23

< Previous | Contents | Next >

‌CHAPTER 23

23 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Madhu means sweet, veda means wisdom – sweet wisdom. Knowledge is never sweet because it is something foreign. It burdens you; it is a pollution, a poisoning of your system. It does not grow out of you, hence It can’t be sweet. And because it is imposed, you are a victim of it. It is a violence perpetuated by the society on the individual.

The society forces its past on every child. It does not allow anybody to grow in his own way; it wants you to become a psychological slave. Knowledge is the strategy to do that. The schools, the colleges, the universities, all serve psychological slavery. They are not in the service of the future; they are in the service of the past. They are never evolutionary; they are always reactionary. They serve the status quo, the vested interests. Their only purpose is to reduce you to a skilful mechanism; hence it is a rape on the individual and his freedom.

But wisdom is totally different. It does not come from the outside, it is your own fragrance. When you grow and bloom it is there. It is a sun that rises within. It is another name for your own consciousness. It has a purity because it is deeply in tune with your nature. Rather than burdening you, it unburdens you; rather than making you a slave it makes you a master; rather than reducing you to serving other people’s goals it gives you freedom so that you can be your authentic self. And to be one’s self, to be one’s true self, is to know what sweetness is. The sweetness simply represents the taste of nectar. When one comes to know one’s self one comes to know immortality. In knowing one’s self one transcends all limitations of time and space.

Deva means divine, aruno means the rising sun – the rising sun of divinity. And that1s what sannyas is all about. The sun has always been there, just very close to the horizon, but we have not allowed it to come up, we have not helped it to come up; on the contrary, we have been repressing it. Our whole life is very ridiculous. We repress that which is our essential core and we express that which

is just a pseudo artifact. We repress the real and we express the unreal; this is the absurdity of our life.

The individual in us remains in darkness and the personality we go on exhibiting everywhere. The personality is a false phenomenon. It is just a mask, it is not our real face. But we have become too attached to the mask and we have completely forgotten the real face, the original face. And it is only in recognising the original face that one’s life starts growing, because only the real can grow; the unreal can never grow. The unreal remains stuck; only the real is dynamic, moving, flowing. The real is always a process and the unreal is always a thing.

But there are a few things which make us too attached to the unreal. First: it is manipulatable. It is very secure, you can rely upon it; tomorrow it is going to remain the same, and the day after tomorrow too, and so on, so forth. It is predictable, it is safe, because it never changes.

To live with the changing is always unsafe, insecure. One never knows ! One remains unpredictable There is no way of knowing what the next moment is going to bring. But if you have a mask, the next moment also the same face will be there; you need not worry. And not only do you feel safe; others feel safe around you. They can depend on you; you have a certain character, a certain mask, a certain personality; you cannot go against it.

But they are also afraid to live with a real individual who is always changing. The real individual cannot promise. He cannot make any promises, because he will say ‘How can I make any promise for tomorrow? – it is yet unknown. I don’t know who I am going to be tomorrow, what circumstances, what stimulants, will bring what ind of responses. It is all in the dark.’

The society does not want this kind of growing people. Nobody feels secure with them. They themselves feel insecure and everybody else feels insecure. Your wife would not like your individuality, because your individuality can fall in love with some other woman tomorrow. But your personality is dependable, your personality is the husband; is not you. Your personality is the marriage contract; your personality can be dragged to the court, your personality can be made to pay. Your personality has to be answerable, but the individuality is never answerable to anybody, not even to one’s self.

The personality is very consistent; only dead things are consistent. And whenever there is something alive and growing it is bound to be consistent; it cannot be consistent with its past and still grow. The tree was five feet tall, now it is ten feet tall; it is not consistent, it is very inconsistent. The river was moving to the south, now suddenly turns and starts moving to the east; it is very inconsistent.

Life is inconsistence. But to live with consistency needs great courage so people have decided to live with synthetic personalities, and that’s how we have repressed our real being. And that real being is hankering, longing, to come up; it wants to rise above the horizon, and without its rising above the horizon there is going to be no fulfilment ever. Fulfilment is withe essential, with individuality and security is with the false personality.

To be a sannyasin means that one takes the risk of being insecure, that one decides to change one’s gestalt from the false to the real, whatsoever the cost. Only one thing can be said: to live in insecurity is to live in tremendous joy. To live in insecurity is the only way to live. To live in security is

a way of dying, a slow suicide, comfortable, convenient. Comfortably one lives and comfortably one dies but one really never lives. And the person who never lives, even his death is false.

How can you die a real death if you have lived an unreal life? Only a man of this type, men like Socrates, die an authentic death, or a man like Jesus dies a true death. And the beauty and the miracle and the paradox is that the true death takes you to the deathless. True life leads you into true death; true death leads you beyond death, it leads you into the deathless. One who is able to die truly is ready to be resurrected. The resurrection automatically follows a true death.

