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Chapter title: Expectation breeds frustration
9 September 1987 am in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium Archive
code:
8709090
ShortTitle:
PILGR06
Audio:
Yes Video:
Yes Length:
109
mins Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
I NEED MY GUITAR TO PLAY MY MUSIC.
I HEAR YOUR BLESSED MUSIC, BUT I DON'T SEE YOUR GUITAR. BELOVED MASTER, WHAT IS YOUR INSTRUMENT?
AND A FEW SUTRAS FOR ME TOO.
Milarepa, neither the music is mine nor the guitar. The music belongs to existence, and the guitar belongs to you. You are the guitar, and this whole vast universe is the music.
I am at the most just a passage for the music to reach to the guitar. That's why you don't see my guitar -- because you don't see yourself. Who are you? On whom am I playing my music? You hear my words and you also hear my silences, and naturally you feel a certain music surrounding me. That music is your response, your love, your trust.
In a way I am not here. It has been a long time since I left this small house for the eternity. It is the compassion of eternity that this small house still goes on continuing to function. It is also your love, your prayers, your gratitude that helps my body-mind system to function. I don't have any desire to be fulfilled. All is fulfilled -- and when all is fulfilled a music arises. I don't have any ambition.
Just the other day Hasya was telling me about one beautiful man who is being followed by many people. Lovingly he is called Dada. Bhadra's husband is his follower, and he stays at Bhadra's house. He told Bhadra, "I agree with Osho on every point except one --
that is, he wants to save the world. I have been around the world," he said, "and I am fed up, and I don't see any hope for the world."
He is going to come to Poona. I told Hasya to meet him and tell him one thing, "You must have had a desire to save the world and you are feeling frustrated."
I don't have to save anybody. The world is perfectly saved -- this moment at least. Why not enjoy this moment?
I love talking to my people without any purpose. It is just my joy seeing your faces, seeing your intrinsic capacities. Who cares about the world? -- if it dies next moment, we will still be playing guitars, singing, dancing, celebrating a last farewell to the world.
Who has given the idea to this man Dada that I am a savior? It is enough to save yourself.
I am not a savior and I am not at all interested what happens to the world
ultimately. I enjoy the idea, the dream that some miracle will happen and this world will be saved, but it is not my goal; I am not an optimist. Only optimists turn into pessimists. Dada must have been thinking himself to be a savior, and seeing the whole world he is feeling frustrated. I have never felt frustrated by anything, because I have never expected in the very beginning. If you don't expect you avoid frustration.
I am a man of total acceptance.
If this world exists, good; if it does not exist, better. But why should I be puzzled about it? It is my joy, and this joy is not the kind which makes people serious.
I have looked into Dada's books before; his famous book is BEYOND THE MIND.
Strange that a man who knows beyond mind should be frustrated.… Who can be frustrated? No-mind has never been heard to be frustrated. And he thinks he has given up the idea, and this is his disagreement with me. He has given up the idea; I never had the idea. And whatever he is saying is just a repetition of J. Krishnamurti.
J. Krishnamurti has left many orphans in the world, illegitimate children, because he never accepted them as his disciples. But deep down they enjoyed the idea that without being a disciple they are gathering so much wisdom. Soon all of them have become masters. I have come across many masters who have never been disciples. It is simply ego.
With J. Krishnamurti's idea that "nobody is my disciple," you feel relaxed: this is great you don't have to love this man, you don't know the beauties of grace that exist between the master and the disciple. You enjoy only one thing: the ego that you are nobody's disciple. And then these who are nobody's disciples start collecting disciples -- and of all that they are saying, not a single thing is original; it is all borrowed.
I have told Hasya and Kaveesha that when Dada comes here, "Encounter him and put him right. He is misguiding many people."
I am a man who lives moment to moment, and I want those who love me to learn the art of living moment to moment. What happens tomorrow we will see tomorrow. At least one thing is certain: whatever happens, our blissfulness, our
ecstasy, our dance, our song will continue -- if not on this planet, then on another planet.
There are millions of solar systems, and each solar system has hundreds of planets, each planet has many moons. Our earth is very poor, with just one moon. Our sun is mediocre; it is six thousand times bigger than the earth, but compared to other suns, which are millions of times bigger than this sun, it stands nowhere in the queue.
What is the problem? We have not asked this planet to be born; it was existence's decision to be here. Why should one worry if existence wants us to take our song and our music and our consciousness to another planet? We will be there... one thing is certain: this commune is going to exist. The whole existence is there.…
Ronald Reagan cannot manage to destroy the universe. This poor earth will be destroyed... that too is possible if existence deep down wills to destroy it. Or perhaps the earth itself has become old, tired, fed up with all kinds of nonsense that man has been doing, and it wants to go into eternal sleep. It is a living being.
But these are not our problems. Our only problem is how to be in this moment, so totally, so intensely that we don't need another moment. This will be enough to give us fulfillment, contentment, ecstasy, which I don't think this man Dada has ever glimpsed.
Pessimists cannot get it; optimists only hope for it. We are realists, existentialists: we have it right now.
It is not a question of getting fed up, it is not a question of hoping for the future. We take the present moment and squeeze the whole juice of it -- that's our religion. Wherever we will be, one thing is certain: we will recognize each other just by the style of squeezing the juice from the present moment.
Faces may be different, planets may be different, that does not mean anything. We have a key to recognize our people: in their eyes, in their faces, they are always existential.
Milarepa, you are my instrument. Your guitar is my guitar. Your fingers playing on the instruments are my fingers. Can't you allow that?
Ramakrishna was dying. He had a cancer of the throat; he could not eat, could
not drink.
His disciples continuously were harassing him saying "Why don't you close your eyes and tell the mother goddess?" -- he was the priest of a temple of mother goddess Kali --
"Just saying, `Remove this cancer' will be enough."
Ramakrishna said, "Don't be angry with me. I have tried it, but the moment I close my eyes and I see the mother goddess, I forget about the cancer."
All the disciples gathered with Ramakrishna's wife, Sharda, and told her, "Now only you can help."
Sharda went to Ramakrishna and said, "This time you are not going to forget the cancer.
Why are you making so many people miserable?"
And Ramakrishna respected his wife so much; she was almost a mother to him rather than a wife. He touched her feet the very moment he had been shown her as a candidate for marriage. Everybody thought, "This boy is mad. Who touches the feet of the wife? --
and she is not your wife yet."
And the first thing he called to her was, "Mother, don't forget me; I had chosen you."
Everybody in the village tortured him, "You idiot, the wife is not called mother. And touching her feet..." He had three rupees. He offered those three rupees to the feet of Sharda. The family of Sharda also became puzzled: "The man seems to be crazy."
But Sharda insisted that if she will marry anyone, that is the man: "The innocence, the purity... he is no ordinary human being. He has something of the beyond already" -- and he was only thirteen years old.
Since Sharda married Ramakrishna he always called her mother. It doesn't look good not to follow the advice of the mother. He said, "I will try one time more,
and because you are telling me, I will put my whole energy to remember what I have to say to the mother goddess."
He closed his eyes... and then opened them laughing. He said, "Sharda, call all the disciples in who have made you their mouthpiece, because I remembered and I told her.
And she said, `Ramakrishna, you have been using this throat for so many years. Now you have so many throats, your disciples, your lovers -- why can't you eat through their throats, why can't you drink through their throats? Why cling to this body? Why not spread into everybody's body who loves you, who will welcome you in the silences of his heart?'"
There was great silence, there was nothing to say.
Milarepa, you hear my music; that music comes from the beyond. I cannot claim any monopoly, any copyright on it. And you want to see my guitar -- just look at your guitar, just look at your hands. In deep love a synchronicity happens. You start doing things which my deepest being wanted to do, but I don't know music; I cannot even recognize which is a guitar and which is a harmonium and which is a saxophone.
I have never been a singer, not even a bathroom singer. I have lived in many houses in this country with many friends, and many times people have asked, "At least we were thinking you will be singing in the bathroom, but you don't sing?"
I don't know singing... I am a song. I don't know singing -- you will have to sing in me.
You will have to allow yourself to be totally available to me. You can dance and it will be my dance.
You can sing and it will be my song.
You can play on instruments, but your fingers will be in synchronicity with me, and I am in synchronicity with the whole. So it is just formal to say that you are my songs, that you are my music. I am just a small passage; the beyond comes through me to your eyes. And because it is of the beyond it has a tremendous
capacity to transform you.
I have not said a single word to you on my own; hence I can claim originality in the literal sense of the word. Ordinarily originality means nobody else has said it, only I am saying it; that is using the word wrongly. Originality should mean it is coming from the origins... origins of life, origins of love, origins of existence.
And you are asking, "And a few sutras for me too."
Milarepa, that is not your business. Devageet has gone mad contemplating on transdental medication. You are already crazy, you can go far -- Devageet you can leave far behind --
so I am a little worried about you. But whatever has to be, has to be. These are a few sutras for you:
If your neighbor does you harm, just buy each of his children a drum.
All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and the success is sure.
Sex is what happens between a man and a woman before they get to know each other.
Reality is what your mother thinks you ought to live in.
You know you are getting old when the girls at the office start confiding in you. A woman can keep one secret -- the secret of her age.
... Except for that, she cannot keep any secret!
God invented man because he was disappointed in the monkey.
A man never knows what a fool he is until he hears himself imitated by one.
... It is natural. How can you see your face without a mirror?...
Be nice to people on your way up because you will meet them on your way down.
A mistake is evidence that someone tried to do something.
... You can see the mistake all over the world. This is the only proof that God tried to do something. Perhaps he was the creator. Creation may not need some creator, but mistakes need someone to do them. This whole world is a mistake, and I think this is the only proof that God may have been trying to do something.…
If a person does not learn from the mistakes of others, he won't live long enough to make all of them himself.
The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.
Everyone is as God made him, and often a good deal worse. Gossip is what no one claims to like, but everybody enjoys.
It is difficult to climb a ladder with your hands in your pockets, but it is possible if your hands are in someone else's pockets...
Then you can climb any ladder. The people you see at the top, those big chunks, their hands are always in somebody else's pocket.
So whenever you meet the so-called leaders, popes, shankaracharyas, take care about your pockets. They are not interested in you, they are interested only in your pockets.…
Familiarity breeds contempt -- and children.
The hardest task of a woman's life is to prove to a man that his intentions are serious.
How do you know your therapy group is right for you? One: It is too expensive.
Two: All your friends have done it.
Three: It focuses on problems you never knew you had. Question 2
BELOVED OSHO,
EVERY TIME I COME TO YOU, I FEEL LIKE ONE OF THOSE ANCIENT WARRIORS WHO CAME TO PAY HIS RESPECTS TO THE EMPEROR. HE
WOULD ENTER INTO HIS PRESENCE, TAKE OFF HIS HELMET AND PUT IT AT
THE FEET OF THE EMPEROR.
THE ONLY DIFFERENCE IS THAT I AM PUTTING MY HEAD AT YOUR FEET.
MORE SO WHEN I ASK YOU A QUESTION, AND EVEN TREMBLING INSIDE, I PUT MY HEAD AS CLOSE AS POSSIBLE, FOR YOU TO CUT IT WITH YOUR
SWORD.
BUT EVERY TIME, TO MY INFINITE SURPRISE, YOU SHOWER THE NECTAR
OF YOUR GRACE ON MY POOR HEAD, THE FRAGRANCE OF YOUR COMPASSION, AND AN OCEAN OF LOVE IN WHICH I FIND MYSELF DROWNING DEEPER AND DEEPER EACH TIME.
BELOVED MASTER, WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO YOUR SWORD?
HOW MANY TIMES WILL I HAVE TO PROVOKE YOU TO CUT MY HEAD?
Sarjano, it surprises me to know that you have a head. Some idiot guy must have given you the idea.
I have not lost my sword -- you have forgotten your head somewhere... maybe drowned in spaghetti!... or do you prefer pizza?
But as far as I know you don't have any head. I have tried to cut it, but what to
cut?
Certainly you are brave enough to go on trying again and again and again. This does not suit the Italian; this is the American stupidity! Try again and again and again... For what?
-- for the sake of trying. Everybody in America is so busy trying, and nobody knows for what. Trying itself has become the goal; speed itself has become the destination.
But Italians are far more loving beings, far more centered in the heart. Perhaps that's why you go on living without a head -- the heart is enough. And no master in the whole of history has cut anybody's heart with the sword. But I am not a reliable man, so you be alert!
A story for you...
The English pirate ship was alone on the high seas. Suddenly the lookout came running.
"Captain! Captain!" he cried, "there are five Spanish galleons on the horizon!" "Quick!" said the captain. "Bring me my red coat."
So he did, and the captain put it on, and the pirate ship defeated the Spanish galleons.
The next day the lookout came running again. "Captain! Captain! There are TEN Spanish galleons on the horizon!"
"Okay," said the captain. "Bring me my red coat." He put it on and they defeated the ten galleons.
"Captain," asked the lookout. "Would you tell me why you always ask for your red coat before we go into battle?"
"Oh, that's because if I'm wounded, the blood will not show; then the men will not be frightened and we will fight to victory!" the captain replied.
The next day the lookout came running. "Captain! Captain!" he cried, "there are a hundred Spanish galleons on the horizon!"
At these words the captain's face turned white, and he called to his lookout, "Quick, bring me my brown pants!"
Just be alert!
I love you, so I'm going to kill you -- that's certain. Love is a sure killer. But I kill gradually, because in my experience if you kill suddenly, people start escaping.
Gradually, they don't know what is happening, they come to know only when they are gone.
And this place is for only those who are ready to be gone. You become your ultimate flowering only when you are not. It is a strange fundamental law of existence, and there is no way to change it.
