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Chapter title: G-d
29 August 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive
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8708295
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INVITA17
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Yes Video:
Yes Length:
119
mins Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
DOES PSYCHOLOGICAL THERAPY HELP TO GO BEYOND THE MIND?
Vijen, psychological therapy can help you to understand the mind, but it cannot lead you beyond the mind.
Only one thing leads you beyond the mind and that is meditation. Meditation has nothing to do with psychotherapy, but psychotherapy can create a ground by
giving you a better understanding of your mind to go into meditation. It cannot lead you directly into the transcendental, but it can be a help, just the way you prepare a garden. First, you prepare the soil, but that is not the garden. And just preparing the ground, removing the weeds, the grass, any wild growth, stones, roots, still it is not the garden -- this much psychotherapy can do.
Now you will have to put seeds, give nourishment to those seeds, care and love and protection. And slowly, slowly the bare ground will start becoming greener. One day there will be flowers and fruits.
Psychotherapy is only a cleansing process, but it is like all cleansing processes. You have to clean your house every day; it is not as if once you have cleaned it you have cleaned it forever. Within twenty-four hours again dust gathers. You have to take a bath every day, or twice; otherwise you will start getting dirty.
Psychotherapy is good as a cleaning method, but it does not go beyond that. And if you remain addicted to psychotherapies you will have to clean yourself again and again. You will have a better understanding of the mind but just that much is not enough to create the world of the beyond. For that, seeds of meditation, awareness, watchfulness are absolutely necessary.
And once you have gone beyond the mind, psychotherapy becomes meaningless. Going beyond the mind simply means you have realized your own being. Now mind is left far behind. Going beyond the mind also means that now mind is going to function as a servant and you are the master. So whenever you need to, you can use it. Right now the situation is just the reverse. You are not the master, and the mind uses you. The mind is almost blind and it directs your life and sooner or later you are going to fall into a ditch.
All minds lead finally to misery, to suffering.
Meditation is the only possibility for creating a space where blessings shower.
I am not against psychotherapies. I am simply telling you they can be used as a foothold to jump into meditation. You can jump into meditation directly too, but you will find it a little difficult because you don't have a clean mind and a clean understanding. The mind will put every weight on you and drag you backwards. Psychotherapy is instrumental, helpful, but alone it is meaningless. I am using psychotherapy in this commune as a means towards meditation, as a help, as a preparation.
But in the West psychotherapy is used as an end to itself; hence psychotherapy in the West is not of much use. Unless it becomes a stepping-stone for meditation, you are moving in a circle. Every day you will have to clean. Once in a while you will have to go to a psychotherapist. People become addicted because it gives you a clean feeling, but that clean feeling remains only for a few days; again you have gathered all the rubbish.
Psychoanalysts ordinarily give their patients two sessions per week, for years, ten years, fifteen years, and still nobody is beyond the mind. After fifteen years of psychoanalysis one simply becomes addicted to psychoanalysis; now it has become a necessity. If you don't go twice a week to a psychoanalyst you gather too much tension, too much dust, you feel too dirty, too heavy. Now you have created a new problem. Psychology rather than giving you freedom has given you new chains. It is as addictive as any alcohol or any drug. Nothing is wrong in it; in itself it is helpful and beautiful, but you should use it for something better.
Psychoanalysis is good but the good is the enemy of the best. You should not get addicted to the good. You should use the good as a stepping-stone for the best; otherwise it turns into an enemy.
Even psychoanalysts are very embarrassed by the fact that there is not a single man in the whole world who has been perfectly psychoanalyzed. And I am amazed at their stupidity.
Hoping that some day some man will be perfectly psychoanalyzed is exactly like hoping that some day some house will be perfectly clean and there will be no need to clean it again. It is absolutely absurd. The house will need cleaning continually, because as time passes dirt gathers.
Even the cleanest mirror needs cleaning once in a while because dirt gathers on it, vapor gathers on it; it does not reflect clearly, it starts reflecting distortions. There will never be any man perfectly psychoanalyzed, because the process in itself is only of cleaning. Can you get your clothes cleaned forever, perfectly cleaned? They will again become ready to go into the laundry. So the people who are going continuously into psychotherapies are going into a kind of laundry, dry cleaning. It is good, but good is not enough.
Vijen, in a sense it can help if you use it as a means and you don't forget that it is
not all.
In another sense it can be a disturbance, a barrier, if you think that this is all and there is nothing else beyond it.
That's what is happening in the West. Psychotherapists think this is the ultimate, but they have not produced a single buddha. Even their founders, Freud or Jung or Adler are not awakened people. They are living in the same misery, in the same suffering as you are living. They are full of fear. They don't know anything about death, that it is a fiction.
They have not experienced their own being. They are just scratching on the surface. Mind is your surface; your being is in the center. How much you clean your surface does not matter, it is not going to lead you to the center. If you can use psychotherapy as a means it is good. If you think it is the end it is the enemy of your transcendence. It all depends on your intelligence.
A Jew asks his rabbi, "I have two problems. I have asked my boss a dozen times already, but he is determined to fire me at the end of the month."
"And what is the other problem?" asks the rabbi.
"Ah well, my wife does not get pregnant, although she stays home and prays all day,"
answers the Jew.
"You are doing it wrong," suggests the rabbi. "Next time you stay at home to pray and send your wife to ask the boss."
Three months later the happy Jew thanks the rabbi: "Your help has worked! The boss has rehired me and my wife is pregnant!"
The rabbi was certainly a great psychoanalyst and did help the poor fellow. If you need this kind of help then psychotherapy is good, but don't ask for more.
Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,
I FEEL I CAN RELAX MORE AND MORE DEEPLY INTO MYSELF. YET, AT THE
PERIPHERY, THERE IS AN UNASSERTIVENESS, A TREMBLING THAT CAN
CLOUD THE BLISSFULNESS OF LIFE.
BELOVED MASTER, DOES MY EGO NEED NOURISHMENT?
My God! Prem Rajya, I wonder whether you have been listening to me. Every day, morning and evening, I'm telling you to drop the ego and you are asking me a great question: "Beloved master, does my ego need nourishment?"
And you are also saying, "I feel I can relax more and more deeply into myself. Yet, at the periphery, there is an unassertiveness, a trembling that can cloud the blissfulness of life.
Does my ego need nourishment?"
That will destroy whatever relaxation you have, and that will stop your growth going inwards. It will make your trembling more strong and the cloud that is covering the blissfulness of your life will become darker. Nourishment of the ego is against your authentic being; it cannot help you in any way. It can only destroy you -- destroy you as you are destined to be by your nature.
Ego is a false mask; it will hide your original face. Don't ask for its nourishment. In fact, cut off all nourishment to it. Let it die. The death of the ego will be the beginning of your real life. The more the ego becomes strong, the less is the possibility of any realization of yourself.
Little Ernie was taking a walk in the park with his father, when suddenly a bee settled on a rock in front of them. Just for spite, Ernie picked up a piece of wood and smashed the bee, whereupon his father said, "That was very cruel, Ernie, and for being cruel you will get no honey for a year."
Later, Ernie deliberately stepped on a butterfly. "And for that, young man," said his father, "you will get no butter for a year."
When they returned home, Ernie's mother was fixing the dinner. Just as they
entered the kitchen, she saw a cockroach and immediately crushed it. Ernie looked at his father mischievously and said, "Will you tell her, Dad, or shall I?"
Your question really makes me wonder how you have been listening. And perhaps this is the state of many of you. You listen to what you want to listen, not what is being said.
You go on continuously interpreting according to your old prejudices. Your mind is continuously interfering; it does not allow what is being said to reach to your heart. What reaches to you is something else, distorted, disfigured, maybe so distorted that it is almost the opposite of what has been said.
One has to learn very earnestly the art of listening. It is a difficult art, and the greatest difficulty is that everybody thinks he knows it. Just because you can hear, you think you can also listen. And these are two differing things, so different that unless you start listening you will never know the difference.
In the dictionaries they mean the same thing, but in actual life hearing is only because you have ears. Listening happens when just behind your ears there is no noisy mind but a silent, receptive alertness. If there is a continuously chattering mind behind the ears you only seem to listen. Then there are going to be misunderstandings.
I myself was very shocked when I came to know that psychologists have discovered that the mind does not allow ninety-eight percent of information to reach you. It only allows two percent; ninety-eight percent is simply rejected in many different ways. Either it gives it a new color, a new meaning, or it misses it deliberately, takes it into a different context where the meaning changes. But the distortion percentage is ninety-eight percent.
The two percent it allows without distorting, because it agrees with its old structure.
So it listens only to itself. Those two percent are agreeable to the mind and so it immediately allows them in without creating obstructions, without creating arguments, doubts, misinterpretations. And language is vulnerable; each word can mean many things.
The mind has the capacity to choose any meaning it wants, any meaning that fits with it.
The art of listening is based on silence in the mind, so that the mind does not interfere, it simply allows whatever is coming to you. I am not saying you have to agree with it.
Listening does not mean that you have to agree with it, neither does it mean that you have to disagree with it. The art of listening is just pure listening, factual, undistorted. And once you have listened then comes the point whether you agree or not, but the first thing is to listen.
If you listen to something which is true there is no question of disagreement. If it is untrue, naturally you have to disagree with it. But your agreement or disagreement should come not from the prejudiced mind, but from the unprejudiced heart. Listening is from the heart, and hearing is from the mind, it is very superficial. And because the heart is deeper, any word that enters you first has to encounter the mind. Before it reaches the heart, the mind has done many things with it.
A man is standing at the bar and another guy walks up to him and says, "Are you Joe Smith?"
The man says, "Yes."
The guy says, "Were you in Chicago a few weeks ago?"
Joe says, "Just a minute," and takes out his notebook, turns some pages, and then says,
"Yes, I was in Chicago a few weeks ago."
The guy says, "Were you in room two one three?" Joe looks in his notebook and says, "Yes."
The guy says, "Did you meet Mrs. Wentworth in room two one four?" Joe looks in his notebook and says, "Yes."
The guy says, "Tell me, did you make love to Mrs. Wentworth?"
Joe scans his notebook again and says, "Yes, I made love to Mrs. Wentworth."
The guy says, "Well, I'm Mr. Wentworth and I don't like it."
Again Joe looks in his notebook and says, "You know, that's funny. I did not like it either."
This is what you call hearing. He agrees perfectly, but he hears only what he wants to hear; he understands what he wants to understand.
And this is almost our everyday situation. At least here with me, you have to change this pattern, you have to be utterly silent because things are being said to you which can bring a transformation in your whole life. Here you are not learning geography or history or philosophy; here you are learning the very art, the alchemy of transformation. It is not collecting knowledge and information and becoming more knowledgeable.
The effort here is just the opposite: to make you less knowledgeable and more innocent, to the final point where you can say, "I don't know anything." Just like a newly born child, you are pure consciousness, unscratched, unspoiled. This is the state of a sage, of a wise man. His life has a completion. From childhood he began and he moved the whole circle of life. Back he has come again to the same point that he has left in his childhood, the pure consciousness which knows nothing but reflects everything. He is capable of understanding everything exactly as it is without any distortion because he has no prejudices to distort. The state of the sage has no preconceived ideas to mix and to mess and to disfigure.
There is a story in the life of Lao Tzu. I have loved it very much...
He used to go for a morning walk deep in the mountains very early before the sunrise when it was dark and there were still stars in the sky. And he used to go to the peak from where the sunrise was the most beautiful. And he would stand there sometimes for hours, just watching the sunrise, listening to the birds, seeing the trees dancing with joy and life, opening their flowers, releasing their fragrance. And then he would come back.
One of his neighbors used to come with him. And he knew that Lao Tzu did not want to talk at all, because that would be a disturbance in his deep communion with nature. He had told him, "If you don't use any words not even hello, you can come. Silently you can join me, silently you can follow me, silently we come back; there is no need to say even goodbye. Words have to be completely dropped if you want to come with me."
The neighbor loved it all. He had never thought that things can be so beautiful because he had never seen the world with such a silent peaceful mind, and with such a beautiful man who must be vibrating his silence and his blissfulness to the neighbor. Because they had been doing it for years now, the neighbor had completely forgotten that it was a strange type of morning walk.
People go, and they talk and they discuss and they argue. They don't look at the trees, they don't look at the disappearing stars, they don't look at the rising sun. They are so much involved with their minds that who is there to look at all the beauty, all the joy of existence, the life again coming back from its sleep as the sun has set the day before.
There is everywhere celebration, in the trees, in the flowers, in the birds.
The man was immensely grateful to Lao Tzu that he allowed him to be with him for so many years. Lao Tzu said, "But I had implored you not to use language. Why are you using language today after so many years?"
He said, "A problem has arisen. A guest is staying with me and he also wants to come tomorrow."
Lao Tzu said, "The condition you have to tell him. He should remember that nothing has to be said on the way, then he can come."
And the guest thought, It is a strange condition. Not a single word, not even hello, not even a goodbye when departing...!
But his host said, "He is a very different kind of man and he will not relax the condition.
So please forget all your etiquette and mannerisms. Simply come with me, remain just like a shadow, and the experience is tremendous."
The experience was tremendous. When they reached to the highest peak from where they could see the sun rising just underneath, deep down in the valley, he forgot the condition; it was so beautiful. He had never seen such a thing, not even in a dream. He was so overwhelmed that he said to Lao Tzu, "It is so beautiful."
Lao Tzu looked at the host. Suddenly the guest remembered that words are not
to be used. Nothing was said. But as they reached home Lao Tzu told his neighbor, "From tomorrow don't come."
He said, "But you are punishing me too much, and I have not spoken a single word. This guest is new; he does not know you. And he has also not said much, just that it is a beautiful sunrise."
Lao Tzu said, "You say it was just a little? That fellow is very talkative. Although he was not saying I could hear his chattering mind. All the way he was chattering: This is beautiful, that is beautiful, and finally, he asserted. Does he think that we can't understand beauty, that he has to tell us? I was present; you were present; he was present. We were watching the same sunrise; what was the need to say anything? No, he is too talkative.
And because you brought him, and you disturbed my morning, from tomorrow nobody comes with me."
The neighbor finally persuaded him and he allowed him back after a week, but told him,
"Never ask if any guests can come. They don't know how to be silent; they are too new. I have never felt any difficulty with you, because not only do you not say anything, you don't think anything."
Thinking and speaking are not basically different. In front of a silent man, whether you think or speak it is the same. Thinking is talking with yourself inside. People don't hear it because they are engaged within themselves; they don't hear even when you talk to them.
How can they hear your inner chattering. But a man like Lao Tzu, in the deepest meditativeness, is able to catch your chattering almost like whispering. Even that much is a disturbance and you will not be able to listen to what is being said.
Gautam Buddha used to initiate people, and the first thing was for two years not to use language at all. Naturally, two years is a long period, and if you don't use language, slowly slowly your inner chattering also stops because it is getting no more nourishment from outside. How long can you continue playing football on your own? You need a partner. Slowly, slowly you become fed up repeating the same things, because what new information will you be getting? You have repeated the old information many times.
I have heard...
People were waiting in the waiting room of a railway station. The train was late. A man was sitting on an easy chair and everybody was interested in watching the man.
Sometimes he will giggle, sometimes he will even laugh loudly, sometimes he will throw something away. Everybody was silently watching and wondering what he is doing.
Sometimes he will make a bad face as if something bitter has come into his mouth, and sometimes he will smile so sweetly.
Finally they could not contain themselves. The train was getting later and later and that man was weighing heavier and heavier on their minds. One of them gathered courage and went to the gentleman and asked, "You have to forgive us, but everybody in the waiting room is interested to know what you are doing?"
He said, "Doing? I'm not doing anything. I'm just telling jokes to myself."
They said, "That makes sense why you sometimes giggle and sometimes laugh. But why do you sometimes throw something and make a bad face?"
He says, "When I hear some old joke I throw it away."
Now if you are telling jokes to yourself, all are old. From where are you getting new jokes? And how long will you deceive yourself? If for two years you have to sit silently just telling jokes to yourself, by the time two years have passed everything is old. You will be throwing with both the hands, and not a single giggle!
After initiating anybody into sannyas the first thing Gautam Buddha used to say was,
"Now for two years be completely silent. Do not use language. If you want water then show the symbol; just be dumb. Act dumb, as if you cannot speak, so you are showing that you need water or you need food. You can point to your stomach when you are feeling hungry. Use symbols as if you cannot speak."
Two years were a long time, but after two years people were so calm and quiet,
so radiant, so full of energy. Your constant chattering is destroying your energy. So Buddha used to remind them, "Now your two years are over, you can use language just if it is necessary. But now you are capable of listening to what I am saying."
But many of his disciples even after two years did not use any language. The silence of being dumb... and symbols were working perfectly well. They have survived the two years just by making symbols, the very essential. You cannot talk philosophy in symbols; you cannot argue for or against God just by symbols. You can ask for water, you can ask for food, you can ask for shelter; you can say that you are feeling feverish or you are feeling cold or you are feeling too hot -- just small day-to-day things which can be counted on your ten fingers.
Only then do you become capable of listening; otherwise you only hear. And if you are capable of listening there is nothing left for you to do. In that silence you will be able to see without any argumentation within you what is right and what is not right. The right immediately makes you so joyful and the wrong immediately makes you sad and aloof. It is a totally different kind of differentiation than mental talk: "This is right; this is wrong."
On what grounds can your mind say, "This is right"? It is your prejudice; it is your preconceived idea.
But the heart has no preconceived ideas. It simply sees clearly. It has eyes but no ideas. It has a clarity but no prejudices. With that clarity it can see where the door is and where the wall is. It does not have to think about it. Only a blind man thinks, Where is the door?
Only a blind man starts finding the door with his walking stick. You don't do that; you don't even think about the door. If you want to go out, you know, you see. There is no need of thinking, you simply go out of the door.
It is not because you are not thinking that first you will try to go through the wall, and then you think about where the door is. And after a logical syllogism you decide, "This must be the door." This kind of process does not take place when you have eyes. Silence becomes your eyes. Silence becomes your criterion of what is right and what is not right.
And the decision that comes out of silence transforms you. You don't have to do
anything.
Mahavira, another contemporary of Gautam Buddha, a man of the same height of consciousness as Gautam Buddha, has made two divisions of people who attain to truth.
One division he used to call the shravakar. It means one who is capable of listening.
Shravan means listening, and shravakar means the listener, one who is capable of listening in the sense I have defined listening; one who need not do anything else, just listening will be enough.
If you have a master with you, a man who knows, then listening is enough. If you don't have a master with you naturally listening will not help. Then you have to be a sadhu. So these are the two categories who travel towards truth. The sadhu means the monk. He has to follow certain disciplines; he has to perform certain austerities, fasting, praying, chanting, the reading of the scriptures. He has to do a thousand and one things which for the listener are not needed.
The art of listening is the simplest method of transformation. Question 3
BELOVED OSHO,
YOU DON'T EXIST AS A PERSON AND YET YOU ARE THE BEING THAT I LOVE MOST. YOU KNOW NOTHING AND YET I PUT ALL MY QUESTIONS AT
YOUR FEET. YOU ARE JUST SILENCE AND YET I CAN ONLY SING YOUR
SONG. YOU HAVE NO NAME AND YET I'M HELPLESS IN CRYING YOUR
NAME. YOU TELL US EVERY DAY THE INEXPRESSIBLE CANNOT BE SAID, AND YET I CAN'T HELP BUT TRY AGAIN AND AGAIN.
YOU KNOW MY GRATITUDE AND YET I CANNOT RESIST TO TOUCH
YOUR
FEET AND WHISPER THANK YOU, OSHO. EVEN MORE TODAY, BECAUSE
YOU FREE ME FROM SAYING NO TO YOU. BUT NOW I HAVE A QUESTION:
SEEING HOW PAINFUL IT IS TO SAY NO TO YOU, HOW CAN I EVER DARE TO
ASK YOU ANYTHING?
Sarjano, you are asking: "Now I have a question: Seeing how painful it is to say no to you, how can I ever dare to ask you anything?"
It is very natural to say yes when you love, just as it is natural to say no when you don't love. But there is still a deeper layer where you love so much that you can even say no.
Your love gives you that power. Your love does not make you a slave, particularly as far as I am concerned.
You can say yes out of fear. Then your yes has no value. Your yes is valuable only when it comes out of your love. The value is not in your yes; the value is in your love. If you can understand this then you can understand another thing also: if your no comes out of your love, it has the same value as your yes, because the value is neither of yes nor of no; the value is of your love. Love is absolutely capable of saying yes or no, because love knows no fear.
Love trusts so much that it can say no without any difficulty. Saying yes is very natural, but there may be times when you have to say no. But the no is coming from a loving heart without any disrespect, on the contrary, with great respect. You respect so much that you know that your no will not be taken as a disrespectful or negative attitude.
Love gives freedom. Love is freedom.
So you need not be worried that you cannot ask for anything. Always remember that you are free to say yes or no to me. I am not your enslaver; I am not your jailer. Not in any sense is there a bondage between me and you. All that exists is freedom and the love that freedom brings.
In this freedom and loving atmosphere everything is acceptable: your yes is acceptable; your no is acceptable. And unless this is possible, your love is not deep enough.
What you have said in your whole question is more a statement and very truthful, honest and sincere. There was only one question in the end that I have answered, but I would like to discuss your statement. I am not answering it because there is no question in it. I am discussing it so that it can become clear to all those who are present here. Because one day everybody has to come to this state from where Sarjano is speaking.
He is saying, "You don't exist as a person, and yet you are the being that I love most."
It is not only true about me. Anybody who does not exist as a person, but only as a presence, will be loved more than anyone else. Simply because he does not exist as a person, he attracts, provokes, invites your love. His absence is a tremendously powerful magnet. His absence is not emptiness; his absence is overflowingly positive. The person is not there, but the presence is intensely there. And what is the difference between the person and the presence? -- the same difference as there is between the flower and its fragrance. The flower is a person, the fragrance is only a presence. You cannot catch hold of it, yet you can be overwhelmed by it.
A person has boundaries, limits. And one who has limits cannot give you unlimited freedom. He himself is not unlimited. Only a person who has died as an ego and has resurrected only as a pure being, a presence, has no boundaries. Obviously he is capable of giving you freedom; in fact, he cannot give you anything else. He has no boundaries.
He can also give you a world without boundaries. And naturally, you will love such a presence more than you can love any person.
A person is a very small thing.
A presence is a vast sky full of stars.
"You know nothing and yet I put all my questions at your feet." I know nothing, it is true.
And only a man who knows nothing is innocent. Knowledge corrupts because it gives you prejudices, it makes you mechanical. If you ask a question to a knowledgeable man he will not answer your question directly, he will simply repeat some dead, ready-made formula. He knows; his answer will come from his knowledge.
My answer will come from my innocence; hence, my answer will be a direct response to your question. A learned man cannot respond to you -- he appears to answer you, but the answer is ready-made; it is not a fresh, spontaneous response. It is a prerecorded answer; it does not pay any attention to you. The answer would have been the same even if it was asked by somebody other than Sarjano.
But my answer will be different to each person, even though the question is the same, because I am responding each time not only to the question, but more basically to the questioner. The questioner is the context. The question is symbolic only. I have to answer the questioner more. The question is only an excuse, so my answers will be different although your question may be the same. It creates great difficulty to so-called scholars.
One professor of Bhagalpur University has been doing research for his doctorate on my thoughts almost for seven years, and he becomes more and more confused. He has inquired several times, "Which answer is right? Because for the same question you have given so many answers. You have created such trouble for the scholars who will be working on your work when you are gone."
That's the way scholars work. They never work on living people, they work on dead people. They will work on Kabir, they will work on Gautam Buddha; they will work on Raidas, Meera, whom they condemned when they were alive. Raidas was a shoemaker and in India a shoemaker is not supposed to be a saint. But what to do if a shoemaker becomes a saint? He was ignored, condemned. No brahmin could go to him to ask a question.
Kabir used to live in Varanasi, which is the Jerusalem of Hindus or the Mecca of Hindus.
It is their ancientmost city and perhaps it is the most ancientmost city in the world. All Hindu learned scholars belong to Varanasi. And Kabir lived in Varanasi but he was not a brahmin. In fact, by his profession he was a weaver. And weavers belong to the fourth class of the sudras, untouchables. But only by profession was he a weaver; by his birth nobody knows whether he was Hindu or Mohammedan, because their parents... certainly he was illegitimate, as people call children if they are not out of marriage.
According to me there are no illegitimate children; there are only illegitimate parents.
And when I say illegitimate parents I don't mean those who are not married, but those who give birth to children without any love. Marriage is a formal thing. Love is the reality, the substantial reality. Any child which is born out of a formal marriage without any love, I call those parents illegitimate.
Perhaps Kabir was born out of a pair who were not married. Out of fear of the society they left the child on the banks of the Ganges. A Hindu monk, certainly a great sage, Ramananda, had gone to the Ganges early in the morning in darkness. And the little baby who was to become Kabir was lying down on the steps of the Ganges. And as Ramananda passed by, the little baby just took his feet in his hand. Now Ramananda could not leave the child touching the feet of the master although it was going to be a condemnation for Ramananda, as to where he got the child -- most probably it is his own child and illegitimate!
Persons like Ramananda don't care at all about the crowd and their opinions. The child has caught his feet and he could not leave the child there, knowing perfectly well that some parents have left him. He brought the child to his monastery. He was a famous Hindu monk and had thousands of disciples and they were all against him: "What are you doing unnecessarily taking a condemnation? Give the child to us; we will leave it there or we will leave it in some orphanage."
Ramananda said, "It is not that there is any question. The child has touched my feet, and I cannot refuse anybody who is ready to surrender himself."
They said, "You are getting into unnecessary trouble. The child knows nothing; it is just accidental. You must have been passing by and he caught hold of anything. It was not addressed specially to you, Ì am your disciple.'"
But Ramananda said, "You don't understand. I know this child, not to whom he belongs in this life, but on his hand is written Kabir.
Kabir is a Mohammedan name which means God; it is one of the names of God. In Mohammedanism there are one hundred names of God. One of those one hundred names is Kabir. So certainly the child seems to be born either out of a father who is Mohammedan or a mother who is Mohammedan or perhaps both are Mohammedan, but it does not matter.
Ramananda said, "I can look into the past life of the child. He has been my child, my disciple before too. It was not accidental that he caught my feet. He simply reminded me,
`Your poor disciple...'"
People said, "You are getting into unnecessary trouble. Nobody is going to believe these stories. And you will be unnecessarily thought immoral, characterless."
Ramananda said, "That doesn't matter."
He raised the child and his prediction became true. Because he said, "One day this child will be a greater man than me. I will be remembered only because of Kabir."
And it is true. Ramananda would have been forgotten. There have been many Ramanandas, many Hindu saints whose names have been forgotten. But Kabir proved to be such a great man that obviously while Kabir is remembered you cannot forget Ramananda.
But because Kabir was not a brahmin, and certainly he was illegitimate in the eyes of the society, brahmins, the higher cast people, were not even ready to go to listen to him. They heard him secondhand. They wanted to know everything about him because the people who were going to him were changing so miraculously. He was one of the highest categories of consciousnesses. The same category as Gautam Buddha or Lao Tzu or Mahavira.
You reminded me of him by saying, "You know nothing and yet I put all my questions at your feet." Knowing that I know nothing, if you still put your questions at my feet, you are sure to find the answer. It won't come from me, it
will arise within your own being, out of your humbleness. Just because you have put your questions at my feet shows immense trust, an innocence. And your trust will not go unfulfilled.
"You are just silence and yet I can only sing your song." It is true. I am just silence, but I am not a dead silence, I am not the silence of a cemetery. I am the silence of the mountains, the silence of the deep forests. My silence and my song are not different. My silence is a song; it has a music of its own. It has a dance too of its own. So you are right, Sarjano.
"You have no name and yet I'm helpless in crying your name." Knowing that I have no name, if you cry my name in your helplessness you will be helped, because you are not calling me in ignorance, just believing in my name. You know perfectly well that I don't have any name. But one has to address some name -- it is arbitrary. Namelessness is the reality but you cannot point a finger towards nothingness, towards silence; you cannot pinpoint. Still it is our human weakness, we have to use names.
Silence has no name but we have called it silence. Existence has no name but we have called it existence. Enlightenment has no name but we have given it a name. It is our human weakness and frailty. But if we are aware of the fact that we are calling the nameless, then there is no problem, any name will do.
I told you Mohammedans have one hundred names for God. I must remind you that in fact they have only ninety-nine names. One name they have left as nameless. That is the real name. Unfortunately the language is incapable, but they have done well. They say,
"God has one hundred names," and then they give the list. The list has only ninety-nine. I have asked many Mohammedan scholars, "How do you explain this? Is there some mistake, some error? Either the man counted wrongly or he has forgotten one name."
And not a single Mohammedan scholar could give me the right explanation because learning is very poor.
And when I said to them, "I have my own experience. I am not a Mohammedan, but I can give you the answer: The reality is the man has done it deliberately. Whoever has written these ninety-nine names knows perfectly well that one name is missing. But that is the true name which cannot be pronounced; hence
he has left it. The number one hundred is given, but the name is not written. So the man was neither counting wrongly nor has he forgotten it."
When Jews write God they never use the O in the spelling. They use G-D, because the real essence, the very center is not capable to be pronounced. They have found a beautiful way; they leave out the O. And in a sense the English O is also exactly the same as the English zero. You can take it in both the senses, that God's real name can only be zero, nothingness, what Gautam Buddha called shunyam, zero; he has exactly called it zero.
It is perfectly right if you know that I don't have any name and still you call my name in your helplessness; you are not committing any wrong.
"And yet I'm helpless in crying your name. You tell us every day the inexpressible cannot be said, and yet I can't help..." Nobody can help. The inexpressible cannot be said, but yet every effort has to be made to say it, knowing perfectly well every effort is going to fail, but just making the effort is significant. Whether it succeeds or fails, that is secondary.
You make the effort knowing that it is inexpressible, yet you tried. You tried and you gave ninety-nine names, but finally you accepted your defeat that no name can be given.
But a number can be given at least: the number one hundred. It is beautiful that the man gave the number at least. Just as the English O in God can also be interpreted, in fact should be interpreted, as zero which is God's name. And that has been dropped because it is not possible for human lips to utter it. The number one hundred has also tremendous meaning. One meaning is that the inexpressible is perfect; one hundred is a perfect number. There have been different mystical ways but all have failed. But that failure is not something to be taken in sadness. That failure also shows that although we have not been able to express his name, we have caught hold of the nameless. We will not be able to count him but we have counted everything and only he remains uncounted; that is a way of counting.
"And yet I can't help but try again and again. You know my gratitude and yet I cannot resist to touch your feet and whisper Thank you, Osho."
It is true for every seeker past, present, future, that nobody can show gratitude to existence but still one has to say something. Not that that saying expresses the
real experience of gratitude, but at least symbolically it gives you a certain satisfaction. You cannot express it in its totality, but you can give it a symbolic name.
In fact what do we know, even about small things? You call a roseflower red, but what do you know about red? If it was called yellow what difference would it make?
One of the great philosophers of the contemporary world, G.E. Moore, has asked the question, "What do you mean by yellow?" And all that you can do is take him to yellow flowers, marigolds, and show him that this is yellow. And he said, "That's what I am trying to tell you. Even a small and mundane ordinary thing like yellow is inexpressible; it can only be shown. And you ask, `What is good? What is beauty? What is God? What is consciousness?'"
You don't understand that these things also can only be indicated. They can be shown. I can take your hand in my hand and show you the path. I can give you the direction where you will find consciousness. But I cannot express it; I cannot give you any explanation right now without your own experience. And if you have experience you don't need any explanation.
Sarjano, lastly you are saying, "Even more today, because you free me from saying no to you. But now I have a question: Seeing how painful it is to say no to you, how can I ever dare to ask you anything?"
There is no question, no problem at all. You can say yes to me, and you can say no to me with the same love, with the same trust, and I will understand your love. I don't care about your words. I will know your heart and I will know the depths of your being.
Yes and no are just trivia.
Sarjano, you have made people serious, and I hate seriousness; hence this joke...
The psychiatrist had been working with the patient, a sex maniac, for many months.
Finally, things had reached a point where the doctor thought that only hypnosis may help the unfortunate patient. The doctor swung a pendulum in front of the man's face and said, as the hypnotists do, "I want you to imagine that this is a big
old clock pendulum, ticking away, and soon you will be asleep. Ding-dong sleep. Ding-dong sleep."
The patient lay still for a moment and then jumped up, shouting excitedly, "Doctor, it works! It works! My ding-dong is asleep!"
Okay, Maneesha? Yes, Osho.
The Invitation Chapter #18
Chapter title: A good laugh is the greatest prayer 30 August 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive
code: 8708300
ShortTitle: INVITA18
Audio: Yes Video: Yes Length: 122
mins
Question 1 BELOVED OSHO,
YOU OFTEN TALK TO US ABOUT GRACE.
IT SEEMS TO BE SUCH A BEAUTIFUL WORD BUT MY UNDERSTANDING OF
ITS MEANING FEELS LIMITED. I KNOW THAT IT IS SOMETHING YOU HAVE.
COULD YOU SPEAK SOME MORE ABOUT IT?
Deva Anupo, grace is one of the great mysteries of life. It is not something physical, not psychological but something spiritual. It is not within your power to create it. Any created grace will be false, phony.
Grace comes as a flowering of your being.
The moment your meditation reaches to the deepest core, to the very center of the cyclone, a tremendous silence, peace and blissfulness arise within you. Grace is the total effect of all these qualities: silence, peace, love, compassion, blissfulness, ecstasy. When these things arise in you, their flame, their fire starts radiating from your physical body.
They are so much they start overflowing. That overflowing of your inner ecstasy is what can be defined as grace.
So it is possible a man or a woman may not be beautiful physically, but when grace arises their physical beauty or their physical absence of beauty is completely changed.
Whatever their physique is, is overwhelmed by something inner which is far more powerful.
It is just like a lamp: the flame is inside; what you see outside the glass of the lamp is the radiation. The glass may be beautiful; the glass may not be very beautiful. The glass may be made of crystal; the glass may be made in India. Once the inner flame is lit you don't see the glass, you see the light. When the
inner flame is not lit you will see the glass because there is nothing else to see. Then you will differentiate between a beautiful man and an ugly man, a beautiful woman or a homely woman. Just to avoid the word ùgly'
they have found a beautiful word, `homely'.
But these distinctions remain only if the inner light is still dormant. Once the inner light comes radiating through the body, you don't see the body, you see a beautiful radiance, a beautiful aura surrounding the person. That is grace.
Grace transforms your physical body completely, because nobody can see now exactly what your physical body is. The grace is so stunning, every gesture becomes so beautiful.
Your eyes radiate a totally new silence. They open to such great depths that they become almost unfathomable. Your words are not just language, something more is added to them. A fragrance, a beauty, a music, even your prose sounds like poetry. Ordinary words start having an extraordinary effect because your inner experience gives them authority.
Before, they were empty, just used cartridges, they had nothing in them. Now they are still the same words; the container is the same, but the content is a new addition to it.
Now the content radiates through the words, and you can see it in many ways.
Gautam Buddha was born on the boundary line of India and Nepal. Now Nepalese are not known for much beauty. They are part of the Mongolian race. Their size is small, their faces don't show the beauty that you will find in Kashmir. But Gautam Buddha's statues are in a way not factual.
I don't believe that such a beautiful man was born on the border of India and Nepal. I have been over the whole territory of Nepal and I have never come across anything resembling this beauty. Perhaps Gautam Buddha was also just an ordinary Nepalese, but why have the statues been made so beautiful? The artists, the sculptors were not seeing only the physical frame of Gautam Buddha, they were also seeing a tremendously powerful aura around him that was making him so beautiful. And it would have been wrong to make his statues as he would have looked before enlightenment. So those statues are all made after his enlightenment.
Almost the same has happened with Jesus. There has been an inscription found in the rocks near Galilee that describes Jesus Christ as an ugly man, extraordinarily ugly. If you had seen him he was repulsive. His height in that inscription is only four feet five inches and on top of it all, he is described as a hunchback. Now you cannot call such a man beautiful. But all the statues and the descriptions by the disciples in the gospels do not mention that he was a pygmy, four feet five inches high, that he was ugly and repulsive, that he was a hunchback. They describe him as poetically, as aesthetically as possible.
And I am absolutely certain that they are not making it up. It is not their desire to present Jesus Christ their master to the world as beautiful. They have seen his beauty, but that beauty is not the ordinary beauty; that beauty is of grace.
From the other side also you can see that you can sometimes find very beautiful people, physically -- if you look they are tremendously beautiful -- but if you are living close enough to them you will find their ugliness starts coming out of their physical structure.
Their physical structure may be like Cleopatra, but Cleopatra to me was not a beautiful woman. She may have had the form of a beautiful body but her intentions and her state of consciousness were very ugly. She cannot have any grace; she was selling her body to anybody, just to remain the queen of Egypt. She was not using the army to fight, she was using her own body. And great generals like Anthony were caught into her trap. She was using her beauty for ugly ends. She could not have grace.
So it is possible that a man or a woman may be physically beautiful, but if his inner being is full of darkness that darkness will show. There is no way for her to cover that darkness by any kind of makeup. In ordinary photographs she will look beautiful. But in Russia one scientist photographer, Kirlian, has developed very sensitive films that also take the photograph of your aura. They not only take your physical frame, but the light that surrounds you, that surrounds every living being, even the trees.
Even the leaves have an aura of their own. And that aura makes such a difference. If a man has grace he will have a tremendously beautiful aura, so stunning to the eyes that you will forget about his physical body whether it was beautiful or not.
Christians have not been able to explain the inscription and the discrepancy with the gospels because they don't seem to understand the law of grace. Kirlian is the first man as far as science is concerned who has changed the whole approach. He takes photographs of the aura; his photographs are not only of you, but the subtle light that is radiating from you. There are people who have almost no aura. Their bodies may be beautiful but their personalities will be ugly. Their intentions and ambitions and their desires will be of a very low character.
Kirlian has photographed people -- simple people, innocent people, gardeners, farmers, fishermen -- with no desire to become the president of a country, no desire to become a prime minister, not even in dreams. It is enough for them if they can survive. They have nothing, but still in the evening they will play on their flutes, they will dance, they will sing. They have beautiful auras in the photographs of Kirlian. He has opened doors of a new dimension which has not been much taken care of because it is of no use for warmongers.
As your death approaches your aura starts shrinking. It means your life is gathering itself at the center from where it can leave condensed -- the way you close your shop.
He has been puzzled by many things. For example: you have five fingers on the hand and even if one finger is cut off in an accident, in a Kirlian photograph there are still five fingers. The one that is no longer there still shows its aura; the aura is still there even though the physical part is gone. There will be a difference, because the physical fingers which are still there will show a substance in the middle of the aura. But that one finger which is missing will show simply a photograph of the aura; there will be no inner substance. It is nonsubstantial, but still the aura is there.
Working deeply on it, he has given such a great contribution to medical science, but nobody seems to use it. No government is interested in life; all governments are in the service of death. Seventy-five percent of national incomes are wasted on the armies and arms. People are living only on twenty-five percent of all income.
Just the other day I was reading a calculation of a scientist who says this is the highest peak of production in the world ever. We can feed more people than there are on the earth. There is no need for anybody to die through starvation. Science has provided every possible technology, but no politician, no political
party is interested in it; no government is interested in it. Their interest seems to be very insane.
If it was in my power, I would put all the presidents and all the prime ministers into madhouses. That is the right place where they belong. They are sick people; in fact, only a sick psychology can be ambitious. A healthy psychology is not ambitious -- you are happy as you are, so there is no need for you to become a president of the country. Then will you be happy? No president is happy, because happiness has nothing to do with your post, with your money, with your power. It has something to do with your inner change, inner transformation.
Kirlian has found that six months before a person is going to die his aura starts shrinking.
If care is taken, that man can avoid death for a few more years. In the same way he has found that before a disease shows itself on the body, six months before, he can guarantee that his disease is going to come, although medically there is no way to check on him.
The only way is when the disease comes. Before the disease happens a different kind of darkness starts to appear on that part. And different diseases have different kinds of colors.
If Kirlian becomes part of the authoritative medical world there is no need for people first to fall sick and then to be cured. Their disease can be prevented even before they have become aware of it. Six months is enough time to cure it and to check by Kirlian photography whether it is curing or not.
In the East for centuries there has been the idea that six months before your death, you stop seeing the tip of your nose because your eyes start turning upwards. A dead man's eyes are turned completely upwards; you can only see the white. That's why in every country, immediately a dead man's eyes are closed, so nobody else becomes afraid; nobody gets an unnecessarily fearful impression. Because if you meet a man with completely white eyes, no black, you are going to freak out. Perhaps you may get paralyzed then and there and fall down.
But it takes six months for the eyes slowly to turn up. Because they are turning up, the person cannot see the tip of his own nose. What Kirlian is saying has confirmed that old proverb to be absolutely right, that the time is six months.
And it is not only true about men, but about leaves, about birds, about animals. And on leaves, his work is tremendous.
One of my sannyasins sent me a thesis just a few days ago. Listening to me he became interested and he worked a whole doctoral thesis on the auras of the leaves. Before a leaf starts dying you cannot see: it is still green; it is still alive. There is no way to say that it is going to die soon, fall and disappear. But through Kirlian photography other leaves which are going to live show a bigger aura, and the leaf that is going to die within six months'
time starts showing a smaller aura. The day it will die it will not show any aura, as if the whole light of life has become condensed inside. Now it does not radiate. It is ready to leave this form of life for another form.
But man can be immensely helped. If Kirlian photography is used on a wider scale there is no need of so many hospitals, so many doctors; there is no need of so much surgery, so many medicines. And this is the problem: It is the establishment which is preventing Kirlian photography from becoming part of medical science because it will make many surgeons, almost all surgeons obsolete, unemployed. It will throw all the doctors on to the streets. All the great manufacturers of medicine will be out of business and bankrupt.
These are the problems because the establishment goes on preventing. Nobody thinks of man as such; everybody thinks about his own interest, money, power, investment. There are many inventions lying down in government warehouses. Governments purchase them, and then don't bring them onto the market, because the people who are supporting those governments with money will be affected.
A few days ago I told you about one Japanese scientist who has been in Hiroshima for one year. He risked his life. He allowed himself to be open to the radiation that has still there. But it is lessening every day; the quantity is smaller, but the radiation is there. And his thesis was saying that radiation from atomic explosions or nuclear weapons can be used for creative purposes. The first immense experience was that although he is sixty-five and has been living one year in Hiroshima -- ordinarily it was expected that he would die of radiation -- now he looks nearabout the age of forty-five. He is sixty-five. He has become younger, he has lost twenty years, and he has become stronger.
He has created a few things, and because I have talked about him -- he must
have heard my tape or seen the video; perhaps I am the only man who has taken an interest in him.
He is coming on the tenth of September. And he has sent me nearabout twenty thousand dollars' worth of inventions that he has made... a belt with uranium inside it which radiates in very minute doses.… And he has been experimenting that if you keep that belt on your body for one year it will give you tremendous energy, youth, long life; many diseases that you would have suffered from, now you will not.
He has also sent a small soap-like thing. That too is covered... You have to keep it in your bathtub and within ten to twenty minutes the bathtub starts almost functioning as a hot springwater. It becomes hot, and just resting in that water is enough to keep you healthy and there is no question of you developing any diseases.
He has also sent a small bottle of which you have to take just two drops in water. For ten minutes it keeps the water radiating and after ten minutes it changes the whole quality of the water. It becomes sweeter, tasteful and immensely energy- giving.
One of the most significant war material producers in America is Lockheed. He has informed me that they wanted the sole copyright of the belt and all that he has invented.
Whatsoever price he wants Lockheed was ready to offer him, but he refused. And he did well because Lockheed would have used them for destructive purposes. They would not have come on to the market for ordinary people.
With modern science this has become a problem that any invention, any discovery needs so much money and so much mechanism that only governments or very big firms like Lockheed or IBM or people like these can afford to produce them. A scientist alone cannot work; he does not have the right instruments which are too costly.
But he was surprised that at least there is one man who supports him. I have proposed that all the scientists of the world should make a world academy of scientists without any question of nation or race. And they will make it their fundamental constitution that they will function only for peace purposes. They will function only to help man live longer, live better, live more peacefully, live
more beautifully; live without disease, without old age, live more intelligently. They are not going to work for any government, communist or capitalist, Russian or American, to destroy this planet.
The same has been the case with Kirlian. His discovery is now almost fifty years old, but no government, no medical institution has given much attention to him. And he has given you one of the great secrets. He can prevent all kinds of diseases happening.
The grace is your aura, and as your inner being becomes more silent your aura becomes more radiant. And just as Kirlian's photography has been able to catch the aura which your ordinary eyes cannot see, a disciple in love and trust starts seeing things which an ordinary observer, outsider, will not be able to see. He starts seeing a grace; he starts hearing the music. He starts feeling a certain fragrance arising from the man, who is centered in his being, who is no longer a personality but has become innocent individuality; whose connection is no longer with the society but existence itself.
His life is of love; he is love. That radiance of love and peace and silence is all part of his grace. That's why I said the word `grace' has tremendous meaning because all that meditation gives you can be put together in one word, and that is
`grace'.
But don't create a desire for it; don't long for it. It comes if your meditation goes deep.
You cannot do anything with grace directly, you can only wait. Your waiting has to become so deep, so trustful, that grace will come when the time comes. Just as the trees go on waiting for the spring -- when it comes, it comes. They are not running after spring; they are not making any speed. They are not creating any action movement: "Why does spring come only once a year... why not twice, and why does it not remain always?" The whole world is silently waiting. Except man there is no impatience anywhere.
Impatience makes you ugly.
Impatience is a disturbance in your meditation. Learn to wait. Be patient and trust that existence will give you whatever you are ready for. All that you have to do is to go on deeper in meditation, beyond mind into silence. No thoughts, no emotions, no moods, just a silent watchfulness and waiting for whatever
existence finds you ready for.
Grace comes, but it comes without a whisper. You suddenly find it. You feel it within.
You feel it in your movements; you feel it in your sleep; you feel it in your speech --
everywhere you are engulfed. But the only thing that is needed on your part is a deep waitfulness. Meditation will create watchfulness and you have to learn the art of waiting.
Philosophical Phyllis said she has learned three discouraging things about men. One, they go to war and kill each other when, if only they would be patient, they would die a natural death. Two, they climb trees and knock down apples when, if only they would be patient, the apples would fall to the ground. Three, they pursue women when, if only they would be patient, women would pursue them.
