Chapter 5 - Perfectly imperfect
There is no need to listen to my words, Anneliese, just being with me is enough, just being in tune, that's enough. Words are only strategies to keep you attuned to me so that you don't fall asleep, so that you remain awake.
You say:
EVERY TIME I FINISHED A LETTER, I FELT THAT EVERYTHING I WROTE WAS
NONSENSE...
It is! But there is no need to throw it away, otherwise what am I going to do here? Use me as a wastepaper basket, so whatsoever you write, sense, nonsense... it is all nonsense -- as far as I am concerned it is all nonsense. So you can send it to me, and I will make some crazy thing out of it.
After acquiring enough money from handouts, an inhabitant of the Bowery decided to take his refreshment at one of Wall Street's better drinking establishments.
A financial tycoon seated next to him was visibly appalled at the appearance and odor of the down-and-outer, so much so, in fact, that he turned to the man and pointedly said,
"Cleanliness is next to godliness -- John Wesley." His words were ignored.
A few minutes later, the financier again intoned loudly, "Cleanliness is next to godliness --
John Wesley." Still he was ignored.
Finally, the visibly irritated financier shouted in the man's face, "Cleanliness is next to godliness -- John Wesley!"
To which the skid-row denizen calmly replied, "Screw you! -- Tennessee Williams."
You can ask me any nonsense thing, and I will give you a bigger nonsense. I am an expert at that, the only expertise I can claim! And the more nonsensical a question is the more I enjoy it, because it expects a more nonsensical answer. If you ask something crazy that means you are asking for something crazy, and I am the last one to be defeated!
Anneliese...
A man went into a restaurant and ordered his breakfast. When the waitress brought his coffee, he observed that her thumb was stuck in the coffee. When the scrambled eggs arrived, again he observed that her thumb was in the eggs.
This was too much, and he said, "Lady, I didn't say anything when I saw your thumb in my coffee, but now I see that your thumb is in my eggs, too."
"Well," said the waitress, "I have a painful arthritis in my thumb-joint, and the doctor told me to put it into something warm and this would ease the pain."
The man was angry and said, "Well, why don't you stick it up your ass?" "Oh, I do, I do," answered the waitress, "but only when I'm in the kitchen!" Osho - The Goose is Out
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6 March 1981 am in Buddha Hall The first question
Question 1
OSHO, I HAVE GOT ALL THE DEGREES THAT A UNIVERSITY CAN OFFER.
WHY AM I STILL IGNORANT?
Dr. Pritam Singh, knowledge has no capacity to dispel ignorance. Knowledge is a false phenomenon; it is not wisdom at all, it is just the opposite of wisdom.
Knowledge is borrowed, wisdom is the flowering of your innermost being. You can borrow a plastic flower, but if you want real roses then you will have to grow them in your innermost being. No university can offer it, no scripture can offer it, no scholarship is capable of doing it. They are all impotent efforts, but they have been deceiving millions of people for thousands of years. Yes, they can make you knowledgeable. To be knowledgeable is one thing, and to know is totally different.
A blind man can be knowledgeable about light, but he knows nothing of light, he has not experienced it. He can collect all kinds of information about light, he can argue, philosophize, systematize, he can write great treatises on light, but he has not tasted the joy of light, he has not seen even a single ray of light. He has not seen a rainbow, the colors of the flowers, the wings of a butterfly. He has not seen the green trees, he has not seen the stars, the sun, the moon. He has missed all that. And what he has accumulated is simply rubbish.
It is better to be ignorant and have eyes than to be very knowledgeable about light and be blind.
But the universities exist specifically for that purpose. No society wants you to become wise: it is against the investment of all societies. If people are wise they cannot be exploited. If they are intelligent they cannot be subjugated, they cannot be forced into a mechanical life, to live like robots. They will assert themselves -- they will assert their individuality. They will have the fragrance of rebellion around them; they will want to live in freedom.
Freedom comes with wisdom, intrinsically. They are inseparable, and no society wants people to be free. The communist society, the fascist society, the capitalist society, the Hindu, the Mohammedan, the Christian -- no society likes people to use their own intelligence because the moment they start using their intelligence they become dangerous -- dangerous to the establishment, dangerous to the people who are in power, dangerous to the "haves"; dangerous to all kinds of oppression, exploitation, suppression; dangerous to the churches, dangerous to the states, dangerous to the nations.
In fact, a wise man is afire, alive, aflame. He would like rather to die than to be enslaved.
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kinds of stupid people. He cannot serve them. Hence, the societies down the ages have been supplying you with false knowing. That's the very function of your schools, colleges, universities.
They don't serve YOU, remember, they serve the past, they serve the vested interests. Of course, they go on puffing your ego up bigger and bigger, they go on giving you more and more degrees. Your name becomes longer and longer, but only the name -- you go on becoming shorter and shorter. A point comes where there are only certificates and the man has disappeared. First the man carries the certificates, then the certificates carry the man. The man is long dead.
Dr. Pritam Singh, it is not possible to become wise through the universities. Wisdom needs a totally different approach, a diametrically opposite approach. Knowledge is of the mind, wisdom is a state of no-mind. Knowledge creates the bottle around the goose -- a beautiful bottle, very beautifully painted, but it is just a bottle.
And inside there cannot be a real live goose. Inside a bottle either you can have a stuffed goose -- that's what your scholars are, stuffed tomatoes, potatoes, but all stuffed, stuffed with junk -- or you can have a painted goose inside. It will look beautiful from the outside, but in fact you are carrying only a bottle.
And the bottle becomes heavier, because knowledge has its own way of accumulating -- it goes on reproducing itself. Knowledge does not believe in birth control at all. If you know one thing, it will drive you into another thing, because with each question answered ten new questions arise. Again the same will happen: ten questions answered and you have a hundred questions ready for you. It goes on spreading. It becomes bigger and bigger and you are lost in it.
You ask me:
WHY AM I STILL IGNORANT?
This is why you are ignorant: you have not yet come out of the illusion of knowledge, the illusion of the mind.
Get out of the mind. The mind is the bottle I am talking about. The moment you drop the mind... and mind is only your idea; it is not a reality, it is fictitious, it is just a fantasy. It is made of the same stuff that dreams are made of. You can simply step out of it.
And this is the moment, Dr. Pritam Singh, because this is a great insight, in fact, to recognize: "Why am I still ignorant when I am carrying all the degrees of the university?"
Accept the fact that all those years of acquiring knowledge have been a sheer wastage. Get out of it! And the moment you are out of the mind, you are out of the bottle. See?... the goose is out! And the whole freedom of the sky, and the whole freedom of insightfulness...
Just the other day I was reading: What does a degree mean? I have four: B.A, M.A., Ph.D., and LL.D. Put them all together and what have you got? -- BAMAPHDLLD!
A YOUNG MAN AT COLLEGE NAMED BREEZE,
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WEIGHED DOWN BY M.A.S AND LL.D.S COLLAPSED FROM THE STRAIN
SAID HIS DOCTOR, "T'IS PLAIN
YOU ARE KILLING YOURSELF BY DEGREES!"
A very agitated professor, a father-to-be, desperate for a son, was pacing up and
down in the waiting room at the maternity hospital. Eventually the midwife came out of the delivery room and said to him, "It's all over, Dr. Jones. Congratulations!"
Still in a state of total panic he replied, "Am I a father or a mother?" That's what it means: BAMAPHDLLD
A professor-couple living in the country, received an invitation from the local squire to a fancy-dress party. They decided to go as a cow, with the husband at the front and the wife at the back.
The party was to be held in the squire's mansion, which was only across a couple of fields, so they thought they might as well walk across in costume.
They had only got half-way across the first field when the husband -- in the front
-- said to his wife, "Don't panic, darling, but there's a bull looking at us."
So they kept walking and the bull kept looking. Then the bull started pawing the ground and making his way towards them in a meaningful manner.
"He's charging us, darling, he's charging!" said the husband. "What are we going to do?" yelled the wife.
So the husband said, "I am going to bend down and eat grass -- you had better brace yourself!"
It was the young British professor's first visit to the United States, and in his innocence he sought lodging in the city's red-light district. His money, however, was as green as his outlook, and the madam gladly offered him a room for the night.
When a friend questioned him about his accommodation over lunch the following day, the young Briton replied, "Well, the room was very pretentious, you know, but Gad, what maid service!"
The so-called learned, the scholarly, the knowledgeable go on living in a world of their own fictions. They have no concern for reality at all -- they are disconnected from the real.
And it is the real which can make your life a joy, a bliss.
The word "God" is not God, the word "love" is not love either. So the poor people who go on thinking about the word "God" or the word "love" are simply missing a great opportunity.
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love, but the word is hiding the truth; the word is covering their eyes. The eyes of all knowledgeable people are so covered with theories, theologies, dogmas, creeds, that they cannot see. They are not transparent. And wisdom is a transparency, a vision unclouded --
unclouded by all thoughts, unclouded by all dust.
One has to cleanse oneself every moment, because dust tends to gather on the mirror every moment. It is a natural process. While you are sitting here, the mirror in your bathroom is gathering dust. Even in the night when nothing is happening -- even the doors of the bathroom and the windows are closed -- still some dust is gathering, settling on the mirror, because dust particles are there in the air itself. Every day in the morning you have to clean the mirror.
One has to be even more alert about the inner mind, the inner mirror, the inner capacity of reflection. EACH moment you have to clean the dust. I prefer to put it in this way: EACH
moment a sannyasin has to die to the past and be born anew. Then he remains transparent, then his mirror remains clear. Then there is nothing to obstruct his perspective. Then he is neither a Christian nor a Hindu, nor a Mohammedan, nor a Buddhist. Then he is simply a mirror, just a mirror, a mirroring -- mirroring all that is, within and without. Out of that mirroring, wisdom is born.
Wisdom is the flowering of your transparency, of your translucency, of your luminous being. That's what we are doing here. In fact, the function of the Master is to undo what the society has done to you. It is an anti-university, an
anti-school, an anti-college, because it is not here to impart knowledge to you but to impart something totally different, something of a different dimension. It is here to create a triggering process in you so that you can get out of your so- called scriptures, words, theories, and you can become just ordinary. You can just become whatsoever you are without any pretensions.
I exalt the ordinariness of consciousness. I am not teaching you the superman here.
Friedrich Nietzsche went mad simply because of the idea of the superman. And in India also, Sri Aurobindo, his whole life, was feeding the Indian ego with the idea of the superman, of the supermind, of the supernatural.
All this esoteric nonsense has become such a heavy burden on man that it has to be totally burnt -- less than that won't do. A fire is needed so that all that can be burnt can be burnt, and only that which remains will be your true self.
I am not esoteric, I am not occult, I am not teaching you the other world, I am not teaching you the supernatural, the superman. I am simply exalting the very ordinariness of every human being, the very ordinariness, not only of human beings, but of animals, of trees, of rivers, and rocks -- this very ordinariness of godliness. To me, godliness and ordinariness are equivalent, synonymous.
If I have to choose I will drop the word "God," because it has become really goddamned.
Just pure ordinariness... and to live it moment-to-moment, joyously, dancingly, celebratingly.
Then wisdom blooms. Then the spring comes and the grass grows by itself. The last question
Question 2
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OSHO, YOUR COMPASSION TOWARDS INDIA BRINGS, IN RETURN, ANGER
AND CONDEMNATION TOWARDS YOU. EVERY DAY INDIAN NEWSPAPERS AND
MAGAZINES ARE FULL OF THIRD-RATE CRITICISM AGAINST YOU. EVEN SO, YOU KEEP HAMMERING THIS ROTTEN CULTURE. WHAT IS THIS BUSINESS?
DOES INDIA DESERVE SO MUCH COMPASSION?
Chaitanya Keerti, it is because I am saying something which India has completely forgotten. It hurts. India has forgotten the truth. For thousands of years it has lived in a foggy state of mind -- not only that, it has also become very attached to that foggy state for the simple reason that it has nothing else to cling to. This is the only prop for its ego.
For twenty-two centuries India has been in political slavery. Now, a country existing for twenty-two centuries in slavery cannot have any source of ego as far as the political world is concerned. It cannot brag about world conquerors like Alexander the Great.
For five thousand years, India has been living in a very superstitious way. The priests have dominated India more than any country ever, and they are the most cunning people in the world. Because of their exploitation, oppression, because of their poisoning of the Indian soul for five thousand years, India has not been able to find any way into truth. They were standing like a China Wall against the truth.
It was a question of life and death for the priesthood. Either the truth or the priest
-- both cannot survive together, there is no possibility of their coexistence. If truth wins, the priest disappears. Hence, the truth has not to be allowed to win so the priest can go on dominating.
No other country has been dominated by priests like India has. For five thousand years a spiritual slavery...
There is nothing to support the ego of the nation -- no science, no technology, no richness, no political freedom, no democracy. You can see the problem. The
problem is... But a nation has to depend on some props, because a nation is not a true reality, remember; it needs props.
The individual can exist without the ego because the individual is a reality and the reality has no need of the ego. But the nation, the race, the church, the state -- these cannot exist without egos. Without egos they will fall apart. It is the ego that functions as a false center and keeps them together Hence, a Buddha can exist without the ego but Buddhists cannot. Krishna can exist without an ego but Hindus cannot. Remember this always: a false entity needs a false center, otherwise it will wither away.
India as a country, as a nation, as a race, was in tremendous need somehow to create a false center. And there was no ordinary alternative available -- money, technology, science, political power -- so the only thing to fall back upon was a spiritual longing, the other world.
And it is easy, because then you are dealing with invisible goods. Nobody can prove it, nobody can disprove it. It is very easy to live in hope of the other world. But who will create that hope? Then you have to depend on the crafty priests, the BRAHMINS -- they became the mediators. They started talking about the other world. They have even given you maps of the other world; they don't know the map of the world, this world... if you ask them, "Where is Timbuktu?" they may not be able to answer, but they can tell you EVERY detail of heaven --
not only of one heaven but of seven heavens, a seven-storied heaven. They can tell you all the details, the minute details of seven hells. There is no problem about it; it is religious fiction.
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Hindus believe in seven hells. Jainas believe in three hells and three heavens. And there was a man in Mahavira's time, who must have been a very beautiful man -- his name was Sanjaya Vilethiputta. He said, "This is all nonsense. There are seven hundred hells and seven hundred heavens!" But people said, "Mahavira says only three, Hindus say only seven"
Sanjaya Vilethiputta said, "Because they have only gone that far, I have searched the whole terrain."
Once a follower of Radhaswami came to me. They believe in fourteen heavens, fourteen stages of paradise. Of course, the founder of their religion has reached the fourteenth. Others are somewhere on the ladder: Rama and Krishna and Buddha are somewhere on the seventh; Jesus, Mohammed and Zarathustra somewhere on the sixth; Nanak, Kabir, Meera, somewhere on the fifth... and so on and so forth, each according to his need, and each according to his capacity.
He had brought the whole map. He wanted my approval: what did I think about this map, what did I say -- was it right or not.
I said, "It is absolutely right"
He was a little shocked because people had told him not to go to me because I would disturb him. And I said, "It is absolutely right. I know. Your guru has reached the fourteenth --
I have seen him there."
He said, "What do you mean?"
I said, "I am in the fifteenth, and he is always begging me, 'Pull me out of the fourteenth!"'
He was shocked, he was angry. But if there are fourteen, why not fifteen? Nobody can prove it, nobody can disprove it.
I have heard: in New York a shopkeeper was selling invisible hairpins. And, of course, the women were immensely attracted -- invisible hairpins!
One woman looked in a box... Of course, when the hairpins are invisible you cannot see them -- the box looked empty. She said, "Are they really there?"
The shopkeeper said, "They must be. Nobody has ever seen them. In fact, for months we have run out of stock, but they are selling!"
When something is invisible you can go on selling it; there is no problem about it.
India has been selling invisible goods to the world. Visible goods are not there. Naturally they become angry with me because I insist that goods should be visible, that you are carrying an empty box, that there is no goose in your bottle. And for five thousand years they have been doing such good business -- and I am destroying their very foundation.
Chaitanya Keerti, it is natural that they get angry at me. But anger simply shows fear, remember always: anger is fear standing on its head. It is always fear that hides behind anger; fear is the other side of anger. Whenever you become afraid, the only way to hide the fear is to be angry because fear will expose you. Anger will create a curtain around you; you can hide behind anger. The Indian mind is becoming really afraid of me. And it is not only the Indian Osho - The Goose is Out
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mind but all the other minds in the world who are doing the same kind of business of dealing in invisible goods. They are all becoming afraid.
When they become angry at me I know that I have hit the right point. I rejoice in it! They have been pretending love, compassion, sympathy, understanding, and I am exposing them to their very core. Without knowing what they are doing, they are doing what I want them to do.
They are in my hands. Anybody who gets angry at me is caught by me. Now he will be in a whirlwind. I will churn him, I will haunt him. Sooner or later he himself will throw his clothes off and stand naked in the sun. That's what is happening. When they are angry at me they are really showing that they have been exposed.
And the only way to defend is to be aggressive. They are defending themselves, but they can defend themselves only if they become aggressive. Their anger is simply showing their impotence.
I have heard a beautiful story, an ancient story:
A man came to China. When he entered the country -- it must be an old, ancient story --
just on the boundary he saw a crowd. Two people were almost ready to kill each other. They were shouting, jumping, making all kinds of angry gestures, swords naked in their hands. But nothing real was happening, as if it was a movie, as if it was just a play. He could not even detect any anger on their faces. Their eyes were calm and quiet, their faces were relaxed. They looked very centered and grounded. So why all this shouting and swinging of swords, and jumping and jogging and running at each other? And nobody is being hit, and nobody is preventing you either. The crowd is simply standing there witnessing the whole scene.
The man became a little tired after a while, a little bored too. One needs some excitement, something should happen. Then one man became angry; his face became red, his eyes became flaming. And the crowd dispersed! The fight ended there.
The newcomer could not believe it, he could not understand what was happening. He asked one person, "What is the matter? I cannot follow the whole sequence. They were ready to kill, but when the time for real action came -- one man had become really angry, had lost his cool -- why did the crowd disappear?"
The crowd said, "They are both Taoists, followers of Lao Tzu, and this is the criterion in Taoist schools; that the moment a person becomes angry he is defeated. There is no need to fight -- he has shown his impotence, he has shown his fear. That's enough! His anger shows that he is a coward. Now there is no point; the other person has gained the victory, he is the conqueror -- he remained cool. He could not be distracted from his center. He could not be pulled out from his grounding. He remained integrated."
Chaitanya Keerti, I know what is happening all over India: thousands of people writing against me, shouting against me. They are losing their so-called cool -- which was phony, because only a phony cool can be lost. Their whole idea of tolerance, their whole idea of accepting others, of accepting different points of view, is lost. A single man, who never even moves out of his room is enough to create a turmoil throughout the whole country.
But it is a significant phenomenon. It shows that all those five thousand years of bogus spirituality have not done any good to India. That's what I wanted to show the whole world.
They are making my point emphatical. I am stating the point, they are supporting the argument. They are supporting me!
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One man has suggested that I should be given shock treatment, electric shocks. This is real Indian culture. Another man has suggested I should be immediately deported from the country. This is tolerance, acceptance of different points of view. A third man has suggested I should be thrown in the Arabian Sea -- not even in the Indian Ocean, because I may poison the Indian Ocean -- in the Arabian Sea. This is a non-violent country, the country of the seers and the sages, of the saints, mahatmas... and all kinds of dodos.
Creeping around to the bedroom window, the Indian private detectives saw their client's wife in bed with another man.
"Just as I suspected," said the first Indian. "Let's go in after him."
"Great idea," the other Indian replied. "How soon do you think he will be finished?"
A travelling Indian guru, His Holiness Swami Etceterananda Paramahansa, founder of Holy Cow-Dung Ashram, Miami Beach, arrived hot, tired and thirsty at a small farm and asked the farmer, of his charity, for a drink.
"Would ye fancy a drop of ale, reverend?" asked the farmer.
The Indian guru blanched, "Nay, I would not, brother," he said sternly, "for I have taken the pledge. Not a drop of the demon drink shall pass my lips. A glass of your good, fresh milk will suffice me."
So the farmer, being a bit of a wag, fetched a glass of milk and splashed a liberal lacing of rum into it. He handed it to the guru, who drank deeply, smacked his lips, raised his eyes to heaven, and said, "Oh, Lord! What a cow!"
Vacation time was suntan time as far as Joan, an admirably proportioned
secretary, was concerned, and she spent almost all of her day on the roof of the Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay, sopping up the warm sun's rays. She wore a bathing-suit the first day, but on the second she decided that no one could see her way up there, and she slipped out of it for an over-all tan.
She had hardly begun when she heard someone running up the stairs. She was lying on her stomach, so, pulling a towel over her derriere, she continued to recline as before. "Excuse me, miss," said the flustered little assistant manager of the hotel, out of breath from running up the stairs, "the hotel does not mind your sunning on the roof, but we would very much appreciate your wearing your bathing-suit as you did yesterday."
"What difference does it make?" Joan asked rather coolly. "No one can see me up here, and besides I am covered with a towel."
"I know, I know," said the embarrassed little Indian, "but unless you wear your bathing-suit, the dinner cannot start. And the governor of Bombay is giving a big dinner to all the respectables of the city."
The woman could not understand. "But what is the matter?" she said. "I don't see the point.
Why can't the dinner start? What has it got to do with my bathing-suit?"
"Right, lady," said the embarrassed little man. "You are lying on the dining room skylight!"