The more you are, the less you are. The less you are, the more you are.
If you are all, then you don't exist. If you are a nothingness, you have tasted existence for the first time.
So, Sarjano, while I go on taking small pieces from your ego, from your so- called personality, you keep yourself engaged in spaghetti and pizza. It is a perfect art!
The authentic master kills the disciple, so that he also can become a pure nothingness, and can become one with the universe. The ancient sages of this country have said that the master is a death. Unless you find a master who can be a death to you, don't waste time. Go on searching, somewhere you will find a master who is going to erase you completely. He will give you your real and authentic being.
Your question is right: I have not lost my sword. It is just because you don't have your head, so you can't see it. But you can feel, and that is far better -- to function through the heart.
Question 3 BELOVED MASTER,
KAHLIL GIBRAN HAS SAID, "I WILL TELL YOU A THING YOU MAY NOT
KNOW: THE MOST HIGHLY SEXED BEINGS UPON THE PLANET ARE THE
CREATORS, THE POETS, SCULPTORS, PAINTERS, MUSICIANS -- AND SO IT
HAS BEEN FROM THE BEGINNING. AND AMONGST THEM, SEX IS A BEAUTIFUL AND EXALTED GIFT."
PLEASE TALK ON SEX AS PART OF THE CREATIVE LIFE OF THE ARTIST.
Dhyan David, Kahlil Gibran is a man of tremendous insight. What he says is always significant and worth contemplating over. He has forgotten just one thing, which is natural, because he had no experience of that faraway horizon. He talks about the creators
-- the poets, the sculptors, the painters, the musicians -- but he forgets completely about the awakened ones. It is not right to forget; in fact he had no idea -- and they are the highest creators. Poets and sculptors and musicians and dancers are very low categories in comparison to a Gautam Buddha, Bodhidharma, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu.
What he is saying is absolutely right: sex is the only energy you have. But you can use it in a destructive way -- and that too he has forgotten. An Adolf Hitler or a Joseph Stalin or a Benito Mussolini or Ronald Reagan, these people are all abnormally highly sexual. In a few people the sex energy is so much that they cannot be satisfied by only creating children.
This is simply a known fact, that children are created through sex. So sex is certainly a creative force, which can even create life. But there are highly sexed people, and just to produce children is not enough to exhaust their sexuality.
They create music; music becomes their outlet. They create art, they create paintings, poetries... and they are thought of always by the society as outsiders, they are not accepted as normal human beings. Something is crazy about them; they are eccentric.
So he has forgotten two things. One is that the destructive people are also highly sexed people, but they use their energy in destruction. It is not automatically decisive that a highly sexed person will be always a creator; most probably he will be a destroyer.
But he is right that sex creates children, creates painting, creates music, creates sculpture.
The world is divided into three kinds of people: the normal sexual people who only create children, the abnormally sexual people who either become destructive, create wars, destroy as much as they can -- and the third category, the creators.
Kahlil Gibran's insight is right, but incomplete. He himself is a poet and a painter, but he knows nothing about awakened consciousness. That is the highest point of creation: creating yourself as an immortal. Because it is an inner creation, people don't count Gautam Buddha as a creator, or Mahavira or Naropa or Tilopa; they don't consider these people as creators, because they can't see what they have created. They have created themselves, and that is the greatest creation in the world. Just look at Gautam Buddha, his silence, his peace, his understanding, his clarity, his blissfulness, his ecstasy...
unwavering.
No enlightened person has ever committed suicide, but the great creators Kahlil Gibran is talking about are well known for two things: either they go mad or they commit suicide.
They go mad when their energy cannot find an outlet. They are mad in their paintings, in their poetry -- but nothing satisfies, everything falls below their standard. That drives them mad. Almost every great artist in the West has at least once visited the madhouse for a few years. Or when they feel they are exhausted and now there is no more energy left to create, their whole meaning of life disappears. Creation was their meaning. In creating things they had become small gods, and now they are nobody, exhausted, used cartridges. These are the
people who commit suicide.
Van Gogh I can give you as an example -- one of the greatest painters the world has ever known passed through all the stages, so he is a perfect example. He was so mad in creating. He was a poor coal miner's son, uneducated, but from the very beginning he started painting laborers, old people, children. And whoever looked at them was amazed: his painting was almost photographic.
His parents wanted him to be a priest. Fortunately, he did not listen to them. He went to the school to become a priest, but all that he did there was drawings of the professors, the missionaries. He never learned anything else. Finally, he was brought back home. The parents were tired; they told him, "Now you are free. Whatever you want to do... but we are not going to take any financial responsibility." He was even happy in this situation.
He left for Paris.
He was Dutch. His younger brother was employed, and out of compassion every week he used to send him the exact money so that he could purchase bread and butter for seven days. He was afraid to send him enough for the whole month, because that would go into purchasing paints and canvases. But he was not aware what he had done to his brother.
Out of seven days he used to eat three days -- one day here, one day there -- and four days he saved money to purchase canvases, colors, brushes, whatever is needed for painting.
No man has been so mad that he was dying of hunger and starvation, but that was the only way to paint. And the great difficulty was -- otherwise things would have been easier and more comfortable -- he did not manage to sell a single painting, because his paintings were the paintings of a genius, and a genius always comes before his time. This existence has strange laws.
Now his paintings... only two hundred have been saved. He used to give paintings to his friends just for a cup of tea, just for a packet of cigarettes.
Now his paintings are the costliest paintings in the world. The last painting was sold for thirty-five million dollars -- that is the record. Never before was any painting sold at thirty million dollars; the last record was only nine million dollars. I don't think any painting is ever is going to outdo him.
Why could people not purchase his paintings? He was ready to give at any price, just the cost price. He worked for days and he was not asking even for labor. They could not understand those paintings; those paintings needed a genius to understand them. He has painted stars, not the way you see them, but as spirals. Now who is going to believe that these are stars? -- everybody knows what stars are! Only just this year it has been found that stars are not the way you see them, but the way Vincent van Gogh saw them.
Strange, without any scientific instruments without a big lab... tremendous clarity.
It took one hundred years for science to find out that his stars are the only right stars, and all other stars painted are just rubbish. The same has happened about his other paintings.
If he could have sold his paintings, he could have made more paintings, but he became tired, starved. His only desire was to paint all the phases of the sun, from the sunrise to the sunset, a whole series of paintings.
The day that series was complete he had exhausted all his energy. He simply wrote a letter to his brother, "I am not committing suicide. I have burned myself out. But I am dying happily because what I wanted to accomplish is accomplished -- I am one of the most contented men. The last painting is complete today." And he shot himself dead. He was only thirty-three years of age.
It is true that you have no other energy than sexual energy. All creation is out of sexual energy. In other words, every creation is a by-product of your sexual energy; even if you become the richest man in the world, that is sexual energy. But Kahlil Gibran has forgotten two things: one, that sexual energy can be destructive; second, that sexual energy never brings you to self-realization, which is the ultimate creation.
It seems he was not actually aware. Although he has written books on Jesus, and he spoke in the language of tremendous beauty and poetry, he was looking at Jesus as a poet. He was not aware of Ta Hui or Bodhidharma or Gautam Buddha, and he was not aware what the problem is. In the East, no enlightened person goes mad, no enlightened person commits suicide. Going mad is the function of the mind. Committing suicide is also the function of the mind.
And because the enlightened person is beyond mind, there is no question of madness, and there is no question of suicide. He lives, and he lives totally. He lives, and he lives at the very peak of intelligence and understanding and awareness.
But I want to add this much to Kahlil Gibran's statement: that these people are also immensely sexual, perhaps more sexual than the poets, than the singers, than the musicians. They have so much energy that they are capable of self- realization, that they are capable of giving a rebirth to themselves.
But basically I agree with the incomplete statement of Kahlil Gibran. I would have loved it if he had made it complete, but he himself was not complete. It is a great exercise of understanding if you look at Kahlil Gibran's statements, and then you look at Kahlil Gibran's life. You will be amazed; his life was very ordinary, perhaps below ordinary, and the poetry is reaching to the stars.
Because they are not artists of life -- they are artists creating objects who have forgotten themselves -- their situation is exactly like the scientist's. A man like Albert Einstein has immense energy, and that energy is sexual, because there is no other energy. The word
`sex' has become so condemned that it is better to say it is life energy, just to protect the energy from the centuries of condemnation.
Albert Einstein worked on objects, faraway stars, the speed of light... and he managed to figure it all out. But he never bothered about his own life; he remained focused on the outside.
If a poet turns inwards he becomes a mystic.
If a scientist turns inwards he becomes a mystic. The energy is the same, but the direction changes.
Kahlil Gibran lived a very miserable life, sometimes ugly. He was a man of great anger, quarrelsome, but he has created great poetry. If you just look at his words, they are pure twenty-four-carat gold. But avoid the man, don't look at him; otherwise your respect for his words will be lost.
The poets, the scientists, the musicians and other creators have a double
personality, a split personality, some kind of schizophrenia. One part of them goes on creating, and one part lags far behind.
The mystic is the only person in existence who is not schizophrenic, who is unique and one, organically one, undivided. His life and his words have the same flavor. But I think Kahlil Gibran in the first place was not capable of knowing the interiority of a mystic; and in the second place, perhaps he was afraid to say that a Buddha is created by great abundance of sexual energy. Nobody bothered him, nobody condemned him when he called poets and sculptors and musicians and other creators oversexed. But if he had called Jesus, Gautam Buddha, Mohammed, Moses oversexed, he would have been condemned all over the world.
But I want to say that all great people in the world, destructive or creative, are people of so much energy, life energy, life force, that they cannot contain it within themselves; they have to do something. I would like that they all turn inwards, so their life is not a split and an agony, and so it becomes an ecstasy.
Joe was sitting at the bar, slowly sipping his drink, when his friend, Mickey, came running in.
"Joe," he shouted, "get over to your house real quick. I just stopped off to see you and I heard a man's voice in your bedroom. So I looked through your window and I saw your wife in bed with another man."
"Is that so?" said Joe, matter-of-factly. "What does this guy looks like?" "Oh, he's tall and completely bald," said Mickey.
"And did he have a thick red mustache?" asked Joe. "Right, right!" yelled Mickey.
"Did he have a front gold tooth?" asked Joe. "Damn it, you are right!" replied Mickey.
"Must be that idiot Dick Roberts," said Joe. "He will screw anything."
There are people of that category also -- no life energy, at the most lukewarm.
They never create anything. Even to create children is such a task.
And by the way, I should also mention to you -- to make Kahlil Gibran's insight more clear -- that no impotent man has been a poet or a sculptor or a scientist; the question of being a mystic does not arise. Perhaps impotency is the worst situation a man can find himself in. But strangely enough all the religions are teaching people to be impotent; they call it celibacy.
Because of this idea of celibacy, religions have been absolutely uncreative. The energy was there in people... they could not create, because to create you need an esthetic sense, you need a loving heart, a feeling individuality. To become celibate they have destroyed all these qualities. So the only possibility for their expression of sexual energy is either perverted sex, homosexuality, lesbianism, or destruction in the name of God, in the name of truth, in the name of Christianity, in the name of Islam.… They have been continuously destroying each other.
Perhaps nobody has looked at the psychology of why it happens. It has nothing to do with their metaphysics; it has something to do with their inner life force. They cannot contain it... then a crusade, jihad, a religious war -- Jews fighting with Mohammedans, Mohammedans killing Jews, Christians killing Mohammedans, Christians killing Jews.
Hindus have completely destroyed Buddhism in India. Buddha was the greatest man on the earth in the past history... and he has left such a great impact on every intelligent being in this country.But when he died, within five hundred years the old priesthood of the Hindus, the brahmins destroyed everything that they could.
You will not believe that Mohammedans not only killed human beings, they also destroyed great pieces of art, because they were worshiped as religious -- beautiful statues of Buddha, great temples.
In every ancient well in India there are beautiful statues, because out of fear that their statues would be destroyed, people have thrown them into the wells. So whenever an ancient well is cleaned or looked into, they are surprised..."What is the matter?" In every well are beautiful statues of Mahavira, of Bahubali, of Gautam Buddha.
There was no need to destroy the whole statue because a superstition exists all
over India that if a statue is a little bit damaged -- one ear is missing -- it is no more worshipable; it has to be removed. There are millions of statues so beautiful... somebody's ear is missing, somebody's nose is missing, somebody's hand has been cut -- that was enough, and they have been thrown out.
I happened to be in a city near Katni in a small place in Madhya Pradesh. There are thousands of statues -- the village consists only of statues, so beautiful that thousands of people must have worked for thousands of years -- but nobody lives there. I enquired, tried to find out in old gazettes of the government, and I found only one reference in an old scripture. That village was the village of sculptors. Being afraid that their statues will be destroyed, they covered their statues with mud and escaped, burned their houses so nobody will think that there is a village.
Now it has become a thick forest, wild trees have grown, but it must have been a very great place when it was alive. Those statues show that the village must have contained thousands and thousands of great artists. Now it is a ghost village. Only statues... they have been discovered during the British regime; their mud has been taken away. It was one of the great discoveries.
In Khajuraho, one of the most famous cities of temples, there were one hundred temples.
It is simply mind-boggling to see a single temple; it takes almost one day, there are so many statues. You cannot find a single inch which is not carved... and huge temples.
They were also buried under mud, small mud hills. Only thirty could be saved; the Mohammedans destroyed seventy.
They have been discovered again, and there is no sculpture anywhere in the world -- I have looked into all kinds of sculpture that existed and exists in the world, but the beauty that Khajuraho sculpture has is just superhuman -- so perfect that one cannot believe things can be made so perfect, so beautiful.
