15 Never ask, \"who am i?\"

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‌CHAPTER 15

Never ask, “who am i?”

3 April 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

Question 1 BELOVED OSHO,

IN HIS BOOK, CODEX HAMMER, LEONARDO DA VINCI HAS WRITTEN:

“IT IS IMPOSSIBLE THAT ANYTHING OF ITSELF ALONE CAN BE CAUSE OF ITS CREATION, AND THOSE THINGS WHICH ARE OF THEMSELVES ARE ETERNAL.”

WOULD YOU LIKE TO SPEAK ON THIS?

Jivan Mada, the question is one of those which has been contemplated for centuries and yet no answer exists.

You have put it in the words of a philosophical treatise by Leonardo Da Vinci, known as CODEX HAMMER. His meaning may not have been apparent to you; it is something which every simple human being asks once in a while.

I will read Da Vinci’s statement, and would like to analyze it to its simplest form. Philosophers don’t like simplicity. They make complex problems out of the very obvious.

He is saying:

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE THAT ANYTHING OF ITSELF ALONE CAN BE CAUSE OF ITS CREATION, AND THOSE THINGS WHICH ARE OF THEMSELVES ARE ETERNAL.

Perhaps out of fear of a very cruel Christianity, which did not allow any freedom of thought, he has put a simple question in such a way that ordinarily you will not understand what he is talking about. In its simplest form, he is saying, “God cannot be the creator.”

Christianity and other religions believe in God as a creator because nothing can be without a cause, nothing can come out of nothing. There must be something out of which you can derive something else: a cause is needed for every effect. The world is the effect and God is the cause; he is the creator and we are the created.

Ordinarily, nobody objects to it because ordinarily nobody bothers about who created the world and why the world was created. It is out of your way – there are a thousand and one problems to be solved, one does not want to be loaded by another. So people simply accept it.

But the philosophical mind cannot accept it so easily. If the world needs a creator, then the creator also will need a creator; otherwise from where can he come? That leads one into a very absurd logic: then one God creates the world, another God creates the God, and so on you go on.

But somewhere you will have to stop. Somewhere – X, Y, Z – you will have to stop: that Z created all other Gods. But the problem remains the same: where does Z come from? And if Z can be eternal, without a cause, then why unnecessarily harass and make a fuss about the world? Existence itself can be eternal, there is no need for any creator. If finally you have to accept that something is eternal without being created by anyone – has been always and will remain always – God is not needed.

Then this existence itself is enough unto itself. It is eternal, there is no need for any creator to take unnecessary trouble.

But the priest will not allow a simple phenomenon, that existence is eternal. A God is absolutely needed. Not by you, not by existence, but by the priesthood of all the religions because without the God their temples become empty. All their scriptures become rubbish, all their rituals stupid, all their prayers childish; all their conceptions of God, the fixations of psychologically sick people.

God is absolutely needed for millions of priests all around. That is the commodity they sell, that is their market. You take God away and what will happen to the pope? The poor guy will have to go back to Poland, open a grocery shop. I don’t think he is qualified for anything more.

But right now, God is there and everything is perfectly right. Then there is a hierarchy: the son of God, Jesus Christ, and the representative of Jesus, the pope and the cardinals and the bishops and the priests. A long line of parasites, and their life is possible only if God created the world.

One thing is certain – it does not need any philosophical mind. Looking at the world, it is certain it has not been created by any God. Such chaos! Such continuous wars.…

Just today I became aware that there are, even this very moment, twenty-five wars going on around the earth. Small wars; that’s why nobody is bothered about them. Their definition of war is: if ten thousand people are killed, it is a war. There are twenty-five wars around the world at this very moment in which more than ten thousand people have been killed.

It seems man’s only business for centuries has been to fight, to kill, to rape. Something seems to have gone wrong in the human mind: either some nuts are loose or some nuts are too tight, but something needs to be repaired in a workshop.

This man as he exists cannot be created by a god. It can be created only by accidental evolution without any direction, without any goal, without any reason.

Existence is simply a directionless reality. It blossoms in many ways – in the flowers, in the stars, in the human eyes – but it is all accidental. There seems to be no direction at all. There seems to be no considered, pre-planned goal that humanity or the evolution of consciousness has to achieve.

You have to find your goal within yourself. It is not given to you, and there is nobody to enforce it upon you. That’s why... yesterday we were talking about George Gurdjieff, who said that the ordinary man does not suffer much; it is the extraordinary man who suffers and suffers unnecessarily. The extraordinary man takes over the question of a certain goal to be achieved, a certain reality to be realized.

