10 That flame depends on you

‌CHAPTER 10

That flame depends on you

28 March 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

Question 1 BELOVED OSHO,

IT SEEMS WESTERN MINDS CRAVE NEW EXPERIENCES. IF MEDITATION IS CONCERNED WITH THE EXPERIENCER, NOT THE EXPERIENCE, HOW DO THE NEW HI-TECH EXPERIENCE KITS MOVE US INTO MEDITATION?

Pradeepa, the question you have asked is very relevant, particularly because so many machines are being developed around the world, pretending that they can give you meditation. You just have to plug your ears with earphones and relax and within ten minutes you will reach the state of meditation.

This is utter stupidity. But there is a reason why such an idea has come to the minds of technical people. The whole responsibility goes to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. What he calls “transcendental meditation” is just repeating a certain mantra, or just any word, continuously not giving a chance to the mind to have thoughts, emotions, sentiments... and certainly, if you can manage even for ten minutes to keep the mind in abeyance, you will feel a very beautiful peace, silence. It may be even healthful, a well-being can be felt for hours, but it is not meditation.

These machines which hi-technology is creating... I have ordered the best ones to be sent here, so that you can also experience what I am saying.

Mind functions on one wavelength when it is awake; when it is dreaming it functions on a different wavelength. When it is fast asleep it functions on another wavelength. But none of these are meditation.

For thousands of years we have called meditation TURIYA, “the fourth.” When you go beyond the deepest sleep and still you are aware, that awareness is meditation. It is not an experience, it is you, your very being.

But these hi-tech mechanisms can be of tremendous use in the right hands. They can create wavelengths in your mind so that you start feeling relaxed, as if half asleep thoughts are disappearing and a moment comes that everything becomes silent in you. That is the moment when the waves are of deep sleep. You will not be aware of this deep sleep, but after ten minutes when you are unplugged from the machine you will see the effects: that you are calm, quiet, peaceful. No worry, no tension life seems to be more playful and joyous. One feels as if one has had an inner bath. Your whole being is calm and cool.

What the transcendental meditation of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi can give, these machines can give in a far better way, in a more certain way, without fail. To anybody, it doesn’t matter, because your effort is not needed.

In transcendental meditation you are trying to create those waves without knowing it. You are only aware of repeating a certain mantra, but repetition of anything continuously creates boredom. Boredom is very restful... and that’s why in churches you will find most of the people having a beautiful Sunday morning sleep when the sermon is going on.

It is strange that it happens in every church, in every place all around the world, that the people who go to listen to the sermon sleep. Because those sermons are the same the same BIBLE, the same statements, the same interpretation. In fact the preachers have a few ready-made sermons: five, six, seven. So they go on changing one week this sermon, another week another sermon. Those who have been coming to listen to them for years know every sermon; the moment the preacher starts, they know what is going to happen and they relax and close their eyes.

But with machines, things are very certain, because they don’t depend on any doing of yours. It is just like listening to music: you feel peaceful, harmonious. Those machines will lead you up to the third state: deep sleep, sleep without dreams.

And I have ordered them: they will be coming here soon and with one machine even a hundred persons can be plugged in. A hundred persons for ten minutes, then another hundred, then another hundred... the whole day the machine goes on creating meditative waves.

But if you think this is meditation then you are wrong. I will say this is good experience, and while you are in that moment of deep sleep... If you can be aware also from the very beginning, as the mind starts changing its waves you have to be more alert, more awake, more watchful of what is happening and you will see that mind is by and by falling asleep. If you can see the mind falling asleep, the one who is seeing the mind falling asleep is your being. And that is the authentic purpose of all meditation.

So these machines cannot create that awareness that awareness you will have to create. But these machines can certainly create within ten minutes a possibility which you may not be able to create in years of effort. So I am not against these hi-tech instruments, I am all for them. It is just that I want the people who are spreading those machines around the world to know that they are doing good work, but it is incomplete.