Religions have only destroyed, because they prevented the creative dimension. In the name of celibacy only two things have happened: destruction and AIDS. These are the two great contributions of all your religions. And if man is intelligent enough, there is no need to say that these religions should disappear. They have done enough harm. We don't need them at all; we can be religious
without religions.
I have made you serious again! Once in a while I forget. So for no reason at all, just for a good laugh, because I hate to leave Buddha Hall unless I see you all are rejoicing and laughing...
A Polish worker went to a local bank to deposit his wages of one week. Worried about the dire conditions of the Polish economy, he enquired what would happen if the bank collapsed.
"All our deposits are guaranteed by the ministry of finance," the teller replied.
"But what if the ministry of finance could not honor the guarantee?" the worker persisted.
"In that case the Polish government itself would intercede," the teller said with growing irritation.
"But what if the government would go bankrupt?" the worker asked with undiminished concern.
"In that case our socialist comrades in the Soviet Union would naturally come to our assistance," the teller retorted.
"But what if the Soviet Union collapsed?" the Polish worker persisted. "Idiot," snapped the teller, "is not that worth losing one week's wages?" Okay, Vimal?
Yes, Osho.
The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here Chapter #7
Chapter title: First have your cup of tea
9 September 1987 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium Archive
code:
8709095
ShortTitle:
PILGR07
Audio:
Yes Video:
Yes Length:
101
mins Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
LAST NIGHT AS YOU WERE GIVING SUTRAS FOR DEVAGEET TO
CONTEMPLATE, YOU WENT DIRECTLY FROM THE THIRD TO THE FIFTH, WITHOUT SPEAKING ABOUT THE FOURTH. IS THERE SOME SIGNIFICANCE
IN THIS?
Sarito, I don't know much arithmetic... that's why I continuously go on counting on my fingers! But that is the original way. That's why there are ten digits in every language --
man started to count on his fingers. Because there are ten fingers, that's why ten is the basic number in all languages.
I am an original man.
But aside from that, there was really something significant. The fourth I have saved for you. So now I will have to begin from the fourth.
The fourth is: There are four stages of getting old. First, when you forget names.
Second, when you forget places. Third, when you forget to zip up.
And fourth, when you forget to zip down.
The fifth sutra for you: A ninety-three-year-old man married a ninety-one-year- old lady and they spent the first three days of their honeymoon just trying to get out of the car.
Sixth: Middle age is when you have stopped growing at both ends -- and have begun to grow in the middle.
Seventh: An optimist is a man who goes to the window every morning and says, "Good morning, God!"
The pessimist goes to the window every morning and says, "Good god -- morning!"
Eighth: There are two ways to be rich. One is to have all you want, the other is to be satisfied with all you have.
Now I have forgotten the number... I assume it is ninth: Freedom is a great thing. It means a man is free to do just what his wife pleases.
Tenth: A man does not stop playing because he grows old, he grows old because he stops playing.
Eleventh: Tolerance is sometimes the uncomfortable feeling that the other person may be right after all.
Twelfth: To have average intelligence is to be less stupid than half of the people
and more stupid than the other half.
... My god, I have forgotten the number! I hope it is thirteenth: If all else fails, give up.
Fourteenth: It is always best not to tell people your troubles. Half of them are not interested, and the other half are glad you are getting what is coming to you.
Fifteenth: When Henry Ford was asked for the recipe for a long and happy marriage, he replied: "Always stick to the same model."
Sixteenth: A man who can smile when things go wrong has probably just thought of someone to blame it on.
Seventeenth: Inscription on the tombstone of a notorious hypochondriac: "See!"
Eighteenth: A pessimist is a man who thinks all women are bad. An optimist is one who hopes they are.
Nineteenth: The definition of alimony: "The screwing you get for the screwing you got."
Twentieth: The ten best years of a woman's life are between thirty-five and thirty-six.
Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,
WHAT IS THIS GENERATION GAP? I HEAR SO MUCH ABOUT IT THESE DAYS.
Jayesh, two old men of eighty were sitting in their club when one said, "Do you think there is as much love, as much fun going on as there used to be?"
"Yes, certainly," said the other, "but there is a whole new bunch doing it." That's what the generation gap is.
A large crowd had been waiting quietly at the foot of a mountain. Moses had been gone for hours. Suddenly his white robe was seen fluttering in the breeze,
and now the lawgiver stood before his flock: "People of Israel! I have been with the Lord for seven hours and I now have some good news, and some bad news "
"Speak, O Moses!" shouted the crowd.
"The good news," says Moses, "is that I have managed to bring the number of commandments down to ten!"
The people cheered. Then they cried, "Moses, what is the bad news?" Moses sadly replied, "Adultery is still in."
For the new generation it is no longer in. That's the generation gap, Jayesh. Now the whole meaning of adultery has changed: it simply means to be adult.
There has never been any generation gap in the past. Hence, one has to look deeply into it because this is the first time in the whole history of man that even the expression
"generation gap" has been used. And the gap is growing bigger and bigger every day.
Things seem to be unbridgeable.
There is certainly a great psychology behind it. In the past there used to be no young age.
You will be surprised to know about it: children used to become adult without being young. A six-year-old, seven-year-old child would start working with his father; if the father was a carpenter he would learn carpentry, or at least help his father. If the father was a farmer he would go to the farm with the father, would help him with the animals, cows, horses. By the age of six or seven he had already entered into life. By the age of twenty he would be married and have a few children.
In the past there was no "younger generation" hence there was no gap. One generation followed another generation in a continuity, with no gap between them. By the time the father died his son would have already replaced him in every field of his life. There was no time to play and there was no time to get
educated; there were no schools, no colleges, no universities.
The new generation is a by-product of many things. In the past the only way of learning was to participate with the older generation, work with them -- that was the only way to learn. And of course the older generation was always respected, because they were the teachers. They knew, and you were ignorant; the ignorant necessarily respected the knowledgeable. Hence in the past it was almost inconceivable that the younger people would disrespect the old people, or could even think in their dreams that they knew more than the older people. Knowledge was very decisive.
The people who knew had the power, and the people who did not, had no power. It was in those old days that the proverb must have been coined: "knowledge is power." That was the only criterion in life, so you never heard of any revolt of the young against the old.
This generation has come to a new, totally new stage. The child never goes following in his father's footsteps. He goes to the school; his father goes to his shop or to the office or to the farm. By the time he comes back from his university he is twenty-five years old.
For these twenty-five years he has no connection with the older generation. His only connection is financial; they help him financially. In these twenty-five years many things happen: one, he knows more than his parents because his parents had been to school at least twenty, twenty-five years before. In these twenty-five years, knowledge has taken such quantum leaps -- it has grown so much.…
I was very much puzzled when I was in the university: my professor of psychology was quoting names and books which had been out of date for almost three decades. And because I was so interested to know everything -- before I entered into myself, I had to know everything that was happening around -- I was continuously in the library.
And it is impossible to respect a professor who knows less than you know, who is outmoded. He should be ashamed to remain in the seat of the professor. That's what I told my professor of psychology: "It is simply undignified for you to remain in that seat, because you don't know what is happening in the field of psychology today. You know what was happening thirty years before. Since the day you left your university you have not touched a single book."
He was very angry. He said, "Who says that?"
I said, "Come with me, I have checked in the university register." For twenty years he had been a professor in that university and he had not taken a single book from the library. I had looked into twenty years' registers, just to check whether this man had ever had issued in his name even a single book.
He could not believe... when I took him to the library he said, "Where are you taking me?"
I said, "This is the library."
He said, "But what is the point of it? What are we going to do in the library? How are you going to prove that I have not been reading?"
I said, "You just come in." And I had those twenty years' registers there, and I told him,
"These are the registers for all twenty years and your name is not mentioned even a single time. And now I am coming with you to your home."
He said, "For what?"
I said, "Just to see what you go on doing, how many books on modern psychology are in your home. I am giving you a chance: perhaps you have your own collection and you don't come to the library."
He said, "No, there is no need!"
I said, "You don't be worried. I have been there this morning already -- I don't take chances. I asked your wife and she said, `That idiot, all he reads is the newspaper.'"
Education has created one of the most important elements of the generation gap. Teachers complain that students don't respect them -- why should they?
When addressing a meeting of professors, I said to them, "Every professor is complaining about only one thing: `Something has to be done; students don't pay respect to us.' And I am here to say something exactly the opposite: Something certainly has to be done, because no professor seems to be respectable. It is not a
question of students not paying respect to you; it is a question of your own. You are no longer respectable. Why were you respectable in the past? -- do you understand? You knew more. Today, students know more than you. Unless you remain ahead of your students you cannot be respected."
Respect needs some rationale. Parents are continually complaining that their children don't respect them, because children are no longer the old kind of children who were following in their footsteps. A new dimension of education has opened in this century which is not in the direction of the old. The old direction was simple: follow the elders, because they know and you don't know. There was only one way of knowing and that was by experience. Naturally, the older person had more experience.
Now, through education, experience is not at all a necessity. By learning, studying, you can know as much as you want. Just sitting in the library you can know the whole world in all its dimensions, whatsoever is happening. You need not even move out of the library.
It reminds me of Karl Marx -- the founder of communism, the last religion in the world.
He spent his whole life, without a single holiday, in the British Museum, just reading and reading and reading. He used to reach the British Museum before it opened; he would be waiting on the steps. And there were many occasions when he was pushed out forcibly because the museum had to be closed. There were a few occasions when he was taken away in an ambulance... because he had been reading all day since the morning -- without eating, without drinking, and he had fainted on the table.
Now if this man knew more than anybody else of his generation, however old he was...
he could not respect old age. Old age has lost respect because a new territory, a new space of learning and knowledge has opened up.
You are going to see a still bigger gap -- one of which humanity is still not aware
-- and I am talking about it for the first time. One gap has been created by education. If meditation becomes a worldwide movement, another gap will be created which will be immense. Then the old man and the young man will be as far apart as the two poles of the earth. Even communication between them has
already become difficult; it will become impossible.
The people who are here with me can understand what I am saying. If you start moving into the world of no-mind, then the people who are old, who have gathered much knowledge in the mind, will look to you retarded, undeveloped, very ordinary. There is no reason why you should respect them; they have to respect you -- you have transcended mind.
And the world is becoming more and more interested in meditation. It will not be long before the day when meditation will become your education for the ultimate. Your ordinary education is about the outside. Meditation will be the education about your interiority, about your inner being.
Of course it will take a little time, because there will be many frauds; there will be many pretenders, false prophets, technicians. You have to understand the difference between a meditator and a man who knows the technique of meditation; he is not himself a meditator -- he is a technician.
For example, I have not seen Dulari here; she is one of my old fellow-travelers. So I enquired today what has happened to Dulari, and I have heard that she has been in one man's meditation camp. That man is utterly, utterly stupid. But he knows the technique, about that there is no doubt. He has been in Burma... and in Burma... he was only a businessman, but he learned the Burmese technique of Vipassana.
Vipassana has many forms: the Burmese, the Ceylonese, the Tibetan, the Chinese, the Korean, the Japanese. The Japanese is the best. But all those techniques have come from Gautam Buddha; perhaps he never thought that it would be possible to learn the technique and not to do the meditation. The technique is simply how to do it.
This man, Goenka... I have never thought it worthwhile to say anything about him. Many of you must have been in his Vipassana camps.… Just a few days before I left America I received a newsletter in which he had made a statement about me. That amazed me -- that was the beginning. I started looking into this man's capacity, potentiality, realization. He made a statement that he had seen me and talked with me for hours in Madras. Now, I have been to Madras in India only once. That was twenty-five years ago, and I am absolutely certain that I have met nobody and talked with nobody for hours about Vipassana. Even the
word Vipassana was not mentioned while I was in Madras for three days.
Seeing this statement gave me the idea that this man cannot be a meditator. If he can lie so easily.… Now Dulari has been in his camp, and after the camp she has been meditating, using the technique given by him, for ten hours a day.
I want Dulari to be alert. And particularly her husband should report to the police, because meditation -- particularly Vipassana meditation -- should not be done more than two hours. And those two hours have to be early in the morning; the best time is before sunrise. If somebody goes on meditating for ten hours, the ultimate consequence is going to be insanity. And there will be by-products also; for example, a man meditating for ten hours will lose his sleep completely.
I had a case sent to me from Ceylon, which is a Buddhist country, with so many Buddhist priests preaching Vipassana meditation.… The technique is so simple, but they have never done it themselves. To teach anything to anybody which you have not done -- and experienced all its possibilities, consequences, difficulties, problems that it can lead you into -- then you are a criminal.
This man who was sent to me was a Buddhist monk. He had lost his sleep for three years, and every treatment was done but no treatment was successful; no medicine would work.
He had been told by his teacher -- I cannot call him a master -- to do Vipassana in the night. Even if you do Vipassana in the day, its effects will carry into the night; that's why I am suggesting the most distant point, before sunrise. Just two hours are enough; more than that... even nectar can become poison in a certain quantity.
Vipassana for ten hours a day can drive anybody mad. That's why I want to make it clear, because if Dulari goes mad I will be condemned because she has been associated with me for twenty years. She should stop doing that technique. At the most, for two hours before sunrise she can do it; that will be healthy and that will bring her deep insight and understanding. But ten hours is too much. Her consciousness will not be able to contain that much. Instead of having a breakthrough, the greater possibility is of having a breakdown. It can become a strain -- it will become a strain.
That's why I am saying, if she continues then her husband should inform the police. And if she goes mad then he should sue this utterly, utterly stupid Goenka
for driving his wife mad.
There are many idiots all around. And because humanity has come to a crisis point where it needs a new dimension for consciousness, naturally many people will come with false ideas. Or maybe the ideas are right but the person who is bringing them is not right; then too the idea is going to harm humanity.