The ordinary man is simply happy in producing children, every day going to the office, every day coming back to the same home. I mean respectable citizens, I don’t mean everybody comes to the same home every night. Some come in the evening, some come in the middle, some come in the morning, but anyway they come. And for what do they come? To take a shower and get ready for breakfast. Their whole life is a routine. Breakfast, lunch, coffee break... and life is not long; soon among these coffee breaks comes the final stop. People fall flat and stop breathing, not even telling anybody what they are doing and why. And why suddenly? Why have you chosen this moment?

People function almost like machines. You cannot ask a machine why it has broken and why, particularly at this moment... You cannot ask a car, “Why have you stopped? And particularly going to Bombay on the ghat – don’t you have any sense?” But nobody asks a machine.

Nobody asks you, “Why are you breathing? Do you have any answer?” If you think about it, you will be really worried that essential questions – why you are born, who was waiting for you, why you are creating an unnecessary crowd and thousands of problems... because the crowd goes on becoming bigger and bigger. The only rational question has been asked by the contemporary philosophical school, the existentialists: “Why don’t you commit suicide?” It won’t do to answer that “I don’t want to.” That is not the question. The question is why don’t you want to? What is the purpose? Why are you harassing people?

In fact, there is no answer.

In old Greece, there was a great philosopher, Zeno, who lived a long life – ninety years. And his teaching was that only retarded and stupid people can go on living. Intelligent people are bound to commit suicide the moment they realize that there is no reason. To go to bed and then get up early in the morning, then again the same routine, the same office file, the same boss... everything is the same. And finally you have to die, so why not now? Why take so much trouble reaching towards your grave? Why take seventy years?

And while going towards your grave you are not going silently, you are creating thousands of problems for others. The postman has to bring your mail and the milkman has to bring the milk.…

And millions of people are engaged in defense – for what? For people who are all going to die, what is the point of defense? The defense armies go on growing like mushrooms everywhere, and who are you defending? Once a person dies you cannot persuade him, “Please, this is not right. We have been arranging so much defense and you decided to stop breathing. Is it gentlemanly?” It is not even Catholic.…

Zeno taught, and it is said that thousands of intelligent people, his disciples, committed suicide. But he lived long – obviously, he had to, it was a responsibility. He was asked again and again, “Your disciples go on committing suicide because of your teachings – why don’t you commit?” He said, “I would have committed suicide long before, but because of this teaching... Who will teach? I have a purpose, and I will try to live as long as possible because once I am dead nobody is going to teach my philosophy.”

And certainly nobody ever taught his philosophy to anybody else. Once he was dead, people were relieved that a great harassment... because he was asking questions which you cannot answer. It is not that he knows the answer, he is simply pointing out to you that there is no answer.

Unanswerable existence has made it possible for millions of priests to exploit you because they give you a sense of direction. They give you the feeling that you are needed by God, that you are created by God; that you are not unnecessary, that you are here to fulfill a certain destiny.

God is absolutely necessary for the priests and their profession, and God is absolutely necessary for others. It is not an authentic answer but something is better than nothing: “God has created you.”

And have you ever looked at your face in the mirror? Can you see any reason why he should create you? What kind of revenge is he taking? And he has not only created you, he has created your wife, your children, all kinds of nonsense. And still you have to worship him! If you don’t worship him, he will throw you into hell.

Strange. We have never asked to be created in the first place. We have never asked that we should be allowed to live. He has created all kinds of desires and longings, greed, jealousy – he is responsible for all that – but you will suffer. He has given you sexuality, and the priest goes on teaching you celibacy. Strange. And the priest is the representative of God – he should teach sexuality, if he is really a representative.

If you look around, except me nobody is a real representative of God.

You are teaching celibacy – strange – and still you believe in God? And I DON’T believe in God; still I am the only representative for the simple reason that my understanding is, there is no reason to ask why you are in existence.

You simply are.

I am, and nobody can ask me why. Even I cannot ask why I am, I simply find myself – I am. It is not a question.…

There used to be a great wise man in India, Raman Maharshi, whose whole teaching was, “Ask yourself: Who am I? Who am I?” How stupid is the very idea! You are, that’s all. The question of “who” does not arise.

If you ask too much, you will say, “I am Niskriya.” Deeper than that, there is nobody: you have reached the bottom level of existence.

I don’t teach you to ask yourself “Who am I?” Are you mad or something? You are yourself, I am myself – everything is clear, there is no confusion. I have never seen anybody confused about identity, who he is. Certainly you know who you are – otherwise, how will you recognize your wife?

Next time you see her you try: be at a loss...”Who is this woman and what is she doing here?” But you recognize her, you recognize your kids.

