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CHAPTER 21
I have come again the storm has persuaded me
9 April 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium
Question 1 BELOVED OSHO,
PLEASE ACCEPT OUR APOLOGY FOR OUR BEHAVIOR LAST NIGHT. WE ASK FOR YOUR FORGIVENESS FROM THE BOTTOM OF OUR HEARTS.
BELOVED OSHO,
LAST EVENING I HAD MY FIRST EXPERIENCE OF DEATH. YOUR ANSWER TO THE BEAUTIFUL QUESTION PUT BEFORE YOU HAD TAKEN ME SO DEEP WITHIN, SO HIGH, THAT BY THE TIME I REALIZED WHAT WAS HAPPENING – YOU WERE GONE.
OH MOST PRECIOUS AND MOST BELOVED MASTER – YOU HAVE TOLD US TO BE HERE ONLY IF IT IS TOP PRIORITY. YOUR PRESENCE MAKES THE BUDDHA HALL INTO OUR TEMPLE.
YOU HAVE TOLD US HOW J. KRISHNAMURTI DIED WITH THE REGRET THAT HE HAD ONLY BEEN AN ENTERTAINMENT TO HIS PEOPLE. HOW SHAMEFULLY WE TAKE YOU – YOUR LOVE, YOUR GRACE, YOUR COMPASSION, YOUR BEING WITH US – FOR GRANTED.
WE MUST HURT YOU AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN. OSHO,
PLEASE FORGIVE US?
Zareen, it was not your fault. It was my fault, because I have loved you too much. I had not kept a distance between me and you. That’s why it became possible for a few people to misbehave. They did not hurt me, they hurt you all. Otherwise there was no need, because you can see – a bigger storm has come and there is no need to laugh.
In fact it gives you an opportunity to be more silent. If you cannot be silent when there is storm and darkness, your silence is not true. It is only a question of looking at things in a right way. The storm is so beautiful, so fresh, is bringing you news of a constantly changing life. The old leaves are dropping, without making any fuss about it, to make way for the new leaves to come. The very dropping of the old leaves... if watchfully, consciously understood, you have understood the secret of relaxation. The dead leaf does not cling to the tree, neither the tree clings to the dead leaf; they depart peacefully, in silence. They loved, they lived, and it is now time to depart.
As far as I am concerned, just as the storm has come again, I have come again. I was not going to come, it is the storm that persuaded me: “I am going again – you will be missed.”
Hundreds of letters just like Zareen’s have come to me. And many more people must have been sad and with tears. But I have felt your sadness, your tears.
I wanted you to know that I am not an old-style Zen master, but I also hit – in my own way, more sophisticated. I also destroy your clingings, your egos; I also destroy your taking me for granted, because one day suddenly I will be gone, just like the storm will be gone. Before I am gone, I would like you to blossom into the biggest roses possible.
When I see you in silence, in peace – and also in laughter which comes out of silence and peace, not out of hysteria... Yesterday I had to leave because a few of you behaved so unconsciously that they needed to be made alert, that this is not a gathering where you can remain unconscious. The whole purpose here is to become more alert, more conscious. If the storm has come, nothing is wrong in it. You should have listened to it and its song, and you should have rejoiced in the falling leaves. You should have learned something of tremendous importance.
But rather than learning anything a few of you behaved in a very stupid way. I had to hit you hard, knowing perfectly well that it will bring many tears to you and your hearts will be crying and weeping. But it can be of great value to understand that it is absolutely wrong to take my presence for granted. Then it becomes a routine, and you forget completely that one day I will be gone.
Before I go I would like to see you all blossom in mystical roses, releasing your fragrance.
Laughter is beautiful when it comes out of understanding, out of innocence. But when it is hysterical it is insane and stupid.
I was not angry, I cannot be angry. I was simply sad to see that a few people are still here whom I continue to call my people, but they are not yet alert enough to be given that much dignity. There is no question of forgiving you, because I have not been angry. It is just that I have been feeling that perhaps my love has not reached a few people.
I allow you more laughter than has ever been allowed; I have loved you as no master has ever loved his disciples. Gautam Buddha would not have loved you at all. Yes, he was compassionate, but being compassionate is not the same as loving. Compassion is dry, compassion is a distance; one is higher and one is very far down in the darkness.
I am not compassionate to you; I authentically love you. My love is not dry; it is not in any way a feeling of superiority, of taking your dignity and reducing you to inferiority. I give you so much honor, as has never been given by any master to any disciple.
Because to me, being a master or being a disciple is just a fiction. The difference is very small: whatever I am, I know; and whatever you are, you do not know. Only this much difference does not make somebody superior and somebody inferior. You are exactly the same universal soul which any Gautam Buddha or Zarathustra or Bodhidharma has experienced. It is within your reach any moment to enter into the ultimate, into the very roots of your being, and all differences between the disciple and the master disappear.
The whole function of the master is very strange. He is destroying his mastership continuously, as he is making you more and more aware. The day you become fully aware – and I will be able to rejoice in seeing my garden full of roses – there will not be any difference between my heart and your heart. We are all part of one universal heartbeat. And in every possible way – even impossible way – I am trying to bring that synchronicity between you and the universal which is your real and original face.
But if I see that you start taking me for granted, that I am speaking and you start laughing unnecessarily, at a wrong point, that means either I am in a wrong place or you are in a wrong place. What has happened yesterday, remember: it should not happen again. I am holding myself with difficulty together. I can disappear any moment. Then all your tears will not bring me back; then all your sadness will be of no use. Perhaps sooner or later you will forget it, as a beautiful dream that you had seen once.