It will be complete only when the person in the deepest silence is also alert, like a small flame of awareness which goes on burning. Everything disappears, all around darkness and silence and peace, but an unwavering flame of awareness remains.

If the machine can be used in the right hands and people can be taught that the real thing will come not through the machine, the machine can create the very essential ground in which that flame can grow. But that flame depends on you, not on the machine.

So I am in favor of those machines on the one hand and on the other hand I am very much against them, because many, many people will think, “This is meditation.”

And people are getting deceived. What Maharishi Mahesh Yogi could not do, these machines will do immense harm. He has done harm to many people, but these machines will spread all over the world very soon. And they are simple, there is nothing much in it. It is only a question of creating certain waves.

Our musicians can learn from those machines, what waves they create, and they can start creating those waves through their instruments. There is no need for the machines, just the musicians can create those waves for all of you and all of you will start falling asleep! But if you can remain awake even in the deepest sleep, when you see that just one step more and you will become unconscious, you have learned a secret. That machine can be used beautifully.

And this is true about all machines of the world. In the right hands they can be used tremendously for the benefit of mankind. In the wrong hands they can become hindrances. And unfortunately, there are so many wrong hands.…

Already they are spreading in America, in Europe, and better and better mechanisms are being developed.

One of my sannyasins you may remember Proper Sagar. His letter has come to me today... because he was refused entry at Bombay airport. He could not enter India. He tried from Kathmandu there he was refused. Because they have his name on a list at every airport around India, he could not enter. So finally he went to Hawaii and met a woman who works with crystals and he started working with her. The woman is old and he proved a good, healthy young man to help her.

Now Proper Sagar has created a carpet. All around the carpet there are crystals, and the carpet has electric wires running inside. And with those electric wires he creates the same kind of wavelength. So you don’t even have to plug your ears, you just lie down on the carpet and the carpet does the meditation! You feel great, and Proper Sagar goes on changing the wavelength.

He has sent me pictures of his carpet. This is great, but on one carpet how many people will you be able to manage? It can be done around the whole Buddha Hall! It is simple technology to change the wavelength, and as the wavelength changes you will start feeling drowsy, sleepy.

But this is not meditation, this is a dangerous deception. If it is not in the right hands then the person will go home thinking he has meditated, and he has only been lying on Proper Sagar’s carpet! Neither Proper Sagar knows what meditation is nor the carpet knows what meditation is, but that

fellow has got the idea that he has meditated. And people are giving money, a hundred dollars for ten minutes. Not costly... if real meditation is available for a hundred dollars for ten minutes, I don’t think it is costly.

But it is not meditation, it is simply a change of the radio waves that are continuously moving around you in the air.

I think within a week the machine will be here. You can all first experience what the machine can give you, and then I will tell you what you can get out of the machine which the machine cannot give you, but it can be certainly helpful as an experience. Otherwise for many people meditation remains only a word. They think that some time they will meditate, and there remains a doubt whether anybody meditates or not.

Proper Sagar has informed me that “I am now trying, Osho, so that even Dynamic Meditation can be done on the carpet.” And I think it is possible, because the question is... you will be jumping on the carpet and the carpet will be changing the electric waves in your body. And he does not know “Yaa-Hoo” yet. Otherwise, with “Yaa- Hoo” and the magic carpet that he has, within ten minutes... you enter inside, and after ten minutes a Gautam Buddha goes out!

Just a little dance, “Yaa-Hoo” and see you in the other world! There is no need to do it again and again.

But in the West the mind is mechanical, the approach is mechanical; they want to reduce everything to a machine, and they are capable of reducing it.

But there are things which are beyond the capacity of any machine. Awareness cannot be created by any machine, it is beyond the scope of any hi-tech. But what hi-tech can give you can certainly be used, so when I was informed I immediately ordered that the best, the latest machine should be sent here so I can show my people both things. I can show them what the machine can do and tell them that this is not meditation, and also can tell them that this can be used as a very beautiful jumping ground into meditation.