One has to learn the art of waiting and then millions of things will happen to you which never happen to impatient people.
A man fell out of a tenth-storey window. He's lying on the ground with a big crowd around him. A cop walks over and says, "What happened?"
The guy says, "I don't know, I just got here."
You have also just got here. Be a little patient, then you will start experiencing things.
In a school in one of Chicago's poorer districts, a questionnaire was sent home with a girl pupil requesting information regarding the number of brothers and sisters, her father's occupation, et cetera.
The next day she returned with a scrap of paper on which was written the following: There are eighteen children in my family. My father can also do plumbing and carpentry work.
Just wait. People are engaged so much. Now think of that man: eighteen children and still he can do plumbing and carpentry work.
Give a little time to yourself and in the end you will find that is the only time you have really lived. Even if you can just give one hour out of twenty-four hours to yourself, to your meditation, to your silence -- just being, not doing anything, just waiting and learning to wait. In the end of your life you will be surprised that your twenty-three hours have gone to waste. Only that one hour, whatever you have gained in that one hour is still with you and is going with you; even death cannot take it away.
Just one hour can give you immense peace, silence, blissfulness, and slowly, slowly the aura of grace will arise around you.
Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,
CAN YOU TALK A BIT MORE ABOUT ACCEPTANCE?
Chintan, I understand your question.…
Chintan is on the verge of death. The doctors have told him that he cannot survive more than two months, and almost one month has passed. He had inquired of me when the doctors had said he has some canceric growth which was not operable, and was growing fast. Naturally, he was shocked. A young man who has not seen life yet, has not yet lived, just in the middle... naturally he was very shocked.
He wrote to me and I told him, "There is no need to be shocked. You are fortunate because you know the exact time when your life will be finished. Others are not so fortunate; they don't know. Their life may be terminated tomorrow. Because you know exactly that within two months you are going to die, live these two months as intensely and as joyfully and as meditatively as possible. You cannot postpone. Others can postpone because they are not aware when they are going to die. You are in a good situation because you cannot postpone. You have to do everything now."
He understood and he has been very happy, very joyous, meditating, dancing, singing.
And his friends have written to me, "We could not believe such a change. His doctors are in wonder; they have never seen anybody taking his death so
beautifully, so lightly."
His question needed this context for you to understand, when he says, "Can you talk a bit more about acceptance?"
Human languages are very poor. The word àcceptance' has a hidden reluctance. You may not have looked into the word, but when you say, "accept it," there is a hidden reluctance, a kind of compulsoriness, because there is nothing else to do. So why make fuss a about it -- accept it.
This kind of acceptance is not true and authentic. I would say, enjoy it. Unless your acceptance is enjoyment, unless your acceptance is wholehearted -- without any reluctance, not out of any compulsion, not out of a particular situation but out of your understanding...
Acceptance becomes a beautiful experience if it is at the same time enjoyment. You are not accepting under the pressure of circumstances; you are accepting on your own accord, with joy, with a deep welcome. Then only you understand what acceptance can do to your being. In a single moment it can change you, transform you from an ordinary human being into an awakened human being.
But don't accept reluctantly. That is deceiving yourself because deep down you don't want to accept. Just after two months you are going to die? And naturally, when somebody said, accept it, what else to do? There is nothing. The doctors are doing the chemotherapy -- they are doing everything that is possible. But they know that nothing is going to help; the cancer has gone beyond the limits of their cure.
Seeing the situation you can accept it, but there will be a negativity inside you. You are accepting because nothing else can be done. If there was some possibility to try you would not accept it. I don't call this authentic acceptance. Authentic acceptance has no negative tone in it, no reluctance, no resistance, no compulsiveness. It is not because of the pressure of things and situations and our helplessness. Don't accept out of helplessness; accept out of your strength.
Two months are so much to live. One can live as intensely and totally in one second as people live in their whole life. But their living is very thin, spread all over a long time.
That does not mean that they are the fortunate ones, because authentic living
needs great intensity and great totality, not a thin layer. A lukewarm survival is not living. But if you know that the next moment you are going to die you will drop everything that you were involved in, and the only priority will be to know yourself.
Before death comes at least be aware who you are. You don't have time to postpone.
It happened that one man used to come to a mystic Eknath for many years. He was a devotee but there was a doubt in his mind that was continuously pinching him. And because there were always many disciples he could not ask. So one day he came very early, before sunrise. Eknath was just coming out of the river. He had taken a bath before his morning meditation in the temple. He reached Eknath and said, "Forgive me for disturbing you at this time, but I have been carrying a question my whole life." And he was a young man, healthy, strong; he said, "And I cannot dissolve it, it continues. It is a disturbance between me and you."
Eknath said, "What is the problem?"
He said, "The problem is that I have seen you for many years, but I have never seen you sad. I have never seen you angry, I have never seen you jealous; I have never seen you in any negative state of mind. You are always smiling and always joyous and relaxed as if there is no worry in the world, no problem in the world. You don't seem to be concerned even about death. You take it so lightly.
"And the problem is that a doubt arises in me whether you are an actor or you are really enlightened? One can manage to act smiling, always showing joyousness, taking everything lightly, never seriously. Is it just a discipline? Have you trained yourself for it? Or is it something that has happened to you -- it is not your doing but a natural, spontaneous understanding that has arisen out of your meditations? That question has been bothering me, because one man can manage to pretend. You see actors in films and you know they are the most miserable lot in the world, but in the film they look so joyous, so happy, so loving, so peaceful, so courageous. If this is possible to do in a film or in a drama, then why is it not possible to do in real life? You need just a little control not to show your real feelings but always to go on acting."
Eknath said, "Wait a minute. Before I answer your question I should not forget
something that I wanted to tell you. I have been forgetting for three days, and it is important; so first I will tell you that thing and then I will answer your question. Just three or four days ago I happened to look at your hand, and I was very shocked. Your lifeline is finished; just such a small fraction has remained so that you may be able to live seven days at the most.
On the seventh day as the sun will be setting you will be dying. This I have been forgetting and this too is as important as your question. Now we can discuss your question."
The man stood up. He said, "I don't have any question and I don't have any time to discuss. If death is coming within seven days why should I worry whether you are real or unreal. That is your business; it is not my problem."
The man started going down the steps. There were many steps to the temple, and Eknath watched him. Just five minutes ago he had come so strong, so young, and now he was going just like an old man, wobbling, taking the support of the railing that he had never taken before, afraid to fall. And when he reached home he simply went to bed directly, even though it was not the time, it was morning -
- he had just got up from the bed. He collected the whole family and told them what Eknath had said.
It was inconceivable that Eknath will lie; there is no point in lying. So there was crying and weeping, and that man stopped eating. What is the point now when you are not going to live?
But a strange thing started happening as he became settled with the idea that death is coming and nothing can be done. "Why not use this time for the meditation that I have been postponing for many years? Eknath goes on saying every day to meditate, put your energy into discovering yourself, and I have been postponing it, because what is the hurry? I am a young man and these things, meditation and knowing yourself belong to the old people when they have nothing else to do. Anyway they are out of work, retired. That is the right time to meditate and find out who you are. Right now you have to find out many other things -- money, power, prestige, respectability. This is not the time to waste in finding yourself. That you can do at any moment when you will not be of any use in life, and life will reject you by retiring you."
It is strange that everywhere when people are retired, their colleagues gather
together just to say goodbye to them, and they always give them a pocket watch. That I cannot believe... what is the idea? But now I know. They give them a pocket watch as, "Not much time is left to remind you, but now, do the essential things that you have been postponing."
The man lay down, started watching his mind for the first time and became utterly silent within two or three days. But the whole family and other relatives and friends from far away arrived. They were even more disturbed. Death is coming; that is a shock. And what has happened to this man? He does not open his eyes; he does not eat; he does not take any interest. This was a time to meet the family, the friends, because who knows when you will ever meet these people again; there is not much chance.
But he is not interested in anything. He did not even allow them to call a physician. By the fourth day they could not believe that he was looking so beautiful, so graceful, so silent. His whole bedroom almost had the same quality which exists around a man of silence or which exists in a living temple, where not only statues are, but some living master is also present.
People came with great words prepared, dialogues which one needs to say, because it is very embarrassing to come to a man who is going to die. What to say to him? You cannot talk about movies, you cannot talk about politics, you cannot talk about football games, you cannot talk about boxing. What is there to talk about? It is very embarrassing if somebody is dying and you have to leave. Then one prepares a dialogue to console him,
"Don't be worried; everybody dies. It is not that it is happening only to you. And then there is God: you have been a virtuous man, and your heaven is absolutely guaranteed."
One has to prepare things like that because now the worldly things that one gossips with each other are of no point. But as they entered, even this dialogue was not possible, the man was so silent. On the seventh day he opened his eyes and asked his family, "How much time is left for the sun to set?"
Reading this story I remember why that pocket watch is given to people: so they don't even need to ask anybody else; just look at your pocket watch and be finished. Never present a pocket watch to anybody, because that simply means that you have taken it for granted that this man is gone. The pocket watch is the
last present.
And the people said, "The sun is just about to set within a few minutes." And he was showing such grace, such joy, such blissfulness, that the family could not believe the metamorphosis that these seven days have been. They all knew he was an ordinary man.
The wife knew, the father knew, the brothers knew that he had nothing special, but in seven days he has gone far beyond them.
Exactly as the sun was setting they all started crying and weeping. And he was saying to them, "Be quiet. There is nothing to worry about."
At that moment Eknath arrived. The whole family touched his feet and told him, "Save him. Can you do anything?"
Eknath said, "With death there is no possibility. Just let me see him."
So they all respectfully moved and gave way to Eknath. The man was sitting silently with closed eyes, looking almost like a marble statue of Gautam Buddha... in just seven days, and he was an ordinary person. Eknath called his name and said, "I have come to see you and to tell you that it was only a device. You are not going to die. You have a lifeline that is very long. You will live almost as much as you have lived. You have lived only half the lifeline, so there are many years to live. This was a way to answer your question."
The man said, "My God. I never thought that this is a way to answer my question."
Eknath said, "There was no other way. Whatever I would have said to you, you would have remained with doubts. A man who can pretend for years to be happy can also lie that he is enlightened. I wanted to give you some experience of it, that it is not acting.
And these seven days have given you the experience. Have you received the answer or not?"
The man stood up, jumped out of the bed -- for seven days he had not left the bed at all --
touched the feet of Eknath and said, "Your compassion is great. Unless your compassion was so great, you would not have lied. But you have answered my question. Now there is no doubt at all. And I cannot see that any doubt in the future is possible. I have known the space in which you are living."
Eknath said, "It does not matter whether you are going to die after seven days or seventy years. Once you become aware that you are going to die, it does not matter when."
The awareness of death makes you live life as totally, as joyously as possible. Death is not your enemy. In fact, it is an invitation for you to live intensely, totally, to squeeze every drop of juice from every moment. Death is a tremendous challenge and invitation.
Without death there would not have been any Gautam Buddha, any Jesus, any Lao Tzu, any Tilopa. There would not have been any Kabir, any Raidas, any Mansoor, any Sarmad.
It is death and its awareness that makes you live as totally, as deeply, as consciously as possible. Before death knocks on your doors you should be able to see the eternal life within you. Then there is no death; death is a fiction. It is a reality only to those who have not lived, not lived in its completeness, in its entirety.
For those who have lived there is no death.
It is only a change -- just changing the house. I am reminded...
One night a thief entered into Mulla Nasruddin's house, and Mulla Nasruddin was trying to sleep. He had only one blanket, so half was used as a bed and half to cover himself.
But sleep was not coming because the mosquitoes were so interested in keeping him awake. They are great teachers who are continuously making an effort that you should not fall asleep. Their whole teaching is awareness. I always thought that these mosquitoes seem to be old masters trying their old teaching. Now they cannot speak, but they can manage to keep you awake.
So Mulla was turning and tossing, and then suddenly, he saw a thief entering. It was a dark night and the door was open. The thief was amazed. He hardly figured out that some man is sleeping; the house seems to be completely empty and all doors are open -- a great opportunity. So he entered inside the house and went on going to the innermost room, not being aware that he is being followed by Mulla Nasruddin.
Suddenly Mulla stumbled on something so the thief became aware. Mulla said, "Don't be worried. I have been living in this house for thirty years; and I have not found anything up to now. But perhaps with your expertise... we can both try to find something. Fifty-fifty?"
The thief could not believe it. What kind of man is this? It is his own house. The thief became a little afraid; this man seems to be either mad or very dangerous. And Mulla said, "Don't be worried. If you are not agreeing on fifty-fifty, you can have sixty, I can have forty -- or whatever you want. I have wasted thirty years searching and searching and I have not found anything. So whatever you want me to give, even five percent commission will do. You try. And I have brought a candle."
He lit the candle and he said, "Because it is dark it will be difficult for you. So I will keep the candle and you search."
The thief said, "I have also been stealing for the same time, thirty years, but I have never met a man like you. You amaze me."
But there was nothing at all, so they went around the whole house. They could not find anything. Finally the thief said, "You are right, there is nothing to find."
As he was going out -- he had been into other houses before and he had left all the things that he has stolen from other houses outside the house -- Mulla went with him, threw his blanket also in the pile. The thief said, "What are you doing?"
He said, "Nothing. I am coming with you, just changing houses."
The man said, "This is an unnecessary trouble and this man seems to be a little crazy." He said, "You can take your blanket."
He said, "No. Either fifty-fifty..."
But he said, "I have stolen these things from other houses."
He said, "That does not matter... otherwise the police station. Fifty-fifty? This is my only business. I keep my house open and the thieves come; they do the business."
The man said, "You seem to be the greatest thief in the world. You never go out; thieves come by themselves."
He said, "It has been happening. But if you want I am prepared to come with you, because what is there in this house?"
The man became so afraid of Mulla because he could not put him into any category. He said, "You can keep everything, just leave me... And I will never come back."
Mulla said, "As you wish, but I was always thinking of changing my house. You will also get the blanket and the whole treasure that you have stolen from other houses, and me who can advise you. You are just amateur. You may have been stealing for thirty years, but you don't know much. I don't go anywhere and thieves come by themselves and fifty-fifty, sometimes even more, sometimes a hundred percent. Because I am always happy to change the house and they are afraid to take me to their house."
The man who knows himself knows death as only changing the house. Acceptance is not the right word, but there is no other word; this is the difficulty.
I would say, Chintan, rejoice! Make all these days a celebration.
And if you can make all these days a celebration, your death will be found to be a fiction.
These days of celebration and meditation and silence and joy and love will create in you the capacity to die consciously. And one who dies consciously knows that death is nothing but changing the house. And it is always for a better house because life always goes upwards; it is an evolutionary process.
I was really shocked by the American government particularly, Ronald Reagan's
government. They have prohibited the universities and colleges and schools to teach Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Books on the theory of evolution have been burned or removed from all libraries, because this theory of evolution goes against the Christian idea of creation. You may not immediately get the difference, but the difference is there.
God created everything so there is no question of any evolution. He created monkeys as monkeys, and he created men as men -- not that the monkeys have evolved into man; there is no evolution. God has made the world perfect. Evolution is possible only if things are imperfect.
This fundamentalist, fascist, fanatical idea of Ronald Reagan has been imposed on the whole of America, and nobody is protesting that it is against the constitution of America.
It is against democracy; it is against freedom of expression. The American constitution makes it clear that religion should not interfere with people's lives, particularly via government powers: the government should be neutral. But this is not neutrality.
And to stop the whole of America knowing anything about Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution is dangerous, because it means you cannot evolve. You are what you are. It is dangerous. I am not saying whether Charles Darwin is right or wrong; that is not my business. I am saying that the idea of evolution should not be taken away from people's minds. In fact, they should be made more aware that for thousands of years we are not evolving -- we should evolve.
And now outside we have got everything. Evolution should take on a different dimension, an inner evolution. But to destroy the whole idea...! Ronald Reagan has done much harm to America, but this is his greatest harm, because this will mean that if the idea of evolution completely disappears from peoples' minds, then wherever they are, God wants them to be there: in misery, in suffering, in anguish, in angst. But that's what God wants, and there is no possibility of evolution.
I don't support the particulars of Charles Darwin, but I support the essential fact that evolution has been happening, because we have seen man becoming a Gautam Buddha. I don't agree that monkeys have become men. And even if they have, it does not bother me; it is perfectly good.
My concern is for the future, not for the past. I want man to evolve. It does not matter whether monkeys evolve into men or not, but man can evolve into superman, into new man. But that evolution will happen only through deep meditation, watchfulness, waiting and accepting life with joy, and accepting death with joy, with no reluctance, without any pressure, but from your innermost feeling.
Everything that is, is beautiful.
It can be more beautiful -- there is no limit to evolution. Particularly for consciousness there is no limit; it can go even beyond Gautam Buddha, beyond Bodhidharma, beyond all the great awakened people of the past, because consciousness has no limits. It is as vast as the sky, as the whole universe.
Chintan, accept with joy and dance and song.
Just a little joke so that you go from here not with serious faces. This temple believes in laughter and I want everybody who comes here to go laughing. Even on the way, when he remembers -- a little giggle. In the night, in the middle of the night, then he remembers
-- a good laugh.
A good laugh is the greatest prayer.
A little boy on a picnic strays away from his family and suddenly realizes he is lost and night is falling. After running around and shouting for a while he becomes very frightened and kneels down to pray with uplifted hands.
"Dear Lord," he says, "please help me to find my mummy and daddy and I promise I won't hit my sister anymore."
Just then a bird flies overhead and shits right into his outstretched hands. The boy examines it, looks up to heaven and says, "Lord, don't give me this shit, I really am lost."
Everybody is really lost. Very few people have reached their home. But your pilgrimage of finding your home should not be serious and sad and heavy; it should be of laughter and song and dance. If you can find your home dancing, laughing, it is true finding. By sadness and seriousness you are bound to find
some graveyard, not your home.
We need people who are seekers but not serious. That kind of seeking, serious and sad, has not led man anywhere.
Okay, Maneesha? Yes, Osho.
The Invitation Chapter #19
Chapter title: Pick up the roses and avoid the thorns 30 August 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive
code: 8708305
ShortTitle: INVITA19
Audio: Yes Video: Yes Length: 85
mins
Question 1 BELOVED OSHO,
WHEN YOU WERE RESPONDING TO SARJANO'S QUESTION, I HEARD YOU
SAY THAT A DISCIPLE CAN SAY NO TO THE MASTER IF THE LOVE IS DEEP
ENOUGH.
I CAN UNDERSTAND YOUR SAYING NO TO US OUT OF YOUR LOVE, BUT
NOT THE OTHER WAY ROUND.
DO YOU MEAN THAT THE DISCIPLE MUST HAVE THE FREEDOM TO SAY NO
BUT IN FACT WOULD NEVER WISH TO OR NEED TO? FROM MY
EXPERIENCE, WHEN I HAVE SAID NO TO YOU I HAVE DENIED MYSELF AND
THEN SUFFERED THE CONSEQUENCES.
HOW CAN THERE BE ANY SITUATION IN WHICH THE DEVOTEE WOULD SAY
NO TO THE MASTER?
Maneesha, the question you have asked raises many questions: questions about love, questions about freedom, questions about the master and disciple and their relationship.
Life appears to be very simple but as you go deeper into it, it becomes more and more complex. And the ultimate complexity is that life consists of contradictions. If you understand, those contradictions become complementaries. If you don't understand those contradictions become opposites.
But in the ultimate organic unity there is enough space for both yes and no. It will not be ultimate organic unity if there is only space for yes, if there is space only for light, if there is space only for love, and not their opposites.
Our mind looks at things in categories of opposition, but mind is not the ultimate decisive factor. The ultimate decisive factor is a state of no-mind. In a state of no-mind everything is possible. The incomprehensible is also possible; the impossible is also possible.
Apparently you are right, that the disciple cannot say no; how can the disciple say no to the master? In what situations? It has been the tradition that no has always been taken as negative. With me, things have a far deeper meaning and significance. No is not necessarily negative and yes is not necessarily positive. You can say yes out of fear, then it is negative. You can say no out of love. You love so much that you are not worried even to say no. The no becomes affirmative; it is no longer negative.
As far as I am concerned, I am not part of any old category of masters. I am a new beginning in the sense that the old master demanded surrender. I don't demand anything from you, because to me surrender is a subtle spiritual slavery. Of course, with a master the surrender feels beautiful but even if slavery is decorated with flowers I cannot be deceived by it.
I want my people to be individuals living in freedom. If they love me it is out of their freedom, not out of fear, not out of desire, not out of some longing for achievement. The old disciple was surrendering himself because he wanted to be enlightened. The master was being used as a means. I don't allow myself to be used as a means. That is ugly.
The old master was using the disciples for his own egoistic ends. The masters in the past used to brag about how many disciples they had. The number of the disciples decided the greatness of the master. The master was also dependent in a certain sense on the disciples. It is something to be understood that you cannot make anybody dependent without yourself becoming dependent too. And the same is true if you are independent, you would love to make everybody independent. Because independent individuality has such beauty and grace, such joy, such freedom to fly in the sky with no boundaries and no chains, with no conditions, no expectations, that a master would love his disciples to be ultimately free, free even of himself.
Zarathustra has said to his disciples: "Beware of me." That small statement contains great meaning, because a disciple can renounce everything to be one with the master, to come closer and closer to the master; he can even sacrifice himself. But in this sacrificing he will enjoy a certain unburdening, because now he is no longer responsible. The whole responsibility is on the shoulders of the master. The disciple has become a sheep and the master has become the shepherd. Now the shepherd will take care.
One can think in this way that the sheep has attained a certain freedom -- freedom from responsibility. But becoming a sheep, even if you become free, your freedom has no meaning. It is fear; it is irresponsibility. In a deeper sense you have lost yourself to gain something. It is not out of love that you have surrendered to the master; out of love there is no surrender, there is no need.
Love is a far bigger phenomenon than any surrender. Surrender is of the mind and surrender is an effort. Love is of the heart and it is not an effort. You suddenly find yourself in love with someone. Even if you try to be in love with someone you cannot succeed. No effort is going to be successful. Love comes just like the spring comes, and when love comes it brings many flowers.
There have been two kinds of masters. The majority of the masters in the past demanded surrender, total surrender. It was a kind of spiritual slavery. The master was enjoying a great ego, and the disciple was enjoying a great unburdening from all responsibilities.
Now the master is going to save him. Now the master is his salvation, liberation, enlightenment. All that he could do he has surrendered himself. He has become an absolute yes.
To me this kind of relationship was not healthy, something was basically wrong. Because of this situation in the past one man stands separate from the whole crowd of masters, and that is J. Krishnamurti. He denied he was a master and he refused to accept anybody as a disciple; this was another extreme. The other masters were demanding absolute surrender. J. Krishnamurti has lived with masters who have asked absolute surrender from him, and as he became more and more mature he saw the whole game: the master enjoys the ego, the disciple enjoys irresponsibility. But neither the master is a true master nor the disciple is a true disciple; both are exploiting each other.
There is no question of love when there is exploitation. Krishnamurti refused to be master of anyone and he refused to allow anyone to think that he is a disciple. He has taken a great step but he has moved to the very extreme. And always remember: if one extreme is wrong the other extreme cannot be right. The right is always somewhere exactly in the middle, the golden mean. Only in the middle is there balance, and only in the middle, exactly in the middle, is there transcendence of the polarities, of the opposites.
My position is exactly in the middle. I don't ask any surrender from you; hence, I am not on the old track. I don't deny you the beauty of being a disciple. I don't insult you; I don't reject you. I accept your love, but I will not accept your surrender. In accepting your love and your disciplehood I am your master, but there is no relationship of surrender.
I am not here to erase your individuality. I am here just to erase your ego.
That does not need any surrender, it needs a deep meditative understanding on your part.
I can give you love, I can share my own understanding with you, but there is no condition attached to it. My joy will be to see you as a growing individual in total freedom. And in total freedom, yes is as much possible as no.
I can understand Maneesha's problem, that no is very difficult, more difficult to a master who does not ask surrender. No becomes more difficult because the master allows it. If the master does not allow no, he is repressing something in you, and his not allowing no does not destroy the possibility of no in you. On the contrary, the master himself is afraid that if you are not prevented, you can say no.
The yes from you is meaningless if you are not free to say no. Your yes has meaning only because you are absolutely free to say no. It does not mean that you have to say no. It does not mean that there will be a situation where you have to say no. In fact it will become more and more impossible for you to say no.
To say no is easy when you are prevented, prohibited. Then, it becomes a question of your individuality; it becomes a question of your spiritual freedom.
And certainly anybody who has any dignity is bound to find situations where he would like to say no. If he does not say it he is behaving as a hypocrite. He is not saying no because he is afraid to lose the love of the master and to lose the possibility of getting higher states of consciousness.
But this is business, this is cunningness. And there should not exist any business or any cunningness between the master and the disciple.
Krishnamurti has moved to the very extreme: no master, no disciple. But that created an absurd situation, for his whole life, and he lived long, ninety years. He started being a teacher at the age of fifteen, and he wrote his first book AT THE FEET OF THE
MASTER at the age of fifteen. It was so early that later on he could not even remember whether he had written it or not. It appeared as if in a dream, far away, just an echo.
From the age of fifteen to the age of ninety, almost seventy-five years continuously -- no master has been teaching so long. Gautam Buddha was teaching for only forty-two years; so was Mahavira. Jesus taught for only three years, because at the age of thirty-three he was crucified; he started his teaching career at the age of thirty. Perhaps Krishnamurti is the only person who has been a teacher for seventy-five years.
But the question is that his situation is very absurd. If he does not accept himself to be master and he does not accept you as disciples, then what is he doing for seventy-five years? Running around and around all over the world what is he doing... to whom he is talking?
The word `disciple' does not mean anything else other than a learner; that is its original meaning. If he is not talking to people who are ready to learn, then what is the point of talking? And if Krishnamurti is not a master, from where does he get the authority to talk, to say anything to anybody? He goes on denying that he is a master, and everybody knows he is a master. And he goes on saying, "You are not the disciples," and everybody who listens to him, learns from him, feels a certain disciplehood.
Both are denying actualities. Out of fear that they may not get trapped into the past relationship of master and disciple. This whole seventy-five years of J. Krishnamurti are full of fear, the fear of the past heritage, centuries of master and
disciple relationship, because it has become a spiritual slavery. The disciple could not say no. Rather than allowing the disciple to say no he simple denied that there is a disciple. It is not a great revolution; it is just a reaction, moving from one extreme wrong situation to another wrong situation, another extreme.
I am standing exactly in the middle. I can see both the extremes, the right and the left.
And I can see that both are half, incomplete. Both are not going to help anybody to attain to spiritual freedom. The first because it insists on surrendering, and the second because it simply denies that you are a disciple. And Krishnamurti goes on teaching for seventy-five years continuously, and becomes angry when the listeners don't listen rightly.
You will be surprised to know that Krishnamurti used to become very angry at times when he saw somebody listening to him for fifty years and still he has not understood anything. He would just look at the people and beat his head -- it was absolutely natural. I will not say that it was unnatural, but he created the situation. In the very first place he denied disciplehood, and then he wants them to understand him.
I accept the status of a master and the status of a disciple. There is nothing wrong in it if the master and disciple are not exploiting each other. If the disciple is not using the master as a means to enlightenment, liberation, and the master is not using the disciple for his own aggrandizement, for his own ego-fulfillment. I want disciples and masters to stand side by side in deep love, with no question of any surrender, with no expectation from the master that you have always to say yes.
My own experience is the more you are prohibited from doing something the more there is a desire to do it. Prohibition is a kind of provocation.
I don't prohibit you.
It does not disturb me or my individuality if you say no. On this point Maneesha is right, that whenever she has said no, she has suffered the consequences. But that is up to you --
not my expectation. It is going to be your understanding that when you say no, you have taken yourself as if you are wiser; you will suffer the consequences.
I have not said to Sarjano, "You will not suffer the consequences of your no." But it will not be from me: not that I will be annoyed, not that I will be irritated, not that I will be angry. It is perfectly okay with me whether you say yes or no. But for yourself there is going to be a difference. Yes means you are listening and following what I am saying. No means you are deciding for yourselves. As far as I am concerned you are absolutely free to decide for yourself, but then you have to be ready for the consequences also.
Freedom brings responsibility.
That's the meaning I continuously repeat, and I know you don't understand. Everybody likes freedom and nobody likes responsibility, but they come in the same package; you cannot separate them. I give you freedom AND I give you responsibility. You cannot complain about me, because you are always free to say no. You cannot say that I have inhibited you, because I have not asked that you say yes whether you want or not. You cannot blame me.
This is absolutely true, that whenever you will say yes, you will find a peace, a silence.
And whenever you will say no, you will find a deep burden on your heart, almost a wound. But you are creating that wound. And I will not prevent you, because I know that preventing provokes people to do the same thing that is being prevented.
A famous Tibetan story...
A man was serving an old master continuously, bringing food, bringing water from the well, massaging his feet. And the old man used to say, "Why are you wasting your time?"
because the old man understood perfectly that there must be some desire.
Finally, one day the man said, "I am serving you because I want to learn some miracle, just one miracle."
The old man said, "But I don't know any miracle. You have unnecessarily wasted your time. You should find somebody else who knows about miracles."
But the man said, "I have been told that you always deny that you know any
miracles, and you go on continuously performing miracles. I have been told,
`Don't listen. Go on serving him. One day he will tell you some secret, but only when he finds you are ripe.'
Perhaps I am not ripe yet."
After a few days the old man saw that this man is still unnecessarily working. "Somebody has put the idea in his mind that I perform miracles. Perhaps miracles happen, but they happen on their own. I am not the performer."
With people of great consciousness things happen just on their own. Just as when the sun rises birds sing; it is not that the sun is performing a miracle. Flowers open their petals, not that the sun is performing a miracle, just the presence of the sun and things start happening. The presence of a very conscious awakened man is enough for many flowers to open, for many birds to sing.
The old man said, "It seems you will not leave me unless I tell you the secret." The man said, "That's true."
So he said, "I will tell you the secret. I wrote a small mantra, the Tibetan mantra om mani padme hum."
Om means the eternal sound of existence. Diamond in the lotus, mani padme hum: mani means diamond, padme means lotus. It means the eternal sound and the diamond in the lotus. It expresses the meaning of enlightenment: the eternal music all around, the beauty of the lotus, and inside the lotus the light of a diamond. In a small mantra they have condensed the whole experience of enlightenment.
So the old man said, "Take this mantra and repeat it five times, just five times. First take a bath, change your clothes to fresh clothes, close your door, sit alone and repeat the mantra five times. Then you will be able to do any miracle you want to do."
The man rushed, he did not even show his gratitude or even say just a Thank You. He simply rushed down the steps of the temple. When he was just in the middle the old man shouted, "Wait, I have forgotten one thing. While you are repeating the mantra remember one thing: don't think of any monkey."
The man said, "Why should I think of a monkey? I have never thought of it in my whole life!"
The old man said, "That's okay, just remember that. No monkey allowed at all. If the monkey comes in you have to repeat the mantra five times again."
The man said, "But why should the monkey come?"
The old man said, "I don't know. I have told you the secret. This is the secret my master has told me."
But he could not even get down the steps before he started thinking about monkeys. He said, "My God, I have not started the mantra yet and monkeys are coming." He will close his eyes and there were monkeys and monkeys, giggling, making faces at him. He said,
"It is a strange mantra. I have not started yet."
He reached home crowded with monkeys. Wherever he will look, he could see only a monkey. He went inside, took a bath, but it was no use. Even in the bathroom, inside the bathroom with the door closed, monkeys were sitting all around. He said, "That old man is such an idiot. If this monkey was the trouble he should not have mentioned it.
Elephants are not coming, camels are not coming, lions are not coming; nobody is coming except the monkey."
Then he sat in a lotus posture with closed eyes but it was useless. The monkeys were nudging him; the monkeys were sitting; it was a congregation of monkeys all around. He was very worried. His wife passed, and he looked and sometimes it looked as if she is a monkey and sometimes she looked..."No, no, she is my wife." His father passed. And sometimes he looked like an old monkey, and sometimes he looked like the father. The man said, "I'm going mad."
Five times was too much. Even to complete the mantra om mani padme hum, just those four words, and there were so many monkeys. The whole night he tried hard. He took a bath many times. He thought perhaps the clothes are not as fresh as they should be, so in the middle of the night, in the cold winter, he stood naked. Now there was no question of dirty clothes or anything. But the monkeys were sitting in lotus posture all around. He started shouting at them and they
laughed.
By the morning he was almost mad. He said, "That old man is tricky. For years I served him. Finally he gave me the secret and managed to destroy the secret by keeping the monkey with it."
He went back to the old man, returned the mantra and he said, "Keep it with you because those monkeys..."
The old man said, "You said they never come to you."
He said, "I have not dreamt or seen or even thought about a single monkey in my whole life. There are millions of animals I have not thought about; there is no need. If you had not said the word I would have been able to perform miracles but now it is impossible."
The master said, "What can I do? That monkey comes with the mantra. Without the monkey the mantra is useless. Unless you can avoid the monkeys you cannot perform miracles."
He said, "I have forgotten all miracles. I just pray that you take your mantra and relieve me of the monkeys, because I am afraid that the mantra is gone but the monkeys may not go. And I have small children and a wife and an old father. I have to take care of them. I cannot go on fighting with these monkeys the whole day and night."
The old man said, "Once you have left the mantra with me they will not come. They are very religious people."
The man went. And he was surprised, he looked all around, no monkey. When he reached home, the wife looked like the wife, the father looked like the father and the children looked like the children. He said, "It is strange." He took a bath, the bathroom was empty.
The mantra was short. He said, "Although I have returned his written mantra, I have been repeating it the whole night, so I have remembered it. There is no harm... now I can repeat it."
The moment he started one monkey appeared just as he said Om. And a few monkeys were around saying Om. He dropped the whole idea. He said, "I should
go to my shop and look at my business. This idea of performing miracles is not for me."
If I say to you, "Never say no to me," you will find many many times the desire to say no; hence I give you absolute freedom. It is up to you to say yes or to say no. You are to decide your own destiny. I can only help you, suggest to you, show you the way. But you can say, "I don't want to go" -- I cannot force you. You can accept my understanding.
You can reject it, and in your rejection I don't think that there is less love. That's why I said if you deeply love me you will not be worried by saying no. But I have not mentioned anything that will happen to you.
By saying no you are relieving me from responsibility. You are taking the responsibility into your own hands. Now if things go wrong you cannot complain about me. When you say yes and things go right I cannot brag about it. The yes is yours; the no is yours; the consequence will be yours.
I love you enough -- hence I give you total freedom. If you love yourself enough, you will be aware what no can do to you and what yes can do to you.
I teach you awareness and then leave you. A man of awareness will not try to go through the walls, he will find the door. A man of awareness will pick up roses and will avoid the thorns.
I give you freedom, and in giving you freedom I feel absolutely free. I don't have any burden of solving, saving, liberating humanity. I don't have any burden at all. I am absolutely weightless. I am not a savior, not a messiah, not a messenger.
I have chosen a third category. Just as Krishnamurti is alone on the extreme left, I am alone in the middle. And Krishnamurti is reacting against the tradition. I am not reacting, I am simply acting out of understanding. I can see where the old pattern went wrong. I will not do just the opposite because just the opposite will also go wrong. I am doing something exactly in the middle.
So I don't deny your discipleship. I don't deny it because I respect you. I love you. I cannot say I am not a master because I know, I have experienced, I can share it with you.
Then it is up to you to say yes or no.
Maneesha is right. So as a footnote remember her, that no will bring its own consequences. It is not that I will punish you, your no will punish you itself. Yes will bring its own rewards. It is not that I will reward you; yes brings its own rewards.
Between me and you there is no relationship other than of love. But it is good that Maneesha has raised the question; otherwise, there was a possibility that many may have misunderstood.
The concerned doctor is trying to convince the patient that he is overweight. "Now just step on the scales," says the doctor. "There... you see? Now look at this chart and compare your weight with the average weight for your height. You are way overweight."
"No, I am not," says the patient. "I am just six inches too short."
It is a very difficult world -- misunderstanding is possible everywhere.
The matronly woman was alone in the house watching her favorite television program when her husband burst through the front door, stalked into the bedroom without saying a word, and began packing his suitcase.
"Where are you going?" she demanded.
"I resigned from the firm today. I'm sick and tired of you, and I'm going to Australia. I'm told that the young ladies there will gladly pay five dollars a night for the services of a good man, and I intend to live off the earnings from my lovemaking."
He then continued to pack. Suddenly his wife pulled her suitcase from the closet and began packing her own clothing. "And where do you think you are going?" he demanded.
"To Australia," she laughed. "I want to see how you are going to live on ten dollars a month."
Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,
WHENEVER ANY EMOTIONS GET TRIGGERED, MY ATTEMPTS AT
WATCHING USUALLY RESULT IN MIND TRIPS, UNLESS I DO SOMETHING
LIKE RUN AROUND BUDDHA HALL A COUPLE OF TIMES FIRST.
I FEEL THAT IF I COULD TURN ALL THIS ENERGY IN, INSTEAD OF OUT, GREAT THINGS COULD HAPPEN.
WHILE YOU TALK TO US ABOUT WATCHING, IT FEELS SO SIMPLE. AND
BASKING IN YOUR SILENCE, I WONDER HOW IT CAN BE A PROBLEM. BELOVED MASTER, WHAT AM I MISSING, OR AM I TOO IMPATIENT?
Prashanto, the first thing is to remember that the exact purpose of Buddha Hall is what you are doing.
Go on running as long as you don't fall down. Fall down on the ground not by any effort, but just let it happen by running continuously. The time will come when you will fall down. Then rest there and you will find immense peace and great silence which you have never known.
This is exactly the purpose of Dynamic Meditation: to exhaust your energy, so the mind has no more supply of energy to create thoughts and dreams and imaginations. So you are using the Buddha Hall perfectly correctly for the first time, knowing that that is the purpose of it.
I have never told anybody, because then from tomorrow you will see there will be two big crowds running.
Exhaust the outgoing energy and suddenly you will find you are in. To go in, you don't need any energy, you are there. The outgoing energy has to be exhausted, so you cannot go out. As far as going in is concerned that is a wrong idea; nobody goes in. How can you go in? That's where you are! You can go out -- that's okay.
So go to Buddha Hall and run as much as you can. Don't stop in the middle
thinking that it is too tiring. Go on, go on, let the body according to its own wisdom fall down. Don't act, don't try to deceive, because you are deceiving yourself. And if you can allow the body to go on running till it falls, then lie down there on the ground, and you would be surprised that you have never known such peace, such silence, such deep meditation.
Gautam Buddha himself... If you go to Bodhgaya where he became enlightened -
- that's why the name of the city has become Bodhgaya. Gaya must have been the name of the town but when Gautam Buddha became enlightened, bodh means enlightenment, so the city of Gaya became Bodhgaya. There is a temple in his memory made almost two thousand years ago and there is the tree under which he used to sit.
If you go to Bodhgaya you will still find what I have described to you by the side of the temple and nearly two hundred stones in a line. For one hour Gautam Buddha used to sit and meditate, and for one hour he used to walk on those stones and meditate. When he became tired of walking he would sit; when he became tired of sitting he would walk.
This way he exhausted his outgoing energy.
One day he found there is no energy at all for any outgoing. He remained in. And this remaining in revealed to him his luminous being, his ultimate consciousness.
In language it is a problem; we say, go in. You cannot go in, because if you go in, then that "in" will also be out. You can only go out; you cannot go in.
In, you are. What do you mean by "in"? It is not the inside of your house; it is where you are. There you don't need going, all that you need is that you don't have any energy to go out, so naturally you remain still and silent and in. Suddenly there is an explosion of light and bliss and ecstasy.
So you have found a beautiful meditation, Prashanto. Continue, and you will find many more from tomorrow on the way. Don't chitchat with anybody. The moment you enter the path by the side of Buddha Hall forget that anybody else exists in the world: you and the road, till you fall down. Then in a day you can achieve something which you may not be able to achieve in one year's Dynamic Meditation. This is the ultimate dynamic meditation!
I have not told people but you have found it, so now I have to recognize it.
Just remember one thing, that you are not to stop by yourself. Because if you stop you will miss the point, you will always stop before the energy is finished. That's why I'm saying go on and on and on till you cannot go on, and you fall. Don't pretend to fall, because those are all deceptions that you can detect yourself. You know perfectly well when you are pretending to fall and when you are really falling.
So don't misunderstand me. The real thing will happen only when automatically you find yourself falling. You are just a watcher, not a doer. And a tremendous experience is possible.
The father was having a heart-to-heart talk with his son before the boy's marriage.
"Son," he said, "I have two bits of advice for you before you get married. First, you must tell your wife, right from the start, that you insist on spending one night each week out with the boys."
"And what," asked the son, "is the second bit of advice?" His father smiled and said, "Don't waste it on the boys."
Hymie Goldberg goes for his weekly visit to the doctor and says, "Doc, I snore so loudly that I keep myself awake. What can I do?"
The doctor rolls his eyes and says, "Why don't you try sleeping in another room?"
So Prashanto, just get exactly what I am saying.
A Jew and an Irishman were fishing in separate boats some distance apart. The Irishman got a bite and was so nervous that he fell out of the boat. He sank twice, and as he was coming up the second time, the Jew rowed over and called out: "Mister, can I have your boat if you don't come up again?"
People have their own understanding. Just get exactly what I have told you, and when something happens report to me, because everybody will be waiting, "What happened to Prashanto?" And tomorrow everybody will be watching! I
have made you a hero within a second. Okay, Maneesha?
Yes, Osho. The Invitation Chapter #20
Chapter title: Those third rate politicians, those dwellers of the gutter 31 August 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Archive code: 8708310
ShortTitle: INVITA20
Audio:
Yes Video:
Yes Length:
89
mins Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
IN CANADA, WHERE I LIVE, I HAVE BEEN ASKED TO PARTICIPATE IN
NATIONAL POLITICS. SHOULD I REFRAIN, GIVEN THE STATE OF POLITICS
IN THE WEST, OR SHOULD I ACCEPT AND USE THE EXPERIENCE AS ANOTHER DIMENSION OF MY PROCESS?
Rupananda, it is well known what I think about politics, but I will not say anything to you, this way or that.
My whole approach to my people is that of freedom. You have to act out of your own intelligence. You don't have to depend on my advice.
I go on giving you my experiences, my attitudes, but there is no compulsion that you have to follow them. You are not my followers, you are my friends.
I cannot impose my ideas on someone I love; I give you absolute freedom to do whatsoever your intelligence, your meditativeness allows you. And I don't think you will go wrong.
Just don't be attracted by ambition, don't be attracted by power, because those infatuations are destructive. And the people who become attracted by things like money, power, prestige, miss one thing: that is life.
Balzar has a law about it: Life is what happens to you while you are making other plans.
A politician has no life, he is always making other plans, and meanwhile life goes on slipping by. But still, it is going to be your choice.
I never want to be remembered by you as someone who forced, manipulated, dominated you according to his ideas. I can share everything with you, but the final decision has to be yours, because that's how one matures. If you feel like going into politics, just think what you can contribute, or you will also become part of the whole dirty game that goes on in the name of politics.
You are asking me, "Should I get into the gutter?" I will not prevent you. If you enjoy it is perfectly okay with me! But always remember, don't take part in
anything unless you are ready so that you can improve it, you can give it some refinement -- not only about action, but also about talk. Cogglin's Law is: Don't talk unless you can improve the silence. It is a tremendously beautiful statement: Don't talk unless you can improve the silence -- very insightful.
Don't go into politics unless you can improve humanity and you can improve people's humbleness... not getting into a competitive will to power, because that kind of thing happens only when you are feeling empty inside. I have never heard of any politician becoming enlightened -- that will be a contradiction in terms -- nor vice versa, have I ever heard of any enlightened man being a politician.
You think you will be exploring a new dimension through the gutter? Through the gutter you will get into a deeper gutter, a bigger gutter, the main gutter. It is not a dimension; it is simply falling from your intelligence, it is not maturity. A certain retardedness is absolutely necessary in politics. If you feel you qualify...! You have to be continuously lying, you have to be promising things which you know perfectly well you cannot deliver.
Just the other night I was reading about a rabbi who wrote a letter to a friend, but a very strange letter. He wrote a small paragraph and then left almost the whole page, and signed underneath. That is not the way people write a letter. When you write a letter, you sign underneath it... this much gap. The man was also puzzled when he received the letter. He inquired of him, "What is the reason for leaving such a big gap between the letter and the signature?"
He said, "It says in the scriptures, `Keep yourself as far away from lies as possible.'"
But still, if you like there is no problem; there are many sannyasins in the same gutter in different countries. A certain cruelty, inhumanity, cunningness are the basic requirements for you to become a politician. So I am worried whether you have all these prerequisite conditions. Innocence is of no use; that will bring failure. Silence is of no use, truthfulness is of no use, to be sharply intelligent is no use. And remember one thing: politics gives you power, but it gives you power by making you a beggar. All politicians are beggars, whether they may be presidents or prime ministers.
Every five years, and they are standing on your door with their begging bowl.
They are, in fact, servants of the people. At least they have to pretend after each five years. For five years they can believe they are masters, but they cannot befool anybody of intelligence.
And this reminds me that the people from whom you are going to beg for votes are ignorant, prejudiced, are not contemporaries. They belong to past centuries, many centuries back; they are superstitious. If you want to have their votes, you have to fall to their standard; they are not going to rise to your standard.
To be a politician is a tragedy. But still, if you want to make your life a tragedy I have no objection. The whole politics around the world misses anything significant for the future.
It is too much concerned with trivia, small, ugly conflicts. It is not interested in reality to improve the destiny of humanity, to give new dreams to people, to bring more poetry into their lives. On the contrary, it destroys their dreams, it destroys their hopes; it destroys their trust in other human beings, because they have been continuously cheated by the politicians, exploited.
Oscar Wilde has said, "A map of the world that does not include utopia is not worth glancing at." But no politician can remain successfully in politics with a utopian mind; he has to be practical, pragmatic. He has to forget fundamental things, that through wrong means you can never reach the right end. Only the right means justify the rightness of your ends. But no politician can manage to follow right means towards right ends. He may talk about right ends, right values, but all his means will be wrong, and through wrong means you never reach to right ends; they don't connect.
