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Chapter title: Three tickets for titsburg
27 August 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive
code:
8708275
ShortTitle:
INVITA13
Audio:
Yes Video:
Yes Length:
101
mins Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
LATELY, I FEEL THAT THE LONGING INSIDE TO GO BEYOND THE MIND
AND EXPERIENCE SOMETHING MORE IS GROWING. IT SEEMS LIKE SUCH A LONG PROCESS -- DOES IT HAVE TO TAKE A LONG TIME?
Atit Yama, the longing to go beyond the mind is the only longing worthwhile.
All that man desires and hopes for is utterly meaningless. In success, in failure, in every possible way it leads you nowhere.
It is not only that you feel the pain in failure -- the pain and the defeat and the agony.
Those who succeed also feel the same pain in a different way, perhaps more deeply than those who have failed, because they have succeeded in what they wanted and yet their inner being is as dark and as empty as ever. They have everything on the outside and nothing inside. In fact, all that they have succeeded in attaining, in achieving, becomes a contrast and shows their inner emptiness more clearly than those who have failed to attain.
It is just as if you write with white chalk on a white wall: it doesn't show. You have to write it on a blackboard and then it shows clearly. The emptiness, meaninglessness shows more clearly on the blackboard of success than it shows on the mind and its screen of failure. In failure there is still hope; in success there is no hope. You have already arrived, and your arrival is the death of all your hoping.
It is a very strange experience that the only successful lovers are those who never meet, are never allowed to meet by the society, by the parents, by the situations. They are the only successful lovers; the world remembers them for centuries. But once the lovers meet, then all hope and all romance from life simply evaporates.
There is one longing amongst all longings, and that is the longing to go beyond mind. But there is a contradiction in this longing, because all longing belongs to the mind: how can the mind long, desire, to go beyond itself? So the longing to go beyond mind has not to be understood in the same way as any other desire, any other ambition.
In fact to call it longing is not right. It is an understanding more than a desire. It is an understanding of the agony and the pain of mind that makes one feel it is better to go beyond. It is not something in the faraway future as a goal, but something that has to be allowed to happen right now.
If you can see what mind has done to you and what it is continuously doing to you, how much misery and how much suffering it goes on creating, then the very understanding of the misery of mind is enough to go beyond. You don't ask how
to go beyond, you simply cannot remain in the mind. You are in the mind because you are not clear that your misery is caused by the mind. You go on throwing the responsibility on something or other.
Jean-Paul Sartre has said -- and when a man like Sartre says something it is significant; his statement has become immensely famous: "The other is hell." In an ordinary way it appears to be right, because you always suffer because of others: your wife deserts you; your husband does not love you; your children are turning into hippies. It is always the others who are creating misery; otherwise you would be in paradise.
In this ordinary sense his statement has meaning, and that's why it has become so famous and so important. But deep down it is rooted in ignorance.
The other is not hell, the other is only a mirror. The other only reflects your mind, your face. sI have heard an ancient parable...
A woman who was very ugly was against mirrors. She was so much against mirrors that she did not allow any mirror in her own home. Her antagonism was so deep that if she saw a mirror in somebody else's house the first thing she did was to break the mirror. And people asked, "What is the matter, why have you broken the mirror?"
She said, "The mirror makes me ugly; otherwise I am perfectly well. If there was no mirror, I would not have been ugly."
The same is the situation when Jean-Paul Sartre says that the other is hell. It is you, it is your mind. And because Sartre goes on depending on this understanding, a man of his caliber and genius never transcends mind, never even thinks of it. It is unfortunate that such beautiful people with such sharp intelligence remain unaware of a simple fact that in your relationships it is your mind that is reflected. In your misery it is your mind; in your jealousy it is your mind; in your hate it is your mind; in your lust for power it is your mind.
Once you see the multidimensional capacity of the mind to create hell for you, the very understanding takes you out of it. You don't have to long, you don't have to desire; you don't have to do anything else other than understand the mind.
Yama, you are saying to me, "I feel that the longing inside to go beyond the mind and experience something more is growing." Superficially, anybody will say that a spiritual desire has taken possession of you, but I am going to be a little hard on you.
First, the feeling is part of the mind, the longing is part of the mind, to have some experience is a desire of the mind... and to have something even more is the very nature of mind. It can be reduced to a simple statement: Mind always asks for more. It may be money or it may be meditation, it doesn't matter -- mind goes on asking for more.
Even if you get God himself, the mind will still ask the same thing: something more.
What are you going to do with this God? Now you are stuck forever. Just think of yourself getting stuck with God forever! The mind may even suggest to you, "It is better to lose this fellow rather than to remain stuck with him; either get something more... or even less will do, but a change is absolutely needed."
Mind is a continuous thirst for more. It never finds fulfillment.
So you have to understand one thing, that this longing should not be part of the mind.
This desire to experience something more should not be mind deceiving you in the name of religion, in the name of spirituality.
The only way to avoid the mind and its deceptions -- and they are very subtle -- the only way is to drop these words: `longing', èxperience', `more'. Rather try to understand the mind, what it is. Look into every nook and corner of the mind, from where all desires arise, all longings arise, from where all passions arise. Just look into this source of all your life.
With the very understanding that the mind is the hell, you will find yourself beyond it; you will not have to go beyond it.
It is almost like when you find your house is on fire. When you see it on fire, you don't think and contemplate what to do. You don't consult holy scriptures for
right instructions.
You simply jump out of the house -- whether it is a door or a window it doesn't matter; whether you are properly dressed or not it doesn't matter. You know a great crowd is waiting, but if you are in your bathroom and suddenly find the house is on fire, you will jump out of the window naked. You will forget to take even the towel with you. It is not a time to think of all these trivia and the crowd is not going to be angry with you, even in Poona. Even the police commissioner is not going to take any action against you. In such a situation ordinary laws don't apply.
The transcendence from mind has happened only to a very few people in the world. And the reason is that most people get deceived by the mind. The mind itself starts asking for transcendence, for going beyond, for searching the truth, and you forget that these are subtle devices of the mind to take you astray from one single thing: that is a deep understanding of mind itself.
Neither transcendence is needed nor going beyond is needed nor any spiritual experience is needed. What is needed is a total understanding of your mind and its structure and its functioning. And that very understanding, without any effort on your part, will become the transcendence, will take you beyond, will give you the experience that mind was only dreaming about and deceiving you.
Your question is certainly arising from the mind, because the next thing it says is: "It seems like such a long process." Understanding is not a long process. Understanding is immediate. You come across a snake on the road -- understanding does not take a long time. You simply jump out of the way without even thinking what you are doing.
In my childhood, in front of the house in which I used to live were only shops. On my side of the road there were residential houses, but on the opposite side there were only shops. So after nine o'clock at night the shops on the other side of the road were closed and it became utterly dark -at that time electricity had not come to my village -- and we used to frighten people, people who were very strong, particularly those who bragged so much about their strength.
Just nearby there was a gymnasium, the most famous in the area, where people were body-building, and they had champions. And we were very small but we knew that whether you are a champion or a great wrestler, it does not matter. We
used to purchase paper snakes from the market and we would put them on the other side of the road attached with a thin black thread held in our hands, while we sat in our house. Nobody in the house was concerned that we were doing anything; we were simply sitting, just holding the thread and watching for the right person.
Whenever we would see some great wrestler coming we would start pulling our thread slowly. And as the snake came on the road the scene was worth seeing. The wrestler would forget everything: he was carrying a lamp in his hand, the lamp would fall down and the wrestler would run so fast -- sometimes he would fall down.
And a crowd would gather, "What has happened?" And he would say, "There was such a great snake."
The people said, "This is strange, every night the snake appears."
One day they tried to look for the snake, "It has to be found because some day somebody is going to be killed by the snake." And they found a paper snake, they found the thread, and they found me hiding behind my grandfather's bed! Seeing that something difficult is happening, I simply put the thread around my grandfather's leg; he was asleep. The crowd woke him up -- I also was with the crowd, asking, "What you are doing?"
He said, "I was asleep. What is the matter? Who has put this thread around my leg?"
And the crowd also saw that he had been fast asleep and that somebody else was behind the game. And this snake appears every day after nine o'clock, and it has made people so afraid that many people have stopped going out of their houses after nine o'clock.
And they said to my grandfather, "Be watchful next time; just remain alert and watch who is doing this trick."
My grandfather knew who must be doing it. But I was with the crowd saying, "You have to be a little alert." And when everybody was gone he said, "You rascal! You are doing this. I have seen you in the daytime with that snake and that thread... but this is too much, that you put it around my leg."
I said, "There was no other way. There was nobody else except you. I was hiding behind you when I saw that I was going to be caught and I said, "It is good, because nobody can find fault with a sleeping old man. So you have to forgive me, but it was such an urgent situation."
When you come across a snake, whether it is paper or made of rubber or plastic or dead does not matter. It does not take any time to freak out; it is not a process. You say it is a long process, "such a long process -- does it have to take a long time?"
Somebody has sent me the Ashram's Law of Shortcut: The shortest distance between two points is always under construction.
It is very difficult to find any shortcut here... but there is no need either if you follow rightly my understanding, my approach. Time is not involved at all; neither is any kind of distance.
This very moment you can look at your mind, and you can see all that your mind contains. And that will be enough just to be finished with it. It is not a question of time; it is not a question of effort. It is only a question of clear understanding.
That's what we don't do. We fight with anger, we fight with jealousy, we fight with everything, but fighting never helps because it takes time. And fighting shows one thing absolutely: that you don't understand that by fighting you cannot go beyond mind.
Fighting is simply one part of mind fighting with another part. It is like making both my hands fight with each other. Do you think any hand is going to win? It depends on me; I can make the right hand win or I can change the idea and make the left hand win. But I know perfectly well that it is within my power: both hands are mine.
Any conflict in your mind, any split in your mind is just a game. You have become two teams, football teams or... And you can go on playing the game and you can enjoy that you are on a spiritual pilgrimage, that you are a great seeker -
- but you are just playing football. And you are playing for both sides; there is no question of any victory, no question of any defeat.
That's what so-called religious people have been doing and are still doing. Their rituals, their prayers, their austerities certainly take time. And not only do they
take time, they never arrive anywhere, they remain the same persons. Maybe they have repressed their sexuality, but the sexuality is there. Repressed, it becomes more dangerous because it becomes more deep-rooted in your unconscious, from where it will create a thousand and one perversions.