Very few will be able to continue on the journey without me, and to meet me finally in their self- realization. But those will be very few. You need me, because my garden is almost a nursery; you have just started growing. It is not the moment for me to retire and to relax into the universal.
If yesterday’s incident makes you more understanding and conscious, then it has been a blessing in disguise. Storms will be coming again and again, but you have to remember.
I have been using laughter itself as a device to wake you up. Nobody in the whole history of man has used laughter as a device. Sometimes I wonder why it has not been used, because it is a well-known fact that in a dream you cannot laugh loudly. If in a dream you laugh loudly you will wake up. In a dream, mostly you never laugh. Laughter is too far away; even to smile in a dream is a very rare experience.
But one thing you know: almost everybody once in a while has experienced nightmares. In a deep danger, perhaps falling into a bottomless abyss, or perhaps being approached by a ferocious lion – trembling, you wake up.
My own experience says to me that if you can laugh rightly, in the right moment, it will bring you out of unconsciousness into the open sky, from the darkness to the light. I am introducing laughter as a meditation because nothing makes you so total as laughter; nothing makes you stop your thinking as laughter does. Just for a moment you are no more a mind. Just for a moment you are no more in time. Just for a moment you have entered into another space where you are total and whole and healed.
For Zareen, I will give a few moments to laugh totally. They are for all of you. And I have chosen her question out of hundreds of others just as a representative, because they were all saying the same things but not with so much totality and with so much love and with so much heart.
Paddy is out...
... and for God’s sake, the storm is gone!
Paddy is out for a spin on his old motorbike, when he stops to give a ride to a hitchhiker. Since it is a cold day, he advises the man to put his coat on back-to-front to avoid feeling the wind.
After a bumpy ride, Paddy looks over his shoulder and sees that his passenger is missing. So he turns around and rides back.
He finds a small crowd of people around a figure lying in the road. “Is he all right?” asks Paddy, anxiously.
“Well,” says one of the crowd, “he was until we turned his head around the right way.”
On her wedding night, Tessa, the anxious bride, turns to her husband: “Charles,” she says, “promise me you will be gentle. I want you to know that this is my first time.”
“What?” exclaims Charles, “your first time? But you have already been married three times!”
“I know,” replies Tessa, “but my first husband was a drunk, the second turned out to be gay, and my third husband was in advertising.”
“I can understand the first two,” says Charles, “but why didn’t your third husband ever make love with you?”
“Well...”
(THE RAIN HAS BEGUN NOW, DRUMMING INSISTENTLY ON THE ROOF.)
The storm has come back!
... replies Tessa, “all he ever did was sit on the bed and tell me how great it was going to be!”
Little Ernie’s mother is saying good night to her kids. She is expecting another child, so she tells them the story of how the stork brings babies.
After she has turned out the light, little Ernie turns to his sister.
“You know?” he says, “I don’t care what Mom thinks. I just can’t picture Dad screwing a stork.”
Zabriski gets a job painting the white line down the middle of the road. On the first day, the Polack paints five miles of road. He does such a great job that the boss calls him in and gives him a bonus. But the next day Zabriski only does three miles, and the day after, only one mile. The boss calls him in again and asks him, “What has happened?”
“Well,” explains Zabriski, “every day it takes me longer to walk back to the bucket of paint.”
Nancy Reagan goes to the psychiatrist and tells him that her husband Ronald has started eating dog food. The shrink tells her not to worry and that such problems are usually short-lived.
But to be on the safe side, he asks Nancy to bring in a sample of dog food for analysis. He discovers that there is nothing harmful in it, and assures Nancy that Ronald should be back to normal in a week.
Sure enough, next week, Nancy Reagan is back.
“So,” says the shrink, “how is your husband? Back to normal I hope?” “I am afraid not,” says Nancy, “he is dead!”
“Dead?” cries the shrink, “what happened?”
“Well,” replied Nancy, “he was licking his balls in the driveway, and I accidentally backed the car over him!”
Now laugh totally, whether the storm comes or not. It is coming.…
Inspector Wu, the Chinese private detective, makes his report in a divorce case: “I climb up tree, so I can see.
He play with she, she play with he. I play with me. I fall from tree.
So I can no see... so solly!”
I have been told that you have been celebrating for almost one hour. I want everything to be celebrated – even tears, sadness, even the feeling that “I have done something wrong or at least participated in something that should not be done, or only remained silent, without interfering with the wrongdoer.”
Our way of asking for forgiveness can only be a celebration. I believe only in celebration. Whatever the excuse – somebody dies, it is not a time to celebrate, but I say to you, “Celebrate!” because
death too is part of existence. And one should not reject existence, and one should not be afraid either.
Committing mistakes, just as you committed yesterday, is simply human. By celebrating, it can be dropped. I don’t want you be sad for anything or guilty for anything, because these are the things which all the religions have used to exploit humanity: making them guilty, making them sad, making them feel that they are unworthy.
I don’t want you to feel in any way unworthy. Even when you commit a mistake you are not committing a sin.
Because you have been celebrating for one hour, I would like to have our prayer: two minutes of total silence, no movement, close your eyes...
Now, let go.
... Come back to life. The storm is coming too. Okay, Maneesha?
Yes, Osho.
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