Meditation is not something mechanical; hence there can be no technicians of meditation.
Goenka is a technician: he knows exactly what is being done in the Burmese style of Vipassana, but he is not a man of meditation -- he is not a man of enlightenment.
And now he has made teaching Vipassana his profession; now it is a business. He is still a businessman. He was a businessman in Burma; just the commodity has changed. He must have been selling something else; here he is selling the technique of Vipassana. And people are gullible. When they see that so many people are going, they start thinking perhaps they should also go.
The generation gap that education has created is nothing compared to the generation gap that meditation can create. This gap is quantitative, that gap will be qualitative. A man with meditation has no age: he is neither a child nor is he young nor is he old. He is eternity itself. How can you expect from him that he should be respectful to old idiots, donkeys and all kinds of animals all around?
But this is also a time to be very alert and very aware: don't be too much impressed by what a person says. Look deeper into the person and his individuality. See whether he has ecstasy in his eyes, watch whether his gestures have the grace of a Gautam Buddha, look very carefully to see whether his inner being radiates light and fragrance. Is he a man of love, compassion and truth? Look at the man, not at his knowledge, because knowledge is available in the books so easily; anybody can collect it. But your being is not available in the holy scriptures.
Your being you have to find. You have to sharpen your intelligence and you have to bring the ultimate within you as a guest. And when the ultimate is a guest within you, you are a flame, you are a fire. Of course your fire does not burn anybody, but heals. Your fire is cool, not warm. Your fire is just a lotus flower.
The seeker should look at the master first -- not at what he says, but what he is. Is he something transcendental? Is his life a laughter, a song, a dance, a joy, a blissfulness? Or is he just a pretender, a businessman fulfilling your expectations
-- of course, showing humbleness, humility... just business tactics.
A man of real truth has no need to be humble. He is neither egoist nor humble, because those are the same things in different quantities. Only the egoist can become humble. I cannot say I am a humble man. I cannot say that I am a simple man, because simplicity is only a lesser form of complexity, and humbleness is on a lower strata, the same as ego.
They are not different; the degrees are different. I am neither humble nor egoist.
I am simply just the way I am.
These people will pretend everything. They will behave in every way that you expect them to behave. That is their whole strategy of catching people. But the intention is to exploit.
Vipassana is one of the greatest meditations, but only in the hands of a master. In the hands of a technician it is the greatest danger. Either the man can become enlightened or the man can become mad; both possibilities are there, it all depends under whose guidance it is being done.
When the Ceylonese monk was sent to me I said, "I am not a Buddhist, and you have been under the guidance of Buddhist monks. What was the need for you to come to me?"
He said, "They have all failed. They have taught me, but they cannot cure me. And I am going crazy. I cannot sleep a single wink."
When he told me this... Buddhist monks are not supposed to laugh, but I told him a joke.
For a moment he was shocked, because he had come very seriously. I told him that a man in England, no ordinary man but a very rich lord, was asking another lord -- with the English attitude, mannerism: "Is it right that you slept with my wife last night?" And the other lord said, "My friend, not a wink."
Even the Buddhist monk laughed. He said, "You are a strange person. I have come from Ceylon and you tell me a joke! And I am a religious man."
I said, "That's why I am telling you a religious joke. If you stay with me I will tell you irreligious jokes too."
I said, "Your problem is not curable by any medicine. Your problem is created by your Vipassana."
He said, "Vipassana? But Vipassana was the meditation of Gautam Buddha; through it he became enlightened."
I said, "You are not a Gautam Buddha, and you don't understand that Vipassana done after sunset is very dangerous. If you do Vipassana for just two hours in the night, then you cannot sleep. It creates such awareness in you that that awareness continues the whole night."
And if somebody is doing Vipassana for ten hours, almost the whole day, the sanity will give way. And then Goenka will not come to help, because he will not even be able to understand that this has happened because of Vipassana. And you cannot sue him in the court, because even the law does not understand that Vipassana can create madness in people.
My whole effort here is to keep you as non-serious as possible, for the simple reason that meditation, all kinds of meditation, can make you too serious and that seriousness will create a spiritual disease and nothing else.
Unless a meditation brings you more laughter, more joy, more playfulness, avoid it. It is not for you.
Jayesh, the generation gap is unfortunate. I am not in favor of it. I have my own strategy for how it can be avoided.
The whole system of education has to be changed from the very roots. In short... we prepare people in education for livelihood rather than life. For twenty-five years we prepare -- that is one third of the life -- for livelihood. We never prepare people for death, and life is only seventy years; death is the door to eternity. It needs tremendous training.
According to me -- and I feel with great authority that this is going to happen in
the future if man survives -- that education should be cut into pieces: fifteen years for livelihood, and again after forty-two years, ten years in preparing for death. Education should be divided in two parts. Everybody goes to the university -- of course to different universities, or to the same university but to different departments. One is to prepare children for life and one is to prepare people who have lived life and now want to know something more, beyond life.
Then the generation gap will disappear. Then the people who are of an older age will be more quiet, more silent, more peaceful, more wise; their advice will be worth listening to.
Just sitting at their feet will be a great blessing; the respect for the old will return. Except this, there is no other way.
Education divided in two parts means young people study for life, and middle- aged people study for death. Of course, the middle-aged people will be studying meditation, singing, dancing, laughing; they will be learning celebration. They have to make their death a festival -- that should be the goal of the second part of education.
They will paint, they will play music, they will sculpt, they will compose poetry; they will do all kinds of creative things. Livelihood they have managed; now their children are doing that. Geography, history and all kinds of idiotic subjects, their children are learning. Let them know where Timbuktu is.
I have always wondered why -- with my geography teacher I was continually in conflict -
- "Why should I know where Timbuktu is? What business is it of mine?" He said, "You are strange, nobody has ever asked this."
I said, "I am going to ask on every point... Constantinople, which in Hindi becomes even worse: Kustuntunia. I have no business with these things. Teach me something valuable."
And my geography teacher used to hit his head... he would say, "The whole of geography is this!"
The history teacher was teaching about the ugliest people that have existed in the
world.
From the history teacher I never got any idea about Bodhidharma or Zarathustra or Baal Shemtov or Lin Chi or Chuang Tzu; I never got any idea, and these are the people who have made humanity evolve.
But I have heard about Tamerlane. Do you know what lang means? He was one- legged.
It is Tamurlang. Giving him respect, nobody called him "one-legged Tamer" but he created so much nuisance that very few people can be compared with him. And for almost three generations... his son was worse than him, and his grandson defeated both.
About these people, who were just murderers and criminals, the whole history is full.
And they are called emperors, conquerors, "Alexander the Great." Even if they were really bad, still history repeats their names, their great acts: "Ivan the Terrible!"
This kind of history is bound to create wrong kinds of people in the world. All these histories should be burned simultaneously all over the world, so all these names disappear completely. And they should be replaced by those beautiful people who have all the credit for your being human. They are the people who have made humanity worthy of respect, who have given it a dignity and a pride, and who have opened doors of mysteries, of the beyond.
The second part of education should consist of meditativeness, of awareness, of witnessing, of love, of compassion, of creativity -- and certainly we will again be without any generation gap. The younger person will respect the older person, and not for any formal reasons but actually because the old person is respectable. He knows something beyond the mind and the young person knows only something within the mind.
The young person is still struggling in the trivia of the world, and the older person has gone beyond the clouds; he has almost reached to the stars. It is not a question of etiquette to respect him. You are bound to respect him, it is absolutely a compulsion of your own heart -- not a formality taught by others.
In my childhood... in India it is an absolute formality: anybody who comes as a guest, you have to touch their feet. Before my father became completely aware of my behavior he used to push down my head: "Touch the feet, the guest is God. And he is an old relative, you should follow the custom."
One day a male goat with a beard entered just in my house. I touched his feet. My father said, "What are you doing?"
I said, "A guest is a God -- and moreover with a beard! An old goat needs respect. You come here and touch his feet."
He said, "Your mind functions in a very different way than anybody else's."
I said, "You have to understand it: from now onwards if I meet an old dog on the road I'm going to touch his feet, an old donkey and I'm going to touch his feet. What is the difference between an old dog, an old donkey, and your old guest? To me they look all the same. In fact the old donkey looks so philosophical; the old dog looks so ferocious, like a warrior -- they have some qualities. That old fellow that you were forcing my head down for.… Next time you force my head down you will repent!"
He said, "What are you going to do?"
I said, "I will show you, because I believe in doing things, not in saying things."
Next time one of my faraway relatives came and my father forgot. He pushed my head down. And I had a big needle ready in my hand, so I pushed the needle into the old man's foot. He shrieked. He almost jumped. My father said, "What has happened?"
I said, "I have warned you, but you never listened. I don't have any respect for this person. I don't know him, I have never seen him before; why should I touch his feet? I am ready to touch the feet of someone whom I feel is respectable." He understood that it is better not to force me because this was dangerous. Blood was coming out of that old man's foot.
I never stood in my university classes when the professors entered. In India you have to stand up. The professors looked immediately at me -- forgot everybody else; they focused on me. And if it was just the beginning of the year they would ask, "Why are you not standing?"
I said, "There is no reason."
And the professor would say, "You don't understand. Have you never stood before in any class?"
I said, "Never, because I don't find any reason. I'm perfectly at ease."
He said, "You.… How to make you understand that when a professor enters into the class, out of respect you have to stand up?"
I said, "That's right. But I have not seen yet anything respectable in you. If I see something, I will stand up. And remember: there should not be double standards."
"You mean..." he said, "what do you mean?"
I said, "I mean if I enter the class, you have to stand up -- of course, only if you see something respectable in me. Otherwise there is no question, you can remain sitting down, or if you want you can even sleep. I don't care a bit."
My professors used to try to persuade me. Once in a while the vice-chancellor would come on a round, and they would try to persuade me that "Just for once... we don't want you to stand for us, but when the vice-chancellor comes into the class, don't create a fuss.
Because then nothing else happens except the discussion about it."
I said, "I am helpless. I cannot do anything against my will. Let the man come. If I feel that he is respectable I will stand up. You don't have to tell me."
And the first vice-chancellor under whom I was studying, the first time he came into the class he was drunk. And I am so allergic that I immediately felt that he was drunk. I remained sitting. The teacher looked at me, stared at me, gave indications that "You stand up." I remained sitting. When everybody was told to sit down, then I stood up.
I said, "Now is the time for me to stand up. This man is drunk. It does not matter who he is, I am going to report him to the police."
And the vice-chancellor was so much afraid and so nervous He had put his hat
on the table. In a hurry he took my professor's hat and went out of the class. And my professor was running behind him to say, "You are taking my hat."
I said, "You see what happens when you are drunk? That man has not even the guts to remain here and you wanted me to stand for him?"
The generation gap exists simply because the reason for respect has disappeared. Unless you create the reason again, the respect will not return. On the contrary, every kind of disrespect will take place. But it is possible to change the whole system.
I would love that the older people be not just old but also wise, not just in age but also in understanding, not only horizontally old but also vertically old... not only growing old but growing up also.
A society where old people are still behaving like young fools is not a society worth calling cultured or civilized. Old people should behave like enlightened people -- not only behave, they should be enlightened. They should become a light to those who are still young and under biological infatuations, natural bondages. They have gone beyond; they can become guiding stars.
When education for death and education for livelihood are separated, when everybody goes twice to the university -- first to learn how to go around this world of trivia and the second time to learn about eternity -- the gap will disappear. And it will disappear in a beautiful way.
Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,
I'M IN A HURRY TO BECOME ENLIGHTENED. WHAT SHOULD I DO?
Chitten, first just listen carefully to this small story.
The plane had just taken off and the captain was telling the passengers about the altitude of the plane, the cruising speed etcetera. But he forgot to switch off the microphone.
He then turned to his co-pilot and said, "First I'm going to have a cup of coffee and then I'm going to screw that pretty stewardess, Denise."
The shocked stewardess was down the end of the plane when she heard this come over the loudspeaker. So she began to rush down the aisle to tell the captain to switch off his mike.
Halfway down the plane an old lady stopped her and said, "There's no hurry, Denise, let him have his cup of tea first."
Chitten, there is no hurry at all. First have your cup of tea!
Enlightenment will be coming, just you have to learn waiting for it. Hurry will not help.
Hurry is going to hinder.
The only thing that is a hindrance is hurry.
The moment you are in a hurry you are never here; you are looking far ahead. You are running. And for enlightenment you have to be still and silent and in this moment --
utterly still, because this whole pilgrimage is from here to here.
For centuries people have been hurrying, and missing. I teach you a totally different approach: of being here, without any hurry -- the whole eternity is there. And don't be a beggar: the moment you are ready and ripe, enlightenment will happen.
Trust existence.
This is the only thing worthwhile for those who are interested in becoming enlightened.
Trust existence that whatever is needed, for whatever you are worthy, it will be given to you. You need not even ask for it. Only the unworthy ask; only the undeserving desire.
The deserving remain silent; the worthy never demand, but when it happens they are full of gratitude. They wait, they allow the spring to come at its own pace, and when the flowers start blossoming they enjoy the fragrance with tremendous prayer in their hearts, of gratitude.
The very desire to be in a hurry can lead you in a wrong direction, because there are peddlers all around who are ready to give you enlightenment instantly. That's why I told you: first have your cup of coffee -- that means instant coffee... but let enlightenment come on its own.
One day a young woman was walking home when a man grabbed her, dragged her into a back alley, and started molesting her.
"Help! Help me someone," she cried. "I'm being robbed!"
"You are not being robbed, lady," interrupted the man, "you are being screwed."