I have heard that three rabbis were standing on the railway station. They were going somewhere, obviously. And finally the youngest one said, "Now it seems the train is going to come and I should get the tickets."
So he went to the window and saw a beautiful woman working on her register. The young rabbi said to the woman, "Lady, how much will it cost for Titsburgh?" He forgot that he is going to Pittsburgh.
The woman was very angry, and said, "You are a religious man..." The rabbi felt very ashamed. He came back and told the other rabbis, "You can purchase the ticket because I am feeling very nervous, and in my nervousness I have said something wrong."
They said, "But tell us what you have said wrong."
He said, "I cannot repeat it. And don't make me feel more guilty; I am feeling very bad."
So the second rabbi, more elderly than the first, said, "I'm going. What kind of nervousness is this? Just purchasing the ticket..." And the moment he saw those beautiful tits he forgot everything -- his old age, his austerities, his rituals, his prayers; all were forgotten. And of course, because he was older he committed more mistakes because his unconscious and his repression were greater. He said, "Just give me three tickets for Titsburgh and the change you can give me in nipples."
The woman was outraged. She said, "You rascals! You are pretending to be rabbis? The first one came and now you have come, and you are worse than the first."
And the second rabbi came back trembling. Then the oldest rabbi said, "What is the matter with you idiots? Just purchasing a ticket... What happens on the window?"
The second one said, "You go and see yourself. Something goes wrong. I was
not thinking that I can do such a stupid thing, but it simply came out."
The old rabbi said, "That window seems to be mysterious. But let me try." And of course he was a very strict disciplinarian, a perfectionist, and the oldest of all. He kept himself very alert seeing that two persons have failed and something is wrong there. He saw the tits but he understood immediately, Okay, so this is the problem: Pittsburgh must be becoming Titsburgh!
He took the right approach and said, "Lady, how much will it be for Pittsburgh?"
The lady said, "You are really a religious person. Those two fellows are so ungentlemanly. They should not be accepted as rabbis."
The rabbi said, "You are right. I will put them right, but I'm going to put you right too!
You are not dressed properly. And remember, when you die Saint Finger on the gate of heaven will show his peter at you!"
The old man became angry...
But you cannot get away from the repressed; it is going to come in some way or other.
Now Saint Peter becomes Saint Finger, and the poor finger becomes peter.
Perversions are the only achievement of the repressed approach of all your religions. It has created a very perverted humanity. I will not say to you to do something to transcend mind -- I will say to you: the only scientific approach is to understand. First understand mind, which is your reality. Why be in such a hurry of going beyond it without understanding it? Understand it and the very understanding is transcendence. The moment you have understood your mind you are beyond it. You will find yourself beyond it within a split second; it won't take any more time. It is not a process, it is a quantum leap.
My effort is to continuously emphasize that meditation is nothing but watching the mind, understanding the mind, seeing all its subtle and cunning ways. And once you have become perfectly aware of all its conscious, subconscious and unconscious layers you are already out of it. In your very watching you have gone beyond. And beyond the mind there is no desire for more, because beyond
the mind you go on growing more and more into infinity. There is no need to desire, it happens spontaneously.
So the first thing is an understanding of the mind and the second thing is to rejoice in spontaneous growth.
The young nun rushed into the mother superior's office and exclaimed, "We have got a fresh case of syphilis in the convent!" The mother superior looked up and said, "Thank God. I'm sick to death of red wine!"
It is a little difficult. The nun has reported to the superior mother that they have received a fresh case of syphilis. And the superior mother said, "Thank God. I'm sick to death of red wine. Always red wine, red wine... At least something fresh has come."
A doctor received an urgent phone call. "Doctor," said the voice. "My wife swallowed my fountain pen two hours ago."
"Why did not you phone me sooner?" asked the doctor.
"I have been using my pencil up to now," replied the husband, "but the lead has broken and I don't have a sharpener."
Life is so ridiculous and so hilarious, that if you just try to understand your mind, you will have a great laugh at yourself and what you have been doing.
Once one of the girlfriends of Pablo Picasso said, "If my boyfriend would ever meet a woman on the street who looked like the women in his paintings he would fall over in a dead faint."
But Picasso is not aware what he is painting. The girlfriend is saying, "If some day on the road he meets the women he paints, he will forget all painting; he will faint and fall over on the road." But Picasso is not aware that all his paintings are nightmarish. And he has been working so hard on those paintings all his life. And he was a genius, but he must be absolutely unconscious of what he is doing.
What are you doing? What goes on in your mind? What kinds of paintings do you make?
What kinds of dreams come to you? What things make you jealous? What things
make you infatuated? Just watch. You have been given, free of charge by your biology, a whole television set which needs no change of any batteries or any electricity; it runs continuously from the cradle to the grave. And who knows it may be running even in the grave.
Brain surgeons have become aware of the fact that the brain can be taken out from your skull and put into a mechanical head. All that it needs is oxygen and blood for everything to run through the mechanical head exactly as it used to run in your head on your body.
Your brain continues to function. It does not know that the man has changed. It goes on dreaming, it goes on thinking; it goes on making plans, it goes on being jealous.
Brain surgeons have been very shocked that the brain does not need you at all; it goes on by itself. And it is very frightening that a brain without a body, just mechanically supported for its nourishment is perfectly well and it goes on doing the same old exercises.
You are being used by your brain almost like a mechanical support, nothing much more.
This brain certainly has to be transcended, but to transcend it you are not to fall into the trap of taking any support from the same brain. If you take any support from it, you will never be able to get out of its trap. The only way not to take support is just to watch, wait and see all its functions. And you will feel immensely relieved immediately, because it has nothing to do with you, it is just a biocomputer.
And this understanding that "I am separate" is the transcendence, is what you mean by going beyond.
Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,
IN MY FIRST FEW MONTHS HERE, WHILE MEDITATING, A FEW TIMES I CAME ACROSS A VERY INTENSE SPACE WHERE IT WAS AS IF TIME HAD
STOPPED. BUT NOW IT DOES NOT HAPPEN, AND I CAN FEEL THAT THERE IS
SOME EXPECTANCE IN ME, THOUGH I REMEMBER THAT THE SPACE ONLY
CAME WHEN I WAS NOT LOOKING FOR IT. EVEN THOUGH I FEEL SO GOOD
WHILE MEDITATING -- ESPECIALLY IN YOUR PRESENCE -- SO FULL AND
RICH INSIDE, I WONDER WHERE THOSE SPACES WENT AND HOW I CAN GET
BACK TO THE INNOCENCE OF NON-EXPECTANCE.
Shivam Suvarna, your question almost answers itself. But perhaps you have managed the answer only intellectually. Your question seems to be real, but it also implies the answer.
The answer seems to be your intellectual understanding of the situation.
I will read the question to make it clear to you, because that clarity will change everything.
"In my first few months here, while meditating, a few times I came across a very intense space where it was as if time had stopped. But now it does not happen, and I can feel that there is some expectance in me..."
That expectance is preventing it. And it seems that intellectually you understand it. You say, "... though I remember that the space only came when I was not looking for it. Even though I feel so good while meditating -- especially in your presence -- so full and rich inside, I wonder where those spaces went and how I can get back to the innocence of non-expectance."
Any method -- that's what you are asking for: How can I get back into that innocence of non-expectance? Any method, whatever its nature, will make things more complicated, because you will be doing it to get into a space which comes only when you are not expecting it. Intellectually you seem to have
understood the fact that it was only when you were not expecting it, it came suddenly. And now there is a subtle expectance and you are wanting to know how to get into that state again.
You simply forget all about those spaces. You are feeling good in meditations, why bother about a space where it seemed as if time has stopped? What are you going to get out of it? And moreover, it was only "as if." Even if time had really stopped, what is the gain? Perhaps the battery of your quartz watch was finished... time stopped. There is no other time except in your watches.
A man charged into a jewelry shop, slammed his fist angrily on the counter, removed a wrist watch from his pocket and shook it under the nose of the saleswoman. "Damn it!
You said this watch would last me a lifetime," he roared.
"Yeah," said the woman, "but you looked pretty sick the day you got it."
Don't be bothered about time stopping, great spaces happening. Feel good because you are feeling rich and full inside. Enjoy this fullness; enjoy this richness. Become so much involved in it that perhaps you will find again that time stops, that again that space opens up, far bigger, far more deep, far more intense, because it will be the second time.
But you have to be involved in some rich experience so deeply that there is no need for it.
These things happen only when you don't need them. They follow the same law as banking: If you need money, no bank is going to give you any; if you don't need money, every bank is going to persuade you to have some. They are willing to give you as much money as you want for as long time as you want. Bankers seem to understand this wonderful working of existence. When someone needs something don't give, because it will be lost; it will never be returned. When somebody has so much money that he does not want anything -- he can open a bank himself -- then all the banks are ready to lend on lower interest rates.
Perhaps existence follows the same law. The more you run after something the less is the possibility of your getting it. The moment you stop, and you drop the very idea, suddenly you have got it.
And you can forget those spaces only if you can create another dimension of richness, affluence, blissfulness -- and that is opening up through your meditation so there is no need to worry. And worrying, you will not be a winner. Those spaces came by themselves. Let them come when they come. When they come enjoy them, when they don't come don't even look back, don't even think about them.
This is something very essential to learn on the path; otherwise, you will get stuck on every point. Whenever something beautiful happens, it will always happen without your knowing.
Unexpectedly the guest comes.
But you feel so good that you start expecting. Now you are going against the law. The guest has come only because you were not expecting, and now you are expecting -- not only expecting, but deep down demanding. And existence is very shy, it won't come. Get involved in something deeper and richer in another dimension. And that is happening for you, so there is no problem. You are not empty, you are feeling full and rich. Feel more rich and more full. Go deeper into meditation and you will forget those spaces, because your meditation will bring greater spaces, greater richness, greater experiences. And then suddenly, one day you will find not the same spaces that you had found, better ones; it is always getting better. On the path of meditation it is always getting better.
So never ask for anything to be repeated, because that way you will be a loser. Something better was going to happen and you were asking for something less. That past space had happened when you were not so deep in meditation. Now you are deep in meditation, you have earned more. You have become more worthy. At that time you were not feeling so rich and so full. Now you are feeling so rich and so full, you need not worry. Something greater will happen.
