Chapter title: None

‌Chapter title: None‌

28 July 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8007275 ShortTitle: GWIND28 Audio:

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[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

There have been two kinds of religion in the world: the religions of meditation and the religions of prayer. And they have existed like enemies; they have divided the whole of humanity.

For example, Buddhism is a religion of meditation, Christianity is a religion of prayer, and up to now there has been no bridge between them. It has not only divided humanity, it has divided each human being into two parts -- because man's wholeness needs to be fulfilled in its wholeness. And man has both aspects his being.

One aspect is fulfilled by meditation, another aspect is fulfilled by prayer. And if one sticks to one against the other, then he remains only half. Hence in the past the so-called holy men were not really holy, because they were not whole. It is because of this schizophrenic division that religion has not been able to bring the revolution it is capable of.

My effort here is to create a bridge. My sannyasin has to be both a man of meditation and a man of prayer, together.

Meditation means a state of thoughtless awareness. It is in a way negative; it

rejects thoughts and creates a silent state inside you. It is beautiful, that silence, but it is lacking something. It is lacking music, there is no poetry in it, there is no dance in it. It is a kind of dead silence, no song arises out of it.

Prayer means the heart is full of love. It is a positive approach. Prayer can dance, prayer can sing, prayer can be a celebration, but without meditation all that celebration remains superficial, noisy. Yes, there is a great liveliness in it but that liveliness is childish, not mature.

Maturity comes through meditation, joy comes through prayer. Centering comes through meditation, dancing comes through prayer. A man is really blessed who can remain centred and yet in a dance, who c an become the centre of the cyclone. And that is my vision of a sannyasin, a true religious person, the whole person.

And it is possible, there is no difficulty in it, there is no intrinsic problem in it. Of course because it has to fulfil two apparently contradictory dimensions together, in the past people chose one. It was easier, less complicated but less rich, obviously.

Man has to grow from simplicity to complexity, but the complexity should not lose track of simplicity, otherwise it becomes insane. It should remain rooted in simplicity and yet it should be complex. Then one has a tremendous beauty because when opposites meet as complementaries they give you dimensions; you are not one-dimensional.

So remember it: be meditative, be prayerful. Through meditation create emptiness and through prayer create love to fill it, so the emptiness becomes an overflowing of love.

One can be rich by possessing many things but that richness is pseudo, it is just befooling oneself. You come empty-handed into the world and you will have to go empty-handed; all your possessions will have to be left behind. So you can waste your life in accumulating them but you are not really gaining anything through life. On the contrary you are wasting a tremendous opportunity to be rich.

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Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

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The real richness is something inner; it has nothing to do with things. And remember: I am not against things -- use, enjoy things, they have their utility. I am not anti-world, not anti-life, not anti -- enjoyment --

enjoy life in all its beauty. But remember that's not all, that is only a very peripheral world. Your real treasure is within you. So don't get lost in the jungle of the world, otherwise you will remain poor and you will die poor.

Jesus says 'Blessed are the poor for theirs is the kingdom of god.' I would like to say 'Blessed are the rich for theirs is the kingdom of god,' although what he means by poor is exactly the same as what I mean by rich, but I am talking more directly.

When he says 'Blessed are the poor in spirit,' he simply means those who are egoless, humble, simple.

innocent -- but that is what I call richness. Why call it poverty? -- it is not poverty. The person with an ego is poor; the person with pretentions is the poor person, Alexander the Great is a poor person, not Jesus; Jesus is the richest person the world has ever known. But I know by his idea of poverty he means exactly what I mean by richness. But I like a direct approach. Why go round about? -- first calling it poverty and then explaining it so that it becomes richness. Why not say it directly? But there is a reason why he used the word 'poverty'; that word has a tremendous appeal for the so-called religious people. They have always worshipped poverty, although their poverty is totally different from what Jesus calls poverty; hence there is bound to be misunderstanding.

Once a young man, a Jesus freak, came to me. He was living as poor a life as possible, without shoes, with rotten clothes. And he was travelling on foot all over India. From the Himalayas he was going to the south, and just living by begging.

When he passed the town I was in somebody told him about me and he came to see me. And I said

'What are you doing? What is this nonsense?' He said 'You call it nonsense?