You have to be mean. You have to be destructive. If needed, you have to commit all kinds of crime. If you can do all these things, only then you can become a politician. It is an absolutely foolish and absurd game, and particularly for a sannyasin who is searching for higher values, who is looking for inner reality -- who is thinking of beauty, truth, good. Politics is just the opposite. A sannyasin is trying to find his authentic being, and the politician has to create a false personality according to what people need.
A politician has to say things which he does not mean but which satisfy people. He can never speak his mind; in fact, people who have gone deep in understanding the psychology of politics, say in politics mind is not needed at
all. We don't see any politician functioning in a way that shows his genius. There have been millions of geniuses, nobody was attracted towards politics, only very mediocre people. In a way they represent the unintelligent, unevolved masses. They are the representatives of the slaves.
I have heard...
A great politician's brain surgery was being done. When the surgeons opened his brain they saw so much rubbish and garbage that they thought it is better to take the whole mind out of the skull and clean it; they have never seen anything so dirty. So they left the politician in anesthesia, so he was not aware, and they went into another room.
Meanwhile, the politician came out of anesthesia, was resting on the bed, when a man came rushing and shouted, "What are you doing here? You have been chosen as the president."
He said, "My God! What am I doing here?" -- and got up.
The surgeons looked from the other room, and said, "Hey! Where are you going? Your brain is here; we are cleaning it!"
The man said, "Now I don't need it! Clean it well and keep it. When I am no longer the president of the country I may need it, but right now there is no problem."
What use is a mind to the president?
Presidents are chosen who have no minds of their own, so they can simply function as rubber stamps.
Politics is a strange world, but if you want to have some taste of the ugliest part of human beings, you can go into politics. Just remember one thing: going in is easy, getting out will be very difficult, almost impossible. It is getting into deep imprisonment by your own desires. But there are people who are jailbirds; they like prison. I have known many politicians; I have not seen anything worthwhile in their lives. They have staked everything just to be in power. And what will these people do with power? They will create more wars, they will create more weapons, they will create more possibilities for a global suicide.
These are my ideas about politics, but these are my ideas, you don't have to follow them.
If you are feeling a certain urge for power, go into it. Of course I cannot bless you. I will feel sad and sorry for your going in a wrong direction, but I cannot prevent you either, because any interference in your life is against my whole approach. So please, meditate over it.
Go around Buddha Hall; you will find Prashanto there, either enlightened or dead! That is far better than going into politics.
Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,
I HAVE BEEN IN SOME LONG RELATIONSHIPS FOR MANY YEARS. WHEN I HEAR YOU TALKING ABOUT JEALOUSY AND FIGHTING AND ALL THESE
PASSIONATE THINGS IN RELATIONSHIPS, I BECOME REALLY SHAKY, BECAUSE IT SEEMS I NEVER EXPERIENCE THESE THINGS REALLY
STRONGLY. LAST NIGHT I GOT VERY SAD ABOUT IT, AND THE QUESTION
CAME UP WHETHER I EVER REALLY LOVED SOMEBODY, WHETHER I REALLY DID LET GO AND LOSE CONTROL.
BELOVED MASTER, DO LOVE AND HATE, FIGHTING AND HARMONY, COOLNESS AND PASSION REALLY ALWAYS BELONG TOGETHER?
Anand Vimlan, there are always exceptions. My feeling about you is that you are being sad unnecessarily. Life allows exceptions: very rarely you will find a couple who is not in a love-hate relationship but simply in love. Naturally, this kind of love will have a certain coolness about it, it cannot be hot.
To make it hot, you have to bring the opposite in; then fighting and quarreling and arguing gives a certain excitement to your energies. And when tired of fighting and arguing, you again move -- the pendulum goes on moving between love and hate. When your pendulum moves towards love, you feel strong love
because of the contrast. It depends on your likings: people like hotdogs! Dogs are enough, but they want hot dogs!
Your love is of a silent type, peaceful. There are rivers which are mountainous, falling from mountains as waterfalls into the valleys; there is much going on. And there are rivers which flow in the valleys silently, so silent that you cannot see that they are flowing. But I don't think that you have to be sad about it; it is a higher quality of love which is cool, without any excitement, without any heat.
Don't you love ice cream... a cool breeze, a silent house; no pillow fighting, no plates being broken? I know it brings a little spice in life when pillows are going like missiles in the air, but that kind of spice...? That kind of excitement is stupid.
A love that can be cool, and without a hot passion, is a higher quality. Every love should become of that quality.
An ancient seer of this country has made a very strange statement. For centuries in this part of the world, when people get married they go to some master, to some wise man to have his blessings; that is conventional. That is more important than the marriage done by the priest. The blessings of a wise man or an enlightened man, if you can find one, will not be just words. He will shower you with all his love, with all his grace, with all his flowers of silence and peace.
One of the ancient seers of the UPANISHADS has a very strange blessing for couples who come to him: "I bless you, that you will have ten children, and finally the husband will become your eleventh child." It looks absurd -- what kind of blessing is this? But I feel that the man had a great insight.
The growth of love should finally be so cool, so passionless that the husband becomes almost a child to the wife, because a woman is intrinsically a mother. In real love, the woman functions as a mother, even to the husband. How they can hate? But it rarely happens, and as the world has gone farther and farther away from their own selves and silence and peace and coolness, their life as husband and wife has also gone in the same way.
So when I am talking, I am talking not about the exceptions -- now, people like you are exceptions -- I am talking about the general rule. But it is good that you ask the question; it makes my answer complete. I have talked about the majority; now, I am talking about a very small minority in the world -- they are the true
lovers. Their love knows no friction, but only deep understanding of each other. So don't be worried about what I have been saying about the majority, about the world at large. You don't have to follow; you are perfectly going right.
Bennett's Accidental Discovery says: First, most auto accidents are caused by people with driver's licenses, so I tore up my license. Secondly, according to the latest statistics, most auto accidents happen within eight miles of your own home, so I moved.
Don't be stupid about these statistics, and about these accidents. Just watch your own inner feeling. If you are feeling happy with your cool and silent, without- any-conflict love, you need not start being childish, immature. You don't have to follow others.
The people who are fighting with their spouses are really very repressed people; their repression is great. All the religions and all the cultures and all the educational institutions are repressing people, teaching them to repress sex. Repressed sex is very poisonous, because then it will not be satisfied with one woman or with one man. That is really the cause of fight, the cause of all jealousies, the cause of making spouses into KGB agents. They are watching each move of the other person.
The husband cannot even look at a beautiful woman passing by if the wife is with him, because even looking at her is going to cause immense trouble at home. It is strange. If you love your wife and your wife loves you, and you see a beautiful flower or a beautiful face or a beautiful moon, there is no difference. But because of repressedness, the wife knows the husband would like to have as many women as possible; she has to be on guard. And because the husband knows his repression, he is aware that wife is also repressed in the same way.
I have heard about a big computer they have invented in New York which answers your questions. A boy went and asked, "Can you tell me where my father is?"
And the computer said, "Your father has gone fishing."
The boy laughed. He said, "This is absolutely wrong. My father has been dead for three years."
The computer laughed and said, "My son, that was the husband of your mother who died three years ago. Your father has gone fishing!"
But this goes on happening because for thousands of years so much sexuality is repressed that it is not possible to be satisfied with one woman, with one man. There is no basic difference, and the moment you put the light off any woman is the same, any man is the same. Small details may be different, but the repressed desire is discontented. A humanity without any sexual repression will not have this kind of relationship which is continuously nagging, fighting, harassing each
other.
This is the greatest psychological problem facing humanity: how to get rid of the repression that religions have planted in everybody's unconscious. It has gone so deep in the bones, in the blood, in the marrow, that one existentialist philosopher has said, "I would like to make love to all the women of the earth; still, I cannot say I would be satisfied." He is saying something true, sincerely true. And he is saying something not only about himself, he is saying it about all human beings, men and women both.
But this is madness. You don't say, "I will not feel satisfied unless I have eaten apples from every tree of the world." That kind of statement will not be relevant at all. But the existentialist philosopher's statement has a relevance; he is saying something true. That does not mean that he does not love, but his love is not capable to remove the deep-rooted, repressed sexuality; it is not enough. He wants more, and he wants change.
These are the reasons of conflict. You are fortunate if your life has been moving like a silent river without any unnecessary conflict, friction; otherwise there are everyday scenes, and this continues all your life.
I have heard that ninety-year-old Herbie, who tried to seduce a fifteen-year-old girl was arrested for assault with a dead weapon!
It is saddening. Ninety years old and you are not beyond sex, you are not beyond childish things; it is because of repression.
Man has to be completely released from all kinds of inhibitions and repressions, and love will become a very silent and cool affair.
Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,
PASSING THROUGH THE GATE OF THIS MANDIR FOR THE FIRST TIME IN
EIGHT YEARS, I FELT A KIND OF FRAGRANCE WHICH HAS STAYED WITH
ME EVER SINCE. IS IT POSSIBLE TO TAKE THIS FRAGRANCE WITH ME
WHEN I LEAVE?
OH, BELOVED MASTER, IT IS SO BEAUTIFUL, AND I AM SO GRATEFUL TO
SPEND THIS TIME WITH YOU, EVEN IF I CANNOT TAKE THIS FRAGRANCE
WITH ME.
Prem Maharaj, the fragrance that you have felt in this temple of seekers is not something that you can leave behind. This fragrance contains love, meditativeness, silence, trust, life-affirmative values, a song of gratitude, a dance with the trees and with the stars...
This fragrance is an experience of a totally new atmosphere that does not exist in the outside world. If you meditate, you will become the same temple. Then, wherever you go the fragrance will go with you like a shadow; even others will feel it.
It is not the first time that such a question has come to me. The moment they enter the gate many people have felt suddenly, as if they are entering into another world -- the air is different, the vibe is different -- as if they have come home. And there is bound to be a certain fragrance, because so many people are meditating, and slowly, slowly their inner-being flowers are opening. The whole purpose of all these people to be here is absolutely different from any gathering anywhere outside in the world.
These are the people who are in search of the essential, existential life source. They are at different stages of evolution in consciousness, but they are all radiating something of higher stages. So when you enter the temple, you will find the air is different, the trees are different, the people are different. And if you also become a meditator, as I know you are becoming, this fragrance will start coming from within your own being. Even others may feel it wherever you go.
I want my sannyasins... I have taken away the clothes which made them distinct;
I have taken away their malas. But still people feel that they look a little different from others; still the airport officers catch hold of them! In Indian embassies when they go for a tourist visa, they immediately get the idea that they are going to Poona; Poona has become synonymous with my name. And many sannyasins have wondered -- they are not wearing the orange, they are not wearing the mala
-- how they have become suddenly suspicious?
A sannyasin will have a certain fragrance, a certain style, a certain way which is subtle; it may not be very apparent to the eyes, but it can be detected.
I would like you to be known as separate from the crowds, not by your clothes not by anything outer, but just by your very being -- your silence, your peace, your love, your eyes.
Every gesture of you should declare that you are a sannyasin.
One day the pope gets a phone call from God. God says to him, "Since you have been such a good pope, I wanted you to be the first to know."
"The first to know what?" asks the pope.
God says, "I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that from now on, the world will have only one religion."
"That's wonderful," says the pope. "Now everyone will be at peace, and everyone will get along with one another -- that's great. But what is the bad news?"
"In a few days," says God, "you will be receiving a phone call from Ma Anando in Poona!"
That one religiousness is not going to be Catholic or Christian. That one religiousness is going to be this fragrance, Prem Maharaj, that you have been feeling here. Once our people are ready, they will go on spreading it all over the world; it needs it tremendously.
Just remember one thing: Never be miserly. Share your experiences here with me your silences of the heart, your flowering of the being. Go on sharing the song that you have heard here, that music that is all around you.
Sometimes I feel sad for a few people. One old sannyasin, Kabir, wrote a letter to me, saying "Osho, I want to share what has happened to me in all these years living with you.
But can I talk about you without mentioning your name?" This cowardliness should be dropped.
I want you not to be sheep, but lions.
I want you to roar about the experience, because the world is so deaf that unless you roar they won't pay any attention. And the moment you mention my name, even if they are dead, they will wake up! Without my name, they will feel goody-goody, and you will feel very goody-goody. But only with my name, will you be able to judge whether those people have any intelligence, any awareness, any understanding, or whether they are just mediocre people with prejudiced minds.
Share without being miserable, without being miserly, and share with authority. You have nothing to lose.
It is a tremendous challenge to change this whole earth into a paradise, but you will not be able to do that if you are cowardly or miserly. There are many sannyasins who remain silent and don't share just out of the fear that they may be condemned: "You have also fallen from the traditional religion, from the convention," they simply remain quiet.
That's not right; that is not compassionate. That is cruel. If you know something, share it for two reasons, because the humanity needs it, and the second reason is that the more you share, the more you will have of it.
MacTavish, O'Rourke and Hymie Goldberg were mourning the loss of a mutual friend.
MacTavish said, "As you well know, my friends, I am a thrifty Scottish soul. But there is a legend in my family that if one places a wee bit of money in the casket so that it may be buried with the body, it will ease the way into the next world. For the sake of our friend, I will place ten dollars in the casket with him." And with a flourish, he released a ten dollar bill and let it flutter onto the dear departed's breast.
O'Rourke had no intention of being outdone. "Well," he said, "this strikes me as near superstition, but I will also contribute that sum." And a second ten dollar bill joined the first on the dead man's breast.
Goldberg said at once, "Do you think I won't join in this kind deed?" And whipping out his check book, he quickly made out a check for thirty dollars, placed it on the dead man's breast and took the two ten dollar bills as change!
Don't be that miserly. Share with your full heart, because it is not only for the benefit of the other, it is also for the benefit of your own being. The more you share, the more open you will become. Your sharing is not a loss. In the ordinary world of economics, if you give things to people, you lose them.
I have heard...
A man stopped his car by the side of a beggar. He was in a good mood; he had won a lottery. He was surprised by the beggar, because his clothes were very costly, although very old and dirty and rotten, and his face also looked cultured, educated. But life had been hard -- it seems he belonged to a very good family, and some calamity had happened. He stopped his car; he was in a good mood, took out a ten rupee note and gave it to the beggar, and the beggar laughed.
The man said, "Why are you laughing?"
The beggar said, "I am laughing because this is the way I finished all my money, my whole heritage that my father has left. I also used to have a beautiful car, but I was giving to everybody -- whoever needed. I laughed, because if this is the way you are also going, soon you will be standing by my side."
In ordinary economics, when you give things you lose. But in the spiritual world laws change. There, if you DON'T give you lose: if you keep your doors and windows closed, your blissfulness, your silence, all become stale. But if you go on sharing, fresh waters will be coming from the eternal sources of life, and your blissfulness will remain always fresh and fragrant. And it will go on growing wider and wider.
As far as I am concerned this is the only real charity, to share your innermost treasure with people, familiar or strangers, and to turn their eyes also inwards. Because seeing your treasure, they will be reminded of their own treasures. Experiencing your fragrance, you will be putting them on the search of how they
can also be so fresh, so fragrant, so graceful. From where can they get this beauty that does not belong to the world, this music without instruments, and this poetic atmosphere without words?
Sharing with people is putting them on the right way: in search. And if they know what happens to the real seeker, they will not go on any wrong path.
The Indian constitution says three things are charitable: giving to the poor, making hospitals for the sick, opening schools for the uneducated. It is a shame that this should be the only kind of charity mentioned in the constitution of a country which knows far higher realms of charity. The constitution was written by people who had no idea -- they were politicians. They could not conceive that there can be some higher charity.
To me these are good but not great. The constitution would have been far richer if it had mentioned sharing your spiritual experiences with those who are poor in spiritual experiences.
I have been fighting for years with the Indian government. They are not ready to believe that this institution is a charitable institution, and they cannot understand that there are deeper treasures, higher consciousnesses, and those who don't have them -- they are poor.
Sharing your spirituality, sharing your meditation, sharing your love at least should have been mentioned in the constitution, particularly of a country which has been for centuries the land which has attracted seekers from all over the world. But this constitution was not written by seers or enlightened people, but by those third-rate politicians, those dwellers of the gutter. They cannot see anything more than the fragrance they feel in the gutter; that is the only fragrance they know of.
I would like you not to be bothered by constitutions and other things. You have to understand the higher economics: share so that you can have more.
Okay, Maneesha? Yes, Osho.
The Invitation
Chapter #21
Chapter title: To know oneself and to be oneself 31 August 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive
code:
8708315
ShortTitle:
INVITA21
Audio:
Yes Video:
Yes Length:
87
mins Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
CAN YOU PLEASE SPEAK ON DISCIPLINE AND MEDITATION?
Niten, it is a very strange question because every day, morning and evening, I am speaking on discipline and meditation. If anybody reads your question, he will think that for the first time I have to speak on discipline and meditation! Where have you been for so long?
You remind me of two old friends; they meet on a street in Leningrad... "How is life treating you," asks one.
"Just great," replies the other.
The first one looks at him dubiously and says, "Have you been reading the papers?"
"Of course," replies the other, "how else would I know!"
People know about their own lives by reading newspapers, and I have been telling you every day about meditation and nothing else, and you are asking...!
Okay...
A little old Jewish lady sits down on a plane next to a big Norwegian. She keeps staring and staring at him. Finally she turns to him and says, "Pardon me, are you Jewish?"
"No," he replies. A few minutes go by and she looks at him again and says, "You can tell me -- you are Jewish, aren't you?"
He answers, "Definitely not."
She keeps studying him, and says again, "I can tell you are Jewish!"
In order to get her to stop annoying him, the gentleman says, "Okay, I am Jewish."
She looks at him and shakes her head back and forth and says, "Really, you don't look it!"
I am wondering from where to begin! Niten, meditation is the only contribution the East has made to humanity. The West has made many contributions, thousands of scientific inventions, immense progress in medicine, unbelievable discoveries in all the dimensions in life. But still, a single contribution of the East is far more valuable than all the contributions of the West.
The West has become rich; it has all the technology to be rich. The East has
become poor, immensely poor, because it has not looked for anything else except for one thing, and that is one's own inner being. Its richness is something which cannot be seen, but it has known the highest peaks of bliss, the greatest depths of silence. It has known the eternity of life; it has known the most beautiful flowering of love, compassion, joy. Its whole genius has been devoted to a single search -- you can call it ecstasy.
Meditation is only a technique to reach to the ecstatic state, to the state of divine intoxication. It is a simple technique, but the mind makes it very complex. Mind has to make it very complex and difficult, because both cannot exist together.
Meditation is the death of the mind.
Naturally, mind resists every effort for meditation. And if you go on without listening to the mind... It is clever and cunning enough to give you false directions and call them meditation.
Just today I was informed about one of the people who has been for many years a disciple of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. He is now here meditating, but he continues his master Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's meditation too.
What Maharishi Mahesh Yogi calls transcendental meditation is neither transcendental nor meditation. It is a mind trick. Just one thing is missing in it -- I have been telling you about the monkey -- and the person who is here should remember it! Transcendental meditation works only if you don't remember the monkey. So from tomorrow morning, be careful! The slightest remembrance of the monkey, and transcendental meditation is meaningless.
In fact, after eighteen years being with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and doing his transcendental meditation, what is the need to come here? But mind is so cunning that he is consoling himself that perhaps it is his master, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who has sent him here. But why should he send you here? I don't consider that he knows anything at all about meditation. What Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is teaching in the name of meditation has been known for centuries in the East by almost everybody that it is a psychological trick. It is not harmful. On the contrary, it can give you a little rest; it can give you a good feeling as if you have taken a shower. But it is not meditation, because it cannot take you beyond the mind.
Any effort made by the mind cannot take you beyond the mind. This is a very
fundamental rule to remember. The so-called transcendental meditation is just an example. There are many of the same kind prevalent all over the East, but they don't bring enlightenment. They don't bring awakened consciousness and that is the only criterion to decide whether they are right or not. A tree is known by its fruits, and a technique is known by what it achieves.
Transcendental meditation is representative of all the meditations which mind has suggested to you; it is a cunning way to take you astray. Mind remains safe, not only safe, but becomes stronger. All these techniques are of concentration. You concentrate on some word, holy word -- the name of God, or any mantra -- and you repeat it as fast as you can, just inside your mind. The faster you can do it the better; the speed helps two things. The mantra or the name of God -- even your own name will do; it has nothing to do with God -- any meaningless word will do because the technique depends on something else. It depends on fast repetition, so fast that there are no gaps left in between.
Because there are no gaps, thoughts cannot arise; thoughts need a little space.
This is one thing: that you go on repeating a word faster and faster, and as you go on doing it for years, you really become an expert. So one thing it does is that it does not give a chance for any idea to enter into your mind. The second, more fundamental thing it does is that it creates tremendous boredom. Obviously, anything continuously repeated is going to create boredom, and boredom is the basis of auto-hypnosis.
When you become bored, you start falling into a sleep, which is not exactly sleep because it is deliberately created; hence it has a different name -- hypnosis. Hypnosis means sleep, with a difference, that it is deliberate.
Sleep comes naturally -- on its own, spontaneously. Hypnosis is deliberate sleep
-- you create a situation in which it is bound to happen. This deliberate sleep is immensely healthy, and even ten or fifteen minutes in a hypnotic state gives you a good relaxation which hours of ordinary sleep cannot give. And when you come out of it, you will feel very fresh.
I absolutely agree that if you are doing it only for this purpose -- relaxation, a freshness comes, but it never takes you beyond the mind. How can it take you beyond the mind, because mind itself is repeating? By repetition, it does not need to think; repetition itself becomes a substitute for thoughts. And by
repetition it falls into a deep sleep -- dreamless sleep, which gives you immense freshness, rejuvenation.
Naturally, you can be deceived that this is meditation -- you can go on doing it your whole life. It is healthy, it is good, it is nourishing, but it is not meditation.
Meditation starts by being separate from the mind, by being a witness. That is the only way of separating yourself from anything. If you are looking at the light, naturally one thing is certain, you are not the light, you are the one who is looking at it. If you are watching the flowers, one thing is certain, you are not the flower, you are the watcher.
Watching is the key of meditation:
Watch your mind.
Don't do anything -- no repetition of mantra, no repetition of the name of God -- just watch whatever the mind is doing. Don't disturb it, don't prevent it, don't repress it; don't do anything at all on your part. You just be a watcher, and the miracle of watching is meditation. As you watch, slowly, slowly mind becomes empty of thoughts; but you are not falling asleep, you are becoming more alert, more aware.
As the mind becomes completely empty, your whole energy becomes a flame of awakening. This flame is the result of meditation. So you can say meditation is another name of watching, witnessing, observing -- without any judgment, without any evaluation. Just by watching, you immediately get out of the mind.
The watcher is never part of the mind and as the watcher becomes more and more rooted and strong, the distance between the watcher and the mind goes on becoming longer and longer. Soon the mind is so far away that you can hardly feel that it exists... just an echo in faraway valleys. And ultimately, even those echoes disappear. This disappearance of the mind is without your effort, without your using any force against the mind -- just letting it die its own death.
Once mind is absolutely silent, absolutely gone, you cannot find it anywhere. You become for the first time aware of yourself because the same energy that was involved in the mind, finding no mind, turns upon itself. Remember: energy is a constant movement.
We say things are objects, and perhaps you have never thought why we call things objects. They are objects because they hinder your energy, your consciousness. They object; they are obstacles. But when there is no object, all thoughts, emotions, moods, everything, has disappeared. You are in utter silence, in nothingness -- rather in nothingness; the whole energy starts turning upon itself. This returning energy to the source brings immense delight.
Just the other day, I quoted William Blake, "energy is delight." That man, although he is not a mystic, must have found some glimpse of meditation. When meditation comes back to its own source, it explodes in immense delight.
This delight in its ultimate state is enlightenment.
Anything that helps you to go through this process of meditation is discipline: perhaps taking a good bath, being clean and cool; sitting in a relaxed posture with eyes closed, neither hungry nor overloaded; sitting in a posture which is most relaxing... having a look at the whole body, every part and whether there is any tension. If there is any tension, then change the posture and bring the body into a relaxed state.
In the East it has been found, and found rightly, that the lotus posture -- the way you must have seen the statues of Buddha; that is called the lotus posture... It has been a discovery of thousands of years that that is the most relaxed state of the body. But for Westerners who are not accustomed to sitting on the ground, the lotus posture is a nightmare! So avoid it, because it takes almost six months to learn the lotus posture; it is not necessary.
If you are accustomed to sitting on a chair, you can find a way, a posture, a chair made in a certain way that helps your body to relax all its tensions. It does not matter whether you are sitting in the chair or in the lotus posture or lying down on the bed. Sitting is preferable because it will prevent you from falling asleep.
The lotus posture was chosen for many reasons. If one can manage it without torturing himself, then it is the best, but it is not a necessity. It is certainly the best situation in which you can enter into watchfulness. The legs are crossed, the hands are crossed, the spine is straight; it gives many significant supports to being watchful. First, in this position, gravitation has the least effect on the body because your spine is straight. So the gravitation can effect a very small portion. When you are lying down, gravitation effects your whole body. That's why for
sleeping, lying down is the best posture. Gravitation pulls the whole body, and because of its pull, the body loses all tensions. Secondly, when you are lying down, if the purpose is to sleep then you should use a pillow because the less blood reaches to your mind, the less the mind will be active. The less blood reaches to the mind, the more possibility to fall asleep.
A lotus posture is a great combination. It has the least effect of gravitation, and because the spine is straight a lesser amount of blood reaches to the mind, so mind cannot function. In that posture you cannot fall asleep easily. And if you have learned the posture from your very birth, it becomes so natural. The crossing of the legs, the crossing of the hands have a significance. Your body energy moves in a circle; the circle is not broken anywhere in a lotus posture. Both your hands... one hand gives the energy to the other hand; your one foot gives energy to the other foot -- and the energy goes on moving in a circle. You become a circle of your bio-energy.
Many things are of much help. Your energy is not being released so you don't get tired.
Your blood is reaching in a lesser amount so the mind does not function too much. You are sitting in such a position -- your legs are locked, your hands are locked and your spine is straight -- sleep is difficult. These are just supports; they are not essential.
It is not that one who cannot sit in a lotus posture cannot meditate, meditation will be a little difficult but the lotus posture is only helpful, not absolutely needed. And for the people from colder countries where sitting on the ground is not possible -- their bodies for centuries; their parents and their parents' parents from Adam and Eve... Have you seen any picture of Adam and Eve sitting in a lotus posture? In fact, it would have been very good for them, because sitting in lotus posture they could sit naked and yet nobody would have been very much aware of their nakedness. That's how the Jaina monks sit, always in lotus posture. You cannot see their genitals. Their legs are crossed, their hands are crossed; this functions almost as a protection for their nakedness.
But if for centuries people have never sat, then it will unnecessarily create trouble; your body structure has taken a certain mode. It is better to follow the body and its wisdom: use a chair. The whole thing is you should be comfortable so that the body does not draw your attention. That's why tension has to be
avoided, because if you have a headache then it will be difficult to meditate. Again and again, your attention will go to the headache. If your leg is hurting, or if there is any slight tension anywhere in the body, it immediately alarms you. It is natural and it is part of the body's wisdom.
If it does not alarm you then there is danger: a snake may be biting you, and you may go on sitting; your clothes may catch fire, your body may be burning, and you may not be aware of it. So the body immediately alarms wherever there is any trouble. That's the reason to create a relaxed position in which the body need not alarm you, because every alarm will be a disturbance in your meditation.
So the first thing of discipline is a relaxed body and closed eyes, because if you have open eyes, then so many things are moving around, they can be a disturbance. It is perfectly right for the beginners to use a blindfold, so that you are completely inside, because it is your eyes, your senses that take you outside. Eyes take eighty percent of all your outgoing contact -- eighty percent is through the eyes, so close the eyes.
For the beginners, it is good if they can use earplugs. Close the ears so no noise from the outside disturbs you. It is only for the beginners; all the precautions are for the beginners.
And then just watch your mind as if the mind is nothing but a traffic of thoughts or a film
-- a movie passing on the TV screen. You are just a neutral observer.
This is the discipline. And if this discipline is complete, watching comes very easily, and watching is meditation. Through watchfulness mind disappears, thoughts disappear. And that moment is the most blessed moment: when you are fully awake and there is not a single thought, just a silent sky of your inner being.
This is the moment when energy turns inwards; the turning-in is sudden, abrupt. And as the energy turns inwards, it brings immense delight, orgasmic delight. Suddenly your awareness becomes so rich because the energy is nourishment to your awareness. The energy coming back creates almost a flame of your being. You see all around pure light, silence -- utter silence, and an immense centering.
You are now at your very center.
At the right moment, when you are exactly centered -- the explosion. That explosion, we call enlightenment. This enlightenment brings you all the treasures of the inner world, the whole splendor. It is the only miracle in the world: to know oneself and to be oneself, and to know that one is deathless, one is beyond the body, beyond the mind; one is just pure consciousness.
So the discipline is just a support, the essential thing is witnessing, watching -- that is meditation. But in the name of meditation, there are hundreds of so-called teachers who go on exploiting people. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi became well known in the West, because the West was not aware that in the East, even the villagers are doing the so-called transcendental meditation. Everybody chanting, repeating the name of God -- it is an enjoyable exercise. I am not against it; it is perfectly good, but don't call it meditation and don't call it transcendental. Those are wrong words for it.
It is hypnotic auto-suggestion and nothing more. It will never give you the light that Kabir talks of, "As if thousands of suns have arisen all around." It will not give you what Rumi calls as if the whole sky is showering flowers, and the whole being is filled with perfume, unearthly, not of this world."
It will not give you the ecstasy that Patanjali, the founder of Yoga, continuously insists on in his yoga sutras. He says that samadhi, ecstasy is very similar to sleep with only one difference that it is alert. If sleep can be awake, if sleep can be full of awareness, then it is samadhi, it is ecstasy. It will never give you the buddha nature. It gives you ordinary mental rest -- physical relaxation; hence, I am not against it.
Whatever Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and other people like him are doing is good, but they are calling something meditation which is not. That's where they are leading people astray. If they had remained sincere and authentic and told people that this will give you mental health, physical health, a more relaxed life, a more peaceful existence, it was right. But once they started calling it transcendental meditation they have raised a very trivial thing to an ultimate significance which it cannot fulfill. People have been in transcendental meditation for years, and in the East, for thousands of years. But that has not become their self-knowing, and that has not made them Gautam Buddhas.
If you want to understand exactly what meditation is Gautam Buddha is the first man to come to its right, exact definition -- that is witnessing. Learn from
Gautam Buddha witnessing, and learn from Patanjali the discipline that can be helpful for meditation. This way, yoga and mediation can become a synthesis. Yoga is a discipline, just an outer support -- immensely helpful but not absolutely needed. And Gautam Buddha has given to the world the very fundamental and the most essential thing: witnessing as meditation.
Niten, your question will not be solved until you start on the path a little bit; otherwise, you will ask again, "What is meditation?" Just my explaining it to you is not enough; you will have to move on the path.
Hymie and Becky Goldberg are about to take their first flight on an airliner. Hymie spends a while enjoying his comfortable, reclining seat and watching the pretty stewardess walking up and down the aisle. Next he looks out of the window and says excitedly, "Becky, look at those people down there, they look like ants."
Becky leans over, has a look and then says, "They are ants, you idiot... we haven't left the ground yet!"
Hymie Goldberg was so interested in watching the pretty girls going up and down the aisle, he had completely forgotten that the airplane was still standing -- it had not moved!
So looking at the ants, he thought they must be people from such a height. That's why you meditate with closed eyes!
Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,
HOW YOU TALK ABOUT THE SAME OLD THINGS DAY AFTER DAY AND YET
PRODUCE A NEW REVELATION WITH EACH SENTENCE IS TO ME THE
GREATEST MIRACLE IN EXISTENCE. WOULD YOU CARE TO COMMENT, PLEASE?
Veena, it is very simple. First, because I have nothing to say, so I am free to say
anything.
I don't know what is going to be my next sentence; hence, it is not a burden or a trouble; it is spontaneous. I am not an orator who has to practice and rehearse. I love people, and I love to share my experience with them. I don't remember the past; hence, it is very difficult for me to repeat it. And because I look more at the questioner than his question...
and all questioners are different; their questions may be almost the same. Looking at the questioner, my answer changes, I respond to the person. I don't have any doctrine to preach, so I don't have to be consistent. I enjoy absolute freedom.
In the past history of mankind, only poets have been given a certain license that they can use a little bit of freedom not to bother about the grammar and the language and the rules and the regulations. They had to be given that much license, otherwise they could not have poetry. That is the difference between prose and poetry: prose has to follow rules, regulations, grammar, linguistics; poetry has a certain freedom. I am even using prose with absolute license, because I don't see there is any reason to follow any limits.
All that I know is if what I am feeling is conveyed to you, whether it is right grammar or wrong grammar, whether it is the right word or the wrong word, is irrelevant. If I have conveyed my joy, my love, my peace, my blissfulness to you, any word is right. And because I have so much overflowing experience of my being I can go on for a millennium talking about it -- from different aspects, different angles, different directions; it will remain inexhaustible.
You have heard speakers, orators; I don't belong to their category. I simply enjoy gossiping! It is not a gospel -- I am not serious about it. Seriousness to me is psychologically sick. Healthy people will not enjoy gospels; they are boring. And you can see in any church you will find people asleep. The Sunday sermon is a good morning nap; people go to the church for that good morning nap... no disturbance. And the sermon is almost the same, it helps sleep.
I have heard that one great preacher was very much disturbed. He was a very learned rabbi. His trouble was that an old millionaire, who had contributed the most to the synagogue, used to sit just in front of him and sleep and snore loudly. It was not a trouble that he was snoring, it was a trouble because his snore
disturbed other sleepers! And his snore kept many other sleepers awake. That disturbed the preacher because that meant every Sunday you have to bring a new sermon -- people are awake.
It is a good agreement between preachers and their congregation, that the congregation will sleep and the preacher will preach. He can go on preaching the same thing every time. There is not much to preach either. In all the four gospels, it is only one story repeated four times, the same incidents reported by four journalists! And not very educated either! So what can the poor preachers do? What can the rabbis do?
I have been looking through the TALMUD, and it is so tiring that anybody who suffers from sleeplessness, I suggest the TALMUD -- you can just manage two or three pages! It is so much nonsense, and on that nonsense rabbis go on interpreting, interpretations upon interpretations. And the original is basic rubbish. I have always suspected because the namèrabbi' seems to be so close tòrubbish' that there must have been some past connection between rubbish and rabbi!
But somehow the rabbi had to stop that old man -- and he found a way. He used to come with his grandchildren -- a little boy, sometimes a little girl -- but he always used to bring a little child with him. The rabbi one day took the child aside and said, "Listen, my boy, if you can keep your grandpa awake, particularly when he starts snoring -- you can nudge him -- I will give you four annas."
The boy said, "Settled!"
And the next sermon day it was really great; the boy did not allow the old man to snore.
The moment he would snore, the boy would nudge him.
The old man was amazed, "What has happened?" The boy had never done such a thing before... always sitting silently. Outside he asked, "What is the matter?"
The boy said, "Nothing is the matter. I am getting four annas to keep you awake, because your snoring is disturbing the whole congregation."
"Who is giving you four annas?" the old man asked. "I will give you eight annas
if you sit silently and don't disturb my snoring." The boy said, "That's perfectly good -- agreed!"
Next time the rabbi looked again and again at the boy, and the boy started looking downwards, and the old man was snoring. And the rabbi said, "What is the matter?" He many times made the indication, but the boy would not look at him at all. He continued to look downward. After the sermon the rabbi took the boy aside, and said, "You seem to be very cunning. Have you forgotten?"
He said, "No, the old man is giving me eight annas not to disturb him." The rabbi said, "I will give you one rupee."
He said, "That's perfectly good -- promised."
Next time he again started nudging the old man. The old man said, "Have you forgotten?"
The boy said, "I have not forgotten. Now the rabbi is giving me one rupee, and business is business!"
A true Jew!
I don't know what is going to come through me. I am almost a vehicle, I have left myself almost completely in the hands of existence. So whatever existence wants to convey to you, I am available. That's why I went on stopping many times because it is not in my hands, it is in the hands of existence. If something goes on flowing, it is okay -- and if it is nothing, I wait. I wait for existence to pick up the last thread.
Veena, you say that it is the greatest miracle in existence. I can agree with you. I myself feel it, that either I am mad -- because for thirty years I have been continuously speaking, nonstop... Now I am speaking much less; otherwise five lectures per day had been my usual routine from morning till late night. Naturally, I thought either I am mad or it is a miracle. There are only two possibilities; I am happy with either!
A Soviet citizen who was visiting the West was besieged by many questions from persons wanting to know more about communism.
"You mean to tell me," asked a curious host, "that by being a communist, you share everything?"
"Yes," came the reply.
"You mean," the host continued, "if you had two houses you would give me one?"
"Of course."
"And if you had two cars, you would give me one?" "Certainly," replied the Russian.
"And if you had two stoves, or televisions, or refrigerators you would give me one of each?"
"Naturally," said the Russian.
"And if," the host went on, "you had two shirts, you would give me one?" "No," replied the communist emphatically.
"Why not?"
"Because I have two shirts!"
Veena, I simply enjoy talking, just as I enjoy silence. I have to keep some balance. Most of the time I am silent, and then naturally, I have to take a little holiday from silence.
Then I talk to my heart's content. I do only two things: I talk to you, and then I go to sleep! In the morning I wake up, I talk to you, and then I go to sleep. My twenty-four hours are divided into two things: talking and sleeping!
My sleep is my silence, my ecstasy, my samadhi. My talking is my sharing with you what I have found in my sleep!
Okay, Maneesha? Yes, Osho.
The Invitation Chapter #22
Chapter title: A sannyasin is never retired
1 September 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive
code:
8709010
ShortTitle:
INVITA22
Audio:
Yes Video:
Yes Length:
110
mins Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
THIS QUESTION IS ASKED BY A TREMBLING HEART, WRITTEN BY A TREMBLING HAND. MY GRATITUDE FEELS SO INADEQUATE FOR YOUR
GIFT. WHY DO I FEEL SO UNWORTHY OF YOU?
Veet Vidhan, there are certain symptoms of falling in love. One of them is a feeling of unworthiness, because love is so vast, and you are so small. You cannot earn love, it comes on its own accord; suddenly it starts showering on you.
Naturally, because you have not earned it, you cannot feel worthy of it. As love deepens, the feeling of unworthiness deepens. If a person in love does not feel it, that means the love is superficial, and the man has too big an ego. Only in that situation -- when your ego is too big, and your love is a superficial affair, not the great affair Ta Hui was talking about...
Before the great affair of love, it is absolutely necessary and inevitable, that one should feel unworthy. Nothing is wrong in it; it is exactly as it should be. Out of this unworthiness, slowly, slowly transformation happens. I can predict it will happen to you too, because your feeling of unworthiness is not just an intellectual question. Intellect never asks such questions; ego does not allow such questions; mind is not capable of asking such questions.
Mind and ego and intellect -- they all take it for granted whatever happens in their lives is not enough. They are worthy for more; hence the question cannot arise from those sources. The only source that remains is the heart, which is always true and always sincere. And once the heart starts feeling unworthy, it does not give a sadness to you but a gratefulness. Slowly, slowly unworthiness turns into gratitude: you are not worthy of something and it has been showering on you; you cannot even understand why existence has chosen you.
One of Gautam Buddha's disciples, Manjushri, became enlightened sitting under a tree.
The moment he became enlightened, suddenly flowers from the tree started showering on him. Those who were around, they could not believe what is happening. There was not any strong wind. There is no reason why so many flowers go on showering on Manjushri.
He was sitting silently with closed eyes; perhaps he was not even aware.
They reported to Gautam Buddha. He looked where Manjushri was sitting under a tree, and he said, "He has become what his destiny was; he has come to his flowering. And not only is his inner being full of joy, even the tree is celebrating."
These kinds of stories for centuries had been taken as metaphors, poetry, beautiful anecdotes. But now we can say they are factually possible on scientific grounds. Trees are very sensitive, more sensitive than you are. They join you in your celebration; they join you in your mourning. Of course, you are not aware, but now scientists have found ways to figure it out. They have made a small instrument like a cardiogram, which is attached to the tree, and the cardiogram starts working, making the graph of the tree's sensitivity.
When the tree is at ease, relaxed, the cardiogram makes the graph very symmetrical. If a woodcutter comes with his axe, with the idea to cut the tree... He has not started cutting and he has not even said that he is going to cut the tree, but if he has the idea, the tree is even sensitive to the idea. And suddenly the graph starts trembling just like your heart trembles... writing, your hand is trembling. The whole tree starts trembling deep down, and it can be caught on the graph. The graph is no longer symmetrical; it goes crazy.
Not only is it that the tree which has to be cut becomes aware of your thought, your thought creates a vibration around you which a simple heart can catch hold of. Other trees surrounding the tree -- friends and companions which have been together for years, have joined in sadness when there was no rain, have joined when the rain comes and brings great joy and blessings. They have passed through many falls and seen themselves standing naked against the sky, and have seen many springs together when great foliage comes and when flowers start blossoming. A certain communion, a certain friendliness has arisen in them.
So it has been found that the tree which is going to be cut starts trembling, catches the thought. But other trees nearby also start trembling... just the idea that one of their old friends is going to be destroyed. Strangely enough, scientists have been shocked that it means trees are more sensitive than human beings: you don't know what thought is going on in the person who is sitting by your side; every mind is broadcasting its thoughts all around, and you are catching them but you are not aware.
They have tried bringing the same woodcutter again, but with no idea of cutting the tree.
He comes with his axe, the graph continues exactly the same, symmetrical, showing that the tree is not worried because there is no idea in the woodcutter's mind -- and the other trees also stop trembling. And when the gardener is
brought who has nourished those trees, cared for them, has loved them, in lonely moments has even talked with them... I had a gardener, an old man, a very beautiful man -- and he was not just professionally a gardener, he loved trees. I have seen him, when there was nobody and he thought nobody was watching him; I have seen him talk to the trees.
Once I caught hold of him, because he was continuously winning every year; almost five years he was with me and every year he was winning the corporation prize for bringing the biggest roses. I asked him, "What is the matter; you talk with trees?" He said, "I love them, I feel them. I can
tell you, but not anybody else, because I trust you will understand, that it is not one-sided; they also answer in some way or other. I have not been winning these prizes because I am a great gardener."
The city was big, and there were many millionaires in the city. They had great gardens and many gardeners. And they were all puzzled because they were all trying to win the prize, but this old man went on winning.
He said, "It is just my talking to the trees, saying, `Don't forget in the right time to give me the biggest flower. It is a question of my prestige and your prestiges.'" And he said to me, "It has never failed. Those other gardeners are doing hard work with more manure, more chemicals. They are doing everything that the art of gardening will suggest, but this is beyond the art of gardening."
As the gardener is brought, all the trees feel so immensely happy that the symmetrical graph becomes almost a dance. Just as it has become crazy out of fear, so out of love it again becomes not the ordinary silent tree, but showing a tremendous joy as if the tree is jumping, dancing. And you can see the difference between the graphs. When the tree is afraid, the graph will show you that these lines are coming out of fear. And when the tree has suddenly seen the gardener who has taken care and grown it like his own children, the graph dances. And you can see in the graph that it is not out of worry, but out of a gratitude and out of a welcome -- a friend has come. And other trees also do the same.
Man is capable of receiving immense joy if he only learns how to be grateful. So you are on the right path, Vidhan. But don't go on thinking in terms that you are unworthy, because that has to be transformed into gratitude. It is certain, nobody is worthy. What have you done to be alive? What have you done to have such
beautiful eyes? What have you done to have this potentiality of becoming a Gautam Buddha? You have not done anything; it is just coming out of the abundance of existence. Existence has so much that it has to share out of sheer necessity to unburden itself; it is overflowing. And if people remain thirsty, it is their own fault.
There is an ancient saying in India that you can remain thirsty standing on the bank of a river. Unless you learn how to bow down, fill your hands with water, the river is not going to jump towards you. It is available; just a little humbleness on your part, a little receptivity on your part, and you can quench your thirst.
Everything that is great in life is abundantly available; just don't shrink in your unworthiness. It is a beautiful first step to experience it, but then for what are we worthy?
Neither for life, nor for love, nor for this beautiful body -- we are not worthy for anything; we have just taken all this for granted. This is the irreligious mind.
I don't call a man irreligious who does not believe in God. I don't call a man irreligious who does not go to the temples or churches. I don't call a man irreligious if he denies heaven and hell and all that nonsense. But I call a man irreligious if he does not feel unworthy of all that he has received and is receiving every moment. With every breath, with every heartbeat life is continuously giving you. The same life is capable of giving you immense blissfulness, of which you cannot even have an idea unless you have tasted it.
Just change your unworthiness into gratefulness, into thankfulness. And to me, this kind of gratitude is the only true prayer. You don't have to say anything -- just the feeling of gratefulness that I don't deserve, I don't see why so much has been given to me and so much goes on showering on me. What can I do except be grateful?
This gratefulness should sink deep in your consciousness, in your very fibers and cells of body. You will simply become gratefulness, then it is prayer. And the things that are called prayer are just false. Millions of temples and churches and synagogues, and millions of people continuously praying... but their prayers are false because they are always asking for something. They are never thanking for what they have already received.
In their prayers if you look, you will find the beggar, the ungrateful beggar. And
you will also find in all the prayers of all the religions -- I have looked as deeply as possible into every religion -- there is a certain complaint that things are not as they should be: "Others are getting more; I am not getting that much." These are not prayers, they are simply wasting their time. They have not even come to understand the meaning of prayer.
It is not in the words, it is prayerfulness. And prayerfulness means only one thing, and only one thing, gratefulness -- a gratitude that goes on sinking deep into your being for everything: for trees being green, for rain coming down to quench the thirst of the earth.
And when the first rains come, the sweet smell coming from the earth is earth's gratitude.
And the trees becoming green, and bringing millions of flowers, that is earth's thankfulness, that is earth's prayer. That's how you should be; that's how your prayer should be -- nothing but a gratefulness.
Slowly, slowly man goes on forgetting what complaint is, what grudge is. As he becomes more attuned with gratefulness, he forgets completely that he has to ask for something.
Things are coming without his asking. He has just to keep his doors open and the guest comes. He has just to wait, and wait lovingly, prayerfully.
I am giving you the meaning of prayer in a way no religion has ever given it to humanity; their prayers are so childish, stupid. A gratefulness will make you more and more capable of receiving gifts.