But if you go on asking and hoping for those same spaces, you will be preventing those spaces because existence never repeats. And you will be preventing better spaces because you are not looking for the future; you are looking backwards at the past.
There is no technique to forget. You are asking for a technique, how to become again innocent and be non-expecting. By any technique whatsoever it is not possible. It is possible to get better spaces. Why should you hanker for those old,
rotten, already experienced? -- They are secondhand. Why not wait for fresher and deeper and more nourishing, more ecstatic experiences which are waiting ahead on the path? But, if you go on looking backwards, you are stuck.
Don't get stuck with anything.
Howsoever beautiful it is, there is a possibility of something better ahead. I have always told a Sufi story...
An old man, a woodcutter, was so old, but still he had to go to chop wood in the forest and bring it back. He was just able to afford food one time a day, and he was in his old age. And when the woodcutter used to go in the forest, a Sufi mystic was always sitting on the way, under a tree, the same tree. He always used to touch the feet of the mystic, and the mystic used to laugh.
Finally, one day he could not contain his curiosity. He said, "I touch your feet twice every day, going into the forest and coming back from the forest. And it is strange, you always laugh -- Why? I am a poor man, uneducated, but this much I can understand: I am paying respect to you, and you are laughing. This does not seem to be appropriate."
The old man said, "I'm laughing because you are an idiot. Where you have been chopping wood, just a little ahead there is a copper mine. And with the same effort that you make in one day to get enough wood for your one meal, with the same effort you can get enough copper for two meals every day for seven days. Six days you can rest; one day you can work. I have been laughing because it is strange that a man has been coming this way his whole life and he never goes a little more. He always gets stuck with the same trees. And just ahead of those trees..."
The next day the man went a little ahead and he was surprised. He was very happy. He came and he touched the feet of the master and said, "I am sorry that I could not understand your laughter."
Then he used to come only once a week. But the master started laughing again. So he said, "What is the matter, why have you started laughing again?"
The master said, "You seem to be such a sticking guy. Just ahead of that mine there is a silver mine. Can't you imagine anything? Can't you see that there is so
much ahead?"
He said, "I never thought about it. But you are strange also. You know -- why don't you tell me?"
And the master said, "There are a few things one should find for oneself; that helps your intelligence to grow. I had to say because my time is finished. And I cannot just wait anymore for you to discover. So just today go a little further and find a silver mine."
He found a silver mine. Now it was needed only to come once a month. But he got stuck there. And the master said, "I have never seen such a fellow. Don't you know that there exists gold too?"
He said, "Where?"
"Just a little ahead. And it seems that unless you are forced, you will not move," said the master.
That day he went a little ahead and found a big gold mine. He said, "My God, my whole life I could have carried so much gold I would have become almost a king! And that mystic is such a strange fellow. He knows everything and he never said anything to me."
But that day he thought "Now I have to make one effort on my own. Perhaps there is something more ahead."
And there was. There was a diamond mine. He said, "My God! So many diamonds. And that mystic knows everything? And he thinks I am an idiot! Now I think he is an idiot. He knows, and he goes on sitting under the tree doing nothing, just waiting for people to give something to him. And his disciples beg and bring food to him, and he knows all this.
And he thinks that I'm the idiot. Today I am going to tell him, `You are an idiot. What are you doing sitting here, knowing all that perfectly well. I am an ignorant man and I don't know what is ahead, but you know.'"
So he came back. With great courage he showed the diamonds and the mystic laughed.
He said, "That's good. But don't get stuck." He said, "But what can be ahead of it?"
The mystic said, "Ahead of it? I am; otherwise why am I sitting here? I have something more valuable than diamonds. So when you are finished with your diamonds you come and sit under my feet. It is my last days and I would like to share with you something more than diamonds. But you had to pass through these stages; otherwise you would not have understood that this poor fellow, who depends on people's food, who is just a beggar, can have something inside him which is far more valuable than the whole diamond mine."
The old woodcutter dropped the diamonds there and he said, "I am finished. If that is the case then I am not going to leave you."
The old man said, "You can sit also. There is enough space under the tree. And it is beautiful and very shadowy. And my people bring food enough, so it will be enough for both."
The woodcutter said... he was an ignorant man, not a thinker, not a philosopher, not religious; he has never thought much, he has never dreamt; if he was brought to a psychoanalyst, the psychoanalyst will refuse him because he will not be cooperating. If he will ask him, "Tell me about your dreams," he will say, "I don't have any dreams."
Then the psychoanalyst cannot do anything. Without dreams he cannot help anybody.
He sat by the side of the saint. And as the night grew deeper, the silence and everything became quiet and calm. He also became quiet and calm and suddenly, he started feeling the vibration of the mysterious man. He could not see anything, but his heart was dancing. He could not say anything, but his whole being was for the first time in a state of joy. He has never known anything except misery, poverty and suffering.
Early in the morning, before he could even say thanks to the saint, the saint died. But he had left behind him another saint. When the followers of the old saint came they could not believe. The old man is dead but a new fellow is sitting by his side with the same vibe.
Those followers have tasted the joy and the peace of the old man. That's why they used to come from a faraway town to bring his food. Just to be with him for a few minutes was enough. It kept them running twenty-four hours, celebrating life. They could not believe that the old man has played such a game with them. He is gone but he has left a representative. They offered his food to the woodcutter and the woodcutter became the saint. Nothing was said, nobody declared that he was the successor, but he proved to be a far greater saint, because he was an ignorant man, and suddenly silence turned all his ignorance into innocence.
All that you need is to forget always what happens, and remember always there is much more. There is no need to long for it because it always happens whenever you are right.
Whenever you are in a right tuning you hear the music from the beyond. And whenever you are in a right space the whole existence celebrates with you.
There is no technique to forget, just a simple understanding. If a woodcutter can go ahead, why can't you go a little deeper into your meditation? That memory of a beautiful experience is holding you back. Forget all about it. It is not worth remembering because much more is there.
Keep yourself available for much more. On this path there is no poverty, there is always more and more richness.
On this path you don't become finally a beggar, you become an emperor.
The plane hit a storm and was going up and down and sideways. A little old lady was getting very nervous and suddenly she shouted, "Everybody on the plane pray!"
A Scotsman sitting next to her said, "I don't know how to pray." "Well, do something religious!" the old lady cried.
So he got up, took off his hat and started making a collection. That's the only thing he knows that is religion.
Don't just wait for those spaces, there are greater religious spaces ahead. Don't
get stuck with prayers.
"Before sending you to the chair," said the judge to Moishe Finkelstein, "is there a last request you would like to make?"
"Yes, judge," said Moishe, "I would like to have a look at my wife first, then I will feel more like dying."
People have strange fixations. Don't bother about what happened in the past. What is happening right now is so beautiful, is it not? Then why create any disturbance. Just go deeper into it.
That which is available will open new skies and many, many spaces. And then you will wonder how foolish it was to expect your kindergarten experiences. Those were just little glimpses of the unknown. The whole unknown is still waiting for you to experience it.
Okay, Maneesha? Yes, Osho.
The Invitation Chapter #14
Chapter title: Silence is the right soil
28 August 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive
code: 8708280
ShortTitle: INVITA14
Audio:
Yes Video:
Yes Length:
100
mins Question 1
MY BELOVED MASTER,
I REALIZED THAT IT IS EASIER TO BECOME SILENT WHILE LISTENING TO
YOU THAN IN ANY OTHER MEDITATION. WHEN YOU STOP TALKING
EVERYTHING SEEMS TO STOP FOR A MOMENT AND I GET A GLIMPSE OF
WHAT MEDITATION CAN BE! THESE ARE THE MOST PRECIOUS MOMENTS
FOR ME! OSHO, WHY IS IT EASIER TO BECOME SILENT IN YOUR PRESENCE?
Dhyan Sandesh, the question you have raised is significant not only to you, but to many more who are not fortunate enough to be in my presence, but who will be reading these words or listening or seeing this on the video screen all over the world.
The question arises almost for everyone, that the way I talk is a little strange. No speaker in the world talks like me -- technically it is wrong; it takes almost double the time! But those speakers have a different purpose -- my purpose is absolutely different from theirs.
They speak because they are prepared for it; they are simply repeating something
that they have rehearsed. Secondly, they are speaking to impose a certain ideology, a certain idea on you. Thirdly, to them speaking is an art -- they go on refining it.
As far as I am concerned, I am not what they call a speaker or an orator. It is not an art to me or a technique; technically I go on becoming worse every day! But our purposes are totally different. I don't want to impress you in order to manipulate you. I don't speak for any goal to be achieved through convincing you. I don't speak to convert you into a Christian, into a Hindu or a Mohammedan, into a theist or an atheist -- these are not my concerns.
My speaking is really one of my devices for meditation. Speaking has never been used this way: I speak not to give you a message, but to stop your mind functioning.
I speak nothing prepared -- I don't know myself what is going to be the next word; hence I never commit any mistake. One commits a mistake if one is prepared. I never forget anything, because one forgets if one has been remembering it. So I speak with a freedom that perhaps nobody has ever spoken with.
I am not concerned whether I am consistent, because that is not the purpose. A man who wants to convince you and manipulate you through his speaking has to be consistent, has to be logical, has to be rational, to overpower your reason. He wants to dominate through words.
One of the very famous books of Dale Carnegie is about speaking and influencing people as an art -- it has been sold second only to THE HOLY BIBLE -- but I will fail his examinations. He used to run a course in America to train missionaries, to train professors, and to train orators. I will fail on all counts. First, I have no motivation to convert you; I have no desire anywhere to impress you. And I don't remember what I have said yesterday, so I cannot bother about being consistent -- that is too much worry. I can easily contradict myself, because I am not trying to have a communication with your intellectual, rational mind.
My purpose is so unique -- I am using words just to create silent gaps. The words are not important so I can say anything contradictory, anything absurd, anything unrelated, because my purpose is just to create gaps. The words are
secondary; the silences between those words are primary. This is simply a device to give you a glimpse of meditation.
And once you know that it is possible for you, you have traveled far in the direction of your own being.
Most of the people in the world don't think that it is possible for mind to be silent.