... Although I have never seen a kid who is not nasty. All great men have remained bachelors for a simple reason: to avoid kids. It is always good to see others’ kids and say, “How beautiful!” But never have your own, because they are such nasty people!

There is no reason for anybody to be here, but what can we do? We are here. And certainly, God has not created us.

The very idea of God creating humanity, the world, and all living beings, is absurd. Because what purpose does it serve? The universe was perfectly silent, stars were shining, there was no need for all this strange crowd who knows nothing else but to fight.

And once you accept that God has created you, you have destroyed your freedom. You have destroyed your dignity, you have lost your soul. You are only a puppet, your strings are in somebody else’s hands. He says, “Dance!” – you dance. He says, “Let go!” – you let go. You know it well. In a little while, we will see it happen!

If your being is created by God then you are not a living entity, but only a commodity. Things are made, beings are not made. Have you seen anybody making beings? Yes, people create children but they are not the makers of the children. And they don’t know what they are doing.

And they were never thinking of children when they were doing it! Just the idea would have disturbed them – “My god, what am I doing?” Children are as accidental to you as you are accidental to existence.

Life is an eternal source of energy. Nobody has created it.

And it is of great importance that we don’t have any purpose: otherwise, we would have been machines. Machines have purpose: a car has a purpose, a railway train has a purpose, but you don’t have any purpose, because you are a being and not a thing.

You have a dignity, a freedom.

In fact, those who have known themselves, their understanding is that you are all gods. Nobody has created you. You have been here forever and you will be here forever.

Hence the teachings of the awakened ones are not of worship, ritual, mantras; the teachings of the awakened ones are how to be awake and realize your eternity. And then life becomes just a play, just a game. Do you think football has a purpose? Everybody knows that it is just a game.

Life is a play, a playfulness.

There is no God and there has never been.

And man’s freedom is absolute. He need not worship anybody, he has only to discover his own potential, his own creativity. What can he do? It is not a question of Who am I? The question is, What can I do? What I can be? As far as who I am, that has already happened. I am. Now the question is, What should I do? Should I be a singer, a dancer, a poet, a mystic, a lover? A man of peace, of great depths, a man of immense silence and joy?

What I should be is the question.

“Who am I?” is useless, unnecessary, wasting your time.

Once this penetrates in your intelligence, that “I am here and I have enough energy – either I can destroy or I can create, either I can be a god or I can be a devil”... these are the real questions.

My effort is to make all of you gods.

The moment you are enlightened... that is another name of the declaration that “I am a god. I am not created, I have been always here in different forms and I will be here in different forms. We will be meeting again and again on different planets, in different times, in different ages, but we cannot disappear.”

So whenever somebody dies, remember a Zen monk, Lieh Tzu. His last words were, before closing his eyes... he said to his disciples, “See you again.” He closed his eyes himself. Ordinarily, others have to close the eyes, because a dead man cannot move his eyelids, so every dead man remains with open eyes. And the open eyes of a dead man create terror, because you can see only the whites of his eyes. His pupils have moved upwards. It looks dangerous, so people immediately close the eyes.

But Lieh Tzu closed his eyes himself. And before closing them he said, “See you in another time, in another place, but see you again.” This is a man worth calling a man, a man of dignity, who does not believe in death.

Those who believe in God are bound to believe in death because if they are created, they can be uncreated. They are only a combination of parts. They can be taken apart, they can be put together again.

But man cannot be put together again for the simple reason that he is not the body; neither the brain nor the mind but something far deeper, just a pure awareness of I am.

Never ask “Who am I?” The moment you ask “Who am I?” you are asking a wrong question, you are on a wrong track. Soon you will find you are Niskriya! I say to you that you will find it. Try

tonight: whenever you close your eyes and ask “Who am I?” an answer will come from inside: “I am Niskriya.” Not only to Niskriya – it will not come to Niskriya, it will come to everybody else. However you try, you will not be able to get through; Niskriya will be there.

Ask a wrong question and get a wrong person.

Jivan Mada, all that is, has always been. Isness is unchanging. Everything changes – but isness, the very essence of life, remains the same.

Ruthie Finkelstein finally persuades her husband, Moishe, to go for a checkup. “You look terrible,” says Doctor Bones. “Do you drink?”

“Why, yes,” says Moishe, “I start every day with a bottle of cognac.” “And with that cough,” continues Bones, “you are probably a smoker.” “You bet,” says Moishe, “three packs a day for me.”

“Look Mr. Finkelstein,” says Bones, “you are not a healthy man. You are going to have to give up smoking and drinking right away, and that is an order. And before you go, that will be thirty dollars for my advice.”