And once you have tasted awareness perhaps a few times the machine may be helpful, so it becomes more and more clear and your awareness becomes more and more separate from the silence that the machine is creating. Then you should start doing it without the machine. And once you have learned to do it without the machine, the machine has helped you immensely.

But people should not believe in machines too much.

I have heard about a man who was uneducated, could not read. He went to the optician and said, “Just look and check my eyes, because I cannot read.”

So the optician said, “There is no problem, I will check and I will give you glasses and you will be able to read.”

The man said, “Are you certain?”

The optician said, “There is no problem, I am doing it every day.”

But the man said, “One thing you should know I am uneducated!”

The optician said, “Then it is very difficult. Glasses I can give you, but education? If you don’t even recognize the alphabet then glasses will not help. Perhaps your eyes are all right and they don’t need glasses, but you need a certain education.”

But glasses can be helpful if you are able to read and your eyes are not functioning properly. Then glasses can enhance the power, help your eyes. And this is the situation with every machine.

Pradeepa, in just a few days... because in India everything takes such a long time. The machines may have already reached Bombay airport, but to take them out of customs is just anybody’s guess: one week, two weeks, three weeks... Here things go so slow.

One of my friends... he was very old, but we had a certain deep affinity. A case was started against him in 1915, because he had written a book of history which was different from the books which the British government had approved. Although he was right, the government did not want those facts to be taught to the people because they were against the British government.

So the case was against him, the publisher, the printer, the owner of the press against four parties. And the case was so complicated, because what he had written was absolutely factual, right; you could not just deny it. It was self-evident. So it went on from one court to another court, to the high court, to the supreme court. Out of four, three of the parties died; only the writer remained.

His name was Pandit Sunderlal. He was really a very authentic, sincere man. All the judges who tried his case died. All the advocates, for or against, were gone. Because the case went on and on, even the government which had started it was finished, in 1947. But the case continued.

I inquired of him in 1975 he had become very old “When is your case going to end?” He said, “It cannot end unless I die. Then they will close it, but otherwise it will continue because they cannot accept defeat and they cannot allow me to be victorious. All the facts are in my favor, and the strangest thing is that the government that started the case those facts were against that government that government is gone, the country is independent. But bureaucracy works in a strange way. Those files have to be completed, so they are not doing anything. They simply go on postponing, and they are simply waiting for me to die.”

He died and the case was closed. But for sixty years... a case that can be decided in six hours, not more than that! But in this country...

I came to know, in a family I was staying with, that they received a letter written to their grandfather who has been dead for almost fifty years. And the letter was sent not from a very faraway planet, but just from a village eighty miles away. It traveled so slowly... even I wondered how it managed to travel so slowly. Eighty miles in fifty years?

But it happens in many places. Every year some case happens: some letter has traveled for thirty- six years; a few letters never reach they start the journey, but... Perhaps some time they will reach, but you will not be here and neither will the person to whom you have addressed the letter.

Files don’t move. Just go into any office and you will see on every table, file upon file. It seems nobody is doing anything but just every day protecting the files. And people go on bribing them: “My file pull it out and put it first.” But they don’t know: somebody else comes and he bribes; his file comes on top of yours. So there is nothing that you can do, and those people go on collecting bribes.

In this country, bribery is not a crime, it is simply friendliness. For centuries, India has been bribing even God. People go to the temple and say, “If a child is born to my wife and if he is a boy, remember I will bring one coconut and sweets as a present to you.” If this is not bribery, then what is?

So the country has been traditionally accustomed to it. Nobody seems to think that anything is wrong in it: I am doing your work, bringing your file, which is hundreds of files down, to the top. Naturally some prasad, some baksheesh, some friendly gesture... But then somebody else comes, and his file... And nobody wants his table to be clean of files, because those files are so productive. If you don’t have any file on your table, you are a beggar; you don’t have anything.