Because they don't think it is possible, they don't try. How to give people a taste of meditation was my basic reason to speak, so I can go on speaking eternally -- it does not matter what I am saying. All that matters is that I give you a few chances to be silent, which you find difficult on your own in the beginning.
I cannot force you to be silent, but I can create a device in which spontaneously you are bound to be silent. I am speaking, and in the middle of a sentence, when you were expecting another word to follow, nothing follows but a silent gap. And your mind was looking to listen, and waiting for something to follow, and does not want to miss it --
naturally it becomes silent. What can the poor mind do? If it was well known at what points I will be silent, if it was declared to you that on such and such points I will be silent, then you could manage to think -- you would not be silent. Then you know: "This is the point where he is going to be silent, now I can have a little chit-chat with myself."
But because it comes absolutely suddenly.… I don't know myself why at certain points I stop.
Anything like this, in any orator in the world, will be condemned, because an orator stopping again and again means he is not well prepared, he has not done the homework. It means that his memory is not reliable, that he cannot find, sometimes, what word to use.
But because it is not oratory, I am not concerned about the people who will be condemning me -- I am concerned with you.
And it is not only here, but far away... anywhere in the world where people will be listening to the video or to the audio, they will come to the same silence. My success is not to convince you, my success is to give you a real taste so that you
can become confident that meditation is not a fiction, that the state of no-mind is not just a philosophical idea, that it is a reality; that you are capable of it, and that it does not need any special qualifications.
You may be a sinner, you may be a saint -- it does not matter. If the sinner can become silent, he will attain to the same consciousness as the saint.
Existence is not so miserly as religions have been teaching you. Existence is not like the KGB or FBI -- watching everybody to see what you are doing, whether you are going to the movie with your own wife or with somebody else's wife. Existence is not interested at all. The problem of whether the wife is yours or not is just a man-created problem. In existence, there is nothing like marriage. Whether you are stealing money, taking it out from somebody's safe or from your own, existence does not and cannot make the difference. You are taking out the money from the safe -- that is a fact -- but to whom the safe belongs, that is absolutely of no concern to existence.
Once George Bernard Shaw was asked, "Can a man live his life so lazily, just keeping his hands in his pockets and enjoying?" George Bernard Shaw said, "Yes, just the pocket should be somebody else's!"
Keeping your hands in your own pockets, you cannot survive! And the fact is that almost everybody has his hand in somebody else's pocket. And that fellow may have his hand in somebody else's pocket, so he cannot stop you because by stopping you, he will be stopped. So he has to accept it, and if he has his hands in a richer pocket, he does not care about you. Go on doing whatsoever you are doing, just don't create a disturbance.
Existence has no morality as such -- it is amoral. For existence there is nothing wrong and nothing right. Only one thing is right -- your being alert and conscious. Then you are blissful.
It is very strange that no religion has defined `right' as being blissful, or defined
`virtue'
as being blissful. And they were in a difficulty to define it exactly as I am defining it because their concern was that in the world, the people they think are sinners look happier than the people they think are saints -- the saints look absolutely unhappy. And if they say that blissfulness is the criterion, whether you are right in tune with existence or not, this will destroy their whole
superstructure. The saints will look like sinners and the sinners will look like saints.
But this is my criterion because I don't care about the scriptures, I don't care about the prophets, I don't care about the past -- that was their business and their problem. I have my own eyes to see, why should I depend on anybody else's eyes? And I have my own consciousness to be aware, why should I be dependent on Gautam Buddha, or Bodhidharma, or Jesus Christ? They were not dependent on me. Obviously, there is no spoken or unspoken agreement. They lived their lives according to their own understanding and insight; I am to live my life according to my understanding and my insight.
My effort here to speak to you is to give you a chance to see that you are as capable of becoming a no-mind as any Gautam Buddha -- that it is not a special quality given to a few people, that it is not a talent. Everybody cannot be a painter, and everybody cannot be a poet -- those are talents. Everybody cannot be a genius -- those are given qualities from birth. But everybody can be enlightened -- that is the only thing about which communism is right. And strangely enough, that is the only thing communism denies.
Enlightenment is the only thing, the only experience where everybody is equal -- equally capable. And it does not depend on your acts, it does not depend on your prayers, it does not depend on whether you believe in God or not. It depends only on one thing and that is a little taste, and suddenly you become confident that you are capable of it. My speaking is just to give you confidence. So I can tell a story, I can tell a joke -- absolutely unrelated!
Every intellectual will condemn me, saying, "What kind of speech is this?" But he has not understood my purpose; it is not a speech, it is not a lecture. It is simply a device to bring confidence to you and to your heart that you can be silent. The more you become confident, the more you will be able. Without my speaking you will start finding devices yourself. For example, you can go on listening to the birds, and they suddenly stop, and they suddenly start. Listen... there is no reason why this crow should make noises and then stop -- it is just giving you a chance.… You can find them, once you know -- even in the marketplace where there is so much noise, everything is going on, crazy.
Just the other day I came to know that in Greece the government was very much worried about the taxi drivers because they were not following any rules, any
regulations of traffic. Their taxis were going anywhere they wanted, against the red light! Finally they decided to specially train the taxi drivers for a week, and they announced three big awards to the perfect taxi driver.
For first place, they could not find anyone; the police were searching for someone to give the prize to, but they could not find anyone. In fact, the moment they found one taxi driver who was behaving exactly the way he should on the road -- the moment they tried to stop him to give him the first prize, he became afraid seeing the police, and he ran against the red light and spoiled the whole game! He did not think that they would give a prize; he must have thought that he was bound for trouble -- he did not care. Just in front of the police, just a moment before he was going to be the first award winner he ran against the light.
In seven days' time they could not find anyone. They could not find a taxi driver to give him the prize, because the moment the taxi driver saw the police standing there, he became even more crazy. The seven days' experience showed that the police and its presence had been making taxi drivers more nervous, and they were getting the whole traffic into a mess.
I don't follow any rules. I have read books; for example, I mentioned Dale Carnegie, HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE, but my
whole life I have been doing just the opposite: how to influence people and create enemies. And I have been successful in that!
Your question is, Sandesh, "I realize that it is easier to become silent while listening to you." The reason is that you are attentive; your mind is still because you want to listen to me. When I stop, your mind cannot start quickly, and before it starts, I start again! I am watching you! I give you only this much gap, so you cannot start your taxi again; otherwise you will run against the red light, and create more chaos.
So my speaking is not oratory; it is not a doctrine that I am preaching to you. It is simply an arbitrary device to give you a taste of what silence is, and to make you confident that it is not a talent -- that it does not belong to any specially- qualified people, that it does not belong to long austerities, that it does not belong to those who call themselves virtuous. It belongs to all, without any conditions; you just have to become aware of it. And that's my whole purpose in speaking to you.
Once you are certain that you can be silent, then your whole focus will change. It is not a question of discipline, it is not a question of being prayerful, it is not a question of believing in God and all kinds of nonsense. It is a question of feeling your own possibility, and once you have known the possibility and become confident about it, the whole religion in your vision will have a different color.
It is a question of silence and consciousness and blissfulness -- it has nothing to do with sins and virtues and confessions. Existence does not bother about your sins -- what sin can you commit? What punishment should be given to poor human beings? Religions have been giving, for small things, eternal hell. One has to be a little just also.
Bertrand Russell has counted all the sins that he has committed, and all the sins that he has thought to commit but he has not committed, and all the sins that he has committed in his dreams. He has given the whole list and has asked the Christian theologians... and he has remained unanswered for more than half a century. Now he is dead; fifty years he waited for the answer. He was asking, "These are all that can be counted as sins: these things I have committed, these things I have only thought, these things I have only dreamt. How much punishment can be given to me on these grounds? The strictest judge cannot give me four and a half years of jail, and Christianity is going to throw me into eternal hellfire!"
To be punished for eternity you need another eternity to commit sins; otherwise it will not be just. In his book, WHY I AM NOT A CHRISTIAN -- he was born a Christian, but as he became aware of the stupidness of the whole Christian theology, he wrote the book
-- he has asked these questions but none of his questions have been answered. The only answer was that his book was banned by the pope. It was put on the pope's blacklist, which is published every year for the Catholics, saying that "You should not read these books."
I am fortunate, my books are also on the list. In the Middle Ages the pope used to burn these books; now it is difficult. But he can at least prevent Catholics, at least old Catholics who are afraid of death and who are coming close to it. It is difficult for him to burn the books; it is difficult for him to prevent even the new Catholic generation. In fact, just by his order that this book should not be read, it becomes more attractive.
The only answer that Bertrand Russell got was that his book was put on the blacklist and his name was put on the blacklist: "This book certainly, and any other book by this man should not be read by Catholics because he can disturb your belief. He is an agent of the devil" -- this is the answer.
He has asked very pertinent questions. He says that on the one hand, Jesus says, "Love your enemies"; he goes even to the point of saying, "Love your neighbors"... which is of course more difficult, because enemies are far away but the neighbors are always sitting on your back.
But Jesus himself threw the moneychangers out single-handedly. He was so enraged that he turned their tables and he threw them out of the temple of the Jews. What authority did he have? And what happened to the love? His authority was only his imagination saying,
"I am the son of God and you are spoiling the place of my father by making business here." And those people were really helpful. Poor people could get money on interest from the temple, and the temple was taking less interest than any other moneylenders outside. It was really to protect the poor from the moneylenders.
And the temple needed some money to run. It was a big temple, hundreds of rabbis; it was the very center of their Jewish life. Throwing those people out of the temple just on the idea, on the assumption, for which he has no proof, that he is the son of God. And he behaved with such anger, such arrogance. Bertrand Russell wants to know -- what happened to his preachings?
Jesus comes hungry with his followers to a village, and the villagers are against them; they refuse, they don't give them shelter. Hungry and tired, he comes across a tree and he curses the tree because there are no fruits on it. It was not the season. What can the poor tree do? And the trees are not expected to fulfill your demands. His cursing the tree shows that he was a very angry man, blindly angry. And Bertrand Russell has classified all these things, and asked for the answers, but nobody has answered a single point.
My own understanding and experience is that the idea of sin, the idea of virtue, the idea of reward, the idea of punishment, heaven and hell, are simply ideas to exploit you, to keep you under control. It is a psychological bondage, because I don't see any point.…
My own experience is that if you can be silent, and if you can transcend mind and your consciousness can grow, it does not matter what you are doing; your actions are not counted at all, only your consciousness.
