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CHAPTER 19
No “I” no “you” – just a mirror reflecting
7 April 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium
Question 1 BELOVED OSHO,
WHAT EXACTLY IS THIS UNCONSCIOUS MIND WHICH IS ALSO CALLED THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL? IS IT SOMETHING BELONGING TO THE PHYSICAL MONKEY BRAIN? OR IS IT SOMETHING OF THE UNIVERSAL MIND, WHICH I AM ASSUMING IS MY OWN HIGHER MIND?
ALSO, IF IT IS NOT OF THE PHYSICAL BRAIN, THEN IS THIS WHY IT IS A WASTE OF TIME TO ATTEMPT TO END YOUR SUFFERING BY PUTTING A BULLET THROUGH YOUR BRAIN?
Prem Sakino, the question that you have asked implies almost the whole psychology of man. In one way, man is divided into the body, the physiology, and the mind, the psychology. The brain is part of the body; mind is the psychology – another name of psychology. They both belong to something else – a deeper and higher consciousness, a universal consciousness. But the state of the mind is very complex; it is almost like a bridge between the soul, the universal, and the body, the individual.
When the body dies the mind continues, as a wavelength of memories, with the conscious soul. It will enter into new bodies; it will gather more experiences, sufferings, joys. And through many lives, mind goes on collecting. Each body allows it to have sufferings or blessings – but slowly slowly, if it goes again and again into pain, misery, agony, it becomes habitual for the mind that whichever body it may have, it will fall into painful experiences.
The mind also dies one day.
Body dies many times; mind dies only once.
The day mind dies, you enter into the world of immortality, the universal. That’s what we call enlightenment.
Until the mind dies, it remains the master; it does not accept being a slave. The moment your innermost being asserts, that very assertion becomes the death of the mind. Hence, meditation is defined as no-mind.
It does not mean that the mind is not there; it simply means the mastery of the mind is no longer there. It can still be used as a vehicle, just like a flute, but the song is not of the flute. And the flute cannot sing on its own – the flute is only a passage; it gives way.
A man of no-mind also uses the mind when he speaks, but just like the song of the flute.
One of the most cherished books of Hindus, SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA, is very strange in the sense that it is called “the song of the divine.” Just its title is so significant; from the very title it means that the words are used not by the mind but by someone who has no mind.
In the East we never developed any psychology. This is one of the most important differences that has grown between East and West. In the East we have developed techniques and methods to go beyond mind; in the West the philosopher, the thinker, has become too much involved in the mechanics of the mind: what is mind?
It is so surprising that for ten thousand years in the East, which has been continuously concerned with the inner search, nobody has bothered about what mind is. If you can drop it, drop it, because all that is real and authentic and true is beyond it. Why waste time with something which is ephemeral?
But the whole of Western psychology is concerned with the ephemeral. The psychologist is concerned with dreams. It is not just symbolic – he is actually concerned with a bigger dream called the mind. And by trying to look into dreams, the psychologist is trying to figure out the functioning of the mind.
Why does he have to go to the dreams? Why can he not rely upon your waking hours?
Your waking hours are fake. You say things which you don’t mean. Perhaps you don’t intend to deceive anyone, but your very upbringing is such that you are bound to deceive. Your every gesture is political, is diplomatic. You are trying to influence the other person, you are trying to convert the other person. You are trying, in short, to exploit the other person’s gullibility. You are not saying what is true, you are saying what people want to hear.
In each church, in each temple, in each synagogue, all the sermons are simply what people want to hear. They are opium for the people, they are consolations for people. People are in misery, people are in suffering, but this suffering humanity becomes a great marketplace for those who can exploit – in the name of compassion, in the name of God.
They don’t remove your suffering – they can’t remove it, it is beyond their power. But they can console you. They can make you feel at ease with your agony; they can give you a dose of opium so
that you can go on living with all the suffering, all the pain, without even bothering about it, without even thinking about it.
Hence, when you say something, it is not reliable. It may be true, it may not be true. The psychologist has to go into your dreams because your dreams have not been polluted by the priests, by the politicians, by the educationists.
They are trying.
They are developing in the Soviet Union and in America both, techniques for teaching people while they are asleep. Once those techniques are refined, man will lose all freedom. Anyway, he is not free – freedom is only a beautiful word, corresponding to no reality. But a small freedom is there: you can dream your dream without any fear of the neighbors, without any fear of the government, without any fear of anybody – the parents, the teachers, the vested interests.
Dreaming is the only freedom. It is such a sad statement that I am making, that you have only dreams where you are free. Otherwise, you are not free; your freedom is just a show. Everybody is in chains, but the chains are invisible.
