will open doors of great riches and great treasures.

But you have not understood the great opportunity because in the end you still ask:

"Beloved Master, was this an encounter with death?"

You have encountered silence, you have encountered a new quality within you of soberness, quietude -- which is unusual to you. You were not ecstatic, and not down, very centered: neither at this extreme nor that extreme, but exactly in the middle. But you have not understood. It is natural -- when for the first time it happens, it is expected that you will not understand it. But I want you to

remember, it was not an encounter with death; it was an encounter with your fear of death, with your fear of being left behind, with your fear of being without a master.

Ten years after his arrival in America from Italy, Roselli had saved enough money from his vegetable business to build a huge house.

"I want-a three bedroom-as upstairs," he explained to the builder. "Nice big-a staircase leading up to bedroom-as, and right over here next to a staircase, I want-a hollow statue."

Months later, he returned and found everything to his satisfaction. Then he noticed a statue next to the staircase.

"Hey, what's-a matter with you?" shouted Roselli. "You no understand-a what I tell-a you?"

"Isn't that what you ordered?" asked the builder. "A hollow statue?"

"Are you stupid, or something?" cried the Italian. "I want-a one of those things-a that goes-a ring-a ring. You pick it up and say-àhallo, 's tat you?'"

Just a little misunderstanding... otherwise, Rafia, you had a beautiful experience. Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

WHENEVER, I AM IN LOVE WITH A MAN, FOR THOSE YEARS NO OTHER

MAN ATTRACTS ME. BUT FOR THE MAN, IT'S NOT THE SAME. THOUGH HE

IS HAPPY AND SATISFIED WITH ME, AND WANTS TO KEEP THE

RELATIONSHIP WITH ME, HE HAS HIS SHORT LOVE AFFAIRS EVERY FEW

MONTHS. I UNDERSTAND THE DIFFERENT NATURE OF MAN AND

WOMAN. I ALSO UNDERSTAND EVERY LOVE RELATIONSHIP HAS ITS PEAKS AND

VALLEYS. STILL, SADNESS IN ME KEEPS ON COMING FOR A SHORT WHILE, AND LEAVING. I GIVE A LONG ROPE TO THE MAN. MY FRIENDS SAY I MAKE MYSELF SO AVAILABLE THAT I LET THE MAN TAKE ME FOR

GRANTED AND I LOSE MY SELF-RESPECT. OSHO, IS IT SO? I'M NOT CLEAR. I DON'T EXPECT ANYTHING FROM HIM. YOU KNOW ME BETTER. WOULD

YOU PLEASE LIKE TO COMMENT?

Neelam, there are many things in your question. First, you have a misunderstanding about man's nature. You think, as many people in the world think, that man is polygamous, and the woman is monogamous... that the woman wants to live with one man, to love one man, to devote and dedicate herself totally to one man, but man is different in nature -- he wants to love other women too, at least, once in a while.

The reality is: both are polygamous. The woman has been conditioned by man for thousands of years into thinking that she is monogamous. And man is very cunning; he has exploited the woman in many ways. One of the ways is: he has been telling her that man is, by nature, polygamous. All the psychologists, all the sociologists are agreed upon the fact that man is polygamous; and none of them says the same thing about woman.

My own understanding is that both are polygamous. If a woman does not behave in a polygamous way, it is nurture, not nature. She has been utterly conditioned so long that the conditioning has gone into her very blood, into her bones, into her very marrow. Why do I say so? -- because in the whole of existence, all the animals are polygamous.

It would be really surprising that if the whole existence is polygamous, only woman has an exceptional nature. In existence there are no exceptions. But because a woman had to depend financially on man, man has cut the woman in so many ways: he has cut her wings, he has cut her freedom, he has cut her dependence upon herself. He has taken her responsibilities on his shoulders, showing great love, saying: you need not be worried about yourself, I will take

care. But in the name of love, he has taken the freedom of the woman. For centuries he has not allowed a woman to be educated, to be qualified in any way, in any craft, in any skill -- she has to be financially dependent on the man. He has taken away even her freedom of movement -- she cannot move freely the way man moves; she is confined to the house. The house is almost her imprisonment.

And in the past particularly, she was continuously pregnant because out of ten children, nine children used to die. To have two, three children, a woman had to be continually pregnant the whole time she was capable of reproducing. A pregnant woman becomes even more dependent financially -- the man becomes her caretaker. The man is knowledgeable, the woman knows nothing. She has been kept ignorant because knowledge is power -- that's why woman has been deprived of knowledge.

And because it is a man's world, they all agree as far as keeping the woman enslaved is concerned.

But everything has been done with very articulate intelligence. She has been told that it is her nature to be monogamous. Now there is not a single psychoanalyst, not a single woman sociologist to refute this: if man is polygamous, then why should woman be monogamous? Man has made the way for his polygamy: he has created prostitutes. It was an accepted fact in the past that no wife would have objected if her husband, once in a while, visited a prostitute. It was thought that it is just natural for man.

I say unto you that both are polygamous. The whole existence is polygamous. It has to be

-- monogamy is boredom. However beautiful a woman may be, however beautiful a man may be, you become tired -- the same geography, the same topography. How long do you have to see the same face? So it happens that years pass, and the husband has not looked attentively at his wife for a single moment.

My own approach is natural and simple. I want no marriages in the world of the new man. Marriage is such an ugly and rotten phenomenon -- so destructive, so inhuman. On the one hand it makes one woman a slave, and on the other hand, it creates the ugliest institution of prostitutes. The prostitutes are needed to save

the marriage; otherwise, the man will start fooling around with other people's wives. It is a social device so that he doesn't get entangled with another's wife -- there are beautiful women available.

In India, in the days of Gautam Buddha, it was the tradition that the most beautiful woman in the town was not allowed to be married; she had to become a prostitute. She was called nagabadu: the wife of the whole city -- because she was so beautiful that to be married to one man was going to create jealousies, conflicts, problems. It was better to avoid all those conflicts amongst men, to make her a prostitute -- available for all.

In India, every temple had devadasis. Still in South India, there are devadasis. Every family was required, in the past, to donate their most beautiful girl to the temple, to God.

In the name of God, those beautiful girls in the temples became prostitutes. First, they were used by the priests; second, they were used by the rich customers -- I mean the rich worshipers. And they were so many that they were available in every price range; even the poorest could afford one. Of course, it would not be so beautiful a woman, but any woman is better than no woman.

Even today, just a few days ago, a survey was made in Bombay of all the prostitutes --

thirty percent of them have come from South India, from temples where their parents have dedicated them to God. For the parents, there was an incentive: dedicating her to God was easier than to get a girl married. It is so difficult in India... you have to give so much money, that not all parents can afford it -- just one daughter, and they will have to sell their land, their house, they will become beggars. So it was very easy, and comfortable, convenient, and virtuous, too -- respectable, honorable -- the society honored it.

They offered those girls; they still offer those girls to the temples, and the temples are selling those girls to all great cities because now rich worshipers don't come to the temples. It is better to have those girls sold to agents in Bombay, in Calcutta, in New Delhi because politicians will need them, priests will need them, rich people will need them. People who are living far away from their homes, working in cities -- their families are in the villages -- will need them.

