10

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‌CHAPTER 10

28 September 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A visitor, motioned forward to take sannyas, asked first if he could say something: I have a very strong faith in Jesus Christ and this strength brought me out of a very deep bondage. I haven’t been able to discharge this help, so what I wanted to do was to build this love up more. I would like to be able to get rid of myself and to give myself up totally to the spiritual life.]

The first thing... your belief will always strengthen you. Your belief belongs to you – it has nothing to do with Jesus. Your belief is part of your ego – the more you strengthen your belief, the more egoistic you will become. Non-ego needs to be totally free of all beliefs – Jesus included, ‘I’ included – because belief is a bondage. It may bring you out of one bondage – it will take you into another. Belief means a concept, a pattern of thinking. Freedom needs no pattern. Freedom is without any pattern. Freedom simply needs no boundaries to it. It is open – a belief is closed.

For example. if you believe in Jesus. it will be difficult for you to believe in Buddha. Then you miss Buddha; your belief has become a confinement. If you believe in me, much more will be excluded and that you will be missing.

Here I am not teaching new ways to believe: my whole teaching is not to believe. but just be.

You want to get rid of yourself.… Who is this who wants to get rid of the self ? It is you ! So the very effort to get rid of the self will be strengthening the self. One has simply to accept. There is no need to get rid of anything; one has simply to accept. The way you are, God wants you to be. The way you are, that’s how you should be; otherwise is not possible. It has come naturally to you the way you are, it has happened naturally. You have not done anything in particular to be that way, so now this effort to get rid of will really be creating more ego because th is wi 11 be your effort to do something.

So the first thing – love Jesus, but don’t believe. Love is open. You can love Jesus, you can love Buddha, you can love me, you can love your friends, you can love your wife, you can love the sun and the moon and the stars. Love is open – belief is closed. Belief is mental – the head is involved. Love is of the heart. So the first thing to be understood is that you don’t make it a head trip.

The head is absolutely a bondage, utterly an imprisonment. People are caged in their heads. Get out of the head and become more loving. Love Jesus – he is so beautiful – but don’t make it a belief, so if Buddha comes across your path, you can love him also. In fact your love for Jesus will make you capable of loving Buddha. Your love for Buddha will make you capable of loving Lao Tzu. Your love for me will make you capable of loving the whole. So love – don’t believe.

Love is trust – belief is not trust. Underneath the belief there is always doubt. That’s why you are asking. You ask me how to strengthen your belief. What are you asking? Go into it, dig into it. You are saying that you have certain doubts hidden deep in you. You have to get rid of them so your belief becomes stronger. The weakness of the belief comes from the strength of the doubts.

You want to kill the doubts so the belief becomes absolutely strong, but if a belief has doubts inside it, it is not total. You can destroy the doubts forcibly, but you cannot annihilate them. They will go on getting deeper and deeper in you. A very paradoxical situation arises, a dilemma: you want to get rid of them and they go on entering your unconscious more and more. They go deeper so that you cannot find them. So in the conscious mind you become a believer, and in the unconscious you remain a sceptic, a doubter. The greater the belief, the greater the doubt. Their strength is always the same. Try to understand me.

If your belief comes very strong, in the unconscious your doubt will become strong in the same proportion, because they balance each other. A strong doubt needs a strong belief to push it down, and the strong belief creates the strong doubt. The proportion always remains the same: they are like two wheels of a bullock cart.

When I say. ‘Drop belief,’ then there is a possibility to drop doubt also, because when you don’t believe there is no question of doubting. How can you doubt without belief, tell me? If you want to doubt something, in the first place you will have to believe in something. If you don’t believe in anything, how can you doubt? Doubt is not possible, doubt becomes impossible.

So I can teach you how to make doubt impossible – I will not teach you how to destroy doubt – and the way to make doubt impossible is to drop belief, so you cut from the very root.

Just think of a man who does not believe in God. How can he doubt God? If a man does not believe in the future. how can he doubt it? If a man does not believe in survival after death, how can he doubt it? So the people whom you think of as atheists, sceptical people, are not really atheists. Because if you really know that there is no God and you don’t have any belief, how can you go on fighting with the concept of God? I have come across people who have wasted their whole life trying to prove that there is no God.

Now this is absurd – wasting your whole life trying to prove that there is no God. If there is no God – finished ! Why bother about it? Why should you be worried about it? The very worry shows that deep down there is a belief.

So this is my analysis – that a believer believes in the conscious and disbelieves in the unconscious. The unbeliever disbelieves the conscious and believes in the unconscious. They are the same people: One is standing on his head, one is standing on his feet – they are not different people.

