14 The way goes through

‌CHAPTER 14

The way goes through

2 April 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

Question 1 BELOVED OSHO...

GURDJIEFF IS REPORTED TO HAVE COMMENTED: “ORDINARY MEN NEVER EXPERIENCE TRUE SUFFERING AND SORROW, FOR THEY LIVE MECHANICAL AND ROUTINE LIVES, AND THEIR TROUBLES ARE ROUTINE, AUTOMATIC AND INESCAPABLE. BUT A MAN WHO HAS WILLFULLY UNDERTAKEN THE EXTRAORDINARY AND UNNECESSARY BURDEN OF THE WORK, HE ALONE KNOWS THE TASTE OF REAL SORROW AND SICKNESS OF HEART, FOR HE WILL SUFFER PAIN AND PRESSURES THAT LIFE DOES NOT ORDINARILY REQUIRE.”

BELOVED OSHO, EVEN THOUGH YOU TELL JOKES AND FILL OUR HEARTS WITH LAUGHTER WHILE SILENTLY CUTTING OUR HEADS WITH YOUR INVISIBLE SWORD, I FEEL SOMETIMES YOU SUFFER MOST, FROM OUR SLEEP AND UNAWARENESS. PLEASE FORGIVE US.

Jivan Mada, before I talk about your question I have to remind you that Vimal had committed suicide and has gone to Goa – perhaps before committing suicide, or after committing suicide; that I don’t know. But I have told him that “although God is dead, you can still pray. Once in a while – one does not know – somebody acting in God’s place answers.”

Some prayers are answered. At least Vimal’s prayer is answered. And that poor Maneesha, because of his prayer, is suffering from a headache.

Now it will be graceful for Vimal to pray again: “Please forgive me; I take my prayer back. And don’t torture that poor girl.”

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But it proves that somebody, somewhere, certainly answers prayers.

Vimal’s existence here creates great problems. Perhaps he has committed suicide and he still has not died. Perhaps he is a resurrection. And perhaps he is none but a ghost, dressed up like Vimal.

Niskriya, take a better look – because I have heard that last night there were many ghosts. And when I left, I saw three who were already entering the hall – with absolute uniform, with my mala! And I was not alone; Avesh was a witness, Shunyo was a witness. And they did a good “Yaa-Hoo!”

It really comes from the world of ghosts, this mantra “Yaa-Hoo!” You will not find it, in any human scripture. It belongs to the world beyond death.

Now it is a question mark, whether this Vimal is exactly the same Vimal who used to be here, or is just a materialization of a ghost? Before I answer your question, this is far more important. He is sitting just by the side of Mukta and Neelam – you both should poke him and see whether there is something inside or not. Because when you poke a ghost you find only skeletons, you don’t find anything else. And it is very difficult for a ghost even to giggle; laughter is out of the question. It is impossible. Even if the ghost is very fresh and has not yet forgotten the ways of when he used to be alive, laughter is very difficult.

So that should be the criterion. If Vimal can give a good laughter when Mukta pokes him... because we have to be very careful. These creatures are all around, sitting on the trees, entering into the crowd – and particularly into my people, because my people don’t mind; they know that the man who is sitting by their side, or particularly the woman, is not real. But they accept.

They are harmless people in a way. If you don’t harass them they will not follow you. Unless you invite them, they will not come to your party.

I have never come across a nasty ghost; all ghosts are holy. That’s why Christians go on believing in the Holy Ghost. Although the ghost made a virgin woman pregnant, yet he remains holy – the ghost cannot do anything unholy; by his very nature he is a very religious being.

It seems that Vimal, if he is a really holy ghost, will manage to take back the prayer. The prayer was almost a curse, and Maneesha is suffering with a migraine. This is not good, just to get into her place.

So take away her migraine! It is now your duty: go to her, ask her forgiveness, so that she is back again tomorrow without any trouble. It does not look right for ghosts to harass people, innocent people, with migraines. And now he is sitting here very virtuously.…

Jivan Mada, your question is certainly of very extraordinary significance. Only Gurdjieff, a man like Gurdjieff, could have made such a statement. But it is in fact true. He is saying:

ORDINARY MEN NEVER EXPERIENCE TRUE SUFFERING AND SORROW, FOR THEY LIVE MECHANICAL AND ROUTINE LIVES.

It is not that there is no suffering, but they are accustomed to it. Secondly, their suffering is repressed. They live on a very thin layer of consciousness; underneath is the whole hell. Once in a while it

surfaces, but mostly the ordinary man lives his whole life without knowing how much suffering, how much misery he was carrying within himself.

In a way he is fortunate, and in a way the most unfortunate, because if he had become aware of this misery and suffering then there would have been nobody who could have prevented him from getting out of this unconsciousness, this routine mechanical life, and becoming an awakened, conscious being.