The so-called religions that have overruled man's mind for centuries are mostly fictions. I have come across Albert Camus' very strange but beautiful and true statement: "If God did not exist, we would have to invent him" -- otherwise, to whom are you going to complain? on whose shoulders are you going to throw all your responsibilities? with whom are you going to be angry? who is going to be your security, safety...?
Camus is saying something very important when he says that if God did not exist we would have to invent him, and if God did exist, we would have to abolish him. If God did exist why would we have to abolish him? -- because it would be intolerable. To be so grateful to him would look like humiliation: you are
unworthy and he goes on giving to you -- you could not forgive him; he is insulting you, he is making you aware of your unworthiness.
I have a friend who was at a time education minister. He used to come to me once in a while, and one day he told me something that he would not have told anybody: "I have thought many times to bring it to your notice, but then I stopped myself. But there is a limit, I have to tell it to you." He was born a poor man, and he was adopted by a rich man, a very rich man, who had no children. So he suddenly rose from poverty to be a super-rich man.
He started giving money to his relatives who were poor, because he himself belonged to a poor family; his relatives were poor, his friends were poor. And now he had so much, and he had got it without any effort, and he was in a position to help everybody. He really helped all his relatives, his father, his brother, his sisters, his friends, and he made all of them very rich. I was aware of the fact.
He told me "The problem is, I have been so generous to everybody who was even faraway connected -- a faraway cousin, or just an acquaintance -- but if I saw that they were in trouble, I gave them as much as they wanted; I gave them more. Now they are all flourishing, they are all rich. But one thing strange is that they don't feel obliged towards me! On the contrary, most of them never come to see me or meet me; in fact, they avoid me. It hurts me very much, that I have done so much... and what kind of ungrateful people are these?"
I said, "You don't understand the deeper psychology behind it. You have given them, but you don't know that the giver always insults the person he is giving. In the very giving you have become higher and the person who has received has become lower. If you are an understanding man, you will see this is actually what happens. I want to ask you one thing: Have you ever accepted any help from them?"
He said, "I don't need it -- why should I accept their help?"
I said, "That's where you are humiliating them, insulting them. What is wrong? -
- small things. If you just phone a friend whom you have helped, who is now rich, has a factory of his own, cars of his own... if you just ask him, `Send two cars; I need them very much.'
You may not need, you have enough cars! Just let those cars come, and after an
hour send them back. You don't need, but let that man feel that he can also give something to you, that he is not always on the receiving end. He is sometimes on the giving side also.
"Or you can tell some friend, Ìn your garden I saw such beautiful roses. Can you send me a dozen roses today?' And he will be immensely happy to send those dozen roses. It doesn't cost him much, but he will start forgiving you, and he will start being grateful to you."
The man said, "Perhaps you are right. I have never, never asked anybody for anything, because I don't need. And I never thought that just giving to somebody, and always giving and never taking..."
"Anything, anything without any value... a few flowers or just calling the person and saying, Ì am feeling very lonely. Can you come and be with me for breakfast or for the lunch? -- I will be immensely grateful.' You would have helped those people to regain their dignity. You have given them money but you have made them beggars, and nobody can forgive you, this is utterly inhuman."
And he said, "I understand, but I will not be able to do it; it is against my ego."
I said, "That is then absolutely clear why they are avoiding you: they know that you are giving to them, not because they are poor but because you are rich. You are not concerned with their problems and worries and difficulties. You are just exploiting their misery, their suffering, their poverty for your own ego fulfillment; Ì have been a great help.' And you are bragging continuously... How can they forgive you?"
That's what Albert Camus means when he says that if God did exist and was available to humanity, we should have to abolish him because it would become intolerable: he goes on giving and he will not ask for anything from you because he has everything -- the whole belongs to him! He would take away all your dignity. You can forgive somebody for anything, but you cannot forgive anybody who destroys your dignity as a human being, who takes away your pride.
Fortunately, there is no God, and particularly for you. There are people who believe in God: deep down they are angry with him. They may pray and they may show their respect, but deep down they think, "Why is my wife suffering from cancer? If God is compassionate, then where is his compassion? I have been praying for years, why am I poor? The people who never pray and never
come to the church or the temple or the synagogue are rich! I am honest and I am trying to be as sincere as human frailty will permit, but I remain poor, a failure, a nobody... and the people who are mean and cunning and can do anything to achieve power and money -- they are successful. The priests go on saying that God is just. Where is your justice?"
These things go on remaining in your unconscious -- you may not say them because they may make God very angry. In fact, in the TALMUD, the Jewish God says exactly the words, "I am a very angry God. I never forgive; never take me for granted." A very beautiful sentence is: "I am not your uncle, remember." That is very Jewish, but their God is a Jew, you cannot do anything about it. He is reminding you, "I am not your uncle, so don't expect any niceness from me. I am your father."
You know there is a difference between the father and the uncle: uncles are always friendly; fathers are authoritarian, powerful people; you belong to them. It is very rare to see a son and a father being friendly, trusting each other, telling each other their innermost thoughts and feelings. But you will always find people immensely friendly with their uncles. They will not say things to just anybody which they can say to their uncles; some different quality exists.
Such a God is not only Jewish, such a God is the God of all primitive people. In all primitive, holy scriptures he is very angry. If he was available in the world, Albert Camus is right, we would have to kill him. It would become intolerable -- his interference in everything, his commandments for everything, and his anger, and his violence, and his torture; his blackmailing that he will throw you into hellfire for eternity if you don't listen to him. And if you are obedient, in other words if you are just a slave, you will have all the joys of paradise. Such a God would not be tolerable, particularly to those who have some pride of being individuals. It will be easier to finish him.
In fact, Sigmund Freud sometimes comes to very great insights; he was certainly a genius. But unfortunately these people never came in contact with any meditation; otherwise they would have given the world tremendous contributions. Still, because of their genius they had glimpses and insights. One of his insights, which may not be factual is certainly psychological. The psychological is far more significant to understand than the factual, because the factual is ordinary, outside you; the psychological is within you and controls you.
Freud says that people worship God as father because some time in the beginning they must have killed some dominant father, somebody who was too dictatorial. It is a well-known fact that many kings have been killed by their sons because the king was going on and on living. And the son was becoming old and it seemed that he was not going to live to be a king; the only possibility was the death of the father. Many kings have imprisoned their fathers and taken over the throne, because they saw that there seemed to be no possibility of his natural death -- at least while there was time to enjoy being a king!
What would be the point when you are seventy-five or eighty when your father dies and you succeed? Within a year or two you would be gone too.
There is a possibility factually, but there is no historical record of it; hence, historians have rejected the insight. But I am not a historian and I think history is simply bunk! My concern with God is for psychological reasons.
Sigmund Freud says that because somewhere in the past man had to kill the father he felt the guilt of what he had done. And out of that guilt he started worshipping the ancestors, the fathers, the elderly people, the old people. All this respect has arisen out of a guilt which has settled in the human heart. Man started inventing a God as father, raising temples in his memory, statues, priests praying, worshipers worshipping.
Behind this whole scene and drama of religion, Sigmund Freud finds only one single fact and that is: somewhere in the past man has behaved so badly with his father -- perhaps murdered -- that he cannot forgive him. So the only way is to pray, make God your father, the creator of the world. All these hypotheses... It was a very original insight.
A man who has no guilt will not go to a church, will not go to a confessional in a Catholic church. For what? -- unless one enjoys talking about so-called sins...!
I have heard...
One woman was coming every Sunday to the confessional, and confessing the same sin that she had been raped. The bishop said, "That is not your sin, you don't have to confess it -- let the person who has raped you."
She said, "But I enjoyed it! That's why I have to confess it. I pretended to resist, but deep down I enjoyed."
The priest said, "Even if you enjoyed it, you have been forgiven. You have donated to the charity box, and I have prayed for you to God. And this is the third time... who is this man? Is he the same man raping again and again every week?"
She said, "I have to confess, he has raped me only once, and because I enjoyed it he did not bother to rape me again. He looked embarrassed... what is the point? In fact, he must have felt he had been raped, tricked. So I go into places where he hangs around; the moment he sees me, he escapes."
But the priest said, "If it has happened only once then what is the point every week to come to the confession?"
She said, "I enjoy the idea and to tell you in detail. It is nothing to me -- ten dollars I can give as a punishment, and you can pray for my sin. But I enjoy even describing it."
My own feeling is that the number of people who confess in the Catholic church, most of them have not committed those sins. They simply enjoy the idea, "I raped a woman."
Perhaps they want to rape a woman, but it is a difficult job. But to confess is very simple, just ten dollars. And for ten dollars, enjoying the idea that I raped the woman... At least the priest is convinced and he will convince God too.
Sigmund Freud seems to me to be psychologically right; otherwise there would be no temples, no churches, no mosques, no gods. Man needed someone to pray to, needed someone to complain to, needed someone to throw all responsibility onto. But if he was available in the world, just in the M.G. market, he would have been killed -- and particularly in Poona.
You will be surprised to know that this M.G. Road is named after Mahatma Gandhi; M.G. is short for Mahatma Gandhi Road -- and Poona has killed, assassinated Mahatma Gandhi! The day a Poona-ite assassinated Mahatma Gandhi sweets were distributed and there was celebration. And now they are calling their main market M.G. market. This is the guilt that somehow has to be erased, so they have raised the statue to Mahatma Gandhi. Strange... you kill the man and then you raise the statue.
You must have seen on the hills, just nearby the bridge, there is one beautiful
bungalow where Mahatma Gandhi used to stay. The people to whom that bungalow belongs used to come to listen to me in Bombay. And when I was moving to Poona, I said to those people, "That bungalow is empty and that will be the best place for the ashram because of the hills around; the road goes round and round -- and the whole hill part belongs to the bungalow. For the ashram it will be perfect, and whatever your price...
They said, "It is not a question of price, it is because Mahatma Gandhi used to stay there, so we have made it a memorial." Now it is a Mahatma Gandhi memorial -- there is a statue, there is a memorial.
Just by the other side of the river there is one palace, Aga Khan Palace, where the British government used to imprison Mahatma Gandhi, as a special concession, because it is not a jail; it is a palace, it was used for Mahatma Gandhi. Whenever the government wanted to put him in jail the palace was used, and he was free to move in the gardens. He was provided with his secretaries, with his wife; he continued to function just as if he was outside. In fact, he was in a better position; outside he used to live in small huts because poverty was his philosophy. Here he was living in the Aga Khan's Palace, one of the most beautiful buildings in Poona, with a vast garden.
His wife died while he was in prison in the Aga Khan Palace. His wife's samadhi is in the Aga Khan Palace, so now the Aga Khan Palace has also become part of a memorial.
Because Mahatma Gandhi was imprisoned there and his wife died there... And it was a group of Hindu chauvinists of Poona who killed him. And now they are trying to somehow erase the guilt feeling -- making memorials, making statues, giving names to the streets.
Sigmund Freud is right in my understanding that man must have behaved badly in the past with their elders, particularly the fathers. And there is a possibility that fathers may have been killed, because they were holding all the power -- and all the power included all the beautiful women of the clan. The sons were young, they needed beautiful women; the father was old but he was holding all the beautiful women: unless he dies, there is no possibility for the young people to have those beautiful women, they were that old man's property.
Psychologists have been trying to find the same pattern in monkeys. If you see
monkeys sitting on a tree, you will be surprised to know that on top is the oldest monkey, the most powerful monkey. He is the president! Nobody else will be allowed to sit on the top of the trees; that is a question of prestige and power. And around him are all the beautiful females. He is old but even the youngest females first have to be under his control. Then underneath that are other elders, and underneath that are the young people.
Naturally, there is every possibility -- and it happens -- that the older monkey is killed by the younger monkey because he is taking away their whole life. He has lived enough and he goes on living -- and he is holding all the power. There is a deep will to power in everybody, and particularly the power over the females. Nobody can even look at those females while the old man is alive. They don't have any other money and treasure and kingdoms; their only property is the females. On this point of the females, many old monkeys are killed.
Perhaps this discovery by the scientists led to the insight of Sigmund Freud that one day men killed their fathers -- had to kill, had to remove them, otherwise they wouldn't allow you to live at all.
If God did exist, it is absolutely certain he would have been assassinated -- it would have become absolutely intolerable. But fortunately, he does not exist so nobody can assassinate him. But unfortunately, people have created a hypothetical God which neither you can assassinate nor you can communicate with. It is a simple hypothesis, but still it helps people to get rid of their guilt.
The priest is the beneficiary; he keeps the hypothesis alive. He fights for the hypothesis, because all that comes to God as offerings to erase the guilt of people reaches the priest.
So the priest's whole work is to make more and more people guilty. This is a business and a very subtle structure: make people guilty about everything, every pleasure.
In Jainism, even to eat food tastefully is a sin; you should not eat tastefully. You can eat, but don't take the taste, don't enjoy it. That is possible only if your taste buds are operated on; otherwise it is not possible. Your tongue and your taste buds... and they are not many, they can be removed very easily. Then you won't taste anything. But that is not the idea.
The idea is that because of those taste buds you will have to taste and then you
will feel guilty. And once you are guilty, you are in the hands of the priest.
Now sex is not in your hands. Feeling good and happy with a restful night is natural, but Jainism condemns it. Jaina monks should eat only one time a day, and that too, standing because being comfortably seated you can eat more; standing you will get tired yourself.
And it looks so embarrassing -- a crowd, and you are standing, and you have to take your food in your hands.
The Jaina monk is not allowed to have anything as his possession. So how much can you take in your hands? -- and you cannot take twice. So they are hungry. To think of food or to think of women or to think of any pleasure is a sin -- even to think, even to dream. And I cannot conceive that a Jaina monk can avoid dreaming about food, or that so-called celibates -- Jaina, Catholics, Buddhists, Hindus -- can avoid dreaming about women?
And the priests say that whether you dream or you actually act it does not matter: even to dream about good food is as sinful as actually eating it because the question is of your mentality; to dream about a beautiful woman is as sinful as having a beautiful woman.
All the religious priests for thousands of years have been managing to find all those areas where you are weak, where nature can be condemned. And you cannot do anything because it is a natural thing, so naturally, you will feel guilty.
Guilt is the whole foundation of your religions.
The priest needs you to be guilty, and because of guilt you need God -- who is going to forgive you? What are your prayers? "Forgive us, we are sinners and your compassion is great. Forgive us father." And there is nobody to listen to you!
Because God is just a hypothesis, assassination is not possible. You cannot find him anywhere. Albert Camus is right: if God did not exist, we would have to invent him.
That's what we have done, we have invented him. If God did exist we would have to abolish him. The existential problem is what I have told you, the feeling that I am unworthy.
It is true:
Nobody is worthy.
We have received everything for no reason at all.
Being grateful to existence is the only authentic religion, and it does not need to have an adjective to it -- Christian or Hindu or Mohammedan. It is simply gratefulness.
Vidhan, you are on the right track; just don't get stuck at unworthiness, that is one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is gratefulness. This is the negative side; that is the positive side.
Remember, always to go with the affirmative, the positive, and you will never go astray.
The ultimate affirmation comes the day when you explode into light, into joy, into bliss, into song, into dance. All that will create more and more gratefulness in you.
You will become just a prayer. Question 2
BELOVED OSHO,
THE OTHER MORNING, WHEN YOU MENTIONED ABOUT A POCKET WATCH
BEING THE LAST PRESENT FOR PEOPLE WHO RETIRE, I WAS AMAZED, BECAUSE WHEN YOU LEFT FOR AMERICA I WAS AT MY VILLAGE, AND I RECEIVED BY MAIL A UNIQUE PRESENT FROM YOU
-- A VERY BEAUTIFUL
SEIKO POCKET WATCH! I WAS DELIGHTED BY THIS RARE GIFT, BUT TODAY I FEEL A BIT SHAKY!
BELOVED OSHO, COULD YOU PLEASE TELL ME SOMETHING ABOUT
THE
SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS GIFT?
Sardar Gurudayal Singh, I remember the pocket watch that I have sent you. I have been giving watches to hundreds of my sannyasins. The significance is simple, so you need not be worried by what I said yesterday.
It was not a retirement gift; a sannyasins is never retired! He becomes enlightened, but retirement is not possible neither before enlightenment nor after enlightenment.
Retirement does not exist in the world of a sannyasin, so you can drop your fear and worry; it was not a retirement gift. I have been giving watches to many people because my whole message is: be watchful!
So don't misunderstand me...
A man in New York for the weekend, struck up a conversation with a young lady in the bar. After a few drinks he suggested that they buy a bottle and go to his room; she agreed.
When the girl began taking off her clothes, the man asked, "Say, how old are you?"
"Thirteen," she replied.
"Thirteen? Good Lord," said the man. "Get your clothes back on and get out of here."
At the door the girl paused and said, "Superstitious, eh?"
In America, the number thirteen is very superstitious! You will find in hotels that after the twelfth storey comes the fourteenth. The thirteenth storey does not exist at all because nobody is ready to stay on the thirteenth floor.
I have seen one book: a man had done great research work proving that this superstition of the number thirteen is not just superstition, it has a scientific background. I was very much amazed so I went through the book. It was sheer nonsense what he had done. He had collected the number of accidents which had
happened on the thirteenth date, the number of people who died on the thirteenth, the number of people who got cancer on the thirteenth... all kinds of calamities that happened on the thirteenth. He had collected such a list that anybody would be greatly impressed that certainly this number thirteen is dangerous.
I wrote a letter to the man saying, "Unless you do the same research for the eleventh and for the twelfth -- just two dates will do, one before thirteenth... and find out what happens on the twelfth, what happens on the eleventh, all the calamities... And unless you find that more accidents happen on the thirteenth than on the twelfth or eleventh, that more people die on the thirteenth than on any other date, your thesis is just nonsense. This way you can prove any date dangerous, because people are dying on every date, every day. There is no quota given for dates."
I received a letter saying that the man had died; unfortunately he died on the eleventh!
One of his friends replied that the man himself had missed the thirteenth. But in America that superstition is very prevalent. People don't want the number thirteen on their car; they avoid the number thirteen in every way. In the army you won't find a soldier whose number is thirteen.
Sardar Gurudayal Singh, that retirement watch is also a superstition, but it is possible that whoever invented it first may have had some idea similar to me, that now a man is retiring, life is in a way finished. It is good to give him a watch because the days are few, time will be rushing by faster than ever. So it will be helpful to keep him alert, watchful.
Time is not money, time is life, and to give a watch... Now it has become superstition nobody bothers what is the meaning. Nobody knows either the people who are giving or the person who is receiving... but just a golden pocket watch.
But when I have given watches -- and I go on giving -- that does not mean that you are retired. That does not mean that your days are finished, "Just count the hours on your watch."
It means: Be watchful, be aware and alert.
Every moment is full of danger and full of ecstasy. If you can use it for awareness and watchfulness, it becomes a great ecstasy, the juiciest experience of life. But if you are not aware, some moment, some day, you are going to die...
Don't die before destroying your ego.
Let the ego die first so that you can realize your real immortal being.
I have given it to you, Gurudayal, just to be watchful, because one can get into any trouble -- particularly a man like Gurudayal.
A few days ago somebody came to me to inform me that Sardar Gurudayal Singh was going to marry Mukta. I said, "I am telling enough jokes, and he is trying to be a practical joke!" And Mukta is also great! She has found poor Sardar Gurudayal Singh. He is a rare man, a happy man, but to find him for marriage...! And he is such a fellow he will not say no. He has known life in many colors: he has been in the army, he has fought in the wars; he has been my bodyguard for many years, and he is of a simple and innocent heart. If somebody approaches him for marriage at this age, he will say okay.
Somehow I have persuaded Mukta not to do such a thing, because he is living a free life.
He has divorced his wife long, long ago; he has not a single worry in the world. He is one of my most profound sannyasins -- poor, but immensely rich because he can laugh more beautifully than anybody else. I don't have to know where he is sitting. When he starts laughing I know because his laughter, even in his old age, comes louder than anybody else's.
No need to worry about that watch! Just be watchful; don't get into any trouble. Now, getting married to Mukta... You will be in trouble; she will be in trouble. She is enjoying fully. She has divorced her husband long ago; you have divorced your wife -- both are free. But I must say that Mukta has an eye to find a real man!
Two jokes for Sardar Gurudayal Singh...
"You will be poor and unhappy until you are forty," said the fortune-teller to her customer.
"Then what?" asked the worried customer.
"Well, by then you will be used to it," the fortune-teller replied!
A man approaching retirement went along to see the company doctor for one final checkup. To his horror the doctor said, "I don't know quite how to put this, but your heart is on its last legs and you have only got six months to live."
"Is there nothing I can do?" asked the shocked man.
"Well," said the doctor, "you can give up alcohol, and cut out smoking. Don't eat rich foods, no dancing, and don't even think about sex!"
"And this will make me live longer?" the man asked hopefully. "No," replied the doctor, "it will just seem longer!"
Okay, Maneesha? Yes, Osho.
The Invitation Chapter #23
Chapter title: What kind of vehicle are you using 1 September 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive
code: 8709015
ShortTitle: INVITA23
Audio:
Yes Video:
Yes Length:
101
mins Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
HEARING YOU SPEAK THE OTHER MORNING, IT FINALLY CAME TO MY
CONSCIOUSNESS THAT I AM SEXUALLY REPRESSED.
I CAN'T REMEMBER BEING SEXUALLY REPRESSED BEFORE THE AIDS
SCARE STARTED. ALSO, BEING REJECTED SEXUALLY BY A BOYFRIEND
HAS CONTRIBUTED; ALTHOUGH I SHARE THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THAT --
OR TRY TO.
I CAN REMEMBER A TIME WHEN, WITH NO BOYFRIENDS, I WOULD FEEL
MY SEXUAL ENERGY AND YET IT WOULD NEED NO OUTLET. IT WOULD
STAY IN MY BODY AND I WOULD FEEL ORGASMIC ALL OVER.
BUT NOW I FEEL IMPRISONED BY REPRESSED SEX AND NEED YOUR
GUIDANCE.
Prem Shunyo, you are simply confused. You are not sexually repressed. You are simply an English lady. It seems you had forgotten it.
Just a few days ago a drunkard was arrested in France. He was making love to a dead woman on the beach. When asked, he said, "I thought she is English."
Don't be worried about repression. And moreover you are coming to the age when everybody feels disturbed, particularly women from the West. Middle age is a troublesome and anguish-creating state.
A few things for you to contemplate...
First, one has to recognize that one is getting into middle age.
Middle age is when you still believe you will feel better in the morning.
Middle age is when you want to see how long your car will last instead of how fast it will go.
Middle age is when you are home on Saturday night, the telephone rings and you hope it is not for you.
Middle age is when you change from stud to dud.
Middle age is when you stop criticizing the older generation and start criticizing the younger one.
These are just symptoms I am telling you, so..!
Shunyo, people who have been here with me for almost ten or twelve years cannot be sexually repressed. That is my whole condemnation all over the world; you can call it my reputation. And asking me a question about sexual repression is just destroying my reputation!
Two men sitting in a bar were commiserating about married life. "I know a man," says one, "who has been married for thirty years and he spends every evening at home."
"That's what I call love," says the other.
"Oh, really?" replied the first, "the doctor called it paralysis." It all depends how you take it.
You are not sexually repressed. You suddenly remembered that you are an English lady...
where are you?... what are you doing here?
A commissar was visiting a collective farm to check on the season's crops. "How are the potatoes?" he inquired.
"The potatoes are so plentiful," a farmer replied, "that if we put them end to end they will touch the feet of God."
"How can that be?" blurted the commissar, "there is no God." "Well," the farmer answered, "there are no potatoes either."
Shunyo, all that has happened is that that crazy Milarepa has escaped from you. But don't be worried; he is crazy enough, he will come back.
You can rely on me, I will see to it that the poor fellow comes back. He will roam about in the ashram a few days. You enjoy the freedom, and don't be worried; he cannot get lost. Finally he is going to come to you.
This has been going on for years. I have been watching it, I have never said anything to you. It is not something new. Hundreds of times he must have left you and he has come back. He is a very tame fellow. You have just to give him enough rope, so that he can enjoy the idea that he is free.
There is nothing to worry about. You simply enjoy a few days of peace and silence, and paralysis.
It is very rare to find time to be alone, to be oneself. It is fortunate to find some people who once in a while escape, before they get caught somewhere else. And he has proved so reliable that many times I was thinking, now he is lost -- and I see him back again.
You just have to learn patience. And by the way, it is a good excuse to learn patience, waiting and trusting that he will come. Suddenly, one night he will start knocking on your door.
I don't think that there is any other woman who can tolerate him long enough except Prem Shunyo -- she is almost immune to Milarepa.
Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,
FOR TEN YEARS I HAVE THOUGHT THAT WHEN YOU SAID THERE IS NO
TIME-SPACE SEPARATION BETWEEN THE MASTER AND THE DISCIPLE, AND
WHEN YOU SAID THE DISCIPLE HAS TO MELT INTO THE MASTER SO THAT
THEIR HEARTS BEAT TOGETHER, I THOUGHT THAT YOU WERE SIMPLY
BEING POETIC. THE OTHER EVENING WHEN YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT
THIS RELATIONSHIP, I SUDDENLY GOT THAT YOU MEAN WHAT YOU SAY
SO POETICALLY.
I WOULD LIKE TO TAKE YOU HOME WITH ME IN MY HEART, MY BELOVED
MASTER, AND I AM A SLOW LEARNER WITH A FRIGHTENED HEART AND
ONLY SIX WEEKS.
WILL YOU COME WITH ME THIS TIME?
Prem Dheera, the first time you were right, when you thought I was simply being poetic.
The second time you were wrong, when you started thinking that I mean what I say so poetically -- I don't mean. If I start going into everybody's hearts it will be impossible to put me together again!
You can love me wherever you are. You can feel me wherever you are.
But poetry is poetry; don't make it something pragmatic and practical. When I talk about melting and about merging and about having a heart-to-heart communion, don't take it that that's actually what I mean. Those are only indications towards a very subtle phenomenon in which I remain I, you remain you. In fact, you become more yourself than you have ever been before.
If love cannot give you individuality, uniqueness, that love is impotent. The power of love consists of giving you freedom and authentic individuality and being. That's the way to take me with you.
When you become an individual, peaceful, silent, utterly free from all kinds of bondage, then your freedom, your uniqueness, your love all indicate that you are taking me home.
You should not take me as a person.
You should take me as the values which I am teaching to you. If you take those values with your heart, you are taking me; hence I say again, the first time you were right when you thought I was being poetic. Poetry should never be understood literally; it is symbolic, but it is significant. Just because it is only symbolic does not mean it is insignificant. Its significance certainly does not consist in being factual. It is something much more than fact, it is truth itself.
Ordinarily we don't make any distinction between fact and truth. Factually you cannot take me in your heart -- that is an impossibility. But truthfully, you can take me in your heart. That will mean my fragrance, my joy, my meditativeness, my ecstasy, my presence but not my person.
If you can understand this there is no problem -- I can come with you.
Just one thing to be remembered: what kind of vehicle are you using?
A Frenchman, a German and a Russian were boasting about the modes of transportation at their disposal.
"I drive a Renault to work," said the Frenchman. "On Sundays I drive my Peugeot. And when I go abroad, I drive a Citroen."
"I drive a Volkswagen to work," said the German. "On Sundays I drive my BMW, and when I go abroad I drive a Mercedes."
"As for me," said the Russian, "I take the bus to work. On Sundays I drive around in my little Moskvitch. And when I go abroad, I drive a tank."
So just be careful if you are taking me in you heart, that you don't drive a tank -- I am a peaceful person and I don't want to go to war! But as far as my presence is concerned you are absolutely allowed to take me with you.
My whole effort here is not to create an illusion in you, but on the contrary to destroy all possibilities of illusion. Man has lived under all kinds of illusions; he is surrounded by hallucinations. When you fall in love with someone it is very rarely a true experience.
More often it is only an illusion, an idea, a projection. When you see someone as beautiful it is more your biology that is creating the illusion of beauty. Once your biological infatuation is finished the beauty will disappear; the same woman will not look beautiful at all.
From the very beginning the woman has known the psychology of man better than man understands woman's psychology. In fact, man has been continuously saying that woman is a mystery. I don't see any mystery anywhere. I have known more women than perhaps anybody else in the world, and I have known men also. None of them is a mystery.
Everything is absolutely clear, but you don't want to see it clearly -- you want to go on having illusions. Illusions are sweet, nice, beautiful. The truth, the bare, naked truth is not so sweet.
Gautam Buddha continuously says that when you see a beautiful woman, don't forget that she is just a skeleton, just as you are a skeleton, covered with a bag of
skin. Maybe someone has a little longer nose and somebody has a little smaller nose, and somebody has round eyes and somebody has a different shape, but inside it is the same blood, bones, flesh. Beauty seems to be only skin-deep.
If you have X-ray eyes you will be surrounded with skeletons all around.
Just recently it happened in Europe that one woman was driving a crane and she struck an electric pole. The shock was so tremendous, she fell down in a coma. She did not die, but after a few hours she came back to consciousness with a strange phenomenon: her eyes had become X-ray eyes. Now she is suffering from a tremendous migraine... but doctors are using her in the hospital as an X- ray machine. She has opened a new dimension.
Because of too much electricity the eyes have changed. Now they can see deep down inside you, and she is completely horrified. She cannot open her eyes because she cannot see your face; she can see only your skeleton. She cannot see your skin and your beautiful nose. She is the first woman who sees people as they actually are, without any illusions.
Asked, "Do you feel some difference between beautiful people and ugly?" -- she laughed.
She said, "There is no one who is beautiful and no one who is ugly. All are skeletons and horrible."
A man was admitted to a psychiatric hospital because he thought he was Ronald Reagan.
But this caused a problem for the staff because they already had a Ronald Reagan on the books and the director thought it might cause trouble. But then he hit upon a brilliant idea. On his first night at the hospital, one of the staff put him in the same cell as the other Ronald Reagan in the hope that this confrontation would bring one or both to their senses.
The next morning he called the new man to his office and asked how his first night had been.
"Oh, doctor," replied the man, "I have been living under a delusion for many years."
"That's an amazing insight," said the doctor excitedly. "Please go on."
"Well," continued the man, "for as long as I can remember, I thought I was Ronald Reagan, but I'm not."
"That's very good," said the doctor. "So who are you?"
The man looked at the doctor, smiled sweetly and said, "I'm Nancy." People go on changing their illusions.
I want you to come out of all the illusions and just see reality as it is. It is simple and it is beautiful. In the beginning you may be shocked because your delusions are destroyed.
But as you will become more and more accustomed and in accord with existence and reality, you will feel a tremendous freedom and a great sense of authenticity.
Gautam Buddha's statement is on record that to experience truth in the beginning is bitter, in the end it is very sweet. But illusions are totally different, just the contrary: in the beginning they are very sweet; in the end they turn out very bitter. In fact, this should be the criterion: something that is sweet in the beginning, be aware of it; it is illusion. Soon you will be awakened out of it and it will hurt and it will feel very bitter. It is better to experience truth, which is bitter in the beginning but in the end proves to be the sweetest experience possible.
So when I am talking to you, I have to be poetic for the simple reason that there are things which cannot be said in prose. There are things which can only be hinted at in a poetic way. But poetry can always be misunderstood because poetry is symbolic and you cannot take it as actual. The moment you take poetry as literal and factual, you are creating an illusion which will sooner or later be destroyed by the reality.
No illusion can live for long.
Every illusion has a very small lifespan.
I don't want you to get into any kind of illusory relationship with me. I have been talking about the master and the disciple relationship from different angles,
emphasizing many things; this also should be remembered, that all that has been said to you about it is poetic and symbolic.
You cannot merge or melt actually, but you can merge and melt by dropping your ego.
That's exactly the intention, that you drop the ego; that between the master and the disciple there will be only two persons -- the master and the disciple -- not four persons, the ego of the master and the ego of the disciple and then the master and the disciple behind their egos.
That is happening in almost all your relationships. On every bed where you find a couple, just look closely, you will find four persons: two real persons and two unreal persons.
Those two unreal persons are created by both projecting something onto the other.
Naturally there is going to be disillusionment. Every relationship comes into a state of disillusionment; then it really hurts. Never create any relationship with projection.
Avoid your ego, avoid your mind.
Just see clearly without any thoughts disturbing your vision and you will never create a relationship. You will have relatedness, you will have deep intimacy but there will be no relationship, no binding; otherwise every relationship becomes a kind of marriage. And the moment something becomes a marriage it has turned into an imprisonment. Certainly, the master disciple relationship cannot be allowed to turn into a marriage; that will destroy its whole purpose.
The whole purpose is to give you freedom, to help you to be free from all kinds of chains which you have mistaken for ornaments; to take you out of your imprisonment which you have taken as your home; to make you aware that your religion, your nation, your race, your caste, your ideology, all are different kinds of imprisonments, and they all turn you into prisoners.
They decorate their chains with flowers, they make their chains with gold, but it does not matter whether the chains are made of gold or of steel -- chains are chains, and they destroy your dignity. They destroy your humanity, they reduce
you into a slave. The whole of humanity is living in many kinds of slaveries.
The slavery has become multidimensional: you belong to a race, you belong to a nation, you belong to a religion, you belong to a political party... And all these are causes of your slavery; all these are destructive to your spirituality.
An authentic human being does not belong to any religion, does not belong to any nation, does not belong to any race. He is simply part of existence. Why belong to small trivial crowds when you can belong to the whole universe? And with belonging to the whole universe there is an immense difference.
When you belong to the whole, it gives you freedom because the whole is unlimited and there are no limitations, no boundaries.
The whole can never become a prison to you.
The awakened man lives in the whole, belongs to the whole universe. He does not belong to small cages howsoever beautiful they may be.
I want my people to belong to the whole. That's the only way I can help you, and I can show my love to you and my respect to you. It has not been the case in the past: no master has been respectful towards his disciples. He has asked that the disciples should be respectful towards him; that they should be grateful towards him; that they should be surrendered to him. These are very subtle games of the ego.
If you love, if your love is real, you will not ask for surrender. If your love is real you will have tremendous respect, it does not matter whether you are master or disciple.
Respect, reverence for life, does not need any special qualification. You will be respectful to the trees and to the birds and to the stars too.
A master who is not respectful to his disciples has no right to have any respect from the disciples either; it is a mutual understanding and awareness. The master is not in any way holier-than-thou or higher-than-thou. He may be more experienced in certain ways, he may be richer in his inner world, but that does not create any hierarchy. All hierarchies are created by the ego, and to be a master, to be an awakened person, the first thing is to drop the ego then you cannot create any hierarchy.
There is a beautiful story about Gautam Buddha's past life...
He loved to relate about his many past lives. At least twenty-four past lives he has related in his discourses to his disciples -- beautiful stories. It does not matter whether they are historically true or not. There is no way to find it out, and there is no reason to be worried about whether they are historical or not -- they are significant.
He says, "In one of my past lives, when I was as unconscious as you are, when I was as miserable as you are, when I was searching for a master as you have come to me searching for a master, I heard about a man who had become enlightened. Immediately I rushed and when I reached a great crowd had already arrived.
"I touched the feet of the man who had become enlightened and the most surprising thing was that I had no thought of touching the feet -- it simply happened. Just the presence of the man was so immense, I found myself touching his feet without my will, without my thought, without my preparation, without even my readiness. I had just come to see out of curiosity whether he was really realized or not, and what had happened.
"As I came close to him something transpired and I touched his feet. I stood back and even a greater miracle happened: that man touched my feet.
"I said to him, `What are you doing? You are awakened, enlightened; I am an ignorant man in search of a master, and masters don't touch the feet of the disciples.'
"And the awakened man said, Ì don't belong to that category of masters. I am ready to touch everybody's feet because I know they are all going to become enlightened one day or other. And there are only seven days in a week! Somebody becomes enlightened on Monday and somebody becomes enlightened on Sunday -- it does not matter. One thing is certain, that everybody carries inside him a buddha. And I can see in you that it is not going to be long before you will be enlightened. I can see the seed has already died and that new sprouts have started growing within you. Seeing your great future, I touched your feet, and also to remind you that when you become an enlightened man, remember that one enlightened man has touched your feet when you were just a disciple.'"
Gautam Buddha used to relate this story again and again to his disciples saying,
"I have as much respect towards you as you have. I have found the truth; you are searching for it.
It is not much of a difference. I have arrived; you are arriving."
I don't want to create any kind of illusory relationship between me and you. I want to stand alone and I want you also to stand alone, and in our aloneness we shall meet.
In our aloneness, in our freedom we shall have reverence and we shall have love, but our love will not be a bondage, and our respect will not create a hierarchy.
Question 3 BELOVED MASTER,
PLEASE SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THE DISCIPLE'S ALONENESS AND COURAGE.
Anand Taral, the first thing to realize is that whether you want or not, you are alone.
Aloneness is your very nature.
You can try to forget it, you can try not to be alone by making friends, having lovers, mixing in the crowd... But whatever you do remains just on the surface. Deep inside, your aloneness is unreachable, untouchable.
A strange accident happens to every human being: as he is born the very situation of his birth begins in a family. And there is no other way, because the human child is the weakest child in the whole of existence.
Other animals are born complete. A dog is going to remain a dog his whole life, he is not going to evolve, grow. Yes, he will become aged, old, but he will not become more intelligent, he will not become more aware, he will not become enlightened. In that sense all the animals remain exactly at the point of their birth; nothing essential changes in them. Their death and their birth are horizontal -- in one line.
Only man has the possibility of going vertical, upwards, not just horizontal. Most of humanity behaves like other animals: life is just growing old -- not growing up. Growing up and growing old are totally different experiences.
Man is born in a family amongst human beings. From the very first moment he is not alone; hence, he gets a certain psychology of always remaining with people. In aloneness he starts feeling scared... unknown fears. He is not exactly aware of what he is afraid of, but as he moves out of the crowd something inside him becomes uneasy. To be with others he feels cozy, at ease, comfortable.
It is because of this reason he never comes to know the beauty of aloneness; the fear prevents him. Because he was born in a group he remains part of a group, and as he grows in age he starts making new groups, new associations, new friends. Already, existing collectivities don't satisfy him: the nation, the religion, the political party... He creates his own new associations: Rotary Club, Lions Club. But all these strategies are just to avoid one thing: never to be alone.
The whole life experience is of being together with people. Aloneness seems almost like a death. In a way it is a death; it is the death of the personality that you have created in the crowd. That is a gift of others to you. The moment you move out of the crowd you also move out of your personality.
In the crowd you know exactly who you are: you know your name, you know your degrees, you know your profession; you know everything that is needed for your passport, your identity card. But the moment you move out of the crowd, what is your identity, who are you? Suddenly you become aware that you are not your name -- your name was given to you. You are not your race -- what relationship has race with your consciousness? Your heart is not Hindu or Mohammedan; your being is not confined to any political boundaries of a nation; your consciousness is not part of any organization or church. Who are you?
Suddenly your personality starts dispersing. This is the fear: the death of the personality.
Now you will have to discover freshly, you will have to ask for the first time who you are. You will have to start meditating on the fact: Who am I? -- and there is a fear that you may not be at all. Perhaps you were nothing but a combination of all the opinions of the crowd, that you were nothing but your personality.
Nobody wants to be nothing. Nobody wants to be nobody.
And in fact everybody is a nobody. There is a very beautiful story...
Alice has reached Wonderland. She came to meet the king and the king asked, "Alice, did you meet a messenger coming towards me?"
She said, "I met nobody."
The king said, "If you met nobody, why has he not arrived yet?"
Alice was very much puzzled. She said, "You are not understanding me rightly. Nobody is nobody."
The king said, "That is obvious that nobody is nobody, but where is he? He should have reached here by this time. It simply means nobody walks slower than you."
And naturally Alice was very much annoyed and forgot that she is talking to the king.
She said, "Nobody walks faster than me."
Now the whole conversation goes on with that "nobody." She understands that he is saying, "Nobody walks slower than you."
"... and I am a fast walker. I have come from the other world to Wonderland, a small world -- and he is insulting me." Naturally she retorts, "Nobody walks faster than me!"
The king said, "If that is right then why has he not arrived?" And this way the discussion continues.
Everybody is a nobody.
So the first problem for a disciple is to understand exactly the nature of
aloneness. It means nobodiness; it means dropping your personality which is a gift to you by the crowd.
As you move off out of the crowd you cannot take that gift with you in your aloneness. In your aloneness you will have to discover again afresh, and nobody can give you the guarantee whether you will find anybody inside or not.
Those who have reached to aloneness have found nobody there. I really mean no body.
No name, no form, but a pure presence, a pure life, nameless, formless. This is exactly the true resurrection, and it certainly needs courage. Only very courageous people have been able to accept with joy their nobodiness, their nothingness. Their nothingness is their pure being; it is a death and a resurrection both.
Just today Hasya was showing me a small, beautiful cartoon: Jesus hanging on the cross, looking at the sky, is saying, "It would have been better if alongside God the father I had Allah the uncle. It would have been better; at least if God was not listening, Allah might have helped."
Having just God for his whole life he was very happy proclaiming, "I am the only begotten son of God." And he never talked about God's family, his brother, his wife, his other sons and daughters. In the whole of eternity what has he been doing? He does not have a TV to waste time, to pass time. He does not have any possibility of having a movie hall. What does this poor fellow go on doing?
It is a well-known fact that in poor countries the population goes on exploding for the simple reason that the poor man has no other free entertainment. The only free entertainment is to produce children. Although it is in the long run very costly, right now there is no ticket, no problem, no standing in the queue...
What has God been doing for the whole eternity? He has created only one son. Now on the cross he remembers that it would have been better if God really had a few brothers, sisters, uncles. "I could have asked help from somebody else if he is not listening to me."
He is praying and he is being angry saying, "Why have you forgotten me? Have you given up on me?" -- but there is no answer.
He is waiting for the miracle. The whole crowd that has gathered to see the miracle by and by started dispersing. It was too hot, unnecessarily. Nothing is going to happen; if something was going to happen it would have happened.
After six hours there were only three ladies left who were still believing that a miracle may happen. One was Jesus' mother -- naturally, mothers go on believing that their child is a genius. Every mother, without exception, believes that she has given birth to a child which is a giant.
Another woman who loved Jesus was a prostitute, Mary Magdalene. That woman, although she was a prostitute, must have loved Jesus. Even the disciples, the so-called apostles, who became second to Jesus in importance in the history of Christianity, all twelve escaped just out of fear of being caught and of being recognized -- because they were always hanging around with Jesus, everywhere. You never can believe the crowd: if they were caught, they might have been crucified, if not crucified at least beaten, stoned to death. Only three women were left.
The third was another woman who loved Jesus. It was love that remained in the last moments in the form of these three women. All those disciples must have been with Jesus just in order to get into paradise. It is always good to have good contacts, and you can't find a better contact than the contact with the only begotten son of God. Just behind him they will also be able to enter through the gates of paradise. Their disciplehood was a kind of exploitation of Jesus; hence there was no courage. It was cunning and clever, but not courageous.
Only love can be courageous.
You are asking about aloneness and courage. Courage comes out of love... Do you love yourself? Do you love this existence? Do you love this beautiful life which is a gift? It has been given to you without your being even ready for it, without your deserving it, without your being worthy of it.
If you love this existence which has given life to you, which goes on providing every moment life and nourishment to you, you will find courage. And this courage will help you to stand alone like a cedar of Lebanon, high -- reaching to the stars but alone.
In aloneness you will disappear as an ego and personality and you will find yourself as life itself, deathless and eternal. Unless you are capable of being
alone your search for truth will remain a failure. Your aloneness is your truth.
Your aloneness is your divineness.
The function of the master is to help you to stand alone. Meditation is just a strategy to take away your personality, your thoughts, your mind, your identity with the body, and leave you absolutely alone inside, just a living fire. And once you have found your living fire, you will know all the joys and all the ecstasies that human consciousness is capable of.
The old woman watched her grandson eat his soup with the wrong spoon, grasp his knife by the wrong end, eat the main course with his hands, and pour tea into the saucer and blow on it.
"Has not watching your mother and father at the dinner table taught you anything?" she asked.
"Yes," said the boy, chewing with his mouth open, "never to get married." He has learned a great lesson: Remain alone.
It is really very difficult to be with others, but we are accustomed from our very birth to be with others. It may be miserable, it may be a suffering, it may be a torture but we are accustomed; at least it is well known.
One is afraid to step into the darkness beyond the territory, but unless you go beyond the territory of the collective mask, you cannot find yourself.
Groucho Marx has made a beautiful statement for you to remember: "I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set I go into the other room and read a book."
The teacher of a class of ten-year-olds is too shy to conduct the sex-education class and so she asks her class to make this a homework project.
Little Hymie asks his father who mumbles something about a stork. His grandmother said he came from a cabbage patch and his great-grandmother blushes and whispers that children come from the great ocean of existence.
The next day, little Hymie is called by the teacher to report on his project. Little Hymie says to the teacher, "I'm afraid there is something wrong in our family. Apparently nobody has made love for three generations!"
In fact, very few people have loved at all; they have pretended, have been hypocrites deceiving not only others but have deceived themselves too.
You can love authentically only when you are.
Right now you are only a part of a crowd, a cog in the wheel. How can you love?
--
because you are not. First be; first know yourself.
In your aloneness you will discover what it is to be. And out of that awareness of your being love flows, and much more.
Aloneness should be your only search.
And it does not mean that you have to go to the mountains, you can be alone in the marketplace. It is simply a question of being aware, alert, watchful, remembering that you are only your watchfulness. Then you are alone wherever you are. You may be in the crowd, you may be in the mountains; it makes no difference, you are just the same watchfulness. In the crowd you watch the crowd; in the mountains you watch the mountains. With open eyes you watch existence; with closed eyes you watch yourself.
You are only one thing: the watcher.
And this watcher is the greatest realization. This is your buddha nature; this is your nature of enlightenment, of your awakening. This should be your only discipline. Only this makes you a disciple: this discipline of knowing your aloneness. Otherwise, what makes you a disciple? You have been deceived on every point in life. You have been told that to believe in a master makes you a disciple. That is absolutely wrong; otherwise, everybody in the world is a disciple.
Somebody believes in Jesus, somebody believes in Buddha, somebody believes in Krishna, somebody believes in Mahavira; everybody believes in somebody but nobody is a disciple, because to be a disciple does not mean to believe in a
master. To be a disciple means to learn the discipline of being your self, of being your true self.