I have heard about a friend who became a clerk in a collectorate, and he was a very efficient person. He managed to dispose of all the files in one day. The collector himself told him, “You idiot! Now what are your sources of earning? Are you thinking that you are going to live only on your wages? Those files have been on this table... one knows not how long. Many collectors have come and gone, the files have remained there. They were sources of income.”

But now these machines will be available as sources of income. Just as you go into a barber’s salon, you go into a meditator’s shop, give a hundred dollars in America; in India a hundred rupees will do meditate for ten minutes and go home. And think about yourself that you are a great religious person.

Now there is a danger from these mechanisms. Soon you will see that churches and temples and mosques will install these machines, because otherwise they will lose their customers.

I have told you about a church... An old man used to come with his grandchild and he used to sleep. That was not a problem; the problem was that soon he would start snoring. Many times the preacher said to him, privately, that “You are a great member of our congregation, but your snoring disturbs many other sleepers. I have no objection, but many people come to me and say, ‘That old man snores too much. We cannot sleep at all. And he is such a regular person that he comes first into the church every Sunday.’” Finally, the priest found a way. He talked to the child. He said, “I will give you one rupee if you can keep your old man awake.”

The child said, “How will I keep him awake?”

The priest said, “It is easy. Whenever he starts snoring, you start hitting him. He will be angry with you, but you are getting one rupee.”

He said, “Done let us see what happens.”

The boy did not allow his grandfather to snore at all that day. The old man was very angry. Many times he looked at him and he said, “You never used to be such... what are you doing? You just listen to the sermon.” On the way home, he said, “What is the matter? Why are you harassing me?”

The boy said, “It is a business. The priest is giving me one rupee to keep you awake.”

The old man said, “You idiot! I will give you two rupees, just let me sleep silently. And remember, that priest will make signs towards you: ‘Wake the old man!’ Don’t bother, just go on looking at him directly without any fear.”

The boy said, “I want an advance, because you always talk great things and nothing happens.” The old man said, “This is too much. An advance?”

He said, “Otherwise, I am going to follow the priest. He has already given me one rupee.”

So the old man gave him two rupees on the second Sunday, and slept heartily and snored as loudly as possible without any fear.

The priest was very much worried. He looked at the child, and the child was sitting straight, as if he had completely forgotten. Many times the priest made indications, but the child did not pay any attention. So after the meeting he took the child aside and said, “You are such a cheat! I have told you and I have given you one rupee; I was going to give you one rupee today.”

The boy said, “Now one rupee will not do. My old man has given me an advance of two rupees. Have you guts enough to give me three rupees in advance?”

The priest said, “I am a poor priest, and in this competition... you are a very nasty fellow!” He said, “Business is business. Otherwise I am going to follow the advice of my grandfather.”

In churches, in synagogues, all is simply talk and talk, which people have heard thousands of times, meaningless. But it is just that they have to go there to show themselves, that they belong to the society. It is a formality. Otherwise, people would start thinking that they were becoming rebellious, or something was wrong. So it is a social function.

As psychoanalysis became important in Western countries, and the people who used to come for advice and confession to the priest... they were the customers, because the priest would give them a punishment: ten dollars, twenty dollars, whatever the coin. These same people started going to the psychoanalyst, who was more educated, more sophisticated, although you had to pay more too. But people’s minds are strange. If you have to pay more, you think you are getting a really great thing. If you have to pay nothing, you think that it does not have any significance.

The psychoanalyst now earns the most in comparison to any other profession in the whole world. And the clients are the same those who used to confess in the Catholic Church are now confessing on the psychoanalyst’s couch. The priests became concerned “This is competition, and a dangerous thing; it is growing. More and more psychoanalysts, more and more therapies, and people are disappearing from the churches.”