Actions are very small things, but up to now all the religions have been counting your actions, not your consciousness. They have been training you how to act rightly, and what has to be avoided. But nobody was saying that unless your consciousness rises you will not be authentically religious.
And it was a surprise to me that as you become silent, as you become conscious, more alert, your actions start changing -- but not vice versa. You can change your actions, but that will not make you more conscious. You become more conscious, and your actions will change -- that's absolutely simple and scientific. You were doing something stupid; as you become more alert and more conscious, you cannot do it.
It is not a question of reward or punishment. It is simply your consciousness, your silence, your peace, which makes you look so far away and so deep into everything that you do. You cannot do harm to anybody; you cannot be violent, you cannot be angry, you cannot be greedy, you cannot be ambitious. Your consciousness has given you so much blissfulness... what can greed give you except anxieties? What can ambition give you? --
just a continuous struggle to reach high on some ladder.
One very successful man, perhaps the richest man of that time, was asked, "What have you learned from your life, because from poverty you have become the richest man in the world?" He said, "What have I learned? I have learned only one thing -- climbing the ladder. That is my only experience. I have reached to the highest rung of the ladder, and now I look stupid! Where else to go?"
As your consciousness becomes more settled, all your life patterns change. What religions have called sin will disappear from your life, and what they have called virtue will automatically flow from your being, from your actions. But they have been doing just vice versa: first change the acts... It is as if you are in a dark house, and you are stumbling over furniture and over things, and you are told that unless you stop stumbling, light is not possible.
What I am saying is, bring light in and stumbling will disappear, because when there is light why should you stumble over things? Every time you stumble,
every time you hit your head on the wall, it hurts. It is a punishment in itself -- a wrong act is a punishment in itself; there is nobody recording your acts. And every beautiful action is a reward unto itself. But first bring light in your life.
Meditation is an effort to bring light and to bring joy and to bring silence and to bring blissfulness, and out of this beautiful world of meditation it is impossible for you to do anything wrong.
So I have changed it completely. Religions were insisting on action; my insistence is on consciousness, and consciousness can grow only in silence. Silence is the right soil for consciousness. When you are noisy you cannot be very alert and conscious. When you are conscious and alert, you cannot be noisy
-- they cannot co-exist.
So my speaking, my talking should not be categorized with any other kind of oratory; it is a device for meditation to bring confidence in you which has been taken away by religions. Instead of confidence, they have given you guilt which pulls you down and keeps you sad. Once you become confident that great things are available to you, you will not feel inferior, you will not feel guilty -- you will feel blessed. You will feel that existence has prepared you to be one of the peaks of consciousness. But you have not been going accordingly; you have been following the priests who have destroyed your dignity and your pride.
Sandesh, you say, "I realized that it is easier to become silent while listening to you than in any other meditation," because in those other meditations you are alone. It will take a little time to gain confidence -- that's why I am speaking morning and evening, almost for thirty years continuously. Perhaps two or three times in these thirty years, I have stopped because I was not feeling well; otherwise I have continued to speak.
Every morning and evening I want to give you the confidence that you are losing in your meditations. When you are meditating, of course it is you who are meditating; your mind goes on with its old habit. And many people who have not been given the confidence have turned back. They try meditation for a few days and it becomes a failure and a sadness that it doesn't happen. And they start thinking, "Perhaps my evil acts of the past life" -- which the religions have forced in your mind -- "or perhaps my belief in God is not total; something is wrong with me."
I want you to be absolutely certain that nothing is wrong with anybody; all wrongs have been fed into you.
Religions have not been helpful in creating a better humanity. They have only destroyed all that was beautiful in man; they have stopped its growth, they have cut the very roots.
Man has remained a pygmy in the world of consciousness.
I have changed the whole focus. I don't say to you that you have to do this, you have not to do that, that this is sin and this is virtue. I say only, simply be alert and conscious and silent and blissful, and everything else will follow. Alone, it will take a little time for you.
As your confidence becomes more and more solid, then alone also you will be able to be silent.
With me, to be silent is easier because of one other reason -- I am silent; even while I am speaking I am silent. My innermost being is not involved at all. What I am saying to you is not a disturbance or a burden or a tension to me; I am as relaxed as one can be.
Speaking or not speaking does not make any difference to me.
Naturally, this kind of state is infectious. Seeing me, being here in my presence, looking into my eyes... even watching my hands, you can feel that they are the gestures of a silent man. Slowly, slowly you become infected, contagious; moreover, around a silent man there is a certain energy field created.
You can try one beautiful experiment: just put some sand on a plate and then when somebody is playing music, put your plate with the sand on top of it. You will be surprised to see that every sound makes a change in the pattern of the sand on the plate. It goes on changing with every sound. Classical music will put all the sand in a very silent, very harmonious state; it will create a pattern of harmony. The same sand, the same plate and any stupid kind of modern music -- from jazz to the skinheads -- and you will be surprised that your sand is in a chaos. It loses all harmony, it loses all peacefulness, and patterns are created which show immediately to anybody disharmony, discord.
A man of silence moves with a certain field of energy around him, and if you are
receptive, his vibe starts touching your heart.
Have you noticed? A husband and wife, if they have really been in love, non- possessive, non-jealous -- and if they have helped each other to remain individuals and they have deep respect for each other -- living a long life, for fifty years together, you will be surprised to know... it is a well-known fact noticed down the ages that they start looking almost the same. Their voices, their eyes, their faces, their gestures... they become so harmonious with each other.
Certainly, between a master and disciple the phenomenon is a millionfold greater, because there is no conflict at all. And particularly with a man like me -- I am not in any way forcing you to be disciples, and I will not prevent anybody from leaving me. I welcome you when you are here; if you leave, my welcome remains the same. My love does not change. You can go away, you can even betray me, but my love remains the same. There is no contract between me and you; you are here out of your freedom, any moment you can go. I am here out of my freedom; you don't bind me.
In this state of freedom the master and disciple can come closest, and naturally energy flows from the higher to the lower. It is just like water coming from a mountaintop towards the valley.
Lao Tzu has actually called his philosophy of life "the watercourse way." When the master and disciple are so deeply in tune, because they are not in any bondage, both are meeting out of their freedom -- and an authentic master never thinks himself higher than the disciple, although the authentic disciple can conceive of the master as higher than anything -- energy flows slowly to the depths of your being. Meditation becomes almost a by-product; silence happens on its own accord. Your heart itself starts dancing with the master.
I was reading a statement of Walt Whitman, the only American I have any respect for. He says, "I celebrate myself, and sing myself." I agree on this point -
- every master celebrates himself and sings himself. Anybody who is interested joins the dance. And slowly, slowly there is no master, no disciple, but only the dance, only the celebration.
But this is only half of the statement; the other half I don't agree with. That's where he shows his Christian roots: "And what I assume, you shall assume." That disturbs the whole thing. Again it has come to the same point -- "What I
believe you should believe, what I assume you should assume." Then there comes a subtle domination. No, on that point I cannot agree.
I would have loved to agree with everything that Walt Whitman says, but I cannot go against reality. It is enough -- "I celebrate myself and sing myself" -- and if you rejoice in it, you join. It is not a question that you have to assume what I assume, that you have to believe what I believe, that you have in any way to be dependent on me. You are participating because you love the dance, you are participating because you love to celebrate; you are participating because for the first time you have come across a man who takes life as a celebration not as a burden or a punishment.
It is enough that you enjoy the song of the master. Your enjoyment will bring you closer.
It is enough that you enjoy the dance; it will make you dance. It is enough that you love the celebration, the very idea that life is celebration. And then slowly, slowly there is a melting and a merging. A time comes when it is difficult to find who is the master and who is the disciple.
Masters and disciples, if they have lived long enough in tune with each other, become almost alike -- without any effort of trying to become alike, because that would be forced and that would be false and that would be hypocrisy. Just dancing together, sitting together, being silent together, a merging is bound to happen.
Sandesh, you say, "When you stop talking, everything seems to stop for a moment and I get a glimpse of what meditation can be." You have forgotten to note one thing. What you have noted is right, that you get a glimpse of what meditation can be. You have forgotten to note that you are capable of having such silent moments, that you see that meditation is not something impossible, that it is not only for any exceptional category of people, that it is available to everybody. You have pointed out one thing absolutely correctly, but you have forgotten to see that you are also capable of being silent, which is very important to remember.
Because I cannot go on speaking the whole day to keep you in meditative moments, I want you to become responsible. Accepting that you are capable of being silent will help you when you are meditating alone. Knowing your
capacity... and one comes to know one's capacity only when one experiences it. There is no other way.
You are saying, "These are the most precious moments for me. Osho, why is it easier to become silent in your presence?" In my presence you forget your own ego, you forget yourself. The emphasis should be not on me, the emphasis should be on you, on the fact that in my presence you love me, you respect me, you trust me, so you put aside your defense measures -- your ego is your defense measure.
Pay more attention to it, to why you become silent. Don't make me wholly responsible for your silence, because that will create a difficulty for you. Alone, what are you going to do? Then it becomes a kind of addiction, and I don't want you to be addicted to me. I don't want to be a drug to you.
The so-called masters and teachers of the religions of the whole world -- I have come across almost all kinds and all categories of teachers -- want their disciples to be addicted to them, to be dependent on them. That is their power trip. I don't have any power trip. I love you, whether you are with me or not with me.
I want you to be independent and confident that you can attain these precious moments on your own.
If you can attain them with me, there is no reason why you cannot attain them without me, because I am not the cause. You have to understand what is happening: listening to me, you put your mind aside. Listening to the ocean, or listening to the thundering of the clouds, or listening to the rain falling heavily, just put your ego aside, because there is no need... The ocean is not going to attack you, the rain is not going to attack you, the trees are not going to attack you -- there is no need of any defense. To be vulnerable to life as such, to existence as such, you will be getting these moments continuously -- soon it will become your very life.
If you ask me, I have almost forgotten the taste of misery; and because I have forgotten the taste of misery and suffering and anxiety, I have also slowly been forgetting the taste of joy, blissfulness, ecstasy -- they have become natural. Just as a healthy man does not feel continuously that he is healthy, only sick people become interested in health. The moment that you have become healthy... coming out of your sickness, you will feel health but when it becomes your
natural experience of every day, every moment, you don't have any contrast of sickness to compare it with.