I can make you a totally new man – neither a believer nor a doubter, neither a theist nor an atheist. I can really make you open. Drop the belief and then doubts will disappear by themselves, because they are shadows of believing. And I am not saying to drop Jesus. In fact if you believe in Jesus, the belief will stand as a barrier between you and Jesus.

Never be a Christian if you really want to come closer to Christ. Your very Christianity will become a barrier, because the very dogma kills truth, the very creed kills love. Love needs no creed, no dogma, no bibles. Love is simply there, undefined, vulnerable, open... flowing in all directions. Love Jesus, and in that love nothing will be excluded.

If you are here with me and if you want to become a sannyasin, love me, but remember that that love should not become exclusive. It should be all-inclusive. If I become a barrier to your love, then I am your enemy. If you love me, you will love Jesus, you will love Zarathustra, you will love Buddha, you will love Patanjali – because they are all flowers of the same dimension. You love the very dimension – the dimension of the divine. And then you love people who are not yet a Jesus, a Buddha, a Patanjali, because they are also moving – zigzag, but moving in the same direction, because God is the destiny of all.

You can go against God, but still God remains your destiny. You can keep your back towards God and you can run away from Him but you can not run anywhere, because wherever you run, He is there.

As I can see, you are very much afraid. Deep unconscious doubts are there, so you want to make your belief more concrete. more solid. If you go to somebody else, they will help, but I cannot help that way. I will really help, but my help is not going to be according to you; it can only be according to me, because I am not here to impose any belief on you. I simply want you to be in such a total openness that no belief is needed. You simply trust life, and life includes all.

In fact, Christians talk about Christ but they don’t trust in him. They cannot.

In Dostoyevsky’s very famous novel, ‘The Brothers Karamazov’. there is an incident... very beautiful. It is fictitious, but very significant. Jesus comes back in the eighteenth century to see how things are going. Mm? for eighteen hundred years Christianity has existed, the church has spread all over the world. Christianity has become the biggest religion ever, the strongest religion ever, the richest religion ever. So he wanted to see how things were going.

He comes to Rome and appears just in front of the house of the Inquisitor who was killing, ordering many murders and burning many people because they were witches and anti-Christians and this and that. Ordinary people surround him, and a few of them start recognising him. Somebody says, ‘He looks exactly like Jesus,’ but they are a little puzzled about how Jesus could have come. But still they feel.Somebody touches his feet. His very presence is enough proof.

And then comes the Grand Inquisitor – everybody is afraid. He comes and he says, ‘What are you doing here? This man seems to be a pretender. Jesus came only once and he is not going to come again. Catch hold of this young man and take him into my house and put him into a cell.’

So Jesus is taken and imprisoned in a cell. In the night, at midnight, with a small candle, the Grand Inquisitor comes into the cell, and there is a dialogue between Jesus and the Grand Inquisitor – a tremendously significant dialogue.

The Grand Inquisitor said, ‘I have recognised you, but please, you are not needed any more. You are the old disturber. You disturbed the religion that was there eighteen hundred years ago. If you come again you will disturb Christianity. We have managed with much effort and are doing perfectly well. You are not needed at all. You can rest in peace in heaven. We are your representatives here, and if you have something to say, you can say it to us, but you need not go to the masses directly.’

Then he says, ‘One thing I always wanted to say to you, and now that the chance is here and you are here, I would like to say it to you.’ When Jesus was meditating eighteen hundred years ago, the devil had appeared to him and had offered him three things. He had said, ’If you are really the son of God, turn these stones into bread.

‘Second thing. if you are really the son of God, jump from the hill or from the tower – the scriptures say that angels will be waiting there to take you into their hands and you will not be hurt. If you can do these two things, I am here to help you to become the king of the world. I can make you the supreme sovereign of the world.’

The old man, the Inquisitor, says to Jesus, ’You refused those things: that was absolutely wrong – you should have turned stones into bread. Religion lives on miracles, and people don’t want freedom – people want miracles, people want power, people want magic. People don’t want truth, and you offer truth – that’s why you were crucified. If you would have turned those stones into bread, you would have been acclaimed as the son of God, but you refused – and that was wrong.

‘Somehow during these eighteen centuries we have managed to convince people that you are a miracle man. Now don’t come back and disturb whatsoever we have established. You should have jumped from the hill or from a tower or from the temple of Jerusalem, and you should have proved that you are the son of God; then there would have been no trouble. Then all the religions of the world would have disappeared and we would have been the only religion. You missed the opportunity because you were more interested in silence, in peace and love – and people are interested in power. You never cared for people,’ the old man says to Jesus.

’If you really cared for people you should have done what people needed to be done. The devil offered you the kingdom of the world: you should have accepted it, because if you had become the king of the world the whole world would have been helped, because people worship power. What you denied, we have tried – and we have managed well.