The psychologist has to enter into your dreams so that he can find out who you are. On the surface you are a celibate, a Catholic monk. But do you think in the dreams also you are a Catholic and a celibate and a monk? Most probably you are just the opposite of what you are pretending to be when you are awake. Your whole wakefulness has been so polluted, so dominated, so conditioned by others that you don’t even know that what you are saying is not your own voice. It may be Voice of America or it may be voice of anybody else, but it is not your voice.
Sometimes, watch whatever you say or do: is it authentically yours? Or has somebody put it in your mind just like things are fed to a computer? – your mother, your father... they were all well-wishers but ignorant, utterly ignorant as far as self-knowledge is concerned. They have made you Christians and Hindus and Mohammedans and communists. And they have created a world which is, as far as consciousness is concerned, absolutely contaminated, divided, a thousand and one discriminations.
But it is only a thin layer. Underneath this thin layer is a vast unconscious. This unconscious is all that has been repressed and not allowed expression.
Everybody can remember hearing the parents say, “Don’t say that, never say that! It is against civilization, culture; it is against respectability, honor. Never mention it.” And slowly slowly, when again and again it is said, you start pressing it deeper into your being. That which has been repressed in you is your unconscious.
A man like Gautam Buddha has no unconscious. A man who is fully awakened is simply pure consciousness. He does not dream, there is no need for him to dream. He is living his life with all its dangers, risks, the way he wants to live. He is not in any way following anybody against himself.
He is not a hypocrite, a pretender, an actor, repeating like a parrot either what he has been told by religions or by politicians or by other vested interests: “You have to be like this and you have to be like that.” Everything... how to sit, how to stand up, how to walk. So many chains and so many
locks on your mouth that you cannot say a single word that arises within you, not a single flower that blossoms in your consciousness.
This repressed part of your being creates the unconscious.
You are asking, “What exactly is this unconscious mind which is also called the dark night of the soul?” It is your repressed mind, centuries old, of many lives. Each time you change the body, your unconscious mind becomes bigger because more repressions are added to it.
You will be surprised that you are not at all aware of what is contained within you, in your own house.
A Zen master, one dark night, was sleeping in his small hut. He had only one woolen blanket, but he was awake and he saw a thief entering in. He felt very sorry for the thief because he knew perfectly well that in his house there was nothing; for thirty years he had been searching. But who knows? This man may be able to find something.
So he got up slowly, lit a small candle, and went behind the thief. The thief looked at him, utterly frozen – “My god, that man I was thinking was either dead or asleep is coming – naked because he has only one blanket – with a candle!” Just think of yourself.…
But the Zen monk said to the thief, “Don’t be worried and don’t feel in any way offended. I am a poor man, I have only one blanket. So don’t be worried. And in this night, dark night and far away from the village, nobody will know what we are doing here.”
The thief said, “What are we doing?”
The master said, “The same thing that you are doing!”
The thief said, “You are a strange man. I am a thief; I am looking for something.”
He said, “That’s what I say! For thirty years I am also looking for something, but in this house there is nothing. So let us make a contract: if we find something, we will divide it.”
The thief said, “My god! You are the owner of this house...”
He said, “I am not the owner of this house. Somebody was, but he is dead. I found this hut and seeing that nobody is living here, I started living here thirty years ago. Since then I have been searching – something must be somewhere; that old man cannot have taken away all the things with him. In fact, in death nobody can take away anything.”
The thief said, “The morning is coming close and I have not come here to discuss great matters, death, and whether somebody can take anything beyond death or not. You just please let me go.”
The master said, “But what about the search? Have I to search my whole life alone? Won’t you give me a hand?”
The thief said, “I pray... just let me get out! If people find me here in the morning, there is bound to be trouble.”
That Zen monk said, “There will be no trouble at all, because for thirty years I have been waiting. Nobody comes here. Let us just have a good dialogue, and in the morning we can search better, more light, and maybe we can find something. And we can become partners! If you find something in somebody else’s house, half will be mine and half will be yours.” He said, “You are a religious man – are you joking? Are you absolutely mad? Making a contract with a thief... people think you are a saint!”
The monk said, “That is true. People think I am a saint, but I don’t have anything other than the blanket. If you don’t want to divide the blanket in two parts, you can take it home.”
And he gave the blanket to the thief. The thief just could not believe what was happening and he ran out. As he was going out, the monk shouted, “Come back and close the door! And always remember: when somebody gives you something, at least say thank you. Learn manners!”
The thief said, “Thank you,” and closed the door. And the monk said, “Remember – this ‘thank you’ will help you go a long way.”
After two years, the thief was arrested for stealing in some other house, caught red-handed. In the court, the magistrate asked him, “Can you give some reference, anybody who knows you?”
He remembered that poor man, so beautiful and so lovely and so nice. He said, “Yes, I know one Zen monk who lives outside the town.”
The magistrate said, “That will do. If that monk – I know him – if he can say anything in favor of you, you will be released.”