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Now, how can the dinner start? All the Indians will be looking towards heaven -- they are always looking towards heaven. And such a sight! They cannot miss it. But they will pretend
-- they will be on their knees with folded hands looking towards God. They will not look at the skylight directly, they will not say that they are enjoying the scene, they will do a long prayer, so long that they will forget completely about
the dinner. And everybody will be pretending that he is not looking at the woman lying down naked on the roof.
This country is a country of pretenders, and I am hurting them. And I want to hurt them, because that is the only way to pull the pus out of their centuries-old wounds. They are angry at me, they are condemning me. That shows that I am on the right track. They cannot ignore me. Either they have to be with me or they have to be against me -- either way I am willing --
but I would like it to be a decisive phenomenon.
Even if a few intelligent people are with me -- and they are with me -- we can transform this whole rotten culture and give it a new life. It needs compassion. Five thousand years of spiritual, political, economic slavery... What other reason, Chaitanya Keerti, do you think is needed for me to be compassionate towards this culture?
But they will not be easily ready to change. Change is hard; it goes against your grain, it goes against your habits, it goes against your hangover. And the hangover of India is very long. They are suffering from the past -- they only have the past.
Remember one thing: a child only has the future, he has no past. Hence, a child never thinks in terms of nostalgia. There is nothing at his back. He is so fresh that he has no memories. The young man lives in the present. The present is so beautiful; the past was only childhood, a preparation at the most. And the young man does not bother about the future --
one starts thinking of the future when the present starts slipping out of one's hands.
The old man thinks only of the past; he has no future. There is only death, a dark night waiting for him. He wants to avoid it. The only way is to turn his back to the future and look at the past. The child looks towards the future, the old man towards the past; the young man remains in the present.
The same is true about cultures. When a culture is very new it looks to the future. It has a tremendous aspiration for the stars, it grows, it expands. When a culture remains really young
-- which very rarely happens, in fact, it has not happened yet -- then the culture remains in the present. And when the culture becomes old, it starts thinking in terms of nostalgia, of the past, the golden age that is no more.
Individually also, youth is a new phenomenon. In the past the child used to go from childhood to old age; youth was not a stage at all. In poor countries it is still so. You can see in the aboriginal tribes of poor countries, children six years old, five years old, working like old men. Seven years old, eight years old, and they are already burdened with worries. They will not have a chance to be young. Hence, in the past there was no generation gap. The generation gap is a new phenomenon, a very significant phenomenon. This is the first time it has happened, this is the first time we have been able to afford it. It belongs to an affluent society, it belongs to a certain richness, when the generation gap appears.
The child and the old man are facing each other -- there is no gap. The child looks to the future, the old man looks to the past. Hence, you will always find a great friendship between Osho - The Goose is Out
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children and old people. They are facing each other. That has always been the case -- children and old people lived together. There was no gap.
The youth is a new phenomenon in the world. He is neither a child nor an old man. He is breaking new ice. He is trying to live now, here. Yes, a few individuals in the past have lived in that constant youthfulness, but only individuals, not cultures. There is a possibility now that even a culture may start living in the present. Many individuals will be needed to prepare the ground for cultures to live in the present.
The Indian concept of time will show you many things. It says the best age has passed, it was the first age, the golden age; they call it SATYA YUGA, the age of truth. It is prehistoric.
At that time life was the most beautiful, it was the golden peak. Time walked on four legs -- it was very stable. Then the fall began.
The Indian idea of time is just anti-Darwinian, unscientific, totally inhuman. Then the fall began -- the age of fall, not of evolution, not of progress -- things started shrinking. Time started walking on three legs. Things became hazy, unbalanced -- it is called treta, "three legs." Then things fell more: time had only two legs, it became even more difficult. It is called dwapar, "two-legged time." And now is the fourth and the last, the most condemned stage -- it is called KALI YUGA. Now all three legs have disappeared. Time is standing only on one leg, ready at any moment to fall, to be toppled. Just one-legged time, and that one leg is already in the grave.
This is a very dark and dismal vision. This is the vision of an old, ancient, rotten country.
India needs a rebirth, it needs a new childhood. It will protect its ideas because it is so accustomed to those ideas. They are its only treasure! So when I hit at those ideas I look like an enemy. The friend looks like an enemy, and the enemies are being taken for friends. But this is natural, this is logical. It can be understood.
A grave-digger, thoroughly absorbed in his work, dug a pit so deep one afternoon that he could not climb out when he had finished.
Come nightfall and evening's chill, his predicament became more uncomfortable. He shouted for help and at last attracted the attention of a drunk staggering by.
"Get me out of here!" the digger pleaded. "I am cold!"
The drunk peered into the open grave and finally spotted the shivering digger in the darkness. "Well, no wonder you're cold, buddy," said the drunk, kicking some of the loose sod into the hole, "you haven't got any dirt on you!"
Now, if you ask a drunkard, he will have his own logic. He will see reality through his own drunkenness.
Indians get angry because they have become accustomed to being praised continuously.
Nobody has ever criticized them. Nobody has ever pointed out to them that "You are living a death, not a life. You are shrinking and dying. You have lost the fervor, the zest, the gusto to live authentically, to live totally."
They have been praised. Their paleness has been given the halo of holiness. Their anti-life attitudes have been raised to great spiritual fantasies. Their hysterical experiences have been called samadhi. Their madness has been respected as if something of the beyond has Osho - The Goose is Out
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descended in them. Their gibberish is thought to be esoteric; people go on finding meanings in it.
Fools have been worshipped, masochists have been thought to be ascetics, sadists have been thought to be great saints. Perversions of all kinds have been given a spiritual connotation. Now, to expose this whole lie of thousands of years is risky.
But I am willing to take the risk because I have nothing to lose -- the goose is out! I have nothing to lose. At the most they can kill me; that is not going to help them. Even my death will be of tremendous help to them. It may shock them out of their nonsense. It may bring them out of their stupor, their sleepiness.
Hence, Chaitanya Keerti, I am going to continue. They can go on criticizing me. Their criticism is basically because of my life-affirmative approach. They have lived a life-negative philosophy. They are against all that gives you joy; they are suppressive, repressive; they are boiling within, but they go on carrying a blanket cover. Nobody wants to show his nakedness.
And when your blanket is worshipped so much, and not only in India but all over the world...
There are so many fools in the world that any Indian can find disciples. It is not a problem at all. Just your being Indian is enough, and you are a guru. I have seen such things happening before my eyes.
One of my disciples, Nirmala Srivastava, has now become a great spiritual leader. Now her name is long: Her Holiness Jagatjanani -- "The mother of the whole world" -- Mataji Nirmalaji Srivastavaji.
She was once traveling with me in a car, and I passed by Muktananda's ashram.
The people staying in Muktananda's ashram invited me to be there for a five- minute stay, just to take a cup of tea. And it was a long journey so I said, "There is no harm in it." Anyway I love a cup of tea! So I stayed for five minutes.
Nirmala saw Muktananda. She could not believe that this stupid-looking man -- disgusting, more or less a buffoon -- had become a great spiritual leader.
After the tea, when we re-entered the car she said, "If this man can become a spiritual leader, then why can't l?"
I said, "You can." And she has become one.
There is one man here from Australia who asked me a question -- because now she is in Australia, doing great spiritual work. He asked me: "Once in a while you talk about a woman, Rabiya el-Adawiya. What do you think about Mataji Nirmala Deviji? Is she also of the same category as Rabiya el-Adawiya?" The man is here.
I know her perfectly well -- for ten years she was my student. There is nothing in it, no spirituality, no meditativeness... but she got the idea from Muktananda. And it is not the only case.
You must have heard the name of a great sardar yogi in America, Yogi Bhajan. He was just a porter at Delhi Airport. He saw Muktananda coming with seven hundred Americans...
Of course at that time his name was Sardar Harbhajan Singh; he was a poor porter, but certainly he looked far better than Muktananda, more impressive. The idea came into his mind, "If this fool can be a PARAMAHANSA, A SATGURU, etcetera, etcetera, then why should I waste my time just being a porter?" He dropped the job, went to America, and is now the greatest spiritual leader of the Sikh hierarchy in the Western hemisphere.
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Just a few days ago, he was back in Delhi with all his disciples. One of his bosses, who is a lover of me, passed by. He saw him sitting on the lawn of the Delhi Taj Mahal Hotel with his disciples. He could not recognize him, he had changed so much. He thought, "A great mahatma."
But Yogi Bhajan is a simple man in that way, far simpler than Muktananda or Nirmala Devi. He sent a disciple to the boss to tell him, "Come to my room. I have something to say to you."
The boss could not understand why the great yogi was calling him; he was thrilled, excited. He went into the room, Yogi Bhajan came in and he said, "Boss, don't you recognize me? I am just that poor Sardar Harbhajan Singh, your porter. Have you forgotten me completely?"
Then he could recognize the face. He said, "But what has happened? You have become such a great yogi with so many disciples!"
Then he told the story... that it is due to Muktananda. The whole credit goes to Muktananda!
Indians cannot drop that garbage easily because that is the only garbage they are capable of selling to the world. They cannot get rid of that crap. It stinks! But it sells. There are millions of people in the world who are hankering for it and they don't know where to go. India has become their hope... and they will be exploited.
They are angry at me, all the gurus of India are angry at me, because I don't belong to their tradition. I am not here to exploit anybody, I am not here to force indoctrination on you: Indian culture, Indian religion, and all that nonsense. I am here just to help you to be free from Christianity, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism. I am here to help you to be yourself, just to be yourself.
My sannyasins are not my followers, they are just my friends. I love them, they love me, but there is no hierarchy. I am not holier than you, or higher than you. That goes against the Indian investment. They are bound to be against me, Chaitanya Keerti. I am affirming life, they have been denying it all along.
Nirmala met her friend Vimala on the street one afternoon and noticed that Vimala was well along the road of pregnancy.
"You know," Nirmala said, "I would give anything to have a baby. But I guess it's hopeless."
"I know just how you feel," Nirmala said. "My husband was that way too, but everything is fine now. In fact, I am eight months pregnant."
"What did you do?"
"I went to Swami Etceterananda."
"Oh, we tried that," Nirmala replied. "My husband and I went there for six months."
"Don't be silly," Vimala told her. "Go alone!" Osho - The Goose is Out
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And they will find all kinds of arguments against me. They are argumentative people. For centuries they have done nothing else but argue. But their arguments are not going to help them because I am not arguing for any philosophy; otherwise they would be able to confute me. I am arguing for existence, and there they are at a loss.
If it was only a philosophical argument there would be no problem. India has known many philosophies. Buddha argued against the Vedas and there was no problem. Mahavira argued against the Upanishads; there was no problem. Shankara argued against Buddha and Mahavira; there was no problem. Ramanuja argued against Shankara; there was no problem. It is an accepted fact, if you argue only for a philosophical standpoint, nobody is worried, because it is just airy-fairy; it does not make any change in one's life.
I am not arguing for a philosophy. I am not philosophical at all, I am totally existential.
That's where they are finding it difficult. They are finding it absolutely difficult to decide how to cope with me, what to do with me. Hence the anger, hence the
condemnation, hence all kinds of third-rate criticism. They simply show their reality. Those third-rate criticisms that they go on making against me are simply bringing their reality to the surface. They are showing their nakedness, their ugliness. And that serves my purpose.
The real-estate salesmen in Bombay lead lives entirely unbounded by mere prosaic fact.
One of these gentlemen was showing some property to a possible customer, a rich man, and he was pulling out all the stops.
He finished up with, "Why, the climate is the best in the country! Do you know?
-- no one ever dies here."
And just then a funeral procession came into view, wound slowly down the street and disappeared from sight. The real-estate agent was taken aback for a second, but he made a quick recovery.
Removing his hat, he said solemnly, "Poor old undertaker -- starved to death."
Indians are clever at argumentation. If I was arguing they would have found a thousand and one arguments. But I am not arguing, I am simply pointing to the moon. My fingers are not my arguments but only indicators. Don't cling to my fingers, see the moon. And it is time that the moon should be seen.
You ask me, Chaitanya Keerti:
EVEN SO, YOU KEEP HAMMERING THIS ROTTEN CULTURE...
I will go on hammering. It is so rotten that there is every hope that we may get rid of it. It is falling apart on its own; just a little hammering is needed. I am going to hit it mercilessly.
And you ask:
WHAT IS THIS BUSINESS?
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This is the business of people like me. It has always been the business of people like me.
Socrates was told by the court in Athens, "If you stop talking about truth, we can release you. You will not be put to death." Socrates refused, and the words he used were very beautiful. He said, "That is my business. I cannot stop talking about truth. Just as I breathe, I talk about truth. It is my business."
I am going to continue. My hammering will become harder because I have to bring more and more rubbish to the surface. My hammering will go deeper. It is a surgical hammering --
many rotten parts of this goddamned country have to be removed. It needs nothing less than that. Medicines won't help, it needs an operation. And I am preparing the operating table...
It is going to be a great adventure. But even if the patient dies, there is no harm done. At least there will be some space, at least there will be less of a crowd. And the patient is dead anyway. This country is living a posthumous existence. It died long ago: the day it started the idea that we are falling, that the golden age is lost, that we are falling deeper and deeper into darkness and hell, it lost all qualities of life. Since then it has been living a posthumous existence.
My effort is to give this country a real death so that a real birth becomes possible.
Resurrection is possible only after crucifixion. There is no other way. Death is the way for life to come back, so don't be afraid of death! In fact, life and death are not opposites, they are not contradictions to each other. They are like two wings -- they help each other, they are complementaries.
I teach you to live totally, and I also teach you to die totally. Totality has to be the taste of a really religious person. And when I say "a really religious person" I don't mean anything supernatural, anything higher, holier -- I simply mean the innocent life, the ordinary life. I exalt the ordinary, I praise the ordinary, I worship the ordinary.
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Only one time: now
7 March 1981 am in Buddha Hall The first question
Question 1 OSHO,
I HAVE HEARD YOU SAY NOT TO ASK FOR ANYTHING IN OUR PRAYERS.
THEN WHY DOES JESUS SAY TO US, "WHEN YOU PRAY, SAY: GIVE US OUR
DAILY BREAD. FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES. LEAD US NOT INTO
TEMPTATION, BUT DELIVER US FROM EVIL"? AND ALSO JESUS HIMSELF
ASKED, "MY FATHER, IF IT IS POSSIBLE, LET THIS CUP PASS ME BY, YET NOT AS
I WILL, BUT AS THOU WILT." PLEASE EXPLAIN.
Dhyan Prabodh, religion has a long history. Much of it is only a hangover from the past.
The real religion, the essential religion is possible only now, because man has come of age.
The past of humanity was very childish -- not childlike, remember, but childish. And it was bound to be so; it was inevitable, unavoidable. So I am not complaining about it, I am simply stating the fact that whenever you think of
religion, never think in terms of the past otherwise you will have a totally wrong orientation. Think more in terms of the present.
When you think of the Theory of Relativity, you don't bring Newton in. You know he did contribute something to scientific growth, but his days are over. We are grateful for whatsoever he did, whatsoever he could do, but with Albert Einstein, Newton was finished.
He will remain only a footnote in the history of scientific growth.
The same is true about religion, about every human endeavor. When you are going to the moon in a spaceship, the man who invented the bullock cart has certainly contributed immensely -- without the bullock cart there would have been no possibility of the spaceship --
but you don't go on worshipping the man who invented the bullock cart. You don't even remember his name. And while you are involved with a spaceship, it is better to forget all about bullock carts. They are not going to help; their mechanism is out of date.
But about religion we are not so rational -- about religion we are very emotional. About religion we are not so scientific -- about religion we are very illogical, superstitious.
Religion has passed through two phases. The first phase was that of prayer; that is the bullock cart era of religion. The second phase is meditation, that is the spaceship age of religion. They are totally different dimensions. Their sources are different, their workings are different, their whole milieu is different. And one should not get confused between the two.
There is much confusion around the world, so let me explain to you. And be very patient because we are all conditioned by the religions of prayer. Their weight is heavy; every human being is crushed under a mountainous weight. And the work for a Master has become more Osho - The Goose is Out
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and more difficult, because it is not only a question of helping you to be
meditative: before that can start much has to be negated in you, much rubbish has to be shovelled out, much dirt has to be cleaned off. The whole past has to be dismantled, only then will you be able to open your wings to the essential, mature, adult dimension of religion.
Prayer means fear, hence all the old religions are fear oriented. Their Cod is nothing but a creation of their fear; it is not a discovery, it is imagination, it is projection. They are full of fear; they need a father figure to protect them from all kinds of fear. And there are thousands of fears in life: there are anxieties, anguishes, problems to be encountered, insoluble puzzles, unbridgeable gaps; man is surrounded by great darkness. He needs a protective hand; he wants somebody as a security, as a safety.
Each child is brought up by parents. His first experience with the parents becomes very decisive, because he is protected, comforted, consoled; all his needs are fulfilled, he does not have to worry, he has no responsibilities, he is taken care of. He can rely on the parents. But this is not going to be so forever. Sooner or later he will have to stand on his own feet.
The moment he stands on his own feet a great trembling arises in him: now who is going to save him? Now who is going to console him? And the problems go on becoming bigger and bigger every day. As life progresses it starts coming closer to death, which is the ultimate problem to be solved. And there is great anxiety about death.
Each child starts falling back, each child starts going back to the childhood state, because that seems to be the only part of his life where there was not a single problem at all. This is regression.
This regression has been thought of as prayer; it is not prayer. Then he falls on his knees and starts praying to a god...
It is not accidental that all the religions call God "the Father." Yes, there are a few other religions which call God "the Mother" -- which is the same. In matriarchal societies God is the Mother, in patriarchal societies Cod is the Father. One thing is certain: that God has to be the ultimate parent.
And then every community, society, civilization, invents its own Cod; they say, "God created man in his own image." That is absolutely wrong -- man has created God in his own image. And because there are so many kinds of people in
the world, there are so many images of God.
But that image is your fabrication; you are praying before your own invention. Prayer is really one of the most absurd things possible. It is as if you are praying before a mirror, seeing your own face, kneeling down before your own image, asking for favors, and there is nothing in the mirror except your reflection. All prayers... prayer as such is juvenile, it is regressive.
It will hurt you, but I cannot help it. I have to say the truth as it is. Prabodh, you ask me:
I HAVE HEARD YOU SAY NOT TO ASK FOR ANYTHING IN OUR PRAYERS.
In fact, the moment you stop asking, you will stop praying. That is a simple methodology
-- I sometimes have to go a little roundabout, just so as not to hurt you too much. Osho - The Goose is Out
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I don't see that there is any God who created the world. I certainly experience a quality of godliness in existence, but it is a quality, not a person. It is more like love, more like silence, more like joy, less like a person. You are never going to meet God and say "Hello" to him,
"How are you?" and "I have been looking for you for thousands of years. Where have you been hiding?"
God is not a person but only a presence. And when I say "presence", be very attentive, because you can go on listening according to your own conditioning.
You can even make
"presence" something objective -- you have again fallen into the same trap. God is a presence at the innermost core of your being: it is your OWN presence. It is
not a meeting with somebody else.
Martin Buber, one of the great Jewish thinkers of this age, has written that prayer is a dialogue between "I" and "thou". There is no "thou", hence the dialogue is impossible. All prayers are monologues. And because there is no "thou" there is no "I" either; they can exist only together, they cannot exist in separation. How can you imagine the existence of "I"
without "thous"? "Thous" are needed to demark the line of the "I".
But Martin Buber in a sense is right -- he is defining the whole past of religion. He himself is burdened with the past; he could never get out of his Jewish skin. He remained encaged, he remained a Jew -- a nice, beautiful person, of great intellectual capacities, but still in bondage.
The Jewish idea of "I" and "thou" is the basic pattern for prayer. Without "I" you cannot pray because there is nobody to pray to. Without "thou" you cannot pray, because whom to pray to? And if you are not asking for anything, then for what are you praying? Prayer means asking, it is a demand, howsoever camouflaged, howsoever subtly hidden behind beautiful garbs and masks. It is asking: you are demanding, you are saying, "Give me this! Give me that!"
So when I say there is no Cod, remember this: I really mean that existence is enough unto itself. It needs no creator. There is creativity but no creator. The division between creator and creativity has to be dissolved, only then will you be able to rise to the peaks of meditation.
Otherwise you will remain confined to the childish patterns of the past: kneeling down before images in temples, in synagogues, in churches, and doing all kinds of foolish things. But those foolish things are being done by thousands of others, so you never become aware that they are foolish. When the crowd is with you, when the multitudes are with you, you feel on safe ground. You feel shaky only when you are alone.
Meditation is the experience of aloneness. Only very courageous people can enter into that dimension. Prayer is a crowd phenomenon, it is part of the collective mind. And when you are in a crowd, certainly a great confidence arises in you. It is infectious, because so many people cannot be wrong. But I would like to tell you: it is always the case that the multitudes are bound to be wrong. Only rarely is there an individual who is right, because truth is such a
pinnacle, such a peak, like Everest. You cannot go to Everest with a multitude; there is not space enough. Only one person can stand on the highest peak -- alone.
Meditation is the experience of being totally alone, utterly alone. Prayer is a crowd phenomenon, it is a mob psychology. Hence Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedanism, all have remained religions of prayer. Even the two religions which tried to become religions of meditation fell back -- Buddhism and Jainism, these two religions tried to be religions of meditation. But only Buddha and Mahavira, two individuals, could manage.