Now it is part of every Christian missionary’s education to study psychoanalysis. I was invited to one of their theological colleges, which is the biggest in the East. I was surprised to see a department

of psychoanalysis. I said, “What are you doing with psychoanalysis? Jesus has not talked about it. In fact, he himself needed psychoanalysis! But the Jews had no idea what to do...”

If Sigmund Freud had been born before Jesus and he was a Jew also Jesus would not have been crucified. He would be lying on the couch of Sigmund Freud, confessing that “This idea tortures me that I am the only begotten son of God. However I try, it does not leave me. I dream about it. Even in the waking hours, I feel I am the only begotten son of God.” There would have been no Christianity. But fortunately, Sigmund Freud was born two thousand years afterwards.

But both are Jews, both are Jewish concerns, and both are earning more than any other firm in the world and they are competitors!

These machines will soon be found in every church, because otherwise they will become competitors. They will give you a certain kind of solace. That’s why I became interested that before the disease spreads, we should make it clear to the world that these machines don’t give you meditation.

Meditation is not something which a machine can give. But certainly these machines can be very useful and can be used to prepare the ground for meditation to grow. So in a way I am very favorable and in another way I am absolutely against. What these machines can do is dangerous in the sense that you can be deceived, you can start feeling that you are a great meditator. You have the machine... and there are small machines which individuals can have. There are bigger machines in which four persons can join together. And the bigger machine, in which four persons can meditate together, has the capacity to just go on adding more and more earphones to it and hundreds of people can meditate together. We will manage it here, because it has to be made clear to the world that this is not meditation but it is a very good preparation for meditation.

And once you have had a few experiences, then there is no need of

the machine. Then you know what happens: you can close your eyes and you can make it happen. Then it has a beauty of its own.

So Pradeepa, you need not be worried. Your vipassana group is not in danger! Now, before our meditations...

Premdipa has written:

Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,

RECENTLY WHEN YOU HAVE BEEN TALKING ABOUT MEDITATION, I FEEL GUILT ARISING IN ME FOR NOT MEDITATING.

And I have been telling you again and again not to feel guilty for anything! Forget all about meditation, but there is no need to feel guilt. Because guilt will destroy your life much more than anything else

can. It will destroy your joy, it will destroy your love, it will destroy your peace. And what is the reason that you don’t feel like meditating?

You say, “I FEEL SO FULL WITH MY EMOTIONS, TAKING IN THE SPICES OF LIFE AND ENJOYING JUST BEING HERE, THAT I DON’T EVEN WANT TO MEDITATE.”

Who is telling you to meditate? At least you cannot blame me. All I am saying is: enjoy life and the spices and just be here, and there is no need of any meditation.

Meditation is from the same root as ‘medicine’. If you are healthy enough, there is no need to feel guilty that you are not taking medicine. Sick people need medicine. You are perfectly healthy, enjoying life and its spices, enjoying just being here. That’s perfectly good. You need not ask FORGIVE ME FOR SAYING THIS, FOR I KNOW YOU HAVE SPOKEN SO MUCH ON THE

BEAUTY AND RELAXATION OF MEDITATION. In fact, I should ask you: Forgive me that I have spoken so much on the beauty and relaxation of meditation that it has created guilt in you.

Now you are creating guilt in me!

AND I HAVE EXPERIENCED GLIMPSES OF PURE ECSTASY AND UNBOUNDED JOY THAT ARE TOTALLY INEXPRESSIBLE.

Great, Premdipa! Then what more meditation do you want? You already have it. But the trouble is... you say,

BUT I AM ENJOYING THIS LOVE, THIS CRAZINESS HERE EVEN YOUR HEART SURGERY SO MUCH THAT I DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT MEDITATING.

Then who is writing this question?

I LOVE YOU WITH MY WHOLE BEING.

Just don’t do that. Because I am alone and you are too many and if everybody loves me with his whole being, you will kill me! Just a poor soul... your whole being! And ask anybody everybody loves me with his whole being, and I have to remain hiding in my room because if somebody comes and starts loving me with his whole being then it is the end of my life!