’Christianity has become a kingdom, a very subtle kingdom – an undeclared kingdom. And almost half the world is ruled by us in your name. I pray you please... we will continue to worship you, but don’t come again.

Jesus took the old man in his arms, kissed his pale lips and went out of the room. The old man said, ‘Go – go forever, and never, never come back again.’

This is the situation: Christianity stands as a barrier. I can make you an unchristian. I can help you to dissolve all your beliefs so that in your purity of heart, you can love. That love is unaddressed

– Buddha, Jesus or Zarathustra; it has no address to it. You simply love, you love those who have attained... you love those who are trying to attain. You love those who have failed but who will attain one day, you love those also who are called sinners, those who have been making all effort not to attain – you love all. But for that a mind is needed which has no beliefs.

A believing mind is not a loving mind.

I can give you trust but no belief. And once beliefs are gone, your doubts will disappear: they are shadows of the beliefs. Each belief carries its own doubt. When there is no belief, there is no doubt, and then trust arises.

[A newly arrived sannyasin says: I love you, you are in my heart, but I am very afraid.]

Mm, that is natural. Wherever there is much love, there is much fear. There are three times in life when there is much fear. One is at birth, passing through the birth canal.

The child has been in the womb for nine months. It is nine months for us – for a child it is almost eternity because he has no time sense, he does not know any clock time, so for the child, nine months is almost eternity – never ending, no beginning, no end. And it is so comfortable that even all the sophisticated instruments of modern science have not been able to make anything like the womb and its comforts. It is so comfortable – no worry, no work, not even the need to breathe. The mother breathes for the child, the mother eats for the child. The child is simply there resting, floating in a certain chemical juice... weightless. The child has nothing to do – it just is.

Then one day he has to leave this beautiful home, this comfortable home, this womb, and he leaves it not knowing where he is going. Of course fear arises – and the passage is very narrow that the child has to pass through; it is suffocating. Passing through that canal the child feels it is almost death. He does not know anything about death, but there is just an unconscious fear that something terrible is going to happen – and it is already happening. So one fear arises when the child is born

– one of the greatest fears.

Primal therapy works to bring that fear back into consciousness so that it can be wiped out; otherwise it remains there for the whole life as a base, as a foundation of your whole life. Your very foundation is on fear. That’s why everybody everywhere is trembling. People are doing things but trembling inside, always apprehensive – something wrong is going to happen; some misfortune is always there it seems. The fear is not of anything in particular, just a fear is there. Primal therapy works to undo it, to bring it to consciousness. And whenever some cause is brought to consciousness, it disappears. That is the alchemy of consciousness.

If you live with the effect, you will live with it forever. You cannot drop the effect, but if you move to the cause, then with just the very awareness of the cause it disappears, and with the cause the effect also. That is the mechanism of how consciousness helps, how awareness helps.

Then there is a second fear – that is of love. That is more than the first and bigger than the third. The third is of death. When the first phenomenon happens – when you are born – you are very unconscious, and in fact you cannot do anything about it – you have to be born so it is not your choice. It is just like a calamity – one has to accept it. Whether you accept it or not, it has to happen,

there is no alternative to it. And in the same way death has to happen; there is no alternative to it. Once you are alive you are going to die, so you cannot do anything about it; you are helpless.

But with love, you can do something, you can resist, so the fear becomes tremendous. You cannot resist birth, you cannot resist death and these are the only three fears in life: birth, death and love. Birth and death on both sides, and love just in the middle.

And love is the greatest of all the three – the greatest because you can resist... the greatest because you are aware... the greatest because it is going to be your responsibility and your choice. It is the greatest because if you choose not to choose – that too is possible – then too there is trouble. If you choose not to choose, you will suffer. So there is fear, because without love life is meaningless. If you choose to choose, you are entering into danger... you are accepting a sort of death – and deliberately, consciously... nobody is forcing you. That’s why there are many people – millions of people – who live without love; they have never been courageous enough to accept it.

Then there are many types of love. You can love things, then there is not much fear. Fear is there.… If you love a beautiful car, there is fear. You will be driving it and be continuously afraid that some accident may happen or that somebody may brush the car, or if you leave it outside on the road, somebody may throw a stone – so you are afraid. Even when you love a thing you are afraid because something may happen, but that is the least fear.

Then you love a person as a son, as a father. as a mother. as a husband, as a wife. You love a person – more fear is there. because things can be replaced. If one car is destroyed, you can replace it by another car exactly like it; there is no problem about it. Persons cannot be replaced; they are irreplaceable. If you lose your lover, you lose him forever. If your son dies, he dies. So more fear arises.

And then the third and the greatest fear-provoking love is falling in love with a master. That is almost falling in love with the unknown .