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The moment they died their religions started falling back to the old, regressive pattern; they both became religions of prayer.
Now Jainas are praying before Mahavira. That is even worse, because Christians can have some support from Jesus but Jainas have no support from Mahavira. Buddhists, millions of Buddhists, are praying before the statue of Buddha. That is ridiculous, unbelievable, because Buddha's last words were "Be a light unto yourself." And it is a strange phenomenon that Buddha's statues were the first to be made in the world; his statues were the first to be installed in temples.
There are temples of Buddha with thousands of statues. One temple in China is called The Temple of Ten Thousand Buddhas -- ten-thousand statues of Buddha in one temple. The whole mountain has been carved into a temple. If Buddha comes back he will start beating his head, he will commit suicide.
The first thing to be remembered, Prabodh: I believe in an orgasmic universe. There are no such divisions as the creator and the created, the higher and the lower, the sacred and the profane, this and that. I believe in one organism.
Existence has not to be thought of in terms of a painter and his painting, because the moment the painting is finished, the painter and the painting become two separate entities.
Existence has to be thought of only in terms of a dancer and his dance. You cannot separate them; the dancer and the dance are one. At the highest peak of dancing, the dancer disappears into the dance -- there is no dancer but only dance.
That is the experience of meditation: when you dissolve yourself into existence, when the dewdrop slips into the ocean and becomes the ocean. And vice versa is also true: the ocean slips into the dewdrop and becomes the dewdrop. They cannot be conceived of as two entities any more.
So when I say God is not a presence, I mean he's not anything outside you -- neither a person nor a presence as conceived in the language of objectivity. When I say God is a presence, I simply mean he is the innermost core of your being -- that silent core, that space where nobody else can enter you; that private, that absolutely intimate virgin space, your interiority, is God.
But the word "God" can create trouble for you. Words are very troublesome because words carry the past; they are made by the past, they are overburdened by the past. Any word is dangerous, because its meaning comes from the past. And for me the problem is: to use the words which come from the past -- because there are no other words -- but to give them such a twist and turn that they can give you a little insight into a new meaning. The words are old, the bottles are old, but the wine is new.
An old lady who was walking her dog decided to go into the local supermarket, which did not allow dogs. She tied the animal to a fire hydrant. No sooner was the dog tied than every loose dog in the neighborhood started sniffing this defenseless animal. The cop on the corner, observing what was happening, called to the old woman and told her that she could not leave her dog there alone.
She asked him why and he replied, "Lady, your dog is in heat." She answered, "Eat, she'll eat anything."
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He countered, "The dog should be bred."
The old lady replied, "She'll eat bread, cake -- anything you give her she'll eat." In complete frustration, he said, "That dog should be laid!"
The old woman stared directly into his eyes and answered, "So lay her! I always wanted a police dog."
Words ARE dangerous... every possibility of being misunderstood. You say, Prabodh:
I HAVE HEARD YOU SAY NOT TO ASK FOR ANYTHING IN OUR PRAYERS.
In fact, that is my way to prevent you from praying. If you have nothing to ask for, why should you pray? Then what is the rationale of it?
Even a man like Jesus is in many ways childish. But it cannot be helped: he belonged to the bullock cart age of religion, he belonged to the Judaic tradition. He lived as a Jew, he talked as a Jew, he died as a Jew. His whole way of thinking, looking, observing, was purely Jewish.
He was not really in rebellion, he was not a rebel in the true sense of the word. On the contrary, he was trying to prove that he belonged to the tradition, he was trying to prove that he was the person that had been predicted by the old prophets, that he had come to fulfill all their prophecies. Now this is sheer nonsense! Nobody can predict for anybody else; the past is absolutely impotent to know anything of the future. The future is that which remains open. If it can be predicted it becomes closed, it is no longer the future; if you can predict the future it is already past. You have already cancelled its opening, it has become closed.
He was trying to convince the Jews that "I am the messiah you have been waiting for." He was trying in every way to fulfill their expectations: doing all kinds of miracles, trying in every possible way to argue his case. This is not the way of a revolutionary. The revolutionary simply disconnects himself from the past; he has nothing to do with the past.
He was still trying to be a prophet in the Jewish sense. A prophet is a religious man with political tendencies, and religion and politics are unmixable. If you mix them, you will create a hotch-potch. And that's what Jesus did: on the one hand he was trying to be religious, on the other hand he was trying to prove that he was a prophet like the old prophets. This political tendency with his religious leaning became a very confused phenomenon in him. He was utterly confused.
I don't see much clarity in him, he's not transparent, he's very clouded. You can see it in his own statement. He says, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass me by..." That is his innermost desire. Otherwise, why should he say, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass me by, yet not as I will, but as thou wilt?" This is a contradiction, a clear-cut contradiction.
This is not said by a truly surrendered person. A truly surrendered person has nothing to say --
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From where does this "if" come -- "if it is possible"? This desire is there that "if you can manage, please... but if you cannot manage then it is okay, then whatsoever happens I will accept." But there is reluctance, there is contradiction. His own desire is that this cup should pass by -- this agony, this crucifixion, this death, should pass by. He was really deep down waiting for a miracle, he was hoping for a miracle. He was not very different from the crowd that had gathered there to observe the crucifixion. He was not very different from the rabbis and the priests and the government who were all conspiring to kill him; their philosophical background was the same.
The rabbis and the high priest of the temple of Jerusalem were trying to prove that this man was a fake. And he was trying to prove that "No, I am the true messiah -- and at the last moment you will see, when God himself descends to save his only begotten son." And time started passing: he is nailed, he is crucified, he is waiting for the miracle. Nothing is happening, all expectations are turning sour. In that moment of agony he screams, "Why have you forsaken
me?"
But there is nobody to whom he is calling. There is nobody who has forsaken him. It is his own idea, it is his own projection, it is his own hallucination. This state is hysterical! But he is waiting up to the last moment. And when he says, "If it is not possible, then let thy will be done," that is surrender, but not true -- with reluctance, just a face-saving device.
Nothing is happening, all is finished. The crowd is jeering and laughing at the whole scene, people are throwing stones, insulting him, hurting him, people are returning home very frustrated because nothing has happened, convinced that he was a fake. Even his own disciples have escaped, seeing that now it is dangerous to be there. If they are caught... if Jesus is not saved by God, who is going to save them? Poor fellows -- they escaped. And it is logical.
Jesus saying, "Let thy will be done," is just making a last effort to save his face. This is not the way of a surrendered man. How can you surrender to your own projection?
Hence, I don't teach you prayer; prayer is bound to be diametrically opposite. Its expectation is basically contradictory: it requires you to surrender, only then can it be fulfilled.
And when you surrender, then what is there left to be fulfilled? If there is some demand still to be fulfilled, you are not surrendered. Please see the contradiction.
Prayer is asking something impossible from you. You can ask God anything, but first you have to surrender totally. But if you are surrendered totally then there is no point in asking.
From where will the asking come? Who will demand? And if you are still demanding, the surrender is missing, so the prayer cannot be fulfilled.
You see the simple mechanism of it? The prayer can be fulfilled only if you don't ask anything. But then what is there to be fulfilled? You had not asked anything in the first place.
I teach you a totally different kind of religiousness. It is that of meditation. You are not to worship, you are not to pray; you have to go deep within your own self
-- a journey of self-discovery. It is not a question of discovering God. Why are
you after God? What wrong has he done to you? Forgive him, forget him!
The first and the only worthwhile inquiry is to know: "Who am I within this body-mind mechanism? What is this consciousness, this miracle of consciousness?" This miracle of awareness has to be discovered. You have to peel your being as one peels an onion. Go on peeling... You will find layers within layers. And finally, when all the layers are discarded, Osho - The Goose is Out
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eliminated, you will find in your hands pure nothingness, emptiness, SHUNYATA. That is your essential core, the center of the cyclone.
Discarding the layers of the onion you have discarded the bottle that was created by you, by the society, by the culture, by the past, by the tradition, and when you have discarded the bottle, the goose is out. Then you are as infinite as the universe itself, as eternal as timelessness itself.
You can call it godliness -- it IS godliness. It is the highest, the greatest flowering of being.
But it is not a God somewhere outside you. You cannot pray to it. You can be it, but you cannot pray to it, because it is not separate.
You ask me:
THEN WHY DOES JESUS SAY TO US, "WHEN YOU PRAY, SAY... "?
Jesus never said this to you. He was talking to other kinds of people. If Jesus comes to you, remember one thing: there will be no possibility of any communication between you and him. There will be a gap of two thousand years. And you know very well that even the small gap between you and your father is almost unbridgeable. Talk to your father, and you are talking to a wall. Your father feels the same: talking to a child is impossible; there seems to be no communication.
Two thousand years is a big gap. If Jesus comes right now, he will look like a
pygmy to you. You will not be able to understand why this man has been worshipped for two thousand years... for what? You will not be able to appreciate him at all. You will find a thousand and one faults in him, very easily. Even the most stupid of you will be able to see: "Is this the man we have been worshipping in thousands of churches, millions of people praying to him? Is this the man?"
But two thousand years of continuous painting... and that is the work of the church, theologians, philosophers, priests -- they go on making it up-to-date, as far as they can, they go on putting on new layers of paint. If you dig deep into these thick layers of paint, you will be really at a loss. When you discover Jesus, you will be very frustrated. You will find a very ordinary man. Yes, in those days he was extraordinary -- it is a question of time. In those days he was extraordinary because the people were even far more backward than he was.
But now you are two thousand years ahead of him. The way he talks and the things he says are not addressed to you, Prabodh.
You say:
HE SAYS TO US...
No, he has no idea of you. What I am saying I am saying to you, but what Jesus is saying he is saying to the people of his time. He is not contemporary to you, how can he say anything to you?
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And this is one of the problems that I am encountering every day, because the people who come to me, either they are living with the hangover of Jesus or of Buddha or of Mahavira or of Krishna or of Zarathustra. They have their past hangovers, and I am a contemporary man! I am simply talking to the twentieth- century, and not only to the twentieth-century crowd but to the twentieth-century elite -- the people of the highest intelligence. Hence, it is difficult to understand what I am saying.
You live thousands of years back. It is very rare to find a contemporary man. Somebody is one thousand years old, somebody two thousand, somebody three thousand... And the older they are, the more valuable they think they are. Hindus try to prove that their Vedas are the oldest scriptures, as if this is something creditable. The oldest scriptures simply means that you have not moved since then, you are still carrying the burden. Historians say that the scriptures of the Hindus, the Vedas, are five thousand years old. But Hindus are not ready to accept it -- they say they are at least ninety thousand years old. The older they are the better.
The same is true about other religions, as if all that is old is gold. In fact, life is always new, fresh, as fresh as dewdrops in the early morning sun on the lotus leaf, as fresh as the stars, as fresh as the eyes of a newly-born baby, as fresh as the song of the birds right now.
Life knows only one time, that is now.
Jesus was not talking to you, he could not -- he had no idea about you, he could not conceive of you. But he was talking to his own people, and his people lived with these ideas.
He was paraphrasing the Jewish concept of religion.
He was saying, "GIVE US OUR DAILY BREAD. FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES.
LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION, BUT DELIVER US FROM EVIL."
Now, to me all that is just sheer rubbish. "GIVE US OUR DAILY BREAD."
In the past, humanity has been very poor. The whole past has been one of long starvation, hunger, illness, famine, floods -- all kinds of diseases. It is a miracle how man has survived somehow.
In countries like India, that is the case still. Hence, you will see one thing happening: the intelligent core of Western youth is turning more and more towards meditation, but the Eastern masses are turning more and more towards things like Christianity. Indians would like more Mother Teresas in India than
me. Naturally, because bread is needed. If you look around India you will find only the poor people being converted to Christianity; not a single rich man is converted to Christianity. Beggars, orphans, widows, aborigines, who cannot manage even one meal every day -- they are being converted to Christianity. It appeals to them because bread is their problem.
Jesus says, "GIVE US OUR DAILY BREAD."
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We have to create it; there is nobody to give it to us. That is the work of science; religion has nothing to do with it. We should start demarking lines: what can be done by science should be done by science, what can be done by technology should be done by technology. If your car has stopped and you have run out of gas, you don't just kneel down by your car and start praying, "Give us our daily gas." That will be as stupid as this prayer. You know you have to search for a gas pump! This is not the way -- it is not going to happen.
But priests have been trying all along to make religion dominate your whole life
-- from bread to God. They are very much afraid to divide; hence, they were against science, against technology.
Bertrand Russell is right when he says, "If the whole of humanity is well-fed, well-nourished, prayers like this -- 'Give us our daily bread' -- will become absolutely futile."
There will be no need at all! And with that, your churches, your temples, your priests, will start losing their power. They have possessed humanity for the simple reason that they have not allowed science and technology to improve your lot.
In India, Mahatma Gandhi was against science, against very necessary science too. He was against the railway trains, the telegraph, the post office, electricity. He wanted this country to live at least as primitively as people used to live ten thousand years ago. The only thing that he accepted as the greatest scientific invention was the spinning wheel. And he was worshipped as a mahatma.
To me, he is committing a crime, a far bigger crime than Adolf Hitler's. But his crime is very subtle. You cannot detect it because he is talking in religious verbiage: "One should trust God -- why should one trust science?"
My emphasis is: life is a multi-dimensional phenomenon, and we should be very clear-cut about divisions. Music should be taken care of by musicians, not by mathematicians. Dancing should be taken care of by dancers, not by chemists. Poetry should be taken care of by poets, not by physiologists. Science has its own contribution -- it is man's intelligence. There is no need for any prayer, we can provide this earth with a paradise, but we will not be able to unless we stop all kinds of nonsense that we are stuffed with.
But this has been a strategy of the priest. He can dominate you only if you are poor, he can dominate you only if you are starving -- because when you are poor and starving and miserable, you are bound to fall at his feet because he is the mediator between God and you.
You don't know any address for where God lives, what language he speaks. That is the expertise of the priest. He knows God speaks Sanskrit, and he does not allow you to learn Sanskrit either, because if YOU learn Sanskrit then he will not be needed. He knows God speaks Aramaic, Hebrew; he will not allow you to learn Aramaic and Hebrew. If you learn them then he will be exposed, because there is nothing in Aramaic or Hebrew or Sanskrit, nothing of any value.
But if you don't know those languages you remain ignorant; and he goes on pretending to be the wise man. He can go on leading you -- blind people are leading other blind people. And his power depends on you, and he has become very cunning. Centuries of exploitation have given him the whole craft, the art, the knack of exploiting you.
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Sigmund Steinberg, the well-known importer of ladies' gloves, paid an unexpected call on the rabbi of his temple. That worthy was more than pleased to see his fabulously wealthy congregationer, who more than made up in contributions for what he lacked in attendance and religious zeal. This time,
however, the trip to temple was for a completely religious, if rather unusual, reason.
"Rabbi," Steinberg commenced after the usual amenities, "I am here to see you about someone most near and dear to me. Mine own, mine darling, mine three- times-a-champion, Westminster Abbey the Third, mine little poodlelah is this coming Tisha B'Av thirteen years old, and I want, Rabbi, you should bar mitzvah him."
The rabbi was completely taken aback. "But my dear Mr. Steinberg, that is impossible.
There has never been in the history of the Jewish religion such a thing. It would be a scandal.
The temple would be a laughing-stock. My orders would be revoked. The sisterhood would be disbanded. The building campaign would be halted. The gentiles would be hysterical. And the board of directors would have my neck."
Steinberg was unmoved. Without so much as the bat of an eyelash, he addressed the rabbi again. "For the occasion, I am donating to the temple the amount, in cash, of five thousand dollars."
"Mr. Steinberg;' the rabbi beamed, "why didn't you tell me in the first place that the dog is Jewish?"
These people have become really cunning. Their whole effort is to remain in power, and the most necessary thing to remain in power, to remain rich, to remain in domination, is to keep humanity suffering. That is a simple strategy; anybody who has eyes can see it. Just think of a world where people are blissful, ecstatic, where people are living moment-to-moment with a dance and with a song... How much of your old religion will remain? How many of your temples and churches and synagogues will be able to survive? They will start disappearing like smoke.
As your suffering disappears, your so-called religions will disappear. They ARE opium for the people; they have been keeping you in a subtle unconscious state. They are giving you great hopes. Those hopes are nothing but drugs, far more dangerous than any chemical drug can be. They have drugged the whole of humanity.
Jesus says, "GIVE US OUR DAILY BREAD. FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES."
What trespasses? But the whole of religion has lived with the idea of sin.
And what was the sin of Adam and Eve? -- that they disobeyed. Disobedience is not a sin, disobedience is part of growth. Each child has to disobey his parents, sooner or later -- and the sooner the better, because life is short. You should not waste your time. One has to learn to say no definitively, only then does a point arise where one can say yes. Without being able to say no, nobody is capable of saying yes. Disobedience is the background in which real obedience blossoms.
And if anybody was responsible for the original sin then it was God, not the poor serpent --
he is the greatest benefactor of humanity, the first true messiah, because he seduced Adam and Osho - The Goose is Out
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Eve and told them to disobey. He was the first Master Without him there would have been no humanity, no Jesus, no Buddha, no Confucius, no Lao Tzu. The whole credit goes to the poor serpent. And the cause of the whole sin was God himself -- he prohibited...
The Garden of Eden was a big garden. There were only two trees; he was afraid Adam and Eve may start eating their fruit. One was the tree of knowledge and the other was the tree of life. Now, why should God be afraid of them knowing and living?
You can see the whole strategy of the priest. He is afraid of two things: knowing and living. He prevents you from knowing so he remains the knower, and he prevents you from living so that you are always falling at his feet begging: "Give us our daily bread." He does not allow you to live totally, intensely. He hinders you in every possible way; he cripples you, he paralyzes you. And the whole story begins in the Garden of Eden.
God seems to be the first priest. Why should he be afraid of them knowing? He
should have blessed them really; he should have told Adam and Eve, "The first thing you have to do is go to these two trees; they are the most valuable. Know -- know life in its totality, know its mysteries, explore. Go from the known to the unknown, from the unknown to the unknowable
-- go on a long pilgrimage. Nothing should be left unknown. You should become part of the whole mystery of the universe." That should have been his first advice if he had been really loving, compassionate.
And he should have told them, "Live -- and live passionately, and live totally! Live intensely, live ecstatically! These are the two trees you should not miss."
If I had been in his place, this would have been my advice: "Live under these trees. You can enjoy other trees whenever you want -- just for a change you can go anywhere -- but these two trees should not be forgotten." Instead of telling them this, God says, "Don't eat from the tree of knowledge." Why? Is he afraid that if Adam and Eve become knowers then they will become equal to him? Is he afraid of Adam and Eve becoming Buddhas, awakened?
Knowing comes through meditation, remember. The tree of knowing is the tree of meditation, and God prohibits meditation. Knowing comes as you enter deeper into your being; when you have reached to the very core, knowing explodes. You become flooded with infinite light.
And the same is true about living: the more you know, the more you live; the more you live, the more you know. They go together, hand in hand, dancing. Knowing and living are two aspects of the same coin; both happen to the meditator. But a religion which is based on fear is afraid of both.
And this is my whole teaching here: know and live. Live without fear, know without hesitation.
And the serpent seems to be absolutely right because he says to Adam and Eve, "God is afraid. If you eat from this tree you will become like gods -- then there will be no superiority, you will be equal to God. And if you eat from the tree of life you will become immortals, just as the gods are immortals. And God is afraid. He wants to keep you in subjugation."
Now who has committed the sin? Who has trespassed -- God, or Adam and Eve? But Jesus thinks still in terms of a rotten past. He is still thinking that man has
trespassed.
I don't see... whatsoever you are doing is natural. What trespasses are you committing?
The instincts that you are living are given by nature. Your sex is a gift from nature, your joy in Osho - The Goose is Out
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nourishing food is part of your nature. You would like to live beautifully, you would love to live comfortably. You would like to have a beautiful garden around your house, you would like a warm swimming pool. You would like to love a man or a woman. I don't see there is any trespass. You are not committing any sin, you are simply following your nature, your spontaneous tendencies.
But the religions have condemned you, utterly condemned you. They have condemned everything that is natural, and through that condemnation they have created great guilt in you.
Your whole heart is full of guilt. That guilt pulls you back; it does not allow you to live anything totally. It does not allow your dance to reach its peak, its crescendo. It does not allow you to sing and shout and rejoice. It represses you.
I cannot support any such kind of ideas.
Jesus says, "LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION..."
What temptation is he talking about? What temptations are there? Life is so simple! But you can label things as temptations, then they become temptations.
For example, I was born in a Jaina family -- unfortunately, but nothing can be done about it. One has to choose one unfortunate state or another. Up to my eighteenth year I had not tasted the poor tomatoes, because Jainas are absolutely vegetarian and the poor tomato has the color of meat -- just the color! There is nothing in it, but the very color is enough for Jainas to feel repulsion. Tomatoes were not brought into my house; I had not tasted them.
When I was eighteen years old, I went for a picnic with a few of my Hindu friends. I was the only Jaina and they were all Hindus. And up to that time I had not eaten in the night either, because Jainas don't eat in the night -- that is a great sin because in the night a mosquito may fall in your food, some insect may crawl in, and unknowingly you may eat something live.
That will drag you to hell. So one has to eat in the day when the light is absolutely clear. One has not even to drink water in the night, because in the night -- who knows? -- without any conscious effort on your part, something may be killed.
So I had not eaten in the night and I had not tasted tomatoes up to my eighteenth year.