The monk was called and he was asked about the thief. The monk said, “This man is a very beautiful, simple man. One night, by mistake he entered into my house.”
The magistrate said, “What do you mean, ‘by mistake’?”
“I said ‘by mistake’ because the doors were open and everybody knows that there is nothing in that hut but me and my blanket. And I offered my blanket to him. He was a guest. He tried not to take it, I had almost to force him. And he is so mannerly that he said to me, ‘Thank you, sir’ and he closed the door. This man is a very nice man, you should not harass him.”
Because that monk said, “You should not harass him,” the thief was released. He could not believe it! Neither did he understand that night, nor could he understand the saint’s statements in court in his favor. He followed the saint.
The monk said, “Are you coming now?” He said, “Yes, I am coming now.”
He said, “You unnecessarily wasted two years. I was telling you to get into a partnership from the very beginning. You had nothing to lose; I lost my blanket. Now what do you want?”
He said, “Now I want to be in your service, to sit by your side and listen to what you are saying. Now I can see that you are not an ordinary man; that you don’t belong to the masses and the crowd, that you are utterly different.”
The Zen monk said, “If you can see the difference, then you are accepted. Be my fellow traveler. I was so sad that night when you could not find anything in the house. You had given me so much respect by entering my hut, because who enters poor people’s huts? People go to steal in palaces. You raised my status to a king, I was grateful. But I had nothing else to give to you but an old blanket, and when you left I wept because, ‘If that man had told me a few days before, I could have collected some things.’
“And sitting on my window sill, I saw the moon in the sky and I wrote a poem. I have not told anybody, but with you I will share it. It is a beautiful poem. It says: My heart weeps, cries, because I could not offer a guest anything worthwhile. If it were in my power, I would have given him the whole moon. But the moon is not in my power.”
It is a beautiful piece. Such a man has no unconscious at all. It is pure consciousness.
You are asking, “Is it something belonging to the physical monkey brain?” Ordinarily yes. Ordinarily your mind belongs to your body because it is nothing but the functioning of your brain, which is part of the body. But the whole effort of meditation is to take it away from the body, to take it away from the brain, purify it from all that gives it limitations – of Hinduism, Mohammedanism, of man, of woman, of all kinds of inferiorities, superiorities. To take it away from all that towards nothingness, towards a silence, towards a peace that passeth understanding... then it is not part of the brain; then it becomes part of the universal consciousness.
That’s what you are saying: “Or is it something of the universal mind?” Ordinarily, no. Extraordinarily, yes.
You are saying, “... which I am assuming is my own higher mind.” Yes, it is your own higher mind, but there is no you. It is simply pure awareness with no ‘I’ and with no ‘you’ – just a mirror, reflecting.
And finally, you are asking, “If it is not of the physical brain, then is this why it is a waste of time to attempt to end your suffering by putting a bullet through your brain?”
Prem Sakino, it is not only a waste of time putting a bullet through your brain, it is again creating more unconsciousness. By suicide, nobody can become enlightened. By suicide, one is born again more deeply rooted in agony. The agony of suicide follows into the next life, the following life.
So it is certainly a waste of a bullet, and immensely harmful to your future life.
If it were so simple to become enlightened by putting a bullet in the brain, there would have been millions of enlightened people. But enlightenment has to be earned. It has to be deserved.
It is a strange phenomenon because in a sense, it is already yours, and in a sense you have to find it. It is hidden inside your being.
No bullet can reach there, but you can reach.
You can reach just by being silent and more silent. As the silence deepens, you are coming closer and closer to a light which is your ultimate source of life.
Yes, you will be burned; as an individual entity you will be no more. But as a universal being, as a whole cosmos, you will be.
And that is the only blissful state. Other than that, you never know what bliss is. It is not pleasure; pleasure is not even something like a faraway cousin. You cannot understand bliss by measuring it in terms of pleasure. Pleasure is almost like scratching: it feels good, but after a while it hurts. Because you have scratched too much, blood starts coming. What you call pleasure is nothing but scratching.
Blissfulness has nothing to do with you; blissfulness is your very nature. You simply relax into yourself, to the deepest rock bottom of your being...
And you are light and you are truth, and you are beauty and you are love, and you are all that one can desire. The glory, the splendor of the whole existence is yours.
But you are not there. Question 2 BELOVED OSHO,
SINCE I FIRST MET YOU ALMOST TEN YEARS AGO, I COULD NOT DO ANYTHING BUT FOLLOW YOUR STEPS AND BE WITH YOU.
IT FELT LIKE WITHDRAWING FROM THE WORLD TO LEARN TO KNOW MYSELF. AS I BECAME MORE AWARE OF MYSELF I BECAME MORE SENSITIVE, BUT DETACHED AND COOL.
BELOVED MASTER, AM I BEFOOLING MYSELF, AS I FEEL IT IS NOW TIME FOR ME TO GO AND LEARN WITH THE ARROWSMITH WOMAN IN THE MARKETPLACE...?