“Thanks, doc,” snaps Moishe, “but who is taking it?”

Nobody takes advice, everybody goes on doing stupid things. And the most stupid is to inquire, “Who am I?” That is the beginning of going insane. Certainly you will find somebody that you are: perhaps Jesus Christ or Hazrat Mohammed or Gautam Buddha; somebody you will find. It does not matter whether it is Niskriya or Gautam Buddha; the very idea – Who am I? – points towards a wrong answer. It can never lead you to yourself.

If Raman Maharshi had told me to sit down and inquire, “Who am I?” it is absolutely certain, that I would have told the old man, “You have gone senile. I know very well who I am and you also know who you are. There is no confusion.” Although his purpose was different: he was trying so that you could find by and by that “I am not the body, I am not the mind, I am not the brain.” And when you find that nothing remains in your hands, this is you.

But you have not found the answer to “Who am I?” You have found yourself, which you were always, whether you have looked into it or not.

Religions have created hypothetical questions – God and the description of God, how many hands he has and how many eyes. Obviously, he cannot be so poor as we are: just two eyes, nothing to look backward with. There are religions whose gods have four eyes. Naturally, there is no need to turn – they can go this way, they can go backwards, without any trouble. It is a very human weakness – you will have to turn around and look back. And the Hindu god has one thousand eyes, because four looks like not very much. Just double the number human beings have, it is not right – one thousand. But nobody bothers to think that if you have one thousand eyes, will you have space

for anything else? I have been concerned about it: you will be all over eyes and eyes and eyes and eyes. No ears, no mouth, no nose, just a collection of eyes – it does not seem to be a great prospect.

Another idea in the mythology of Hindus is that God has one thousand hands. It means there must be two Gods – one has one thousand eyes, one has one thousand hands – because you can’t have one God with one thousand hands and one thousand eyes together. It will be too crowded – very busy – and nothing will be accomplished by such a God. Once you take anything hypothetical as a truth, you start growing the truth... because you have to ask questions like whether he has a beard or not.…

Gautam Buddha has no beard, Mahavira has no beard; twenty-four tirthankaras of the Jainas have no beard. Great idea! Just to save the trouble of shaving every morning and every evening...

But nobody ever thought that this means these people were lacking in some essential hormones. Unless those hormones were missing, beards would grow. Women don’t grow beards – it is not their fault. You cannot tell them that “This is not good – when everybody else is growing a beard, just to give them company grow a beard!”

A woman can also grow a beard if she takes injections of certain hormones. But it is a very strange thing: Gautam Buddha, in his twenty-three past lives, has never grown any beard. Twenty-four tirthankaras of the Jainas have no beard. It is a strange coincidence.

Once in a while, you can find a man who is missing certain hormones. At least I knew one, in my very own village. And he is one of the richest men in that territory. I used to go to him and say, “Listen, you can’t have babies.”

“What do you mean?”

I said, “You cannot have children and if any child is born to your wife, remember: it is the Holy Ghost, because a man who cannot grow a beard has not the potential to create children.”

He said, “You are a strange man. How many times have you reminded me of this?”

I said, “I will go on reminding you again and again, so that you are aware: whenever you have a child, it is somebody else’s child.”

Fortunately, it is a small village – not a single car, no parks to meet, no beach, nowhere to go – and a very stratified Hindu society. The Holy Ghost has not been able to give a child to that fellow. I have been inquiring constantly. When I came back from America, my first inquiry was, “Has something happened or not?” Somebody had come from the village. He said, “You are strange! The first question! Nothing has happened, and now he is so old...”

I said, “It doesn’t matter. The Holy Ghost can make even old virgins pregnant.” They are Christians, so they were very angry at me. I said, “You should pray not to Jesus Christ, not to God, but to the Holy Ghost. And one never knows in what form the Holy Ghost comes, so allow a little freedom to your wife. Otherwise, you are not going to have any children.”

And I hear that he is still – now he must be seventy – without any children. It seems the Holy Ghost has not come back again since Jesus Christ. Or perhaps he comes once in a while, but people don’t recognize him. It was a rare occasion that he was caught red-handed.

If there is a God, then naturally questions arise: he must have a son. But poor imagination stops very soon – only one son, not even a sister for him to play with? And has the Holy Ghost become too tired, or have they dropped the whole idea?

Once you accept any conceptual question, hypothesis, then a thousand and one questions arise. God created the world. Then why did he create poor people, why did he create rich people? Why could he not create an equal humanity? Why did he create man as superior and woman as inferior? What was his purpose? Is he a male chauvinist?