"Well," she replied, "if this is being screwed, then I have always been robbed before."
Don't get mixed up. Everything in the world needs hurry, because so many people are running for it. You cannot wait; otherwise you won't get it. You have to trample people, you have to go ahead without thinking what means you are adopting. Even if people are to be killed, kill, but remain ahead; otherwise you are going to miss. That is one dimension of life -- of trivia, of meaningless things, money, power, prestige.
But there is another dimension where there is no need to be in a hurry, because there is no competitor. You are alone. In your inner world nobody can enter. In your stillness you suddenly find yourself, absolutely alone, surrounded by nothingness. Just rejoice in it, relish it. Your enjoyment of your aloneness and nothingness will make you ripe for the enlightenment to happen.
It happens.
I can say it to you because it has happened to me. I am not depending on any Gautam Buddha or any Jesus Christ. Whatever I am saying I am saying with my own signature.
Hence I can say with absolute authority without any hesitation: there is no need to worry.
It comes, and it comes without giving you any advance notice. It comes so silently that you cannot even hear its footsteps.
You just have to be ready and ripe, and to be ready and ripe there is only one way: be still and wait. Don't move, not even in your thoughts, not even in your emotions... just a pure pillar of stillness. And suddenly there is the explosion, and where there was darkness is light and where there was death is pure life and where there was sadness is just an explosion of song and dance and laughter.
But never think in terms of hurry. That is a hindrance. Be patient. Okay, Vimal?
Yes, Osho.
The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here Chapter #8
Chapter title: Forget trying to get it!
10 September 1987 am in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium Archive
code: 8709100
ShortTitle: PILGR08
Audio: Yes Video: Yes Length: 95
mins Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
I THOUGHT I HEARD YOU SAY THAT IF ONE GOES DEEPLY INTO SEX IT
WILL EVENTUALLY DROP OFF BY ITSELF. I HAVE THOUGHT LONG AND
HARD ABOUT THIS, DESPERATELY TRYING TO PENETRATE ITS HIDDEN
MEANING, BUT ALL I GOT WAS A HEADACHE.
Devageet, it is a good sign, the headache -- the beginning of the revolution. Only one thing you misunderstood. I have not said that sex will fall off, you will fall off -- but enlightened, don't be worried.
Here people die only enlightened; otherwise they hang around, hang around, go deep and go hard... and one day they drop off. And this dropping off is really entering into eternity.
You would not need any meditation. Meditation is needed for those who cannot think too hard and too deeply. The headache indicates what is going to happen to you...
But it does not matter whether sex falls off or you fall off. Your physical, mental, social personality is what you know about yourself. The moment sex drops off, you become for the first time really alone -- because sex is your relationship with the world. For the first time you become immaterial, because sex is binding you to matter. For the first time you become transcendental to your body and biology.
The death of biology or chemistry or society in you is, in other words, the resurrection of your real life.
I have always loved the story about Jesus. Christians have misunderstood him, as usual; they thought that it was really a factual resurrection -- bodily, biologically,
psychologically. That's where they have missed the point. He certainly resurrected, but in a spiritual sense. He died on the cross as a physical personality, and he resurrected as a spiritual being.
So whether sex drops or you drop -- because you and sex are almost synonymous -- what remains is your authentic life.
So, Devageet, you are moving on the right path. Headache... and the head will drop off; then other aches and other things will start dropping off. Finally you will be left only with that which is immortal. And that is our whole search, that's what we are seeking. These things which can be taken away will be taken away; only that which cannot be taken away from you is yours.
A reporter once asked Winston Churchill whether he agreed with the prediction that women would rule the world by the year 2000.
Churchill replied, "Yes, they will still be at it."
`Woman' is also a symbolic word. To man it represents nothing but sex. If you take it literally, then Churchill is to be condemned for condemning women. But if you take its metaphorical meaning, then `woman' is replaced by `sex'; that's what it represents in man's mind. And sex has been ruling over the world from the very beginning, if there was any beginning, and is going to rule man to the very end -- if there is an end.
Only a few people have transcended the physical, the sexual, the psychological, and have entered into a different dimension that I call enlightenment. And unless the enlightened are listened to, understood, there is no hope for the world.
It is not that millions of enlightened people are needed; just two hundred enlightened people on the earth, and the whole earth will be dazzling with their light, with their being.
And those two hundred will create chain reactions: they will provoke you for the great pilgrimage, they will remind you who you are. Just looking into their eyes, suddenly inside you will click -- it is only a click -- and the whole dimension changes.
Paddy and his friend Sean were sitting in a bar moaning to each other, talking about how ugly their wives are -- a common topic among husbands.
"My wife is so ugly," said Sean, "if I want to make love to her I have to put a bag over her head."
"That's nothing," said Paddy. "My wife was so ugly when she was born that the doctor slapped her mother."
But these statements have become ugly in the sense that they have forgotten that instead of `woman' they should use the word `sex', because that's what it means in the deepest core of the mind of the male.
As far as women are concerned, they are not interested in man's physical body; they are not interested in his ideological, philosophical, mental gymnastics. Their approach is far more direct: they simply see your spirituality. The thing a woman is attracted to is the charisma, the aura of spirituality around a man; hence they never talk about the ugliness or beauty of men. That is not their concern. That is a great difference between the approaches of men and women.
Women go directly deep inside men. That's why it is one of the most difficult things to keep a secret from the woman: where will you keep it? -- she goes directly inside you.
And she is capable of going directly inside you because man has lived very superficially.
Many men are not aware that they have hearts. Yes, they know they have lungs, but the lung is not the heart; neither is the brain the mind, nor is the mind your being. These are superficial layers.
No woman in the whole world has created any ideology, any great metaphysics, any great philosophy. Her concern is not the outside; her concern is the inside. That's why I have immense respect for women. Perhaps no man in the whole world ever had as much respect for women as I have.
Women have been loved, but not respected. And without respect the love is nothing but lust; you label it with a beautiful word, but deep down inside you it is always sex, always sex. Man has reduced woman and her spirituality to such a state that she has become only an object of sex.
And if the American trend has to be followed -- where everything has to be used once and thrown away -- the ultimate consequence is coming closer: use the
woman once and throw away. They are already doing it in a way.…
In America, three years is the limit for everything. People change their jobs every three years, they change their cities every three years, they change their wives every three years. But those three years will get smaller and smaller -- perhaps even by the time the honeymoon ends, everything has ended. Most probably it has ended. But people go on pretending that it is still continuing, because they have given so many promises, so many words to keep that now it looks very awkward to go against their own promises.
But a woman loves in a different way. Her love has some quality of spirituality. Man's love is only physiological, biological. You may not have found a single joke in any language of the world from women against men. It is below her prestige. All jokes are from men against the woman, because for him woman is not a spiritual being at all.
In China for thousands of years the woman was accepted by law as a commodity that a man possesses. He can bargain, he can stake her in gambling, he can sell her, he can even kill her -- the court was not concerned. If you kill your chair you will not be arrested... the woman was not more than that. And the whole past has been so ugly that man has not even asked forgiveness for it.
Women have been treated like cattle. But the woman has not, in spite of all this ugliness that has been done to her, changed at all. She still loves... and her love has a purity and a beauty and a grace. Man's love is ugly, animalistic; it is not more than a sneeze -- he is just relieving himself. But the woman is not relieving; she is living it with its totality. It is a prayer to her, as sacred as any prayer can be.
These are the differences that have to be bridged. At least for my people I want these differences to be bridged. Just as we don't discriminate between religions, we don't discriminate between nations, we don't discriminate between races, the final discrimination that has to be dropped is between men and women. They both are beautiful. If they become a little more alert, they are in fact two complementaries of one whole: man is half, just as the woman is half.
My effort, in spite of the whole world's condemnation of me, is to bring man and woman to a space where they can accept each other as their other part, as their other pole. I don't care about the condemnation of the world; it simply brings
giggles to me. Who cares about idiots condemning you? -- they are not even worth any reply. But even if a small section of society starts respecting each other, there will be a tremendous revolution.
My own understanding is that as your love deepens, your sex disappears -- because love is so fulfilling, what is the need of this bullock-cart sex? It is out of date.…
And soon the day will come when children will not be born out of men and women's sex.
We have suffered very much: blind children, retarded children, have had to live their life in utter agony and suffering... but there were no means to clear the situation. But now we have the means, now love can be completely a fun, a joy, a celebration, with no responsibility, no fear of making the woman pregnant, because that keeps her in bondage and that keeps you also in the bondage. You are partners in creating a child; now you have to be a partner in bringing him up.
I have heard... in a court a man, ninety-five years old, and a woman, ninety-one years old, appeared for divorce. The judge had seen many cases but this was really shocking. He could not believe it: one foot is already in the grave; for what do they want a divorce?
He asked, "How long have you been married?"
They said, "It is very difficult to remember. Maybe seventy-five years, or it could be a little more."
The judge said, "I cannot understand: you managed to live together for seventy years, and now at the very end you have come to divorce."
They said, "We had to wait for all our children to die. Now we are completely free, no burden."
Man's past history, Devageet, has been really not human. It can be human only if the woman and the man are no longer just sex partners; that drags them both to the very lowliest spaces. If they can love each other with respect, not using each other as commodities, men and women both will have a great uprising of consciousness.
The more your sex energy becomes love, the more you are a spiritual being. Sex is only a reproductive process forced by nature on you. Nature has been using you just like a factory -- and you don't have even the dignity to declare, "I am not a factory."
But this can happen only if you are alert, aware, conscious of what you are doing, what you are thinking, how you are behaving. And that brings such grace and such beauty, that the physical beauty simply disappears. I have seen many beautiful women with very ugly minds. I have seen many beautiful men, but their beauty is not more than skin-deep. And this is the trouble: beauty is always skin-deep, and ugliness goes to the very bones. Go on digging to the bones, to the marrow, and you will find it... it is there.
Love is the alchemy to change that ugliness from within. And once it disappears from within, even an ordinary face, a homely face, starts shining with the bliss and joy of the beyond.
Don't be worried about the headache; the headache is simply an effort of biology to drag you back. I have not suffered almost for thirty years from a headache. Slowly, slowly I have forgotten how it feels. And because I have not suffered from headache, I don't feel my head either. It is only pain that makes you feel anything. But thirty years before I have also suffered from headache, and the headache is certainly concerned very deeply with sex.
No medical researcher has come to the conclusion, but I say it from my own discoveries that I go on and on making -- I'm an incurable discoverer -- and sooner or later science will have to agree with me. The sex center exists in the head, not in the genitals -- that much science has come to know. And if the sex center exists in the head and not in the genitals, then sex deprivation can create a headache. It will not create genital ache because there is nothing... it is only an extension of a certain center in your mind.
Why have people started thinking -- and doctors have started even advising their patients
-- that sex is good for your mental health? And they are right: all the people who have repressed sex in the past in the name of religion, have suffered tremendously with headaches. Even a man like J. Krishnamurti suffered for forty years continuously with such great headaches, migraine, that even he, a man of
such understanding, used to think of hitting his head with the wall and be finished -- the pain was too much.
J. Krishnamurti was brought up by people with all the old ideas: Repress your sex. He was not allowed to meet young women. Even when a woman who was almost the age of his mother once had been taking care of him when he was sick, immediately great turmoil started in the leadership of the Theosophical Society: "They have fallen in love. Remove the woman" -- and the woman was removed. It was sheer stupidity: Krishnamurti was not more than fifteen, and the woman was nearabout fifty. But the woman was a beautiful woman, very understanding. No man can take care of anybody else the way a woman can take care even of strangers.
I was in jail in America. They had put me in the medical ward, so that nobody could say that I had been tortured, harassed. In the medical ward there were six women nurses and a doctor, and one male nurse. It never used to be that way in the past. In fact, in this country you cannot find a male nurse; in this country
`nurse' means a woman. A male nurse looks awkward, unpsychological.
I watched the way the woman doctor behaved with me -- with such respect and such love.
And all the nurses... the oldest nurse -- a very womanly woman, almost a Jewish mama --
took care of me so much that during the three days I was there she dropped one of her holidays. She said, "I cannot go out "
All the nurses behaved as though I had been known to them forever: I was not a stranger but part of their heart. But the male nurse was a trouble. One day only was given to the male nurse in seven days, but that one day he tortured me -- not physically, but he would come into my cabin and he would start asking questions... and religion and theology and philosophy.…
I told him, "Listen... with great difficulty I have got these few days' holiday, and you are destroying that. I have forgotten all about religion, all about philosophy, I don't know anything. Just don't torture me."
But the male mind functions only intellectually; it does not know anything about the heart. Not a single woman in the medical ward ever asked a single question.
They brought my food, they managed... the doctor managed that I should not go to the common toilet, she gave me her own bathroom: "We will feel ashamed to send you there, it is dirty. All criminals... While you are here just use my bathroom, and I will remember it: because you have used my bathroom, it becomes a temple for me. The moment I enter it I will remember you."
The head nurse has never gone in her life to purchase things for the prisoners; they come on a fixed routine basis. But for me she used to go every day -- and she was an old woman -- to purchase fruits, vegetables, anything that was vegetarian. I asked her, "You are unnecessarily taking trouble. Things come, they are perfectly good. If they are good for other human beings, they are good for me too. Just take care because I am a vegetarian."
She said, "No, those things come mixed with non-vegetarian food. And you are here only for a few days."
The last day when I left the first jail, all the nurses and the doctor and the sheriff and the whole staff had tears in their eyes. The doctor said to me, "We don't want you to leave."
I said, "It is a jail. As far as I am concerned there is no problem, I can remain here. But millions of people around the world are waiting for me to get out. Your tears prevent me... it looks very heartless."