Govindo, you need not befool with any arrowsmith woman. A real woman is sitting in front of me! I offer to introduce you to this woman. You will not find such a woman anywhere in the world; with a small beard, a beautiful mustache... And really looking beautiful!
I wonder, why has Vimal not been using this dress from the very beginning? After I have left, you all have to see her – I really mean her, it is not a mistake – and rejoice in a real woman.
Where are you going? – on a rented bicycle, to some arrowsmith woman! Can’t you find any woman here? If you cannot find someone to love here, you will not find any-where. Because it is not a question of someone else, it is a question of you.
Are you aware of the implications of love? Are you ready to love? Are you ready to drop your jealousies? Are you ready to share without asking anything in return?
Love is the purest form of friendship, and it is available to very rare people. Others are only scratching each other. They call it love; just scratching each other’s skin. They are idiots, and the priests condemn them. They say, “Don’t scratch each other’s skin; otherwise you will be going into hell. There, the devil will scratch!” Strange: if two persons feel good scratching each other, it should not be anybody else’s concern. Soon they will get fed up by themselves.
And who is this arrowsmith woman in the marketplace? You can go, by all means – but remember you have not yet learned the art of love, because it is another name of meditation.
Paddy is training Dennis, his donkey, for the Irish Donkey Derby.
There is no doubt that Dennis is the fastest donkey in the whole of Ireland. But every time he races, Dennis slows down to wink at all the lady donkeys.
Govindo – listen attentively!
Paddy decides that there is only one solution to this problem and he takes Dennis to the vet to be doctored.
A couple of weeks later, Dennis is waiting at the starting gate for the big race. He gazes straight ahead, ignoring all the other donkeys. His head is bent low, his eyes intense. Dennis has only the track on his mind.
The gun goes off and Dennis leaps away from the starting gate, but after a few paces, he stops, turns around and trots dejectedly back.
“For crying out loud!” screams Paddy, “what is wrong?”
“What is wrong?” snorts Dennis, “How do you think I felt when I jumped out from the start and some wise guy announced over the loudspeaker: ‘They’re off’!”
Govindo, avoid the marketplace a little longer.
The dinner is finished and the head waiter is hovering amongst the twenty business delegates with the bill, which amounts to a thousand dollars.
Unfortunately, the bill is pushed from one diner to another diner. No one seems to be taking responsibility for paying it.
Suddenly, Hamish Mactavish, the only Scotsman present, announces in a loud voice: “Pass me that bill; I will pay!” The next morning, the papers carry the headline: “Scotsman shoots Jewish ventriloquist!”
It is a dangerous world out there. I think, wait a little longer.
Hymie Goldberg and Moishe Finkelstein are changing their clothes in the locker room after a game of golf.
Moishe starts putting on a pair of women’s knickers; Hymie is astonished. “When did you start wearing women’s underwear?” he asks.
“Well,” says Moishe shaking his head, “ever since Ruthie, my wife, found a pair on the front seat of my car.”
Miss Goodbody is giving her class an English lesson, and all goes well until she explains the use of the word ‘perhaps’ to them.
“Now, Billy,” she says, “will you make up a sentence to show that you understand how to use ‘perhaps’?”
Billy stands up, thinks for a moment and says, “If we are very good, perhaps teacher will let us go early.”
“Excellent,” says Miss Goodbody. Then she turns to little Ernie and says, “What about you, Ernest? Can you give us an example?”
Little Ernie stands up and says, “Does it have to be made up, Miss?”
“No,” replies Miss Goodbody, “it can be true, as long as you use the word ‘perhaps’.”
“Okay,” says Ernie, “when I saw you and the music teacher taking your pants off in the music room, I thought that perhaps you were going to shit on the piano.”
And the last, before we do our daily meditation.
Back at the zoo, Luigi’s demand that Griselda the Gorilla’s children be brought up Catholic is turned down by Herman Kanubowitz, the zoo’s Jewish director.
As a last resort, Griselda’s keeper puts a sign up on the gate of the zoo, which reads: “One thousand dollars to mate with ape!”
Kowalski has just returned some penguins to the zoo, when he sees the sign and walks into the keeper’s office.
The keeper takes one look at Kowalski and knows that he has found his man. However, Kowalski also has three conditions.
“First,” says Kowalski, “nobody tells my wife.” “Absolutely not!” replies the keeper.
“Second,” says Kowalski, “nobody tells my workmates.”
“Don’t worry,” replies the keeper, “complete secrecy will be maintained.”
“Okay,” says Kowalski, “and third... can I pay in installments?”
Now close your eyes and for two minutes be completely frozen. Just gather your energy in.… Now, let go.
... Okay, come back to life. Okay, Vimal?
Yes, Osho. Good.
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