Thirty percent of the prostitutes in Bombay have come from temples where they were dedicated to God. Every temple in the past was nothing but a sacred facade to hide prostitutes under the name of devadasis. The word means: servants of God.

Man has arranged for himself, but he has prohibited the woman.… First, his ego is hurt if his woman falls in love with somebody else. That means he is rejected, that means he is not man enough, that means something is missing in him.

And more than that, there is another problem: private property. He has to keep a perfect guard on his woman because he wants his own blood to inherit his property. And if the women are free to have love affairs, then it is very difficult -

- almost impossible -- to be certain that your son is really your son. It may be somebody else's son, and he will inherit your property. To protect private property, the woman has to be conditioned that she is monogamous. But it is not true, it is not natural.

Whether one is man or woman, everybody needs a change, at least once in a while -- for the weekend. Five days you can both be monogamous; for two days, on the weekend, you can both be polygamous. And what is the worry about the property -- who owns it when you are dead -- whether it is your blood or somebody else's blood? It seems to be an unnecessary worry -- somebody will inherit it.

And if you become interested in other women, you should understand that your woman is also human, has the same heart, the same consciousness -- she also likes sometimes to meet a new man. She also gets tired and bored.

In the new world, to which I have dedicated my whole life, there should be no marriage --

only lovers. And as long as they are pleased to be together, they can be together; and the moment they feel that they have been together too long, a little change will be good.

There is no question of sadness, no question of anger -- just a deep acceptance of nature.

And if you have loved a man or a woman, you will love to give the other person as much freedom as possible.

If love cannot give freedom, then it is not love.

Neelam, you say that, "Sadness in me keeps on coming for a short while and leaving. I give a long rope to the man." Now, the very idea is wrong. Is your man a dog that you give him a long rope?

You cannot give freedom -- freedom is everybody's birthright. The very idea, "I'm giving a long rope"... still the rope is in your hand. You are the giver of freedom. You cannot give freedom; you can only accept the freedom of the other person. You cannot keep one end of the rope in your hand, watching the dog pissing on this tree, pissing on that tree.…

You think that is freedom? No, the very idea is wrong.

The other person has his freedom; you have your freedom. Neither he needs to have one end of the rope in his hand, nor do you have to have it; otherwise, both are chained. His rope is going to be your chains, your rope is going to be his chains. And you think you give enough rope -- you think you are being very generous.

Freedom is not something that has to be given to another person. Freedom is something that has to be recognized as the property of the other person.

And the freedom of the person you love will not hurt you. It hurts because you don't use your own freedom. It is not his freedom that hurts; what hurts is that you have been incapacitated by centuries of wrong conditioning -- you cannot use your own freedom.

Man has taken your whole freedom. That is the real problem. Your freedom has to be returned to you, and it will not hurt; in fact you will enjoy it.

Freedom is such a joyful experience. Your lover is enjoying freedom, you are enjoying freedom. In freedom, you meet; in freedom, you depart. And perhaps life may bring you together again. And most probably All the researches about

love relationships indicate a certain phenomenon which has not been accepted by any society up to now. And even today, when I say these things, I'm condemned all over the world. When your man becomes interested in another woman, it does not mean that he no longer loves you; it simply means just a change of taste.

Once in a while, you like to go to Sarjano's pizza place. That does not mean that you have renounced your old food, but once in a while, it is perfectly good. In fact, after visiting Sarjano's place, you go to the canteen more joyously. It takes a few days for you to forget the experience -- then again, one day, the spaghetti. These affairs don't mean much. One cannot live on spaghetti alone.

The psychologists are agreed on one point: couples who love each other should have a few love affairs once in a while. Those love affairs will renew their relationship, will refresh it. You will start seeing beauty again in your wife. You may start fantasies, dreams of having your wife again -- that you misunderstood her before; this time you are not going to misunderstand. And the same is true about your husband.

In my idea of a commune, people will be absolutely free to say to their partner: "I would like two days holiday. And you are also free; you need not sit in the house and boil." If you want to meditate, that is another thing; otherwise you have been interested in the neighbor's wife too long.… The green grass on the other side of the fence -- you wanted to chew it for so long; now your wife is giving you a chance!

You should say, "You are great! Just go for a holiday, and enjoy it. And I'm going to the neighbor's house -- the grass is greener there." But in two days, you will find that the grass is grass, and your own lawn was far better.

But an authentic experience is needed, and when after two days, you meet again, it will be the beginning of a new honeymoon. Why not have honeymoons every month? Why be satisfied with one honeymoon in one life? That is strange, and absolutely unnatural. And love is not something bad or evil so that you have to prevent your wife loving somebody else. It is just fun; there is not much to be bothered about. If she wants to play tennis with somebody, let her play! I don't think that making love has more significance than playing tennis. In fact, tennis is far cleaner.

Neelam, you say, "I don't expect anything from him. You know me better." I do know you better! I know everybody better. Even in your no-expectations, there are hidden expectations -- unspoken... and they are more subtle, and more binding. Simply, one has to accept a simple fact: your partner is a stranger -- it is just an accident that you are together -- and you never expect anything from outsiders, from strangers.

One of the wisest women I have met in my life told me that she makes love only to strangers.

I said, "Why? It will be really a difficult thing to find a stranger to make love to."

She said, "No -- in trains, in airplanes... I don't even ask their name, and I don't say anything about myself -- we remain strangers, I have made love to them, and we meet the next day in the marketplace: neither I recognize him, nor he.… There is no need -- we enjoyed the moment just out of sheer freedom, no bondage, no commitment."

She is a married woman, married to a very rich man in the Philippines, but she rarely goes to the Philippines. She goes on moving around the world, finding strangers. She says, "Once in a while, I go to the Philippines. My husband himself becomes by that time a stranger, and I love him. But the moment I feel that I am falling into the trap of relationship, I rush out -- again, on the road."

I can see something tremendously deep in her insight. Love as much as you can. Never think of the next moment; and if your lover goes somewhere else, you are also free. And don't deceive yourself: can any woman say that while she is in love with one person, she does not get attracted to other people? Maybe it is a very repressed desire, maybe she never allows it to surface; but it is impossible not to, because there are so many beautiful people around. You have chosen only one stranger amongst many strangers.

Keep freedom as a higher value than love itself. And if it is possible -- and it is possible because it is natural -- your life will not be a misery, it will be a continuous excitement, a continuous exploration of new human beings. We are all strangers: nobody is a husband, nobody is a wife. Some idiot registrar cannot

-- just by putting his seal -- make you a husband and wife. And once that idiot has put the seal, if you want to separate, you have to go to another idiot -- bigger idiots -- and wait for months or years to be separated.

Strange! -- it is your private affair; no business of any registrar, no business of any judge.

Why do you go on giving your freedom into the hands of others?

Neelam, you say, "My friends say I make myself so available that I let the man take me for granted, and I lose my self-respect." Your friends don't understand a

thing -- and they are not your friends either because their advice is that of enemies.

One should make oneself absolutely available. Your friends are telling you that when your man wants to make love to you, one day say you are having a headache; another day, you are too tired; the third day, you are not in the mood... so keep the man hanging around. Don't give that much rope -- just a little rope, and a beautiful bell around his neck with your name written on it, saying, "Beware, personal property." What do you mean by

"availability?" You should be available to the person you love, and if once in a while he feels to change -- enjoy. And let him go joyously. That will bring self- respect to you, and dignity.