But I say on the other hand he is fortunate that he does not know that he is carrying a whole hell within himself. Just a little prick in his bag and you will see how much misery, how much suffering. People don’t even talk about these things, because even these words may provoke their own suffering to surface. People don’t talk about death.…

From my very childhood I used to go to every funeral. My father used to say, “People go to somebody’s funeral who is a relative or a friend or in some professional way connected. You are not connected with anybody, but it seems that whoever dies is your relative! You won’t go to school that day, you will go to the funeral – and nobody has invited you, nobody has even informed you! In fact people try to prevent the information from reaching to you, because you are an unnecessary harassment. People think, ‘Why have you come here?’”

But I continued to go to every funeral that I came to know was happening. Whatever work I was involved in, I would drop then and there, and I would join the funeral procession. Even the people would see me and wonder: am I following them?

I said, “I am not following you, I simply want to see what you do there.” They said, “You have seen – so many times!”

I said, “I still want to confirm it. A single exception and I will drop the whole idea.” But without any exception I found the principle to be true, that when people take a dead body to the funeral, even on the funeral grounds they don’t sit looking at the funeral. They sit with their back towards the funeral pyre and talk about a thousand other things – but not about death, which is the most important thing that is happening. A man is burning just behind them and they are talking of stupid things... “What movie is going on, have you seen it?”

I could not believe that people are afraid to face things, because to face them means to know intensely that every death is a declaration of your death; that today you are seeing somebody on the funeral pyre and tomorrow somebody else will see you on the funeral pyre. They want to avoid the fact. Even to visualize it, themselves on the funeral pyre, shakes their whole being.

That’s what Gurdjieff is saying: True suffering and sorrow never become the experience of the ordinary man. And by “ordinary man”... he is not condemning anybody. He is simply saying, every unconscious man is an ordinary man. He is not even aware of himself – what can be more ordinary? He has lived a life of seventy years and he has not come across himself.

But the reason is that people create a barrier between themselves and their unconscious reality, which contains lives of suffering, pain. They are afraid to face it. And unless they face it, they cannot

face that which is beyond suffering, that which is blissful, that which is our very nature – our eternity, our joy, our dance, our flowers.

People cannot reach their own flowers. A great barrier of unconscious repressed suffering...

And you know how suffering is repressed. For example somebody dies and you start crying. Immediately some wise guy is going to tell you, “Don’t be emotional; death is a natural thing, it happens to everybody. There is nothing in it. And it is not manly – tears? are you a woman?”

Even small boys are told, “Don’t be girlish.” Their father has died and they cannot cry because that will expose them: they are not a man, unemotional, strong, courageous, who can face everything.

This crying and weeping is left for women.

But that does not mean that this statement is true only about men and not about women. It is more true about men, but it is also true about women. They also go on suppressing their sorrow, their misery, in different ways. Just the ways are different. They distract themselves in their jewelry, in the television, in shopping, in going here and there, just continuously talking yakety-yak, yakety-yak. They are avoiding something, escaping from something. They don’t want to see it; they want to forget the wounds that are inside.

So in a way they are fortunate, but not really. The real fortunate ones are those of whom Gurdjieff says, A MAN WHO HAS WILLFULLY UNDERTAKEN THE EXTRAORDINARY AND UNNECESSARY BURDEN OF THE WORK...

Just look at his words: no master has been able to make such statements; that’s why he was the most misunderstood man one can imagine. He is saying, A MAN WHO HAS WILLFULLY UNDERTAKEN THE EXTRAORDINARY AND UNNECESSARY BURDEN OF THE WORK... And

by ‘the work’ he means digging into your unconscious, going as deep as possible. Unless you reach to the very living source of your life you will have to suffer much.

It is unnecessary, he says, because you can live like an ordinary man. Nobody is forcing you. It is extraordinary, because ordinary people go to the church, not into themselves. They read the BIBLE, they don’t read their own unconscious. They worship in a temple, but they don’t expose themselves in meditation.

Gurdjieff used to call it “work” because it is undertaken only by very intelligent, courageous and strong people – for the simple reason that you can live without going into all this, you can just be a stationmaster your whole life, or a businessman or a clerk, or a priest. There is no need to go into such suffering and sorrow.

But you will not get rid of it. Even in your next life it will continue, and it will gather more suffering from this life. Each life, layer upon layer goes on collecting all that has not been lived, expressed, the unfinished, unlived, the repressed.

In Buddhism – and perhaps only in Buddhism – there is a technique to find out how many lives you have lived before. And the way is to count the layers, just as by cutting the tree you can know the

life of the tree by the circles, how many years, because each year one circle is made. So if the tree has been two hundred years old, you will find two hundred circles in the wood.