Certainly, God has no wife. The whole group is a gay group – God, the Holy Ghost, the Son... not a single woman. And what are these three fellows doing? Must be getting tired. Unless there are a few women... Just put a few men aside and you will see: they become serious, sad, bored, start thinking about suicide, because there is nothing else to think about. Just bring a few women in and hallelujah! Sadness is gone, people are running with their girlfriends here and there; nobody wants to die, not in this moment.

Jivan Mada, don’t be bothered with such philosophical questions.

Be concerned with the existential, with the real, with the ordinary which you have to face every moment, every day, about yourself, about your potential.

Who cares about God?

Only stupid people who don’t have anything to do. They go on thinking about strange things.

Paddy is handling some dynamite in a quarry when he lets one stick drop. Suddenly the whole box explodes, shooting up in the air and taking Paddy with it. After a while, the boss comes round and asks his fellow worker, “Where is Paddy?”

“He is gone,” answers Seamus.

“When will he be back?” asks the boss.

“Well,” says Seamus, “according to Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity... if he comes back as fast as he went, he will be here yesterday.”

Now, it is time for prayer, and then many more things have to be done.…

Moskowitz met Finkelstein on the street one day and said, “Finkelstein, have I got a bargain for you! An elephant! A whole living elephant, for just one hundred dollars.”

Finkelstein said, “Are you crazy? What do I want with an elephant?”

“It is a beautiful elephant,” continued Moskowitz, “all grey, ten foot tall, and complete with a trunk.”

“But I have nothing to feed it on,” cried Finkelstein. “I live in a three-room apartment, I have no place to put it in.”

But Moskowitz went on: “Two beautiful tusks, maybe two feet long. It is a magnificent beast. They don’t make them like that anymore.”

“Moskowitz,” said Finkelstein, almost screaming, “I have a three-room walk-up apartment on the fifth floor. Where will I keep an elephant?”

“You are a hard man, Finkelstein,” said Moskowitz. “I will tell you what. I will throw in a second whole elephant for only fifty dollars extra.”

Finkelstein smiled and said, “Now you are talking!”

The shy young bride is really upset when she learns that her husband has been married twice before.

Through her tears, she asks him what has become of his two previous wives.

“I may as well tell you,” says her husband. “My first wife died from eating poisonous mushrooms.” “And your second wife?” she cries.

“She died of a fractured skull,” the man answers. “It was her own fault, she wouldn’t eat the mushrooms.”

... Vimal, it seems you have not prayed. This is not right. In fact, you are enjoying it! Somebody is having a migraine and Vimal is enjoying it! I have never heard of it, that somebody has a migraine and somebody else enjoys, but in this world everything happens.

Kowalski is drinking in a bar with a friend.

“I love America,” he says, “I am so glad I came over here. Where else in the world could you finish a hard day’s work and be waiting for a bus outside the factory gates, in the rain...”

“What? What is so great about that?” interrupts his friend.

“Just wait,” continues Kowalski. “Then the boss comes out in his black Rolls Royce, opens the door and says, ‘It is a hell of a night – come in out of the rain.’ When you are inside, he says, ‘That coat’s all wet; let my buy you a new one.’

“And after that, he takes you back to his mansion and gives you a big meal and a few drinks and a warm bed for the night. And in the morning, he gives you a good breakfast and a ride back to work. That would never happen in Poland.”

“Amazing,” says his friend, “that happened to you?”

“Not to me,” replies Kowalski. “It happened to my sister!”

So now get ready for a let-go. And beforehand, you should remember that let-go does not mean that you have to laugh and enjoy. This is a religious experience! It is not entertainment.

Krishnamurti died. He would have lived if people had listened to him. His last words were, “People think I am an entertainment – and I am talking about enlightenment.”

But as far as I am concerned, to me enlightenment is the ultimate in entertainment. You can enjoy, but for two minutes, let-go is to be total – no noise, no laughter... just as if there is nobody in the Buddha auditorium.

Let it be an experience of an energy contained within.

And then I will allow it to come up in “Yaa-Hoo!” Then you can do as much as you want. But first enlightenment, then entertainment – not vice versa.

Niskriya, are you ready?

So when I say, “let go”... let go.

(QUITE A FEW OF US, IT SEEMS, ARE HAVING A BIT OF TROUBLE BEING “AS IF THERE IS NOBODY”... SUPPRESSED GIGGLES KEEP ERUPTING IN WAVES, HERE AND THERE.)

Unless it is total, I will continue it.…

(NOW IT SEEMS THE WISH TO CONTINUE IT OUTWEIGHS THE WISH TO BE TOTAL! FINALLY, OSHO GIVES UP, WITH A CHUCKLE.)

Okay, come back.…

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