They were great temptations. I had seen tomatoes in the market, and they were really tempting
-- sitting so meditatively, so centered, so grounded. Potatoes are also not allowed in Jaina families because they grow beneath the ground, and anything that grows in darkness is dangerous to eat because it will bring darkness to your soul.
When I went for this picnic to a hill station, all my friends were so much enjoying the mountains and the beauty and the castles that nobody was in a hurry to prepare food. And I have been a lazy man from the very beginning -- I cannot cook food. I can cook many other things... but I cannot cook food, not even my tea. So I had to wait for whenever they decided.
I was feeling hungry -- the journey, the travelling, and the mountains' fresh air. I was feeling hungry and the night was coming closer, and I was feeling afraid also: "What is going to happen? If they cook food in the night, then I will have to sleep without food." And my stomach was hurting.
Then they started cooking food. And great temptations: tomatoes, potatoes, and the beautiful smell of the food. I was wavering between temptation and virtue. One moment I Osho - The Goose is Out
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would decide "It is better to sleep one night without food -- one cannot die -- rather than suffer hell and hellfire just for a few tomatoes and a few potatoes."
But then the hunger was too much. And then the argument started coming to me: if all my friends are going to hell, what am I going to do in heaven? It is better to be with friends in hell than to be with those foolish Jaina saints in heaven. At least in hell you can cook tomatoes, potatoes, you can eat well, there is enough fire. Even I can cook there!
And they all tried to persuade me: "There is nobody else here, and we are not going to tell your family either. Nobody will ever come to know that you have eaten in the night, that you have eaten tomatoes or potatoes."
Reluctantly, hesitatingly, I agreed. But I could not sleep until I vomited in the middle of the night. Nobody else vomited -- they were all fast asleep and snoring
-- only I vomited. It was my psychology, because I was suffering from the idea that I had committed a sin. It was not the tomatoes that I vomited, it was my attitude. And that day it became clear, absolutely clear, that you can live life totally only if you drop all attitudes. Otherwise you will live partially, and to live partially is not to live at all.
I cannot support this prayer.
Jesus says, "LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION..."
One thing is certain: that Jesus is feeling the temptation, otherwise why this prayer? He is feeling that God is leading him into temptation. And if God is leading, why not surrender?
Then the real prayer would have been: "Lead us really into total temptation. When you are leading, why do it half-heartedly? When you have decided to lead, then lead us totally!"
He is tempted; his prayer is an absolute confirmation of his temptation. And it is natural --
he was a human being just like you, as alive as you are. And he must have felt all natural likes, dislikes. He must have loved things, he must have preferred things. But he is afraid -- the past is heavy on him.
"LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION, BUT DELIVER US FROM EVIL."
There is no evil, hence there is no need to be delivered from anything. There is only one thing and that is a state of unconsciousness, unknowing, unawareness. I will not call it evil --
it is a situation, a challenge, an adventure. It is not evil. Existence is not evil, existence is an opportunity to grow. And, of course, the opportunity to grow is possible only if you are tempted in thousands of ways, if you are called forth by unknown aspirations, if a tremendous desire in you arises to explore... And the only thing that can prevent you is unconsciousness, unawareness. That too is a great challenge -- to conquer Become more conscious, become more aware, become more alive. Let all your juices flow.
Don't hold yourself back. Respect your nature, love yourself, and don't be worried about unnecessary things. Unworried, move into the thick of life, explore it. Yes, you will commit many mistakes -- so what? One learns through committing mistakes. Yes, you will go into Osho - The Goose is Out
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many errors -- so what? It is only by going into errors that one comes to the right door. Before one knocks at the right door, one has to knock on thousands of wrong doors. That is part of the game, part of the play.
Mr. and Mrs. Goldberg had scrimped and saved to put their eldest son through college. At last, they had the money and decided to send him to a fine high-brow Eastern boarding-school.
They saw him off on the train, and tearfully bade him farewell.
A few months later, he returned home for the Christmas holidays. The parents were overjoyed to have their son Sammy back with them. The mother greeted him with: "Samelah, oh, it's so good to see you."
"Mother' he replied, "stop calling me Samelah. After all, I'm a grown man now, and I do wish you would refer to me as Samuel."
She apologized and asked, "I hope you only ate kosher foods while you were away?"
"Mother, we are living in the modern age, and it's preposterous to hang on to old world traditions. I indulged in all types of food, kosher and non-kosher, and believe me, you would be better off if you did."
"Well, tell me, did you at least go to the synagogue to offer a prayer of thanks occasionally?"
The son replied, "Really, do you honestly feel going to a synagogue when you are associating with a large percentage of non-Jews is the proper thing to do? Honestly, Mother, it is unfair to ask it of me really."
At this point, Mrs. Goldberg, fighting back anger, looked at her eldest son and said, "Tell me, Samuel, are you still circumcised?"
The past goes on hanging around you. It is an imprisonment. If you are a Jew or a Christian or a Hindu or a Jaina or a Buddhist, you are not really a man. You are dead, you are a corpse -- circumcised or not circumcised.
One becomes alive only when one is totally free from the past. To be in the present is the only way to be alive.
Prabodh, these prayers are nothing but fear-oriented people's projections and desires. I teach you love not fear.
In all the languages of the world, the religious person is called god-fearing. That is an ugly expression; it should be dropped. It is impossible for a religious person to be god-fearing because he cannot have fear. A religious person simply lives lovingly -- not out of fear.
These are all prayers out of fear:
"GIVE US OUR DAILY BREAD. FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES. LEAD US NOT
INTO TEMPTATION, BUT DELIVER US FROM EVIL."
Drop all this. Be a little more alive, a little more contemporary.
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Henry went on his first hunting trip. When he got back to his office his partner Morris could not wait to hear all about the trip. Henry told him, "Well, I went into the woods with the guide. You know me, two minutes in the woods, I get lost. I am walking extra quiet, when all of a sudden the biggest bear you ever did see is standing right in front of me. I turn around and run just as fast as I can and that bear, he is running even faster.
"Just when I feel his hot breath on my neck, he slipped and fell. I jumped over a brook and kept running, but I was losing my breath and sure enough there was that bear getting close to me again. He was almost on top of me, when he slipped again and fell. I kept on running and finally I found myself in the clearing of the woods. The bear was running as fast as he could and I knew I didn't stand a chance. I saw the other hunters and shouted for help and just then the bear slipped and fell again. My guide was able to take aim and he shot the bear and killed him."
Morris said, "Henry, that was quite a story. You are a very brave man. If that had happened to me, I would have made in my pants."
Henry looked at him and shrugged, "Morris, what do you think the bear was slipping on?"
Man has lived in fear -- it is time to put a full stop to it. Humanity needs a new dawn, a totally new vision.
Jesus says God is love. I would like to change it. I would like to say love is God. When you say God is love, love is only one of the qualities of God; he may have other qualities: wisdom, justice, etcetera. To me, love is God; godliness is only one of the qualities of love.
There is no other God than the fragrance of love. But the fragrance can arise only in deep meditation, not in prayer. Prayer stinks of fear.
I know perfectly well that to say anything against Jesus or Buddha or Krishna
hurts you, but I cannot help it. If it hurts, it hurts. And rather than feeling sour about what I say, ponder over it, meditate over it. Because I am not interested in arguing against anybody. I have tremendous love for Jesus, Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna. They were beautiful people, but their days are finished.
We need new insights, new pastures, new dimensions. And those new dimensions are bound to go against our old, rotten mind. So when it hurts, remember: it is not the truth that is hurting you -- it is your own lie that you have been clinging to which hurts. Whenever you have to choose between truth and a lie, be courageous and choose the truth, because that is the only way to live, the only way to know, the only way to be.
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The dimension of the mysterious 8 March 1981 am in Buddha Hall The first question
Question 1
OSHO, ACCORDING TO A VERY RECENT THEORY IN ASTRONOMIC PHYSICS, EVERY ATOM WHICH EXISTS IN THE BODY OR WHICH BUILDS UP ALL
MATERIAL THINGS AROUND US COMES OUT OF A COSMIC CIRCLE THROUGH
WHICH IT MUST GO AT LEAST TWICE. HOWEVER, THIS FACT DOESN'T HELP ME
TO FEEL PART OF THE COSMOS. OSHO, AS A SCIENTIST, DO I EVER STAND A CHANCE OF EXPERIENCING MYSTERY?
Walter Hultzsch, science is a demystification of existence, hence it is absolutely impossible to feel any sense of the mysterious through science; the very method of science prohibits it. It is just like somebody who is blind trying to see through the ears, or somebody who is deaf trying to listen to music through the eyes: the very method becomes the barrier.
Science has a definite methodology and that makes it limited; it gives it a demarcation, a definition. And it is absolutely necessary for science to be defined, otherwise there would be no difference at all between science and meditation, between science and religious consciousness.
Science means being definite, being absolutely definite, about facts. And if you are very definite about facts then you cannot feel mysterious -- the more definite you are the more mystery evaporates. Mystery needs a certain vagueness; mystery needs something undefined, undemarcated. Science is factual; mystery is not factual, it is existential.
A fact is only a part of existence, a very small part, and science deals with parts because it is easier to deal with parts. They are smaller, you can analyze them, you are not overwhelmed by them, you can possess them in your hands, you can dissect them, you can label them, you can be absolutely certain about their qualities, quantities, possibilities -- but in that very process mystery is being killed.
Science is the murder of mystery.
If you want to experience the mysterious you will have to enter through another door, from a totally different dimension. The dimension of the mind is the dimension of science, and the dimension of meditation is the dimension of the miraculous, the mysterious.
Meditation makes everything undefined. Meditation takes you into the unknown, the uncharted. Meditation takes you slowly slowly into a kind of dissolution where the observer and the observed become one. Now, that is not possible in science. The observer has to be the observer and the observed has to be the observed and a clear-cut distinction has to be maintained continuously. Not even for a single moment should you forget yourself, not even Osho - The Goose is Out
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for a single moment should you become interested, dissolved, overwhelmed, passionate, loving towards the object of your inquiry. You have to be detached, you have to be very cold
-- cold, absolutely indifferent. And indifference kills mystery.
Between the world of meditation and the mind there is a bridge; that bridge is called the heart. The heart is just exactly in between the two. Hence, the poet lives in a twilight land: something of him can be scientific and something of him can be mystic. But that is the anxiety of the poet also, because he lives in two dimensions, diametrically opposite to each other.
Hence, poets tend to go mad, tend to commit suicide; they are always known as a little bit crazy, outlandish. Something about them remains berserk for the simple reason that they are not settled anywhere. They are neither in the world of facts nor in the world of existentials; they are in a limbo.
The poet can have a certain taste of the mysterious, but that too only rarely; it comes and goes. The mystic LIVES there, the poet only jumps once in awhile and feels the joy of jumping beyond gravitation. But within a minute or within seconds he is back, crushed against the forces of gravitation.
Poetry is a kind of hopping. Once in awhile you are in the sky, for a moment you feel as if you have wings, but only for a moment. Hence, the despair of the poet, because he falls again and again from his peaks. He gathers a few glimpses... The greatest poets too have been able to gather only a few glimpses of the beyond.
But the mystic lives in the world of mystery. His approach is absolutely transcendental to science. He is neither in the mind nor in the heart, but in the beyond; he has transcended both.
Walter, if you really want the experience of the mysterious then you will have to open a new door in your being. I am not saying stop being a scientist, I am simply saying that science can remain a peripheral activity to you. When in the lab be a scientist, but when you come out of the lab forget all about science. Then listen to the birds -- and not in a scientific way! Look at the flowers -- and not in a scientific way, because when you look at a rose in a scientific way it is a
totally different kind of thing that you are looking at. It is not the same rose that a poet experiences.
The experience does not depend on the object, the experience depends on the experiencer, on the quality of experiencing. When the scientist looks at the rose he thinks of colors, chemistry, physics, atoms, electrons, neutrons and whatnot -- except beauty. Beauty does not come into his vision, and that's what the rose is.
To the poet, to the painter, the rose is a totally different experience: the rose is a manifestation of the unknown, of the transcendental, of the secret of life itself. It represents something of the divine, it brings into existence something of the sky, something of faraway stars. It grows on the earth, it is rooted in the earth, but it is not just part of the earth; it contains far more than that. It is not the sum total of its constituent parts. The scientist only comes to know it as a sum total of its constituent parts -- there is nothing more to it -- but the poet starts feeling something plus.
The moment you dissect the rose, the beauty disappears. The rose was only an opportunity for the beauty to descend, a receptivity of the earth to the sky, a receptivity of the gross to the subtle. The poet feels that; but it is a feeling, it is not a thought.
So when you come out of your lab, forget all about atoms, forget all about the cosmos; rather, start looking afresh, with a different vision -- the vision of a child, the vision of a poet, Osho - The Goose is Out
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the vision of a lover. When you look at the woman you love never think of her in terms of biology, otherwise you will have missed the whole point. She is not biology, she has a being far greater than any biology can contain. When you kiss your woman don't think in terms of what is being transferred from lips to lips chemically, otherwise you will be disgusted! You won't see any poetry, you will be puzzled by what all these poets have been talking about. It is only an exchange of bacteria, germs, millions of germs -- dangerous too. It can be a matter of life and death -- beware!
When you are making love to your woman don't think in terms of hormones,
avoid that nonsense, otherwise the whole love act will simply be a mechanical phenomenon. You will be there and yet not there. You will be just an observer, not a participant. And the poet's whole secret is participation.
Looking at a flower, become the flower, dance around the flower, sing a song. The wind is cool and crisp, the sun is warm, and the flower is in its prime; the flower is dancing in the wind, rejoicing, singing a song, singing alleluia. Participate with it! Drop indifference, objectivity, detachment. Drop all your scientific attitudes. Become a little more fluid, more melting, more merging. Let the flower speak to your heart, let the flower enter your being.
Invite him -- he is a guest! And then you will have some taste of mystery.
This is the first step towards the mysterious, and the ultimate step is: if you can be a participant for a moment, you have known the key, the secret. Then become a participant in everything that you are doing. Walking, don't just do it mechanically, don't just go on watching it -- be it. Dancing, don't do it technically; technique is irrelevant You may be technically correct and yet you will miss the whole joy of it. Dissolve yourself in the dance, become the dance, forget about the dancer.
When such deep unity starts happening in many many phases of your life; when all around you start having such tremendous experiences of disappearance, egolessness, nothingness; when the flower is there and you are not, the rainbow is there and you are not; when the clouds are roaming in the sky both within and without and you are not; when there is utter silence as far as you are concerned; when there is nobody in you, just a pure silence, a virgin silence, undistracted, undisturbed by logic, thought, emotion, feeling, that is the moment of meditation. Mind is gone, and when mind is gone mystery enters.
Mystery and mind cannot exist together; they are not, by their very nature, coexistential.
Just like darkness and light: you cannot have both in your room. If you want darkness you have to extinguish the light; if you want light then you have to lose darkness. You can only have one, for the simple reason that the presence of light is the absence of darkness, the presence of darkness is the absence of light; they are not two things, in fact. The same phenomenon, present, is light; absent, is darkness. Now you cannot manage both, to be present and absent together.
Mind is the presence of the non-mysterious, the logical, and meditation is the presence of the mysterious, the miraculous.
Hence, move from the mind. Let art, poetry, painting, dancing become more important --
they will bring you closer to meditation -- and finally take the plunge. If you have tasted something of poetry you will gather enough courage to take the ultimate plunge.
Hence, to me religion consists of three layers; the first layer is of science. Just as your body consists of material, atomic constituents, so religion consists first, the most peripheral part, of science. I am not against science -- science is an absolute need -- but it is only a Osho - The Goose is Out
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peripheral phenomenon, the most superficial, the first concentric circle around your center.
Then comes the second concentric circle, which is deeper than science; that is of art, aesthetics. And then the third; that is meditation. And if you have entered these three concentric circles, slowly slowly you will attain to the fourth.
The fourth in the East is called TURIYA; we have not given it any name, we have simply given it a number, "the fourth." Nothing can be said about it, that's why no name has been given to it. It is even beyond mystery. Meditation will take you into the mysterious, but there is still something more than that; that is inexpressible. Nothing can be said about it, nothing has ever been said about it, nothing will ever be said about it, but it has been experienced.
Only at that ultimate peak of experience, in that ultimate ecstasy, Walter, will you know what it is to be.
You ask me:
OSHO, ACCORDING TO A VERY RECENT THEORY IN ASTRONOMIC PHYSICS, EVERY ATOM WHICH EXISTS IN THE BODY OR WHICH
BUILDS UP ALL
MATERIAL THINGS AROUND US COMES OUT OF A COSMIC CIRCLE THROUGH
WHICH IT MUST GO AT LEAST TWICE.
Whether it goes twice or thrice, how can it help you to feel that you are part of the cosmos? It may go thousands of times -- it is irrelevant!
You say:
HOWEVER, THIS FACT DOES NOT HELP ME TO FEEL PART OF THE COSMOS.
No fact can help you. You will have to travel the whole terrain in a totally different dimension.
You also ask:
OSHO, AS A SCIENTIST, DO I EVER STAND A CHANCE OF EXPERIENCING
MYSTERY?
Not as a scientist, there is no chance. I cannot give you false hope. As a scientist you have no chance to know the mysterious; but that does not mean that you have to stop being a scientist, that simply means that you can let science be one of the aspects of your life. Why make it your whole life? Why become synonymous with it? It is perfectly good to use your logical mind, your analytical mind -- it is perfectly good, it is beneficial. The world needs technology, the world needs science, and you can be of immense service to humanity, but that is a totally different matter.
You should not think that this can be your whole life, otherwise you will live only on the porch of the palace and you will think that this is the palace and you will suffer all kinds of things on the porch. Sometimes it will be too cold and sometimes it will be too hot, and Osho - The Goose is Out
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sometimes the rain will start coming in -- it is only an open porch! And the palace is there, available; you could have entered the palace. I am not against the porch, remember, I am not telling you to demolish it. The porch is a necessity, but a porch is a porch. Pass through it, use it, but you have a beautiful palace -- why not explore the whole palace of your being?
Explore poetry, explore music, explore dance, explore meditation, and finally and ultimately disappear into the fourth. Then, and only then, the goose is out!
The second question Question 2
OSHO, WHEN SERIOUS, SAD PEOPLE BECOME ENLIGHTENED, DO THEY
REMAIN SERIOUS AND SAD OR DO THEY BECOME FUNNY LIKE YOU?
Prem Jyoti, who has ever heard of serious people becoming enlightened? The serious person cannot become enlightened. Seriousness is a disease; it is the cancer of the soul.
Seriousness is a wrong, utterly wrong approach to life. How can you come to truth through a wrong approach? The serious person is simply ill, pathological. Of course, for thousands of years serious people have dominated us because that is their only joy in life, there is no other joy for them -- the joy of dominating.
There is a beautiful parable of Kahlil Gibran:
Every day he goes for a morning walk and he comes across a field where a scarecrow has been put. The scarecrow has a purpose: he drives wild animals away, birds away from the crops.
One day Kahlil Gibran asks the scarecrow, "You have been standing here year in, year out
-- you must be getting very tired, very bored?"
And the scarecrow says, "No, I may look bored, I may look very serious, but I am enjoying my job."
Kahlil Gibran says, "What kind of enjoyment can you have? I don't see anything here for you to enjoy."
He says, "The very joy of making people afraid gives me such a thrill. Day in, day out, I am driving animals, birds crazy! They run away from me. I am the supreme-most around here, I am the most powerful person. Everybody is afraid of me. Don't you think that's more than one can expect from life?"
The serious person has been doing that for centuries. In the name of politics, in the name of religion, in the name of education, in the name of morality, he has been torturing people; that is his only joy. He is basically a sado-masochist.
No sado-masochist can become enlightened, and out of one hundred people that you think have become enlightened, ninety-nine point nine percent are not enlightened. Just the traditional idea, and you go on carrying it. You have been told that this man is "enlightened."
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No criterion exists for you to judge him by -- because Jesus is enlightened to the Christians, to the Jainas he is not; they have a different criterion. You will be surprised: to the Christians, Mahavira may not look enlightened at all; they have a different criterion.
Christians say Jesus never laughed in his whole life. This must be an absolute lie. I cannot believe it, that he never laughed; his whole life shows a different flavor. It is impossible to think that he never laughed, but Christians say that he never laughed. Why? -- because an enlightened person has to be serious, very serious, burdened with all the problems of the world. He has come to solve all the problems, he has come to save humanity. He is the savior, the messiah; he has to save you from your past sins, and the future possibilities too. Naturally
-- he is carrying on his shoulders a Himalayan weight -- how can he laugh? It is
impossible.
But the whole idea that somebody has to save you is ugly; the whole idea destroys your freedom. You are not even allowed to suffer for your sins, somebody else has to suffer Your whole responsibility is taken away.
That is not the vision of other traditions. For example, Buddha will not agree with it. He says, "Be a light unto yourself. Nobody else can save you." Hence, Buddha is not so serious; there is no need, there is no reason to be serious. He is free from all his own problems, he is released. There is a subtle joy in him.
But Christians will think that Buddha is selfish, he is only thinking of himself. And how can an enlightened person be selfish? Jesus is enlightened because he is thinking of the whole of humanity.
Mahavira lived naked. That is the Jainas' concept of an enlightened man: that the enlightened person will renounce everything, he will live naked, and because he is completely free from all sins he cannot suffer. And Jesus suffers much on the cross. Now, according to Jaina philosophy you suffer only because of your past bad karmas. If Jesus had to suffer on the cross that simply shows that his past karmas were still there -- he had to pay for it; each act has to be paid for.