In that experience is hidden the very treasure of life. In that experience you become for the first time an emperor; otherwise you will remain a beggar in the crowd. There are two kinds of beggars: poor beggars and rich beggars, but they are all beggars. Even your kings and your queens are beggars.
Only those people, very few people who have stood alone in their being, in their clarity, in their light, who have found their own light, who have found their own flowering, who have found their own space they can call their home, their eternal home -- those few people are the emperors. This whole universe is their empire. They don't need to conquer it; it is already conquered.
By knowing oneself you have conquered it. Okay, Maneesha?
Yes, Osho. The Invitation Chapter #24
Chapter title: Virtue is the currency of heaven
2 September 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive
code: 8709020
ShortTitle: INVITA24
Audio: Yes
Video:
Yes Length:
116
mins Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
HOW IS IT THAT GOING INTO SOMETHING CONSCIOUSLY HAS SUCH A POWER TO REVEAL ALL THE THREADS WHICH MAKE UP THE TANGLE?
Devageet, the reality is just the opposite. All our tangles in life are created by our unconsciousness, so the moment you become conscious those tangles disappear. It is not the power of consciousness that makes them disappear. It is the power of unconsciousness that creates them.
All the tangles of life, of love, of relationship are created by our unconsciousness. We don't know what we are doing, and by the time we become aware it is too late. What has been done cannot be undone. Our unconsciousness is very supportive to the ego -- they have a co-existence. Coming of consciousness will not only disperse all the tangles, it will also disperse you as an ego. It is a very complicated and complex phenomenon.
In your unconsciousness you do something. It is almost certain that once you have done something wrong that has created misery in you, around you, you will come to your senses. But you cannot undo it because the ego comes in between. You cannot even say,
"I am sorry." Just a simple apology may disperse the tangle but the ego won't allow even that. And you are almost a victim; you are not doing things. Your unconsciousness, your unawareness goes on forcing you to do things.
Just last night I answered Prem Shunyo's question very lightly and very lovingly
and very joyously. I joked about it, but she was pissed off -- I could see her face. Milarepa was angry.
You don't know what you are doing. What you are doing is almost beyond your hands; you are reacting. If Prem Shunyo had heard what I was saying... I was simply saying,
"Don't take it seriously." I was laughing about it, but she could not laugh. You all laughed because it was not your problem. The more you laughed the more you made her serious.
In each person's life the time of change comes. And one of the greatest things to remember is that when you change a certain pattern of life, you have to change naturally.
It is not in your hands. Biology makes you capable of sex at the age of thirteen or fourteen; it is not your doing.
At a certain age, as you are coming closer to forty or forty-two, the biology's purpose is finished. All those hormones that have been propelling you are disappearing. To accept this change is very difficult. You suddenly start thinking as if you are no longer beautiful, that you need a face-lift.
I have heard about a woman who was saying to the plastic surgeon, "I need a face-lift."
The surgeon looked at her and he said, "There is nothing wrong; it is just age. Don't be worried about it. Why unnecessarily go to the trouble? But the woman was insistent, so the doctor said, "Okay, but it will cost five thousand dollars."
The woman said, "That much money I don't have. Can't you suggest something cheaper?"
The doctor said, "Yes. You can purchase a veil."
It is one of the Western problems. In the East no woman is worried. Things are accepted as they come. Acceptance has been the basic foundation of Eastern life. The West is continuously imposing on nature, demanding how things should be. Nobody wants to become old, so when the time of transition from one stage of life comes, a very strange phenomenon happens -- and that is what is happening
to Shunyo. I did not say it because I did not want to hurt her.
It is going to happen whether I say anything about it or not, just as a candle comes to the very end, has only a few seconds more before it will be gone. At the last moment the candle suddenly becomes bigger with all its power.
Nobody wants to go.
It is a well-known fact to medical science that people at the time of death suddenly become completely healthy; all their diseases disappear. This is the last effort of their life
-- to resist death. The people who are related to them feel very happy that suddenly all diseases have disappeared. The person has become calm and quiet, but they don't know that it signifies death. The diseases have disappeared because their function is fulfilled: they have killed the man. Now it is the last spurt of life.
The same happens with every biological change in life. When sex is becoming irrelevant, you start thinking of sex more than ever, and suddenly a great spurt... That is what is giving her the idea that it seems she is sexually repressed -- because so much sexuality is suddenly overwhelming the mind.
The mind can only understand logically, rationally one thing: from where is this sexuality coming? -- it must be coming from the repressed unconscious. That is what Sigmund Freud and their followers have been teaching to the whole world. They are right on many points; they are wrong on many points. Particularly about this point, the transition when you are no longer young and the hormones in you are going to disappear, and the interest in sex is going to die -- before dying it will explode with its full force.
If you go to a psychoanalyst, he will say that you are sexually repressed. I cannot say that, because I know that this sudden overwhelming sexuality will be gone by itself, you don't have to do anything. It is the signal that life is passing through a change. Now, life will be more calm and more quiet. You are really entering into a better state.
Sex is a little childish. As you become more and more mature, sex loses the grip over you
-- and it is a good sign. It is something to be happy about; it is not a problem to be solved.
It is something to celebrate.
In the East no woman ever feels the trouble of the transition from youth to old age. In fact, she feels immensely happy that now that old demon is gone and life can be more peaceful. But the West has been living under many illusions. One is the illusion that there is only one life. That creates immense trouble. If there is only one life and sex is disappearing, so you are finished. Now, there is no more opportunity; there will not be any more excitement in life. Nobody is going to say, "You are beautiful and I love you and I will love you forever."
So first, the illusion of one life creates a problem. Second, the psychoanalysts and other therapists have created another illusion that sex is almost synonymous to life. The more sexual you are, the more alive you are. So when sex starts disappearing one starts feeling like a used cartridge: now there is no point to live; life ends with sex ending. Then people try all kinds of bizarre things: face lift, plastic surgery, false breasts. It is stupid, simply stupid. People start trying wigs; they start trying dresses which are sex-provoking.
Almost all Western women are starving -- they call it dieting! The idea in the West is that a woman is beautiful if she is not fat. And nature has some other idea: the woman has to be a little fat because for nature the woman is a mother. A mother needs extra fat for the child, because when the child is in her womb he will need food. And when the child is in the womb, the mother starts feeling nausea; she cannot eat, she starts throwing up. She needs emergency fat in her body so she can feed the child because the child needs food; he is growing fast.
Science says that in the nine months in the mother's womb, a child grows so fast that he will never grow so fast again in his seventy years. In nine months he passes through almost the whole evolution of man, from the fish... all the stages. His requirements have to be fulfilled by the mother -- And she cannot eat... you can imagine. It is troublesome to have a child in your belly. I don't think any man is ready to be pregnant: he will commit suicide; without any doubt he will jump from a fifty-storey building, "I am finished...
pregnant...?"
Just think, the idea that you have a child in the belly, and you will go crazy. But how to get rid of it...
The mother goes through immense suffering, great sacrifice; hence, in the East we have not created the idea of a skinny woman. Of course, the skinny woman looks more sexually attractive, younger. The fat woman looks less sexually interesting, because she loses proportions. Her waist is no longer very small. Her body has gathered so much fat that nobody will feel attracted towards her. She does not have the necessary attraction for the human mind.
The East has accepted that a woman has to be a little more fat than a man, a little more rounded.
Just the other day somebody brought me a book of pictures taken by one famous photographer and on the front page was Sophia Loren. In the East she cannot be conceived of as very beautiful: she must be dieting -- and dieting is nothing but the rich man's idea of starvation.
The poor people starve by themselves. The rich people starve in a costly way under professional guidance. The fear that you will not be attractive, that you will no longer be looked at by people... You will pass through the street and nobody will look at you; who is going...?
It is a great need of man, and particularly women, to have attention -- attention is nourishment. A woman suffers immensely when nobody pays attention to her. She has nothing else to attract people by; she has only her body. Man has not allowed her to have other dimensions where she can become a famous painter, a dancer or a singer, a learned professor. Man has cut all other dimensions from the woman's life where she can be attractive and people will pay respect even while she becomes old.
I have to remind you of the meaning of `respect': it means looking back. When somebody passes by: re-spect. It has nothing to do with honor; it has something to do with your being suddenly aware that a beautiful thing has passed.
Woman is left only the body by man, so she is so much concerned with the body that it creates clinging, possessiveness, fear that the person who loves her, if he leaves, perhaps will find another person. And without attention she starts feeling
almost dead: What is the use of life if nobody is paying attention to you? She does not have an intrinsic life of her own.
Man has taught woman that her life depends on others' opinions about her. You can see all over the world that beauty competitions are arranged only for women, and the woman does not even revolt against these ideas. Why not for men? Just as you choose a Mrs. or Miss Universe, choose a Mr. Universe. No, nobody bothers about the man's body. He can grow fat; he can become a Winston Churchill. Still he attracts attention because he has power.
In the same book just beside Sophia Loren is Winston Churchill -- ugly, as fat as you can conceive, the whole face sagging. He needs a face-lift -- not Sophia Loren -- but he will not bother; there is no need. He can have power, he can be the prime minister. He can be this and he can be that...
Man has managed over the centuries to have all the other dimensions of attracting people, and he has left to woman only one dimension: her body. He has made woman just a vegetable. And naturally, the vegetable starts being worried if there are no customers.
It is not a coincidence that in the most sexually perverted country, France, while being in love with a woman, you say, "I want to eat you." Are these people cannibals? Is the woman a vegetable or what? "I want to eat you" shows a great respect for the woman!
When nobody says to her, "I want to eat you," she thinks, "I am now finished. Life has come to an end!"
But here with me you have to learn something. The first thing is a deep acceptability of all the changes that nature brings to you. Youth has its own beauty; old age has its own beauty too. It may not be sexual, but if a man has lived silently, peacefully, meditatively, then old age will have a grandeur of its own.
Just as the snow-covered peaks look beautiful, the white hairs of old age also have their own beauty -- and not only beauty, but wisdom too, which no young man can claim, because all his behavior is stupid. He is running behind this woman, running behind that woman.
The old man has stopped all this running business. He has settled in himself. He
is no longer dependent on anybody else. The old woman should follow the same way. There should be no difference between men and women.
That is why I was simply laughing and joking about Prem Shunyo's question because I did not want her to become serious about something which is natural. And if Milarepa feels angry, he simply proves what I have been saying, that he is crazy.
Now he is running after younger women. This shows that you are not maturing, not learning that what you call love is not love, but biological slavery. Love happens only when you are beyond biological slavery; then love has a beauty. Biological slavery and the biological relationship are so ugly that for centuries people have decided to make love in darkness without light, so they don't see what they are doing.
Particularly the woman is very sensitive when you make love to her; she immediately closes her eyes. Just to see this nasty thing that is happening...
I have heard that when Henry Ford died he was received with a great welcome in heaven and even God thanked him: "You have done great service to humanity by creating so many cars -- you are a great creator."
Henry Ford said, "That's okay, but you are not that great a creator. You have put man's body in such a stupid way that the loveliest part people think about, dream about is so close to the dirtiest part. Could you not find somewhere else in the whole body?
Why has love to be sandwiched between the ugliest parts? You don't have any sense, no aesthetics. The exhaust pipe is so close to the most lovely part that I cannot believe that you are a great creator" -- and he was right.
God has committed many mistakes. This is one of the major mistakes. The loving part could have been anywhere else: you have a six-foot-long-body, so much territory! And what kind of a stupid god... where he puts the loving parts?
Not only is it to be accepted when life is going through a biological change, but it has to be rejoiced that you have passed over all that stupidity, that now you are free from biological bondage; it is only a question of conditioning.
When you ask me questions you should remember that I never in any way want
to hurt you. Even sometimes if I have to avoid the truth, I avoid it but don't hurt you. If you get hurt about something that must be your own mind. But perhaps you are just a victim in that too -- it is unconscious.
Devageet, you are asking, "How is it that going into something consciously has such a power to reveal all the threads which make up the tangle?"
They have been made in your unconsciousness. They have been made in the darkness of your being. And when you bring light, naturally you see all the tangle: how you have created your misery, your suffering, your anguish, yourself. Seeing it is enough -- all those tangles disappear.
A conscious man never creates any tangle; he lives more intensely than anybody else. But his life is without any tangles for the simple reason that in consciousness you cannot create tangles.
Abbie's wife had just died and he was standing over the grave and sobbing uncontrollably. His best friend put his arm around him and said, "Abbie, time is a wonderful thing. Believe it or not some day you will want to start a new life again and be with people, maybe even get married again. Listen to me: Time heals wounds."
Abbie looked at him and replied, "I know, I know... but what am I going to do tonight?"
Such is the unconsciousness of man. The wife died in the morning and he is worried about what he is going to do in the night -- tonight! And you are talking about time: that some day wounds will be healed. What about tonight?
I have heard an ancient story, Arabic, that a man's father died and all the old people of the neighborhood came and said, "Don't be worried, son. If you have lost your father, we are here. Don't think for a single moment that you are fatherless. We are all your fathers. You can come always to us in any difficulty, any problem."
He was very much consoled, seeing the concern of his neighborhood people. He had never thought that they would be so considerate.
And then his mother died and all the old women came and said, "Don't be worried. We are still alive. You can look at us as your mother and whatever your
mother was doing for you, we can do. There is no problem about it."
He was very much consoled. And then his wife died, and not a single wife from the neighborhood came to say don't be worried we are here. Whatever your wife was doing, we will do...!
The man was very angry. He stood in front of his house, watching if anybody would come or not -- and nobody came. Finally, he started shouting, "You nasty people. When my father died all the old people came. When my mother died all the old women came.
And now my wife has died and no young woman is coming -- what kind of neighborhood is this?
"... absurd, illogical! I am waiting from the morning for somebody to turn up, but nobody has come."
One has to accept life. But your unconsciousness does not allow you to accept life as it is.
You wanted something else.
It is perfectly good when sex disappears. You will be more capable of meditating. You will be more capable of being alone. You will be more capable of being blissful, without any misery because the whole game of sex is nothing but a long misery -- fighting, hate, jealousy, envy. It is not a peaceful life.
It is peace, silence, blissfulness, aloneness, freedom which give you the real taste of what life is.
Two women are talking in a tearoom at four o'clock over two large, gooey ice cream sundaes and little sugary cakes. They have not seen each other since high school days and one is bragging about her very advantageous marriage.
"My husband buys me whole new sets of diamonds when the ones I have get dirty," she says, "and I have never even bothered to clean them."
"Fantastic," said the other woman.
"Yes," says the first, "we get a new car every two months."
"Fantastic," says the other.
"And our house..." pursues the first woman, "Well, what is the use of talking about it, it is just..."
"Fantastic," finishes the other.
"Yes, and tell me, what are you doing nowadays?" asked the first woman. "I go to the charm school," says the other.
"Charm school! Why, how quaint. What do you learn there?" "Well, we learn to say, fantastic, instead of bullshit."
In your unconsciousness everything is bullshit. And when you become conscious, it is really fantastic: all tangles disappear, all problems disappear. But you need not go to a charm school to learn it, because in a charm school deep down the woman is saying,
"Bullshit."
And she is just repeating like a parrot, "Fantastic," but she means bullshit. Not in a charm school, but in a school where your unconsciousness slowly, slowly disappears leaving a luminous being within you -- then there is no tangle in life.
I have lived a very strange life. Anybody else would have found so many tangles in it, so many troubles. I have also passed through all kinds of tangles, troubles, problems, but I have remained unscratched; I have enjoyed the journey. Whatever life brought to me, I have enjoyed it. I have tried to make the best out of it, whatever it is.
There is no point in crying and weeping over spilled milk. Any situation can be made a learning, a step towards maturity, can be turned into a beneficial opportunity. That is what I call intelligence; otherwise, what is the difference between intelligent people and unintelligent people.
Devageet, it is true consciousness has tremendous power, but it is not used in revealing and dispersing the tangles of your life; they simply disappear as you become conscious.
Gautam Buddha used to say that when the lights are on and from the windows people can see that the master is awake, thieves don't come close. When the lights are put off, only then do thieves come close to the house to see whether the master has gone to sleep and it is the right time to enter. He was saying this about consciousness. He used to call sex, greed, lust for power, position, respectability all thieves. They come to you only when they see that there is no light in the man; inside it is all dark.
Once you are radiating consciousness and light, those thieves don't come close to you.
But consciousness has its own power. It is simply in the presence of consciousness that tangles disappear. The power is not used for dispersing the tangles and problems; the power is to bring blissfulness. The power is to bring peace, silence, at homeness, at easeness and a tremendous ecstasy, a divine drunkenness.
Life becomes for the first time self-oriented; you don't have to beg from others for anything. Nobody can give you blissfulness; nobody can give you ecstasy. Nobody can give you the sense of immortality and the dance that comes with it. Nobody can give you the silence, which becomes a song in your heart.
What can people give to you? In fact, the power of consciousness gives you so much that you become capable of sharing with people. For the first time, you can give to people.
They are living in darkness; they haven't seen any light. They don't have any idea what a conscious being is. They don't have any conception, comprehension of the power of consciousness, how many flowers shower, how much fragrance becomes natural to you.
You can give, and you can give them a taste and you can give them a direction, so they can also find the same power which is dormant in them.
A conscious man awakened can help millions of people to move towards the source of joy, real and authentic life, to pure love which knows nothing of hate, which knows nothing of jealousy, which has nothing to do with body and biology -- which is just a spiritual communion, a feeling of deep compassion for your innermost being.
Yes, the power of consciousness gives you many things. The treasure is inexhaustible, but your problems and tangles that have been created by unconsciousness -- for them no power is needed, just the presence of consciousness is enough.
Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,
CAN YOU SAY SOMETHING ABOUT VIRTUE?
Fantastic! Here, we are not concerned about virtue at all. Virtue is for people who are unconscious; it is a training for them to say, "Don't say bullshit, say fantastic!"
Virtue is a training a discipline imposed on unconscious people. All the religions talk about virtue as being against sin. They have made fixed categories. Some things are condemned as sin and some things are praised as virtues. The virtuous man will have immense reward after death, and the sinner will be condemned to hellfire for eternity.
This is the strategy of fear and greed, because man can be easily manipulated by these two things -- fear and greed. Heaven is nothing but greed exaggerated; so hell is fear exaggerated, and human beings are afraid of eternal hellfire. Out of fear they somehow try to avoid whatever is sin. And the trouble is anything that gives you joy, anything that gives you pleasure is sin.
Out of fear they lose all contact with life, they become dry and dead before their death.
There is only one consolation: that they are declared saints, they are worshipped. Just their ego is satisfied greatly; otherwise they are suffering deep down immensely.
That is why your saints cannot laugh: laughter needs a little juice. There is no juice in them; everything is dry. They are deserts where nothing grows green. So on the one hand the pressure of fear...
I have seen pictures of the Middle Ages: there were Christian preachers who made so much fuss about hell and its tortures that just to be in the church
listening to their sermons many ladies used to faint. Just the idea that they were going into such detail...
what would be done to you? The people thought the preachers were great according to how much they could infect people's psychologies. The greatest preacher was one in whose congregation almost everybody fainted.
A deep fear psychology, a deep guilt psychology on the one hand, and on the other hand greed to be fulfilled as a reward. You will be getting everything in paradise: all those things which are sins here on the earth, they will also be available to you.
Mohammedans are against alcohol, but in their paradise there are rivers of alcohol. You don't have to go to a small pub, you can drink, you can drown, you can swim. All the rivers, they don't consist of water -- pure wine. Here it is condemned: you should not fall in the trap of love. A woman is condemned and in the heaven -- in every religion's idea of heaven -- women are freely supplied. Of course, according to your virtue you will get. If your virtue is great perhaps, Sophia Loren -- it all depends on your virtue.
A strange game has been played with the human mind. Thousands of girls... I say girls, because they don't grow in age. They don't have to feel like Prem Shunyo; they are fixed for eternity at the age sixteen. In fact, they are prostitutes, eternal prostitutes, but they are thought to be rewards for saints. How many other saints have used those rewards, because since the beginning the same staff has been working, not even a shift change. I have never come across anything about a shift change or any staff change in the holy scriptures -- the same young women.
They remain always young. They don't perspire; they do not need deodorants. They must be certainly made of plastic, because only plastic does not perspire. A real skin is bound to perspire if it is alive, because through every pore of the skin you are breathing in. And perspiration is a natural way of keeping you at the same body temperature.
If it is too cold you start shivering. You may not be aware why you are shivering. You think it is because of the cold; it is to keep your body temperature continuously the same.
Shivering gives you inner heat. In the hot season you perspire. You perspire so that your water, perspiration is taken away by the heat; it evaporates so the heat
does not affect your temperature. It simply evaporates your perspiration. It leaves you without increasing your temperature; otherwise, if there was no perspiration, your life span would not be very big.
The life span can be measured in many ways: in years, seventy years, but as body temperature from ninety-eight to one hundred and ten -- just twelve degrees is your span of life. If there was no perspiration, your temperature would be as high as the heat is around you. The moment you pass one hundred and five, you would start getting dizzy.
The moment you pass one hundred and seven, you would be falling into a coma. The moment you pass one hundred and ten, you would have passed away.
It is perspiration that saves you; it is your life savior. But those poor plastic girls... and eternal promise for all joys!
The Hindu heaven has certain trees, which they call kalpavriksha, wish- fulfillment trees.
You don't have to order a cup of tea or a woman or a car; you don't have to order anybody; you don't have to call any bearer or give a call to some agency. You just sit under the wish-fulfilling tree -- and they are all over heaven, everywhere
-- you just sit underneath and you say whatever you want, and immediately, instantly, it will be provided.
There is a beautiful story of a man, who by some accident stumbled into heaven. He had no idea where he had reached. He was sitting under a kalpavriksha. He was feeling very hungry. He had been traveling a lot and that is how he had stumbled somehow by accident into heaven.
He said, "I am feeling hungry but I don't see any hotel anywhere, any restaurant, nothing.
I don't see even a single man. But I am feeling very hungry, if I could get some good food... Immediately beautiful women appeared from nowhere with all kinds of sweets and delicious foods. He was so hungry that he did not pay attention to where all these things were coming from.
He started eating, feeling perfectly well. He was tired. He went to sleep. Before going to sleep, he thought that sleeping on the ground, uneven with stones, if
someone could arrange just a mattress, and suddenly -- he could not believe -- again beautiful women appeared with a beautiful bed and they put him on the bed. But he was so tired that he still did not think what was going on.
When refreshed, he awoke. He thought, my God, there is nobody here who has brought the food, and I have not said to anybody; I just thought about it! And he looked at the beautiful bed, "Who has brought this? I had simply thought about lying down on the ground. It seems there must be ghosts around." That was the natural conclusion, because he was not aware that he was in heaven, under a kalpavriksha.
"There must be ghosts all around, my God" -- and immediately ghosts appeared, because whatever you would say... The moment he saw the skeletons of ghosts dancing all around, he said, "My god, they are going to kill me" -- and they killed him. The man never came back.
Religions have used fear to prevent you from living, and greed to help you so that you can be patient and hope that great things are ahead. Just the small things you are leaving, and for eternity you will enjoy all the pleasures that you want -- and you don't have to pay for them.
Virtue is the currency of heaven.
The more virtuous you are, the bigger a bank balance you have in heaven. I don't teach you virtue because your virtue is false, because deep down there is greed.
I teach you only awareness.
Out of awareness whatever you do is virtue according to me. And out of unawareness whatever you do is sin according to me. And according to me, your sins are not going to take you to hell. Your sins immediately give you hell -- here, just now. And your virtues are not going to give you an eternity of paradise. Your virtues give you joy, blissfulness, the moment you act with full awareness.
The punishment and the reward is immediate: the reward follows your action. But it depends where your action will lead you. It can be unconscious action, then hell herenow.
It has nothing to do with geography; it is something to do with your psychology.
Acting consciously, you are in paradise wherever you are. Once you have learned, you will not ask, "What is virtue?" You will ask, "What is awareness? What is consciousness?" You will ask, "What is meditation?" -- because that is going to make you conscious and make you alert.
What brings misery is sin. Whatever brings joy is virtue.
Alfred North Whitehead has made a beautiful statement: It requires a very unusual mind to make an analysis of the obvious.
To me, it is absolutely obvious that virtue or sin, heaven or hell are secondary. The primary is your alertness, your awareness, but people won't ask the obvious. These are by-products, and by getting entangled with by-products you will be in trouble.
There is a tale concerning Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson on board a train...
They passed a flock of sheep and Watson said, "A sizable flock, Holmes."
"Ah, exactly seven hundred and eighty-four in number, my dear Watson," said Holmes sleepily.
"Good heavens, Holmes," said Watson. "Surely you can't have counted them."
They are in a train; the train has passed the sheep. The flock is left far behind and it must have taken a single moment to pass.
"Not directly," said Holmes. "I made use of a simple trick any school child knows. I merely counted the legs and divided by four."
Just don't get into nonsense; otherwise, you will always feel what Leonardo da Vinci has confessed in his letters: I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have. Now, Leonardo da Vinci is one of the greatest geniuses, and whatever he has done is incomparable. There is nobody else who even comes close to him. But even such a great man feels a little guilt, "I have not reached the quality it should have."
This is the atmosphere that religions have created in the world. They don't allow anybody to be at ease, even the greatest genius. They go on telling you that you are still not doing right; you are still far away from the goal. You are still unworthy; you are always unworthy. They will not leave you at peace so that you can enjoy life and love life and be grateful to God, and be grateful to the universe -- which both mean the same to me.
God is not a person. It is this whole universe -- these trees, these clouds, the sun, the stars, you and everybody, whether asleep or awake, whether committing sins or virtues, you are part of one organic universe.
If you commit a sin... The word `sin' has been contaminated by the religions; otherwise it simply means in its roots, forgetfulness, unawareness. It means exactly what I am saying to you. Sin is your unawareness. Any action done in unconsciousness is sin. But religions have completely destroyed the original meaning of the word. Whatever you are doing consciously is virtue and there is no ready-made list of what are virtues, because in a different situation, the same thing may become sin. The thing that was virtue in one condition, in one context, may not be virtue in another context; it all depends. But how are you going to know whether in this context it is virtue or sin.
Those dead categories that have been given to you like the ten commandments, fixed forever, they don't take account of the fact that life is continuously changing and you are moving every moment into a new situation -- and a new situation needs a new response.
So I don't give you, I can't give you any ready-made list to avoid these things, that these are sins and avoid them because they will lead you to hell. I cannot exploit you and your fears and I cannot say to you that these are the commandments, if you follow them yours is the kingdom of God, because in life things go on changing.
It happened...
I had a friend; he was a professor in the university -- a very learned professor of Sanskrit.
He wanted to go to Tibet because many scriptures in Sanskrit on Buddhism had been burned by the Hindus in India. But their translations exist in Tibetan still, so he wanted to translate them back into Sanskrit.
It was a great idea and he was well versed in Sanskrit. He had been learning Tibetan for years and now he was ready. But he was a brahmin by caste, a very orthodox brahmin.
In India it is perfectly good to get up at five o'clock, early in the morning and have a good bath in the nearby lake or in the nearby river, and then do your prayer, meditate. Only after that can you enter into the mundane world of your profession, your life, your family.
In Tibet, the Tibetan holy book says that only one bath a year is allowed; Tibetan monks are the dirtiest people to find. I have been harassed by Tibetan monks.
When the Dalai Lama came for the first time -- escaped from Tibet with thousands of Lamas -- I was taking a camp in Bodhgaya and all the Lamas first came to pay respect to the place where Gautam Buddha had become enlightened. I was taking a camp just there in the compound of the memorial temple for Buddha. I had never come across Tibetan Lamas. But such are habits, they die very hard. They use, I think three or four layers of clothes, one on top of another. Their clothes are greasy, dusty and they will not take any bath because their holy scripture says once in a year is compulsory.
When my friend reached Tibet, he continued to follow his pattern of life in India. He could not manage to be there more than three days, because he had to take a bath early in the morning, five o'clock, according to the brahmin religion. Without taking a bath you cannot eat; that is a sin -- and in India it is certainly right. But in Tibet the whole context is different. To take a bath in ice-cold water, five o'clock in the early morning is to freeze yourself to death. Food is not a problem. You will not be able to eat food. In three days he got so tortured by this morning bath.
One day he tried; it was too much. The whole day he was feeling as if his blood was frozen. And for another two days he could not eat because he could not take the bath. So he had taken only one bath in Tibet and one day he had eaten and two days he remained without food. But he thought, How long will it be because I cannot survive without food, neither can I survive with the bath. It is better to go home, forget all about those scriptures; it is none of my business.
He came back. I was surprised when I saw him back "... so quick you managed to translate."
He said, "Forget all about translations. Congratulate me that I am alive." And when he told me I said that this is stupidity.
In Tibet you should look at the context, not at your Hindu idea of virtue and sin -
- that is stupidity. Mohammedans have been allowed by their founder, Mohammed, four wives, and it is perfectly virtuous to have four wives.
Mohammed himself married nine wives. Obviously he was a prophet, no ordinary man, but, it was perfectly right in those times because the Arabs were continuously fighting and killing. But only men were killed; it was against their culture to kill any woman. The women were raped, but not killed.
So there was a strange situation; there were four times more women than men. If he had insisted that monogamy was virtue, as is being insisted all over the world
-- polygamy or even bigamy is a crime, is a sin -- he would not have been right. Because if monogamy had been virtuous, what would have happened to the three women who are left without men? They would corrupt the whole of society. They will become prostitutes and the whole society would become an ugly scene. So Mohammed is perfectly right; I support him.
But not now in India, where women and men are equal as they are everywhere, nature keeps a balance, an exact balance. To keep the balance nature has to take care: it gives birth to one hundred and fifteen boys when it gives birth to one hundred girls, because fifteen boys will pop off before the time of marriage -- boys are weak and fragile.
The ordinary idea that women are weak and fragile is just male chauvinistic imposition.
Nature knows better: fifteen boys per hundred are going to die. Girls don't die; they have a greater resistance against diseases. They are not so often sick and they live longer than men, five years longer all over the world.
So by the time the marriageable age comes, there are a hundred boys and a hundred girls.
Monogamy seems to be absolutely right in this context, but Mohammedans go on insisting that it is part of their religion... So even in India they are allowed to have four wives. It is such an ugly situation because it means three men will remain without wives.
So the Mohammedans abduct women from other religions.
Hindus particularly are very touchy people. If a woman has been forcibly taken by the Mohammedans to their homes, even if they have not touched her she will not be accepted back in the Hindu fold, she has to go to the Mohammedans. She has fallen below the dignity of a Hindu.
So Mohammedans have been continually stealing women from other societies. They have to, because what to do with the three men that are without women? Those three men will start relationships with others' wives and that will create a mess. And the Indian constitution, which, in the name of religion, doesn't want to interfere in any religion, cannot do anything to prevent Mohammedans from this polygamy. And those four women that they marry, they use as economic, financial help; they work and the husband rests. This is great!
The Mohammedan priests go on insisting on no interference, because a man with four women can create four children per year, very easily, but a woman with four men cannot create four children; she will create only one child. The population of Mohammedans goes on increasing as nobody else can increase the population the way they can. So you will not be surprised that India has been divided; Mohammedans have taken Pakistan and made it separate. The country has been cut into three parts: one side is Pakistan, given to Mohammedans; another side is Bangladesh, given to Mohammedans. And still, within forty years, in India Mohammedans are again number two to Hindus.
Again they can ask for another country. And you will also be surprised that India is a Hindu country but the number of Mohammedans in India is more than in any Mohammedan country in the world -- not even Arabia, or Egypt, or Iran, or Libya, or Palestine... No Mohammedan country has so many Mohammedans as India has.
India is the greatest Mohammedan country in the world if you take the number of the Mohammedans. And the number goes on growing four times more. Hindus are simply puzzled what to do because soon they will be outnumbering Hindus. They have taken Pakistan, they have taken Bangladesh, and it is not far away when they will be the majority and Hindus will become the minority in their own country.
Situations, contexts should be taken into account and that is possible only if you
are living a very alert and conscious life; otherwise you will follow dead, ready- made things which may have been relevant at some time. Those times have changed and they have become irrelevant, but the list continues to be the same.
So I don't give you any list. I have been asked by priests, Hindus, Mohammedans, Christians, that I should make a clear-cut statement: what are sins, what are virtues and what are my fundamental principles of religion?
I said, "My first fundamental and the last fundamental is that religion cannot be a fixed thing. It has to be spontaneous. It has to come out of your awareness. Nobody can decide it. No catechism can be given according to me.
I can only teach you awareness and then you find out with your awareness, with your own light where to go, what to do.
Anything done with awareness is virtue. Anything done with unawareness is sin. Okay, Maneesha?
Yes, Osho. The Invitation Chapter #25
Chapter title: Just go and tell everybody
2 September 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive
code: 8709025
ShortTitle: INVITA25
Audio:
Yes Video:
Yes Length:
103
mins Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
SINCE MY ARRIVAL HERE I HAVE BEEN LIVING INTENSELY, AND I SEE
THAT THE PRESENT IS ONLY POETRY.
I THANK YOU DEEPLY FOR YOUR BEING HERE WITH US. I AM LEAVING IN
A FEW DAYS AND I FEEL THAT YOU WILL BE EVERYWHERE I GO, BUT I AM
SCARED OF THE NOISE OF THE WORLD. I DO NOT WANT TO LOSE MYSELF
THERE.
CAN YOU TELL ME SOMETHING?
Dhyan Giovanna, once you have tasted the inner silence, the noise on the outside does not matter; it is not a disturbance at all. The only disturbance comes from your inner noise, the chattering noise inside, the continuous rush of thoughts -- that is the real marketplace. What is outside, is outside; you can pass through the marketplace in absolute silence. If your inner being is not disturbed, then what is
happening outside cannot have any impact on you.
The fear arises only because we are not certain of our own silence -- our silence is very vulnerable. And in the beginning, it is natural -- it is nothing to be worried about. All that is needed is that the inner silence should be more crystallized. In fact, going into the outer world can be of immense help because it becomes a test. Use it as an opportunity to test your silence. And once you start feeling silent in the crowd, then you will be overjoyed --
then you can be certain that this silence is yours; otherwise sometimes one is deceived.
In the mountains you can be silent, in the deep forest you can be silent, in the middle of the night under the stars you can be silent -- but that is not your silence. It is just the outer silence penetrating you. In fact, there is no difference -
- outer silence penetrating you, or outer noise penetrating you -- both are the same; you are under the impact of the outside.
Hence I don't give any value to the silence that you feel coming from the outside. This silence will not be much help; when noise comes, you will be overwhelmed by the noise.
The silence has not to be of the mountains, of the stars, of the silence of the deep night, nor the silence of this commune. Here everybody is silent -- at least, trying to be silent!
With so many people trying to be silent, one can just become part... But it is the same: you can become part of a commune and feel silent; in the crowd you can become part of the crowd and you will feel noisy. In fact, you are not yet. All your experiences are dependent; you don't exist as an individual. That is the fear; otherwise it does not matter.
I used to have a friend who was condemned in the whole city -- he was a thief, and you can say he was a master thief. For almost six months he would be in jail, and six months outside. Nobody in the city even wanted to talk to him.
From the jail he used to come directly to my house. He was a very lovable man. And whenever he would come from the jail to my house, naturally everybody in the family was disturbed. My father again and again insisted to me that this friendship was not good.
I said, "Why do you believe in him and not in me? Am I your son, or is he your son?"
And he said, "What kind of argument are you giving me?"
I said, "I am saying exactly the right thing. You don't believe in me, you believe in him.
You are afraid I will be affected by him -- you are not giving even a single thought that I may affect him. Why do you think I am so weak?"
He said, "I have never thought from this angle -- perhaps you are right."
Slowly, slowly that man became accepted by my family. It took a little time; there were many reasons for them to reject him. The first reason was that he was a Mohammedan; second, he was a thief.
I had to sit outside the dining room because they would not allow him in the dining room.
In a Jaina family, no Mohammedan can be allowed in the dining room. Even for guests or customers, separate plates, glasses, saucers, cups -- everything is kept, but it is kept separate; it is used only for them. And I insisted that when I invited him for food, I was going to eat with him -- I could not insult him. He may be a thief, he may be a Mohammedan, it doesn't matter; I respect his humanity. So the only way was that I would also have to sit outside the dining room. And my friend used to say, "Why do you unnecessarily continue to fight with your family?"
And slowly, slowly my respect towards him changed him. He was angry with me, saying,
"Your respect prevents me from being a thief, and I don't know anything else. I am uneducated."
He was an orphan, and there was no other way for him except either to beg or to steal, and certainly stealing is better than begging. Begging degrades you very badly; by stealing, at least you are using your intelligence, your courage.
He was angry and said, "Now my life has become really a problem, and you are
the cause. I cannot steal because I cannot betray your trust, your love and your respect. And nobody is ready to give me employment."
So I took him to my father and I said to him, "Now my friend wants employment. You are against his stealing, now give him employment; otherwise you will be responsible for his stealing. The poor fellow is ready to do any work, but nobody in the whole city is ready to give him work because he is a thief. People say to him, `Bring certificates from where you have been working. Who has ever employed you ever in your whole life?' And he has no certificates."
I told my father, "Listen, somebody has to give him work the first time; otherwise, how can he get a certificate? You give him employment, and then you can give him a certificate. And I guarantee that he will not steal and he will not do anything wrong."
On my guarantee my father employed him. All other friends of my father said, "What are you doing, giving a job to a thief? He will deceive you." But my father said, "My son has given his guarantee, and I have to give the man an opportunity because my son's reasoning is right: If nobody gives him an opportunity, then everybody is pushing him towards the jail. And the whole society is responsible for pushing him towards the jail.
He wants to work, but if nobody is willing to give him work.… What do you want -- that he should commit suicide or what?"
Once a person goes into jail, then it becomes his only place, his home. Then within a few days he is back, because there is nobody outside to give him any protection, any dignity, any respect, any love. It is better to be in the jail.
He proved tremendously trustworthy, and finally my father had to accept. He said, "You are right. I was thinking that I was taking an unnecessary risk. I had not thought that your reasoning was going to work. He is a professional thief -- his whole life has been just going in and out of the jail. But you were right."
My father was a very sincere man and very truthful; he was always willing to accept his mistakes, even in front of his own son. He said, "You were right, that I trusted more in him -- I thought he would spoil your life. I did not trust that you might transform his life."
Giovanna, it all depends how much you trust your silence, how much you trust
yourself, how much the silence is arising from your inner sources. Then there is no problem -- you can go in the noisy world and you will remain silent. And it is possible that you may change a few people you come in contact with. Why trust that they will be able to change you? Why accept your weakness?
Go in the world with courage and with strength, and the noise of the world will not be a disturbance. And your silence will help people to become silent. Talk about your experience of meditation to your friends, to your family. It is always helpful to provoke in people an invitation, to provoke in people a longing, that they have been missing something that you have attained. And the more you spread your experience and share your experience with people, the more you will be protecting yourself; they will not be able to influence you.
Start spreading your fragrance and your silence and your experience. That becomes a subtle protection around you, and that also becomes a tremendously transforming force.
Rather than going with fear, go with blissfulness, spreading the experience that has happened to you.
You say the present is pure poetry -- that is so valuable; share it. And trust that the higher value is always victorious. The noise cannot win over silence, and misery cannot win over blissfulness, and darkness cannot win over light. These are fundamental rules of existence.
Just follow these fundamentals and you will be enriched in the marketplace even more than you can be enriched here. Because there, you will become stronger -- you will find the challenge to become stronger. And each time you come, you will come here to refresh yourself, to go deeper, to find greater peaks of consciousness and then go into the world.
Make it a point that the world has not to be renounced. The world needs people who are silent.
In the past, the silent people have deserted the world; they have escaped to the mountains.
In my opinion, they were cowards and escapists. They have not helped the world to evolve more, to become more mature, to become more peaceful; they simply escaped just out of fear that the world would destroy them.
I want my people to go into the world and destroy the world's noisiness, the world's ugliness, greediness. It is a challenge, and it is very exciting. Always remember: the best defense is attack! Attack people with your peace, with your love, with your silence, with your joy -- that's the best defense, and that is a great service to humanity too.
Sid Levensky, aged eighty-three, goes into the confessional at Saint John's Cathedral. The priest asks him, "Have you anything to confess?"
"Yes," says the old man, "my wife died two months ago. Two days after she passed on I met another woman. She is twenty-two years old. I have been sleeping with her since the day I met her. Sometimes we do it two or three times a day."
"And how old are you?" asks the priest. "Eighty-three," Sid replies.
"Oh dear!" says the priest, "Go home and say ten Hail Marys." "I can't do that," says the old man, "I'm Jewish."
"Then for God's sake, why are you telling me all this?" asks the priest. "Oh, it's not just you," replies Sid, "I'm telling everybody!"
So just go and tell everybody! Question 2
BELOVED OSHO,
I HAVE BEEN AROUND YOU FOR EIGHT MONTHS NOW, YET I FEEL I RARELY REALLY LET YOU IN.
WHAT CAN I DO, OSHO?
Prem Arpana, as far as I am concerned, I would suggest that you don't do anything. It is your effort, your desire that is preventing me being within you because all desire, longing, closes the doors.
And you are asking, "What can I do?" If you can do nothing, that will be the best
-- you just leave this idea. What are you going to do with me inside you? I am perfectly happy wherever I am! And I can help you from the outside more easily.
And this eight months, you say, "I feel I rarely really let you in." It means sometimes, not really, but you let me in. Why are you engaged in this unnecessary mind game? There is no need. It happens, but it happens only when you are not waiting for it; it happens only when you are not making any effort for it.
It is one of the most difficult things to understand, that there are things which happen not by your doing, but by your not doing, your sleep -- if you make an effort, then it is impossible. People have been doing all kinds of things: chanting mantras, repeating numbers from one to a hundred and back, from one hundred... ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven... to one. And again, going up, coming down, going up, coming down.
In fact, all this effort keeps them awake. But these are the suggestions of so- called wise people, who are all around, ready to give advice like, "Repeat the name of God." That will keep you awake! The only thing that can bring sleep is to forget all about it -- do something else, anything will do. Just lying down, what is the harm? Have a good rest, why be worried about sleep? And when you are at ease, with no worry, no chanting, no mantra, no God -- you are just resting
-- you will find slowly, slowly sleep is coming, enveloping you. You will not know when you have fallen asleep.
Do you know exactly at what time you enter from waking into sleep? You have been sleeping every day for your whole life, but do you remember, any night, even a single time, the exact moment when you entered into sleep? Even if you look at your watch, sleep will be gone. That much effort on your part is enough to disturb it. Sleep comes only when you have completely forgotten about it.
And this is a vicious circle: people who are suffering from sleeplessness cannot forget it for a single moment, and that creates sleeplessness. And the more they are suffering from sleeplessness, the more difficult it becomes for sleep to come.
There are many things in life which need absolute relaxation on your part. They will come when the right moment is there, and the right moment means when you have forgotten them completely.
It happens often that you remember somebody -- seeing him, you know him, you know his name, it is just on the tip of your tongue. But why is it not coming out? The more you try...
It becomes a very weird experience -- you know, you perfectly know, you are absolutely certain that you know the name, you know the person. There is not the slightest doubt in you, but somehow it is stuck just on the tongue -- it does not come out. It becomes a very strange feeling.
And then you start doing something else. How long can you go on sitting with this strange, weird feeling? You just go in the garden, start digging a hole, planting a tree, or pruning the trees... and suddenly it is there. When you had forgotten completely to remember it, it suddenly comes -- surfaces to your consciousness. But it surfaces only when you have forgotten to remember it.
These eight months you must have been trying hard to feel me inside you. In the first place, there was no need. You have to feel yourself; that is the basic thing that you have not done. You don't know your own inside -- how can you feel me inside you?
Just first do the homework: feel yourself, your interiority, your inner being. And the moment you feel your inner being, you will be so overwhelmed with joy, relaxation, at ease, that there is a possibility you may feel me also within you. You may feel stars, you may feel the sun, you may feel the whole existence within you. But first, feel your within.
Let me say it this way: If you can feel your within, the without also comes within. You become so expansive, your consciousness becomes so vast, it spreads all over existence.
It is one of the most beautiful, most blissful experiences.
And I have no objection if you feel me within yourself -- from my side, I am absolutely willing to come in. But you don't know that the doors of your inner subjectivity are closed. First, get settled inside. Before you invite the guest, please become the host; otherwise, what am I going to do in an empty house? I am a lazy man. Unless you are there to take care of me, I am not coming!
Max Levensky is dragged out of bed at three a.m. one morning and is hauled before the KGB. He is accused of being anti-Soviet and is then interrogated.
"What is the definition of a communist?" demands the KGB man.
Max replies immediately, "Someone who has read the works of Marx and Lenin."
"And what," continues the interrogator, "is the definition of an anti-communist?"
Max thinks for a moment and then says, "Someone who has read the works of Marx and Lenin and understands them."
You just try to understand yourself, and then everybody will be coming in -- Marx and Lenin...! But the first thing first. The only thing that can be said is: the basic need is to know yourself, be yourself, and everything else will follow. The understanding of yourself opens the doors of all the mysteries of existence.
Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,
YOU OFTEN TELL US THAT WE SHOULD NOT JUDGE OURSELVES OR OTHER
PEOPLE.
I AM A TEACHER AND BECAUSE OF MY JOB I HAVE TO JUDGE THE STUDENTS.
NOW THAT I AM GOING BACK TO ITALY, I AM WORRIED ABOUT HOW I SHALL MANAGE WITH MY JOB. CAN YOU GIVE ME SOME HELP?
Kalo Shreeman, my saying that you should not judge does not mean that you cannot say to a student, because you are a teacher, "The answer you have brought is not right."
It is not judging the person, it is judging the act. And I am not telling you not to judge the act -- that is a totally different thing.
For example, somebody is a thief -- you can judge that stealing is not good. But don't judge the person, because the person is a vast phenomenon and the act is a
small thing.
The act is so small a piece... that small piece should not become a judgment about the whole person. A thief may have many beautiful values: he may be truthful, he may be sincere, he may be a very loving person.
When I say don't judge a person, I am not saying that you are not allowed to say that somebody is committing a mistake. Somebody is falling into a well -- I am not saying that you should just stand silently without judging. This judgment, "Don't go that way" --
perhaps that man is blind and you have to prevent him; otherwise he will fall into the well. But preventing him, seeing that he is blind, does not mean that you are condemning him. The moment you start thinking in terms of condemnation then judgment enters, and I am against that kind of judgment.