You don't know your head unless you have a headache -- have you observed it? Do you become aware of your head? You become aware of your head only when you have a headache. A headache gives you the idea -- people who have not experienced headaches, don't know what it is to have a healthy head without any headaches.
All our experiences depend on their opposites. If you cannot taste the bitter, you cannot taste anything sweet either -- they go together. If you cannot see darkness, you cannot see light. And if you are continuously in one state, you start forgetting about it.
That's what I call going beyond enlightenment -- the day you start forgetting that you are enlightened, the day it becomes just the natural course of your life, ordinary, nothing special. The way you breathe, the way your heart beats, the way your blood runs in the body, enlightenment also becomes part of your being. You forget all about it.
When you ask the question, I am reminded that yes, there is an experience called enlightenment. But when I am sitting alone I never remember that I am enlightened, that would be crazy! It has become such a natural, ordinary experience.
First go beyond mind. Then go beyond enlightenment too. Don't get stuck anywhere until you are simply an ordinary part of the existence, with the trees, with the birds, with the animals, with the rivers, with the mountains. You feel a deep harmony -- no superiority, no inferiority.
Gautam Buddha had some glimpses of going beyond enlightenment. He mentioned it, that there is a possibility of going beyond enlightenment. He did not say that he had gone beyond it, but he recognizes the fact that there should be a state when you forget all about enlightenment. You have been so healthy, you have forgotten all about health; only then have you come home. Finally even enlightenment is a barrier -- the last barrier.
Now a joke for you, not related to anything! I am grateful to you that you allow me to say anything that I want; you don't object.…
Grandpa Goldstein got drunk one night and no one could find him. They looked everywhere -- behind the barn, in the hay shed, but no Grandpa. Finally, Bernie heard the pigs snorting and went to check. There was Grandpa Goldstein lying in the mud with an old sow, stroking her belly.
"Gee, honey," Bernie heard him mutter, "I have been sleeping with you for forty- nine years and this is the first time I have noticed your nightgown has two rows of buttons!"
... I think this much meditation for this morning will do! The Invitation
Chapter #15
Chapter title: Kissing is absurd to the eskimos 28 August 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive
code: 8708285
ShortTitle: INVITA15
Audio: Yes Video: Yes Length: 104
mins Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
MODEST THOUGH MY EXPERIENCE OF AWARENESS IS, WHEN IT IS
HAPPENING I FEEL INTOXICATED. IT IS A FAR MORE SUBTLE, BUT HEADIER
DRUNKENNESS THAN ANYTHING THAT MAKES ONE UNCONSCIOUS. IS THIS A CASE OF ILLUSION OR A CASE OF DIVINE WINE?
Maneesha, awareness and divine intoxication are contradictory only in language but not in experience. In experience they are synonymous. But the divine intoxication is not at all similar to ordinary intoxication. It is not unconsciousness -- it is too much consciousness.
You become so small, and the whole ocean of consciousness... you start drowning in it.
Particularly in the beginning it feels as if you are becoming drunk. But the difference is clear: you remain aware that you are drunk. The ordinary drunkenness is unconscious; you are not aware that you are drunk. And that is a very fundamental difference.
You can be intoxicated just by too much consciousness because you cannot contain it. It starts overflowing; it is bigger than you. And in the beginning it is so sudden and so much that you feel almost without any control over yourself. That's why the idea of drunkenness arises.
Because in intense awareness you start forgetting your ordinary mind -- your so- called ego, your mundane worries, your trivia of worldly matters -- there is a certain similarity with intoxication. The whole infatuation with intoxicants has remained down the ages, although all the religions, all the governments, all the masters, all the teachers, all the moralists, all the puritans -- everybody has been against intoxicants. But they have not been able to prevent humanity from becoming more and more infatuated with newer drugs.
Older drugs are there in their place; new drugs are being continuously added -- now man can manufacture synthetic drugs, certainly far more unconsciousness- creating than any drugs found in nature. One is surprised to know why, when everybody has been against, they have not been able to prevent it. The reason is very simple, and not far away to find.
It is too obvious; perhaps that's why one feels in a state of ignorance about the cause, about the reason.
Man's life has remained miserable, so miserable that he wants to forget it, at least for a few hours, just to have a little rest. And all the religions and all the governments and all the so-called social servants have not been able to alleviate misery from human life. But without removing the cause, they have been forcing man not to drink alcohol, not to take marijuana. It was absolutely certain that they were going to fail. The cause has to be removed, not the symptom. The symptom will go on its own accord; just remove the cause.
And when in intense awareness you suddenly forget all your worries, miseries, suffering, tensions, it appears similar -- that's why one feels as if one is divinely intoxicated.
Divinely because you have not taken any intoxicant, but there is a tremendous difference too, not to be forgotten: that you are aware.
Any ordinary drug makes you simply unconscious. Meditation brings awareness, but awareness is such a big phenomenon that you are bound to be drowned. And in the beginning the experience is so much, so intense, that you are almost erased, as if you have disappeared. But it is not illusion. It is not any kind of hallucination.
And to call it divine wine is just being poetic. It is pure awareness which does the same work that is expected by people through intoxicating drugs. Intoxicating drugs remove symptoms; awareness removes the very cause. Drugs simply give you a few hours of forgetfulness, and again the misery is there -- and with a vengeance, because it has to wait for six hours; it becomes more intense.
Awareness cuts the very root of being miserable, in anxiety, in anguish. And because it cuts the very roots, after you have come down from the heights of awareness you don't find misery -- you find a peace, a silence, a very mild sweetness and a very subtle fragrance, left behind the tide, the tidal wave that
had come and overtaken you.
It is perfectly beautiful. There is nothing illusory in it. It is absolutely existential. It has nothing to do with intoxicants. Only in appearance, in the beginning, you will feel as if you are intoxicated.
Irving Levinsky was walking around New York City thinking how crowded and impossible city life was becoming. When he saw a man lying in the gutter Irving walked over and said to him, "Are you sick, can I help you?"
"No, it is okay," said the man. "I have found a parking space so I have sent my wife out to buy a car."
Intoxication is one thing: this kind of thing is not possible through awareness. Through awareness you can feel in the beginning things which look strange -- happy for no reason at all, smiling or laughing for no reason at all. And it becomes a vicious circle: when you laugh then you see that "This is stupid, why I am laughing?" Then you laugh more and then it becomes difficult to stop. Just seeing yourself laugh without any reason it appears as if you have gone mad, because you have never understood, never experienced that being joyous, laughing, is natural and healthy.
It does not need to have any cause. Sadness, seriousness are parts of a psychologically sick man -- they need causes. So when you are feeling happy, don't start asking, "Why am I happy?" When you are feeling sad ask why you are sad. But strangely, it has become conventional to our minds that when we are sad we accept it as if it is our nature. And when we are joyous even we are surprised; deep inside we even start worrying: "What is happening to me?"
Just this morning I quoted Walt Whitman, and he says, "I am the celebration, I am the song." It is one of his most beautiful poems, in which he sings the song of himself:
"There is no reason. It is my nature to be a celebration, to be a song, to be a festival." It is just healthy. It is just to be yourself.
While Walt Whitman was alive he was very much condemned, just because he was so happy for no reason at all -- just because he could dance alone, sing, not for anybody else but just for himself, or just as if he was the song, he was the celebration itself. Christian seriousness could not understand him. The ordinary
humanity thought him either mad or drunk. But he was not drunk and he was not mad; he was one of the most intelligent men America has ever produced.
Intelligence is a celebration.
It is a festival of lights and it is a long series, a chain of songs, joys, festivities. It is only the unintelligent who remain sad and do nothing to remove it. It is the unintelligent who accept sadness, misery, suffering, behind beautiful names: fate, kismet, luck -- all these words are nonsense. But these words help people to remain miserable.
The man of awareness gets out of all that is unnatural and certainly finds sources of juice within himself. The mystics of the East have even defined God as raso vai saha; "he is just juice." There is no word in English to translate exactly the depth and the meaning of the word ras -- juice is a literal translation.
When you are happy for no reason at all you find a certain juiciness inside you -- you are not dry. Your saints cannot dance, they are so dry. You can dance only if you are full of juice. And the mystics who defined God as raso vai saha had a tremendous insight. They are removing the God of the theologians, the God of the philosophers, the God of the so-called religions. They are creating a totally new concept of God with which I can agree: It is the juice of life.
It is the celebration of life. It is the festivity of life.
It is the flower and the fragrance.
But people are living, even in their ordinary wakefulness, a kind of sleepy life. The whole of humanity seems to be under a spell, as if they are all walking in hypnosis, as if they are all suffering from somnambulism.
You may have heard about sleepwalkers who get up in the middle of the night and without waking, with open eyes, without stumbling, reach directly to the kitchen, find the fridge, open it, eat anything to their heart's content, and in the day they are dieting! And the doctor is puzzled and they themselves are puzzled
-- "What is the matter? The more I diet the more my weight is going up."
And there are almost ten percent of people capable of somnambulism. They can
walk in their sleep, they can do things, and in the morning they will be disturbed: "Who has done this?" And not just ordinary people; there are cases on record of very great geniuses.
Madame Curie, one of the first women ever to receive a Nobel Prize, was struggling for three years to solve a mathematical problem, and was becoming almost hopeless. Every angle, every dimension, every process she tried, but she was not reaching the right conclusion.
Tired one night, working on the same problem, she fell asleep. When she woke up it was almost morning. She had slept three, four hours just on the table, her head on the papers on which she was working to find the conclusion. And she could not believe her eyes: in her own handwriting the conclusion was written. There was no process, but the conclusion was there.
She could not believe it, because she had been working to find this very same conclusion... and all the ways she had tried, she had reached somewhere else but never to this point. And certainly nobody else could do it, because the door was locked, her husband was not at home and the servant did not even understand arithmetic. Looking carefully, she found it was her own handwriting -- not very accurate, because it had been written in sleep.
And then she closed her eyes and tried to remember whether there had been any dream, and she found that she had dreamt that she was working on the problem, had found the conclusion, and she was writing it -- she remembered it. And then she remembered the whole process.
Now, when she was writing the answer she must have been writing with open eyes. She was a somnambulist, and this was a sudden discovery. Then it was found that many times she had been wandering through the house asleep.