That is the whole meaning of the parable of Jesus’ resurrection. It is a myth, tremendously pregnant with meaning, but the Christians have destroyed the whole beauty of it. They have tried to make it a historical fact, and whenever a myth is reduced to, or projected as, a historical fact it loses all significance. It becomes ugly, it becomes a pretension because it is a false thing; it is untrue. Resurrection is the other side of a true death, but the true death is the climax of a true life. And to live truly and to die truly is my only message!

The sun is there, just very close to the horizon – if you allow it will start rising!

[A sannyasin asks: How can I change problem-solving thinking, which is result-oriented, into meditation?]

Just do one thing: let the mind solve the problem, kt the mind go through the whole process of solving the problem, but you be a witness; don’t become identified with the mind.

The mind is a mechanism, a computer; precisely that’s what the mind is. You are not it, you are the watcher behind. You can see all the manoeuvres of the mind, you can see all the climates and the moods of the mind; you need not get identified with them. That’s where the problem arises. Nothing else is ever a problem: the only problem is that we get identified.

For example: there is a thought of anger passing through the mind, your biocomputer is very hot, angry, at something or other. You can watch it in a very detached and cool way, you can see ‘Yes, the mechanism is hot.’ It is just as when something goes wrong in the car and you start feeling that the engine is getting hot; you don’t become identified with it. Although I know people who are even identified with their cars! They become hot when their engine becomes hot.

A distance has to be created. So let the engine be there, let the engine be hot – watch, simply watch! And I am not saying ‘Don’t be angry.’ I am not saying to repress anger. I am not saying anything of that kind. I am not saying ‘Evaluate that this is bad.’ No evaluation is needed; you simply wait without any evaluation. Simply look at the whole process, watch it without any prejudice, without any bias; just see what is happening, see the fact of it! Just as you see a leaf falling from the tree, see that the mind is in anger. And when the anger starts going watch its going. When the engine is cool again watch its coolness. So many things come and go through the mind, you remain there, far away, a watcher on the hills.

This is an art, you learn only by doing it: the more you do, the more you will be able to do it. Once this art is learned, slowly slowly you become tremendously capable. And then the mind can go on doing its work; it is not a disturbance to you.

I am not against the mind; I am only against identification. And when you are not identified, you have surpassed the mind. Then you are the master: you can use the mind. And the mind is of great use; it is one of the greatest gifts of god. So don’t try to change the processes of the mind. Rather than changing the processes of the mind, you just learn new art, a new way of looking at the mind. A new context has to be learned, a new perspective. This you try!

[Osho checks the energy of a sannyasin recently returned from the West.]

You are ready for many many things! And it is always a question of being ripe. A person can make many efforts but if he is not ripe all those efforts are doomed to fail. And not only that, if those efforts fail he will lose self-confidence too; next time he will find it very difficult to do anything again. That’s what happens to many people: many people start meditating but the time is not right, the season has not come and they fail. And if you fail too many times, you lose confidence; you fall into a kind of despair. You start thinking that this is not for you or, maybe, this is all nonsense.

By being with a master this can be prevented. The master starts work only when the person is ripe; otherwise he tries to prepare him for the real thing to be done. But you are ripe, and there is no need of any preparation. You can simply dive into the infinite, you can dive into the depths of the divine.

And the reason is that you have a very innocent approach towards life. You are not knowledgeable, you are not academic about life. You have the heart of an artist.

And the heart of an artist is very close, closer than anybody else’s heart, to the heart of the mystic.

The artist is a mystic who has not yet become aware, that’s all. He is groping; he is already in the shrine but groping, not knowing where he is. The mystic knows. But the space is the same, and you are already in the space. Just a little more light, just a little more rootedness, a little more centering, and all will become luminous.

I am happy with the way you are: you have the right kind of space for me to penetrate you. So for the few days you are here remain as open as possible, as vulnerable as possible. Remain in tune with me as deeply as possible. Don’t allow any doubt to disturb you, to come between me and you.

It is a love affair, and doubts disturb love affairs very deeply.

And one cannot live in a doubt, one cannot live in a no. The no has no space, so you cannot live in it. One can only live in a yes. Yes is infinite. It has all the space of the world, it contains the whole universe.

So be in a yes, in a total yes, and things will start happening on their own accord. So meditate, dance, sing... become a child!

[A sannyasin visiting for the first time says: I was very clear when I came but now being here these days I’m full of doubt and wondering if I’m supposed to be here. Things like that have come up.]

That is natural.If you come full of doubts, the first impact is that your doubts disappear and you

are full of trust. If you come full of trust the first impact is that your trust disappears and you become

full of doubt. And the reason is that the mind has both together. Half of your mind is a trusting mind and half of your mind is a doubting mind. So if you come with a trusting mind, by the time you reach here you are already tired of it, so you shift. It is just for a change, you shift to the doubting side. If you come with the doubting mind, the same thing happens: you are tired of it so you shift. This happens to almost everybody. It does not happen to people who come without any doubt and without any trust, who simply come with no particular attitude. Then it doesn’t happen, because it can’t happen. It depends on you.