A divorced woman, frustrated with married life, ran an ad in the local newspaper that read, "Looking for a man who won't beat me, who won't run around on me, and who is a fantastic lover."

After one week, her doorbell rings. She goes to the door, opens it, and sees no one there.

She closes the door, and is about to walk away when the bell rings again.

Opening the door once again, she sees no one there, but happens to look down and notices a man with no arms and no legs sitting on the doorstep.

"I'm here to answer your ad," he says.

The woman does not know quite what to do, what to say.

So the man continues, "As you can see, I can't beat you, and it will be impossible for me to run around on you."

"Yes, I can see that," said the woman, "but the ad also said I wanted àfantastic lover'."

The man smiles and says, "I rang the doorbell, didn't I?" Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

The Golden Future Chapter #33

Chapter title: The natural man needs no morality 28 May 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive

code:

8705280

ShortTitle:

GOLDEN33

Audio:

Yes Video:

Yes Length:

83

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

ALTHOUGH I AM DEEPLY SATISFIED AND NOURISHED BY MY EKDAM

PUNJABI FOOD, STILL FROM TIME TO TIME I FEEL A STRONG PULL

TOWARDS OTHER DISHES, AND ENJOY ITALIAN PIZZAS, FRENCH WINE, OR

JAPANESE SUSHI. IT'S NOT THAT I DON'T WANT TO EAT OUT

OCCASIONALLY, BUT I'D LIKE TO FEEL IT IS IN MY HANDS WHETHER I DO

OR NOT, AND NOT BE A VICTIM OF THIS HORMONAL CONSPIRACY. BELOVED MASTER, CAN YOU PLEASE GIVE ME A CLUE HOW TO GO BEYOND THESE BIOLOGICAL PULLS?

Kamal, if one allows nature without any inhibitions to take its own course, one transcends biology, body, mind, without any effort. But we are full of inhibitions. Even the so-called young people, who think that they have disowned repressions, are in a very subtle way repressive. If you are repressive, then you cannot transcend biological pulls naturally, without any effort. So, the first thing to be remembered is that nature is right.

All old traditions have been telling you that nature is not right. You have to divide nature into right and wrong. But nature is indivisible. So while you are dividing it, you are simply making an impossible effort. The whole of nature has to be accepted with great joy and gratitude. Biology is not your bondage, but a certain stage of growth.

Life taken with insight and understanding helps you to go beyond itself without asking you for any discipline, any effort, any arduous conflict. We are children of nature. But all the religions have created one thing certainly: a divided mind, a schizophrenic man who is pulled in two directions. They have all given you moralities.

The natural man needs no morality. Easy is right. To be natural, to be spontaneous is right... and transcendence comes on its own. The people who are split against themselves

-- that biology is something to be transcended, that body is something to be

fought, that mind is something to be dropped -- anybody who is entangled in all these conflicts will never transcend.

One should go more easy. It is not a war field. Your life is an autonomous growth. The first need is of a total acceptance with no reluctance, no unwillingness, no subtle condemnation anywhere in your mind.

You are saying, "Although I am deeply satisfied and nourished by my EKDAM Punjabi food.…" His Punjabi food is Neelam. You say you are deeply satisfied; you don't understand the nuances of being deeply satisfied. It becomes a kind of death. To be alive one needs a little discontent, a little restlessness. If you are deeply satisfied, from that deep satisfaction arises your desire to change your food once in a while.

Man is a creature of evolution and growth. Being deeply satisfied brings a full stop to your life...ekdam. Ekdam means: once for all, once for ever. Neelam has an individuality, a grace, a loving heart, and it is very easy to be satisfied with her -- she is not a quarreling type, a fighting type. She herself is at ease, and anybody who loves her will find himself soon at ease. A harmony arises -- but harmony on the one hand is beautiful, and on the other hand is boring.

Perhaps you have never thought that satisfaction is a kind of death. It means you are ready to repeat the same every day, that you have forgotten to change, to evolve.

"... still from time to time I feel a strong pull towards other dishes, and enjoy Italian pizzas, French wine, or Japanese sushi." It is absolutely natural. The problem is arising because of your conditionings that when you are absolutely satisfied with a woman, why should you ask? Why should the desire for somebody else even arise in you? It arises because of your deep satisfaction. Deep satisfaction starts deadening you... nothing new, no excitement, no possibility of "No," always "Yes." On the one hand it is very sweet; on the other, it is too sweet.

Hence, the desire arises once in a while to have some affair with another woman. It is absolutely natural. If Neelam were a fighting type, nagging type, bitchy, this desire would not have arisen so much, because she would never have allowed you to be satisfied. She would have kept you always unsatisfied; she would have remained a stranger to you, still to be explored. I know her... she has been open

to you, available to you, she has not been holding secrets from you. That is not her fault, that is her beauty. But even the most beautiful roseflowers have their thorns, even the most satisfying situations have their problems.

Because you are too satisfied, you start asking for a change of taste: Italian pizzas, French wine, or Japanese sushi. Nothing is wrong in it. At least my people, who are the herald of the new man, have to understand it, that there is nothing wrong in it. The whole old conditioning goes against what I am saying to you, but if you are intelligent, you will see the point.

Accept it, but don't keep it a secret from Neelam. Don't let her down. Don't make her feel that she is not enough for you. Say to her, "You are too satisfying, and my mind wants a little change of atmosphere, some excitement so that I can feel that I am still alive." And remember, whatever you take for yourself, you have to give her too. It has not to be one-sided, not that you go to Sarjano's place, or find a Chinese restaurant; you allow her also.

Not only allow... the woman has been repressed by man so much that you will have to pull her out from her conditionings. You will have to help her to move, once in a while, into new pastures. If you can do that, you will not only be accepting your nature; you will also be helping her to find out her nature.

As a man, you are also guilty, because it is the man who has forced the woman, made her monogamous. In fact, she needs to move with other people more than you. The most astounding research about men and women and their sexualities is just amazing: Man can have only one orgasm, the woman can have multiple orgasms. The reason is simple because in orgasm, a man loses energy; he will need to recover for sometime, according to his age, to have another orgasm.

But the woman does not lose any energy. On the contrary, her first orgasm gives her a deep incentive to have more orgasms, and she is capable of at least half a dozen orgasms in a single night. Because of this fact, man became so afraid that he prevented the woman from knowing the fact that anything like orgasm exists. So he is very quick in making love. The woman will take a little longer time because man's sexuality is local, genital; woman's sexuality is spread all over her body. If a man wants her to have an orgasm, he has to play with her whole body, the foreplay, so her whole body starts throbbing with energy.

But once she has had one orgasm, she is utterly dissatisfied because now she

knows the taste, and she is capable, and she knows that now she can have deeper orgasms. And man is simply impotent after the first orgasm, at least for twenty- four hours. He cannot do anything else -- he just turns over and goes to sleep. The poor boy is finished. And every woman weeps, cries because she has not even come, and her lover is finished.