And to disturb anybody who is walking or doing something in his sleep is very shocking.
The person may get a heart attack, because he cannot believe what he is doing, how it happened to be.
In New York a case happened...
One man every night in his sleep, in the middle of the night, used to jump from
his building to the terrace of another building, almost ninety-storey-high buildings -- if he were to fall from there it would be impossible to find his pieces. And the jump was really long; even professional jumpers in the Olympics would have refused, seeing the gap between the buildings. Just a little less, one step less, one inch less, and you are gone.
But people became aware of it, and every night it became a show. A crowd used to gather at the exact time when the man would appear on his terrace, would jump to the other terrace, and would jump back. People would watch it with awe, not believing in their eyes.
Slowly the crowd became bigger. When it was small they remained silent; when the crowd became bigger it was difficult to keep it silent. One night when he was jumping, the crowd, new people, simply cheered him, and he woke up in the middle of his jump.
And you can conclude what happened: he fell from ninety storeys, just in front of the crowd, shattered into pieces. He himself could not believe what was happening. And he had done it so many times.…
A wife begins to get a little concerned because her husband has not arrived home on time from his regular Saturday afternoon golf game. As the hours pass she becomes more and more worried, until at eight o'clock the husband finally pulls into the driveway.
"What happened?" says the wife. "You should have been home hours ago." "Fred had a heart attack at the second hole," replies the husband.
"Oh, that's terrible," says the wife. "But why are you so late?"
"Well," replies the husband, "for the next sixteen holes it was hit the ball and drag Fred, hit the ball and drag Fred."
Do you think these people are awake? They may not be called somnambulists, but they cannot be called conscious, they cannot be called really awake. The poor fellow had a heart attack, he has died! Now it was time to stop the game, but the game cannot be stopped and naturally, it was a difficult job to drag the dead man and then to play the hole and then again drag...
If you watch your life and the life of people around you, you will find a thousand and one cases where people are thinking that they are aware and alert, but they are not. Their action does not show alertness or awareness.
While crossing the railway lines one day, Paddy was hit by a train and badly injured. He spent six months in hospital but was finally released. While he was walking home he saw a toy train set in a shop window. He rushed inside, picked up a hammer and started smashing the toy train to pieces. The shopkeeper came running over, shouting, "Hey, what the hell are you doing?"
"It is okay," replied Paddy, "it is dead now. But you have to kill these things before they grow up and get really dangerous."
Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,
I AM ALWAYS TOUCHED WHEN YOU SPEAK OF EACH OF US HAVING A UNIQUE INDIVIDUALITY, BUT I THINK I AM OFTEN CONFUSING
PERSONALITY WITH INDIVIDUALITY. IS THIS INDIVIDUALITY SOMETHING
GENETIC, UNIQUE TO EACH INCARNATION, OR IS IT THE ESSENCE WHICH
MOVES WITH US THROUGH INCARNATIONS?
BELOVED OSHO, CAN YOU SAY SOMETHING WHICH WILL HELP US COME
TO KNOW OUR INDIVIDUALITY?
Prem Prartho, it is not only you but almost everybody who misunderstands the difference between personality and individuality. Most people live their whole lives thinking that their personality is their individuality.
The distinction is very subtle. Personality is that which is given to you by the society, culture, civilization, education; in other words, by others -- people are giving you their opinion about you and you are collecting those opinions. Those
opinions are creating your personality.
You must have observed very small children whose personalities are not yet developed. It takes time; for at least three to four years the child remains more of an individual than he may perhaps ever be again. He is authentic, sincere. He does not take any note of others'
opinions.
It is because of this that if you want to remember your past you can go back only up to a certain moment -- and that moment will be the age of either four years or three years, at the most three years. After that there is a complete blank. You have been here during those three years, but you don't remember anything. You were nine months in your mother's womb -- you don't remember anything at all.
The reason you cannot now remember these three years is because you had no personality. It is the personality which accumulates opinions of others and creates a false identity, a certain idea of "Who I am." You don't know exactly who you are, because to know who you are you will have to dig deep within yourself through the whole rubbish that has accumulated in the name of personality. You will have to become a child again.
That's what is meant when Jesus says, "Unless you are born again you cannot understand what I'm saying." And it was said to a rabbi, well learned, a man named Nicodemus. He was a professor in the Jewish university of Israel. He wanted to meet this charismatic young man -- so courageous... hiding behind crowds, Nicodemus had heard Jesus many times. He himself was a professor but he had never heard anybody speak the way Jesus was speaking, with such authority. He was not quoting the scriptures, he was simply quoting his own experience -- hence the authority.
Nicodemus became interested but he was not courageous enough to come to Jesus in the daytime, because if others see, what they will think? Jesus was uneducated, a carpenter's son -- perhaps what you call an illegitimate son, because virgins cannot give birth to legitimate sons. And he had no acquaintance with the ancient traditions of Judaism but he was speaking like a born prophet.
Once in the middle of the night when there was nobody else and all his followers had gone to sleep and Jesus was doing his last prayer, Nicodemus came in darkness and said,
"Forgive me. I am not a courageous man, I am a coward. I wanted to meet you many times but in the crowd, before the crowd, I could not gather courage. So I have come in the middle of the night, but I had to come. Please forgive me for disturbing you."
Jesus did not ask Nicodemus what was his question, what was his inquiry. On the contrary, he simply said, "Unless you are born again, you will not understand me."
What does he mean by "born again"? He means unless you become a child again, unless you put your whole personality aside. Individuality to individuality, there is a possibility of a communion. With your personality standing in between
-- you are a great professor, you are a learned scholar, you are a famous man; all these troubles are standing in between -- it is impossible to reach you. You will misunderstand me, you will distort me, you will interpret me, you will make whatever you want to make out of my statements."
And what Jesus is saying is my own experience -- continuously being misunderstood by people who are expected to be intelligent. It is strange but it is not only happening with me, it has always happened. If truth is not misunderstood then there is something wrong with the truth. If a man is not misunderstood then that man has nothing significant to say.
What you know about yourself is your personality. You know that you have a certain name -- are you aware you had come in the world without a name? You have a certain education, a certain qualification -- you know you were not born a doctor or an engineer or a professor. These are things added to you. Your degrees, your name, your fame... all these things are added to you.
But this is what you are. As far as you are concerned, if all these things are taken away from you what will you be? Just a zero.… A plain slate, all writing has been removed.
Your personality is all that you know about yourself -- I am making it absolutely simple so that you can be alert -- and your individuality is that which you don't know and you are.
Meditation is an effort to get rid of personality and to reach to your living sources of life, your individuality, your flame, that you have brought from your mother's womb -- and that you had before your birth, even before you entered
the womb of the mother. You have had your individuality since eternity. It is your essential consciousness which is covered with so many layers of so many lives that it is lost completely and you have forgotten the way how to reach back to it.
And every life goes on adding more and more layers of dust around your essential life.
That essential life is immortal; your personality is mortal.
Your personality is dependent on other people; hence you are always afraid of other people. A famous man can become nobody if people change their minds. And people change their minds so easily. There is not much difficulty in it.
Who is Richard Nixon now? Do you ever hear anything about poor Nixon? He has lost his personality; by losing his presidency he has lost all. Now he is living almost anonymously, as a nobody.
It happened in Napoleon Bonaparte's life...
He was defeated only once -- all his life he had been winning. The battle in which he got defeated by the English general Wellington was a very cunning one. Wellington was not of the same caliber as Napoleon Bonaparte... but he had brought seventy cats in front of his army. His whole army was wondering -- what is the matter? Why these seventy cats?
It was a secret that Wellington had come to know from his detectives that in his childhood, when Napoleon Bonaparte was almost a six-month-old baby, a wild cat had jumped on him -- almost playfully; it didn't harm him, but it left a deep fear in the small child's mind.
It became the first impact on his personality, it became his foundation. Everything else came afterwards. He could fight barehanded with a lion or with a tiger with no fear -- the man was immensely courageous. But in front of a cat he simply lost all his nerve. It was beyond his powers to remain himself; his very foundation of personality slipped. And it was beyond him because it was deep in his unconscious, so he could not do anything; he had no idea even.
Only a woman who had been taking care of him, his nurse, was aware of it. But out of fear she had not told anybody, because it was her fault. She had left
Napoleon, this little baby six months old, in the garden, and had gone to meet her boyfriend just behind the bushes. So it was her fault.
She never told anybody but somehow -- perhaps she may have told the boyfriend
--
Wellington's detectives found out.
Wellington was afraid that there was not much possibility of his victory against Bonaparte, because he was continuously winning. And this was going to be a decisive moment: if England was defeated then there was nobody else who could defeat Bonaparte. So every effort was made to find out some weakness in his personality.
One thing must be said in favor of Wellington. He may not be a great general -- he was not -- but he was certainly a better psychologist than a general. Before going to the war front he looked into the personality structure and he came to know that Bonaparte was not afraid of anything except a cat. That's why he brought seventy cats -- not only one --
not to take any chances.
All along the front of his army there were cats. There was no possibility that Wellington is allowing Napoleon Bonaparte not to see the cats. And the moment Bonaparte saw the cats -- not only one but seventy -- it was suddenly as if all his power slipped out of him.
He became so nervous that he told his assistant general, "You take charge. I cannot be in the front; I will be in the back. You arrange the battle, I am no more in my senses."
The assistant general could not understand what had happened. But it was clear that Napoleon Bonaparte had gone pale, looked almost as if he were dying. Something very essential had simply gone out of him. This was the battle in which he lost -- it was not the victory of Wellington, it was the victory of cats against a six-month-old baby Napoleon.
He was imprisoned on the small island of Saint Helena. Of course he was given all the facilities that should be given to a great man of his caliber, and because he was having almost a nervous breakdown he was given a doctor, a nurse, a
beautiful house... and he was not imprisoned like any prisoner, he was just kept on the island. The island was vacated completely. Only he was there, a few guards were there, the doctor was there. He was allowed to move on the island, on the beach, to swim; he was given every facility, knowing that he was passing through a tremendous personality crisis.
One day as he was going to the ocean, to the beach, a woman who must have been taking care of the horses of the guards, was coming from the other direction, carrying a big load of grass. It was a small footpath; the doctor was with him and the doctor shouted to the woman, "Move out of the way! You don't understand who is coming -- he is Napoleon Bonaparte!"