For Mahavira, they say that if Mahavira walks -- and he walks naked, barefoot -- and if on the path there is a thorn, the thorn will immediately turn upside down, seeing that Mahavira is coming, because Mahavira has no more sins left, hence the thorn cannot give any pain to Mahavira, so what to say about crucifixion? But Mahavira is serious.
Krishna is not serious. Krishna is dancing, singing, playing on his flute.
When Bodhidharma became enlightened, for seven days he could not stop laughing. Asked again and again, he only said this much: "I am laughing because the whole thing was ridiculous. The goose has always been out, and I was trying to bring it out of the bottle, and the bottle never existed. The whole effort was sheer absurdity, ridiculous! I am laughing at myself and I am laughing at the whole world, because people are trying to do something which need not be done at all. People are trying hard, and the harder they try the more difficult it becomes. Their very effort is the barrier!"
How are you going to decide who is enlightened and who is not?
Just the other day I received a letter saying: "If you are really enlightened then you should hide yourself in the Himalayas, because enlightened people always remain in hiding. They remain unknown, they remain unsung."
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Now, if this man is right, then Mahavira, Buddha, Jesus, Krishna, Rama, Zarathustra, Mohammed -- none of them is enlightened, because they are all well-known, world-known.
They were not hiding in the Himalayas, they did not live anonymously, they did not die unsung.
And then one more question arises: how has this man come to know about a few people who have lived hiding in the Himalayas, unsung, unknown, the people he thinks are the real enlightened people? Then how has he come to know about them? And if he knows, then they are not unknown -- unless he is the only one who is allowed to know the secret!
But these fools abound; they go on parading their own prejudices.
I will not tell you who is enlightened and who is not enlightened, but I will tell you of a simple phenomenon which you can understand and which can become a light for you. One thing is absolutely certain: that the sado-masochist cannot be enlightened. One who tortures himself and tortures others, enjoys torturing, cannot be enlightened.
Enlightenment is blissfulness, it cannot be serious. It can be sincere but not serious. It will be sheer joy! It will be pure ecstasy!
Prem Jyoti, you ask me:
OSHO, WHEN SERIOUS, SAD PEOPLE BECOME ENLIGHTENED...
I have never heard of any! And if you have heard of any sad and serious people becoming enlightened, then either they were not sad and serious or you have
heard wrong. Serious and sad people become something else, they don't become enlightened. They become popes, Mother Teresas, Mahatma Gandhis, Morarji Desais, SHANKARACHARYAS, Ayatollah Khomaniacs, IMAMS, priests. The churches, the synagogues, the temples, the mosques, the GURUDWARAS -- they are full of these people; they are serious people. They gather around an enlightened person and they start destroying all that he has brought into the springtime.
They start creating a dead tradition -- and the tradition has to be serious, the tradition cannot be non-serious.
The enlightened person is always joyous, but the tradition, the convention cannot be joyous. The whole structure of a tradition is basically political; it is there to dominate, it is there to oppress, it is there to exploit. And you cannot exploit people playfully, you have to be very serious. You have to make them so sad, so afraid of life itself, you have to create so much trembling in their being, that out of that fear they fall into your hands; they become objects of your manipulation.
A man like me cannot exploit you, because this whole place is more like a tavern than a temple. It is more playful than serious. We are engaged in a beautiful game! The moment you think of it as a game, all seriousness disappears, things become lighter. You can walk in a dancing way; there is no weight on you.
But the priests cannot do it; their whole prestige depends on their seriousness. The more serious they are, the more somber-looking, the more "holier-than- thou" they can pretend to be... And they will do everything -- they will fast... naturally, when a person fasts he becomes serious, he cannot laugh. When you are hungry, starving, you cannot laugh -- and you cannot Osho - The Goose is Out
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allow anybody else to laugh either. It is not a laughing matter! You are starving, sacrificing, crucifying yourself, and people are laughing! It cannot be pardoned, it cannot be forgiven.
Naturally, when you go to a fasting person you become serious -- you have to be serious.
That is simple manners. Now, a person who is distorting his body in every possible way, who is torturing his body in every possible way -- how can you laugh? The very scene is sad; you feel burdened. It is very difficult to be with these so-called saints. That's why people just go to pay their respects and escape immediately, because to sit with them means they will make you burdened, they will create guilt in you.
For example, if they are fasting and you are well-fed, guilt is bound to be created. If they are standing on their heads and you are simply standing on your feet, you are doing something wrong. Naturally, you will feel, "I am not yet a perfect man -- this man who is standing on his head is perfect." You see the sheer stupidity of it all? If God wanted you to stand on your head he would have managed it!
If God had wanted homosexuality in the world he would have created Adam and Bruce --
it is so simple! Why bring in Eve? Unnecessary trouble! But these stupid people go on doing the unnatural, and their very unnatural approach to life naturally makes them serious. They are going against the current, they are exhausted, tired, bored, but their only joy is that they can also bore you.
Moishe cannot decide about his son's future. So he goes to the rabbi and asks his advice.
The rabbi says, "That's very easy. We put the Talmud, the Torah and some money on the table, and let him choose. If he takes the Talmud he will become a rabbi. If he takes the Torah he will become a lawyer. If he takes the money he will become a shopkeeper."
Moishe agrees and they call his son. The son looks at all the things on the table and then takes them all.
Moishe is perplexed. "What will happen now?" he asks the rabbi. "He will become a Catholic priest," replied the rabbi.
These sad people become Catholic priests, Hindu SHANKARACHARYAS, Mohammedan IMAM, and what-not. These serious people lose their humanity; they become parrots. But it pays. You need not have much intelligence to be a
parrot, you need not have much courage to be a parrot; if you just have a little bit of memory and you can recite the Vedas, the Gita, the Koran, you will be respected and honored. You are not doing anything creative, you are not adding anything to the beauty of the world, you are not contributing to the earth and its joys, on the contrary, you are destroying. But people have been conditioned for thousands of years, and they go on doing things according to their conditioning. Parrots are worshipped.
A farmer owns a parrot who always screams, "Heil Hitler!"
One day the farmer gets fed up with the parrot and locks it in the hen-house. The cock walks over to the parrot and asks, "Tell me, why did the farmer lock you in here?" The parrot remains silent.
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"I'll give you four of my hens if you tell me," continues the cock, but the parrot remains silent.
"Listen, if you tell me why he locked you in here, I'll give you ten of my hens."
The parrot turns around and screams, "Can't you leave me alone? I'm a political prisoner!"
These sad people, they either become priests or politicians or they become great pedagogues, professors, philosophers, theologians. But they never become enlightened; that much is absolutely certain -- that cannot happen in the very nature of things.
To become enlightened one needs the lightness of a flower, the lightness of a feather, the multi-dimensional colors of a rainbow. One needs the joy of the birds in the morning, one needs the freedom of the clouds. One needs only one thing: a heart full of ecstasy -- not the ecstasy of something ultimate, not the ecstasy of something in paradise, but ecstasy here and now, ecstasy this very moment, when your eyes are full of this very moment, when there is nothing else, no past, no future, when this moment pervades you so totally, so intensely, so
passionately that nothing is left behind. Only these few people have become enlightened.
Hence, I say, if you live in joyous ordinariness you are enlightened. There is no need for any spiritual nonsense, for any esoteric nonsense.
The toilet seat in the Rabinowitz home was chipped. On his day off, Sidney promised to paint it. He had some nice bright green enamel in the garage and applied a fresh shiny coat.
Ethel went in with a magazine, sat down to meditate and read. When she tried to get up she found she was stuck! She yelled for Sid.
He tugged and tugged but could not pry her loose. Ethel, in desperation, cried, "So what are you standing there for! Call me a doctor! If plaster gets stuck, he at least knows how to remove it without tearing off the skin!"
Sidney dashed to the telephone and pleaded with the doctor to come right over. This was a real emergency! The doctor explained that he had an office full of patients and that he could not possibly get there for at least two hours.
Sid had a bright idea. He would unscrew the hinges and she could lie on the bed on her stomach and wait for the doctor. The two hours seemed like four but the doctor finally arrived.
Sidney directed him into the bedroom and pointing to his wife said, "Doc, ain't that something? What d'ya think of that?"
The doctor looked thoughtfully and declared, "Very nice... but why such a cheap frame?"
Life has to be taken hilariously! Life is so full of laughter, it is so ridiculous, it is so funny that unless your juices have gone completely dry you cannot be serious. I have looked around at life in every possible way and it is always funny, whatever way you look at it! It gets funnier and funnier! It is such a beautiful gift of the beyond.
Prem Jyoti, I am against all seriousness. My whole approach is that of humor, and the greatest religious quality is a sense of humor -- not truth, not God, not virtue, but a sense of humor. If we can fill the whole earth with laughter, with
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and swinging! -- if we can make the earth a carnival of joy, a festival of lights, we will have brought for the first time a true sense of religiousness to the earth.
The third question Question 3 OSHO,
SPIEGEL, THE BIGGEST NEWS MAGAZINE IN GERMANY, HAS FINALLY
STARTED A SERIES ON YOU, YOUR SANNYASINS AND THE ASHRAM. THE
WRITER SAYS MANY NICE AND INCREDIBLE THINGS ABOUT YOU AND EVEN
COMPARES YOU WITH THE POLACK POPE. HE SAYS: "THE MASSES WHO
SURRENDER TO THE CHARISMA OF JOHN PAUL II DO NOTHING DIFFERENT
THAN THAT WHICH THE POONA PILGRIMS DO IN THEIR SURRENDER TO OSHO.
ONLY THE CHURCHES AND THEIR SECT EXPERTS CANNOT AGREE WITH THAT."
OSHO, DO YOU FEEL OFFENDED OR PLEASED BY THIS STATEMENT?
I am amused! The Polacks I have always loved. The Pope is secondary, the Polack is the real thing. The Polack is the elephant and the Pope is just the last part of the elephant, the tail part!
I am certainly not a pope, I cannot be -- I am not that serious a man, I am not that religious either. I am very ordinary! To be a pope one needs to be very extraordinary. As far as charisma is concerned, I have none. I am just as ordinary as anybody else in the world. The whole idea of charisma is anti-human, it divides people. And the whole strategy of creating a charisma is nothing but the process of conditioning.
If you go to see a naked Jaina monk you will not see any charisma because you are not conditioned for that. You will simply see an ugly, disgusting-looking person, pale, ill, ill at ease, eyes almost dead, no intelligence in the face, the whole body shrunken. Yes, one thing will be big -- the belly -- because the Jaina monk eats only once a day so he has to eat too much. The whole figure of a Jaina monk, if you are not conditioned by Jaina ideas, will appear to you like a caricature, a cartoon, but to the Jainas themselves there is charisma, great charisma.
Jaina monks, particularly the DIGAMBARA Jaina monks who live naked, every year tear their hair out with their own hands. If you look at it, it will look insane, ugly, violent, but the Jainas watch with great respect -- something of immense value is happening. The man is simply tearing his hair out! You must have seen your wife sometimes in anger, or if you go to a mad asylum you will find people tearing their hair out -- just angry at themselves, violent with themselves, repressed anger and nothing else. But to the Jaina mind it is charismatic:
"What sacrifice!"
If you go to a Christian church and see the cross, if you are conditioned by Christianity then you will not see that death is being worshipped -- but the cross represents death. There is every possibility if Jesus had not been crucified there would have been no Christianity at all. It is not Jesus who has dominated the Christian mind, it is the cross. Hence, I don't call Christianity "Christianity," I call it "Crossianity"! The cross simply symbolizes death, suicide; Osho - The Goose is Out
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it is not a life-affirmative symbol. But to the Christian it symbolizes the great sacrifice of Jesus for the whole of humanity.
Charisma is created by a certain conditioning. The same Pope was not charismatic two years ago -- suddenly he has become charismatic. What miracle has happened? Just because he was chosen to be the pope, he has been voted pope, and he has become charismatic. Now millions of people are impressed by him; nobody would have cared... The same man has been there for more than sixty years; nobody had ever bothered about him. This is just a created illusion.
The same man, if he becomes the president of a country, starts having charisma, and once he is no longer a president he loses all charisma; then he is nobody.
When the revolution in Russia happened there was a very charismatic leader, Kerensky; he was the Prime Minister of Russia. During the revolution he escaped, and for fifty years nothing was heard about that charismatic leader. People had completely forgotten about him, and before Lenin he was the most important man in Russia; he had dominated the whole scene. After fifty years he died in New York as a grocer! When he died it was found that he was none other than Kerensky. For fifty years he was tending a grocery store and nobody ever thought of him as charismatic.
I am not charismatic, and I don't believe in all such nonsensical things. I exalt the simple, the unconditioned, the innocent, the ordinary, and I want all categories to be dissolved: the category of the sinner and the saint, the unholy and the holy, the profane and the sacred, the moral and the immoral. I want to dissolve ALL categories! Man is simply man.
So I would not like to be compared with the Pope. In fact, I don't like any comparison at all because comparison is basically a wrong approach. I am myself! I don't want to be compared even with Jesus, what to say about the Pope. I don't want to be compared with Buddha, with Zarathustra, with Lao Tzu, because all comparison is basically wrong. Lao Tzu is Lao Tzu, I am who I am; there is no question of comparison.
How can you compare a rose bush with a cedar of Lebanon? There is no question of comparison. How can you compare the lotus with the marigold? In fact, two lotus flowers cannot even be compared with each other; they have their own uniqueness.
But we have been living with this idea of comparison for centuries. We always compare, we always put people into categories, we always put people into boxes
-- who is who, to what category one belongs.
My whole effort here is to dissolve all categories and to declare the uniqueness of the individual. Never compare me with anybody else. I am simply myself. Good, bad, holy, unholy, whatsoever I am, I am simply myself. The very idea is disgusting, to be compared with anybody else. God never creates carbon copies, he always creates originals, and everybody comes with his own original face.
But Polacks I love -- that much I have to concede!
A Polack walks into the office of a circus and offers to jump to the ground from ten meters up, head first, without a net. The manager does not believe this so they go to the stage. The Polack gets up to about ten meters height, takes a deep breath and jumps head first. He crashes down on his head, lies still for a few moments and then gets up.
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The manager is fascinated. "That's incredible!" he exclaims. "I'll pay you one hundred dollars a night."
The Polack shakes his head.
"Okay, okay, I'll pay you three hundred dollars a night." "No," replies the Polack.
"I'll pay you a thousand dollars!" says the manager.
"No," says the Polack, "I've changed my mind -- I don't want to jump anymore. I didn't know it would hurt so much!"
A Polack discovered that he had three balls. He was so anxious to tell it to someone that he stopped the first man he met on the road and told him, "Do you want to bet that together we have five balls?"
He lost his bet... the other guy had only one ball!
The Polack woman was dying. With her last breath she turned to her husband and asked,
"Before I die, make love to me just one more time."
The Polack husband answered, "How could you ask me to do such a thing? It will kill you!"
The wife pleaded, "Everyone is entitled to one last request before they die, you should grant me this last wish."
The Polack replied, "Okay." He got into bed and made love to her. No sooner did he finish than she hopped out of bed completely cured and ran downstairs and started to flick a chicken and yell into the living room, where her children were sitting, that dinner would be ready in an hour.
The children were astounded and ran up the stairs to their father who was sitting in a chair and crying. They said, "Papa, why are you crying? It's a miracle! Mama is completely cured!"
He replied, "I know, but when I think what I could have done for Eleanor Roosevelt!"
The Polack mind has its own way of working! It is the most intriguing mind in the world!
SPIEGEL has done one good thing -- it has reminded me of the Polack Pope.
The old Polack general lived with his young wife in a lonely villa. They kept two guards in front of the house to protect them against intruders.
One night the guards saw that the lights in the general's bedroom were on for a very long time. Suspicious, they snuck up to the window and peeped in. The general's wife was lying on the bed naked, looking quite bored. The Polack general, also naked, was anxiously walking around the room with a pistol in his hand.
Suddenly he stopped, looked down at his groin and shouted, "Stand up like a
man or I'll shoot!"
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Do you remember the famous proverb: "The bread never falls but on its buttered side?"
However, there is a story of a Polack whose bread fell and landed buttered side up. He ran straight away to the Polack Pope to report this deviance from one of the basic rules of the universe.
At first the Pope would not believe him, but finally became convinced that it had happened. However, he didn't feel immediately ready to deal with the question and asked for time. He studied hard the old scriptures about it, prayed to God and did all kinds of things to find an infallible answer.
After months of waiting he finally came up with an answer. He said to the Polack, "The bread must have been buttered on the wrong side."
Deva Yachana, you ask me:
SPIEGEL, THE BIGGEST NEWS MAGAZINE IN GERMANY, HAS FINALLY
STARTED A SERIES ON YOU, YOUR SANNYASINS AND THE ASHRAM. THE
WRITER SAYS MANY NICE AND INCREDIBLE THINGS ABOUT YOU AND EVEN
COMPARES YOU WITH THE POLACK POPE. HE SAYS: "THE MASSES WHO
SURRENDER TO THE CHARISMA OF JOHN PAUL II DO NOTHING DIFFERENT
THAN THAT WHICH THE POONA PILGRIMS DO IN THEIR SURRENDER TO OSHO."
That is absolutely wrong because I am not here to help you to surrender to me. I don't want to stand between you and the whole. It is not a question of surrender. It is a question of surrender when you go to the Pope, here it is a love affair. There you surrender to the Pope because he represents God, represents the only begotten son of God, Jesus Christ. I don't represent anybody!
When you are with me you are living in a love affair; there is no question of surrender.
You are simply learning ways to relate with existence. I am only an opportunity, a device -- a catalytic agent at the most.
My sannyasins are not my followers. I am not creating a church, I am simply imparting what I have seen. I am simply sharing my love, my joy, my experience. Those who are here are fellow-travellers. You are not surrendered to me; but living with me, slowly slowly you will start enjoying a deep surrender to existence. That is a totally different matter; I have nothing to do with it. The credit will go to you, not to me. My presence can only help in one thing: to see the pattern of stupidity in which you are caught.
The Pope is simply enforcing the same stupid pattern in you. For thousands of years people have been surrendering to these popes and priests and nothing has happened.
I am not a priest and I am not interested in gathering crowds. I am not interested in creating a tradition, I am simply enjoying myself! Those who want to enjoy themselves, they are welcome. It is a place of joy. The very word "surrender" is irrelevant here! Nobody is surrendering to anybody else. You have to be yourself, authentically yourself, sincerely Osho - The Goose is Out
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yourself, and then a miracle starts happening: the moment you discover your original face you enter into a communion with the whole.
SPIEGEL IS not right in saying that the same thing is happening to Poona pilgrims, but when people come and watch from the outside, these misunderstandings are bound to happen.
They are just onlookers.
To understand what is going on here one has to be a participant, not just an observer. Only then will some taste on your tongue reveal the secret.
I have heard that every year as part of the splendid Easter ceremonials at St. Peter's in Rome, the Chief Rabbi of the city would enter the Basilica in solemn procession during High Mass and present the Pope with an ancient scroll. And every year the Pope would take this scroll, bow to the Rabbi and hand it back, whereupon the Rabbi would return the bow, turn and leave.
This mysterious rite had been going on for so many hundreds of years that no one could remember the origins of it nor what it symbolized. But the first Eastertide of the Polack Pope's reign he decided to put an end to what had become a totally meaningless ritual, and so when the Chief Rabbi duly presented the scroll, His Holiness -- to the consternation of the entire Curia -- opened it up. It was a bill for the Last Supper.
The last question Question 4
OSHO, I AM GOING NUTS! I KEEP LAUGHING AT A JOKE. I EVEN WOKE UP
ONCE LAUGHING AT IT. AND I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THE JOKE IS!
Yoga Lalita, then I will have to tell it again! In fact, there are four jokes. Three I will tell you today and the fourth you have to discover -- the TURIYA! I will give you forty-eight hours to discover it. If you cannot discover it then I will tell it too.
The first joke that I have been telling to you in your SUSHUPTI, the dreamless sleep...
Naturally, it is difficult to remember it. And Yoga Lalita is my librarian, so I have to remind her continuously of jokes so she goes on collecting jokes for me. I never see her, I never go to the library, so the only way to convey the message is while she is asleep.
The first joke:
A minister, a priest and a rabbi were discussing how they "divined" what part of the collection money each retained for personal needs and what part was turned in to their respective institutions.
"I draw a line," said the minister, "on the floor. All the money I toss in the air -- what lands to the right of the line I keep, to the left of the line is the Lord's."
The priest nodded, saying, "My system is essentially the same, only I use a circle. What lands inside is mine, outside is his."
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The rabbi smiled and said, "I do the same thing. I toss all the money into the air and whatever God grabs is his!"
The second joke, Lalita, has been told to you in the state of SWAPNA, the dream state.
Something of it you may remember -- just a few fragments here and there.
The distraught young man was perched on the fortieth-floor ledge of a midtown hotel and threatening to jump. The closest the police could get was the roof of an adjacent building a few feet below. However, all pleas to the man to return to safety were of no avail. A priest from the nearest parish was summoned, and he hastened to the scene.
"Think, my son," he intoned to the would-be suicide. "Think of your mother and father who love you."
"Aw, they don't love me," the man replied. "I'm jumping!" "No! Stop!" cried the priest.
"Think of the woman who loves you!"
"Nobody loves me! I'm jumping!" came the response.