To avoid the woman from having the knowledge of orgasm -- for centuries the woman was not allowed even to know the beauty and the pleasure of orgasm -- man also has had to prevent himself from having orgasm. All that he knows is ejaculation; ejaculation is not orgasm. Ejaculation is simply throwing out energy: one feels more relaxed, the tensions of the energy are gone, and one snores better.

The woman has become aware of orgasm only in this century and the whole credit goes to the movement of psychoanalysis. In the East, ninety-eight percent of women are still unaware that there is anything in making love, because she gets no juice, no experience.

She in fact hates the whole affair. Ejaculation is not her need, it is man's need; but both have remained deprived of sex and its ultimate orgasmic experiences.

But the trouble is, how to manage it? Anything looks very immoral. Either you have to invite all your friends, so that five, six friends make love, one by one, to the woman.

Then she will be satisfied, but that looks very hurting to the ego. Or you have to provide her with an electric vibrator. But once she knows the electric vibrator, you are useless because the electric vibrator gives her such tremendous orgasmic experiences that you cannot give.

It seems there has been some mistake by nature itself: men and women are not equal in their orgasmic capacity. You are fully satisfied, but have you ever bothered whether your beloved has found even a single orgasm? Because she has not found a single orgasm, she can remain devoted to you: monogamous. But if she knows what orgasmic experience is, she will also want, once in a while, to be with another man.

If you really love your woman, you will help her to come out of her old conditionings which are far deeper, because man himself is responsible. Man himself does not have those conditionings; his morality is very superficial and a

hypocrisy. But the woman's morality has gone very deep. Man has been enforcing it from the very childhood. If you feel to change it, it is your responsibility; and particularly Kamal, a man of your understanding should be able to understand what I am saying.

It is your responsibility to bring Neelam also out into the sun, into the rain, into the wind, so that she can drop all her conditionings. You have to help her; you have to teach her how to enjoy Sarjano's place, and not go on eating the Punjabi food her whole life... how to enjoy Japanese food or Chinese food. If men and women really love each other, they will help each other to be unconditioned from the past.

Man does not have many conditionings, and they are superficial. He can drop them very easily, the way you drop your clothes. The woman has been conditioned so much that it is not like dropping her clothes, it is like peeling her skin. It is hard and unless you really love a woman.… It will be impossible, on her own, to get rid of all those conditionings, help her. Give her also the taste that in the world there are so many other foods; in the world, other than you, there are many more beautiful men. Your woman must know all of them. It is part of your love that your woman becomes more and more rich in her experiences. And the richer she is, she will not only give you satisfaction; she will start giving you excitement and ecstasy.

You say, "It's not that I don't want to eat out occasionally, but I'd like to feel it is in my hands whether I do or not.…" It is in your hands, but it can be in your hands only if it is in the hands of Neelam too. As far as I am concerned and my concept of the new man and new woman is concerned, there should be equal opportunity for both. Not that you are the master and your woman is your slave; that she can remain satisfied with you, and you can go, once in a while, fooling around the neighborhood. She has every right to fool around in the same neighborhood! And there is no need to feel guilty; you have to help her not to feel guilty.

It is a very strange phenomenon that woman's liberation will be man's liberation, too; their slavery is together. Because you don't allow your woman to be free, how can she allow you to be free?

Freedom has to be, from both sides, a precious value -- loved, recognized, respected.

You say "... and not be a victim of this hormonal conspiracy." If you want to get beyond the hormones and the biology; live it totally, exhaust it. My own understanding is that by the age of fourteen your hormones start working, and if you allow them total freedom if you go with them joyously by the age forty-two, they will like to go to rest. And this transcendence will be natural; it will not be a celibacy imposed. It will be a sacred celibacy that is coming to you from the beyond, because you have lived your life totally and now nothing in the ordinary life interests you. Your interest is in higher values, for a deeper search about life, about truth, about creativity. You have passed a childish age. By the age of forty- two, according to me, a man really becomes adult, but only if he lives naturally. If he lives half-heartedly then it will take a longer time -- maybe forty-nine years, maybe seventy-five. Maybe even when he is dying he is thinking only of sex and nothing else; he never transcends it.

You both are understanding people and you both love me, and you both can see things without screens on your eyes, clearly. Love each other totally, and occasionally allow each other freedom. But it has to be on both sides. And it is not going to destroy your love; it is going to make it richer, deeper, more fulfilling, more orgasmic. And those few occasions when you are on holiday from each other will not take you away from each other; they will go on bringing you closer to each other. Don't have any secret -- be absolutely open, and allow the other person also to be absolutely open, and respect openness. Never, even by your gestures, make the other person feel guilty. That is the greatest crime humanity has been committing: making people guilty. If the other feels guilty because of very deep rooted conceptions, help her to be free of the guilt.

Love lived in an atmosphere of freedom will transcend you from sex naturally, easily, effortlessly. Love will remain, sex will be gone and then love has a purity and a beauty and a sacredness of its own.

Sitting on a bus in New York, a prim old lady was shocked to overhear an Italian say to another, "Emma come-a first. I come-a next. Two ass-a come-a together. I come-a again.

Two ass-a come-a together again. I come-a once more. Peepee twice. Then I come-a for the last time."

When the Italian was finished, the red faced old maid turned to a policeman sitting nearby, and said, "Are you not going to arrest that terrible old man?"

"What for?" asked the policeman. "For spelling Mississippi?"

Take life more joyously and more jokingly. Let your whole life become a beautiful joke.

There is nothing wrong in nature, and to be natural is to be religious.

But there are disparities between man and woman; neither biologists, nor psychologists have been able to figure out why these disparities exist. The woman is far stronger as far as orgasmic experience is concerned. She needs to have more lovers than man, and man must have become aware of the fact in the very beginning of life. To prevent her, he has completely closed even the possibility of having one orgasm. That's why all women hate sex. I was puzzled -

- why do women hate sex? All the women go to celibate monks and worship them; as far as their own husband is concerned, they know he is a dirty old man.

The reason is, to them sex is an experience -- just dirtiness. The man is throwing his dirt onto the woman. The woman feels used, and nobody likes being used.

The new man will make love not a one way affair, from man to woman; it will be a two-way affair. Both will be enjoying it. And science has to find some way either to make man capable of having multiple orgasms so he can go a long, long time with the woman, giving her as many orgasms as she requires, and make the whole journey beautiful; or science has to cut woman's multiple orgasmic capacity to a single orgasm. Something has to be done, and it is one of the most important things because it creates problems in everybody's life.

You both are intelligent, and I hope that you will prove my hypothesis that you can love each other, and yet once in a while have different affairs -- joyously, not reluctantly. Not because I am saying it, but out of your own understanding.

Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,

THE OTHER DAY WHEN YOUR BODY FELL A LITTLE, SOME OF YOUR

SANNYASINS RUSHED TOWARDS YOU IN A SPLIT SECOND TO HELP. THERE

WAS NO HUSTLE AND NO CONFUSION AMONGST THEM, AND THEIR MOVEMENTS WERE IN PERFECT HARMONY. AFTER THE NECESSARY ASSISTANCE WAS FINISHED, THEY SAT BACK IN THEIR SEATS AS IF

NOTHING HAD HAPPENED. THIS ALL HAPPENED WITHIN A COUPLE OF

SECONDS. OSHO, IS THIS THE REFLECTION OF THE AWARENESS THAT YOU

ARE CONSTANTLY TALKING ABOUT?