But that woman was an uneducated woman. She had never heard of Napoleon Bonaparte or why she should move.
Napoleon Bonaparte said to the doctor, "You are wrong. The time is gone when mountains used to move just with my orders. Now it is better I should move out of the way of a poor woman who is just carrying grass for the horses. You forget all about the Napoleon Bonaparte I once was. I am no longer that man."
He was saying a very essential truth. He had lost his personality. He died very soon after.
Only one thing could have revived him: not medicine but meditation, if somebody had made him aware that "What you have lost was not yours at all. You have still got your essential being and there is no need to be worried. What you have lost was false and what is real is still within you." But one has to be aware of it.
You are too much identified with the false, the personality -- that's the meaning of the word; it comes from the Greek persona, and `persona' means a mask. In Greek theater actors used to wear masks; the sound was theirs but the face was not theirs. Sona means sound -- sound coming through a mask. You don't know who is behind it. The only real thing is the sound that is coming out; anything else that you are seeing is just false.
But with you things have become far worse; even the sound is not yours. That too has been a training, a discipline. You have been corrected continuously by your parents, by your teachers -- how to speak, how to sit.
I was being shown around a Christian theological college where they train missionaries.
It is the biggest institution in Asia for training Christian missionaries and ministers and priests and bishops.
I was surprised... I had to stand outside the door with the vice-chancellor who was showing me around. A professor was teaching the students, when you are delivering a sermon in the church, how you should stand, how you should look at the audience, where you should speak loudly and where you should speak almost in a whisper, where you should raise your hand, what gesture should be used at a particular point, where you should beat on the table...
I was horrified. I could not believe that this is religion. I said to the vice- chancellor, "If this is making Christian missionaries who are going to convert people into Christians..." I asked him, "Do you think Jesus had gone through any college, through all these gestures and training and voice? He was an uneducated carpenter's son. There were no theological colleges at that time, particularly no Christian colleges. And still none of your missionaries -- and you have millions of missionaries around the world -- speaks the way Jesus spoke."
The authority was not out of training. It was not out of personality; that is the difference.
That's why I said to him, "Although there have been hundreds of popes in these two thousand years, none of them has been crucified because none of them spoke with that authority. None of them spoke with that poetry, none of them spoke so dangerously --
and they all represented Jesus! I will not accept anybody as a representative unless he is crucified."
I said, "You teach these missionaries to carry a small cross, folding. They should always keep it with themselves and when Jesus is crucified, unfold the cross, stand with their hands on the cross, look upward the way Jesus looked... that is the last and the real thing."
The vice-chancellor said, "You are making a joke of our religion."
I said, "I am not making a joke, you are making a joke by teaching all these
people. You are not even allowing them their own voices -- voice training programs, voice test!" And your voice can be changed, its pitch, its vibration can be checked and you can be trained how to change it, how to bring a new quality to it, more forceful or more peaceful, more musical.
And they had a department where they were testing people's voices, training their voices.
They were even giving them hints about where they should raise their hands. Now, that hand is going to be false -- it is personality.
Jesus also had raised his hand at that point but that was individuality. It was not a training. Nobody had told him -- it was spontaneous, it was coming from his own inner being.
So remember: whatever you have learned from others is not you. That is your persona, and you have to find your innocence again. You have to find your essence before people started putting layers on you, before people started civilizing you, making you more cultured, more educated.
You say, Prartho, "I am always touched when you speak of each of us having a unique individuality, but I think I am often confusing personality with individuality."
Not often, Prartho -- always. Because once you know your individuality you will never again get confused. Once you have seen the real, how can you think of the false as real?
Once you know the real, the false has disappeared from your consciousness completely.
So whatever you are thinking of as individuality and personality are both personalities.
One may be deeper, more unconscious, more rooted so that you cannot recognize that it is false; one may be superficial, a fresh layer, so you can recognize it as false. But both are personalities.
The moment you know your individuality you are finished forever, in a single blow, with all that is false. Suddenly you have no name, no fame, no religion, no
nation. Suddenly you are just a pure consciousness, just a human being -- not even your body, not your mind, not your heart, but just a pure source of life.
That source of life goes on transmigrating from one form into another. Once you discover it your journey is coming to an end. Totally discovered, you are enlightened. Then there is not going to be any more birth for you, any more imprisonment into a body, into a personality -- you have attained to freedom.
Individuality is freedom.
That's why it touches you; even the word uttered goes deep inside you like an arrow.
And the individuality is bound to be unique. The personality is created by the society, so it wants everybody to be almost similar -- the same dress, the same haircut, the same mannerism, etiquette.
For example if you meet somebody here and you start rubbing noses with him, you will be thought mad because that is not part of the culture here. But when Eskimos for the first time saw Christian missionaries kissing each other, they said, "These idiots! They think they will teach us religion, and they are so dirty; they don't even understand the ABC of hygiene. They are mixing saliva with each other, and they think they are showing love!"
Kissing is absurd to the Eskimos; they have never kissed in their whole history. And seen from their viewpoint it seems they are right: kissing mouth to mouth is really dirty. Just think of it, what you are doing -- exchanging millions of germs. This you call love? You are giving your diseases to the person you love and that person is giving his diseases to you, and you both are in love? A great exchange is happening in the name of love!
I favor the Eskimos, they are hygienic. Rubbing noses is very clean -- noses are the cleanest and coolest part of your face. And it is possible that because of the spread of AIDS, the whole world will have to follow the Eskimos sooner or later. Kissing is going to be prohibited by law -- not for moral reasons but just for scientific reasons.
Even shaking hands is not very scientific. The Hindu way of welcoming each other with folded hands is absolutely right. Not for any religious reasons, just for purely hygienic, scientific reasons, because the virus could pass even through a
handshake. It can pass through perspiration; it is possible for the virus to pass through anything coming out of your body -- saliva or perspiration. And people's hands are perspiring. It is dangerous.
Now I have been brought pictures from American magazines, from European magazines, of police with gloves on their hands because they were preventing a protest march of gay people. Now to touch the gay people is dangerous. But who knows who is gay? Popes have been gay, presidents have been gay, prime ministers have been gay, great philosophers have been gay. You would be surprised if you knew the list of great gay people... Socrates was gay. Just now I told you about Walt Whitman -- he was gay. There have been hundreds of poets and painters, writers, novelists, world-famous people, and they were gay.
It is better to fold your hands and keep away. Whoever invented the folding of hands must have been a very alert person.
For different reasons these things have come into existence. Shaking hands has not come out of love; neither has folded hands come out of love. These have both come out of showing the other, "I am not carrying any weapons. You can accept me as your friend -- I am not your enemy." When both hands are there you can see that the other person is not...
Even shaking with the right hand is enough because if a weapon has to be carried it will be carried in the right hand, unless you happen to be a leftist!
These welcoming signs, their origin is not very beautiful, it is ugly. It is just a test that the other person is not your enemy, that you can trust he will not attack you. Both are showing that they can trust each other.
Slowly, slowly the origin of things is always forgotten and then you think this is something great. Folding the hands or shaking hands -- they are really, in a way, ugly.
They show suspicion, they show distrust. But in every culture there is bound to be some kind of gesture. And everybody is brought up in a certain culture, in a certain atmosphere.
He learns those gestures.
It happened that when Japanese sannyasins started coming here I was in trouble
in the beginning because they have absolutely different gestures. Nobody else has the same gestures in the whole world. How have they managed to have such gestures? For example saying yes, everybody in the world except the Japanese moves his head up and down.
The Japanese move their heads sideways. Everywhere else that means no, but not in Japan. In Japan it means yes.
So when I used to talk with them I was at a loss. I am asking, "Are you meditating?" and they are saying, "No."
"Why have you come? You are wearing a mala, are you a sannyasin?" And they are saying, "No."
"Then why are you wearing the mala?"
Finally one sannyasin who understood a little bit of English told me, "You are not understanding those poor fellows. They don't understand you. In Japan for
`yes' you have to move your head sideways and for `no' up and down."
I said, "It is very difficult. How have you managed because the whole world is in agreement about that?"
There must have been some deep reason why the Japanese developed a certain gesture so different from everybody else.
But all that you know, the way you behave, is learned from others, is taught by others.
This is all your personality. The personality cannot be unique, it is social. Individuality is not social, it is existential. In existence everything is unique; every tree is unique, every flower is unique, every star is unique.
Existence believes in uniqueness. Society is always fearful of uniqueness.
It does not like anybody to be unique. The unique seems to be a stranger. Society wants uniformity, not uniqueness. You should eat the same things they are eating; you should use the clothes they are using; you should not try to show that
you are separate from the crowd. The crowd never forgives anybody who looks like an outsider, a stranger. It tries in every way immediately to force you to become part of the society. Then people feel at ease.
But you are destroyed; your individuality is sacrificed for the satisfaction of the crowd; hence, when you hear me talking about unique individuality something deep inside you is stirred. Something that is your real being needs some help, needs some support, needs some invitation to come up and throw away the personality.
Your being a Hindu or a Jain or a Buddhist or a Christian or a Jew are all personalities --
throw them away. And then you are just all one, pure human beings. And in that purity you will find uniqueness because every flame will have its own shape, will have its own light, will have its own fire. Every flower of your being will have different fragrances.
And if some day a better humanity arrives on the earth and this old rotten humanity disappears there will be variety, and variety will be respected and loved. Variety makes life more rich. If everybody is a unique individual we will have a world tremendously rich, because everybody will be showing his own talents, his own genius in his own way, in his own style. Nobody will be a carbon copy of anybody else. Everybody will be original.
And there is no other way, Prartho, except meditation to discover your individuality.
During the hotel-room shortage Bernie was given a room with two beds and told that they would have to rent the other bed to someone else. He was in bed reading when the other occupant, Shirley was shown in. Shirley was a beautiful blond.
She glanced at Bernie and started slowly to undress, exposing everything to her best advantage. When she was finally nude Shirley posed for some time in front of the mirror, first this way and then that.
Finally, she got in bed and leaning over as near as she could, whispered, "How would you like to come in my bed?"
"No, thanks," croaked Bernie, I've already come in mine!" Okay, Maneesha?
Yes, Osho. The Invitation Chapter #16
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