One student is doing something which is not right. You are a teacher, your very function is to put the student on the right path. It is your love, it is not your condemnation; it is your compassion, not your judgment. But most often what happens is just the opposite: people start judging the person rather than the action. Actions have to be corrected -- and particularly in a profession like teaching, you have to correct; you cannot allow students to go on doing wrong things. That will be very cruel, uncompassionate.
I have been a teacher myself, but I have never judged a single student as far as his person, his being is concerned. But that does not mean I have not corrected them if they were wrong. For example, I was sitting one day with the vice- chancellor. He loved to talk with me whenever he could get a chance and could find me, because I was very rarely present.
And most often I avoided passing by his office because he used to tell his peon that if he saw me, to just bring me in. He loved to talk; he enjoyed a good argument.
I was talking with him, and a girl came crying. So he said to me, "Just a moment," and he asked the girl, "What is the matter? Why are you crying?" She said a certain boy, a student in her class had been harassing her for almost the whole year. "He throws small pebbles at me in the class, he writes letters to me." And the vice-chancellor said, "Don't be worried, I will call him and put him right; such things cannot be allowed. He will be punished, you don't be worried.
And if he does not stop, I will expel him from the university."
I was listening, and I said, "Just wait a minute. I want to ask the girl a few things."
He said, "Of course, you can ask. If you can help in the matter, it will be very good."
I asked the girl, "Are you really hurt by his throwing pebbles at you and writing love letters to you? Be honest! The day he does not write a love letter to you, don't you wait for it?"
The vice-chancellor said, "What are you talking about?"
I said, "You just keep quiet. When I am talking, you just be a gentleman -- keep quiet."
The girl stopped crying. I said, "Do you understand? If no young man harasses you, will you feel good? Don't you know there are girls who are not harassed by anybody, and they are suffering?"
The vice-chancellor said, "What are you saying?"
I said, "You keep quiet, I am going to solve the matter completely. I will talk to that boy also."
He said, "You need not talk, because the way you are talking..."
I said, "Now I have taken the matter in my hands." I asked the girl, "Are his love letters not written well? Then I can teach him how to write love letters! Because every girl wants love letters -- I don't see that there is anything unnatural in it."
Now the vice-chancellor was boiling! He said to the girl, "You go away."
I said, "She can go only when you answer a few questions in front of her. When you were a student, just remember those old days -- those beautiful days. Have you not written love letters to girls?"
He looked at me, he looked at the girl, and he said, "My God, what..." For a moment he was silent.
I said, "Be honest!"
He said, "Yes I have written..."
I said, "And just a moment before, you were expelling that boy from the university and you had forgotten completely."
Every young man will write letters, and if somebody does not write, the function of the teacher is to help him: "Are you a dodo or what?"
As far as my classroom is concerned, from the very first day I entered after the long summer vacations, my first thing was... because in India the girls sit on one side, boys sit on another side, and in between there is a big space. My first thing was, "Just get mixed."
They would look very embarrassed.…
I said, "Just get up, and you can choose whomsoever you want, but get mixed! I cannot tolerate this stupidity because this is the cause -- you have to throw stones, you have to write letters... What is the need? Just sit next to each other, and if you want to say something, whisper. Whisper -- I can stop; I can give you time. For fifteen minutes you do whatsoever you want to do. I will keep my eyes closed and meditate, so that after fifteen minutes we can concentrate on the subject matter. This is more primary."
Students were very much afraid of me. With hesitation they would mix up; still they would sit so that they would not touch each other. I said, "What nonsense -- do you think each other untouchable? Sit relaxed. And if you want to nudge the girl, or the girl wants to nudge you, it is perfectly okay; nature demands it. And because you are prevented, then you start ugly behavior. Now, taking the air out of the girls' bicycles -- that I don't think is natural! That is sheer stupidity. Harassing them on the road, saying ugly dirty words -- I don't think that is right, nor is it worthy of you.
"If you want to say something, write a beautiful love letter. If you don't know how to write, I am here -- I am available. Anybody, male or female, can come to the common room where I sit. I will teach you how to write love letters."
My class was the most silent class, and I told the vice-chancellor, "Sometime you can come and you can see -- nobody is doing anything to anybody because
they are allowed; I accept it as my responsibility that they should be allowed to be as natural as possible.
Every girl should feel that she is loved, desired, that there are people who look at her with loving eyes. Every boy wants to be loved. And this is the time when they should pass through these experiences."
I said to the girl, "What do you want? Tell me exactly. Do you want the boy to be expelled?"
She said, "No."
"Do you want him not to write letters to you?"
She said, "No." The vice-chancellor said, "Then why have you come here?"
I said, "It is very simple -- she simply wants your attention. She wants to say to the world that she is being loved, somebody is writing love letters, and without telling others there is no joy in the thing. The whole world should know that she is no ordinary girl --
exceptionally beautiful -- people are throwing stones."
The vice-chancellor said to the girl, "Now you go, because listening to such things... he can even spoil me. You just leave the room, and if you don't want to do anything against that boy, never come again." And when the girl had gone, he said, "You should not do such a thing, because if people come to know..."
I said, "In fact, you are afraid of your wife, it is not about people. And I am going to tell your wife that this old man is teaching... in front of me, he has been teaching that love letters are natural."
He said, "You were saying natural!"
I said, "You were listening silently! Do you agree with me or not?"
He said, "I agree, but don't go to my wife -- that is the only woman I am afraid of."
I said, "Then you have to behave."
Just don't judge so quickly, and don't judge the person. Judge actions, and correct them, and don't correct them according to tradition, convention, according to so- called morality, according to your prejudices. Whenever you are correcting somebody, be very meditative, be very silent; look at the whole thing from all perspectives. Perhaps they are doing the right thing, and your prevention will not be right at all.
So when I say, "Don't judge," I simply mean that no action gives you the right to condemn the person. If the action is not right, help the person -- find out why the action is not right, but there is no question of judgment. Don't take the person's dignity, don't humiliate him, don't make him feel guilty -- that's what I mean when I say, "Don't judge."
But as far as correcting is concerned: unprejudiced, silently, in your awareness, if you see that something is wrong and will destroy that person's intelligence, will take him on the wrong paths in his life, help him.
The job of the teacher is not just to teach futile things -- geography, and history, and all kinds of nonsense. His basic function is to bring the students to a better consciousness, to a higher consciousness. This should be your love and your compassion, and this should be the only value on which you judge any action as right or wrong.
But never for a single moment let the person feel that he has been condemned. On the contrary, let him feel that he has been loved -- it is out of love that you have tried to correct him.
Conrad was six years old. Although he was six, he had never spoken a word. His parents took him to the psychiatrist, but it didn't help. But one evening at the dinner table, Conrad looked down at his plate of food and said, "Take away this muck, it tastes terrible!"
His parents were elated and wept with joy. "You can talk!" cried his mother. "How come you've never spoken before this?"
"Up to now," said Conrad, "everything has been fine!"
Don't judge people -- try to understand them. Now he is saying such a beautiful thing:
"What is the need to speak when everything is going fine? Only for the first time something is terrible!"
A guy lying in a hospital bed, coming around from an anesthetic, wakes up to find the doctor sitting beside him. "I have got bad news and good news for you," says the doctor.
"Would you like the bad or good first?" "Aaagh," groans the guy, "tell me the bad."
"Well," says the doctor, "we had to amputate both your legs above the knee." "Aaagh," groans the guy, "that's really bad."
After recovering from the shock, he asks the doctor for the good news.
"Well," said the doctor, "the man in the next bed would like to buy your slippers!"
Just don't be serious! Don't think that you are a teacher so you are in a very serious job.
Look at life with more playful eyes... it is really hilarious! There is nothing to judge --
everybody is doing his best. If you feel disturbed by somebody, it is your problem, not his. First correct yourself.
I have my own way of looking at things.… I was a teacher for nine years, and I never judged a single student. I have never examined a single examination paper, because I told the vice-chancellor, "If I really examine, nobody is going to pass. And if I am going to pass a few people, why should the others not be passed? So things are clear -- you can decide -- either I can pass everybody, or I can fail everybody."
He said, "You always bring strange ideas! I have been a teacher my whole life; this idea never happened to me."
I said, "This is exactly what I am going to do, so you can decide."
He said, "It is better you don't take any examination papers. I will inform the in- charge that you should not be given any papers to examine."
I said, "That's perfectly right, because that saves me the trouble of judging people unnecessarily."
Only once they appointed me as a superintendent of the whole examination. I said, "You are doing something wrong -- you don't understand me." That was my first encounter with the new vice-chancellor. I said, "You don't know me. The old man knew me; he never committed any mistake like this."
He said, "What are you saying? Is it a mistake?"
I said, "It is a mistake because you don't know me. But give it a try!" So he said, "Okay."
He came two or three times to see what was happening, and he was feeling terrible when he heard me telling the students, "Listen, if you have brought notes hiding in your pockets, I have no objection. Just don't be caught. Do it cleverly, watchfully, because it is not a sin -- but you should not be caught. To be caught is the crime."
The vice-chancellor was standing there, listening. And I said to them, "I will try my best to catch you. So you decide. I give you two minutes -- if you are afraid of being caught, just bring everything that you are hiding and put it on the table, and I will not say anything to you. But after that, if you are caught, then your whole year is spoiled."
Immediately, students started bringing their notes -- one boy had written answers on his shirt, inside. So he said, "What am I supposed to do? I have no notes but I have written many things on my shirt, inside -- should I give the shirt?"
I said, "You have to give it."
The vice-chancellor was standing there. He said, "What is going on?"
I said, "You keep quiet. I told you beforehand, if I am the superintendent things will be going according to me."
I told the boy, "You take your shirt off, put it here." He said, "But it is too cold."
I said, "That's not my problem -- why have you "
So he had to take off his shirt. And the vice-chancellor said, "This is too much."
I said, "I cannot help.…" And nobody was doing anything -- they had even brought books, whole books. They were hiding them behind their coats, shirts, pants, everything came out!
And I said to them, "Now you can start answering your questions. And don't be worried, if you cannot answer something, I am here; I am here to help you. You can just raise your hand and I will come and try to help you."
Nobody raised his hand. I said, "What is the matter?" They were afraid, because this has never happened -- a superintendent telling them, "I will help you." I said, "This is just human. You are in difficulty, and I am sitting here doing nothing "
That was the first and the last time.… The vice-chancellor said, "You are a strange person.
That boy is shivering -- how can he write?" It was a cold morning the
examinations used to be early in the morning, seven o'clock Somebody's pants
had been taken, because people used to write on their pants -- people do all kinds of things.
They had their ways, and I knew. I have also been a student, and I knew all kinds of things. That was very easy, to write on your pants -- nobody will be able to see. But I told them, "It doesn't matter, even if you have to sit naked sit naked!
Next time you will not do such a thing. But I am not uncompassionate to you; if you are in need of some answer that you cannot find, I will give it to you; you just have to raise your hand. Because according to me, all examinations are absolutely absurd."
If it were up to me, I would allow the students to have all the books available. Only a very intelligent student can find out the answers from the books in three hours. And you will be able to judge their intelligence in a better way; otherwise somebody has just crammed five answers, and he knows nothing else, and he
comes first in the class. And somebody else knows everything, just has missed those five questions, and he is a failure.
This is not a good examination; they should be allowed to have the whole library available to them. They can go to the library, they can find the answer, they can write it.
In three hours, they have to find as beautiful answers as possible. And only intelligent students will be able to find them.
In the Soviet Union they have changed this old idea of examinations. Now books are available -- all the books concerned are available in the hall where the students are given their examination; they can consult any book. It is far better, because the ultimate concern is to know the intelligence of the person, not his memory. So students need not memorize anything -- they have to understand things. In examination time they can either just from their intelligence give the answer, or they can look in the books. But if in a five hundred page book you have to find one answer, you need some intelligence -- mediocres will not be able to find the answer, they will become so nervous...
And there is no need that a person should have to wait for one year. I told the vice-chancellor, "If I am going to be the superintendent I will follow my ideas, I don't care what is conventional. The conventional is not necessarily the right thing. I will give them all the available material; they can find out. Only the intelligent people will be able to find out. And those who have not been successful should be given a chance again after one month. What is the problem that they should wait for one year?"
Finally, there is no need of any examinations if every teacher goes on giving marks in his diary every day to the students. And every year, all the notes from all the teachers are collected. And based on those counts the students are moved, either upward or downward. Because there are many who deserve to go back -- they have somehow slipped, they should not be allowed... they should be put back; they should earn better marks and go ahead again.
And this should remain available: if a teacher finds that an intelligent student has unnecessarily to wait six months more for examination, he should recommend that the student be moved right now to a higher class, because he has enough intelligence. There is no need for him to wait six months more. Teachers should
be the decisive factors. In that situation, nobody fails, nobody passes -- people simply move. A few move faster, a few move a little slower; everybody according to his pace. Nobody is condemned as a failure, nobody is praised as first-class, nobody is praised as a gold medalist. All these things teach people unnecessary ambition, and ambition is poison.
You are a teacher; you should try in every way to change the very structure of teaching, particularly your teaching. And slowly, slowly things move. You should tell other teachers, "There are many things wrong with the education system itself, which nobody bothers about. And you are judging students; the first thing should be a right system of education." The whole system is rotten, old, out of date; it has to be completely changed.
So I am not saying don't judge. Particularly systems, conventions, traditions -- judge them! But don't judge individuals. If their actions are wrong, help them to get free of those wrong actions. If they are going in wrong directions, help them to find right paths.
And this should be your love, this should not be your judgment.
"Young man," said the judge, looking sternly at the defendant, "it is alcohol, and alcohol alone, that is responsible for your present sorry state."
"I am glad to hear you say that," replied Paddy, with a sigh of relief. "Everybody else says it is all my fault!"
Okay, Maneesha? Yes, Osho.
The Invitation Chapter #26
Chapter title: You have your problem -- I'm going home 3 September 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium Archive
code:
8709030
ShortTitle:
INVITA26
Audio:
Yes Video:
Yes Length:
133
mins Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
THE HARMONY I FEEL WITH YOU, THE VISION OF LOVE AND FLOWERING, TREMBLES WITHIN ME. I FEEL A GIVING OF EVERYTHING TO THIS
WONDERFUL GIFT OF LIFE. SOMETHING IS HAPPENING THROUGH ME OR
WITH ME OR IN SPITE OF ME -- AND I KNOW THIS IS HOME. BELOVED MASTER, BELOVED MYSTERY, WHO AM I?
The mystery of life always happens in spite of you. In the beginning there is no other alternative possible. Only in the end does it start happening through you. But it can happen through you only when you are not. Then you become a hollow bamboo which can be turned into a flute and the song can pass through it.
In the beginning you are -- you are too much.
So when the first experience of mystery starts happening it is in spite of you. And it is good to understand that life is far bigger than you can conceive and its power is immense beyond our any conception; just we are waiting patiently, searching patiently, knowing perfectly well that we don't know the way, knowing perfectly well that we have lost our original eternal home -- knowing perfectly well that we are unconscious. All our efforts, our search, our seeking is groping in the dark.
It is good to remember our situation. Do your best. In spite of your darkness, blindness, unconsciousness, whatever you can do, do. But remember, it is not going to happen through your doing. It is going to happen because you are longing for it so deeply that existence cannot resist, cannot remain indifferent to you.
So although you are not prepared, nobody is prepared. Nobody knows the way, nobody knows where the home is, nobody knows in which direction to move, what discipline to follow.
But there are two kinds of people: those who are not aware of their situation of darkness and blindness, and those who think that they are not blind, that they are not in darkness; that they know the way, that they know where they have to go, that they know what they have to do.
These are the people to whom existence cannot happen; they are too much. And all that they know is absolutely false, they have not experienced it. But their falsity is so much identified with their being, it is their ego which says, "You are not blind. There is no darkness and all that is needed you know it through the scriptures, through the old masters, through reading, learning, studying." But all that is borrowed; it is not going to help.
No two persons reach the end on the same route. Hence Gautam Buddha may have reached through a certain path and Chuang Tzu may have reached through another path, but their paths are no longer useful for you. In fact, it is impossible to find their paths either. Their paths disappear just as the birds flying in the sky don't leave any footmarks.
So you cannot find out from where the world has reached to the heights, and you cannot follow because there are no footprints. All there is, is what is written in
your scriptures...
and you try. The Buddhist tries the way Buddha may have followed. In the first place there is no way to find what way he has followed, because the way is inner and nobody is capable of giving an expression to it. So what is written is a faraway echo in the minds of the disciples.
It is a strange story to remember that the man who remembered the most of what Buddha has said in forty-two years... And Buddha continuously resisted their efforts to write it down because he did not want to leave any scripture behind nor did he want to leave any statue of himself. He wanted to disappear just as if he has not come. One of his names is Tathagata. It has two meanings; both are significant. One is: the man who taught the philosophy of suchness. The other is more literal but has a tremendous significance.
Literally the word `tathagata' means just came, just gone, leaving no mark behind, just like a breeze comes you feel it and the coolness of it, and it is gone. Neither do you know from where it comes nor you know where it goes.
So for his whole life Buddha did not allow his statements to be compiled. And in the end he said to them, "No statue, no memorial should be made of me because I want to disappear as if I had never been. Because whatsoever is left behind becomes the hindrance for people; it does not help them."
There is a great insight, very profound -- and such egolessness, such simplicity, such humbleness that he wants to disappear silently without any footprints, because nobody can follow anybody else. Nobody can become wise by reading and studying scriptures.
So that greater part of humanity which believes that they know, they are the ones to whom the mystery is not going to happen. But if you are searching, knowing perfectly well that you know nothing -- you don't even know that your ignorance is absolute; it is not that a little bit you know and a little bit you don't know -- in this humbleness, in this acceptance that I don't know, the mysteries start happening. They happen in spite of you.
You cannot manage -- they are not manageable, they are not under your control -
- but once they start happening they make their way through you.
Slowly, slowly the ice of your ego melts and a passage is made. Existence starts
singing its songs, sending its music, giving you directions; helping you to find the doors of all that is mysterious and is not available to the mind but only to the man of heart, to the man of humbleness -- to the man who is perfectly aware that he knows nothing.
And it is good that you ask, "Beloved Master, beloved mystery, who am I?"
You are Swami Satyadharma. This much you should remember; otherwise in the ordinary life you will get lost. Once you forget that you are Swami Satyadharma then you don't know where you are going and what you are doing.
I have told you two small stories...
One is about George Bernard Shaw. He is traveling in a train from London to some place and the ticket checker comes. Bernard Shaw looks into everything, opens this suitcase, that suitcase, all the pockets, and the ticket is missing. He starts perspiring and looks very much afraid and concerned.
The ticket checker says, "I know you; everybody knows you. The ticket must be somewhere; there is no problem. You will find it. Don't get so nervous and excited in your old age" -- he was ninety.
The ticket checker said, "I will not disturb you, I am going. You just relax."
George Bernard Shaw said, "You don't understand. It is not the question of the ticket.
Who is bothering about the ticket? The question is where am I going? Can you tell me where I am going? Without the ticket... now I have got into a tangle. I am not searching for the ticket for you -- I don't care about you or anybody. But the problem is: Where am I going?"
The ticket checker said, "My God, that is impossible for me to figure out where you are going. Now I can understand why you are feeling so nervous. Your hands are trembling."
The second anecdote is about Mulla Nasruddin in the same situation as George Bernard Shaw. The ticket checker is asking for the ticket and he is looking everywhere. Other passengers are puzzled that he looks into every pocket but he leaves one pocket. He does not touch that one.
Finally, the ticket checker said, "You have looked everywhere but you don't look into this pocket."
He said, "Don't talk about that pocket. That's my only hope and I don't want to destroy that hope. If it is not there I'm finished. Then it is nowhere else. So I cannot open that way. I will look everywhere possible..."
He had thrown all the clothes and everything out of the suitcases. The ticket checker was at a loss, the passengers were at a loss. But Mulla was absolutely reluctant, "Whatever happens, I am not going to touch that pocket. That I will leave because at least there is a hope that perhaps the ticket is there. If the ticket is not there then I am completely finished."
The problem is the same: I don't know where I am going. So as far as the world is concerned, you are Swami Satyadharma -- and there are two Swami Satyadharmas here.
Remember, you are not the other one. To make it clear, the other one is German; so don't get mixed.
Just as you call me Beloved Master, beloved mystery, I call you beloved disciple, beloved mystery. Behind Swami Satyadharma everything is a mystery. Satyadharma is just a facade for the outside world, just a utilitarian identity; it is not your reality; but behind it is a mysterious being. You are becoming aware of gifts of existence, of mysteries. Something is happening through it; just allow it.
Your function is not to prevent, not to be reluctant. Join your hands with whatever is happening. That's what I mean by let-go.
Let existence cleanse you. Allow it total power over you.
Don't be worried that you will be destroyed, because you will be destroyed. There is no need to worry; it is absolutely certain. When things are certain there is no worry. It is only the uncertainty that creates worries.
You will be destroyed.… That which will remain undestroyed in you is your authentic self. That which is destroyed is your personality, your false self; it needs to be destroyed.
You can use that destroyed part in the world because they won't understand if you say that you are a mystery. Even your family, your wife, your children, your parents will think you have gone mad if you say, "I am a mystery." Nobody is a mystery and only you are a mystery? -- where did you lose yourself?
So as far as the outside world is concerned you are Swami Satyadharma -- not the other one; that you have to remember! This is a problem for sannyasins because they have the same names, many. You can get lost and start thinking, Who am I? And naturally, you are a mystery, but a German mystery or an Italian mystery... this much you should remember: that you are not a German mystery.
For the outside world, completely keep your old false identity, your name, your profession, your qualifications. But inside you will know that it is only utilitarian, not real, useful; useful in the society, but when you are alone you are not Swami Satyadharma and you are not Italian or German or English.
You are not even your body. You are not your mind.
You are just the pure mystery behind.
Now there is no way to describe it, you will have to experience it, and you are moving rightly towards that experience. Just don't in any way knowingly out of fear hinder the process. There is no fear: only the false will die and the real will remain always and always. That is the definition of the real: That which remains.
The false is just useful. In the crowd of the world you need a name. The reality is nobody has a name, but it will be a very difficult world if everybody drops the name because it is false. Then you won't have any address. The postman cannot find you anywhere because everybody is a mystery! You will create troubles because you are not the husband and you are not the wife and you are not the father and you are not the child -- everything outside will be disturbed, will become a chaos.
Outside keep everything as it is. Inside don't be identified with it.
This is the whole secret of finding yourself without being condemned by the
society as mad.
A traveling salesman was just on the point of checking into a hotel when he caught sight of a stunning young woman who was without doubt giving him the full come-on treatment. He strolled over to her and nonchalantly exchanged a few words with her, behaving as though he had known her all his life. Then they both walked to the reception desk and booked in as man and wife. After a one- night stay, the salesman went to collect his bill and check out. He was appalled to be presented with a bill for one thousand pounds.
"Look here, this is out of the question. I have only been here for one day," he cried.
"Yes sir," replied the receptionist, "but your wife has been here a month."
So don't get into such trouble. On the outside remain exactly what you are, Swami Satyadharma.
Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,
YOU ADVISE WATCHING PATIENTLY THE UNTANGLING OF THE GORDIAN
KNOT THAT TIES ME TO THE PAST. SOME PART OF ME IS HAPPY TO DO
THAT; ANOTHER PART WANTS YOU TO SLASH THE KNOT ASUNDER. IS
THIS LAZINESS OR MASOCHISM OR A MIND TRIP?
It is not masochism, Prem Rajiva, nor is it a mind trip. You are sincerely wanting to get out of the entanglement. You want to be free of all entanglement; you want to come out of the prison. What you are calling the Gordian knot, you want it to be slashed.
It is a sincere and authentic desire, but the trouble arises because this desire is also from the mind. So one part of the mind is ready to cut the Gordian knot and
another part of the mind is always against. It is not a special question about the Gordian knot that divides you.
Mind's functioning is through duality. The right word used for that is `dialectics'. Karl Marx has used that word as a foundation of communism. He calls his philosophy dialectical materialism. He says the society evolves through dialectics, and by dialectics he means it will be helpful to you for your development -- and what he says has some truth in it.
The meaning of dialectics is that one part functions as the thesis, another part functions as the antithesis and out of the conflict of the two comes the third part, a synthesis.
Synthesis on its own accord becomes again thesis and creates antithesis, and their conflict brings a new synthesis. This is how step by step evolution happens.
And he is right, although he used his philosophy to support a political ideology. That is fictitious, but the idea of dialectics in itself is absolutely correct.
He says that the proletariat, the poor are the thesis, and the rich, the capitalists are the antithesis. Now there is going to be a class struggle, a revolution, a fight between thesis and antithesis that will create the dictatorship of the proletariat as the synthesis. On its own then it will become the thesis and it will create its antithesis as democracy of the proletariat. And out of the conflict between the two will arise another synthesis.
Every man's capacity to think is limited. That synthesis never becomes thesis. He has come to the end of his row; he has arrived at a state where there is no class, no government. He has achieved the utopia. Now there is no need of any conflict, any revolution. But I don't see that evolution is going to stop anywhere. So he has used a very significant principle of philosophy for his political ideology. And as he reaches to his ultimate goal he forgets all about dialectics. That is not only his fault -- everybody's. The religions say God created the world, and when you ask them who created God -- finished.
They have come to the end of their row.
The Jainas in India say that man has been evolving, not in his physiology as Darwin thinks -- that in physiology he is evolving from apes or monkeys or gorillas -- but Jainism says man is evolving through different animal
consciousnesses, not physiologically but in his soul. It seems more accurate than Charles Darwin. Charles Darwin does not have any evidence.
The whole thing seems to be hypothetical because nobody has seen any monkey, because if in the past, thousands of years ago, some monkey became a human being, why are other monkeys not becoming human beings now? They are now more evolved as man has evolved. Now they will be jumping every day! Suddenly you see a monkey, and he jumps and becomes a man and says, "Hello, where are you going? I am coming too."
Nobody has encountered any monkey becoming a man. And the difference between a monkey and man is so great that it cannot be possible to take a jump suddenly. Monkeys know how to jump, but that does not mean they can jump and become a human being.
They can jump from one branch to another branch -- that's perfectly okay -- but they cannot jump from one state of consciousness into a totally new state of consciousness, because it needs a new brain, a different size of brain; it needs a different structure of the body. Just to stand on two legs a monkey will need so much bodywork that he will not survive.
It has happened in Lucknow...
A boy was found who had been raised by wolves in the forest, and just the other day a girl was found. She was the same age, thirteen, and she had been raised by animals. So the boy and girl walk on all fours -- naturally, they have imitated their parents.
It has happened in Calcutta too. They tried to make him stand on two legs, thinking that the man should be restored to humanity -- they killed him. Just the effort to make him stand on two legs was so difficult because he now had a fixed structure. For fourteen years he had walked on all fours; now suddenly he could not stand.
And the same happened in the Lucknow case: in six months they had killed the boy. I put the whole responsibility on the stupid idea that these people should be restored. They were perfectly beautiful; there was no need. This boy who was killed in Lucknow by the scientists and the doctors... They were giving him all kinds of medicines and injections and bodywork and massage. And the boy was so strong that they needed four or five people to catch hold of him; otherwise he
used to run faster on his four feet than any runner. He could have come first in any Olympic race anywhere; he was a wolf.
It would have been more humane to leave him back in the forest. But this is how the unconscious mind functions. Now a girl has been found in Europe and they have immediately started working on her to restore her. They will kill her. I can predict it --
because this "restoration" is not possible; it would take a lifetime.
As for the Lucknow boy, in six months the whole success for the scientists and the doctors was that he learned one word: the name Ram that they had given to him. That was their whole success -- and they enjoyed very much, that they had done "great service." All they did... There are five billion human beings, what is the point of taking a beautiful wolf back into humanity, and rejoicing that he has learned the name Ram?
And thousands of people were coming -- he had become an exhibition -- to ask him,
"What is your name?" And he would say, "Ram" -- with anger. According to his mind, it was purely torture because traction was being done.
Suddenly a monkey cannot become... And Charles Darwin also was looking for a middle link. The monkey must have become first a middle link between man and monkey, and then from middle link he may have moved to monkey. He never could find any middle link; his hypothesis remains hypothesis.
All these philosophers go on using some idea. Once they get attached to it they extend it into a philosophy, into a whole system. That's what Marx did. But dialectics is a natural phenomenon, particularly as far as man's psychology is concerned: mind functions through dialectical ways.
You will never find mind without any split.
I keep coming across very intelligent people.… I wanted one of our sannyasins who is a very intelligent legal expert, to come here -- and there is no problem in coming. His wife is also as educated as he is. They were both colleagues in law college, his wife was a magistrate. He has been in the commune. The wife had also come, but because they had a small child she went back and took a job as a
magistrate. Now that her husband has gone back to join her, she has dropped out of her job. So I told both of them they could come here. He informed me that ninety percent he wants to come, but ten percent of his mind thinks of security, safety; the child, his education, old age, the future...
I have come across such people all my life, and I have asked them only one thing: If you are intelligent enough, then why are you choosing the ten percent part of your mind against the ninety percent? You are not realizing at all that you are choosing ten percent of the mind -- and you are afraid to choose the ninety percent.
And mind is never going to be a hundred percent for anything. That is not the way mind functions, it is out of the question. Mind's function is always to be divided on every question: a thesis, antithesis, and then you have to find out the synthesis, and you have to function according to the synthesis.
So there is no problem about your being a masochist; you are not on a mind trip either. It is simply the way of the mind that it never functions as a total unit. In fact, if you see the dialectics in life you will find it in many places. You walk, that is dialectical. If both your legs move together one hundred percent you will fall down. Fifty percent remains static, fifty percent moves. Then the other fifty percent becomes static and the static part starts moving. That's how you walk; that is dialectical philosophy. That's how a bird flies; that's how you use your hands.
Even your mind is not one single piece; it has two hemispheres. Your right hand is connected with the left side of your mind and your left hand is connected with the right side of your mind. So if something goes wrong with the left side of the mind, for example paralysis, then your right hand will be paralyzed.
Both have different functions. The right side of the mind thinks and the left side of the mind feels, and thinking and feeling are just like two legs. They cannot join together; otherwise there will be no progress in life. You will remain static.
So it is simply a matter of not understanding the nature of mind. You have one part of the mind ready -- let it go and do its job. That is the moving leg, and the other part is the static part. And you think that you would like me to slash the knot asunder. I cannot do that because I love you.
Once I started doing things for you, you would become dependent on me. And
that is the last thing that I will tolerate. I would not like you to be dependent on me. I can give you the way, I can show you the way, but I will not walk for you. You will have to walk yourself, because I want you to be absolutely independent and free. Today I am here, tomorrow I may not be here.
If you become dependent on me, as has been happening all over the world for centuries --
people become dependent on the masters, and the masters enjoy the dependence. Neither are the masters authentic nor are the disciples intelligent -- and humanity has remained static.
Are you aware of the fact that for centuries there has been no evolution? If monkeys have become human beings at some time, what have human beings done? -- they are stuck. At least some daring human being should take a jump and start flying, do something! But you know perfectly well that if you try flying, there will be no evolution, only multiple fracture.
It has happened to a few people under LSD or under impact of some drug -- particularly LSD gives these ideas that you can fly. And one woman flew out from an eighty-storey building, from the eightieth floor. She simply flew out of the window. And you know what would happen... so it happened.
LSD is a very harmless drug, but it should be used under medical supervision, because it gives such ideas, great ideas, and the mind is no longer functioning so there is no opposition; there is a
one hundred percent surety -- and that is very dangerous. A one hundred percent surety is not favorable to evolution. It is good that the mind should be divided for and against, discuss, argue, and slowly slowly progress.
But one thing is strange, that for at least one million years there has been no evolution as far as man is concerned. You cannot call this evolution: one person becomes a Gautam Buddha or one person becomes a Bodhidharma or one becomes a Tah Hui -- you cannot call that evolution. The whole of humanity is stuck somewhere.
What is the problem? The problem is, humanity is not moving with the part of the mind which is for evolution; it is staying with the part of the mind which is not for evolution.
You have to learn only one thing, that you have already a part of your mind ready, happy to do that. So do it! Don't bother about the other part of the mind. That mind is pulling you back; it represents your past. And the mind that is feeling happy and excited to do something, it represents your future. Choose the future.
Don't depend on somebody else, because that dependence is dangerous. It is not only one question that can be solved, there are a thousand and one questions -- and your evolution depends on your own readiness to risk, your own acceptance of danger.
You are in a right position; there is no problem. Just listen always to the part of the mind that is for the future, that is for the unknown, that is for evolution, and the other part will come following behind.
Once you are decisive, the other part of the mind will immediately follow you. It will remain against you until you are decisive. And the decision has to come from looking at the fact of which mind is for the future and evolution, which mind is going to give you a better life, a better understanding, a better consciousness -- choose that and the Gordian knot will be slashed without any effort on your part or without any need from outside help.
A woman leaned over her side of the fence and asked the little boy next door how he was getting on with his new stepfather.
"Great," he replied, "every morning he takes me out in the boat to the ocean, puts me in the water and then I swim back to the beach."
"But is not that a bit dangerous for a little boy?" asked the woman.
"Oh, that's easy. The hard part is untying the knot and getting out of the bag."
It is certainly a little harder... but if you can manage to do it, it will give you a sudden quantum leap for a higher consciousness.
Question 3 BELOVED OSHO,
YOU OFTEN TALKED ABOUT PSYCHOANALYSIS AND RELATED
THERAPIES.
WOULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT ON MORE RECENT DEVELOPMENTS LIKE
FRITZ PERLS' GESTALT THERAPY AND -- THE LATEST FASHION -- VOICE
DIALOGUE? CAN THESE THERAPIES HELP A PERSON WHO IS ALREADY
MEDITATING TO SEE HIMSELF AND HIS GAMES MORE CLEARLY?
Tilo, in the first place psychotherapies like Fritz Perls' Gestalt therapy and others are already old; they are not new. The only new thing which is the latest fashion is Voice Dialogue -- but they are all just mind games.
They cannot contribute anything to a man who is already meditating -- no psychotherapy has the quality of meditation, because no psychotherapy has produced a single enlightened being. Their founders were not enlightened and the enlightened beings in the East never bothered about any psychotherapy. They have not even bothered about psychology or mind itself, because for them the question was not to solve the problems of the mind, for them the question was how to get out of the mind which is easier. Then the problems all are finished, because once you are out of the mind, the mind has no nourishment to go on creating problems; otherwise it is an unending process.
You get psychoanalyzed, whether old or new fashions it doesn't matter; they are just variations of the same theme. Your mind feels a little fresh and good after a psychological session, because you have unburdened yourself. A little understanding of mind also comes -- that keeps you normal.
In fact, all psychotherapies are in the service of the establishment; their function is not to let people go abnormal. Somebody is going outside the herd and the norms of the herd and doing things which it is not supposed that you should do...! They may be harmless but the society cannot tolerate such people. They have to be brought to the normal, to the average standard.
The psychotherapist's work is to clean your mind. It is a kind of lubricating your mechanism -- it functions a little better and you start becoming a little more
understanding about the functionings of the mind, although that does not make any revolutionary change. And it is possible you may solve one problem, but you have not removed the cause.
Mind itself is the problem.
So you can remove one problem, mind will create another problem... It is just like pruning the trees: you prune one leaf and just out of self-respect and dignity the tree will grow three leaves in the place where there used to be one. That's why gardeners go on pruning; that gives trees more foliage, more leaves.
The same is the situation with the mind: you can remove one problem by understanding it
-- and it is costly -- but the mind is still there which has created the problem, and psychoanalysis does not go beyond the boundaries of the mind. The mind will create a new problem, more complicated than the one that you have solved. Naturally, because the mind understands you can solve that kind of problem, it creates something new, more complicated, more foliage.
Meditation is a totally different thing than psychoanalysis or any therapies which are confined to the mind. It is simply a jumping out of the mind: You have your problems --
I'm going home.
Because mind is a parasite it does not have its own existence. It needs you inside in it, so it can go on eating you, your head. Once you jump out of it, the mind is just a graveyard.
All those problems that were too big drop, they simply drop dead.
Meditation is a totally different dimension: you simply watch the mind and in watching you come out of it. And slowly, mind with all its problems disappears; otherwise the mind is going to create strange problems.
The other day in England a court released a murderer. It is a very strange case, and it may give impetus to many people to murder. The murderer was in the second world war fighting in Japan. And he pleaded in the court that in the night he dreamt that the Japanese were chasing him, and they were just about to get
hold of him. He became so frightened and he wanted to survive, so he caught hold of the neck of one Japanese and killed him by pressing on his neck. And as the Japanese was killed, he awoke from the dream and the Japanese was no one but his wife.
The court was in a difficulty what to do, because he had not done it consciously, in awareness. Now to punish him does not seem right, even in a traditional England, where anything new takes years to be accepted. When the whole world will accept it then England will try!
The judge must have been a man of great understanding, but he has also opened a door of dangers. Now anybody can kill his wife and say, "What can I do? Japanese were following..." It is a precedent that you have released one man, acquitted completely from committing any crime.
Now you are able to commit crime. You just have to pretend that you are asleep, and there is no way for the court to find out whether you were really asleep and the Japanese were really following you in your dream. The poor woman was fast asleep, he jumped up and killed her -- and perhaps he is right... But now there will be cases which will not be right. Perhaps what he is saying is true; he has been in the war in Japan and that may have come as a dream from his unconscious; and out of fear, to protect himself, he started fighting with the Japanese. And there was nobody else in the room except the wife close to him just on the bed, so he jumped, caught hold of the Japanese...
Mind is your only problem.
All other problems are just offshoots of the mind. Meditation cuts the mind from the very roots.
And all these therapies -- Gestalt and Voice Dialogue and Fritz Perls -- we can use them for those who have not yet entered into meditation just to have a little understanding of the mind so they can find the door from where to get out.
We are using all kinds of therapies which are helpful, but not for the meditators. They are only helpful in the beginning when you have not yet become accustomed to meditation.
Once you are meditative you don't need any therapy, no therapy is helpful then.
But in the beginning, it can be helpful, and particularly for the Western sannyasins.
I don't suggest it much for Eastern people that they should do therapy groups. For example, Japanese have been found not to understand that in an encounter group if people are fighting it is just playful fighting. They really start fighting and they can become dangerous; they can kill somebody.
Different cultures... Japanese have been writing letters to me saying that in the therapies they are telling us that you hate your mother, your father -- and it is absolutely wrong!
We will kill the therapist! Japan has a totally different culture. The very idea that you hate your mother -- and the person will commit hara-kiri. He will kill himself because it is so shameful.
I have come to know such stories of hara-kiri that you cannot believe. One famous historical case happened three hundred years ago. A very well-known master of martial arts forgot, when he went to meet the emperor, to bow down. In Japan you have to bow down even to your enemy when you go to fight.
Both bow down to each other because one never knows who will be left alive. At this moment enmity and friendship don't matter. At this moment when one person is never going to be seen again and will not even be able to ask for forgiveness, they give respect.
And it is authentic, it is not formal.
Going to the emperor and forgetting to bow down... And he forgot because he was a great master and thousands of people who were learning under him were all bowing down to him. So he had become accustomed to people bowing down to him, and then he would respond by the same gesture. It was such bad manners that when he was made aware that he had committed a great crime because he had not bowed down to the emperor, he committed suicide.
That is the routine process. There is no other way except that to show that you really feel repentant. It is not so easy as in the West where you can just say, "I'm sorry" -- that is very formal and very easy. Japanese take things very seriously. The only way you can say, "I'm sorry" is by hara-kiri -- one feels so ashamed of himself that he cannot allow himself to live anymore.
The more strange thing is that his three hundred intimate disciples committed hara-kiri because their master had behaved in a shameful way. They were not at all concerned, but because their master has fallen in grace, how can they stand in the world with grace and dignity? Three hundred disciples committed hara-kiri. This is a historical fact, and this kind of thing has been happening in Japan for centuries.
So one sannyasin has written to me, "The therapist goes on insisting, `You must hate your mother...' Either I will kill the therapist or I will kill myself if he is right. Because I don't see that I have ever hated my mother."
And in fact the situation is different. In Japan almost one-third of the girls don't marry; they remain with their mother. In the rest of the world the situation is different. And what psychoanalysis has found does not apply to the Japanese. It applies only to the Western mind and its upbringing.
Sigmund Freud is right only about the Western mind and its tradition. When he says that every girl hates her mother because she loves the father, the whole thing is based on their understanding of sex, that one loves the opposite sex. So girls love the fathers, the boys love the mother. But the girls cannot express their love, particularly they cannot be sexually related with the father, and the mother is related sexually. So they become jealous of the mother -- the mother is their enemy. The boys become enemies of the father and because of that the boy cannot make love to the mother.
The Japanese cannot even think of this; even Indians cannot think of this -- just a totally different upbringing. Indians cannot believe what kind of nonsense this is. And for the Japanese things are very difficult. If you insist and you convince him that he hates his mother or he hates his father -- and the whole psychoanalysis depends on these kinds of things: who you hate, why you hate... And they go on digging deeper and they prove to the person that from very childhood there has been a jealousy and that is creating all the problems.
"Why can't you love your wife?" -- the psychoanalyst will come to the conclusion that you wanted to love your mother -- and your wife is not your mother -- and the wife does not love you because she wanted to love her father and you are not her father. So you are bound to fight continuously. You have fallen in love with the girl because something in her resembles your mother. And the girl has fallen in love for the same reason: something in you resembles her
father.
So you have married your mother; she has married her father. This is psychoanalysis.
And because neither she is behaving like your mother nor you are behaving like her father, problems arise.
But to say to a Japanese, "You have married your mother," is simply out of the question.
To say to an Indian, "You have been secretly loving your mother and you wanted a sexual relationship with her..."; he cannot even think..."Are you in your senses or..."
In India the tradition is that the son loves his mother almost like a goddess. He loves his father and respects his father next to God. And the difficult thing is that even the people in the East who are teaching or who are in the profession of psychoanalysis, as professors or as practitioners, they have all learned from the West and they don't understand that the East has a totally different orientation.
And Sigmund Freud or Jung or Adler or Assagioli or Fritz Perls have no idea. Not even in their dreams have they thought that people can be different from the Western people.
In the East psychoanalysis is not of much help. For the Westerners, I like them to go through groups just to clean the mind. With a clean mind, to enter into meditation is easier. But if you don't enter meditation and you simply depend on cleaning the mind, then you will be cleaning the mind for your whole life and you will not go anywhere else.
Because of its different orientation the East should find seats in the universities for meditation, not for psychoanalysis.
One of the great Indian psychologists who was the head of the department in the Hindu university of Varanasi belonged to a village near my village; and moreover, he was father-in-law to one of my friends who had studied with me. He was one of the most respected professors of psychology, but he was condemned by everybody because people, thinking that he would be able to help them with their mind problems, would go for psychoanalysis, and
psychoanalysis brings... They would ask, "Whom do you hate?"
And the Indian would find himself at a loss because everything comes down to sex -- and the Indian cannot accept that idea. It is not the same orientation as in the West.
This man's name was Laljiram Shukla. And because his son-in-law was my friend, the son-in-law was continuously telling him that he must meet me at least once. He was an old man. I was just out of the university. He invited me to come to Varanasi because his son-in-law was continually praising me. It became a psychological problem for the psychologist that the son-in-law was more interested in me, and not interested in him and was continually praising me. It became a challenge to him.
I was not aware what the situation was. When he invited me I thought perhaps it was because of my friend; he may have talked about me, so I went. I was a guest in his house, and I immediately became aware of a certain tension.
I asked my friend, "What is the matter?"
He said, "The problem is that I have been talking about you not knowing that he was feeling very offended. But he never showed it, and now, because you are here -- and many other professors have become interested; all his students, nearabout twenty postgraduates, they are all coming in the morning to meet you
-- he is feeling very much wounded."
So in the morning he exploded. He started arguing with me, and because I told him, "All your education is from the West; all that you are talking is simply nonsense in the East --
what do you know about meditation? All your knowledge is about the mind, and that too of a certain mind, the Western mind. You are betraying the East by teaching people all kinds of nonsense, which does not make any actual impact on them, because that is not their problem.
"I have never seen anybody, I have looked in so many people's minds... In the East nobody is jealous of the father, nobody wants to make love to the mother, but without these things the psychoanalyst will say, Ìf you want to be cured you will have to cooperate.'"
And I argued with him -- I had to because he was so angry with me that I could not understand why he had invited me. And because he could not answer, I asked him directly, "I ask you, have you ever in your childhood wanted to make love to your mother? Have you ever thought in your childhood to kill your father because he was your competitor for the same sex object, the mother?"
He cooled down, and he said, "Never. I never thought about these things."
I said, "What are you doing now? Imposing on people ideas which are not their problems, are you helping them or destroying their integrity? You are telling them that their problems are things which are not their problems."
In the East for centuries the problem has been how to get beyond the mind -- the only problem, the single problem. But for the Western mind, because it has developed in a different way, it has never thought about transcending mind. I have looked into Jewish sources, into Christian sources; there is not a single statement in the whole history of the West where somebody has made an effort to go beyond the mind.
They have used the mind to pray, they have used the mind to believe in God; they have used the mind to become religious, virtuous, but they have never even thought that there is a possibility of going beyond the mind.
In the East that has been the only, single search. The whole genius of the East has been working for one thing, no other problems: how to go beyond the mind. Because if you can solve your problems wholesale just by going beyond, then why go for retail solving of problems. The mind will go on creating; it is a very creative force. You solve one problem, another problem arises. You solve that problem, another problem arises.
It is a good business for the psychoanalyst, because he knows you are never going to be cured. You are not going to be cured of the mind; he cures your specific problems. Your mind is there, the source. He never cuts the roots, he only cuts leaves, branches at the most, but they go on growing again -- the roots are there.
Meditation is cutting the very roots of problems.
I repeat: the mind is the only problem, and unless you go beyond the mind, you will never go beyond problems.
It is strange that even today, the Western psychologists have not even pondered over the fact that the East has created so many enlightened people. None of them has bothered about the analysis of the mind.
Just as in the Western literature -- religious, philosophical, theological -- there is no idea of going beyond the mind, in the same way in the Eastern philosophical literature there is nowhere any mention that psychoanalysis or psychology is of any importance. The West has lived with the mind and the East has lived beyond the mind, so their problems don't seem to be the same.