Satyam Niranjan, yes. It is something of alertness, something of silence and peace -- a discipline that arises out of awareness, not a discipline that is being forced through training. Only Sarjano missed out because he did not have the camera ready.

After you had gone back to your seats and I moved, I remembered Sarjano, and I remembered a small story.…

An American couple are touring darkest Africa on safari. They are walking cautiously through the jungle, when suddenly a huge lion springs out in front of them. It seizes the wife with its giant jaws and proceeds to drag her into the bush.

"Shoot!" she screams. "Shoot for Christ's sake!"

"I can't," answers the husband. "I have run out of film."

Everything was right, only Sarjano was not ready with his camera. I have heard he is angry with his camera, wants to sell it. Don't do any such stupid thing! Even if you have run out of film we can get more!

Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,

NOT LONG AGO, IN A DISCOURSE, I HEARD YOU SAY THAT YOU

HATED

SPAGHETTI. THEN RECENTLY, YOU SAID YOU HATED SUNTANS. AND NOW, JUST THE OTHER DAY, I HEARD YOU SAY THAT THE ONLY THING YOU

HATED WAS INCOME TAX. DOES THIS MEAN THAT YOU DON'T HATE

SPAGHETTI, AND SUNTANS ANYMORE? OR IS THERE SOME MYSTERIOUS

CONNECTION BETWEEN THESE THREE SEEMINGLY UNRELATED PHENOMENA?

I don't hate anything. But just when I am talking to you, there are points which have to be emphasized. And when I say I hate spaghetti, I am simply emphasizing something.

Hatred is not part of my being at all. In fact, I have never tasted spaghetti, and perhaps I will never taste it because of an accident.

One Italian woman, a professor with a doctorate from the University of Rome, used to be my sannyasin. But she had strange habits: one was that I don't think she had ever taken a single shower in her life. She used to stink. And she went putting on powder, layers of powder... she was a beautiful woman. And it was she who made me so much afraid of spaghetti, because she prepared spaghetti one day and brought it for me to eat. The spaghetti was smelling of her.

I told her, "Out, you just go out of the room. Leave the spaghetti, I will eat... but I always eat alone. You just go out." And as she went out, the first thing was: I threw her spaghetti down the toilet. And the smell was so dangerous that even today -- it must be twenty-six, twenty-seven years ago -- but suddenly, if I remember spaghetti, I remember the woman and the smell. And then it is no more a memory; I have to live it again. That's why I say,

"I hate"; otherwise, I have never tasted spaghetti. It just came in a wrong way to me, through a wrong vehicle.

A suntan also I don't hate, but certainly I don't like, because to me it seems a

modern way of self-torture. It is something masochistic, lying down in the hot sun. All over the world millions of women are suffering, and nobody protests that -- "Stop this nonsense!" And that suntan does not remain long. You are simply sunburned. In a few days, you are healed and you are back to your normal color.

If one really wants to be a little less white, a suntan is not the way. You need a certain pigment to be injected into your body, and then you will remain, for your whole life, the color you wanted. A suntan to me always looks something like religious self-torture; the beaches are full... there is no space on the beaches on a sunny day.

I don't hate -- why should I hate? It has nothing to do with me. I simply don't like... I myself don't like to go into the sun. I love to see the sun from my air- conditioned room.

A wealthy English tourist visiting America was curious about the native American Indians. After touring one reservation, she asked her guide why some men had more feathers than others in their headdresses.

"We only have one feather because we only have one squaw," said the guide. Thinking the guide must be joking, she asked another man who said, "Uh! we have four feathers because we have four squaw."

Disturbed that any culture could possibly have such a crude custom, she decided to ask the tribal chief for further explanation. "Why are there so many feathers in you headdress, chief?" she asked.

"Me chief, so me fuck them all. Big, small, short, tall, make no difference." The English lady was mortified. "You ought to be hung," she snorted.

"You damned right," said the chief. "Me hung like buffalo." "Well," she cried. "You don't have to be so damned hostile!" "Hoss-style! Dog-style! Any style! Me fuck them all!"

Tears in her eyes, and red with embarrassment, the woman cried, "Oh dear, Oh dear." To which the chief replied, "No deer! Me no fuck deer! Asshole too high.

Fuckers run too fast!"

I have just been joking. I don't hate anybody... neither the spaghetti, nor the suntan, nor the tax collectors. But when I am speaking, I never say anything that I have prepared beforehand and whatever I say, I want to say with my totality, with my spontaneity. My word "hate" is simply a total expression of my dislike.

My God! I'm still smelling that spaghetti! Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

The Golden Future Chapter #34

Chapter title: Out of the mind -- below or beyond 28 May 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive

code: 8705285

ShortTitle: GOLDEN34

Audio: Yes Video: Yes Length:

102

mins Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

YOUR OUTSTRETCHED HANDS EVER-PATIENTLY WAIT BESIDE MY OPEN

CAGE DOOR, BECKONING. BUT TIME AND TIME AGAIN, I RETURN TO MY

CAGE SHOUTING, "FREEDOM, FREEDOM!" HAVING A TASTE HERE AND

THERE OF THE VASTNESS OF THE UNKNOWN, WHY DO I RETURN TO MY

LESSER HOME? YOUR BECKONING EYES, YOUR INVITING HANDS PULL SO

STRONGLY AT MY HEART, AND YET I RESIST. BELOVED OSHO, WHICH IS IT

I AM MORE AFRAID OF -- LIFE OR DEATH?

Prem Leela, the old man, the way he has existed for centuries, is afraid of life, not afraid of death. Death he worships, life he renounces.

All the religions that have prevailed in the world have been life-negative; they have continuously hammered the thought into your mind that to love life is something wrong; to love life is for sinners, to hate life is for saints. All their disciplines are managed and planned in such a way that they destroy your life; they destroy your joy of life, they destroy your longing for more and more life.

Rather than helping you to live more aesthetically, more artistically, more beautifully, more blissfully, they condemn life so much in so many ways that your whole longing for life is poisoned. And in a very indirect way, they all

teach you to worship death. What is renunciation of life if not the worshiping of death? They are afraid of life because life seems to be against their religions. A man who loves life will not bother at all about temples, and mosques, and churches; life is enough unto itself.

One who has known life in its depths and in its heights will not bother at all whether God exists or not because he has already known something more real, something more certain than any God has ever been.

All gods are hypothetical. Only life is the real God.

Naturally, the priests are worried that you should not get too much involved with the mysteries of life, because if you are too much involved with the mysteries of life... who is going to be a Christian, or a Hindu, or a Mohammedan, or a Buddhist? Who is going to worship dead gods, dead saints? Who is going to listen to the priests?

One who has heard the song of life itself, one who has lived intensely and totally the music of life itself, who has danced it, is not going to be concerned about belief systems -

- he has no need. And there are only two ugliest professions in the world... one is that of the prostitutes and the other is that of the priests.