"But think," the priest implored, "think of Jesus and Mary and Joseph who love you!"
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph?" the man queried, "who are they?"
At which point the cleric yelled back, "Jump, you Jew bastard, jump!"
And the third has been told to you in JAGRUTI, the so-called awakening state -- which is not much of an awakening state. Maybe that's what goes on keeping you laughing.
Lalita says:
I'M GOING NUTS! I KEEP LAUGHING AT A JOKE. I EVEN WOKE UP ONCE
LAUGHING AT IT. AND I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THE JOKE IS!
This may be the joke:
The family managed to bring the patriarchal grandfather from Hungary and he came to live with his daughter and her family. The old man was fascinated by New York and all it had to offer. One day, his grandson Yankel took him to the zoo in Central Park. Most of the animals were familiar to the old man. However, they came to the cage where the laughing hyena was confined and the old man became curious. "Yankel, in the old country I never heard of an animal that laughed."
Yankel noticed the keeper standing nearby and approached him. "My grandfather recently came here from Europe. He says they don't have laughing hyenas there. Could you tell me something about it so that I can, in turn, tell him?"
The keeper said, "Well, he eats once a day."
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Yankel turned to his grandfather and in Yiddish translated, "Zayda, he eats once a day."
The keeper continued, "He takes a bath once a week." "Zayda, he bathes once a week."
The old man listened intently.
The keeper added, "He mates once a year." "Zayda, he mates once a year."
The old man shook his head up and down and said thoughtfully, "All right, he eats once a day, he bathes once a week, but if he mates only once a year, why is he laughing?"
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9 March 1981 am in Buddha Hall The first question
Question 1
OSHO, IS IT IMPORTANT TO HAVE SOME KIND OF ATTITUDE TOWARDS LIFE?
Margrit, the best way to miss life is to have a certain attitude towards it. Attitudes originate in the mind, and life is beyond mind. Attitudes are our fabrications, our prejudices, our inventions. Life is not our fabrication; on the contrary, we are just ripples in the lake of life.
What kind of attitude can a ripple in the ocean have towards the ocean? What kind of attitude can a grass leaf have towards the earth, the moon, the sun, the stars? All attitudes are egoistic, all attitudes are stupid.
Life is not a philosophy, it is not a problem; it is a mystery. You have to live it not according to a certain pattern, not according to a conditioning -- what you have been told about it -- you have to start afresh, from the very scratch.
Each human individual should think as if he is the first on the earth; he is the Adam or the Eve. Then you can open; you can open to infinite possibilities. Then you will be vulnerable, available; and the more vulnerable you are, the more available you are, the greater the possibility of life happening to you. Your attitudes function like barriers; then life never reaches to you as it is -- it has to fit your philosophy, religion, ideology, and in that very fitting, something dies in it. What you get out of it is a corpse: it may look like life but it is not.
That's what people have been doing down the ages. The Hindus are living according to the Hindu attitude, the Mohammedans according to the Mohammedan attitude, and the communists according to the communist attitude. But remember a basic, fundamental truth: the attitude does not allow you to come in contact with life as it is; it distorts, it interprets.
There is an old Greek story:
A fanatic king had a beautiful golden bed, very precious, studded with thousands of diamonds, and whenever there was a guest in the palace he would offer the bed to the guest.
But he had a certain attitude: the guest had to fit with the bed. If the guest was a little longer then the king would cut him down to size. Of course, the bed was so valuable it could not be changed, but the guest had to be put according to the bed
-- as if the bed did not exist for the guest but the guest existed for the bed!
And it is very rare, almost impossible, to find a man to fit a ready-made bed. The average person does not exist, remember; the average person is a fiction, and the
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average person. The king was a mathematician -- great calculation had gone into it. He had measured the height of all the citizens of his capital, and then the height was divided by the number of all the citizens; he had come to a fixed average. Now, there were small children in the capital, young people, old people, pygmies, giants, but the average was a totally different phenomenon. There was not a single person in his whole capital who was really average. I have never come across the average person -- the average person is a fiction.
So whosoever was going to be the guest was in trouble. If he was shorter than the bed, then the king had great wrestlers who would pull the man to size. That must have been the beginning of Rolfing! Ida Rolf must have learnt it from that king. Of course, each guest died, but that was not the king's fault -- he was doing everything with the best intentions in the world!
When you have a certain attitude towards life, Margrit, you will miss life itself. Life is vast, uncontainable by any attitude; it is impossible to put it into a certain definition. Yes, your attitude may cover a certain aspect, but it will be only an aspect. And the tendency of the mind is to proclaim its aspect as the whole, and the moment the aspect is claimed as the whole you have missed the very connection with life. Then you will live surrounded by your attitude in a kind of cocoon, encapsulated, and you will be miserable. Then all your so-called religions will be very happy because that's what they have been telling to you: that life is misery.
Buddha says birth is misery, youth is misery, old age is misery, death is misery -- the whole of life is nothing but a long, long tragedy. If you start with attitudes you will find Buddha absolutely correct; you will be a proof of it.
But I want to tell you that life is not misery, and I don't agree with Buddha at all. Life becomes a misery, but that is your doing; otherwise life is eternal joy. But to know that eternal joy you have to come open-hearted, open-handed.
Don't approach life with your fists closed, clenched. Open your hands. Go into life with immense innocence. Attitudes are cunning: you have already decided
without tasting, without experiencing, without living. You have already arrived at certain conclusions, and of course if those conclusions are there already in you A PRIORI, you will find them confirmed by life. It is not that life confirms them, but your whole mind will try to find out ways and means, arguments, data to support them.
Mind is like a sponge: it goes on sucking. It is a parasite. Once there is the center of a certain A PRIORI conclusion then that center starts becoming crystallized.
A man came to me who had been working for years on a certain hypothesis in many countries of the world: particularly in the West, and more particularly in America, the number thirteen is not thought to be good. There are hotels in America where the thirteenth floor does not exist; from the twelfth floor you simply come to the fourteenth. The number thirteen is avoided, no room has the number thirteen; from the twelfth you immediately reach the fourteenth, because nobody wants to live in the thirteenth room or on the thirteenth floor. A great fear -- the idea that the number thirteen has something evil in it.
And this man was working and collecting all kinds of data, and he had collected a really huge, mountainous support how many accidents happen on the thirteenth of every month, how Osho - The Goose is Out
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many people die on the thirteenth, how many people commit suicide, how many people murder, how many people go mad.
And he was showing his great thesis to me, and he said, "What do you say?"
I said, "You do one thing more. You have put so much energy into it, now try one thing more. Now find out what happens on the twelfth! And you will come to the same data, because on the twelfth also people go mad, commit suicide, murder, rob. Everything happens every day, but if you have a certain fixed attitude then you will choose according to that attitude. And of course when you have so much information and argument you feel certain that your attitude is right."
Margrit, I teach you a life without any attitudes. This is one of the fundamentals
of my experience: if you really want to know that which is then drop all philosophy, all "ism". Then go open-handed, utterly naked into the sun, to see what it is.
In the past, it was thought that our senses are doors, that the reality reaches from our senses to our innermost being. Now the latest research shows something else: our senses are not just doors, they are guards also. Only two percent of information is allowed to pass in, ninety-eight is prevented outside. Anything that goes against your idea of life is prevented and only two percent filters in.
Now, to live a life of only two percent is not to live at all. When one can live a hundred percent, why decide to live for only two percent?
Margrit, you ask me:
IS IT IMPORTANT TO HAVE SOME KIND OF ATTITUDE TOWARDS LIFE?
Not only is it not important, it is dangerous to have any attitude towards life. Why not allow life to have its dance, its song, without any expectations? Why can't we live without expectations? Why can't we see that which is in its purity? Why should we impose ourselves upon it? And nobody is going to be the loser. If you impose upon life you are the only loser.
From London comes the story of the three professors of literature who, while returning from luncheon, encountered several ladies of pleasure who were patrolling the street -- en masse.
"What might one call such a congregation?" mused the first professor, a Shakespearean specialist. "A flourish of strumpets?"
The second professor, being an authority on the novels of Anthony Trollope, naturally contributed, "A chapter of trollops."
But the best description came from the youngest and the least specialized of the professors.
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It is better not to label life, it is better not to give it a structure, it is better to leave it open-ended, it is better not to categorize it, not to label it. You will have a more beautiful experience of things; you will have a more cosmic experience of things, because things are not really divided. Existence is one orgasmic whole; it is one organic unity. The smallest blade of grass, the smallest leaf in a poor tree is as significant as the biggest star. The smallest thing is also the biggest, because it is all oneness; it is one spectrum. The moment you start dividing you start creating arbitrary lines, definitions, and that's the way one goes on missing life and the mystery of it.
We all have attitudes; that is our anguish. We all look from a certain standpoint, hence our life becomes poor; because every aspect at the most can only be one- dimensional and life is multi-dimensional. You have to be more liquid, more fluid, more melting and merging; you are not to be an observer. There is nothing to be solved! Don't take life as a problem, it is a tremendously beautiful mystery. Drink of it -- it is pure wine! Be a drunkard with it!
A successful cloak-and-suiter had finally found the girl of his dreams and he made preparations for a wedding the garment district would never forget. His designers prepared for the bride a wedding gown of the finest imported silks and satins, and his own marital raiment was truly a sight to behold.
The affair was nothing less than breathtaking; no expense had been spared. Then, as the newly-weds were about to embark on their honeymoon trip to Canada, an urgent message arrived in the form of a telegram.
"It's from my partner," the groom explained. "Urgent business. I'll have to attend to it immediately."
"But what about our honeymoon?" the bride asked tearfully.
"Business comes first," he said. "But you go ahead. I'll catch a later plane and be there by tonight."
"But what if you can't make it by tonight?" she moaned.
"Then," he blustered, "start without me."
A businessman has his own philosophy, his own attitudes. The scientist has his own attitudes. Everybody is living in a small prison of his own attitudes.
My effort here is to bring you out of your imprisonment, hence I don't teach you any doctrine, I don't give you any dogma, I don't give you any creed to live by. I am simply trying to help you to be unburdened of all the nonsense which has been imposed upon you for centuries. If you can put aside the mountainous weight of the past, if you can start living as if you are the first man, only then is there a possibility that you may come to know what godliness is, what freedom is, what joy is. Otherwise, misery is going to be your lot, and naturally, sooner or later, you will agree with the pessimistic attitude of Buddha: that all is suffering, all is pain.
I absolutely deny it, because my own experience is just the opposite: all is bliss, all is benediction. But it depends on you, how you approach life: guarded, with certain spectacles on your eyes, or unguarded, in deep trust, in love.
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Chapter 9 - Rejoice to abandon! The second question
Question 2
OSHO, IN THE PAST ALL FAMOUS ARTISTS HAVE BEEN WELL- KNOWN FOR
THEIR BOHEMIAN SIDE OF LIFE. OSHO, PLEASE CAN YOU SAY SOMETHING
ABOUT CREATIVITY AND DISCIPLINE?
Santosh Sneh, the bohemian life is the only life worth living! All other kinds of lives are only lukewarm; they are more ways of committing slow suicide than ways of living life passionately and intensely. In the past it was inevitable that
the artist had to live in rebellion, because creativity is the greatest rebellion in existence. If you want to create you have to get rid of all conditionings, otherwise your creativity will be nothing but copying, it will be just a carbon copy. You can be creative only if you are an individual, you cannot create as a part of the mob psychology. The mob psychology is uncreative; it lives a life of drag, it knows no dance, no song, no joy; it is mechanical.
Of course, there are a few things you will get from the society only if you are mechanical: respectability you will get, honors you will get. Universities will confer D.Litts on you, countries will give you gold medals, you may finally become a Nobel laureate, but this whole thing is ugly.
A real man of genius will discard all this nonsense, because this is bribery. Giving the Nobel prize to a person simply means that your services to the establishment are respected, that you are honored because you have been a good slave, obedient, that you have not gone astray, that you have followed the well- trodden path.
The creator cannot follow the well-trodden path, he has to search out his own way, he has to inquire in the jungles of life, he has to go alone, he has to be a dropout from the mob mind, from the collective psychology. The collective mind is the lowest mind in the world; even the so-called idiots are a little more superior than the collective idiocy. But the collectivity has its own bribes: it respects people, honors people, if they go on insisting that the way of the collective mind is the only right way.
It was out of sheer necessity that in the past, creators of all kinds -- the painters, the dancers, the musicians, the poets, the sculptors -- had to renounce respectability. They had to live a kind of bohemian life, the life of a vagabond; that was the only possibility for them to be creative. This need not be so in the future. If you understand me, if you feel what I am saying has truth in it, then in the future everybody should live individually and there will be no need for a bohemian life. The bohemian life is the by-product of a fixed, orthodox, conventional, respectable life.
My effort is to destroy the collective mind and to make each individual free to be himself or herself. Then there is no problem; then you can live as you want to live. In fact, humanity will really only be born the day the individual is respected in his rebellion. Humanity has still not been born; it is still in the womb. What
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person to be himself, to exist in his own way... And, of course, he has not to interfere with anybody -- that is part of freedom. Nobody should interfere with anybody.
But in the past everybody has been poking his nose into everybody else's affairs
-- even into things which are absolutely private, which have nothing to do with the society. For example, you fall in love with a woman -- what has that got to do with the society? It is purely a personal phenomenon, it is not of the marketplace. If two persons are agreeing to commune in love, the society should not come into it, but the society comes into it with all its paraphernalia, in direct ways, in indirect ways. The policeman will stand between the lovers; the magistrate will stand between the lovers; and if that is not enough then the societies have created a super-policeman, God, who will take care of you.
The idea of God is that of a peeping Tom who does not even allow you privacy in your bathroom, who goes on looking through the keyhole, watching what you are doing. This is ugly. All the religions of the world say God continuously watches you -- this is ugly. What kind of God is this? Has he got no other business but to watch everybody, follow everybody?
Seems to be the supreme-most detective!
Humanity needs a new soil -- the soil of freedom. Bohemianism was a reaction, a necessary reaction, but if my vision succeeds then there will be no bohemianism because there will be no so-called collective mind trying to dominate people. Then everybody will be at ease with himself. Of course, you have not to interfere with anybody, but as far as your life is concerned you have to live it on your own terms. Then only is there creativity. Creativity is the fragrance of individual freedom.
You ask me, Sneh:
OSHO, PLEASE CAN YOU SAY SOMETHING ABOUT CREATIVITY AND DISCIPLINE?
"Discipline" is a beautiful word, but it has been misused as all other beautiful words have been misused in the past. The word "discipline" comes from the same root as the word
"disciple"; the root meaning of the word is "a process of learning." One who is ready to learn is a disciple, and the process of being ready to learn is discipline.
The knowledgeable person is never ready to learn, because he already thinks he knows; he is very centered in his so-called knowledge. His knowledge is nothing but a nourishment for his ego. He cannot be a disciple, he cannot be in true discipline.
Socrates says: "I know only one thing, that I know nothing." That is the beginning of discipline. When you don't know anything, of course, a great longing to inquire, explore, investigate arises. And the moment you start learning, another factor follows inevitably: whatsoever you have learned has to be dropped continuously, otherwise it will become knowledge and knowledge will prevent further learning.
The real man of discipline never accumulates; each moment he dies to whatsoever he has come to know and again becomes ignorant. That ignorance is really luminous. I agree with Dionysius when he calls ignorance luminous. It is one of the most beautiful experiences in existence to be in a state of luminous not-knowing. When you are in that state of not-knowing you are open, there is no barrier, you are ready to explore. The Hindus cannot do it -- they are Osho - The Goose is Out
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already knowledgeable. The Mohammedans cannot do it, the Christians cannot do it. My sannyasins CAN do it, for the simple reason that I am not imparting knowledge; on the contrary, I am destroying your knowledge.
Hence it happens every day... Every day I receive many letters, many questions.
One friend has come from the West. He says, for three, four years he has been reading my books and he was so excited, he was in such great love with me, that he wanted to come somehow as quickly as possible. Now he has been able to manage to come, but here he feels frustrated. For four years he was in deep love with me, and now he says, "I cannot say the same because you are so shocking to me. You irritate me, you annoy me; you go on hammering on my cherished ideas."
It is easy to read a book because the book is in your hands. I am not in your hands! You can interpret the book according to your ideas, you cannot interpret me according to your ideas -- I will make so much trouble for you! He was not in love with me, he was in love with his own ideas, and because he was finding support from my books he lived in an illusion.
But with me illusions are bound to be shattered. I am here to shatter all illusions. Yes, it will irritate you, it will annoy you -- that's my way of functioning and working. I will sabotage you from your very roots! Unless you are totally destroyed as a mind, there is no hope for you.
Discipline has been misinterpreted. People have been telling others to discipline their life, to do this, not to do that. Thousands of shoulds and should-nots have been imposed on man, and when a man lives with thousands of shoulds and should-nots he cannot be creative. He is a prisoner; everywhere he will come across a wall.
The creative person has to dissolve all shoulds and should-nots. He needs freedom and space, vast space, he needs the whole sky and all the stars, only then can his innermost spontaneity start growing.
So remember, my meaning of discipline is not that of any Ten Commandments; I am not giving you any discipline; I am simply giving you an insight how to remain learning and never become knowledgeable. Your discipline has to come from your very heart, it has to be YOURS -- and there is a great difference. When somebody else gives you the discipline it can never fit you; it will be like wearing somebody else's clothes. Either they will be too loose or too tight, and you will always feel a little bit silly in them.
Mohammed has given a discipline to the Mohammedans; it may have been good for him, but it cannot be good for anybody else. Buddha has given a discipline to
millions of Buddhists; it may have been good for him, but it cannot be good for anybody else. A discipline is an individual phenomenon; whenever you borrow it you start living according to set principles, dead principles. And life is never dead; life is constantly changing each moment. Life is a flux.
Heraclitus is right: you cannot step in the same river twice. In fact, I myself would like to say you cannot step in the same river even once, the river is so fast-moving! One has to be alert to, watchful of, each situation and its nuances, and one has to respond to the situation according to the moment, not according to any readymade answers given by others.
Do you see the stupidity of humanity? Five thousand years ago, Manu gave a discipline to the Hindus and they are still following it. Three thousand years ago Moses gave a discipline to the Jews and they are still following it. Five thousand years ago Adinatha gave his discipline to the Jainas and they are still following it. The whole world is being driven crazy by these Osho - The Goose is Out
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disciplines! They are out of date, they should have been buried long long ago. You are carrying corpses and those corpses are stinking. And when you live surrounded by corpses, what kind of life can you have?
I teach you the moment and the freedom of the moment and the responsibility of the moment. One thing may be right this moment and may become wrong the next moment. Don't try to be consistent, otherwise you will be dead. Only dead people are consistent. Try to be alive, with all its inconsistencies, and live each moment without any reference to the past, without any reference to the future either. Live the moment in the context of the moment, and your response will be total. And that totality has beauty and that totality is creativity. Then whatsoever you do will have a beauty of its own.
The third question Question 3
OSHO, I HAVE DISCOVERED THAT I AM JUST BORED WITH MYSELF AND I FEEL NO JUICE. YOU HAVE SAID TO ACCEPT OURSELVES,
WHATEVER WE ARE.
I AM NOT ABLE TO ACCEPT LIFE -- KNOWING THAT I AM MISSING SOMETHING
OF JOY INSIDE. WHAT TO DO?
Bob Luka, we hear there is a new type of tranquilizer that doesn't relax you -- just makes you dig being tense.
Try it! Try it and try it and try it again -- be an American! -- but not more than three times.
Try it, try it, and try it again, and then stop because there is no point in being silly.
You ask me:
I HAVE DISCOVERED THAT I AM JUST BORED WITH MYSELF...
This is a great discovery. Yes, I mean it! Very few people are aware that they are bored, and they are bored, utterly bored. Everybody else knows it except themselves. To know that one is bored is a great beginning; now a few implications have to be understood.
Man is the only animal who feels boredom; it is a great prerogative, it is part of the dignity of human beings. Have you seen any buffalo bored, any donkey bored? They are not bored.
Boredom simply means that the way you are living is wrong; hence it can become a great event, the understanding that "I am bored and something has to be done, some transformation is needed." So don't think that it is bad that you are feeling bored -- it is a good sign, a good beginning, a very auspicious beginning. But don't stop there.
Why does one feel bored? One feels bored because one has been living in dead patterns given to you by others. Renounce those patterns, come out of those patterns! Start living on your own.
Only the authentic person is not bored, the pseudo person is bound to be bored.
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bored, because they are dividing their life in two parts. Their real life remains repressed and they start pretending an unreal life. It is unreal life that creates boredom. If you are doing the thing you are meant to do you will never be bored.
The day I left my home for the university my parents, my father, my family people, all wanted me to become a scientist -- there was much more of a future for a scientist -- or a doctor at least, or an engineer. I refused absolutely. I said, "I'm going to do what I want to do, because I don't want to live a boring life. As a scientist I may succeed -- I may have respectability, money, power, prestige -- but deep down I will remain bored because that is not what I ever wanted to do."
They were shocked because they could not see any prospects in the study of philosophy; philosophy is the poorest subject in the universities. Reluctantly they agreed, knowing that I would be wasting my future, but finally they recognized they were wrong.
It is not a question of money, power and prestige; it is a question of what intrinsically you want to do. Do it, irrespective of the results, and your boredom will disappear. You must be following others' ideas, you must be doing things in a right way, you must be doing things as they should be done. These are the foundation-stones of boredom.