Just a little love is enough.

I am a very contented man, I don’t ask much. Just a little “Yaa-Hoo” that’s enough.

AND I CANNOT THANK YOU ENOUGH FOR EVERYTHING.

My god! I don’t remember that I have done anything to you!

BUT I HAVE NO LONGING TO PURSUE THESE GLIMPSES ANY FURTHER. CAN THIS BE, OR AM I TOTALLY ON THE WRONG TRACK?

I hope that you are totally on the wrong track, because I don’t want to meet somebody who loves me with his whole being, who does not want to meditate, and who already has experiences of pure ecstasy and unbounded joy that are totally inexpressible. And who does not want to meditate who not only does not want to meditate, he does not even think about it!

Then I am puzzled: either you are on the wrong track... or perhaps you are cuckoo.

Pope the Polack is on his world pilgrimage. He stops in San Francisco to bless the people and take part in a holy mass at the cathedral.

Claude, a transvestite, happens to be sitting next to the aisle as the pope comes past on his way to the altar, swinging the incense burner.

“Hey, sweetheart,” says Claude to a startled Pope the Polack, “I just love your gown. But did you know that your handbag is on fire?”

You must be the same type of person.

Ezra Grubelberg fell out of a fourth-story window. While he is lying flat on the ground with a big crowd around him, a policeman walks over and asks, “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Ezra replies, “I just got here.”

Grandma Faginbaum walks into the pub with a parrot on her finger. She holds it up and shouts, “I will screw the first guy who can guess the weight of this parrot.”

After a long silence, a drunk in the back of the bar yells out, “Two hundred kilos.” Grandma whirls round and says, “Close enough!”

You seem to belong to these people.

One night, Paddy and Sean are stumbling along some railway tracks when Sean turns to Paddy and says, “I hate this staircase. The steps are too far apart.”

“I don’t mind that,” says Paddy, “the thing that is killing me is the low hand-rails.”

Bernie Bernstein phones Goldberg and Finkelstein, the merchants. “Put me through to Mr. Finkelstein, please,” says Bernie.

“I am afraid Mr. Finkelstein has gone out, sir,” replies the secretary. “Then get me Mr. Goldberg,” says Bernie.

“I am afraid Mr. Goldberg is tied up at present,” says the girl. “Okay,” says Bernie, “I will call back.” Ten minutes pass.

“Mr. Goldberg, please,” says Bernie.

“Mr. Goldberg is still tied up,” answers the girl. “I will phone back,” says Bernie. Half an hour later... “Get me Mr. Goldberg,” demands Bernie.

“I am terribly sorry, sir,” says the girl, “but Mr. Goldberg is still tied up.” “I will phone back,” snaps Bernie. And another half hour passes.

“Get me Goldberg!” shouts Bernie.

“I have got dreadful news, sir,” says the girl, “Mr. Goldberg is still tied up.”

“My god,” screams Bernie. “This is ridiculous! How can you run a business this way? One partner is out all day and the other is tied up for hours on end. What is going on there?”

“Well, you see, sir,” explains the secretary, “whenever Mr. Finkelstein goes out, he ties up Mr. Goldberg.”

It is the mailman’s last day on the job, and he is feeling mixed emotions. On the one hand he is glad to be retiring, but on the other hand he will miss seeing the beautiful young married woman he has fancied for the last few years.

He is shocked and delighted when she opens her door for this last time, wearing a see-through gown, and invites him in. She drags him up to the bedroom and makes passionate love to him.

Afterwards she cooks him a delicious breakfast. When he is about to leave, the young woman goes to her purse, takes out a dollar bill and gives it to him.

“I don’t understand,” says the satisfied mailman. “You are going to pay me as well?”

“It was my husband’s idea,” the woman explains, “when I told him you were retiring and suggested we give you something, he said ‘Screw him, give him a dollar’.”

“The breakfast,” she adds proudly, “was my idea.” Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

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