Of course, the profession of the priests is far worse because the prostitutes only sell their bodies, they don't sell their souls. And they don't interfere with anybody else's freedom, they don't destroy your joy; on the contrary, they in some way enhance it, intensify it, make it more aflame. It is the priest who sells gods, and who enslaves man, and who interferes in everybody's life -- his freedom, his individuality.

He can not tolerate seeing anybody happy, because the person who is happy is not going to be his customer; his business is dependent on your misery. The more miserable you are, the more you will seek the advice of the priest, the more you will worship statues, the more you will look beyond life for some consolation. This life is full of suffering. You have to believe in a life other than this life just to bear it, just to tolerate it; otherwise, it will become impossible even for a single moment for any intelligent man.

The priests have left only one thing, and that is suicide. They have destroyed everything that life is capable of, and they have poisoned your minds so deeply that even if you try to enjoy something... you want to dance, but you find that some invisible chains are preventing your feet; you want to sing, but you find some invisible hands are choking your voice; you want to love, but you suddenly hear some voice coming from within your own mind that you are going to commit a sin, it is against God and against all the holy scriptures.

Prem Leela, your question is of tremendous importance. You are asking, "Which is it I'm more afraid of: life or death?"

Nobody is afraid of death.

It may seem unbelievable, but I repeat that nobody is afraid of death, because you cannot be afraid of something you don't know. You cannot be afraid of something with which you are not acquainted -- what do you know about death? How can you be afraid of the unknown?

It is the known that creates fear. It is the miserable life that you have lived today, that you are afraid you may have to live tomorrow again. You know it; you have been living it year after year, hoping that some miracle will happen, and tomorrow with the rising sun everything will change. But the sun rises every day; it has risen thousands of times, and nothing changes. On the contrary, life goes on becoming more complicated, more miserable, more full of suffering, more full of fear.

Yes, you are afraid of old age, you are afraid of disease, but not of death. You know nothing about death. Death, you worship.

One of my friends was meeting with the home minister. He asked, "Ramakrishna Mission is given tax-exempt status, Vivekananda Mission is given tax-exempt status; why are you all against a man who has not done any harm to you?"

And the home minister said to him -- "they are friends, old colleagues -- because Bhagwan is still alive, he cannot be given tax-exempt status." My friend could not believe that to get tax-exempt status, you have to be dead! He said, "What kind of logic is this?"

And the home minister explained, "A living man cannot be given a tax-exempt status because he may change tomorrow, he may change his whole ideology; he

may become a communist, he may become an anarchist. And particularly the man you have come to recommend to me is already dangerous!

"Once a man dies, everybody is satisfied; at least one thing is certain -- that man cannot change. He cannot give another interpretation to life, he cannot declare that there is no God. We can be certain about his philosophy, and if it fits into our categories, we can give the tax-exempt status, but not to a living man -- and especially to a living man like Bhagwan!"

My friend was going to see the prime minister, but the home minister said, "It is better you don't mention Bhagwan's name to anybody. Just the name makes them afraid for the simple reason that he does not belong to any religion; nobody knows what exactly is his teaching. He does not give any discipline to his people; on the contrary, he takes away people's disciplines and beliefs. Rather than conditioning them to be obedient to the society and the society's morality, he corrupts them. He takes away their conditionings and leaves them open, vulnerable, rebellious."

Have you ever seen anybody who is alive being worshiped as a saint? Even when Ramakrishna was alive, people thought, "He is an idiot, he is a madman." When Ramateertha was alive, the great Hindu scholars of Varanasi declared that he could not be a saint because he did not know Sanskrit. His whole upbringing was in Persian, Arabic and Urdu, because he was born in Lahore which is now in Pakistan. But once dead, nobody asks whether Ramateertha knew Sanskrit or not; dead, everything is right. Now he is worshiped as a great saint. Ramakrishna is no longer described as a madman; he is worshiped as an incarnation of God -- by the same people.

To worship the dead has been one of the basic attitudes of the old man, because the dead man cannot create rebellion, cannot provoke people to revolt. A dead man is very comfortable, convenient. But one who is alive, and not only alive, but who believes life to be the only God, looks certainly dangerous.

Just a few days ago here in Poona, one of the shankaracharyas, Swami Svarupanand, told a conference, "Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh is the most dangerous man mankind has ever known." I don't carry nuclear weapons with me, I don't have even a knife to cut vegetables, but I am the most dangerous man of the whole history of mankind because I teach life and not death, love, rejoicing and not renunciation.

The old man has lived so wrongly, so stupidly, so insanely that the harm that has been done to us is incalculable.

A man is shipwrecked, and finds himself in an uninhabited region. After wandering long in the jungle, he comes at last to a village where he sees a noose from which a corpse is hanging.

"The Lord be praised," he cries. "Civilization at last!" But this is the civilization we all have inherited.

Two guys at a bar were comparing the sexual behavior of their wives. "Hey," one said,

"Does your wife close her eyes when you are making love to her?"

"Sure, she does," the other replied. "She can't stand to see me having a good time."

The priests are just like these wives who can't stand to see anybody having a good time.

All your religions are nothing but condemnations of everything that can give you pleasure, joy. They are very supportive of everything that is nothing but self- torture.

Your question is: "Bhagwan, your outstretched hands ever-patiently wait beside my open cage door, beckoning, but time and time again, I return to my cage shouting, "Freedom, freedom!" Having a taste here and there of the vastness of the unknown, why do I return to my lesser home? Your beckoning eyes, your inviting hands pull so strongly at my heart; and yet I resist."

Naturally, a great question mark arises in your heart -- why? Why do you choose slavery when freedom is available? Why do you choose the cage when the doors are open, and the whole sky is yours?

The answer is not very far to find. The cage has security. It protects you from rain, from sun, from strong wind, from your enemies. It protects you from the vastness in which one can be lost. It gives you a shelter, it is your cozy home, and you don't have any responsibility of worrying about your food, of worrying

about the rainy season, of worrying about whether tomorrow you will be able to find nourishment or not.

Freedom brings tremendous responsibilities.

Slavery is a bargain: you give your freedom and somebody else starts being responsible for your life, for your protection, for your food, for your shelter, for everything that you need. All that you lose is your freedom, all that you lose are your wings, all that you lose is the starry sky. But that was your soul.

In a cage safe and secure, you are dead; you have chosen a life of no risk, no danger.

That's why you go on returning to your cage, although your deepest soul is restless in slavery; it would like to risk all and to have the freedom to go to the very end of the sky.

It longs to fly across the sun to faraway stars. That's why my hands become significant to you, my words become a beckoning. But you decide, finally, to be a hypocrite; that's what almost everybody in the whole world has decided.

You start singing songs of freedom in the cage. Although the doors are open and the sky is available, you settle for a life of hypocrisy -- to have all the coziness and the insurance and the security of the cage, and have all the joys of freedom in your song, in your poetry, in your painting, in your music. That's why you go on shouting, "Freedom, freedom!" You are simply deceiving yourself.

The new man will not be a hypocrite.

The old man was basically taught to be a hypocrite. The greater the hypocrite he was, the more honored, the more rewarded, the more respectable. He had settled with society:

"You respect me and I will be a slave, I will be at your disposal. You just go on giving Nobel prizes to me."