So first, love is the greatest fear out of all the three fears: death, birth, love. And then love of a master is again the greatest fear among three loves: things, persons and the unknown. So it is natural, mm? Just accept its naturalness, and in spite of it, go on moving towards me.

You cannot go back. You have already taken that step from which return is not possible. You can do only one thing. You can remain stuck there – that is not going to help. You will feel stagnant, you will become very worried – back you cannot go. The choice is either to remain where you are, stuck there, or you can move ahead. It is going to be a death of sorts.

I can only promise you death – but only out of death is resurrection. Only out of death will you be reborn again. Only out of death will you become new. Only out of death is the blessing, the celebration, because the eternity opens its doors, the timeless. Only time will die when you die in me. Only mind will die when you die in me. The timeless and the mindless will be revealed to you. It is going to be a revelation, so gather courage.

This time it is going to happen (a chuckle). Don’t be worried. (Osho leans forwards and touches her bowed head.) And I will be after you – don’t be worried!

[An elderly, white-haired sannyasin, asked what she could do about the headaches she was experiencing. She experienced a very hot sensation on the head and felt it was because of the movement of energy there.]

It is energy. Do one thing: whenever you feel the headache, just sit silently and go into the headache. Don’t fight with it – accept it, enjoy it, and go into it. Try to feel how intense it is. Try to see how much head is covered by it. Try to find out what the form of it is, and by and by penetrate it and try to find out what colour is there. You will find colour and you will find form.

[The sannyasin then says that after the headache she has a very strong depression and she thinks about how people kill themselves.]

No, because she has not yet accepted the headache, that’s why the depression comes. What I am saying is that once she accepts it, enjoys it, goes into it, she will see the form, the colour, the intensity.

First it will become very very intense. It will become almost hitting as if a knife is going there inside. It will be very intense, but go with it; don’t fight with it. Once it has become intense, you will see that it comes to peak – as if everything disappears, only the headache remains. And then in a moment the whole headache will disappear, and you will feel so relaxed and happy, as you have never felt before.

It is energy, not a headache.

[The sannyasin said she felt so depressed that she was even thinking of killing herself.]

No, no, nothing.… This is just energy. When this energy reaches to certain points in the head.The

mechanism is this – that the head has two centres. One centre is of life and one centre is of death, so when the energy comes to the death centre, you will feel tremendous headaches and the idea of death will arise.

When you accept this, when you go into it, the energy starts moving towards the higher centre of life, which is beyond the centre of death. Once the energy reaches to the life centre, you will feel so happy, so ecstatic – more than you have ever dreamt about. It is just the centre of death that has been touched by the energy. When that energy touches the death centre, you will feel ideas of death – that people are killing you, or that you could kill yourself, commit suicide. These are just because of the energy passing through the death centre.

Once energy has reached to the life centre, you will feel so beautiful and so happy. Just the opposite will happen.

Now even brain surgeons have come to know this phenomenon. They open the whole head and with electrodes they touch centres to find out what the centres are, and where they are. If they touch a particular centre, immediately the idea of suicide arises in the person and the person says, ‘I am feeling like committing suicide.’ They take the electrode away; he is okay. Again they touch the centre and he feels that he wants to commit suicide. Take it away – he is okay. Touch it again – the same comes. So that centre touched by electricity brings the idea. It is your inner electricity that is passing through the same centre.

There are certain centres which, when touched by an electrode, make the person feel very sexual. If you go on giving electricity to him, he can have a sexual orgasm and he will feel more sexual than he has ever felt before. Take the electrode away – he is pacified. That’s why they say now that sooner or later we can invent small pocketsize computers in which there will be at least four or five buttons. If somebody wants sexual pleasure, he can just push the sexual centre. and the electricity starts going into the sex centre and he can have sex with no sexuality. Nobody will ever know what is happening.

He can keep it just in the pocket and push it and he will feel so beautiful and so happy and so joyous. If he wants to feel unhappy, he can push another button. If he wants to feel happy, he can push another button. If he wants to feel angry, he can push another button. He wants to feel compassion, he can push another button. Now this has really become possible.

Yoga has known it for thousands of years – that when energy passes through a certain centre, a certain feeling arises. Your energy is passing through the death centre. That’s why the idea comes to kill yourself or even to murder others. But it is nothing to be worried about. It will go. Good, Bhakti.

[To a recently-arrived sannyasin says now he is okay.] Mm, good ! Now is the only time... all else is false.

If you are happy now, you are happy, because there is no other time. Now is the only time there is. Remember it. The past is gone and gone forever. The future has not yet come and will never come, because it never does. Future is that which never comes.

So this moment – this split second – is the only reality. If you learn and know how to be happy in this split second, you have the key. Protect the key – otherwise somebody can steal it! Mm? Good.

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