She said, "No, I understand. Just in three days you have become so much part of us, we have forgotten completely that you are a prisoner here" -- because the whole day I was sitting in the doctor's room. To make me comfortable, she had moved to another room --
because there prisoners will be coming, patients will be coming -- and they did everything that a loving family can do.
She said, "Forgive my tears. Don't take any note of it. It is my problem that we will miss you from tomorrow."
When I shook hands with the nurses they were all trembling. They had all cut photos from newspapers and they said, "Please, give a signature and write my name. This is our most precious gift. We are enough rewarded... otherwise this jail is a torture house. Even in the medical part the torture continues; it is just a strategy to show to the world that a sick person is not tortured."
But because the whole staff was in such a deep loving attitude, they could not do anything to torture me. The nurses brought soaps from their homes, new combs from their homes. If they cooked something which was vegetarian they brought it from their home. I said, "Why are you taking so much care of a prisoner?"
They said, "You are not a prisoner. You have changed the whole climate of the medical ward."
But it is to happen all over the world The woman has to be respected, not only
used.
And slowly, slowly you will see that sex is the lowliest form of relationship. It will drop.
Just go a little higher in your consciousness... But I don't want you to drop it with effort, deliberately, because then it will cling around you. Go into it. It is our destiny to pass through that fire test.
And once you have gone through it and come out of it into the clear, meditation becomes so easy that you don't have to do it. Just sit by the side of any tree and from all over a subtle showering of a new silence, of a virgin serenity, starts falling over you, just like rain, or just like flowers of madhukamini falling in thousands.
I have not seen any other plant which has so generous a heart as madhukamini. The word madhukamini means `honey woman'. Its fragrance is incomparable. And the most beautiful thing is that it goes on showering almost like water, rainwater. The petals of its flowers go on falling the whole night. You can sit underneath it and you will be all covered with flowers.
Something like this is bound to happen, Devageet, if you allow the false personality that surrounds you to die. Then love and meditation are not two things -- they become one.
The loving is meditative, and meditation is nothing but the radiation of love. Question 2
BELOVED OSHO,
IN MY MIND I AM WRITING TO YOU ALMOST EVERY DAY. ALL THESE
QUESTIONS AND STATEMENTS BOIL DOWN TO THE FOLLOWING:
GRATITUDE -- I WANT TO SAY THANK YOU, OSHO, BELOVED MASTER --
AND ATTENTION. COULD YOU SAY IN DISCOURSE, ONE SINGLE TIME,
"HELLO, HAREESH," SO EVERYONE CAN HEAR IT, SO THAT I AM CERTAIN
THAT YOU AND EVERYBODY ELSE KNOWS I AM EXISTING AS YOUR LOVER
AND FELLOW DANCE-PARTNER?
Hello, Hareesh.… But this will not be enough. It will be just plates without anything to eat, to drink. It will look like a desert where nothing grows.
And people are saying "hello" to each other without any reason; so I say... but I would like to present you also something, so "Hello Hareesh" is not empty. My first present: A man sitting in a bar is complaining to the bartender: "After one year and three thousand dollars with that psychiatrist, he tells me I'm cured. Some cure! A year ago, I was Nancy Reagan -- now I'm nobody."
A Roman Catholic, a famous priest, and a Protestant minister, also very famous and well-known, had a heated discussion over the merits of their respective faiths.
Finally they agreed to differ, and as they parted the Catholic said, "Let us go our ways --
you continue to worship God in your way and I will continue to worship him in his way."
The minister's wife... my second present... was becoming upset that her husband exclaimed, "Oh, Jesus, sweet Jesus!" every time he reached orgasm.
"It's perfectly proper, my dear," he assured her, "and in accordance with THE BIBLE
where it says, `Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'" And the third:
The Catholic priest heard a number of women confess that the grocer's new delivery boy had seduced them all. He made them each put ten dollars in the poor box.
The delivery man appeared last, and the priest asked angrily: "What have you got to say for yourself?"
"Just this," replied the boy, "either you cut me in on those ten dollars or I take my business to another parish."
Hareesh, keep your business here!
I can understand a deep desire in everybody to be loved, and I love you all whether I know your names or not. Names are just labels stuck to you. You have come here in the world without names, and you will leave this world without names.
As far as I am concerned you don't have a name; and if you look within yourself, you will not find any name there. You are a nameless reality -- and it is good, because every name creates a boundary around you, makes you small.
But your question is significant. Attention can do two jobs: if it is forced, it nourishes the ego; if it is prayed with gratitude, it nourishes the soul.
I cannot say anything against your question. Your question is so full of love, gratitude, that I can repeat as many times as you want, "Hello, Hareesh." It will not strengthen your ego, it will weaken it. And so many people here, hearing me calling to you, "Hello, Hareesh," are also repeating the same. Then it becomes a tremendous energy field, a brotherhood of spirituality, where everybody is to share his abundance.
It is perfectly right. Many would have liked the same, but could not gather the courage.
You are a courageous man. And you are asking "... and everybody else knows I am existing as your lover and fellow dance-partner." Here we are not gathered to talk about nonsense -- about God, heaven and hell. Here we have gathered to rejoice, to sing, to dance together in such an ecstasy that individualities melt into each other and it becomes one organic whole.
I have seen it becoming one organic whole many times, when you all laugh together.
Even the Germans don't understand why they are laughing -- but they are intelligent people: seeing that everybody is laughing, they also participate. In fact, they laugh louder than anybody else, so nobody suspects that they are Germans. Of course, outside Buddha Hall they enquire of people, "What was the matter? Why were people laughing so much?
I could not get it."
My suggestion to all the German sannyasins is: Forget trying to get it -- that is what is troubling you! You are engaged in trying to get it and the moment passes.… Everybody is laughing, and you are always second; you cannot laugh first because you have not got it yet.
Here it is a temple of celebration, utterly pagan. Nobody is serious, nobody is bothering about how to reach heaven, how to get a harp, sit on a cloud and go on singing for eternity, "Alleluja, alleluja.…" Those are the idiots. They have been taken up just to relieve the earth.
If you can rejoice with me you have understood me. If my music has touched your heart, it is enough.
I am not here to convert anybody; I am just here to help you learn a little dance of the soul. This is the most religious phenomenon: the dance of the soul -- no fear of punishment, no greed for any reward.
This moment is all in all. Question 3
BELOVED OSHO,
WOULD YOU TELL ME A JOKE OR GIVE ME SOME SUTRAS, OR ANYTHING
BEFORE I LEAVE?
Hari om tat sat... that is the starting of any Eastern holy scripture. It is a very beautiful thing: hari means a thief, OM means the ultimate music of existence. Tat sat means this eternal music of existence... the thief is the only truth.
This question is from Dhyan Om. He is back. For a few days he had disappeared
-- not from the ashram, but he had stopped asking questions because I loved him so much that I gave him good hits. The greater hit you get, remember, your reward is much... you deserved it.
First he is asking, "Would you tell me a joke or give me some sutras, or anything before I leave?"
In the first place, why should you leave?
In the second place, you are a joke unto yourself; you don't need any jokes. But I will not disappoint you.
A few sutras for you:
A curved line is the loveliest distance between two points. Get it?
I have also been a German in one of my past lives, so I understand the Germans more than anybody else.
We are happier in many ways when we are old than when we are young. The young sow wild oats, the old grow sage.
It is really difficult But I will go on telling sutras until you get one.
A cigar gives a wise man some time to think and a fool something to stick in his mouth.
The principle thing an inquisitive child learns is how little adults know.
You know you have reached middle age when weightlifting consists merely of standing up.
We are all born mad; some remain so.
I will not say to which category Om belongs. Most probably he has remained so. Behind every successful man is an astonished woman.
A Japanese proverb: Nothing is as ancient as progress. It started from the very moment Adam and Eve were thrown out of the Garden of Eden.
I have heard the first words of Adam to Eve were, "We are passing through a great crisis.…" These are the first words, and they continue to be relevant every day. Thousands of years have passed, but we are passing through the greatest crisis every day.
Any child who gets raised by the book must be a first edition.
There are books on how to raise your children, how to be a mother, how to be a father; it is so unbelievable that all the animals are raising their children without any difficulty, without reading any book. Only man seems to be utterly retarded. He needs to read how to raise his children. He has forgotten even the simplest things which any animal, any bird, knows perfectly well. Still we go on calling it evolution, for the simple reason that nobody objects. And even if they object -- for example this bird is objecting -- we don't understand their language.
Temptation usually comes in through a door that was deliberately being left open.
A man may know his own mind and still know next to nothing.
The latest thing in clothes is usually the woman you are waiting for. When you don't know what you are doing, do it neatly.
Beauty is only skin-deep, but ugliness goes right to the bones.
What no wife of a philosopher can ever understand is that a philosopher is working when he is staring out of the window.
You can be positive of anything of which others are as ignorant as you are.
It is because of such fundamental principles that God goes on existing, the devil goes on existing, heaven and hell go on existing, sin and virtue go on existing. And you can be positive, absolutely positive... because neither you know nor anybody else knows, so nobody is going to contradict, nobody is going to negate. Only an innocent person may perhaps start saying things which go against all the ignorant people of the world.
One of the hardest decisions in life is deciding when to start middle age.
One: old age is when your symptoms are the most interesting things in your life. Two: old age is when your face in the morning has more wrinkles than your bed.
Three: old age is when you not only cannot remember when you first made love, but also when you last did it.
That is real old age!
And you ask for a joke also. A joke that I hope can be understood... otherwise I will try another -- but I will not allow you to leave this place disappointed.
First: Rabbi Gideon Finkelstein died and went to heaven. He saw only three people there, reading by a dim light. One of them was reading PLAYBOY, another PENTHOUSE, and the other POPULAR SCIENCE. He decided to see what hell was like.
The rabbi got to the devil's domain and it turned out to be a big night club with every kind of music being played. There was an eight-piece Dixieland band, a thirty-piece swing band, three discos, and all the people were dancing.
Rabbi Finkelstein went back up to heaven and asked for an audience with God. "I don't understand it, Lord," he said, "there are only three people here in heaven and they are all reading. Down in hell everybody is dancing and having a good time. Why can't we have that in heaven?"
The Lord said, "I can't hire a band for just three people."
And second..if you have missed the first joke, this certainly you will miss.
Three old ladies were sitting together on a park bench when a flasher walked up to them, opened his coat, and exposed himself.
The first old lady had a stroke, and the second old lady had also a stroke, but the third old lady's arms were too short to reach.
Okay, Vimal? Yes, Osho.
The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here Chapter #9
Chapter title: Enlightenment is none of your business
10 September 1987 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium Archive
code: 8709105
ShortTitle: PILGR09
Audio: Yes Video: Yes Length: 102
mins
Question 1 BELOVED OSHO,
WATCHING THE MIND, IT SEEMS TO ME THERE IS AN INFINITE OCEAN OF
THOUGHTS. MEDITATION GIVES ME MORE PEACE AND GROUNDING, BUT
HEARING YOU SPEAK ABOUT ENLIGHTENMENT -- IT SEEMS TO ME FAR, FAR AWAY.
CAN YOU GIVE ME SOME ADVICE?
Dhyan Jashan, enlightenment is as far away as you are from yourself; hence the distance differs from individual to individual.
You are certainly in a difficult position: first, you are a German, and nobody has ever heard of any German becoming enlightened. Only one of my German sannyasins used to become once in a while enlightened, and again he understood, "What am I doing? It is not for me," and he dropped the idea. That happened many times. Just now I have heard that he is washing dishes in a Zorba the Buddha restaurant. The person who told me about him had asked him, "What happened? You had become enlightened "
He said, "Forget all about it. Five times I became enlightened, and then I dropped the whole idea. I am feeling far happier washing dishes in the restaurant." What was happening was that whenever he would come here he would become unenlightened, and whenever he would go to Germany he would become enlightened. In Germany there was no question, no objection; nobody has even heard what it means, so in Germany it would be easier. Here it is a little difficult.
Secondly, you are really in a big dilemma: you are a liar! First a German, and then a liar makes things very complex -- otherwise enlightenment is as easy as nothing else in the world. Everything needs some effort, except enlightenment. Everything needs you to go somewhere, everything needs you to do some climbing the ladder -- except enlightenment.
Enlightenment is the easiest, because it is not an achievement. Don't make a goal of it...
that's what is making it difficult for you. If you are feeling good and grounded in meditation, you are perfectly in the right direction. Just get all your ocean of thoughts settled. Let it become a lake without any ripples.
You drop the idea of enlightenment -- it is none of your business. Meditation is going well; that means the tree is growing well, the flowers will be coming in their own time, in their own season. No tree is worried, no tree is concerned about why the flowers have not come yet; they always come in their own time.
All that you have to take care of is that the tree should not die, that it should be nourished, that it should have a good soil, that it should be watered, that it should have your love, your friendship. All you can do is nourish your meditation, become more and more grounded and centered. One day suddenly, from nowhere... the explosion.
You don't have to go to enlightenment; it comes to you. In fact, even that is not right to say. It does not come either; it happens -- and it happens from your innermost core. It is an explosion, just like the explosion of an atom. Atomic explosion comes from the innermost core of the atom. Enlightenment is the explosion of your innermost life center.
Suddenly all darkness is gone! A light has descended upon you from every side, and a light that needs no fuel... a light that remains, that has come forever.
Nobody can become unenlightened; that is an impossibility, that's a difficult task
-- even a German cannot do that. But enlightenment becomes a problem because you go on hearing me. I am the problem. I cannot stop talking about enlightenment, and that creates the desire in you and the longing in you. Just don't listen to me! The moment I say
"Enlightenment..." simply say, "It is not for us." If you can avoid...