But you are not to be part of that old hypocrite world. I want you to come out of all security, all coziness, all shelter. Make the whole sky your home, be a wanderer, a pilgrim, know all the mysteries and all the secrets of life. And let not your life be a serious and miserable phenomenon. Let it be a joyous laughter, a

playfulness.

To me, authentic religiousness means a childlike innocence, playfulness, and a wholehearted capacity for laughter.

Then each moment becomes so precious that you will not sing the song of freedom, you will live it. You will not talk about truth, you will know it. You will not worship God, you will find him wherever life is -- all over existence.

Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,

THE CLOSER I GET TO YOU, THE MADDER I BECOME, AND I HAVE NOTICED

THIS PHENOMENON IN OTHER DISCIPLES. PLEASE COMMENT.

Prem Ramarshi, the question shows you are not yet mad enough because those who are mad never accept that they are mad. That is one of the absolutes: the madman never accepts that he is mad.

You can look in madhouses, you can ask as many madmen as possible, and you will be surprised that they are all shocked that people think that they are mad. No argument convinces them; on the contrary, they are ready to give every argument to prove that they are not mad.

It happened in the second world war, Winston Churchill had gone for a walk in the evening, tired of the whole day's work, and the tremendous responsibility and tension --

because Adolf Hitler was bombing exactly over London. He forgot in his thoughts that after six o'clock he had to go inside the house; an absolute curfew ordered that after six o'clock, nobody should come out of the house. As Churchill remembered it, he saw that it was six-fifteen. And it was not in India where, if you are the prime minister, no law applies to you; it was Britain where it makes no difference whether you are the prime minister or a nobody.

He rushed to the closest house because his own house was far away, it would take fifteen minutes... the streets were deserted, he could be caught, and that

would become a scandal

-- that even the prime minister does not follow the rules that he decides for everybody to follow.

He knocked on the door. A man opened the door, and he introduced himself saying, "I am Winston Churchill, prime minister of the country, and by chance I forgot to return home in time. Please give me shelter."

Before he could end his sentence, the man, a very strong man, pulled him in. Churchill said, "What are you doing?" The man said, "Shut up! We already have three more Winston Churchills in here."

It was a madhouse!

Winston Churchill said, "But I really AM Winston Churchill." The man said, "Forget all about it. They all say the same thing. Everybody is really Winston Churchill."

He said, "Let me phone my wife, or to the palace." The man said, "Forget all these things.

Just get into your cell so I can lock it. And don't make any nuisance in the night, because we are tired of these Winston Churchills. Those three are also continually saying, "We want to talk to Buckingham Palace; we want to inform parliament what kind of misbehavior is being done to the prime ministers."

He thought for a moment, and realized the situation -- that there is no way; he will have to wait till the morning, unless some officer or doctor, somebody more intelligent then this idiot, comes in.

But it was the same story. The jailer came, and he was an educated man. Winston Churchill very politely said to him, "Listen, I'm really Winston Churchill. I'm not joking.

And I have too much responsibility, the country is at war, I cannot remain here! I'm needed in my office; every moment is decisive.

The jailer laughed. He said, "Just rest. Three others are also continually harassing us that they are responsible for the whole country, that they are to save

the whole world."

Winston Churchill thought that now even the last hope.… The doctor came. He looked at Winston Churchill, and Winston Churchill said, "Do you recognize me? Have you seen my picture?"

The doctor said, "I have seen your picture, and that's why I'm wondering... that you look exactly like Winston Churchill."

Churchill said, "I don't look. I am."

The doctor said, "Forget all about that! Don't say that, because there are three more. They also look... and if you tell them that they look like Winston Churchill, they become very angry. They say, `We are! Don't insult your own prime minister.'"

His family was in search all over the street where he used to go for a walk, and somebody said that they had seen him knock at the madhouse on the corner -- that's how he was found and released. But before getting released he said, "I would like to ask a favor. I would like to see the other three. I have become so interested in them. Once in the night, it came to me, "Perhaps I'm just mad, and they are right." But then I dropped that idea,"

No, I'm certainly Winston Churchill; I'm the prime minister." But I would love to see them."

So he was taken to see them. They all looked like him -- fat, with the cigar. And they all looked at him also, and they all said the same thing. They said, "Boy, you look almost like Winston Churchill -- an exact copy of me! How did you manage?"

Because he was not a madman, for a moment the idea came to him, "Perhaps I am mad."

But for those three people even that idea was impossible.

You say, Ramarshi, "The closer I get to you, the madder I become, and I have noticed this phenomenon in other disciples." You have to come a little bit closer. Just becoming madder is not enough; you have to be really mad! And the moment when you are really mad, you will not say you are mad; your will say, "I

am enlightened." That too happens here; when somebody really gets mad he becomes enlightened. Unless you become enlightened, I don't take it seriously. Then it is okay, it is normal. Here in this commune of crazy people it is a normal phenomenon, and you have observed rightly.

But to be mad by coming closer to me is to attain to sanity in a world which is really insane. Because the world is insane, the sane people will appear as if they have gone mad. The sane people are so few, and they happen once in thousands of years -- a Gautam Buddha, a Zarathustra, a Lao Tzu, a Socrates, a Jesus. Centuries pass, and humanity goes on living in a lukewarm madness. But because everybody is in the same boat, nobody recognizes that anybody is doing something insane.

Coming closer to me means becoming more sane. It will appear like becoming madder...

and even more mad. All these words are very irrelevant. As far as I see, there is a certain similarity and a certain dissimilarity between the sane and the really sane, between the ordinary mad and the madness that comes as a divine gift.

The sameness is that both go out of the mind. In fact, we say -- in many languages the phrase exists -- that somebody has gone out of his mind that means he has gone mad. But Gautam Buddha also goes out of his mind. Just the difference is that: you can go out of mind and fall below mind or you can go out of mind and transcend mind and go beyond.

In both the cases you will be out of the mind -- that will be the similarity between the ordinary madman and the enlightened man. But everything else will be totally different.

The man who has gone beyond the mind has become for the first time sane, intelligent, wise. But to the ordinary humanity, to the normally insane people, both have gone beyond their fold, both will appear as if they are mad, and many of their actions can be interpreted as if they are similar.

One great Zen master, Lin Chi, was staying in a temple on a cold winter night. In the middle of the night, the priest suddenly woke up because he saw, in the middle of the temple, a great fire. He rushed there; Lin Chi was sitting by the side of the fire.

Lin Chi had come that very evening and he wanted to stay overnight. Knowing him as a great Zen master, the priest had allowed him; but now he was repenting that he had allowed this madman inside the temple because he had burned a big wooden statue of Gautam Buddha, and he was enjoying in the cold night the heat, the warmth.

The priest said, "Are you mad or something?" Lin Chi said, "What's the matter? Why are you looking so angry?"

He said, "You have burnt Gautam Buddha! It was our most precious statue; it took years to make it."

He said, "I have burnt Gautam Buddha?" So he took his staff and started searching in the ashes of Gautam Buddha for his bones, which in the East are called flowers.

The priest said, "Now what are you doing?" Lin Chi said, "I am looking for the flowers!

Gautam Buddha is gone, but at least we can save the bones."

Even the priest had to forget his seriousness and laugh, and he said, "You are really mad.