Exactly in the same way, every life leaves a circle of suffering and sorrow within you. It can be counted, how many lives you have been repressing, how many lives you have lived before. But the longer you have lived, the more difficult it becomes to enter into your inner kingdom.

The ordinary priest, the preacher, goes on talking about beautiful things – about good work, virtue, charity, sharing, and you will enter into the kingdom of God. It is not so easy. First you have to be finished with your whole unconscious. And that unconscious is what the mystics have called “the dark night of the soul.”

Only very intelligent people will take this unnecessary burden, because HE ALONE KNOWS THE TASTE OF REAL SORROW AND SICKNESS OF THE HEART, FOR HE WILL SUFFER PAIN AND PRESSURES THAT LIFE DOES NOT ORDINARILY REQUIRE.

You can live very superficially, you can avoid the dark night of the soul, but if you avoid the dark night of the soul, you are avoiding all your treasures. You are avoiding the very meaning of your life and existence. Hence the intelligent man takes the challenge and enters into the dark tunnel, which seems to be unending. But it ends one day. If you go on with courage, knowing that people have passed beyond it – that is the beauty of being with a master, because you know that at least one example is before you and with you, who is standing outside of the tunnel and who is constantly calling you to enter the tunnel... because unless you enter, you cannot get out of it. There is no way to bypass it.

There are thousands of frauds in the world and their work is to tell you how to bypass the darkness and the suffering and the sorrow and just become enlightened. Just a transcendental meditation, repeating a certain name, and you will become a realized soul. There is no connection in it, there is no authentic work. What will happen to your unconscious? What will happen to your collective unconscious? You are trying to bypass them, just to leave them. That is not the way.

The way goes through them. You have to cut them and pass through them, knowing perfectly that there is someone with you who has already passed beyond it. Not that you need, as an absolute necessity, the presence of a master – if you have the heart and the trust, even a Gautam Buddha, twenty-five centuries back, will do. It depends on your trust, because there have been people all over the world who are confirming it: “Just enter the darkness of the unconscious watchfully, awake, alert, because that is the only way to pass through it.” Awareness is the only bridge between you and your ultimate flowering.

Jivan Mada is asking,

Question 2

“BELOVED OSHO, EVEN THOUGH YOU TELL JOKES AND FILL OUR HEARTS WITH LAUGHTER, WHILE SILENTLY CUTTING OUR HEADS WITH YOUR INVISIBLE SWORD, I FEEL SOMETIMES YOU SUFFER MOST, FROM OUR SLEEP AND UNAWARENESS. PLEASE FORGIVE US.”

Jivan Mada, you have stumbled upon a truth. But as far as I am concerned, you are already forgiven. It is true that an authentic master suffers because of your unconsciousness, because of your mistrust, because of your betrayal. And there are so many ways which make the master suffer unnecessarily.

He could have avoided it. And there have been two categories of masters I have told you about: the arhatas and the bodhisattvas. The arhatas don’t suffer. They suffer their own past, their own unconscious, and once they are out of it they don’t want to have anything to do with anybody, because they know that now even to accept anybody as a disciple is to take a responsibility, a burden. And you work hard on a hundred persons; ninety-nine at least are going to betray you. At some point on the way they are going to leave you – and not only leave you, they are going to spread lies, allegations, because they have to protect their own ego. They have to protect, so that nobody can say that they have betrayed. In fact they are feeling deep guilt, and they have to cover it up.

You know what happened to Judas. After twenty-four hours he committed suicide. When Jesus was crucified – he had not realized it before, that things were going to go so far. He had not conceived that Jesus would be crucified, because he had not committed any crime. But Judas betrayed for a small sum of thirty silver pieces.

It is a very symbolic and meaningful incident, which Christians don’t discuss because they cannot understand what happened. Judas was the most important person around Jesus, the most cultured and the most educated and the most sophisticated. Naturally he had the desire that he would be proclaimed by Jesus as his successor. Just an ordinary desire – but seeing that Jesus was not going to proclaim anybody as a successor, he betrayed him.

He sold Jesus into the hands of the enemies. Still he was not aware – that’s what everybody is doing in sleep – he was not aware what were the implications. He was very happy that he got thirty silver pieces, but when he saw Jesus crucified, then the guilt. And the guilt was so much that he could even cover it up by telling people lies. The only way for him even to face himself was to commit suicide. He had degraded himself in his own eyes so much... but that is a very extreme case.

People go on betraying masters. At a certain point, when their own suffering becomes too much, they start projecting that suffering on the master – as if the master is doing it, as if he is forcing them to pass through this darkness: “You are responsible!” They don’t understand that the master is not creating your suffering, your suffering is already there; the master is simply helping you to pass through it. But because in your unconsciousness you have never accepted that “this suffering is mine,” naturally, when you come across it, a logical idea is to project it on the master. And naturally, many of those who feel such projections are going to be against the master.