Ugly things can happen when you impose. For example, Erhard was running the movement of EST -- and it looks stupid to the Eastern meditator. What he was trying to do is so hilarious, but people felt very good. You will also feel very good if you do it, without paying him the two hundred and fifty dollars fee for you to become enlightened.
And how you become enlightened is a very simply process.
You are not allowed to go to the bathroom, so your bladder goes on becoming more and more filled with... and it starts hurting -- and you are not allowed to go to the bathroom.
And the session continues from the morning till night. The whole day to contain yourself, to resist the temptation...!
In such a situation who is listening to what nonsense he is talking? You are trying to hold yourself so that in some unaware moment... And then it starts happening, because how long can you do it? Particularly women don't have any control on the bladder; man has a little control, but women don't have.
So one woman starts pissing -- and when one starts... And Erhard used to say, "That is great!" And she feels certainly immensely relieved. First you created the tension and the tension became too much; it became anguish, agony. And now, she feels so released: It is enlightenment." She says, "I have got it" -- and then follows a chain... Somebody else starts getting it, somebody else starts getting it
-- they used to fill the whole hall with urine. And they have paid two hundred and fifty dollars -- you can do it on your own!
If this is enlightenment, just close your room, and if you need some help it can be very easy; your friend can tie you so you cannot go to the bathroom. Then,
contain yourself as long as you can and there comes a moment when you cannot contain. Then the bladder simply takes over. You are simply surprised by what is happening. And such a great relaxation and relief follows, such peace that you have never known -- peace that passes understanding!
These idiots have been creating new fashions in psychology, in psychoanalysis, therapies
-- and earning millions of dollars, and cheating people. It is not enlightenment. And if this is enlightenment then there is no need to be enlightened. It is perfectly good to go to the toilet... forget all about enlightenment.
The East has never bothered about the mind, has not even taken any note of it, has ignored it. From Patanjali to Gautam Buddha, to Shankara, to Ramakrishna, to J.
Krishnamurti -- the whole tradition does not bother about the mind. The mind is mentioned only for one purpose: how to transcend it.
Hundreds of methods have been found which can help you to transcend the mind, and once you are beyond the mind all its problems look as if they are somebody else's problems. You attain to a state of a watcher on the hills, and all the problems are in the valleys. And they don't have any impact on you; you have gone beyond them.
The West has remained utterly mind centered. In the West the only thing they have thought about is matter and mind. And matter is the reality and mind is only a by-product; beyond mind there is nothing.
In the East matter is illusory, mind is a by-product of all your illusions, projections, dreams. Your reality is beyond matter and mind, both.
So we divide reality in the East into three parts: matter, the outermost; the soul, the innermost; the mind is in between the two. Matter has a relative reality; it is not absolutely real, just relatively real. The mind is absolutely unreal, and the soul is absolutely real.
This is a totally different categorization of humanity. In the West the categories are simple: matter is real, mind is just a by-product, and there is nothing beyond mind.
So remember, Tilo, if you are meditating then nothing else is needed. If you are not meditating, then these psychotherapies may be helpful as a stepping-stone for meditation.
It was sunrise, and the young athlete was doing push-ups on the beach when a drunk appeared.
The drunk weaved his way to within a few yards of the perspiring young man, sat down on the sand and laughed and laughed.
"What the devil are you laughing about?" asked the annoyed young man. The drunk laughed and said, "Don't look now, but somebody stole your girl." Unnecessarily doing push-ups...
The West is unnecessarily making tremendous effort in analyzing the mind -- utterly useless unless they accept a transcendental state. And that's why again and again they get cheated by frauds. For example, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is cheating the whole of the West by any stupid thing. First it was transcendental meditation, then people became fed up with it because it was not meditation; it was mind repeating a mantra. You were not going beyond the mind, so what is transcendental in it?
So his earnings became very low; he had to invent something new. So he has invented spiritual yogic flying. First he started by spiritual levitation: you can meditate and become so light that you will start rising upwards! -- and you can find idiots everywhere... And people were paying four hundred dollars for learning spiritual levitation. In the first place what are you going to do by... even if you levitate, what purpose is going to be served by it? In the second place nobody was levitating; people were hopping.
Trick photography was being used and spread. People were shown to have levitated, and they had levitated with their mattress also -- that was strange. The mattress also has become yogic, spiritual...!
He was continually asked, "Give a public demonstration of your levitation" -- and he could not. A case was brought in the Supreme Court of America by seven of his own disciples, who had been working hard on levitation and found that it was absolute nonsense -- they were just hopping! So they had brought a case
against him, demanding ninety million dollars. He has been cheating the whole world, and he has accumulated tremendous money.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi dropped that idea because he could not give a public demonstration. He came with a new idea, and this new idea is yogic flying -- even greater. And what is the purpose of yogic flying? -- if one person can learn to fly, then ninety-nine persons in the world will become meditative and silent and peaceful.
A big business, because it means for five billion people to become peaceful -- no war, no conflict, just blissfulness -- millions of people will have to learn yogic flying. Again, he was aware that he would be asked to give a public demonstration. He has given one demonstration in Europe, and now another is planned in America soon. And what people saw was, it was the same hopping, but now it is hopping not only in one place, you go on hopping...
Every frog knows it! And it is so stupid that people are paying millions of dollars to learn what the frogs know without any difficulty. They are giving public demonstrations and they don't even see that they are being absolutely stupid. A few have become so expert that now there are hurdle races; small hurdles are places and they hop over the hurdles.
They are great spiritual people.
But I don't see the connection. Even if they can hop, and go on crossing the hurdles, in what way is this going to create peace in the world...? Nor can it create peace in the person who is hopping. It will create more retardedness in him. The very idea that he has accepted this stupid thing shows that he has no intelligence at all. And what peace, how can peace be attained by these kinds of things?
He is now proposing to the world that if millions -- he has calculated exactly how many millions of people are needed to learn hopping to prevent the third world war.
I don't believe that man is so stupid that he gets caught by such frauds. People are learning. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has opened an academy in Switzerland where thousands of people are learning hopping.
The West is being exploited by all kinds of frauds for the simple reason that the
West has not looked into the matter of meditation itself. So any idiot goes and says anything, and gathers followers because they don't know what meditation is. Neither will chanting a mantra nor hopping nor levitation...
These things have nothing to do with meditation. Meditation has only one meaning, and that is going beyond the mind and becoming a witness. In your witnessing is the miracle -
- the whole mystery of life. Okay, Maneesha?
Yes, Osho. The Invitation Chapter #27
Chapter title: Still time to change the trains
4 September 1987 am in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium Archive
code: 8709040
ShortTitle: INVITA27
Audio: Yes Video: Yes Length:
107
mins Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
I AM ALSO GETTING OLD. WOULD YOU TELL ME A FEW LAWS FOR MIDDLE
AGE ALSO?
Amrito, everybody is getting old. Since the day you were born, you have been getting old
-- each moment, each day. Childhood is a flux, so is youth -- just old age never ends, because it terminates! That is the unique quality of old age, that it brings you to ultimate rest. But you want a few laws for middle age... You are a man of medicine, you should know better.
As far as I am concerned, I have never been a child, never a youth, and never become old and never will die. I know only one thing in me that is absolutely unchanging and eternal.
But just for your sake...
There are many laws about middle age, because all over the world people become old.
And many thinkers have been thinking, What is this old age? The first law is De Never's Lost Law; obviously about old age, the law can be the last: Never speculate on that which can be known for certain.
You know perfectly well you are getting old, now don't speculate on that, that will make you more miserable.
The law is beautiful, never speculate on that which can be known for certain. In fact, in life, except death nothing is certain; everything can be speculated upon,
but not death.
And old age is just the door to death.
Middle age is when you begin to exchange your emotions for symptoms.
Lendel's Law: You know you are getting old when a girl calls "No," and all you feel is relief.
Old age is when you start to turn out the lights for economical rather than romantic reasons!
Old age is that period of life when your idea of getting ahead is staying even. Old age is when you can do just as much as ever, but would rather not.
Old age is a mysterious experience, but all these laws have been found by the Western mind. I have not been able to discover anybody in the whole literature of the East talking about old age. On the contrary, old age has been praised immensely, because in the East it has been thought that you are not old. If your life has simply moved on the horizontal line, you are only aged. But if your life, your consciousness, has moved vertically, upwards, then you have attained the beauty, the glory of old age. Old age in the East has been synonymous with wisdom.
These are the two paths: one is horizontal, from childhood to youth, to old age and to death; another is vertical, from childhood to youth, to old age, and to immortality. The difference in quality of both the dimensions is immense, incalculable. The man who simply becomes young, and old, and dead, has remained identified with his body. He has not known anything about his being, because being is never born and never dies; it is always, it has been always, it will be always, it is the whole of eternity.
On the vertical line the child becomes young, but the youth on the vertical line will be different from the youth on the horizontal line. Childhood is innocent, but that is the point from where these two different dimensions open up. The youth on the horizontal line is nothing but sensuality, sexuality and all kinds of other stupidities. The youth on the vertical line is a search for truth, is a search for life
-- it is a longing to know oneself.
A man on the vertical line cannot be called young if he is not meditative, and the same is true about old age. On the horizontal line, old age is simply trembling, afraid of death; I cannot think of anything except a graveyard, and darkness which goes on becoming darker and darker. It cannot conceive of himself except as a skeleton.
On the vertical line, old age is a celebration; it is as beautiful as man has ever been.
Youth is a little foolish -- is bound to be; it is inexperienced, but old age has passed through all the experiences -- good and bad, right and wrong -- and has come to a state where it is no longer affected by anything concerned with body or mind.
It is a welcome! old age on the vertical line is keeping its door open for the ultimate guest to come in. It is not an end, it is a beginning of a real life, of an authentic being.
Hence, I continuously make the distinction between growing old and growing up. Very few people have been fortunate to grow up; the remainder of humanity has only been growing old. And naturally they are all moving towards death. Only on the vertical line does death not exist; that is the way to immortality, to divinity. And naturally, when one becomes old on that dimension, he has a grace and a beauty and a compassion and love.
It has been noted again and again... There is a statement in Buddhist scriptures that as Buddha became older, he became more beautiful. This I call a true miracle. Not walking on water -- any drunkard can try that. Not turning water into wine -- any criminal can do that. This is a true miracle: Buddha became more beautiful than he was in his youth; he became more innocent than he was in his childhood -- this is growth.
Unless you are moving on the vertical line, you are missing the whole opportunity of life.
But here our whole effort is to block the horizontal line and open the blocked vertical line. Then every day you are coming closer to life, not farther away. Then your birth is not the beginning of death, your birth is the beginning of eternal life. Just two different lines and so much difference.
The West has never thought about it; the vertical line has never been mentioned because they haven't been brought up in a spiritual atmosphere where the real riches are inside you. Even if they think of God, they think of him outside. Gautam Buddha could deny God -- I deny God. There is absolutely no God for the simple reason that we want you to turn inwards. If God is -- or anything similar -- it has to be found inside you; it has to be found in your own eternity, in your own ecstasy.
To think of oneself as a body-mind structure is the most dangerous idea that has happened to people. That destroys their whole grace, whole beauty, and they are constantly trembling and afraid of death, and trying to keep old age as far away as possible. In the West, if you say to an old woman, "You look so young," and she knows she is no longer young, she will stand in front of the mirror for hours to check whether any youthfulness has remained anywhere. But she will not deny it, she will be immensely happy. In the East, nobody says to an old woman, "You are young"; on the contrary, old age is so respected, loved, so that to say to somebody, "You look younger than your age,"
is a kind of insult. .
I am reminded of one incident that happened life...
I was staying in Chanda -- a far corner of Maharashtra -- with a very rich family, and they were very much interested in an astrologer. They loved me and I used to go at least three times per year. That was their quota, and I used to stay there for at least three or four days each time. Once when I went there, without asking they had arranged with the astrologer to come and to look at my hands and tell some things about me. When I came to know about it, everything was fixed; the astrologer was sitting in the sitting room. So I said,
"Okay, let us enjoy that too!"
I showed him my hand; he pondered over it and he said, "You must be at least eighty years old."
Of course, one of the daughters of the rich man freaked out, "This is stupid. What kind of astrology..."
At that time I was not more than thirty-five -- even a blind man could have measured thirty-five and eighty! She was really angry, and she told me, "I am
finished with this astrologer. What else can he know?"
I said, "You don't understand. You are more Westernized -- educated in the Western style. You have been to the West for your education -- you can't understand what he was saying."
She said, "What was he saying? It was so clear there is no need to understand; he was simply showing his stupidity. A thirty-five-year-old young man, and he is saying that you are eighty years old."
I said, "Be patient."
And I told her a story about Emerson...
A man asked Emerson, "How old are you?"
Emerson said, "Nearabout three hundred and sixty years."
The man could not believe... and he had always believed in Emerson that he is a man of truth! What had happened -- a slip of the tongue? Or had he become senile? Or is he joking?
To make things clear he said, "I did not hear what you said. Just tell me how much...?"
Emerson said, "You have heard it -- three hundred and sixty years."
The man said, "I cannot believe it. You don't look more than sixty years."
Emerson said, "You are right in a way: on the vertical I am three hundred and sixty, and on the horizontal I am sixty."
Perhaps he was the first Western man to use this Eastern expression of horizontal and vertical.
Emerson was immensely interested in the East, and he had a few glimpses which bring him closer to the seers of the UPANISHADS. He said, "Actually I have lived sixty years; you are right. But in sixty years I have lived as much as you will not be able to live even in three hundred and sixty years. I have lived six times more."
The vertical line does not count years, it counts your experiences. And on the vertical line is the whole treasure of existence -- not only immortality, not only a feeling of divineness, but the first experience of love without hate, the first experience of compassion, the first experience of meditation -- the first experience of the tremendous explosion of enlightenment.
It is not a coincidence that in the West, the word ènlightenment' does not have the same meaning as in the East. They say that after the black ages, dark ages, came the age of enlightenment. They refer to people like Bertrand Russell, Jean- Paul Sartre, Jaspers as very enlightened geniuses. They don't understand that they are misusing a word, dragging it into the mud. Neither is Bertrand Russell enlightened nor Jean-Paul Sartre nor Jaspers.
Enlightenment does not happen on the horizontal. Even in his old age Jean-Paul Sartre was still running after young girls. Bertrand Russell changed his wife so many times, and he lived long on the horizontal -- almost a century. But even in his old age, his interests were as stupid as young people.
The East understands that the word ènlightenment' has nothing to do with genius, has nothing to do with intelligence, it has something to do with discovering your real, authentic being. It is discovering God within you.
Amrito, you need not be worried about laws. Those laws are all on the horizontal line. On the vertical line there is love, no law; there is the growing experience of becoming more and more spiritual and less and less physical, more and more meditative and less and less mind, more and more divine and less and less of this trivial material world in which we are so much enmeshed.
On the vertical line, slowly you feel desires disappearing, sensuality disappearing, sexuality disappearing, ambitions disappearing, will to power disappearing... your slavery in all its aspects disappearing -- religious, political, national. You become more of an individual. And with your individuality growing clear and luminous, the whole humanity is becoming one in your eyes -- you cannot discriminate.
There are great experiences on the vertical line; on the horizontal line there is only decline. On the horizontal line the old man lives in the past. He thinks of those beautiful days, those Arabian nights when he was young; he thinks also of those beautiful days when there was no responsibility and he was a child running
after butterflies. In fact, for his whole life he has been running after butterflies -- even in old age.
Mulla Nasruddin was passing along a street...
And he saw a beautiful young woman so he gave her a good nudge. The woman was shocked, because Mulla was old; all his hairs were pure silver white. The woman said,
"You should be ashamed -- all your hairs are pure white. You are the age of my grandfather -- you should have been dead by now. You are showing your ugliness.…
Mulla said, "Listen, my hairs are white, that's true, but my heart is still black -- dark black."
On the horizontal line, that's what happens -- your hairs will become white, but you don't become white. In fact, on the contrary: as you grow old, you become more and more infatuated by desires, because now you know that ahead there is only death. So you enjoy as much as possible, although enjoying becomes difficult, physically you have lost the energy. So the old man on the horizontal line becomes cerebrally sexual; he is continuously thinking of sex.
Psychologists have been watching thousands of people, and they have concluded that every man thinks of a woman at least once in three minutes. Just check it! That will show you on what line you are -- horizontal or vertical. And each woman thinks of a man one time in seven minutes. That is the difference that creates conflict. The moment the husband comes and asks, "Dear, what about it?" and she says, "I have a headache, don't torture me any more..." The difference is that she thinks of it only one time in seven minutes, that means one day in seven days...!
The man thinks of the woman one time in three minutes, that is average. In old age those three minutes shrink into one minute. The old man has nothing else to do but to think --
and what else is there to think about? He imagines beautiful women.
One day Mulla Nasruddin was sitting on his balcony watching the beautiful sunset...
And suddenly he shouted to his servant, "Bring my glasses, bring my glasses quickly!"
The servant said, "What calamity has happened?" He brought his glasses.
Mulla said, "You idiot, when I say quick it mean quick. We missed the opportunity."
The servant said, "I don't understand, what opportunity?"
He said, "Such a beautiful woman was going by, but my eyes can't figure out whether she is a woman or a man, whether she is really beautiful or I am imagining. Glasses were needed, but by the time you brought the glasses she was gone."
The servant said, "You are under the wrong impression; she was not a woman! He is my brother who has come to see me. Nobody else has passed."
The old man is continuously thinking of the past -- this is the psychology. The child thinks of the future because he has no past; there is no question of thinking of the past --
no yesterday. He thinks of days to come, the whole long life. Seventy years gives him space... He wants to become big enough quickly to do things that all the big people are doing.
The old man has no future -- the future means death; he does not even want to talk about the future. The future makes him tremble. The future means the grave
-- he talks about the past.
And the same is true about countries. For example, a country like India never thinks of the future. That would mean it had become old; it is symptomatic. It always thinks of the past. It goes on playing the life of Rama and Sita; for centuries the same story... every village performs that drama. It goes on thinking about Buddha and Mahavira and Adinatha and RIGVEDA and the UPANISHADS.
Everything has passed. Now the country is simply waiting to die; there is no future.
According to the Indian idea -- and that is the idea of the old mentality, the mind of the old man -- the best age was millions of years ago; it was called satyuga, the age of truth.
After that man started falling.
You can see the psychological parallel; there are four ages: childhood, the young man, middle age, the old man. According to these four he has projected four ages for life itself.
The first age was innocent, just like a child -- very balanced. They give the example that it has four legs just like a table, perfectly balanced. And then the decline starts.…
In India, the idea of evolution has never existed, but on the contrary just the opposite idea. The word is not even used in the West -- you may not have even heard of the word -
- but in India they have been thinking about involution, not evolution: "We are shrinking, we are falling down."
In the second stage of the fall one leg is lost; the table becomes a tripod. It is still balanced, but not as much as it was with four legs. In the third stage it loses another leg; now it is standing only on two legs, absolutely unbalanced. And this is the fourth stage: even two legs are not available; you are standing on one leg -- how long you can stand?
The first stage is called satyuga, the age of truth; the second is simply named by the number; treta is the third, because only three legs are left. The second is called dwapar.
Dwa is exactly what two is in English; this `two' comes from the Sanskrit dwa; moving through many other languages it becomes twa, and then finally it becomes two. And the fourth age they have called kaliyuga, the age of darkness.
We are living in the age of darkness. This is the mind of the old man: ahead there is only darkness and nothing else. The child thinks of the future, of the golden future; the old man thinks of the golden past. But this happens only on the horizontal line. On the vertical line, the past is golden, the present is golden, the future is golden; it is a life of tremendous celebration.
So rather than being worried about the laws of old age, think about which line your train is moving on. There is still time to change trains; there is always time to change trains because from every moment that bifurcation is available. You can shift, shift from the horizontal to the vertical; only that is important.
Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,
CAN YOU SAY SOMETHING AGAIN ABOUT COMING TO THE MASTER AND
GOING BACK TO THE WORLD?
Again?
Chetan Dhyan, it seems you have heard it before. Where were you that time? And are you certain you will be able to hear this time?
I can say... in fact I am saying everything again and again and again, but you are not ever at home so you don't know. You think I am saying new things every day
-- from where can I get new things? I have stopped reading; for twelve years I have not touched a single book. I don't meet people, so I can't gather gossips or gospels. I don't go anywhere. I just talk to you and go to sleep!
In sleep do you think I can find new things every day? My sleep is dreamless, contentless
-- just a pure silence. It is another name for meditation to me.
Nirvano just takes care that once in a while I sleep, or else the body suffers; otherwise the whole night I am awake. I have divided the day into two parts because there is nothing to read. I have read so much, and now I am utterly bored when I come to look at books. I already know what these idiots will be writing. And there is no other source.…
The only thing is that you feel what I am saying is new, that you have never heard it before. You have been here, but I will not refuse your question. I will repeat it again! But before I say anything about it, to wake you up I will tell you a story. I use stories and jokes to keep you awake! If I start talking about pure
philosophy there will be complete silence and people will start snoring!
For centuries people have been snoring whenever religion, spirituality, philosophy and meditation were discussed. And all the great masters have been in immense agony because of their compassion -- what to do with these people? But I have found a way: there is no need to say to you, "Wake up!" I simply tell you a joke when I see you are slipping into sleep. Then you just straighten up, open your eyes, look all around -- I don't allow anybody to snore!
A man from Warsaw in Chelm on a business trip, was walking down the street when he was stopped by Yossel the chimney sweep. "Zalman!" cried Yossel. "What has become of you? It's so long since I have seen you. Just look at yourself."
"But wait," replied the stranger, "I'm..."
"Never mind that," said Yossel. "I can't get over how much you have changed. You used to be such a big man, built like an ox. And now you are smaller than I am. Have you been sick?"
"But wait," replied the stranger, "I'm..."
"Never mind that," said Yossel. "And what has become of your hair? You used to have a fine head of black hair, and now you are completely bald. What has happened? You know, I don't see how I ever recognized you. Zalman, what has become of you?"
"I have been trying to tell you," the man replied. "I am not Zalman." "Oy," replied Yossel, "You have gone and changed your name as well!" If one does not want to listen, what to do! You will find some way out.
Your question is beautiful. You say, "Can you say something again about coming to the master and going back to the world?"
The moment you have found a master, wherever you are the master will be with you.
Finding the master means drinking from his well.
Finding the master means becoming yourself -- so attuned with the master, so in accord, in such a deep harmony, that you only appear two, but you have become one. The bodies are two, but the inner flames of your life have become one. Once you have found the master, there is no way to go anywhere where you can be without the master.
If going to the world you find yourself alone, without the master, that simply means only one thing, without any doubt -- you have not found the master yet.
There is a beautiful story about Mahakashyapa, one of the most significant disciples of Gautam Buddha -- perhaps just second to him, or maybe just equal to him. He never asked any question, he never bothered Buddha about any problem. Finally, Buddha became concerned, "What is the matter? Everybody is asking, everybody is receiving the answer, and this Mahakashyapa never asks anything. And if he does not ask there is no point in answering him -- what am I going to answer?"
He called Mahakashyapa. With tears, Mahakashyapa came to him and he said, "The only thing is that I am afraid of enlightenment."
Buddha said, "You are strange. You have left your kingdom and you have become a sannyasin, and now you are afraid of enlightenment?"
He said, "That's true, that's why I don't ask anything, because I am afraid if I become enlightened you will send me away to spread the message, the word. I have been watching; those people who have become enlightened have been sent away, and I cannot live a single moment without... Just leave me alone. I don't want any enlightenment, I just want to be with you. And I can be with you only if I am unenlightened; once I am enlightened I know you will send me."
Buddha said, "I promise you, I will not send you. But just out of that fear, don't prevent yourself from becoming enlightened -- you don't know what it is!"
Because of the promise of Gautam Buddha, Mahakashyapa became enlightened on the second day. All this time he had been becoming silent, peaceful -- no question, no answer; the chattering of the mind had gone away. For twenty years he had been sitting in deep closeness with Buddha, and his love for him was so much that he was ready to drop the idea of enlightenment.
You will find very few disciples who will be ready to drop the idea of
enlightenment.
They will say, "This is stupid. For enlightenment we have come to a master, and then for the master we drop the idea of enlightenment! It does not make sense."
But once Buddha promised him, the next day he became enlightened. And Buddha called him, "Mahakashyapa, now you have to go and spread the word."
Mahakashyapa said, "And what about your promise?"
Buddha said, "A promise was given to an unenlightened man! You are no longer the same man; that man has gone. To you I have never given any promise."
Mahakashyapa said, "That's true. That man is gone, but be kind enough... Forget about the promise because you are tricky, you are getting out of it. Let me be here."
But Buddha said, "What will you do here? Don't you know that once you have become enlightened, wherever you are I am with you? I am you. What is the difference between my enlightenment and your enlightenment? Just a day ago you were an unlit candle; today you have your own flame -- and the flame is the same. Today you are a buddha yourself."
Mahakashyapa touched his feet and said, "I will go, but just allow me one thing, that wherever I am I can bow down towards your direction and touch your feet. Your feet will not be there, but I can touch the ground and kiss the ground. This much you will have to allow me."
Buddha said, "I can allow you. There is no harm in it, but what will others think? They will think you are crazy. First you are going to talk about meditation, enlightenment --
they will think you are a little strange -- and when they see you kissing the earth and touching the earth with your head then it will become certain to them that you are really mad."
Mahakashyapa said, "That you can leave to me. That is my problem; you should not interfere in it. First you tricked me into enlightenment -- for twenty years I was so happy.
Now I am more happy and more blissful. For twenty years I was happy in spite of my ignorance, now I am happy, simply happy -- there is no ignorance, there is no darkness. I am grateful to you. I know you are within me now, but whatever the world thinks I will continue to touch your feet -- at least from far away, just in your direction."
And his whole life he continued. People were amazed seeing him every morning, every evening, "What are you doing?" But he was such a luminous figure, nobody could think that he was mad. In fact, they had never seen such a man of genius, intelligence, awareness, love, compassion, blissfulness -- twenty-four hours in ecstasy. So they could not think that he was mad, but what was he doing?"
He said, "I bow down to my master's feet. He must be a thousand miles away, just in the direction... I cannot forget my gratitude towards him. If he had not tricked me I would have remained unenlightened forever.
"Just for me to become enlightened, my master was even ready to lie. He promised me --
knowing perfectly well that he was not going to keep his promise -- and he is a man of his word; I have never seen him going against his word. But his compassion was so much, and his love was so much, how can I forget him?
"It does not matter where he is I bow down in gratitude morning and evening, and that is my most precious time. I am blissful, I am ecstatic, I am enlightened."
But I want you to know that he said to people again and again, "Even my great ecstasy is less than the ecstasy I feel when I bow down to my master. Whatever I am is his compassion and nothing else."
Chetan Dhyan, you need not be worried if you have found the master in me. Then wherever you are you will find me very close, nearby -- just following you like a shadow.
But if you get lost into the world, that will also be a good experience, to understand that you have not found the master. In any case, these are the only two alternatives -- either you will find me in your gratitude, in your love, in your peace, in your silence, in your meditations, in your joy, or you will forget about me in the crowd. In both of the ways it will be a beautiful experience and a
beautiful test.
I want everybody here... those who are essential to run the commune should remain here; otherwise, people should come and go. They can manage it to be here for three months --
be here three months and go back into the world.
The day you can start finding me wherever you are is the greatest day of your life.
Question 3 BELOVED MASTER,
LOVING TO HEAR YOU LAUGH, LOVING YOUR JOKES, LOVING YOU
--
BELOVED MASTER, WOULD YOU SPEAK TO US ABOUT LAUGHTER?
Anand Svabhavo, when you are hungry you don't want somebody to speak on food!
When you are in a river drowning, you don't want somebody else to talk about the art of swimming. There are right moments and right situations, and there are things which can be talked about, yet misunderstood.
Laughter is a mystery. It is better to experience it than to hear someone talk about it. But one becomes curious, "What is laughter?"
Laughter is the most intelligent factor in you.
Buffaloes don't laugh, and if you meet a buffalo laughing you will go mad! Then it will be impossible to bring you to sanity. No animal laughs. Laughter needs a very sensitive intelligence. It means that you can understand the ridiculousness of a certain situation.
What are jokes? They are a very clever arrangement. They take you in a direction logically, rationally, you start expecting that now this is going to happen, this is going to happen... and it goes on happening according to your
expectations. Then comes a sudden turn and something happens which you could never have imagined. That brings laughter to you.
It is a very internal process of your rational expectation. If what you were expecting happens, there will be no laugh. But if you see something that you could not have conceived and everything went well up to the end -- and then suddenly something happens that makes you immediately forget all your reason, logic, mind...
Laughter is the only ordinary experience when you are no longer a mind, and I use it to give you glimpses of no-mind, of meditation, of a transcendence of mind. Perhaps I am the first man in the whole history of mankind who has been using jokes as a preparation for meditation. Jesus would not laugh; Buddha will not laugh; Lao Tzu is not heard to have ever laughed... They were serious people, and they were doing serious work!
It will be good to understand a small incident which began the tradition of Zen. Those are the people who understand -- the only people on the earth, a small stream who have understood the meaning of laughter because their origin is in laughter.
It was again Mahakashyapa...
He was sitting under his tree -- he was sitting under his tree for twenty years. It had almost become his tree; nobody else used to sit under that tree. Everybody knew that that was the place for Mahakashyapa and not to disturb that man. "He never asks, he never says anything, he never talks -- why disturb him? Just leave him alone." It had become an accepted fact. But one day he laughed -- and that day was his day of enlightenment.
A great king, Prasenjita, asked his wife... His wife was a disciple of Gautam Buddha, a lay disciple, not a sannyasin, but immensely interested in Gautam Buddha and hoping that one day her husband would allow her to become a sannyasin. Prasenjita was not interested in sannyas; he was interested in increasing his kingdom, to make it bigger and bigger. He was always fighting, invading new areas.
By chance, Buddha had come into the capital of Prasenjita, and the wife was insisting,
"You have to come with me to welcome him because it doesn't show culture, refinement if you don't come. A man of the caliber of Gautam Buddha happens in millions of years.
Kings and queens are a rupee a dozen! You can find them anywhere; they are not worth much. You will be forgotten, but Gautam Buddha's name will remain till the last man has become enlightened. You may be remembered if you go to Gautam Buddha and touch his feet. Just this small act on your part will make you historical".
And that is true -- who would have heard about Prasanjita? There were hundreds of other kings at that time, and we don't know anything about them, but Prasanjita is known. And because the wife was insistent, he said, "Okay, but I have to present something to him."
He had a very beautiful diamond. Other kings were jealous of that diamond; perhaps that was the best diamond available in those days. So prasenjita said, "What else can I offer to him? I will offer this diamond."
The wife said, "You don't understand, a diamond or a stone is equal to him. It will be better that you take a lotus flower, because to him the lotus flower represents a revolution
-- it comes out of dirty mud. And it is the most beautiful flower on the earth, most fragrant, the biggest flower. It comes from the dirt, it crosses the water and stands on top of the water. This is a great revolution: dirt turning into such a beautiful...
"So velvety are the flowers, leaves and petals that when dewdrops in the night gather on the big petals and big leaves, they are so velvety that the water cannot touch them. They remain on the lotus leaves, but the lotus leaf remains untouched by them. The lotus flower remains in the water but the water does not touch it -- that gives it another significance that a man should live in the world untouched by it. He should live in the world but not allow the world to enter him; he should live in the dirty world, but he has the possibility of becoming a lotus flower."
So the lotus became a symbol for the transcendence from the trivial matters of the world.
Gautam Buddha is represented in thousands of temples sitting on a lotus flower. That lotus flower represents his philosophy -- it has become a symbol. So she said, "In our beautiful pond at the palace I will find the best and biggest lotus flower -- you take the lotus flower."
The husband did not think that a lotus flower had any value in comparison to his diamond which could purchase a whole kingdom. So he said, "Okay, I will take both, and I will see which he prefers. This is my first meeting, so let me judge the man."
He touched the feet of Buddha and wanted to give the great diamond. Ten thousand disciples were present. They could not believe the radiance of the diamond, its clarity, purity, its perfection -- and it was so great. There was complete silence, because everybody was watching what Buddha was going to do now, because it was against his disciplines to have anything more than three changes of clothes and one begging bowl --
that had to be the only possession for any sannyasin. Now what was he going to do...?
Was he going to refuse the king? -- that will be insulting. Was he going to accept it? --
but that will be against his discipline. So there was great silence and great curiosity.
Buddha saw the diamond and told prasenjita, "Drop it!"
Very reluctantly, he dropped it, because now there was no way... He has presented, and the man is saying "Drop it." Under the impact of Buddha and those ten thousand people -
- in which there were nearly two dozen enlightened people -- he dropped the diamond.
Then he brought from the other hand the lotus flower, thinking that perhaps his wife was right.
Buddha said, "Drop it!"
prasenjita could not believe what kind of man he was, "I have brought presents and he goes on saying, `Drop it.'"
The third time, when he had dropped the lotus flower, his hands were empty, but Buddha said loudly, "Drop it!"
He said, "I don't have anything to drop."
That was the moment when Mahakashyapa for the first time in twenty years started laughing, madly. prasenjita was very much offended, but Gautam Buddha called Mahakashyapa gave him the lotus flower, and told him, "From you will start a totally new and unique, fresh stream."
That fresh stream has developed into Zen -- but it was born in the laughter of Mahakashyapa.
prasenjita said, "I don't understand what is happening... why this man laughed."
Gautam Buddha said, "He laughed because you could not understand my third request to drop it. I wanted you to drop your ego. I am not concerned with lotus flowers, not concerned with diamonds. I only am concerned with one thing, your ego. Unless you drop it, you have not dropped anything. And I cannot accept your diamond or your lotus flower, because that will enhance and nourish your ego.
"That's why Mahakashyapa laughed because the poor emperor does not understand the language of a mystic -- but he understood it. In ten thousand sannyasins he was the only one who understood what I meant -- and he laughed. I have chosen him to be the first for a new stream of seekers, so he is the founder of Zen."
Zen was founded in laughter, and for twenty-five centuries the tradition has continued to produce enlightened people. Most of the traditions have died but Zen still brings flowers.
Perhaps, rooted in laughter, it is rooted in the highest consciousness. Anand Svabhavo.…
Rabinovich sits down in a cafe and orders a glass of tea and a copy of PRAVDA.
"I'll bring the tea," the waiter tells him, "but I can't bring you a copy of PRAVDA. The Soviet regime has been overthrown and PRAVDA isn't published anymore" -- PRAVDA is the mouthpiece of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
"All right," says Rabinovich, "Just bring me the tea."
The next day Rabinovich comes to the same cafe and asks for tea and a copy of PRAVDA. The waiter gives him the same answer.
On the third day, Rabinovich again orders tea and PRAVDA. This time the waiter says to him, "Look, sir, you seem to be an intelligent man. For the past three days you've ordered a copy of PRAVDA, and three times now I've had to tell you that the Soviet regime has been overthrown, and PRAVDA isn't published anymore."
"I know, I know," says Rabinovich. "But I just like to hear it." Two Jews sat in a coffee house discussing the fate of their people.
"How miserable is our lot," said one. "Pogroms, plagues, quotas, discrimination, and Adolf Hitler... Sometimes I think we'd be better off if we'd never been born."
"Sure," said his friend. "But who has that much luck -- maybe one in fifty thousand?"
Try to get it!
It was at the office Christmas party. As they lay on the office reception couch in the darkened room, their breath came hot and fast.
"Oh, Melvin, oh Melvin," she said passionately, "You've never made love to me like this before. Is it because of the holiday spirit?"
"No," he panted. "It is probably because I am not Melvin!"
It is possible, when you have a hearty laugh, mind stops, because mind cannot laugh. It is structured seriously, its function is to be serious, miserable, sick. The moment you laugh, it does not come from your mind, it comes from the beyond, from your very inner spirit.
According to me, all the religions have missed one of the dimensions of the greatest importance, a sense of humor. And they have made the whole world serious.
I want my people to fill the world with laughter, joy, songs, and dances. We are not seeking for any paradise -- we are seeking how to create the paradise, herenow, because we are not interested in things after death. If we can create a paradise herenow, certainly we will be able -- even if we meet in hell -- to create the paradise there.
All my people are condemned by all the religions, so I hope we will be reaching hell. But they are to be warned, "Don't send my people to hell, because they will turn the hell into a far better paradise than you have with your old, dirty and dry saints who cannot even smile!"
I trust absolutely that when a million sannyasins enter into hell with their guitars and songs and dances and jokes the whole quality and the whole atmosphere of hell is going to be changed -- I think even the devil will join you! He will become a sannyasin: Swami Anand Devil!
Okay, Maneesha? Yes Osho.
The Invitation Chapter #28
Chapter title: Opening the doors of light and beyond
4 September 1987 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium Archive
code: 8709045
ShortTitle:
INVITA28
Audio:
Yes Video:
Yes Length:
92
mins Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
WHO IS THIS GHOSTWRITER WHO IS MAKING THE GOLDEN RULES?
Amrito, as far as I am concerned there is only one golden rule, that there are no golden rules. What are known as golden rules are only gold-plated. These so- called golden rules are obviously made by people who have gold. You can see that these rules are not golden but only gold-plated...
Women have a much better time than men in this world; there are far more things forbidden to them.
Many a romance begins when a girl sinks into his arms -- and ends up with her arms in his sink.
Bachelor: A man who comes to work each morning from a different direction.
Milligan's Law of Home Economics: Two can live as cheaply as one, for about half as long.
You've heard of the three ages of woman: youth, middle age and, "You are looking wonderful."
Golding's Law of Typecasting: The world is divided into two types of people, those who divide the world into two types of people, and those who don't.
The meek shall inherit the earth, but not its mineral rights.
Women are entirely to blame for men's lies; they keep insisting on asking the most awkward questions.
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
Klein's Law of Possibilities: Nothing is impossible for people who don't have to do it themselves.
In this world there are only two tragedies: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
Middle age: Later than you think and sooner than you expect. Old age is not so bad when you consider the alternative.
Percy's Law of Laziness: The world is divided into two sorts of people, those who are willing to work and those who are willing to let them.
Karl Marx says, "To do is to be do." Albert Camus says, "To be is to do."
And Frank Sinatra says, "Do be do be do." Question 2
BELOVED MASTER,
IS IT POSSIBLE TO EXPERIENCE LOVE AND MEDITATION AT THE SAME
TIME?
Taglish Bharti, love and meditation are not two things; hence, the question itself does not arise.
Love is a meditation and meditation blossoms in love. Of course when I use the word
`love' I don't mean the love that ordinarily is understood by the word, I don't mean the biological infatuation -- anyway it is not love. It is simply your chemistry, not you which feels attracted, and under the chemistry's illusion you think you are in love. But that kind of love every animal, every bird knows perfectly well.
Only man seems to be deluded, and deluded so much that all the animals in the world except man have a certain season when they are infatuated -- their season of reproduction, a very limited period in the year when biology overtakes them, makes them completely blind; forces them almost against their will. Have you seen two animals making love? And have you ever seen them smiling? They look so bored that how to get out of it seems to be the only problem that is troubling them.
The whole year they look more relaxed, more at ease, more in tune with nature and with themselves, but when the reproduction season comes they all start looking sad, serious, saintly. They forget their playfulness; they forget their freedom. Suddenly they feel themselves under a kind of hypnotic trance; in fact, it is a chemical trance.
That's why scientists are able to change sexes very easily. A man can become a woman, a woman can become a man -- just a very small change, a change in the hormones, in the chemistry of their bodies. Just a few more hormones and the woman will start growing a mustache and beard.
Now there are many people in the world who have changed their sexes. Sometimes it has happened automatically because man consists of both, man and woman. Something is contributed by your father, something is contributed by your mother, so you are both: your father and your mother, part man, part woman. Whichever is more in percentage, perhaps sixty percent man and forty percent woman, then you are man or it may be otherwise, then you are a woman.
This percentage of hormones can be changed just by giving you injections. And in the developed countries there are already men who have been born as women, and women who have changed to men. But in the beginning the very idea came to mind because once in a while there was an accidental case. For example, in
the very beginning of this century in London there was a case. A man fell in love with a woman and he married the woman. But after the marriage he was very much amazed that the woman slowly started changing into a man.
After a year he was so much ashamed because the whole town was laughing at him: his woman had turned completely into a man. He went to the court for divorce. The court was puzzled; there had never been a case like that before the court. And the man was perfectly reasonable. He said, "I married a woman; I have never married a man. Why should I marry a man? Obviously the marriage is canceled; in fact, I don't need any divorce, but just not to be illegal, I am asking for divorce."
His wife was sent for a medical examination. There was no need because she had a mustache and beard; her breasts had disappeared. There was not much need, but not taking any chances the judge said, "Let her be medically examined. If the doctor's report says she has become a man then there is no question, your divorce is accepted."
That gave the idea to the scientists that perhaps the woman has a very small difference between her male hormones and female hormones. Perhaps she is fifty-one percent woman, forty-nine percent man, and by some change, climate, food, some medicine... it can be anything that has altered the proportion between man and woman in her. The difference was very slight, very borderline, and she became a man.
This opened a door of great research, and it was found that every man can become a woman and every woman can become a man.
This reminds me that in the East, from the very beginning, almost ten-thousand- year-old statues are available in which Shiva and his wife, Parvati, are represented as one personality: half man, half woman. It is a beautiful aesthetic and artistic sculpture, and that's how it has been thought always: a beautiful metaphor, but nobody has thought of it as a reality.
The people who created that statue must have come to know that every man is carrying a woman within him and every woman is carrying a man within her -- and this change is not impossible.
My own feeling is that in the future many more people will be changing -- because why not have both the experiences in one life? Most intelligent people
will change -- the unintelligent always are afraid of any change -- otherwise, you have lived as a woman for thirty years, now it is time, why not have a look from the other side? Why go on living on this bank? The scenery from the other side is also very beautiful.
Only then will the old idea of the poets that the woman is a mystery will be solved. You can become a woman and know what the mystery is. You can become a man and know what the mystery is. There is no mystery at all; it is just a poetic conception. The difference is only biological, chemical, hormonal.
I don't call that kind of infatuation love; I call it lust. And to be confused between lust and love has created your problem.
You are asking, "Is it possible to experience love and meditation at the same time?" Lust and meditation you cannot experience at the same time.
Lust is against meditation. It is desire, an ugly desire.
It takes you towards unconsciousness.
Meditation is the greatest longing, the only longing which cannot be called a desire. And it takes you upwards towards more consciousness.
Now both things you cannot do -- going upwards towards more conscious being and going downward towards more unconscious being; you cannot do them both at the same time.
But love and meditation are both reaching towards higher states of being. Meditation is a state of thoughtlessness, a state of silence, serenity, tranquility -- a state of blissfulness.
There is no reason why love should be against it. Out of blissfulness love will flow. In fact, only a meditative person can be a loving person, and only a loving person can be meditative, because both are going beyond the unconscious mind, the dark mind, the blind mind, and opening the doors of light and the beyond.
They are different names and their different names have a certain meaning and significance. Meditation is possible even if you are alone. In fact, it is possible
only when you are alone, in your aloneness, utter purity... no crowd of thoughts or emotions or feelings, just a flame of being conscious.
Meditation is the discovery of your own self.
But once you have discovered the treasure a tremendous need arises in you to share it.
That sharing is love. Meditation is like the sun and love is like the radiation reaching to faraway flowers to open, for birds to sing, to make the whole living world alive, fresh, rejuvenated. Exactly what the sun is doing to the whole solar system, meditation does to the whole human world: it radiates love.
And if meditation does not radiate love then one is in some fallacy. What he is thinking is meditation is not meditation. It may be concentration, it may be contemplation, but it is not meditation.
Concentration is of the mind, one pointedness of the mind. Contemplation is also of the mind, not one pointedness but one subject matter. If you are thinking about light you go on thinking about light, higher and deeper and more possibilities and implications of light; but you keep track of one dimension.
So we can define contemplation as thinking in one single dimension, not going astray, not going here and there; not allowing many different sorts of thoughts but one singular path, moving in the same direction. Science depends on concentration and philosophy depends on contemplation. Religion depends on meditation.
Meditation is when mind is not functioning at all, when mind is absolutely silent and still, as if absent. In this absentness of mind your authentic being surfaces. Your mask disappears and your original face is encountered for the first time.
For the first time you know who you are.
And this experience of oneself is the experience of one's divineness. Out of this divineness radiates love. It is not addressed to anyone in particular; it simply radiates to friend and to foe, to the familiar and to the stranger; it does not know any discrimination.
When the sun rises it does not rise only for roses and not for marigolds. It does
not rise only for rich people and not for the poor. It does not rise only for the strong and not for the weak. It rises unaddressed. It radiates in all directions. Whoever has eyes will be able to see it. Having eyes simply means whoever is receptive, whoever is sensitive will be able to see it. The sun does not rise only for the blind.
Only a blind man can pass a man of meditation without feeling his love. I mean spiritually blind, one who does not have any idea of who is within his being; who knows himself according to others, what they say. His knowledge of himself is nothing but a collection of opinions of other people. He does not know himself directly, immediately; and because he does not know himself he remains closed; otherwise it was not possible to crucify Jesus.
Those who crucified Jesus must have been spiritually blind. The man was absolutely innocent, and he was full of love. He had not harmed anyone; in fact, he was trying to help everyone. But it is a strange world. Here there are more blind people than those who have eyes. And because the people who have eyes and receptivity are in a minority they remain silent. It is very unfortunate that the blind are very articulate and those who have eyes, seeing that the majority are blind, remain silent. They go on seeing that Socrates is being poisoned by the blind and they don't protest.
In my eyes the people who poisoned Socrates or crucified Jesus or murdered Mansoor or assassinated Sarmad, they were less responsible than those who knew that what was happening was absolutely wrong but remained silent out of fear.
There is a beautiful incident...
When Al-Hillaj Mansoor, a Mohammedan mystic, was being very primitively assassinated... Jesus' crucifixion is far more sophisticated; Socrates' poisoning is even more sophisticated, but nobody has suffered as much as Al-Hillaj Mansoor. First they cut his legs -- they killed him piece by piece, just to torture him as much as possible, to the optimum -- then they cut his hands. Then they destroyed his eyes with hot iron rods --
they went on piece by piece.
Thousands of people had gathered to watch. Al-Hillaj Mansoor's master, Junnaid, a famous teacher, was also present. Of course he was absolutely against
what was happening, but the weakness of the good... Seeing the majority he remained silent. He knew that Mansoor was born after thousands of years; he was one of the rarest flowers.