Jesus says "Blessed are the poor in spirit."' I said he does not say that just by not wearing shoes you become poor in spirit or just by begging you become poor in spirit. As far as I can see you are tremendously egoistic. The moment I said this he became very angry, almost ready to fight.

I said 'Sit down. That's what I am saying -- that you are not humble. Your humbleness is just a strategy of the ego and you are using Jesus' words in a totally wrong context; you have not understood them.'

But that's what Christians down the ages have been doing with the words of Christ. And that is going to be done to almost all enlightened people and their teachings. Hence my effort is to be as direct as possible, so there is less possibility of misunderstanding.

I don't want to be metaphorical, I don't want to use parables because they can be interpreted in many ways. I don't want to use traditional words, or if I have to use them because there are no other words available then I want to make my meaning as clear as possible, as definite as possible. In that sense I am very logical and mathematical.

I call meditation the greatest richness because it makes you aware of your own infinite treasure. It makes you a master of the kingdom of god. And the only key to that kingdom is through meditation, through silence, watchfulness, awareness.

Man can have knowledge but not wisdom. Man can achieve as much knowledge as he wants. It is easy, you just need a little mind effort, a little exertion. You can go on feeding your memory system. It is a computer; you can accumulate whole libraries. But wisdom is not something that you can accumulate because it does not happen through the mind at all. It happens through the heart, it happens through love, not through logic.

When the heart is open with love, with trust, when the heart is surrendered to the whole, then a new kind of insight arises in you, a clarity a tremendously deep understanding of what life is all about, of who you are, of why this whole existence exists in the first place. All the secrets are revealed, but through love not through logic, through the heart not through the head. God has a direct connection with the heart, no connection with the head at all. So if one wants to approach god the way goes through the heart.

Once you have known wisdom through the heart then you can use your mind

also as a good servant, then you can use even the knowledge accumulated by the mind in the service of wisdom -- but not before you have known through the heart. Hence, rather than wasting time in accumulating unnecessary information, and people go on accumulating such stupid information, which is utterly ridiculous. If you look in the history books ... children are forced to remember the names of stupid kings and queens and their birth date and their death date -- and what do they have to do with this poor child?

Once a teacher asked a child 'If Adam had never left the garden of Eden what would have happened?'

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Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

child said 'One thing is certain: there would have been no history and no history class! It all began with Adam getting out of the garden of Eden.'

It is rumoured that the first words that Adam uttered when he was coming out of the gate... to Eve he said 'We are passing through a great crisis.'And since then we have always been passing through a great crisis. It is always a crisis. Not for a single moment have the crises stopped: one crisis after another crisis.

And the poor children have to read history.

When I was a student in the school that was a constant problem for my teachers, because I would insist

'What is the purpose? Why should I know about this man? Did he know anything about me? Then why should I bother?' My history teacher would simply close his eyes and sit silently -- what to do? Many times he sent me to the principal saying 'Please explain to this boy. He asks such questions that cannot be answered. And in a way he is right...' because what do I have to do with some Henry, some Edward? What do I have to do with these people/ And still I am wondering because I have not come across any situation in which they were needed. And I don't think they will ever be needed. And all kinds of

geographies...

Don't waste your time with information. All the universities are wasting peoples' lives. Almost ninety-nine per cent that they teach is rubbish.

The one per cent, it seems enters the rubbish without their knowledge, otherwise they would stop that too. Somehow it gets mixed into the rubbish and enters the curriculums and the texts; otherwise it is all absurd.

D.H. Lawrence had the suggestion that if for one hundred years we could close all the schools and universities humanity would be immensely benefitted. And I agree with him: it would be the greatest blessing to humanity if for one hundred years there were no school, no college, no university -- all were finished. For one hundred years, a holiday. Man would become fresh, young again and he would forget all about Alexander the Great and Napoleon and Ivan the Terrible and Genghis Khan and Tamerlane. It would be such an unburdening and man could start from ABC.

But each person can do it. It may not be possible to persuade the whole of humanity to stop all the colleges and universities, but individuals can be persuaded. And that's what I go on doing with my sannyasins: I persuade them to drop all nonsense and give the uttermost priority to their heart.

Move your energy to the heart, be more loving and you are in for a great surprise. As your love grows, as your love petals open and your heart becomes a lotus, something tremendously beautiful starts descending on you -- that is wisdom. And wisdom brings freedom.

Knowledge brings information, wisdom brings transformation.