Everybody has been betrayed – not by one, by many people. Gautam Buddha has been betrayed and Mahavira has been betrayed and Chuang Tzu has been betrayed; Jesus has been betrayed – and betrayed by people who were very intimate and close, but they could not see the point. And perhaps because they were so close, that’s why they could not see the point that it is your suffering that the master is trying to help you to pass through; it is your night, not his night. But you will think that it is his creation: “He is unnecessarily forcing me into self-torture.” He will look like an enemy.

It needs tremendous love, tremendous trust to know that the suffering is yours; the master is simply

trying to help you to get rid of it. And to get rid of it there is no other way than going through it – but go consciously.

Jivan Mada, it is absolutely right... and if my people understand it, it will help tremendously for their growth, for their realization, for their enlightenment. I want to make your burden as light as possible. Perhaps nobody has tried to make your burden as light as I am trying to make it. Gautam Buddha will not tell a joke just to make you laugh; neither will Mahavira tell a joke just to help you to take things non-seriously.

Sorrow and suffering and misery – everything has to be taken non-seriously, because the more seriously you take them, the more difficult it is to get out of them. The more non-serious you are... you can pass through the suffering, through the dark night, singing a song. And if one can pass through the dark night singing a song and dancing, then why unnecessarily torture yourself?

Make this whole journey from here to here just a beautiful laughing matter. So, let me do my work.…

Ruthie Finkelstein is not getting along with her husband, Moishe, and they have not had sex for a long time...

You should learn from Sardar Gurudayal Singh; he is going to be an enlightened man soon!

... One day, while she is shopping in the supermarket, Ruthie begins to feel very horny.

When she has paid, a good-looking high school boy offers to carry her groceries to her car. Ruthie gladly accepts, and as they are walking across the parking lot, she sidles up to him and whispers sexily in his ear, “I have an itchy pussy!”

“Well, Ma’am,” replies the boy, “you will have to point it out. All those Japanese cars look alike to me!”

... This was the place where Gurudayal Singh was needed, but he never gets into the right jokes in a right place at the right time. But Gurudayal is a very simple man. He always gets into wrong jokes – and I have been teaching him almost for fifteen years or more, but he will never enter into the right joke. Now he is silent, now he is relaxing. Now he will not laugh. He misses every right time!

Miss Goodbody goes with her class to Paris for a school trip. They are seeing all the sights, when Miss Goodbody realizes that little Ernie is missing. She leaves the rest of the class in a museum and goes looking for him.

After searching for some time, she finds little Ernie standing in the corner of a cabaret show, crying. “Why are you crying?” asks Miss Goodbody.

“Well,” sniffs Ernie, “my Mom told me that if I look at a naked woman, I will turn to stone – and now I feel something getting hard already.”

Joseph Mandelbaum and Benjamin Rosenblatt, partners in the garment industry, are having their worst season ever. Ten thousand Madras sports coats are hanging on the rack unsold, and bankruptcy is imminent.

Out of the blue, in walks a buyer from Australia looking for Madras sports jackets.

“Would you guys have any for sale?” asks the Australian, “I have been looking for them everywhere.”

After a brief pause to catch his breath, Joseph admits that there might be a few left. Soon a deal is concluded for ten thousand jackets, to be shipped to Australia at a handsome profit.

“There is one thing;” says the buyer, “for this large order I need to get confirmation from my home office. There should be no problem, so unless I send you a cable by the end of the week, the deal is on.”

The week creeps by, with the partners anxiously waiting to see if the Australian will change his mind.

At ten minutes to five on Friday, Benjamin is closing up the shop when there is a knock at the door and a voice shouts, “Telegram!”

The partners freeze. Trembling, Joseph grabs the cable and opens it. Suddenly his face lights up. “Bennie! Great news! Your wife just died!”

This is especially for Sardar Gurudayal Singh. Get into it! Paddy comes home with two black eyes.

“What happened to you?” asks Maureen.

“Well,” says Paddy, “I was riding on the bus this morning and there was a big fat woman sitting in front of me. She had her dress caught up in her crotch, so I pulled it out, and she punched me.”

“That accounts for one black eye,” says Maureen, “what about the other one?” “Well,” says Paddy, “I could see she did not like that, so I shoved it back in.”

Now, Gurudayal, should we have a little let-go? But remember, yesterday your let-go was not perfect. You enjoyed it too much.

You have to be silent. Let-go means, for one minute at least you are dead. But I saw you were enjoying being dead! This is not right. You have to correct it; otherwise you will have to do it every day!

I saw a few people even holding up their legs. This is not let-go! Let-go is impossible – how did those legs reach up? And you were still laughing and enjoying. You destroyed the whole... So this time, unless I call you back you have to be utterly dead, no sign of life.

Okay, Niskriya? Niskriya is allowed to take photographs. Ready?

Let go...

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