That’s why it is easier to believe in a dead master, because he will never create any doubt in you. It is easy to believe in Jesus, because now Jesus is just a fiction of your own mind. You can project anything on him, and he has to be like that. When he was alive it was not so.

When you come to me you come full of expectations, and they are very unconscious! If they are not fulfilled, doubts arise. And how can they be fulfilling? If I am going to fulfil the expectations of everybody who comes here, just think what will happen? Thousands of people come with thousands of expectations. I have to be simply myself; I cannot fulfil anybody’s expectations. And it is very rare for a person to come without expectations; that’s not the way of the mind. The mind has already decided a few things; without knowing anything the mind has already concluded, it has many a priori ideas.

If a Mohammedan comes here he expects me to be like Mohammed, and I am not! It is very unconsciousHe will not find Mohammed here, and then he is disturbed. He would like me to say

things which are written in his Koran and I will be saying things which I have to say; then there will be disturbance. And there is a gap of fourteen hundred ears between me and Mohammed, so how can I say things which Mohammed used to say? It is impossible, I will be so out of date.

And how can I fulfil...? because here are Mohammedans, and Christians and Jews and Parsis and Jainas and Buddhists and Hindus and Sikhs. Almost all the religions of the world are represented by people here; they all come with their ideas.

You will be surprised, you don’t know this: there is a sect of Jaina monks who don’t speak in the night. Now if a Jaina comes from that sect and he sees that I am talking in the night – finished! I am no more enlightened! Because how can an enlightened person speak in the night? They don’t even sit in the light in the night, because the light may kill a few insects. It creates heat, a few moths may come and die; then who is responsible? And they believe in absolute non-violence, so in the night a Jaina monk sits without light. He cannot read, he cannot talk, because if you talk hot air comes out of your mouth: It can kill small germs in the air.

There are three hundred religions on the earth and all have their own a priori conclusions. So whenever you come, you will have to learn one thing: drop your expectations. You will have to see me as I am, not as you would like me to be.

And I have no expectation of you – that again creates the problem. Because if you go to a Christian you can expect a few things from him; in return he expects a few things from you. So there is a mutual arrangement: you fulfil his expectations; he fulfils your expectations. But with me there is no question of any mutual arrangement. I fulfil nobody’s expectations and I have no expectations of anybody. I help you to be yourself, whatever that means. I don’t impose a pattern on you, I don’t

want you to be a certain kind of person; I simply want you to be free, to be yourself. I give you freedom and I teach you freedom, because I don’t have any expectations of you, of what you should eat and what you should not eat and how you should live and how you should not live.

You will have to learn at least that much, that I don’t expect anything of anybody; nobody should expect anything of me. Then there is no question of doubt, no problem arises. You are here simply to learn if something can be learned. Why bother about doubt? What has that to do with you? You are here to imbibe something, to learn something. If it is useful, learn it; if it is not useful, forget an about it. But give it a try. And your doubts won’t allow you to give it a try; they will disturb you. So be here neither as a believer nor as a non-believer; just be here to be available. to see what is happening.

And people get disturbed over such small things, ridiculous things, but they get disturbed about them. One has to be very alert. To be with me means to be with a certain phenomenon about which you cannot have any expectation; otherwise you will miss the whole opportunity.

And I am not saying to trust. I am simply saying to drop your a priori expectations and doubts will disappear. And when there is no doubt arising what is left is trust. I am not saying to trust me. Trust is not against doubt, it is just the absence of doubt. Then there is trust. Trust is not belief or faith; trust is just an open heart. Trust does not mean that you believe in me, because belief presupposes doubt. First you have to doubt; only then can you believe. Belief is a process of repressing the doubt. So I am not telling you to believe in me. Why should you believe in me? There is no need. I am simply saying to put the doubt aside so you can learn something.

It is not going to harm me whether you doubt me or not – it is going to harm you. So it is your problem and you have to see it: if you doubt me you ill miss the opportunity. That’s your choice. If you put the doubt aside seeing that it is your expectation.And why should you expect anything

from me?

Why should you expect anything from this commune? This commune is not run according to your idea, so there is no problem. This commune has no commitment to run according to anybody else, so there is no problem.

These people have decided to be with me, so let them be! You are here to learn something, to meditate, to sing, to celebrate. Why bring in these things to disturb you? Put them aside and then you will start finding a trust arising in you which is not belief, which is not faith; it is nothing but love. It is neither belief nor disbelief, it is just pure love, and in that love there is great splendour. In that love there is great benediction.

Just dance and sing and those expectations will disappear, and with those expectations doubts will go. Doubts are shadows of expectations.

< Previous | Contents | Next >