Junnaid had been a teacher of thousands, but none of his students, none of his disciples had reached to the same heights as Mansoor -- all this he understood.
People were throwing stones before the assassination began. He did not want people to know that he was not throwing stones, so instead of throwing a stone he threw a roseflower, just to show that he had thrown. Now in thousands of stones, who can find out what he had thrown? People saw that he had thrown something.
But Mansoor could see. When thousands of stones were falling on him, hitting him, and blood was flowing all over his body, he could see that a roseflower also fell on his face.
And he knew that this roseflower could only be thrown by his master Junnaid. He shouted from his cross, "Junnaid, these thousands of stones are not hurting me so much as your roseflower; it has created a wound in my very soul."
This statement is tremendous: "Thousands of stones have not hurt me. These are people who don't know me -- but you know me; I had grown under your shadow. Still, instead of protesting, you are so cowardly that you are afraid that if you don't throw something people may start suspecting that you may be a friend..." And tears came to his eyes.
And Mansoor said, "These tears are not for these stones; these stones are not worth my tears. These tears are for the man who has thrown the roseflower to me."
And still Junnaid remained silent.…
The good man is responsible. The silent man, the man who has understood is responsible for all that has happened in the history of man against the people who were just pure love, pure silence, pure godliness.
But perhaps nothing can be said to those good people either, because if they had come out there would have been another assassination and nothing else. That's what Junnaid said afterwards, and he was right. Other disciples asked him, "It
was very shameful when he called out your name. You behaved as if you were not Junnaid. It is shameful that you did not protest when your greatest disciple was being tortured -- tortured brutally."
No, even animals don't torture in that way. If you want to kill someone, kill. But to cut him piece by piece is so condemnable.
The other disciples said, "You should have protested."
Junnaid said, "Do you think it would have saved him? I have also thought about it. It is not that I have not felt the tragedy, I have felt as much hurt as Mansoor. I loved him, but I knew that if I had come out and protested, then instead of one man, two men would have been assassinated. Nothing would have been achieved by it."
But still I feel it would have been better that two men were assassinated instead of one. I differ from Junnaid, because there may have been a third man who would have come out, and three men may have provoked courage in many more. It is not that in that vast crowd there was only Junnaid who saw that it was absolutely inhuman and ugly -- and there was no crime. The crime was simply that Al-Hillaj Mansoor had said, "I am God," ana'l haq, and simultaneously he said, "It is not that only I am God -- you are also. I know it; you still have to know it. That's the only difference."
So he was not speaking because of his ego, he was speaking because of his experience.
He was not denying godhood to anyone. He was simply saying, "Your God seems to be asleep; my God is awake. One day it was also asleep and I was as ignorant as you are.
One day you will be also as awake as I am. It is only a difference of time."
Such a compassionate man. Why has humanity behaved so badly with these people? One of the reasons, fundamental reasons is that their height hurts people's egos. Their silence, their love, their beauty, their grace, their blissfulness... Everything hurts people, because they are living in dark holes, in misery, in suffering, in anguish, and somebody is standing on the hilltop, sunlit, surrounded by fragrant flowers. They cannot forgive such a man.
This is something to be deeply understood and remembered, that up till now man has proved by and large barbarous. All talk of civilization is nonsense. All talk of culture, Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, is simply bullshit. Because the way we have behaved with our best sons and daughters is not cultured, is not human. It is subhuman or perhaps even below animals.
No animal murders another animal of his own species. No lion will kill another lion, howsoever hungry; he would rather die than kill. But man is the only animal again. He is unique in many ways: he is the only one who kills people of his own species -- not only kills but eats.
Just a few days ago in Palestine the people demanded from the government, "We should be allowed to eat the dead people because there is a shortage of food -- and it seems utterly uneconomical not to eat the dead people." Their demand was ugly but more ugly is that the Palestinian government has accepted their demand, saying that it is okay. The government cannot supply food. On what grounds can it deny them?
First they will start eating people who died naturally and then they will start eating people who have been killed on purpose. That has happened in Buddhist countries: in China, in Japan, in Korea, in Taiwan. You will find hotels where it is written, "Here only the meat of the naturally dead animals is available." Now so many natural deaths of animals don't happen anywhere in the world that they can supply food for the whole country. How many animals do you see dying naturally?
Those boards are absolutely false, as false as you will find in India. Every restaurant, hotel, sweetshop... they will all have a board saying, "Only pure ghee is used here." And everywhere vegetable ghee made by vegetables, not by milk, and sometimes even by rotten vegetables, not even the best quality vegetables, is available. From where can they get so much pure ghee? You cannot even get pure milk.
I was a postgraduate student and the man who used to supply the milk to all the students in the hostel was known as a very saintly man; he was really called Santa Baba, because everybody thought, He is so honest; he is supplying pure milk. He always used to come with his son, carrying the milk.
I heard him many times. If somebody asked "Santa Baba, is the milk really
pure?" He would immediately put his hand on his son's head and say, "If I have mixed water in the milk my son will die."
Naturally people thought... I heard it many times. I started thinking that there must be some clue to the mystery, because I used to take his milk and I knew it was not pure. It was so thin that it was more water than milk. One day I took him aside and I said to him,
"No need of your son... and no need for you to put your hand on his head. You just tell me one thing. Is it really true?"
For a moment he was silent and then he said, "It is not true." I said, "You are every day offering your son."
He said, "It is very simple. I never mix water into milk; I always mix milk into water. So I am not making any wrong statement."
You cannot get anything pure.
I have heard about Mulla Nasruddin, that he wanted to commit suicide. So he went and got poison with great difficulty from a chemist. He had to bribe him because from where would he get the prescription for poison? Without the prescription the chemist said, "I cannot give you anything; you have to have a doctor's prescription."
He said, "Who is going to give me the prescription? I want to commit suicide. You take these one hundred rupees or two hundred rupees, because I am going to die. What am I going to do with the rupees afterwards?"
So he bribed him, went very happily home, mixed the poison in the milk, drank it, slept, waited and waited and waited, and there was no death coming, not even sleep! Many times he woke up, looked all around -- whether he was in hell or heaven... but his wife was snoring by his side.
He said, "My God, how long is this poison going to take? The chemist was saying the moment you put it on your tongue you are gone..."
And it was becoming morning. The whole night he had been waiting. Morning came and his wife was still snoring by his side. He rushed to the chemist -- he
was just opening the doors of his shop -- and asked him, "What is the matter?"
He said, "What can I do? You know, in this country you cannot find anything pure.
Everything is mixed. In a way it is good; nobody can commit suicide -- at least by taking poison."
A man of love is really the only man who is cultured, who is civilized. And such a love arises only as a fragrance of meditation; hence my insistence on meditation. Unless we turn people towards meditation on a vaster scale -- as it has never been done before --
there is not much hope for the future, for future humanity.
But I am not a pessimist, not a single inch. I am an absolute optimist. I will believe to the very last moment when the world is committing suicide in a world war, to the last moment I will trust that man will wake up. Seeing such a tremendous tragedy ahead, how can people remain asleep?
Now there are only two alternatives: either suicide or meditation. Life has brought us to such a point where there are not many roads; just two roads, two possibilities, simple choice. Either humanity chooses to commit suicide under the leadership of Ronald Reagan, or humanity chooses to meditate, to be silent, to be peaceful, to be human, to be loving.
Only through meditation can we defeat the politicians -- and the politicians need to be totally defeated. Their power has to be destroyed forever. Their nuclear weapons and their atomic weapons have to be thrown in the Atlantic and in the Pacific. And if they want to jump with them they can jump also, because they are the greatest criminals in the world.
Ordinary criminals may murder somebody and you take them to the gallows. Adolf Hitler kills eight million people, alone. Joseph Stalin kills one million Russians, his own people, without any difficulty. All these politicians continue creating more and more weapons to destroy humanity. And they are the leaders, they are the guides of people.
With these blind politicians dominating the world there is no hope.
I invite the whole humanity, because this is a decisive moment, this is the time when a great revolution is needed, a revolution against all politicians, without any discrimination of whether they are socialist, communist, fascist, capitalist; whether they believe in democracy or they believe in dictatorship -- it does not matter.
For the first time all politicians are standing together to destroy humanity, and if we can make man free from the political jargon... The only way to free man is to make man loving, peaceful. So he simply drops the weapons and he says, "They are not needed. We are not going to kill each other. And if you have so much urge to fight, then the presidents and the prime ministers can have boxing matches -- and we all will enjoy. It will be really great."
What is the need to destroy so many innocent people for a few idiots who cannot come to a solution; seeing perfectly well that the time is becoming shorter and shorter and any accident is possible -- and there will be no humanity at all.
I have heard that the third world war happened, and a monkey sitting on a tree says to a female monkey, "Darling, should we start it all again?" And he has an apple in his hand.
"Eat it again"... and God will throw you out of the Garden of Eden and the beginning of another humanity.…
But that humanity will again end up in some Ronald Reagan -- it won't be different. The only difference that can be called a difference is the difference of consciousness. And meditation is nothing but a science of creating that difference.
You are asking, "Is it possible to experience love and meditation at the same time?"
And I am saying to you: Love is only possible if meditation is possible. They are both two wings of the same bird. And if you want the bird to fly high in the sky of consciousness, both the wings are needed, love and meditation, but not your kind of love.
You should remember the difference between your kind of love and the love I'm talking about.
The husband and wife were having a terrible argument. Finally the wife threw up her arms and exclaimed, "Why did I have to marry you to find out how stupid you are?"
"You did not have to," replied the husband angrily. "You should have known it the minute I asked you."
Who is going to ask you except a stupid person! That very moment it was clear, there was no need for so many years to wait to find out. I am not talking about this love.
The new fully-automatic airplane was making its first cross-country flight. A recorded announcement said, "This is the first all-automatic jet. There is no pilot, no crew. Press a button and we take off. Press another button and dinner is served. Press another button and we land. Nothing can go wrong... can go wrong... can go wrong... can go wrong "
And we are sitting on a volcano of nuclear weapons -- and everything can go wrong! Just press a button...
Your question is not only a personal question. It has now become a question for the whole of humanity, the whole earth. But unfortunately, in five billion people it is difficult to find even a few hundred people who are sincerely interested in finding what meditation is -- not by studying about it but by experiencing it.
Time is running short. Every moment we are coming closer to a situation which may be deliberately created or may be just accidental. We have known the experience a few days ago. In France something went wrong; in Russia something went wrong. You cannot trust machines. Man has not trusted man but he has trusted machines more.
You will be surprised to know that in Japan, which is the most technologically advanced country in the world today -- it has left America far behind Its
currency is now the most valuable; the dollar rates second. In America the greatest rich man has only four and a half billion dollars. In Japan the richest man has twenty-one billion dollars. And Japan is the only country where thousands of robots, mechanical men, are functioning and working in the factories. They are cheap, because they don't get temperamental, they don't go on strike, they don't ask for wages. The question of a pay rise does not arise.
They work twenty-four hours a day with no shift change.
But suddenly, last month a strange thing happened -- that's what I call an accident. In one factory five persons were killed by the robot mechanical men; something went berserk.
Those robots simply grabbed the people who were passing by, gave them a good hug --
finished. Engineers could not believe what was happening, "Is it some kind of love that has arisen in the heart of the robot?"
And not only one, five robots in one factory -- just in one day. And from that day people are keeping far away. Even engineers are looking from far away because to come close if the robot falls in love with you... Then just a good hug, and you are finished. I am not talking about this kind of love.
Man also does this kind of love, not only robots. If you watch men... How many men have killed how many women although they are alive? How many men have been killed by women although they are alive, but just alive, breathing, surviving? But they don't know any life. Love has destroyed their life. This is not the love I am talking about.
Love should enhance life, make it richer and more beautiful and more blissful. Lovers should give more freedom to each other, more individuality, more dignity. But what is happening for centuries is just the opposite. Lovers are trying to dominate each other, to destroy each other, to enslave each other. I am not talking about that love. That love cannot go with meditation.
"My wife thinks she is a chicken," the husband explained to the psychiatrist. "That's a serious delusion," was the reply. "How long has this been going on?" "Three years," mumbled the husband.
"Three years?" said the shocked shrink. "Why did you not bring her in before now?"
"Well," replied the embarrassed husband, "frankly, we needed the eggs."
This is going on with almost every couple; they are driving each other crazy. This is not love. If this is love then what is hate?
The very idea of domination, the very desire to be powerful over others shows a poverty of soul. It shows that you don't have power over yourself; hence the desire to have power over others.
That's why I say the politician is the poorest person in the world, because his desire is to have power over millions of people. This desire shows his poverty. He has no power over himself and he wants to have power. But it does not matter... he may have power over one person or one million people or one billion people -- it does not matter. His inner feeling of inferiority, that he has no power within himself will remain the same. He can deceive the world but he cannot deceive himself.
That's the difference between the politician and the religious person. The religious person searches for power over himself, and the politician searches for power over others. The politician is bound to be violent, destructive, ugly, barbarous.
Only a man who wants to be the power over himself, who wants to know where the source of his life is, from where he is getting his energy, where the life and energy source within him are...
The search for it is meditation. Finding it is enlightenment.
And once you have found it you have so much, in such abundance, that you cannot help sharing it. You become a rain cloud which wants to shower on the thirsty earth. And you must have smelled the sweet fragrance that comes from the thirsty earth, from the first rain cloud's shower on it, in gratitude, in thankfulness.
A man of meditation like Gautam Buddha showers his love -- he is a rain cloud, or better to call him a love cloud, who showers his love to all those who are thirsty, to all those who are aware that love is showering.
But the majority are so foolish, they immediately open their umbrellas. They protect themselves from love, they protect themselves from Gautam Buddhas,
they protect themselves from Socrates... Strange people. Something is basically wrong, and that is, they don't know themselves and they don't know their thirst and they don't know what nourishment they need.
Love is the nourishment that is missing in the world.
Yussel Moscowitz had lost all interest in life, so he went to see his psychiatrist. The usually patient shrink decided to use shock tactics this time and said sharply, "What would happen if I cut off your left ear?"
"I could not hear," replied Yussel with a sigh.
"Then what would happen if I cut off your right ear?" barked the shrink. "I could not see," said Yussel, beginning to show signs of boredom.
The psychiatrist became alarmed. "This is serious. Why do you say you could not see if I cut off your right ear?"
"Because," said Yussel with a yawn, "my hat would fall over my eyes. Both the ears gone, how can I see?"
The people you think are psychiatrists, psychologists, psychoanalysts, the people who are helping humanity to become more sane, are the most insane people in the world. The statistics are very clear. From no other profession do so many people go mad as from the profession of psychiatry. The proportion is double that from any other profession.
In the past the professors used to be champions of going mad; now they are number two.
Number one is the psychologists. They commit suicide four times more than any other profession -- and these are the people who are helping humanity to be sane, normal, healthy, intelligent. These are the people supposed to teach you how to live and how to live joyously. These are the people who claim that their function is to teach the art of living.
But if these people are going to teach the art of living it is going to be a really dangerous art of living. It will not be the art of living, it will be the art of at the most vegetating.
The professor asked the young girl in his psychology class, "Which part of the body expands to ten times its natural size under an emotional impact?"
Blushing, the girl replied, "I would rather not answer that."
The professor called on the boy sitting next to her who promptly replied, "The pupil of the eye."
The professor turned back to the girl and said, "Your confusion shows three things. One, that you did not do your homework; two, that you have a dirty mind; and three, that one day you will be sadly disappointed."
Okay, Maneesha? Yes, Osho.
The Invitation Chapter #29
Chapter title: The crescendo of the insanity of centuries 5 September 1987 am in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium
Archive code: 8709050
ShortTitle: INVITA29
Audio: Yes Video: Yes
Length:
103
mins Question 1
BELOVED OSHO,
SINCE BECOMING OLD TWO DAYS AGO, I HAVE DISCOVERED A WHOLE
NEW WORLD, THE WORLD OF WOMEN'S GOSSIP. I AM NOW ACCEPTED AS
ONE OF THE GIRLS -- WELL ALMOST, BUT I GUESS I WILL NEVER KNOW
THAT. MY QUESTION IS: IS THERE NO END TO GRATITUDE?
Devageet, I have told you that the woman has three ages. She never becomes old; it is only the man who becomes old.
The woman passes through childhood, through youth and, "How wonderful you are looking."
I think somebody has told you, "How wonderful you are looking." That has given you the wrong conception of "Since becoming old two days ago..."
All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher. From today you will be known as a philosopher.…
Remember: Old age is when the candles cost more than the cake. And also remember: Old age is when getting it up gets you down.
You have certainly entered into the age when people will call to you, "How wonderful you are looking."
The eyes of the dead are closed gently; we also have to open gently the eyes of the living.
I will try my best to be gentle with you because you must be dreaming: women never become old; it has never been heard of.
You are not aware of a very fundamental law: When you are up to your nose, keep your mouth shut.
And never forget that money can't buy happiness, but it can buy you the kind of misery you prefer.
In old age certainly one wants to be happy, but nothing can buy happiness. In old age people have money, but money can buy only the misery you prefer, not happiness.
So I think, Devageet, it is better still to wait. Two days is not a long time, you can come back. It is dangerous to be old. Start falling in love with someone, and old age will disappear. That is one of the strategies to drop old age.…
A man in love is incomplete -- that's true -- until he has married. Then he is finished.
So just don't get married. Always remain in love, and you will be young. The moment you are married then I cannot help.
The only thing to remember about women is: A man who moralizes is really a hypocrite, and a woman who moralizes is invariably ugly.
Just avoid the moralizing women!
It is simply human to err -- and that's what you have done, fallen into a human error -- but the law is: To err is human, but to make a real mess of things you need a computer.
One who dares to be a fool should remember that that is the first step in the direction of wisdom.
You have the intrinsic capacity to become wise, but only two-day-old, not very old.
If you have really become old, you will come to know sex is hereditary. If your parents never had it, chances are you won't either.
Socialism is when the state owns everything; capitalism is when your wife does.
And this is a tremendously significant maxim to remember as far as old people are concerned: Whenever you feel the urge to exercise, just lie down and wait until it passes.
If you have really become old just have a look at your passport. If you actually look like your passport photo, you are not well enough to travel.
Devageet, you are perfectly young. Just to avoid women you are trying to play that you are old. That is not new. In my commune every sannyasin plays old. This is a very different world: outside men are chasing women; in my commune women chase men.
Outside women have headaches; in the commune men have headaches. They look so much worried and afraid that some woman is going to get them -- and most often the woman succeeds.
It is good that you understand that two days ago you became old. Remain old!
A big Yorkshire farmer found it necessary to go to London for several months and decided to leave one of his best workers in charge: "I want you to take care of things, Harry, as if I were here myself, understand?"
Harry nodded.
Four months later the boss farmer returned to find everything in shape. Harry, pointing things out said, "The chicks have been laying plenty of eggs, the wheat has grown double strong, the vegetables are better than they have ever been, and as for those monthly spells your daughter used to have, I have even got those stopped."
Devageet's old age is the same. Let him remain old but don't believe his old age. He can get anybody's monthly problem stopped. He is simply pretending to be old.
Question 2
BELOVED OSHO,
AM I MOVING RIGHTLY OR AM I JUST A HOPELESS NUTCASE?
Premnath, your question is very significant, because in this world everybody is moving rightly except the nuts -- at least that's what the whole humanity believes.
The reality is just the contrary: the whole of humanity is a nutcase, and only a few nuts escape from this madhouse you call the world.
It happened once...
Kahlil Gibran's one friend became mad. He was a very great poet, thinker of a high caliber, a genius. When Kahlil Gibran heard he came back to Lebanon. He was born in Lebanon, he was brought up in Lebanon, he was a Lebanese. But then he went to America and he spent his whole life in America.
Hearing about his friend in Lebanon he came back to see him; he went to the madhouse.
His friend was sitting alone in the park of the madhouse on a bench. He looked at Kahlil Gibran but did not pay much attention, did not even show that he has recognized him.
Kahlil Gibran said, "Don't you recognize me?"
He said, "I recognize everybody. But what are you doing here? With great difficulty I have been able to leave that mad world and enter into this peaceful place. What are you doing here?"
And Kahlil Gibran writes in his diary, "It shocked me, but he was making a very significant point. He was saying that only the madhouse seems to be sane, and outside the madhouse everybody is insane."
At least in the madhouse nobody worries, nobody is ambitious to become a president or a prime minister, nobody is concerned to become the richest man, nobody has any ambition. People are enjoying moment-to-moment life. You may not like their way of doing it, you may not like their way of enjoying it, but that is your problem not their problem. In the madhouse nobody has any problem
except the doctors who are running here and there worried and concerned. The mad people don't have any worry in the world; they are just at ease as they are. They are in a tremendous acceptability.
It happened in one madhouse...
The old doctor retired and a new doctor came. So there was a farewell party and a welcome party also for the new doctor. The old doctor who was retiring spoke first.
There was not a single clap. Nobody laughed, nobody seemed even to hear him or what he was talking about. There was utter silence as if there was nobody present. And when the new doctor stood up people clapped, enjoyed, a few people started dancing...
The new doctor said, "This is strange. The old doctor who has served them his whole life is retiring, and they remain completely silent; they did not even clap once."
So when the meeting was over he asked a madman, "What is the matter? Why did you misbehave with the old man? You clapped for me and you don't know me at all."
They all said, "The reality is, you look just like one of us. We were so happy to find you.
That man was a problem. He was continuously worried -- and here nobody is worried; things are running very smoothly."
No war, no murder, no suicide -- and it is one of the strangest things that mad people rarely fall sick. If they are sick they become healthy. Mad people are healthy people, because all the problems that can create mental tension and can affect your body are no longer there. Their bodies are natural, and they become innocent like children.
The new doctor was very much shocked when he heard the real reason for their clapping and joyous shouts and why a few started dancing. When he heard that they thought that he was one of them, he looked a little crazy.
In fact, one of the great psychologists, Adler, has created a psychology around
will to power. And one day he was in his class. He said to his disciples who he was preparing for the new psychology, "The people who become teachers are the people who want to dominate others, and that is the easiest way to dominate; small children cannot do anything much about it. The people who become politicians suffer from inferiority complex. To hide that they try to magnify their ego as much as they can -- until it bursts."
And he was explaining about every kind of profession -- why people choose a certain profession. One young man stood up and he said, "You have left one profession out completely, the profession of the psychologist."
Adler was silent. He could not answer because the answer was clear. The student said,
"Perhaps you cannot say it, but I will have to say to complete the list. The people who tend to become psychologists are people who are psychologically sick."
In fact, neurotics, psychotics, all kinds of nuts, enter into the world of psychology. That is the most beautiful hiding place they can find. They become experts about madness, but deep down they are mad people. I have studied the lives of psychologists and I have been really surprised that these people should have been in madhouses. They are treating mad people, and they are the most highly paid profession in the world.
You are asking, "Am I moving rightly or am I just a hopeless nutcase?" Everybody is a nutcase but nobody is hopeless. The world has unfortunately been growing for thousands of years in such a way that it has turned everybody into a nutcase. There are two kinds of nuts: normal and abnormal.
The normal nuts run the whole world. They are doctors, they are professors, they are engineers; deep down the madness is there, but within limits. Everybody is on the boundary line. Just a small incident, a small accident, and they can go beyond the boundary line: the wife dies, the business goes bankrupt -- anything can happen and the boundary line can be crossed, they immediately become nutcases.
The psychologists of the whole world are only trying to do one thing: to make abnormal nuts normal, somehow to bring them back within the boundary line. It does not help the nutcases, but it helps the world to go on running in its common way.
But why has it happened that so many people in the world are either mad or just on the boundary line? There is not any qualitative difference, but only a quantitative difference, a difference of degrees. We have been brought up with mother's milk, with all kinds of superstitions; they have gone deep into our unconscious.
I used to live in a city for a few months. Just in front of me there was a municipal water tap. And the man had the idea that while he was filling his pot with the water, if a woman passed by, that water had become dirty. He would immediately throw the water and he would start filling it again.
One day I was watching. "What is the matter?" I asked the man. He said, "According to my religion women are -- even their shadow is dirty, and I cannot drink dirty water."
I managed to find a woman and paid her so that I could tell her, "Tomorrow you go on walking and let us see how long his religion lasts."
But that man was also a man of great courage, because the whole day... The woman got tired, but I was paying her so she managed to continue. She went away for some time to eat; she sent her daughter to replace... The evening came but the man continued to throw away the water because the woman had come.
Finally it was too much. He threw the pot and came directly to me, because he understood what was happening. And he said, "You will drive me crazy!"
I said, "You are crazy. Nobody can drive you crazy. The very idea you are carrying that even the shadow of the woman makes things dirty... You are born of a woman, so you are dirty. For nine months you have been within the womb of a woman, and you have not even thought for a single moment what kind of a stupid idea you are carrying. Nobody can drive you crazy. I am trying to drive you sane. So remember, from tomorrow this superstition is not going to happen again; otherwise... I get paid enough, and I am alone --
I will keep a woman constantly on duty so that whenever you are on the tap she has just to walk there. Or she can just stand there, why walk?"
The man said, "Then something will have to be done."
And he did; he changed neighborhood. That very night he escaped from the
neighborhood. I tried to find where he had gone. I was in search, but the city was big.
Somebody who knew him told me, "Don't waste your time. He has left the city itself because he knows you will not leave him easily; wherever he goes, you can appoint a woman to walk... And without the water he cannot cook his food, he cannot eat his food, he cannot drink water. You were killing him."
But he was not thought mad, because in the neighborhood in which he was living everybody had that superstition. He was just poor; others had their own running water.
That poor man did not have his own bathroom, his own running water, so he was using the corporation water. But they all believed that he was right, I was wrong.
That's why I should disturb people's religions -- these are religions. If you just watch what kind of religions people have been brought up in, you will be surprised that they have turned the whole humanity into an insanity.
I had once a friend who was a professor, and I have been his student also. For my postgraduate studies I was his student, and then when I also became a professor in the same university we became colleagues. But our friendship was old, since my student days. He had the idea that to see a woman is the greatest sin. Now he was a well-qualified professor.… He used to walk with his umbrella covering his eyes, so that he could see only two or three feet ahead. And he used to run so fast -- his bungalow and the department were not very far apart. With his umbrella touching his head he would run almost to his house and lock his house from inside.
In the class I was the only male; there were two female students. There were only three persons in his class. He could not look at women; it was against his religion which believed that celibacy is the foundation of religion.
So he used to teach with closed eyes. Seeing him teach with closed eyes, I thought this was a good opportunity to have a good sleep. So I was also sitting with closed eyes.
Those two girls wondered... and they felt strange also: the teacher is asleep -- with closed eyes he is speaking; the only male student is listening with closed eyes.…
The professor thought that I must be following the same ideology of celibacy. He was very happy, because in the university he was laughed at. Now at least there were two persons belonging to the same idea. He took me aside one day and he said, "You are doing it perfectly well. But how do you manage on the road? -- because I don't see you carrying the umbrella."
I said, "To tell you the truth I don't belong to your madness. I'm simply sleeping; this is my time to sleep. My whole life I have slept from twelve to two without any exception."
Even in school I used to disappear for those two hours. In the university I used to disappear, and when I became a professor I asked the vice-chancellor, "These two hours are absolutely sacred to me. You can give me periods before or after, but these two hours you cannot touch."
He said, "What is the matter?"
I said, "The matter is that these two hours are devoted to sleep. If you give me a period I will sleep -- and I will tell all the students to fall asleep, to just keep quiet and silent and enjoy."
So he gave me periods after two o'clock.
I told the professor -- Bhattacharya was his name -- "You are under a wrong impression. I don't believe in such idiotic ideas, because with your closed eyes you are seeing the woman more. What are you seeing with your eyes closed? And in fact, why have you closed the eyes? You must have seen the woman first, then only can you close your eyes.
And if in seeing a woman your celibacy is disturbed, it is not much of a celibacy. What will you do in a dream?"
He said, "You are right. In a dream I cannot do anything. Neither is the umbrella there...
and the eyes are already closed -- the women are inside. Do you have any suggestion?"
I said, "Because of this umbrella and because of these closed eyes your dreams are disturbed by women. If you drop this idiotic discipline that you have
imposed upon yourself... Women have their own business. Who is bothering to come into your dreams?"
He said, "No, my father followed the same ideology, my forefathers..." -- he was a brahmin from Bengal -- "and I cannot drop it, although I know the whole university thinks me mad."
But others have their own madness. It may be different, may not be detectable if everybody has it, but to be sane there is only one possibility and that comes out of meditation; otherwise, whatever you do is going to be insane because it will be coming out of your unconsciousness. You will not be doing it in your alertness, in your awareness.
According to me the madman is one who has fallen completely unconscious, who has lost even the thin layer of consciousness that you have. But even the thin layer of consciousness does not prevent you from behaving insanely.
You just watch yourself. Just watch your thoughts -- and you will be amazed what kind of thoughts go on in your mind. Watch your actions, what kind of actions you go on doing. Are they actions or are they only reactions?
A sane man behaves differently. A Gautam Buddha is surrounded by a crowd which is abusing him, using ugly words, obscene words, because he is against the organized religion of the Hindus and he is against the Hindu holy scriptures, the VEDAS. He has criticized them as hard as it is possible, and they need it. It is not that he is wrong. He has condemned the whole priesthood, that these are the exploiters, parasites. Naturally, brahmins were enraged.
And this was a brahmin village through which he was passing. And the brahmins surrounded him and said every kind of bad thing that they could manage. He listened silently. His disciples became angry, but because Buddha was present it was not courteous to say anything before the master. The master was standing so silent, and listening as if they are saying very sweet things.
Finally Buddha said to them, "If your things that you wanted to say to me are finished, I would like to reach to the place where people must be waiting for me. But if your things are not finished, after a few days when I will be returning I will inform you. And I will have enough time to listen to all that you want to say."
One man said, "Do you think we are saying something? We are condemning you. Do you understand or not? Because anybody else would become angry, and you are standing silently..."
The statement that Buddha made to these village people is immensely significant. He said, "You have come a little too late. If you had come ten years ago when I was as insane as you are, not a single person would have gone alive."
Ten years ago he was a prince, a warrior, one of the best archers of his time, a great swordsman, and those brahmins... he could simply have removed their heads with a single blow, without any difficulty. Because those brahmins know nothing about swords or arrows or being a warrior. He would have just cut them
-- almost like vegetables.
He said, "You have come late. Ten years ago if you had come... but now I am no longer insane. I cannot react and I would like to ask you one question. In the last village people came with sweets and fruits and flowers to receive me, but we take food only one time a day, and we had already taken the food. And we don't carry things, so we had to tell them, `You please forgive us, we cannot accept sweets, flowers. We accept your love, but these things you will have to take away.' I want to ask you," he said to this angry crowd,
"what must they have done with their sweets and flowers that they had brought as presents to us."
One man said, "What is the problem in it? They must have distributed the sweets in the village."
Buddha said, "That makes me very sad. What will you do? -- because I don't accept what you have brought, just the same way as I did not accept the sweets and the flowers and other things that the people brought to me in the other village, if I don't accept your obscenity, your ugly words, your dirty words, if I don't accept, what can you do? What are you going to do with all this garbage that you have come with? You will have to take it back to your homes and give it to your wives, to your children, to your neighbors.
"You will have to distribute it, because I simply refuse to take it. And you cannot make me angry unless I accept your humiliation, your insult. Ten years ago I was not conscious; if somebody had insulted me he would have lost his life immediately. I had no idea that insulting me is his problem, and that I have
nothing to do with it -- I can simply listen and go on my way."
This is what I call sanity. Do you think humanity is sane? It only appears... just superficial sanity, mannerism, etiquette, culture, civilization, just skin-deep. Scratch a little deeper and the barbarous comes out.
If you really want, Premnath, to be a sane being, sannyas is the way for sanity, for dropping all those unconscious layers of your mind which force you to behave unconsciously. And in your unconsciousness you are doing things for which you yourself will repent when you will become a little alert and aware, "What have I done?"
The insane person can only react. The sane person acts, the sane person responds
-- he never reacts.
The way is simple and you are at the right place where your mind can become calm and quiet, so much so, as if it is absent. You should be certain of your sanity only if you can attain a state of no-mind. Only then can you be certain that nothing can drive you mad, because the mind that was possible to become insane is no more -- you have transcended it.
I am reminded of an old story...
Once there was an old couple who lived deep in the forest, and they never saw anybody else. One day the old husband was walking on a lonely path when he saw something shining on the ground. He bent down to pick it up and it was a mirror. But he had never seen a mirror before and when he saw his own face reflected in it, he thought it was his father's face. Obviously he had never seen his own face, but he had seen his father's face.
So he took it home and placed it up in the attic for safekeeping, and every evening he would go up and say good night to his father. But his wife became suspicious about what he was doing in the attic every evening. So one night she followed him. She saw him looking at the mirror and saying good night to it... but she had never seen a mirror before either! So she pushed over to him, grabbed the mirror out of his hand, looked into it and said, "You old idiot! You mean every night you come sneaking up here just to say good night to this ugly old woman?"
But this is how our mind functions. You don't know your original face -- and
there is no mirror which can show you your original face. What you know as your face is only the face that you have seen reflected in the mirror; it is a reflection.
You must have seen in big cities or in exhibitions or in circuses, there are mirror halls where different kinds of mirrors are arranged: in some mirrors you become so tall, and in some mirrors you become such a pygmy; in some mirrors you become so fat, and in some mirrors you become so thin.…
I don't think the mirror that you are using can be perfect. It is very difficult to have a perfect mirror. If by chance you have a mirror which makes your face look beautiful or ugly, then you will carry that idea with yourself.
But you don't know your original face, how it is, directly. It is only in the state of no-mind that you become aware of your originality, and that is the only sanity as far as I am concerned -- as far as any awakened human being has ever been concerned.
It is by going beyond the mind and entering into the no-mind that you will attain sanity; otherwise, Premnath, you will remain either a normal nutcase -- or if you are a little courageous, a little adventurous, you may go beyond the border, and you will be stamped a madman. And once you are stamped by the society as a madman you may come back to being normal, but nobody will ever think that you are normal.
I used to live with one of my father's sisters while I was in the college studying. The husband of my father's sister had a brother. He used to come just to chitchat with me, and I saw every possibility that he could go beyond the border; just a little push was needed.
So one day I was talking to him and I told him, "If you are really religious" -- and he was a very religious fanatic -- "then you should touch your wife's feet every night before you go to bed."
He said, "But where is it written?"
I said, "It is not written. Great principles remain unwritten, they are transferred from master to disciple."
But he said, "People will think that I am mad or something. Nobody touches the
feet of his wife."
I said, "Every woman should be taken as your mother; only then you can be celibate."
He said, "That's right."
That night he went home. He touched the feet of his wife and the wife shrieked and the whole house gathered saying: "What are you doing?"
And he said, "Every woman is a mother."
They said, "That's right but that does not mean that you have to touch the feet of your wife. Don't be stupid!"
But he became stubborn -- he was a fanatic. He said, "I will touch... She is my wife, not yours -- and what is wrong in it? I am just paying my respect."
His other brothers came to me asking, "What kind of thing have you told him?"
I said, "I was just checking whether he could cross the line or not. I will pull him back.
Don't be worried."
But it was really difficult to pull him back. I had to convince him, "Just for society's sake... You have deep respect, you can touch your wife's feet when she is asleep in the night. Show your respect; it does not matter whether she is asleep or awake."
He said, "That's right. I am getting into trouble; everybody thinks I am mad."
He stopped touching the feet but everybody continued to think that he was a little cuckoo.
People had never thought that he was cuckoo before when he was doing the same things.
Now he is doing the same things and people are suspicious. Once a suspicion has entered, then it is very difficult to remove it from the mind of the society.
And in fact people enjoy it that you are mad and they are not mad. They provoke your madness once they know that you are vulnerable. Only one person is not vulnerable to any provocation: he who knows the secret of meditation.
A couple went to see a new movie, and the two seats in front of them were occupied by a man and his dog. When the film was over the dog applauded enthusiastically. The man behind leaned forward and said, "That's simply astonishing."
"Yes, it is," said the dog's companion, "Especially since he hated the book." Just all around you, if you watch clearly, you will find all kinds of nuts.…
The Queen of England was visiting The Royal Military Hospital, and insisted on making a round of the wards. She came into a room with three beds and asked the first soldier,
"What is wrong with you?"
Embarrassed, the soldier replied, "Syphilis, Your Majesty."
Trying to appear natural, the Queen asked, "And what treatment do you get for it?"
"Wire brush and Dettol," the soldier replied.
"Is there anything you would like to make your stay more comfortable?" the Queen asked.
"No, Ma'am, I'm a soldier in the Queen's Own Regiment, and that's enough for me."
Deeply touched, the Queen moved on to the next bed, where the soldier lay on his stomach. "What is wrong with you, soldier?" she asked.
"Piles, Your Majesty," grunted the soldier. "What is your treatment here?"
"Wire brush and Dettol, Ma'am."
Wincing the Queen asked if there was anything she could do to make him more comfortable. He answered that he was simply grateful to be a soldier in the Queen's Own Regiment, and that was more than enough.
The third soldier told her hoarsely that his problem was a sore throat. "What is the treatment for that?" she asked.
"Wire brush and Dettol, Ma'am," came the reply.
"Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?" "Yes, Ma'am. Next time I would like my treatment first."
It is such an insane world you have just to be watchful and alert and you will see ridiculous, hilarious things happening everywhere. It is unbelievable that sane people should do such things.
But remember: everybody is vulnerable. We are born in a wrong society, in a wrong world, with wrong conditions. And unless you are really interested to get rid of your past and past impacts, impressions on your mind, it is not going to leave you easily. The madness continues.
And as you grow your madness also continues to grow. It is not strange that after sixty, people start thinking you are senile; you have been always. Just now the senility has grown to a point where it is apparent. It cannot come suddenly from nowhere. It has been growing with you.
Nobody wants to talk to old people for the simple reason that they are irritable, annoyed easily, expect too much, and to you they look a little insane. Perhaps their mind is tired; not only are they retired, their sanity also is retired.
Three old men were sitting on a bench in a public park. One was seventy-five, the second was eighty and the third was ninety. They used to meet there every evening. The whole day they waited for the evening, because they were the only friends. Everybody else was far below their age. And there was such a generation gap that there was no question of making friends with anybody else.
All the three persons were retired, but that evening the first seventy-five-year-old man was looking very sad, ashamed. The second old man asked, "What is the
matter with you? Why are you so sad, so ashamed? What have you done?"
He said, "Don't ask. A beautiful lady was taking a bath -- she was a guest in our house, and I was peeping from the keyhole and my mother caught me red- handed. It is so shameful."
Both the other old men looked at each other and laughed, and they said, "Don't be stupid, everybody does such things in childhood, everybody gets caught. There is no need to feel so ashamed about something that happened in childhood."
He said, "What are you saying? It happened this morning! And I don't know how I am going to go back home. I wanted to die at that very moment."
The second man said, "I can understand your problem. I have also my problems. They are bigger than yours. It is now the seventh day that I have not made love to my wife. The moment I say, `What about it?' she simply turns to the other side and says, Ì have such a headache and I am so tired. Just go to sleep.'"
The third old man laughed and said to the first old man, "Just ask him what kind of love he makes to his wife."
And he asked, "What kind of love do you make?"
He said, "Love? I take her hand into my hand and press it three times. And then we say good night and go to sleep. What more can I do at this age?"
The oldest said, "Your problems are childish, stupid. I am facing the real problem. This morning my wife slapped me, and I said, `Why are you slapping me?' She said, `What are you doing?' I said, Ì'm preparing to make love.' She said, `You idiot, neither do you sleep the whole night nor do you let me sleep. This is the third time you are making love.' So I think I'm losing my memory."
Just watch people.…
If you are alert and silent and sane you will be simply surprised what goes on happening all around.
My whole effort here is to create a commune of people who are completely free from past conditions, fanatic religions, fascist political ideologies, and who start
responding to life out of silence and peace, awareness, consciousness, not through a mind which has no eyes. It is blind. It reacts immediately like any mechanism. But it has no eyes to see directly and deeply into any problem.
Even the greatest people that you know in the world behave very childishly, and they are creating millions of problems for other people because they have power. The whole power is in insane hands; not a single powerful man in the world is even interested in meditation -- and except meditation there is no way out. We are really coming to the crescendo of the insanity of centuries.
In all of our lifetimes we are going to see the ultimate madness exploding by the time this century comes to an end -- and it is not long. It is now nineteen eighty- seven; the year two thousand is less than thirteen years away. In these thirteen years things will go on becoming more and more insane.
Just the other day I received a letter from Oregon, from a doctor, a dental surgeon, "I am very ashamed by the way the American government treated you and the commune. You had brought a new colorfulness to the state of Oregon. Rather than rejoicing in that colorfulness, they destroyed the whole commune."
Many intelligent people in America feel the same way, but the old problem -- those intelligent people feel but they remain silent, because they know the majority is absolutely insane. They are so insane that they destroyed the commune illegally, they imposed crimes on me of which I have not even dreamt.
They blackmailed me through my attorneys, because they made my attorneys afraid that if they were going to insist on trial, then my life might be at risk because the American government would not like to be defeated by a single individual: "You know and we know that we don't have any evidence, so your victory is certain. But remember, your victory would mean the assassination of Osho."
It was made so clear by the government attorneys to my attorneys, that they came to me and said, "We have never seen such a thing happening. It is absolutely insane, absolutely illegal, criminal. Now they want you to accept any two crimes, the smallest crimes, but accept that you are guilty of two crimes so that they can save the face of America and American democracy and American justice. And once you have accepted two crimes then there will be no trial and you will be freed."
I was very stubborn. I told my attorney, "It is better to fight the case because they don't have any evidence and they cannot have any evidence."
But the attorney said, "The question is of blackmail. They are threatening us that they will withdraw the bail and they will put you in jail. And they can go on postponing the case for ten years, fifteen years, and in these ten or fifteen years they will harass you, torture you. And we are afraid they may even take your life, because they have made one thing clear, that the government is not ready to be defeated by a single individual."
With tears in their eyes they begged me, "Don't insist on a fight. We know that you have not committed any crime, and they know it. And we had not gone to negotiate with them; they came to us to negotiate."
This is very strange -- that the government should come to the criminal to negotiate... for what? If I have committed the crime I should be punished. What negotiations? Is it a business?
But the reason was clear: they knew they could not prove anything against me. And the Attorney General of America later on accepted -- when I had left America -- that I had not committed any crime; they didn't have any proof, any evidence, any witness. But you will not believe that even knowing this, they blackmailed my attorneys. They cried and I had to accept, because they told me, "It is absolutely futile. It is hitting your head against the wall for no meaning. It will destroy your whole movement, it will destroy all your sannyasins, and you will leave millions of people who love you. It is better to accept two crimes."
I said, "I am not a serious man. I can accept all of their thirty-four crimes. There is no problem, but don't ask for any proof, because I don't have any evidence either."
They said, "No, nobody is going to ask for evidence."
And what happened? As I accepted two crimes the judge immediately ruled that I am punished with four hundred thousand dollars -- that is nearabout sixty lakh rupees -- for two crimes which I have not committed, which they have forced in a blackmail way threatening my attorneys that my life is at risk, "just to save my life!" But they never mentioned that once I accepted then sixty lakh rupees will be the fine. They did not mention that. This was the second trick.
First they blackmailed, "This way there will be no trial and we will release Osho immediately." But with the judgment the judge came -- four hundred thousand dollars.
My people who were present in the court immediately collected that much money within ten minutes, because the attorneys were concerned to get me out of America as quickly as possible. And as I was coming out of the jail, immediately another summons for some other case that they had created in another court... They were waiting outside the jail to give me the summons.
As I was coming to the airport I received the news that they had put a bomb under my chair. They were waiting that if I didn't accept, and I wanted to go with the trial, then they would just explode the bomb and finish the whole thing, so there would be no person and no question of any trial.
Now that bomb cannot arrive inside the jail and under my chair without somebody who is not part of the government, who is not part of the high authorities of the jail... The jail had no interest in killing me. The idea must have come from Washington -- it must have come from Ronald Reagan.
These people who are in power are lying, blackmailing -- doing every kind of act that is inhuman. But perhaps they are doing it in their insanity, in their unconsciousness.
And there is no great movement in the world to counter the forces of violence, madness, except our movement for meditation.
The responsibility is great on each of you. Not only for your own sake, but for the sake of preventing the mad powers from destroying this beautiful planet -- this planet which has produced a Gautam Buddha, a Jesus Christ, a Zarathustra; this planet which has given birth to a Krishna, to a Mahavira, to a Lao Tzu. And these are just the beginnings of spring; there are higher possibilities in the future.
If man goes on living on the earth, we will be producing even higher peaks than we have produced in the past. Those high peaks in the past were produced in spite of all the hindrances of the society. If the society is supportive, we can create so many beautiful people around the world that it can turn from a desert into an oasis.
And that's what the dental surgeon reminded me of in his letter: "We miss you;
you turned a desert into an oasis, and we feel ashamed that the American government did something absolutely wrong. You brought a message which could have saved not only America but the whole of humanity."
They are missing now because that small commune in Oregon had become suddenly more important than Washington itself. All the eyes from all over the world were concentrated on the commune: "What is happening there? Why are people so happy?
Why are people so loving? Why is there no fighting? Why is there no murder? Why is there no suicide? What has happened to those people? Their jealousies, their conflicts seem to have disappeared, they have entered, it seems, into a new state of consciousness."
But as far as I am concerned I have no complaint against anybody. My own feeling is it was good that they destroyed the commune. It helped my people to spread all over the world. And wherever my one sannyasin is, he will create the right atmosphere. And a few people are bound to gather around him to create small communes all over the world.
Now I'm not interested in creating a big commune, because any big commune is going to be destroyed by the power that is any government. It does not matter whether it is the Indian government or the American government. If I create a big commune again, which is possible now... The moment you have a power, although your power is of love and peace and silence, the powerful people in New Delhi will start getting disturbed.
I don't want to repeat history. Only idiots repeat history.
So my new idea is that we will not create a big commune that unnecessarily comes into conflict with the powers. We will create small communes all around the earth so nobody will be worried, because a few people cannot be dangerous to the vested interests, but those few people can make the whole world afire with love, with peace, with silence, with blissfulness.
Okay, Maneesha? Yes, Osho.
The Invitation Chapter #30
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