You cannot make me feel responsible for it, because I am helpless, I will continue to talk, I cannot talk about anything else. Whatever I say suddenly turns out to be something about enlightenment. Just watch...
A priest went to a ranch in order to buy a horse, and saw a beautiful one that he
liked and asked if he could try it. "Sure," said the rancher, "but I have to tell you something. That horse used to be owned by the bishop, and if you want the horse to move, you have to say, `Good Lord,' and if you want him to stop, you have to say, Àmen.'"
"That's okay," said the priest and jumped up and said, "Good Lord." The horse promptly moved off and then was seen galloping in the mountains. The priest was yelling, "Good Lord, good Lord." and the horse was really moving.
But suddenly they were coming to the edge of the cliff and, in panic, stricken with fear, he yelled, "Stop, stop!" That did not work and then he remembered and shouted, "Amen."
The horse stopped right on the edge of the cliff and, wiping his brow with his relief, the priest said, "Good Lord!"
Do you think Gautam Buddha could have made this story in any way connected with enlightenment? But I am just incurable. I see every element in it exactly leading to enlightenment. All that you need is the last "Good Lord"... finished!
There is no hurry. You are moving slowly, gradually, you are getting grounded, becoming centered, but listening to me your desire catches fire. It starts thinking, "If meditation is so beautiful, so silent, what will enlightenment be like?" And then it becomes a constant worry and a tension. It will not help you; it will even disturb your meditation.
But you should look at my trouble also. If I don't talk about enlightenment, you are not going even to do meditation; if I talk about enlightenment, that disturbs meditation. Now you tell me the way...! So just be sane. Enlightenment comes -- I can guarantee you it comes. It is not as though it is something that has not happened to many people. You have the potential for it, but you have to understand the whole process.
In the beginning the master goes on telling you all the beauties and all the blissfulness and all the ecstasies of enlightenment. He has to -- otherwise who has time to meditate?
Television is there, football matches are going on.… The world all around is so full of idiots doing all kinds of gymnastics: boxers are boxing, actors are acting -
- who has time for meditation, and for what?
If I don't talk about enlightenment, then naturally you will ask me, "Why should I meditate?" And the moment I say "Enlightenment..." trouble arises. Then your mind is habitually making everything a goal, far away. Mind enjoys challenge, and enlightenment is not a challenge.
People even want to go to Everest. When Edmund Hillary, the first man who reached on top of Everest, was asked by the news media, "Why did you take such a risky step of going to the highest peak of the Himalayas?" His answer was really beautiful, an answer with great understanding.
He said, "It is not a question of my going. It is just because Everest is there, unclimbed, and I cannot tolerate it. It is not troubling me, it has nothing to do with me, but simply the idea that it remains unclimbed... hundreds of people have died trying to climb it, and it has become a challenge. I will risk my whole life." You will not gain anything.…
He reached to the top, looked all around, and felt embarrassed, because there was not even somebody to say "Hello, hi, Edmund Hillary, how are you?" -- not even a single tree, not even a single bird, not even a single animal, nothing. Just miles and miles of eternal snow which has never melted... He did not remain there for more than two minutes; what is the point? Man may go to the moon, man may go to Mars, man may go some day to some star. They are challenging to the mind. Mind is very interested in any challenge: provoke it, and it will go.
But enlightenment is not a goal, it is not Everest, it is not the moon. It is you. You don't have to go anywhere, not even out of your room. You don't have to take a single step.
You have just to be silent, unmoving, and it is there. It has always been there.
So you should understand: the problem of the master is that he has first to talk about enlightenment to create a little interest, a little longing in you, and then he has immediately to make it clear to you that you should not make your longing attached to a goal. You have to find it just within yourself. No effort, no doing, no action... nothing is needed.
Dhyan Jashan, if you can simply remain meditating and enjoying the silence and the peace of it, you have done whatever is needed on your part. Now leave enlightenment to existence. Existence is not miserly; it is not exhausted because a few people have become enlightened. There is no quota, that only so many
people can become enlightened. The whole world can become enlightened, everybody has the intrinsic potential; you just have to disconnect your meditation from any goal-orientation, from any motivation. It is not difficult if you understand: just a little intelligence...
But we live in a world where intelligence is not valued, where the mediocres rule, where the mediocres are the leaders... where the intelligent people simply get out of the crowd, they don't want to be unnecessarily hassled and hustled in the crowd; they stand by the road and let the crowd pass. Once you become aware of the strangeness of the people around you, you will be surprised: how have you been missing it up to now?
Just today Neelam has brought a news which has been published by all the newspapers of India. The statement is from a man called Devahar Baba, who is worshiped by thousands of Hindus, thought to be a great saint. All his qualities for being a great saint are very peculiar. One is that for twelve years he was standing in the water day in, day out. He will eat standing up to his chest in the water, he will do everything there: that made him known nationwide, a great man. Somehow people persuaded him that "it is enough, twelve years..." Just out of compassion he came out of the river, and since then he has been sitting in a small hut made for him on a tree. These are his two qualifications for being one of the representatives of Hinduism.
His statement was just according to his qualifications. The statement was that the world can be saved, all problems can be solved, if only cow slaughter is stopped. Now his statement is being published by every newspaper without a single criticism -- but my statement will not be published by anyone. Now this is sheer stupidity, not intelligence.
How can the world's problems be solved by stopping cow slaughter? But in India it is a very common way of thinking.…
Mahatma Gandhi used to think that if everybody starts spinning his own clothes, all problems will be solved. India is great in finding simple solutions! Now Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is saying that if people start learning yogic hopping, which he calls yogic flying, all problems will be solved. There will be peace, serenity, no war, no hunger.
And I am amazed that nobody criticizes them, nobody holds them by the neck
and tells them, "You idiot!..." The world is suffering with so many complex problems, and you are suggesting that somebody sitting in the lotus posture, hopping, will solve all the problems. Nuclear weapons will disappear, communism will not be against capitalism, the Soviet Union will become a democracy, America will distribute all its wealth to the poor, the West will distribute all its products to the poor countries -- just because a few idiots are sitting in the lotus posture and hopping. I cannot even conceive in my dream...
Perhaps that's why I have stopped dreaming for thirty years. I have not dreamt for thirty years -- what to dream? And if you call these people idiots, immediately somebody's religious feeling is hurt. Immediately an arrest warrant... I have been summoned thousands of times -- I have even forgotten the number -- and how many times have they issued arrest warrants for the single reason that I have made some reasonable statement?
It is a very unreasonable, almost insane world in which you are living. If you can manage just to meditate, you have done more than is expected of the contemporary man. And your meditation is going good. Just go on saying, "Good Lord!" In meditation there never comes any cliff. You don't have to remember "Amen" -- there is no need.
Meditation slowly, slowly turns into your enlightenment. You suddenly become aware one day, Where is that darkness? where is that continuous rush of thoughts? where has the mind gone? Suddenly you are absolutely as hollow as a bamboo; but your hollowness is not empty -- it is full of joy and full of rejoicing. You will dance for no reason at all, you will sing for no reason at all, songs that you have not composed, dances that you have not learned. They are just bubbling spontaneously in your consciousness.
That is enlightenment, but don't make it a goal. Meditation is enough.
Everything else follows on its own. Question 2
BELOVED OSHO,
WHEN YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT SEX AND MEDITATION THE
OTHER
EVENING I GOT MIXED UP. SO OFTEN BEFORE I HAVE HEARD YOU SAY:
"LET YOUR SEX BE YOUR MEDITATION." ALSO, HOW DO YOUR LATEST
SUGGESTIONS FIT INTO 'THE TANTRA VISIONS'? PLEASE COMMENT, BELOVED OSHO, I AM PUZZLED.
Dhyan Smita, when I said, "Let sex be your meditation," did you do it? When I was talking about TANTRA VISION, what did you do about it?
It seems my work is talking and your work is listening, and then finding out contradictions -- what I said yesterday, what I said the day before yesterday...
You get puzzled because you don't do anything. If you had done sex as your meditation, the question about sex and meditation as two interests would not have arisen. Now the question has arisen that you have two interests. That means my first statement has not been heard. And I am not a person to remember what I have said yesterday; I don't know even what I have said today -- otherwise I will be in the same boat as you are, puzzled!
I go on making as many contradictions as possible without any puzzlement. It doesn't matter. I must have said to somebody, "Let sex be your meditation." His question must have been different, the person must have been different. It would have been possible for him to make sex his meditation.
But the person who has asked, "I have only two interests in life -- sex and meditation,"
cannot deceive me, whoever he is. I may not know him, but his question gives me absolute perception of his innermost being. His only interest is sex. Meditation he is putting in just to make the question look religious.
I cannot say to this person, "Let sex be your meditation." I can say to this person, "Let meditation be your sex" -- and that's what I have said. First get finished with sex, have it as much as you want -- because meditation can be done even
when you will not be able to go into sex.
You can always go into meditation to the very last moment of your life -- it can be postponed. But you cannot rely on whether tomorrow sex will be possible or not. It is not within your hands; it comes on its own at a certain age, and at a certain age it disappears.
Then people are talking about it and thinking about it -- which is perfectly good, but there is no sex at all. It is all cerebral, in the mind. And sex in the mind is the problem, not sex as a generative force.
I want to tell you that in the mind these two things, sex and meditation, cannot exist together. Sex is pulling you downwards, and meditation is pulling you upwards.
A thief was caught and brought to the court. He had not stolen anything, but some drama was going on in the house, and he forgot completely for what he had come there. And he enjoyed the drama so much that he was caught. The court asked him, "Why did you remain the whole night, and not steal anything? For what have you entered? You are a well-known thief."
He had been to jail many times, and it was the same judge. He said, "I know you perfectly well, but this is strange, something new. You have not stolen anything, and still you remained inside the house the whole night."
The thief said, "These things we can discuss later on. First I want Your Honor to make it absolutely clear to me that one punishment you will not give me. You can send me to the gallows... but don't tell me to be married to two women."
The magistrate said, "What nonsense are you talking? There is no punishment like that."
He said, "Then it is perfectly okay. That is the problem. I had gone into the house to steal.… But the man has two wives, and one lives on the first floor, one lives on the ground floor. The man was being pulled by one upwards and by the other downwards.
And it was such a funny scene -- one was pulling him by his hairs, the other was pulling by his legs -- that I forgot completely for what I had come there.
"I enjoyed it so much that I started giggling, and that's how I got caught. If I had remained silent there was no problem, I would have escaped very easily. But the poor man... that's why I said to you from the very beginning, `Just don't give me that punishment!' One woman is enough, two women are too much."
The man who is saying, "Sex and meditation are my two interests..." if I say to him, "Yes, go ahead," he will be torn apart. Sex will give him continuous downward gravitation and meditation will try to pull him out of the hands, the chains and the forces of gravitation that pull you down.
Meditation is a way to open your wings and fly into the sky. It does not believe in gravitation. You cannot have both.
So always remember: if I am saying something, do it. You are not here as my examiners so that you have to find out what contradictions I have been telling you. But people take such self-appointed positions.…
Now Sarjano has written a letter to me. He goes on writing stupid letters almost every day. Just because last night, when I went out, Avirbhava was on the outside door to open the car... And I have my own way of relating to people; I scare her, and she is so innocent, she gets scared -- at least she pretends. She never disappoints me, "No..." Who is Sarjano to write to me, "I cannot forgive you that you scare simple Avirbhava." Now, who is he?
I used to think that Swabhav is in charge of the ashram... has there been some change?
Sarjano is neither in charge of the ashram, nor is Sarjano a guardian to Avirbhava, nor is Sarjano my boss. So who gives him all these appointments? He cannot forgive me! -- and who has asked him that he should forgive me? I will not ask even God himself to forgive me. Even if I can manage to forgive God, that will be enough. For this whole stupid idea that is going on all around, God is responsible -- if he is still alive. And the day I am going to encounter him is going to be really the last judgment day!
But who are you to judge me, in my own place, amongst my own people? First he was a disciple; it seems now he has become my master.
Dhyan Smita, I will read your question again to make it clear so that you never repeat such stupid ideas again. You have not done anything, whatever I have
said; you are just listening and waiting to find contradictions. What will you get out of it? It is a well-known thing that only idiots are not contradictory; they are absolutely consistent.
It needs a little intelligence to be inconsistent, and it needs immense intelligence to be contradictory. Why does it need immense intelligence? -- because unless you can prove your contradictions are complementaries of an organic unity, you don't have the right to make any contradictions. I have never made any contradiction, because I can prove to you each contradiction has its own function in the organic whole where opposites meet and merge and mingle into one unity.
You are not supposed to be here to bother about these things. But this is how people are.
Somebody is worried.…
Just today there was an article by Vijayanand. Eight years before he left me; in these eight years so much water has gone down the Ganges, and so many idiots have come and gone here that I cannot remember the names of all of them. Now he goes on writing articles against me, and today's article I was amazed at. What are his objections? He left me because a man who has ninety-three Rolls Royces, dozens of watches, cannot be enlightened.
But he left me in '78, when I had not yet gone to America -- and the reason why he left me was still to happen five years afterwards! He seems to be an astrologer or a palmist or a prophet. And he should know that those cars did not belong to me: I have never looked back at what happened to those cars, I have never bothered to enquire of anybody what happened to those cars.
Here I am a guest, I don't possess anything; whatever my people provide me I use. If they stop providing me even clothes, I will still be delivering lectures, naked! It does not matter.
All those ninety-three cars were not mine. I had never had -- or for almost thirty- five years, even touched -- money. I don't have any pockets to keep it; I dropped having pockets thirty-five years ago. I don't have any bank account. Perhaps I may be the only man in the world who can be called the richest poor man -- richest because I am loved by my people so much that what more do you need. People accumulate money because they are afraid no one is going to take care of them. I'm not worried; I know there are millions of people who would like to
take care of me.