Even a drop of bliss is an ocean. One can be drowned in a single drop of bliss. In fact a single drop of bliss is immeasurable. It is enough, more than enough, because bliss has no boundaries, it is infinite, and even a drop of infinity is infinite. It is as vast as the sky.

The only reason why we cannot attain it is that we are clinging to the ego which keeps us confined, which makes us very small. If we want to be blissful we have to drop our boundaries. We have to forget that we are Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, that we are communists, socialists, fascists. We have to forget all boundaries that ideologies draw around us -- religions and cultures, traditions,

conventions, moralities.

Once all these boundaries are dropped, suddenly you are moving into a totally new world, a world which is unbounded. You are getting out of the prison.

To be a Christian is to be in a prison. Jesus was never a Christian, remember. And he rebelled against the Jews, that's why they crucified him. He rebelled against all boundaries, against all that was past, He was a rebel. So was Buddha, so was Lao Tzu, and so is the case with everyone who has ever experienced bliss.

Drop the boundaries, definitions, identities and the doors are open -- there is nobody barring the path --

and one immediately plunges into the world of bliss.

Knowledge never makes you blissful; on the contrary it makes you more and more miserable. And it can be easily observed, it is a factual phenomenon. As man has grown more and more in knowledge, he has become more and more miserable. Whenever a society is well-educated, people start feeling life is meaningless, people start feeling a kind of deep boredom.

Move to the primitive societies, go to the aboriginals who are still living five thousand years back and you will be surprised by one thing: they don't have anything to be blissful about but they are blissful. They don't have big aeroplanes and palaces and television sets, they have no technology, they are living in a primitive way, but one thing is very clear, very obvious, they are blissful -- poor, but blissful. Why is it so?

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Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

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Move to a very knowledgeable society where education has become available to almost one hundred per cent of the people and you will be surprised: people look very miserable. They have lost something rather than gaining. In accumulating

knowledge they have forgotten to move into the world of wisdom. They have made knowledge a substitute, and remember substitutes never fulfil.

You love a woman -- that is a tremendously beautiful experience -- but you can get a substitute through a prostitute. Now in America they have substitute wives. And psychologists are suggesting to people to go to a substitute just for a change because they are so bored with their wife, bored with their family. But a substitute wife is after all a substitute; it is a plastic flower. She does not love you, you don't love her. At the most it can be a superficial meeting. At the most it can be sexual, but it can't have intimacy; it can never be spiritual. You use the woman and the woman uses you. It is a monetary relationship; you are ready to pay, she is ready to sell.

Now there are male prostitutes also! Of course not in poor countries like India, but in England, in America you can find male prostitutes. These are the great things that are happening through women's liberation. If men can have women prostitutes, why cannot woman enjoy male prostitutes? -- equality after all is equality. So people can go to foolish extremes, absurd extremes.

But slowly slowly everything is becoming a substitute, The true thing goes on disappearing. Instead of the true thing some substitute takes its place because a substitute can be manufactured, it is easily available, sellable, marketable. The real thing is not sellable or marketable; you have to deserve it.

Knowledge is a substitute. You can go to any university, to any library, to any museum, and you can accumulate much knowledge, but for wisdom you cannot go anywhere. In fact you have to stop going, you have to be very still and silent. You have to dig deep within yourself, to the very rock-bottom of your being.

It is arduous, but when you are absolutely silent, when all thoughts have disappeared, when your eyes are as clear as a mirror without any dust, you become capable of seeing that which is. That is wisdom.

And simultaneously, as wisdom happens your heart starts dancing. In fact for the first time you hear the REAL heart beat. For the first time you hear the song of the heart. For the first time your whole being --

body, mind, heart, soul -- are all dancing together and there is tremendous grace. My sannyasins have to achieve it. That's the only thing worth achieving, a blissful wisdom.

Blessed are the blissful, because they have already entered into the kingdom of god. Not knowing that they are entering into god's heart they have entered. In fact god can never be found directly. You cannot approach god directly, he has no address; he has no name either, no form. If you search and seek god you will never find him.

It is because of this fact that humanity has slowly slowly turned atheistic, because people have looked for god and they have not found him. They searched, they wasted their lives and finally they discovered it had been an exercise in utter futility.