This is just a wooden Gautam Buddha. There are no bones in it."

Lin Chi said, "If that is the case then you have still got two more statues, and the night is long and very cold. Bring one and you can also participate and enjoy. And as far as worship is concerned, one statue is enough; three are not needed."

But the priest, seeing the intentions of Lin Chi, could not allow him to remain in the temple. In the middle of the night, a cold night, he forced him to leave the temple. He said, "I'm afraid if I go to sleep you will destroy another statue. I have heard much about you and I have always thought that you are a little mad, but today I know you are completely gone."

So he threw Lin Chi out of the temple. In the morning he opened the doors to see what had happened to Lin Chi. Just in front of the temple there was a milestone. Lin Chi had collected a few wild flowers, had put those flowers on the milestone and he was doing his morning worship: "Buddham Sharanam Gachchhami."

The priest said, "My God, this is too much! First he has destroyed a precious statue of Gautam Buddha and now he is worshiping before a milestone." He went and he asked Lin Chi, "What are you doing?"

He said, "The real thing is prayer. Whether the stone is carved in a certain form and proportion or not, it does not matter. It is only an excuse. You have your excuses -- I have destroyed one, two are still there. Sometime I will see... but for this morning this milestone is as perfect to meditate, to pray with, as any Gautam Buddha."

To any ordinary normal human being, this behavior will look insane. But do you think it is insane or is it super-sanity, super-sensitivity? He is a superman, because he is saving the essential and destroying the non-essential.

Don't be worried about becoming madder by coming closer to me -- rejoice! The madder you become, the more blissful you are. And you are seeing the same phenomenon happening in other people. My very being here is to drive as many people mad as possible, because these mad people are the potential for the future.

The so-called sane have ruled the world too long, and destroyed everything that was valuable. Now let this new race of the new man, who may look mad to the old, rule over the world. Let these people spread more madness, more joy, more song, more ecstasy and more dance around the earth. That's the only way to save it from destruction.

But old habits die hard. So you are becoming madder, Ramarshi, in installments

--

slowly, slowly. Take a little longer steps. Don't take me for granted. I am here today, tomorrow...? Only one thing is needed -- permission from Rafia! And I can persuade him.…

Sandra and Simon are arguing furiously over the breakfast table. "Oh, you are stupid!"

shouted Simon at his sister. "Simon!" says the father, "that's quite enough of that. Now say you are sorry."

"Alright," says Simon, "Sandra, I am sorry you are stupid."

Just small steps won't do; you need quantum leaps!

Ramarshi, the mind can try to be sane. But it will be very superficial sanity, just skin-deep, or perhaps not even that much; a little scratch and the insane will come out. Real sanity consists only in going beyond the mind and entering into a state of meditation.

Thoughts can never become sane. Only a thoughtless silence brings you to the world of sanity.

And when silence deepens inside you and goes on opening doors upon doors of your heart till you have reached your very being, don't stop, because the mind is very old and your meditation will be a very new experience. The old has weight, the old can pull you back again and again. The new experience of meditation and intelligence has to be given time to grow roots, has to be given time to start influencing your actions and your behavior. You should not leave the effort to create your meditation, your silence, your peace and its depth till you are absolutely certain that your mind is under your control and you are not under the control of the mind. That is the criterion of a sane man: the mind is his servant. For the insane man, the mind is his master.

Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,

THE OTHER MORNING YOU SAID THAT WE ARE ALL GOING TO BE ENLIGHTENED AND ALL MASTERS, AND I FELT SIMULTANEOUSLY A

GREAT LAUGHTER AND A TREMENDOUS RESPONSIBILITY AWAKENING IN

ME. IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT? AM I LISTENING CORRECTLY? AGAIN I FEEL THAT I AM NOT RECEPTIVE ENOUGH. PLEASE HELP ME.

Sarjano, I said certainly that you are all going to become enlightened, and masters, and you heard me right. Just one thing more I have to add to it. I could say it because enlightenment is your very nature. It is because of language that many problems arise; otherwise I would have said you are enlightened and you

are masters -- you are just unaware of it.

It is as if you have a treasure in your house, but you don't know where it is. The house is big -- many mansions, many rooms; you know certainly the treasure is there, but you are poor, you are a beggar, and who is going to believe you? Even you yourself suspect a thousand-and-one times that perhaps it is all a myth, a dream; there is no treasure. But you have not looked into the house, you have not searched in all nooks and corners; you have not made enough efforts to find it.

I have found my treasure! That's why I am absolutely certain that if my consciousness can give me so much peace and so much silence, so much joy, so much blissfulness, there is no reason why your consciousness cannot do the same. Perhaps you have not looked into the possibility, you have not searched in your own being, you have never gone in; otherwise you are enlightened this very moment.

And I could say that not only you all will be enlightened; you all will be masters. All enlightened people have not been masters, but I can say with tremendous guarantee that my people, once they become enlightened, are going to be masters, for the simple reason that I have been preparing you to convey the message. I am giving you all the devices: how to create bridges between you and those who are blind; how to find words which can contain at least a hint of your experience. Talking to you twice every day for almost thirty-five years.…

The danger is that many of you may become masters before they become enlightened, because they have listened to so much; just a little articulateness and they can pretend to be great masters. A few are doing that already around the world; they have become mini-gurus.

But what you heard, you heard rightly. It seems difficult, it seems almost impossible; hence you laughed. The very idea of Sarjano as enlightened will create laughter in everybody. Sarjano, the enlightened master, the piesta seller, the pornography photographer. It certainly.… I can understand why you laughed. You know yourself!

But simultaneously you also felt a tremendous responsibility awakening in you, because it does not matter; neither piesta, nor anything else can prevent your enlightenment. In fact, my people are going to be not just like the stone statues of Gautam Buddha, sitting in a lotus posture doing nothing. How many Buddhas

like that can we afford in the world? We will need a shoemaker who is enlightened, a piesta maker enlightened -- all kinds of people. Your actions don't define you; your being remains undefined by your actions. Certainly your being defines your actions. When you are enlightened your piesta will have a different taste.

In desperation the young bride finally took pen in hand and wrote to the problem page of a newspaper: "I am married to a sex maniac. My husband never leaves me alone. He makes love to me all night long, while I am in the shower, while cooking breakfast, even while I'm trying to clean the house. Can you tell me what to do?" signed, worn out.

"P.S. Please excuse the jerky handwriting."

But even these people have to become enlightened!

My deepest longing is to make all kinds of people enlightened and to make enlightenment a very ordinary, simple and innocent experience -- nothing special, nothing holier-than-thou-humble, non-pretending, not claiming spirituality... just being joyous and full of light, radiant with joy, overflowing with love, ready to share their experience in whatever way they can.

Sarjano, there is no need to laugh. You are as capable as any Gautam Buddha. And there is no need to be worried about responsibility, because when you become enlightened you also become capable of fulfilling tremendous responsibilities of which you could have never dreamt before.

[SUDDENLY THE SOUND OF FIRE CRACKERS IS HEARD IN THE DISTANCE.]

Is this Sarjano making all these firecrackers from his piesta shop? -- because I think he is there!

Okay, Maneesha? Yes, Osho.

The Golden Future Chapter #35

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