Why should I bother having a bank account and paying income tax? I have not paid any income tax to anybody, I have never purchased a ticket in thirty-five years. Somebody purchases it... somebody keeps it... I don't know. I don't know who has my passport, or even whether it exists or not!
I depend on my love, and I trust that love will manage things. And if it does not manage, that too is okay.
Vijayanand does not know that the commune we had managed in America was no ordinary commune -- perhaps the greatest commune that has ever existed in the whole history. Sannyasins from all over the world had put at least three hundred million dollars into the commune. They were not my property... I am giving him the whole list, so for his next article he will be able to prove that "this type of man cannot be enlightened."
The commune had one hundred and twenty-six square miles of land -- that should be mentioned as my property. The commune had one hundred more cars as well as ninety-three Rolls Royces; they should also be included -- make it one hundred and ninety-three.
The commune had also one hundred buses, twenty of them were fully air- conditioned --
that should also be included in my property. The commune had five airplanes -- that should be also included. The commune had its own cranes, its own tractors, all kinds of construction instruments, road-making mechanisms -- it should all be included. Why only ninety-three Rolls Royces? -- why make me poor? It had houses for five thousand people to live in, and it had temporary houses for twenty thousand people, ready any time to be erected. But do you think all that was my property? Do you think anything here is my property?
But these hungry, starving, greedy, sexually repressed Indians, but pretending to be spiritual, are worried unnecessarily. If I am not worried -- and I have never gone to see the garage where those ninety-three Rolls Royces were. The director of that garage is here, and I have been telling him, "I will be coming some day" -
- but I knew and he knew that I would be the last person to come there.
He made a beautiful place and he kept those cars with care, with such care that
the president of Rolls Royce himself had come to see and was amazed. He said, "The cars, the way you are keeping them -- even we are not keeping our new cars with such care."
Now all those cars are being exhibited in the great cities of America, on television, because one of the sannyasins had painted almost thirty cars in psychedelic colors. All those thirty cars have been purchased by some oil king in the Middle East.
... But nothing belonged to me. I have never looked backwards.
Why should these idiots be interested that I had ninety-three Rolls Royces? They want to prove that if a man has ninety-three Rolls Royces he cannot be enlightened -- that is the rationale of the whole article. If that is true, then Vijayanand has to answer that if Krishna can be a perfect incarnation of God with sixteen thousand wives, what is the problem with ninety-three Rolls Royces? -- at least they are not sex objects. If Krishna and Rama and Parusram, Hindu gods, could have golden chariots, solid gold, and still be gods, what is wrong in having ninety-three Rolls Royces?
And they were not mine at all. It is a strange thing that the whole news media goes on insisting that those cars were owned by me. If those cars were owned by me, then those cars should be here. The government of America has no right to my cars.
Those watches were not mine. Now they are going to... They have exhibited first those watches all over America. One cannot think governments and politicians can be so ugly: in the first place not returning those watches to the commune -- because it was commune property. If it was my property I could have claimed it; but it was not my property, so naturally I cannot claim anything. And now they are auctioning those watches on the sixteenth in Christie's in New York.
Vijayanand is trying to prove that I am not enlightened. But that should not trouble him.…
Even if I am not enlightened, I am not a problem to him: I don't harass him, I don't haunt him. But for eight years continuously he has not been here, and he has been haunted by me. He seems to be something of a nutcase. He should just look into the Hindu scriptures, full of pornography; he should look at the highest Hindu trinity of gods: all have wives, and all are so infatuated with women that
even to call them gods is simply nonsense.
When Shiva's wife died -- he was one of the trinity -- he proved himself almost to be an insane man. I will not call him a god; I will not call him even a sane man, because for twelve years he carried the dead body of his wife all around the country in search of some physician who may be able to cure her of death. Now, any idiot knows nobody is cured of death; death is not a disease, it has no medicine. This man must have been insane. Even ordinary people have more sanity. But these people are gods, they are enlightened by their very birth!
One should always remember: people who live in glass houses should not throw stones at anybody else. I can destroy their whole Hindu mythology without any effort. It just needs exposure -- it is so full of bullshit.
And as far as I am concerned, I have declared myself to have gone beyond enlightenment just to get rid of all these idiots. So now there is no problem for them -- I have already gone beyond. They don't have to be worried about me. I have left enlightenment also far behind. I am just an ordinary man.
But something goes on hurting their egos. What hurts these people? -- my silence? my love? my blissfulness? Everything hurts them, because everything shows that they are living in gutters, and they don't know the flight of an eagle in the sky across the sun.
But when I find people here too behaving that way, then certainly I start thinking that I committed a mistake by becoming enlightened. I could have lived at ease without any idiot telling me that he cannot forgive me... and I have not done anything to him.
I will tell Avirbhava to find this Sarjano; he needs to apologize to Avirbhava. It is just out of my love, and everybody knows it: whenever I see her, I like to scare her a little -- and she enjoys it. Many times I wanted to pass without scaring her, and I felt, "No, it is not good, because she will be expecting it and I am going without doing it. It is inhuman "
But what Sarjano has the right to say any such thing to me? You should be completely aware here.
If you are here, you are here to learn something, not to teach. First become
capable of teaching something, then people will come to you. But don't try to impose yourself and appoint yourself as a judge.
This man Vijayanand had come to the ashram just to hide, and out of my compassion I allowed him. Otherwise I would have told him, "Just get lost. There is no place for you here"... because of what he had done. He was in love with his sister's daughter, which is absolutely against Hindu culture, Hindu religion, Indian mind -- and it is also wrong hygienically, scientifically, medically.
I support the Hindu idea because not only is it morally wrong, it is scientifically wrong to be married with such a close relationship. Your sister's daughter is your daughter: to be married to your daughter... That's why he had left Bombay -- because he was harassed and tortured by his family and by others: "What are you doing...?"
I gave him shelter -- that was my fault -- I told him he could remain here, nobody would bother here. Perhaps he has not been able to forgive me because I know the secret, and I know the real reason was not any spirituality, not any meditation, nothing but a shelter.
He has not been able to forgive me; otherwise, for eight years continuously he goes on writing for no reason. This is for the first time... I thought it is better to say something, because this idiot is not going to stop without hammering his skull as hard as possible.
And what did he do here? Out of fear he sent his sister's daughter to England, because the whole family was against, and the whole community where he lived and the whole industry -- he is a director in the film industry -- was against. All his brothers are famous actors, directors -- they were all against. So he sent the girl away, and here he married another girl just to cool things down, so the Bombay people start thinking, "Now the problem is finished, he has married a girl." And that was a pure deception, an ugly, inhuman behavior.
He married the girl just to cool down the heat that was against him; and once the heat was cooled down he dropped the girl. He called the girl whom he really wanted to marry, his own sister's daughter, and he married her -- he committed bigamy too. The girl he married belonged to a very high-class family in Delhi. She had come here to meditate, but got infatuated with the idea He bribed her,
he blackmailed her by telling her that he was a director -- and he is a director, and a good director -- that he will make her a heroine in his films.
This idea was the bribe, so she was immediately ready to marry him. He got married to her, and after the marriage he sent her back to her home in Delhi saying, "I will come and take you back " He never went there. On the contrary,
the mother of the girl came to me saying, "We don't want this third-rate man to be married to our daughter." They were very rich people; the daughter's father was ambassador in Russia. She said, "If her father comes to know, he will kill me. She is my one and only child."
I said, "I will try." But there was no need to try. Vijayanand escaped from here. He married the other girl, and because the first marriage was not registered, he simply went to the priest who had married them, bribed him, and burnt the marriage certificate. So without a divorce he has married his own sister's daughter.
Now all this only I know. That is the wound that he is carrying against me. I have never told anybody.… But he has been insisting for eight years continuously; now comes the limit. Now I expose him. The family of the girl that he has deceived remains silent, because they do not want to create any stir. The father was a politician and an ambassador, and even to bring it to the court would have condemned the girl and would have created trouble for the family, for her marriage. It was already silent... because Vijayanand got married again, and he denied that he had married the first girl -- because he had burnt the certificate.
Knowing that I am the only person who can expose him hurts, he goes on and on writing against me, for no reason, just to create a defense around himself. I was not going to attack him: I know human stupidity, I know human insanity, I know human frailty and weakness and I have every compassion for it.
But I will not tolerate anybody here in the commune behaving as if he owns the space. If ever again I get any letter like this, you will be turned out of the door. Whoever he is --
because he seems to be very tricky -- one letter he writes which is absolutely ugly, then another letter he writes praising me, and great poetry and great gratefulness this Italian spaghetti cunningness will not do here!
Dhyan Smita, you are saying, "When you were talking about sex and meditation the other evening I got mixed up." The statement looks as if you were trying to do what I had said before; otherwise, why should you get mixed up? What got mixed up? -- sex and meditation?
What got mixed up? Just one thought that you had heard before and another thought that you have heard now -- only two thoughts. But this place is not for thinking; this place is for going beyond thinking. And if you had meditated, there would have been no mix-up.
You are saying, "So often before I have heard you say..." So often! -- you are saying exactly the same as the German sannyasin was doing: so often he became enlightened!
"So often before I have heard you say: `Let your sex be your meditation.'" What have you done about it? Today I want to say to you, Let your meditation be your sex -- no other sex, just meditation.
"Also, how do your latest suggestions fit into the Tantra Visions?" Who bothers?
-- when I was talking on Tantra you did not listen. Now I'm talking on other things, you are not listening. Tomorrow I may not be talking about the same things: are you going just to listen?
As far as I am concerned I have never contradicted myself. Certainly when I speak on Tantra, I speak not as a scholar on Tantra or about Tantra; I speak as an insider who knows what Tantra is. When I speak on meditation, I don't speak about meditation; I speak about my experience of meditation.
Whatever I speak, I never speak without the support of my own experience, and in my experience there is no problem: the Tantra vision, meditation, sex, enlightenment -- all come into one single organic unity.
But that does not mean... According to you, do you want me to say everything every day the same? Then what is the need for me to be here? Just a tape recorder will do.
I am not a tape recorder. I am a living human being, growing continuously, and according to my growth my answers will grow, will become different, have different colors, will have more depth, will have new angles, new dimensions. I am not a system maker; I am simply an explorer of the whole field of
consciousness.
So I will make all kinds of statements. Whichever suits you, do it. Don't be worried about my being contradictory, because that is my problem. If I am contradictory you are not going to be responsible for it. I will arrange on the last judgment day with God, who is contradictory: am I contradictory or is he contradictory? But that is my problem. God will not ask you about my contradictions, he will ask about your life, how you have lived it --
have you lived it at all?
Always remember it as a criterion: if there is a God and on the final judgment day he asks you, What is in your hands? -- they will be just empty. You will not have even a few flowers to offer him, because your concerns are all absolutely unnecessary, irrelevant.
Your concerns should be absolutely just you, and nobody else.
First solve your own Gordian knot, first cut yourself asunder, first explode your own potentiality; and then you have the right to advise, you have the right to say something about these great things -- meditation or Tantra or enlightenment. Right now you don't have in any way, any right at all, to say anything.
Do something! Be something! Then your very being will resolve many problems that right now you feel are great problems. You think this is a great problem, and you say, "I am puzzled." Why should you be puzzled? I should be puzzled, it is my contradiction, not yours. But I am not puzzled... nothing puzzles me.
A man was on safari in Africa, but he lost his guide and wandered deep into the jungle.
Suddenly he was surrounded by hostile natives. He was at a loss what to do. But then he remembered a trick he had seen in an old movie.
He dug into his pocket, pulled out his cigarette lighter, flicked it once and a big flame popped up.
"It is a miracle," shouted the chief, collapsing to his knees. "I have never seen a lighter that worked first time."
If you can enjoy me, that is enough. If you can celebrate me, that is enough.
A traveling salesman, staying overnight in a hotel, found a BIBLE by his bed. On the front page was this inscription: "If you are sick, read page forty-two. If you are worried about your family, read page sixty-eight. If you are lonely, read page ninety-two."
He was lonely, so he opened to page ninety-two and read it. When he had finished he noticed on the bottom of the page the hand-written words: "If you are still lonely, call 62485 and ask for Gloria."
I call this kind of BIBLE really holy: this is the service of the poor, of the lonely, of the lost.
Here, you are to rejoice. This is not an academical institute; it is just a divinely mad communion of people who know how to love, how to laugh, how to sing, how to dance.
And you bring academic questions, that I said something and now I am saying something else.…
If you go on looking that way you will simply waste your life, because I will go on saying anything every day. But whatever I say is relevant to somebody. If you watch carefully, you should choose whatever is relevant to you, and not only keep it in your memory, but materialize into a realization.
Just a joke to make this silence deeper.… First experience this silence, so that after the laughter you can experience the deepness of it... how laughter can make silence deeper, how laughter can make love deeper, how laughter can make meditation deeper. But first, feel it.…
A traveling salesman was passing through a small town in Virginia when he saw a little old man sitting in a rocking chair on the porch of his house. The little man looked so contented that the salesman could not resist going over and talking to him.
"You look as if you don't have a care in the world," the salesman said, "what is your formula for a long and happy life?"
"Well," replied the little old man, "I smoke six packs of cigars a day, I drink, I
enjoy a large bottle of whiskey every four hours, and six cases of beer a week. I play the guitar and I go out chasing women every night."
"My goodness," exclaimed the salesman. "That's just great! And how old are you?"
The little man took the cigarette out of his mouth and said, "Twenty-five." Okay, Vimal?
Yes, Osho.
The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here Chapter #10
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