But the whole responsibility falls on the shoulders of the priests, the popes, the shankaracharyas, the imams, the ayatollah, the so-called religious people, the religious preachers, because they go on telling people to search for god, to seek god -- and that is patent nonsense'

I say seek bliss and you will find god. Seek god and you will not find god and you will become more miserable than you were ever before because not finding something on which you have staked your whole life is bound to make you very frustrated. Forget all about god; just search for bliss, find the causes of your misery and drop those causes, remove those causes from the very roots.

And you will be surprised: as all the causes of misery are dropped bliss starts growing in you. And in blissful moments you will become aware of a new presence surrounding you -- and not only you but the whole existence. That presence is god.

God is not a person but a presence. God is not god but godliness.

Bliss comes like a breeze, it comes like fresh air. You cannot see it but you can feel it. It is not tangible, it is not material. You cannot show it to anybody; it is not objective. But you can breathe it and you can be tremendously enriched and nourished by it. In fact if somebody is open to you he will also feel your bliss. It cannot be proved -- that is true. It cannot be proved in a scientific way because it is not an object, it is a subjective experience, something inner, very inner. But when one feels it there is absolute certainty, there is no doubt at all. Doubt is impossible in those moments. It is impossible even to ask a question about it. It is so self-evident and so totally convincing that it is not possible for there to be any question mark. It is only in such moments that trust is born.

1/08/07

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

God cannot be believed in, and those who believe in god are simply deceiving themselves, they are dishonest people. My observation is that the so-called religious people are the most insincere and dishonest people in the world. Atheists are more sincere, honest, authentic; theists are hocus-pocus, bogus, pretenders, hypocrites, living a double kind of life: saying one thing and doing exactly the opposite. They have two doors to their life; the front-door, where they are Christians and Hindus and Mohammedans and are reading the Bhagavad Gita and the Koran and the Bible and having all the paraphernalia of their religious ritual.

And they have a backdoor also where you will find their reality. And you will be surprised: you were thinking this man was one and this man is not one, this man is not even two, this man is many. He has many masks and he goes on changing his masks.

In fact people have become so skilful that they don't need to change their mask, it is almost an autonomous process. The mask changes itself; as the situation changes the mask changes. You can observe it in others, you can observe it in yourself. You know when you are smiling truly and when you are simply smiling just to deceive, because a smile is expected; you are fulfilling a certain expectation. But it is only on the lips, an exercise of the lips maybe but it has nothing else behind it, it is a facade.

A real trust is not a belief, it is an experience. God has to be experienced. And never believe before you come to experience -- never never -- because once a belief enters your being it poisons you. Drop all beliefs because god is -- why believe? Why not experience?

I am not a teacher. I don't give you a dogma or a philosophy; I am simply a witness. I say 'I have experienced, so YOU can experience.' And there is no need at all to believe.

I was absolutely atheistic and I am tremendously fortunate that I never believed in god because if I had I would have never known. I never believed in anything at all. I was such a sceptical person that I would even ask things which nobody seems to ask. I would even ask about the existence of the other person, whether the other person really existed or was I just dreaming. Because sometimes you dream and there are persons in your dream.

I have always loved Chuang Tzu's famous statement: 'One night I dreamt that I became a butterfly, and since then I have always been in trouble because I have not been able to figure it out: if Chuang Tzu can dream that he is a butterfly, who knows? -- in the morning the butterfly may fall asleep and start dreaming that she is a Chuang Tzu. Who knows?'

I had it written just behind my desk when I was the university. One of my professors came to see me one day. He saw that and he said 'Why have you written this Chuang Tzu statement?' I said 'This is my statement too. I don't believe that you are.'

He said 'What are you saying?' I said 'Because sometimes you come in the dreams also. And now the thing has become more complicated.' He said 'What do you mean?' I said 'In the dream also you asked about this board, "Why do you have this board?" -- and now you are asking again. Now which one to believe?'

He simply went out. He said 'You will drive me crazy! Are you mad or something?'

But I am happy that I was that mad. Because I could not believe in anything I was free, totally free, and in that freedom something transpired; in that utter emptiness something came from the beyond like a breeze.

I could not see it but I felt it; I felt the freshness of it, I felt the fragrance of it and it transformed me. I am still not a believer because now god is a certainty to me.

Now I don't say God exists, 'I say 'ONLY god exists and nothing else.'

The Golden Wind

Chapter #29

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