The whole of humanity is bored because the person who would have been a mystic is a mathematician, the person who would have been a mathematician is a politician, the person who would have been a poet is a businessman. Everybody is somewhere else; nobody is where he should be. One has to risk. Boredom can disappear in a single moment if you are ready to risk.
You ask me, Bob Luka:
I HAVE DISCOVERED THAT I AM JUST BORED WITH MYSELF...
You are bored with yourself because you have not been sincere with yourself,
you have not been honest with yourself, you have not been respectful to your own being.
And you say:
I FEEL NO JUICE.
How to feel juice? Juice flows only when you are doing the thing that you wanted to do, whatsoever it is.
Vincent Van Gogh was immensely happy just painting. Not a single painting was sold, nobody ever appreciated him, and he was hungry, he was dying, because his brother was giving him only a small amount of money so that he could at least manage to survive. Four days a week he would fast and three days a week he would eat. He had to fast for those four days because from where was he going to get his canvases and paints and brushes? But he was immensely happy -
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He died when he was only thirty-three; he committed suicide; but his suicide is far better, Bob Luka, than your so-called life, because he committed suicide only when he had painted the thing that he wanted to paint.
The day he finished a painting of the sunset which had been his longest desire, he wrote a letter saying: "My work is done, I am fulfilled. I am leaving this world immensely contented."
He committed suicide, but I will not call it suicide. He lived totally, he burned life's candle from both ends together in tremendous intensity.
Bob Luka, you may live a hundred years, but your life will be just a dry bone, a weight, dead weight.
You say:
OSHO... YOU HAVE SAID TO ACCEPT OURSELVES, WHATEVER WE ARE. I AM
NOT ABLE TO ACCEPT LIFE -- KNOWING THAT I AM MISSING SOMETHING OF
JOY INSIDE.
When I say accept yourself, I am not saying accept your pattern of life -- don't try to misunderstand me. When I say accept yourself, I am saying reject everything else -- ACCEPT
YOURSELF. But you must have interpreted it in your own way. That's how things go...
The Martian landed his saucer in Manhattan and, immediately upon emerging, was approached by a panhandler. "Mister," said the man, "can I have a dime?"
The Martian asked, "What's a dime?"
The panhandler thought a minute, then said, "You're right. Can I have a quarter?"
I have not said what you have understood. Reject all that has been imposed upon you -- I am not saying accept it. Accept your innermost core which you have brought from the beyond and then you will not feel that you are missing something. The moment you accept yourself without any conditions, suddenly an outburst of joy happens. Your juices start flowing, life really becomes ecstatic.
A certain young man's friends thought he was dead, but he was only in a state of coma.
When just in time to avoid being buried he showed signs of life, he was asked how it felt to be dead.
"Dead!" he exclaimed. "I wasn't dead. I knew all the time what was goin' on. And I knew I wasn't dead, too, because my feet were cold and I was hungry."
"But how did that fact make you think you were still alive?" asked one of the curious.
"Well, I knew that if I was in heaven I wouldn't be hungry, and if I was in the other place my feet wouldn't be cold."
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One can be certain, Bob Luka, that you are still not dead: you are hungry, your feet are cold. Just get up and do a little jogging!
A poor man, lacking education and all social graces, fell in love with the daughter of a millionaire. She invited him home to meet her parents at their elegant mansion. The man was intimidated by the rich furnishings, the servants and all the other signs of wealth, but somehow he managed to appear relaxed -- until it came to dinner time. Seated at the massive dinner table, mellow with the effects of wine, he farted loudly.
The girl's father looked up and stared at his dog which was lying at the poor man's feet.
"Rover!" he said in a menacing tone.
The poor man was relieved that the blame had been put on the dog, and so a few minutes later he farted again.
His host looked at the dog and again said, "Rover!" in a louder voice.
A few minutes later he farted a third time. The rich man's face wrinkled in rage. He bellowed, "Rover, get the hell out of here before he shits all over you!"
Bob Luka, there is still time -- get out of the imprisonment in which you have lived up to now! It only needs a little courage, just a little courage of the gambler. And there is nothing to lose, remember. You can only lose your chains -
- you can lose your boredom, you can lose this constant feeling inside you that something is missing. What else is there to lose? Get out of the rut and accept your own being -- against Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna.
Accept yourself. Your responsibility is not towards Buddha or Zarathustra or
Kabir or Nanak; your responsibility is only towards yourself.
Be responsible -- and when I use the word "responsible," please remember not to misinterpret it. I am not talking about duties, responsibilities, I am simply using the word in the literal sense: respond to reality, be responsible.
You must have lived an irresponsible life, fulfilling all kinds of responsibilities which others are expecting you to fulfill. What is there to lose? You are bored -- this is a good situation. You are missing the juice, what more do you need to get out of the prison? Jump out of it, don't look back!
They say: Think twice before you jump. I say: Jump first and then think as much as you want!
The fourth question Question 4
OSHO, CAN A MADMAN BECOME A BUDDHA?
Anand Navaneet, only a madman can become a Buddha! The so-called sane people at the most can become Buddhists but not Buddhas, they can become Christians but not Christs.
Only a madman...
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My invitation is for the mad people of the world. I am a madman's guide to enlightenment!
A group of philosophers from a Russian prison decided to escape. They had a duplicate key, so they waited for the night to make their escape. At midnight one of them went to open the door but came back after a few minutes with a long sad face.
"What happened?" asked all the others.
"Well, our plan is useless. We can't escape -- the crazy night-watchman has forgotten to close the door and I can't use the key!"
Philosophers cannot become Buddhas! It needs guts to become a Buddha.
Jesus was hanging on the cross when a philosopher passed by. He stopped, looked at Jesus and asked, "What are you doing up there?"
Jesus nodded his head to the left and right and said, "I'm hanging out with friends!"
The philosopher continued, "Well, if you want, I could get a ladder and take you down."
"I would appreciate that," Jesus replied.
Half an hour later the philosopher came back with a ladder, climbed up to the cross, screwed the nails out of the right hand, then out of the left hand.
Jesus fell headlong, screaming, "You idiot! Next time start with the feet!" The last question
Question 5
OSHO, I WANT TO GET LOST UTTERLY AND ULTIMATELY INTO ABSOLUTE
LOVE. WHAT SHOULD I DO?
Dharmo, the very idea of getting lost utterly, ultimately, absolutely, is demanding too much. Be a little more human, don't aspire to the impossible. The impossible has been driving people to unnecessary hysteria, and we have been burdened with impossible values for centuries. We have learned these words and we go on repeating these words parrot-like without even taking in the significance.
Be human, don't aspire to perfection in any way because all perfectionism is neurosis. Be human and accept all the frailties and limitations of human beings.
Why should you want to be lost utterly? For what? What are you going to gain from it? If it CAN be managed -- it is good that it cannot be managed -- but for argument's sake I am saying if it can be managed, you will come again with: "Now I am feeling very lonely, utterly lost, absolutely lost, ultimately lost!" You will start hankering to go back, to have a little more of the spice of life.
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is a rhythm: you melt, you enjoy the melting, then again you are back. It creates a rhythm, and rhythm is always richer. If you are simply dissolved forever there will be no rhythm, no music, no dance. It will really be death, not life.
My whole approach is to teach you to be human. For centuries you have been told to be superhuman. I rejoice in your human-ness. To me, human-ness is synonymous with godliness.
It is perfectly beautiful to be lost once in a while and found again, so that you can lose yourself again. Create a rhythm of getting lost, of finding yourself again. Life is a music, and the music is possible only if both things continue, otherwise it will be monotonous.
Dharmo, I cannot help you to get lost absolutely, ultimately, utterly. I love the moment, I love the IMMEDIACY of the moment. I am very averse to words like "ultimate"; they are faraway words, they don't have much meaning in them; they are pretentious words.
The absolute is not of any significance; a rose flower is of far more significance, it is not absolute: in the morning it grows, by the evening it is gone. That's its beauty -- it is momentary. It is a miracle! The ultimate rose will be synthetic, plastic; it will be there forever, but because it will not be able to die it will not be alive either.
You have to learn this losing yourself, then coming back to yourself and losing yourself again -- the closeness of love and the distance. Each distance in love
again creates a longing to be close. If you are stuck together and you cannot separate, your love life will become a nightmare.
Meditate over this story, Dharmo; it is a beautiful parable. Only I can say it is a parable.
Rosalie Mazzolli, nee Adelstein, had married a midget. For a while they were getting along all right, but one day Rosalie showed up in the domestic relations court and demanded she be granted a divorce from little Harry.
"Surely, Mrs. Mazolli, you knew your husband was a midget when you married him,"
questioned the judge. "Why are you now desirous of leaving him? Didn't you anticipate the problems this marriage would encounter?"
"Oh, Your Honor," sobbed Rosalie, "how was I to know? Everything is wonderful, except for sex."
"Sex?" repeated the judge. "What has his being a midget got to do with sex?"
"Well," she continued tearfully, "when we're nose to nose his toes are in it; when we're toes to toes, his nose is in it, and when he's in it he disappears altogether, and oh, Your Honor, I get so lonely!"
There is no need to be utterly, ultimately, absolutely lost. Be relaxed -- once in a while get lost and that is good. Lose yourself and find yourself again and again. This is a beautiful drama, this existence, of losing and finding yourself. And drop all these words like "ultimate,"
"absolute," "perfect"; all these words are the inventions of the philosophers. Life is immediate, life is always now and here. And live it with all the frailty of a human being, with all the frailty of a rose flower, and you will come to know the greatest splendor IN the moment -- not in eternity. It is always now and it is always here! Don't condemn the momentary, rejoice in it, rejoice to abandon.
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10 March 1981 am in Buddha Hall The first question
Question 1 OSHO,
I FREQUENTLY HEAR A QUESTION BEING ASKED ABOUT THE ASHRAM...
THERE IS SO MUCH VITALITY HERE NOW AND SO MUCH CREATIVITY WITH
ALL THESE SHOWS AND MUSIC AND FASHIONS AND CRAFTS, AS WELL AS
EVENTS HAPPENING ABROAD, THAT PEOPLE ARE WONDERING WHAT WILL
HAPPEN WHEN YOU ARE GONE.
WHEN YOU LEAVE YOUR BODY WILL THE ASHRAM BECOME A DEAD
INSTITUTION, AND WILL YOU JUST BECOME DEIFIED AND FORGOTTEN?
Binoy Thomas, my concern is the immediate, this moment. Beyond this moment nothing exists. The only time that is existential is now and the only space that matters is here. So I don't care what happens in the future -- neither the past nor the future have any validity.
But that is the way of the mind: the mind can only think in terms of past and future, the mind cannot experience the present; it deviates from the present
continuously. The mind is like a pendulum: it moves to the left, the far left, or to the right, the far right. Either it is leftist or rightist -- and my whole approach is to be exactly in the middle.
The word for the middle which Gautam Buddha used is very beautiful: he called MAJJIM
NIKAYA, "the way of the exact middle." If you can keep the pendulum in the middle, the clock stops. The clock represents the mind -- and not just literally, not just as a metaphor; mind is time. Time consists of two tenses, not three. The present is not part of time; the past is time, the future is time. The present is the penetration of the beyond into the world of time.
You can think of time as a horizontal line. A is followed by B, B is followed by C, C is followed by D, and so on and so forth: it is a linear progression. Existence is not horizontal, existence is vertical. Existence does not move in a line -- from A to B, from B to C --
existence moves in intensity: from A to a deeper A, from the deeper A to an even deeper A. It is diving into the moment.
Time conceived of as past and future is the language of the mind -- and the mind can only create problems, it knows no solutions. All the problems that humanity is burdened with are the mind's inventions. Existence is a mystery, not a problem. It has not to be solved, it has to be lived.
I am living my moment. I don't care a bit about what happens later on. It may look very irresponsible to you because my criterion of responsibility is diametrically opposite to people's Osho - The Goose is Out
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idea of so-called responsibility. I am responsible to the moment, to existence -- and responsible not in the sense of being dutiful to it, responsible in the sense that I respond totally, spontaneously. Whatsoever the situation is, I am utterly in tune with it. While I am alive I am alive, when I am dead I will be dead. I don't see any question at all.
But I can understand your question, Binoy Thomas. You say:
I FREQUENTLY HEAR A QUESTION BEING ASKED ABOUT THE ASHRAM...
The people who are asking you are dead, otherwise why should they be worried about the future? They don't come to the ashram, they don't come to me, they have no participation in all that is going on here -- they are concerned about the future! They are showing much worry about the future -- what will happen? The question is: what is happening?
And the people who are asking such questions are stupid too. Are they going to live forever? They are worried about me and my work as if they were going to be here forever. I am here for the moment, you are here for the moment. If a meeting is possible, something of tremendous beauty can happen. But these fools go on thinking in such cunning ways that they not only deceive others, they even manage to deceive themselves. Right now they are condemning me, right now they are criticizing me, and still they are showing great love --
what will happen when I am no longer here?
The moment I die, the whole world dies for me; then whatsoever happens, happens. I have not taken on the whole responsibility for existence. Who can take it? But there have been people who have tried it and they have all utterly failed.
For example, Gautam the Buddha -- one of the most beautiful men who has ever walked on the earth -- was very concerned that no religion should arise when he left the world, that he should not be worshipped, that statues of him should not be made. He emphasized it again and again his whole life. Forty-two years of constant sermonizing to people, that "There is no need to worship me," brought about just the opposite result. The more he emphasized "Don't worship me," the more people felt "This is the man to be worshipped."
This is the law of reverse effect. There are more statues of Buddha in the world than of anybody else, and he was against statues. So many statues have been made of Buddha that in Urdu, Arabic, and other Mohammedan languages, the very word BUDDHA has become synonymous with statue, with a little change:
BUDH. BUDH means statue, but BUDH comes from BUDDHA. Thousands of statues... and the man was emphasizing "Don't make statues!"
In fact, there was no need to emphasize it. The very emphasizing of it was wrong. Why should he have been concerned about the future? When you are no longer there, the very desire to control the future according to your ideas is political. People are trying to control humanity while they are alive and they go on insisting that they would like to control humanity even when they are gone.
I am not controlling anybody -- I am not a politician. I am not interested at all that anybody should be controlled by me today or tomorrow.
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for fifty years? There must be something in it. He is afraid, there is fear -- he knows that he will be worshipped, he knows that there are already people who think of him as their guru.
The more he freaks out, the more those fools think, "This is the real guru! Look how humble he is -- no pretensions, no desire, no ambition to be holier-than- thou." Ponder over it.
Krishnamurti is doing the same thing again that Buddha did. He is not at all original about it; it is an old game. In fact, people's minds work in a strange way. God said to Adam and Eve,
"Don't eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge," and they ate it. The moment you say no, something deep in the heart of man starts becoming interested; a great curiosity arises. So I am not saying to anybody, "Please don't worship me."
And when I am not there, what can I do? Fools are fools. Whether they worship me or somebody else will not make much difference. If they want to worship they will worship.
And, Binoy Thomas, have you pondered who these people are who ask you this question?
They must be Hindus, Mohammedans, Christians, Jainas, Buddhists, Krishnamurti-ites. Who are these people? If they are so concerned about me, have they dropped Krishna? Have they dropped Mohammed? Have they dropped Buddha? If they were honest and sincere, they would have dropped all the religions. But they go on carrying their Bibles, their Zendavestas, their Vedas, their Mahaviras, their Zarathustras, and still they are concerned only about me.
And what are their institutions? What is Hinduism? or Islam? or Jainism? or communism for that matter?
Every institution is bound to be dead, only a man is alive. No institutions are ever alive.
How can an institution be alive? By its very nature, it is going to be dead.
So next time these people ask you the question, you ask them: who are you? Do you belong to any institution, to any religion, to any theology, to any philosophy? If you belong, then you don't have the right to ask the question. And if you don't belong, then you will not need to ask the question, you will see the point that the intelligent people will never fall for dead institutions. But the unintelligent are bound to live in institutions -- there is no way you can change the label. And you are living in a thousand and one kinds of institutions.
What is marriage? -- an institution. And only insane people live in institutions. Marriage is dead. What is your family? and what is your nation? and what is your race? -- all institutions.
But this is a strange thing: that people go on asking these questions without ever thinking that these questions are pointing towards themselves.
As far as I am concerned, I am not at all interested in the next moment. Even if this sentence remains incomplete, I will not make any effort to complete it. I will not even put a full point to it. I have no desire to dominate, but I cannot go on saying to people, "Don't worship me," because that is the way to create worship.
People have to be understood within their whole insane mechanism. For example, Jesus says, "Blessed are the poor... for theirs is the kingdom of God."
Now, for these two thousand years many have tried to be poor for this simple reason and motive: so that they can attain to the kingdom of God. Do you see the contradiction? "Blessed are the poor... for theirs is the kingdom of God." Then what kind of poverty is this if it brings the kingdom of God to you?
Then this is a good incentive, a great motivation for greed. If Jesus was really right, he should only have said this: Blessed are the poor because they are poor.
Then why make this statement
"... for theirs is the kingdom of God"? Everybody wants to have the kingdom of God; everybody wants to possess eternal treasures. And if one has to be poor and sacrifice for that, it is worth it.
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People have been doing this all along. It is time that man should start looking more clearly, more transparently at what has been told to him and what he has done.
People always misunderstand. While the Master is alive, they will not come to him, because while the Master is alive, they cannot be allowed to misunderstand. They will come to him only when he is no longer there, because a dead Master can be controlled, manipulated.
Just a few days ago, a so-called Jaina saint, Kanjiswami died. He was worshipped by the Jainas so much so that the Jainas had been declaring: "In the next circle of existence, in the next creation, he will be the first TEERTHANKARA, the first founder of Jainism, again."
When he died -- I have seen the pictures, somebody sent the pictures -- the Jainas were trying to fix his posture, because a TEERTHANKARA or a would- be TEERTHANKARA should die in the lotus posture. They must have broken some of his bones. At least a dozen people were forcing his dead body into a certain yoga posture. Now, you cannot do this while a man is alive -- he will go through a primal scream!
While he was alive he used to wear clothes, but according to the Jainas, one attains to the ultimate freedom only when one dies naked, so they removed the clothes. Now, the corpse cannot prevent it. The clothes are removed, a lotus posture is fixed, and the followers are happy.
This goes on happening.
A maid who seemed to enjoy her work, gave notice one day without warning.
"Why do you wish to leave?" the lady of the house asked her. "Is anything wrong?"
"I just can't stand the suspense in this house a minute more," the maid replied. "Suspense? What do you mean?"
"It's the sign over my bed that says: 'Watch ye, for ye know not when the master cometh.'"
The moment the Master is gone, you have only the words. Words can be manipulated, words can be interpreted, words can be colored and painted according to your prejudices. But, Binoy Thomas, as far as I am concerned, it will be impossible -- for many reasons it will be impossible.
First, I am a man who is consistently inconsistent. It will not be possible to make a dogma out of my words; anybody trying to make a creed or dogma out of my words will go nuts! You can make a dogma out of Mahavira -- he is a very consistent man, very logical. You can make a philosophy out of Buddha -- he is very mathematical. You can make a philosophy out of Krishnamurti -- for fifty years he has simply been repeating the same thing again and again; you cannot find a single inconsistency in him. On the one hand he says, "I am not your Master, your guru. Don't depend on me," but in a subtle way he is creating the whole philosophy --
which is so consistent, so utterly consistent, that everybody would like to be imprisoned in it, it is so sane.
It is impossible with me: I live in the moment, and whatsoever I am saying right now is true only for this moment. I have no reference with my past, and I don't think of the future at all. So my statements are atomic; they are not part of a
system. And you can make a dead institution only when a philosophy is very systematic, when there are no more flaws, when no Osho - The Goose is Out
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fault can be found, when all doubts are solved, all questions dissolved, and you are given a ready-made answer to everything in life.
I am so inconsistent that it is impossible to create a dead institution around me, because a dead institution will need the infrastructure of a dead philosophy. I am not teaching you any doctrine, I am not giving you any principles; on the contrary, I am trying to take away all the philosophies that you have carried all along. I am destroying your ideologies, creeds, cults, dogmas, and I am not replacing them with anything else. My process is of pure deconditioning. I am not trying to recondition you. I will leave you open.
Hence, you can see it here, all my sannyasins are unique individuals. There is no certain pattern into which they have to fit themselves. There is no "should," "should not," there is no rigid structure, but only a liquidity. I am not giving you the Ten Commandments, I am not giving you detailed information on how to live, because I believe in the individual and the individual's dignity and his freedom. I am sharing my vision -- that is my joy -- but it is not being shared in order that you should try to live up to it.
Krishnamurti goes on saying, "Don't follow me. Don't imitate me," but on the other hand, when people don't follow him, he becomes very irritated, annoyed. It is a little subtle. For example, he says, "Don't follow me," and people follow him. Then he becomes annoyed. If you are truly sincere, then you can say "Don't follow me," but if people want to follow you, who are you to prevent them? You have said your thing, now it is up to them what to do or not to do. You are not their Master, so if they want to follow you, you cannot prevent them. If you prevent them, that means you are forcing them to follow your idea of not following.
He becomes very annoyed...
Just a few days ago he was in Bombay, and I tell my sannyasins that wherever he is, they should go there and sit in the front rows. And the moment he sees the
orange people, he becomes unenlightened immediately! He starts shouting.
Now, why this annoyance? There must be some deep desire to control. Now who are you to tell somebody not to wear orange? If somebody wants to wear orange then it is his choice.
A subtle strategy, a very indirect strategy to manipulate, to dominate, to possess...
I am simply sharing my vision, my joy. I am enjoying it, and whosoever wants to enjoy it with me is welcome. Naturally, when I am gone there may be a few fools who will try to figure it out, to make a system, although I am making it almost impossible. But fools are fools. They can try to do the impossible.
Bertrand Russell has said, "It is a strange fact of history that not a single religion has been founded by a man who had a sense of humor." In fact, to have a sense of humor and to create a religion is contradictory. Religions are created by sad people -- very long faces, almost dead.
Bertrand Russell is no longer alive, otherwise I would have told him, "Then come and see."
It may not have happened in the past, and I agree with him because Mahavira was serious, Jesus was serious, Mohammed was serious, Shankaracharya was serious... And Russell seems to be right; these sad people have created the dead institutions of all the religions.
But here something totally new is happening. I am not trying to create a religion, I cannot do it, because the very idea of creating a religion is ugly. But I am releasing a sense of humor in you, a deep laughter in you. To me laughter is more sacred than prayer, dancing more spiritual than chanting mantras, loving existence far more cosmic than going to a church or to a temple. Becoming utterly nobody, a pure nothingness, is far more significant than becoming Osho - The Goose is Out
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a saint. Innocence, a sense of humor, a joyous participation in life... you cannot
create a dead institution around such tremendously alive experiences. A dead institution needs something dead to be made out of. It is made out of the corpses of your saints. My whole approach is nonserious -- sincere, but non-serious.
A salesman stopped at a small-town hotel and had difficulty getting a room.
He was about to leave when the clerk said, "I think I may be able to put you up. There are two beds up in room ten and one is occupied by a woman. But there is a screen around her bed and she is sleeping soundly. Just go to your bed quietly and everything will be fine."
The offer was quickly accepted. About twenty minutes later the salesman returned, greatly excited.
"Good heavens!" he cried. "The woman in the other bed is dead!" "I know that," said the clerk, "but how the hell did you find out?" People are curious, very curious.
Binoy Thomas, you say:
I FREQUENTLY HEAR A QUESTION BEING ASKED ABOUT THE ASHRAM...
THERE IS SO MUCH VITALITY HERE NOW AND SO MUCH CREATIVITY WITH
ALL THESE SHOWS AND MUSIC AND FASHIONS AND CRAFTS, AS WELL AS
EVENTS HAPPENING ABROAD, THAT PEOPLE ARE WONDERING WHAT WILL
HAPPEN WHEN YOU ARE GONE.
Tell those fools to come here while the thing is alive. When you see a beautiful rose flower you don't start thinking, "What will happen when the rose flower withers away by the evening.
When its petals fall and go back to the earth, to their original source -- what will happen then?" You don't bother about it. You rejoice in the flower, you dance with the flower in the wind, in the rain, in the sun. You see a bird on the wing, soaring high towards the sky, towards the stars. You don't think, "What will happen when the bird is dead?" You enjoy it.
And, strangely, these are the people who create dead institutions, because when the bird is alive and singing and soaring high they are afraid to come close. When the bird is dead then they can make a beautiful golden cage -- a temple, a synagogue, a church -- and then they can worship. The dead word is not dangerous.
These people who are wondering what will happen, are the same people who will create a dead institution. My people cannot create a dead institution -- it is impossible. Those who have been in communion with me will have learnt one thing absolutely, categorically: that life cannot be confined into institutions; the moment you try to confine it into institutions you destroy it. So while I am alive they will celebrate. When I am gone they will still celebrate.
They will celebrate my life, they will celebrate my death, and they will remain alive.
Remember, religions are created by guilty people, and I am not creating any guilt here.
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There are certain mechanisms... If Jesus had not been crucified, there would have been no Christianity at all. The real founder of Christianity was not Jesus Christ but the high priest of Jerusalem, the rabbi, and Pontius Pilate. These two persons, in conspiracy with Judas, created Christianity. This is the real "holy trinity"; Jesus Christ is just an excuse.
Crucify a man like Jesus, and then you will never be able to forgive yourself, you will feel guilty. Your hands will look red with the blood of Jesus. Now, what should be done to remove those wounds, those guilt feelings? The only way is to
move to the opposite: worship.
I am not sacrificing, hence there is no possibility of worshipping me. I am living joyously
-- nobody need feel guilty about me; there is no reason at all. If I start living naked, if I start fasting, if I start moving barefoot on the roads, if I start begging for my food, then I will create guilt, then I will create in you a subtle mechanism. Something will be triggered in you and finally you will find consolation only in worshipping me.
Mahavira is worshipped because he moved around naked; he tortured himself, fasted.
Buddha is worshipped because he was a king and he renounced all his pleasures. I have not renounced anything. In fact, I was born a poor man and I live like a king. There is no need to worship me because there is no need to compensate me. I am not creating any guilt in anybody. I am not torturing myself.
You can easily forgive yourself. There is no point in going on carrying guilt.
The whole question of what will happen in the future is political. The politician is always concerned with the future.
A great politician had been bitten by a dog but didn't give it much thought until he noticed that the wound was taking a remarkably long time to heal. Finally he consulted a doctor who took one look at it and ordered the dog brought in. Just as he had suspected, the dog had rabies. Since it was too late to give the patient serum, the doctor felt he had to prepare him for the worst.
The politician sat down at the doctor's desk and began to write. His physician tried to comfort him. "Perhaps it won't be so bad," he said. "You needn't make out your will right now." "I'm not making any will," replied the politician. "I'm just writing out a list of people I'm going to bite!"
I am not interested in the future at all. This moment is too much, too overwhelming. I am rejoicing in it. And this is my way of life: to live moment to moment. I am not a prophet, I have not come here to determine the whole course of humanity in the future -- that kind of bullshit does not appeal to me at all. Who am I to decide the whole course of humanity in the future? I am living my
moment joyously; that's enough. And the people who will be coming will find their own ways to live. To suffer or to rejoice -- it all depends on their intelligence.
I cannot determine anything, but my way of working is such that it is impossible to create a philosophy, a dogma, a creed, a church, absolutely impossible.
Eighty-five-year-old Will Jones hobbled down to the local bar to have a cold one and shoot the breeze with his friends. Mr. Jones was the talk of the town as he had recently married a beautiful nineteen-year-old girl. Several of the boys bought the old man a drink in Osho - The Goose is Out
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an effort to get him to tell of his wedding night. Sure enough the old rascal fell right in with their plans.
"My youngest son carried me in and lifted me onto the bed with my young bride. We spent the night together and then my three sons carried me off the bed."
The small circle of men scratched their heads and asked the old boy why it took his three other sons to take him off, when it only took his youngest boy to put him on.
Proudly he replied, "I fought them." Live each moment totally.
You ask me, Binoy Thomas:
THERE IS SO MUCH VITALITY HERE NOW...
The vitality is because we are living herenow, our whole vision is of herenow. We don't look beyond that because beyond that nothing exists; whatsoever comes is always now.
Time is an invention. Now is a reality. So much creativity is happening for the simple reason that we have withdrawn ourselves from past and future.
Our whole energy remains blocked either in the past or in the future. When you withdraw all your energy from past and future a tremendous explosion happens. That explosion is creativity. And this is only the beginning -- every day, every moment, things are becoming more intense, more passionate. But we are not trying in any way to control the future.
I am not a prophet, neither am I a messiah. To me, the claims of Jesus Christ and people like him, look childish: that they have come to deliver the whole humanity from their sins.
Krishna says in the Gita, "Whenever religion will be lost, I will come back." To me, this is all crap. There is no need for anybody to come; the people who will be here will take care of themselves.
I am preparing my people to live joyously, ecstatically. So when I am not here, it won't make any difference to them. They will still live in the same way -- and maybe my death will bring them more intensity.
Death is always a beautiful background which makes your life more intense. But my ashram is never going to become a dead institution. And if it does, it won't be my ashram.
You ask me:
WHEN YOU LEAVE YOUR BODY WILL THE ASHRAM BECOME A DEAD
INSTITUTION AND WILL YOU JUST BECOME DEIFIED AND FORGOTTEN?
I am not leaving anything to anybody. I have declared myself Bhagwan. I am not leaving anything to anybody. Why should I leave it to anybody? I know I am the Blessed One -- and only I can know. How can anybody else know it? And I am trying to seduce my people into Osho - The Goose is Out
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understanding this immensity: that they are also the blessed ones. It is
impossible to deify me
-- I have already done it! What else is there left for you? I don't depend on anybody.
Before I leave the world, one thing I am certainly going to do -- it is private, so please don't tell anybody else -- before I leave the world, I am going to declare all of my sannyasins blessed ones. Thousands of Bhagwans all over the world! There will be no need to make any special nook and corner for me, I will be dissolved in my people. Just as you can taste the sea from any place and it is salty, you will be able to taste any of my sannyasins and you will find the same taste: the taste of Bhagwan, the taste of the Blessed One.
I am waiting for the right moment.
Once the new commune is established, all my sannyasins will be called Bhagwans. Then it really will be a Bhagwan movement.
The second question Question 2
OSHO, IF LIFE IS SO BEAUTIFUL, THEN WHAT IS THE POINT OF BEING
ENLIGHTENED AND NOT BEING REBORN?
Deva Vipul, there is no point at all. That's what I have been telling you, but you don't listen. Your question shows that you have still not listened.
The question begins:
IF LIFE IS SO BEAUTIFUL...
"Ifs" and "buts" won't do. If life is beautiful then you need to be enlightened. Life is beautiful, so there is no need to be enlightened.
Vipul, are you a Polack or something?
A lady was looking in a bookstall for a gift for a sick Polack friend.
When asked if she would like something religious, she replied, "Oh, no. My Polack friend is well on the way to recovery!"
If you can drop that "if," you will be on the way to recovery. But that "if" is there
-- I can see it, sitting on you like a huge mountain.
I don't see any point in being enlightened. Things are perfectly beautiful as they are. But if you start with a hypothetical question, then you have not tasted life. Drop the "if" and you are enlightened. There is not much to enlightenment. It is a simple recognition that I have been unnecessarily chasing my own tail. The day you get it, you stop chasing your tail, you just simply sit in the sun and take a sunbath.
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A Polack landowner has been wondering for quite a while about the quietness of his barnyard during the mid-day breaks. One day he decides to find out what's behind it all, so he steps out discreetly and sees his farmhand crossing the yard with pants open and disappearing into the barn. The landowner calls his servant back and asks him what's going on inside the barn.
"Well, sir, we've got quite a jolly game going on in there. The girls hide their heads in the hay and then have to guess who did it!"
"That sounds like fun," replies the Polack landowner. "Can I join you?"
"I guess so," says the farmhand. "Your wife has been at it for six weeks already!"
You can join, but drop the "if." Those who have dropped the "if" have already joined. The Buddhas and the Krishnas and the Zarathustras -- they have joined the game just by dropping the "if."
But, Vipul, it is very difficult to drop "ifs" and "buts" -- the mind consists of them; these are the bricks of the mind. And all minds are Polack, remember.
The Polack Pope was finally persuaded by his cardinals to find a woman, so that
he could better understand the problems of mankind.
"Well-a, okay," said the Polack Pope, "but-a she's-a gotta have certain qualifications.
First-a, she's-a gotta be blind, so she cannot see-a what-a I am-a doing to her. Second-a, she's-a gotta be deaf, so she cannot hear-a what I say-a. And third-a, she's-a gotta have-a the biggest tits-a in Italy!"
People are trying to play the game of life but with many conditions -- and those conditions prevent them.
Life is a beautiful game if you don't have any conditions to it. If you can simply plunge into it with no "ifs," with no "buts," then there is no need for enlightenment.
What is actually meant by enlightenment? -- a relaxed, restful approach to life, a deep synchronicity with existence, an egoless communion with the whole.
A Polack stripteaser goes to a theater manager for an audition. Before beginning her performance, she puts a big red apple in the middle of the stage and to the accompaniment of soft sexy music, she begins her number.
The music comes to a crescendo... she is almost naked. With a crash of cymbals and a roll of the drums, to the gaping eyes of the theater manager, she leaps across the stage, does three impressive pirouettes and to the final crash of the drums dives down in the splits and lands on top of the big red apple.
When she gets up to bow, the apple has disappeared.
After a moment of deathly hush, the theater manager applauds her ecstatically. Osho - The Goose is Out
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"You will become famous all over the world. I will book you for the best theaters in Tokyo, London, Hamburg, New York and Paris."
"No! Paris no!" replies the stripteaser in a worried tone.
"Why not Paris?" asks the manager. "It's one of the best cities in the world for your number."
"No, not Paris! In Paris my mother does this number with a watermelon!" The third question
Question 3
OSHO, WHAT MAKES THE FISH JUMP OUT OF THE WATER?
Stephen Lyons, it is a strange question... it is fishy! Have you been a fish in your past life, or are you planning to be born as a fish in the future?
I don't know much about fish and their minds, but I guess that they must be just like you: getting tired of the same ocean, the same water, the obvious. They must be jumping out of the water just to see what is beyond. They must be in search of enlightenment, NIRVANA. Or perhaps, trying to get out of the known to have some taste of the unknown.
Indian mythology says that the first incarnation of God happened in the form of a fish.
That seems to be very relevant, because that's what biologists say: that life must have started in the ocean with a fish. The fish is the most primitive form of life.
Then compare... Even the fish is curious, inquiring. And there are millions of men who are not curious at all, not inquiring at all, who are living with stuffed ideas -- borrowed rubbish from others -- who are not explorers. The fish jumping out of the water shows you that you have fallen even below that.
A Christian remains a Christian, a Hindu remains a Hindu, a Mohammedan remains a Mohammed -- and not only that, they brag about it. They are far worse than the most primitive form of life, the fish. One should inquire, one should explore. It is accidental that you are born a Hindu or a Mohammedan; it is not your destiny. Explore, jump out of the water, look around. There are millions of possibilities available, and the more you explore, the more you are. The more you go into the unknown, the more integrated you become. The challenge of the
unknown is the most centering phenomenon in life.
Perhaps the fish are jumping out of the water just to listen to a few of my jokes. Mrs. Cantor suspected her husband of playing around with the maid.
Having to spend a few days with her sick mother, she told her small son, Harvey, to keep an eye on Poppa and the maid.
As soon as she returned, she asked, "Harvey, did anything happen?"
"Well," said the boy, "Poppa and the maid went into the bedroom and took off their clothes and..."
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"Stop! Stop!" shouted Mrs. Cantor. "We will wait until Poppa comes home."
Poppa was met at the door by his irate wife, cringing maid and confused son. "Harvey, tell me what happened with Poppa and the maid," stormed Mrs. Cantor.
"As I told you, Ma," said Harvey, "Poppa and the maid went into the bedroom and took off their clothes."
"Yes! Yes! Go on, Harvey," said Mrs. Cantor impatiently, "what did they do then?"
Replied Harvey, "Why, Mother, they did the same thing you and uncle Bernie did when Poppa was in Chicago."
So, Stephen Lyons, when you see a fish jumping out of the water again, please tell it a joke.
A pretty girl walked up to a tall handsome man.
"Ohhh," she sighed, "you have such big muscular arms!"
"Yes," he responded, making a fist with one hand. He then pointed with the other hand to his muscles and said, "Eighteen inches! I measured them this morning."
"Ohhh," said the girl with admiration, "and you have such a big beautiful chest!"
The man laughed, stretched his arms in the air, and said, "Forty-five inches! I measured it this morning."
The girl was amazed. She looked down at him, pointed her finger at his cock and asked,
"How long?"
"Two inches," he replied.
"Only?" the girl asked disappointed.
The he-man took a deep breath, looked at the girl and said, "Measured from the floor, of course!"
Now, Binoy Thomas, can you make a religion out of my jokes? Can you make a dead institution out of my jokes? It is impossible.
The last question Question 4
OSHO, YES, OSHO, YES. THERE IS NO MORE BOTTLE, NO MORE YOU, NO
MORE I, ONLY THIS DRUNKEN JOY THAT MAKES MY TOES CURL IN ECSTASY.
BUT, OSHO... WHAT WAS THE JOKE?
Yoga Lalita, the ultimate joke, the only joke... Osho - The Goose is Out
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The official, Riko, once asked Nansen to explain to him the old problem of the goose in the bottle.
"If a man puts a gosling into a bottle," said Riko, "and feeds him until he is full- grown, how can the man get the goose out without killing it or breaking the bottle?"
Nansen gave a great clap with his hands and shouted, "Riko!" "Yes, Master," said the official with a start.
"See," said Nansen, "the goose is out."
This is the only ultimate joke in existence. You are enlightened. You are Buddhas --
pretending not to be, pretending to be somebody else. And my whole work here is to expose you.
See, Lalita, the goose is out! You will make every effort to put it back into the bottle, because once the goose is out then you don't have any problems. And man only knows how to live with problems, he does not know how to live without problems, so he goes on putting the goose back into the bottle.
There is a beautiful story of Rabindranath Tagore.
He says: I was searching for God for thousands of lives. I saw him... sometimes far away, close to a distant star. I rushed... by the time I had reached there he had gone further ahead. It went on and on. Finally I arrived at a door, and on the door there was a signboard: "This is the house where God lives -- Lao Tzu House."
Rabindranath says, I became very worried for the first time. I became very troubled.
Trembling, I went up the stairs. I was just going to knock on the door and suddenly, in a flash, I saw the whole point. If I knock on the door and God opens the door, then what? Then everything is finished, my journeys, my pilgrimages, my great adventures, my philosophy, my poetry -- all the longing of my heart --
all is finished! It will be suicide.
Seeing the point so crystal clear, Rabindranath says: I removed my shoes from my feet because going back down might create some noise -- he might open the door! Then what?
And from the moment I reached the bottom of the steps I have not looked back. Since then I have been running and running for thousands of years. I am still searching for God, although now I know where he lives. So I only have to avoid that Lao Tazu House and I can go on searching for him everywhere else. There is no fear... But I have to avoid that house -- that house haunts me; I remember it perfectly. If by chance I accidentally enter that house, then all is finished.
It is a beautiful insight.
Man lives in problems, man lives in misery. To live without problems, to live without misery, needs real courage.
I have lived without any problems for twenty-five years, and I know it is a kind of suicide.
I simply go on sitting in my room doing nothing. There is nothing to do! Osho - The Goose is Out
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If you can allow that much silence to penetrate your very being, only then will you be able to let the goose out of the bottle. Otherwise, for a moment maybe... and again you will push the goose back into the bottle. That gives you some occupation; it keeps you occupied, keeps you concerned, worried, anxious. The moment there are no problems, there is no mind. The moment there are no problems, there is no ego. The ego and the mind can exist only in the turmoil of problems.
As I see it, man creates problems to nourish his ego. If there are not real problems he will invent them. But he is bound to invent them, otherwise his mind cannot function anymore.
So, Lalita, this is my simple declaration: that all is divine. The trees, and the rocks and the stones, and the mountains, and the stars -- all are divine. The goose has never been in the bottle. It is only the man who cannot live without problems who forces the goose into the bottle and then starts asking how to get it out. And then he makes impossible conditions: first, the bottle should not be broken, then the goose should not be killed.
Now the goose is big -- it fills the whole bottle. It is impossible to fulfill the conditions.
Either the bottle has to be broken -- that is not allowed, or the goose has to be killed -- that is not allowed. You have to bring the goose out without killing it and without destroying the bottle. That is not possible in the very nature of things. AIS DHAMMO SANANTANO -- this IS how life's law is, it is not possible. So man remains happy because it is not possible, so he can go on carrying the bottle.
I see Lalita carrying the bottle with the goose... But the truth is that the bottle is only our imagination, fantasy, just made of the same stuff that dreams are made of.
This is the most difficult thing for humanity to accept. Hence, so much opposition to me, because I am telling you that you are Gods, that you are Buddhas, that there is no other God than you. That is the most difficult thing to accept. You would like to be a sinner, you would like to be guilty, you would like to be thrown into hell, but you cannot accept that you are a Buddha, an awakened one, because then all problems are solved. And when problems are solved, YOU start disappearing. And to disappear into the whole is the only thing of any worth, is the only thing of any significance.
What I am telling to you is not a teaching. This place is a device, this is a Buddhafield. I have to take away things which you don't have, and I have to give you things which you already have. You need not be grateful to me at all, because I am not giving you anything new, I am simply helping you to remember.
You have forgotten the language of your being. I have come to recognize it -- I have remembered myself. And since the day I remembered myself I have been in a strange situation: I feel compassion for you, and deep down I also giggle at
you, because you are not really in trouble. You don't need compassion, you need hammering, you need to be hit hard on the head. Your suffering is bogus. Ecstasy is your very nature.
You are truth. You are love. You are bliss. You are freedom.
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Chapter 5 - Perfectly [imperfect]{style=” color: #00F; font-family:"Times New Roman", serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; font-size: 14pt;“} {style=” color: #00F; font-family:"Times New Roman", serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; font-size: 14pt;“} Chapter 5 - Perfectly [imperfect]{style=” color: #00F; font-family:"Times New Roman", serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; font-size: 14pt;“} {style=” color: #00F; font-family:"Times New Roman", serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; font-size: 14pt;“} Chapter 5 - Perfectly [imperfect]{style=” color: #00F; font-family:"Times New Roman", serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; font-size: 14pt;“} {style=” color: #00F; font-family:"Times New Roman", serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; font-size: 14pt;“} Chapter 5 - Perfectly imperfect