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CHAPTER 28
The art of listening is enough
17 April 1988 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium
Question 1 BELOVED OSHO,
NIETZSCHE WROTE, IN ECCE HOMO,
HERE THERE SPEAKS NO PROPHET, NONE OF THOSE GRUESOME HYBRIDS OF SICKNESS AND WILL TO POWER CALLED FOUNDERS OF RELIGIONS. ONE HAS ABOVE ALL TO HEAR CORRECTLY THE TONE THAT PROCEEDS FROM THIS MOUTH, THIS HALCYON TONE, IF ONE IS NOT TO DO PITIABLE INJUSTICE TO THE MEANING OF ITS WISDOM.HERE THERE
SPEAKS NO FANATIC, HERE THERE IS NO PREACHING, HERE FAITH IS NOT DEMANDED: OUT OF AN INFINITE ABUNDANCE OF LIGHT AND DEPTH OF HAPPINESS THERE FALLS DROP AFTER DROP, WORD AFTER WORD – A TENDER SLOWNESS OF PACE IS THE TEMPO OF THESE DISCOURSES. SUCH THINGS AS THIS REACH ONLY THE MOST SELECT: IT IS AN INCOMPARABLE PRIVILEGE TO BE A LISTENER HERE.
OSHO, THIS IS CERTAINLY ABOUT YOU. WAS NIETZSCHE YOUR FORERUNNER?
Maneesha, Nietzsche is certainly my forerunner, just as Chuang Tzu is, or Bodhidharma. There have been mystics in the world which I can call my forerunners. But it does not mean that I have to agree with them in totality.
They are just forerunners – but I am not an after-runner! I am my own self. There are points on which I will not agree even with Gautam Buddha and there are points where I will not agree with Friedrich
Nietzsche either. But the spirit of Friedrich Nietzsche is certainly closer to me than anybody else’s, even Gautam Buddha included, for the simple reason that he is the only great thinker who has not created a blind following. He remained aloof and alone. All that he asked was, just be a listener. He never asked for any surrender. That’s where he differs from many founders of religions. They are enslavers of man.
Friedrich Nietzsche may not be right on many points but he is certainly a man who loves freedom and who respects the individuality of the other. He loves the other so much that he cannot convert the other into a follower. Because to convert anybody into a follower is to destroy him, his integrity, his authenticity; is to create a hypocrite, a spiritual slave. And that’s what all founders of religions have done. They have created a spiritual slavery all over the world.
At least Nietzsche has not committed that sin. He was capable – far more capable than any Jesus or Mohammed, Mahavira or Krishna – to impress people, to influence people, to create a blind following. But because he did not do it, I have tremendous respect for him.
He never allowed anyone to be a follower. All that he asked was to be what Mahavira has called shravaka, the listener. You have only to be a listener. The art of listening is enough; no other discipline is required. If you are in the close proximity of a man like Friedrich Nietzsche then just to listen is going to transform your whole being.
Nothing else is needed.
But listening is not so easy, because your mind is continuously chattering. Even while you are listening, your mind is not silent. And a mind that is not silent cannot be a listener; it can only hear, but it cannot listen.
You have to know the difference, clearly, between hearing and listening. Anybody who has ears can hear, but it does not mean that he will be able to listen. For listening he needs something more than only the mechanism of ears; he has to know how to be such that his heart and his ears join in a combination. Ordinarily, they are absolutely disconnected. The ears are joined with the mind, not with the heart. And our whole education, religious or secular, makes it a fundamental rule to force every child so that his ears are connected with his thinking process, not with his love, not with his heart.
Only the heart knows the silence which is capable of listening. Only a lover listens; others simply make conversations.
That reminds me about two professors who had gone mad – it often happens in that profession. To be a professor is to be on the borderline.
The superintendent of the mad asylum thought that since both were professors of great repute, it would be good to keep them together and see what happens.
So he put them into one cell and, hiding, he tried to listen to what was happening. Soon he felt that if he listens a little more, he will go mad! What was happening in that cell was a great conversation, but nobody was listening to anybody. One professor would talk, the other would be silent; it would
seem as if he were listening. And when the first stopped, the second would start – and the trouble was, there was no relationship between the two! What the first was saying was one thing, and what the second was saying was something else completely – not even a faraway cousin!
The superintendent listened a little while and then he started feeling confused... but the most puzzling thing was: why does one stop when the other talks? That was his irresistible urge to know. So he opened the door of the cell, went in, and asked what was going on.
They said, “Are you deaf? A great conversation is happening. Do you think we don’t know how to converse? One talks, the other remains silent – it is a simple method. So let him talk whatever he wants to talk. When he is tired, then I will take my turn. Then I will take my revenge! And we are grateful to you that you have put us together. This conversation is going on day in, day out. It is a question of prestige.”
When I heard about this, I wondered whether this is not what is actually happening all over the world. Just because you know how to converse, that one of you has to be silent, it does not mean he is silent. It simply means he has to pretend that he is silent. His mind is weaving a thousand and one thoughts. His mind may be somewhere far away, and he will pretend that he is listening attentively.
This is happening everywhere. Even when you see that a conversation is very relevant, the relevance is a very arbitrary strategy. You go on remaining silent, weaving your thoughts, spinning a thousand and one thoughts; just by the corner of your ear, the words are falling. Then you catch hold of a certain word, and from that word you jump in. It seems the conversation is related; it is not related at all, it is just a pretension. Just what those two professors did, you are doing.
Friedrich Nietzsche is saying: All that is needed is to know the art of listening. Listening to the winds and listening to the clouds and listening to the dancing trees, the falling leaves – utterly in silence, your mind weaving no thoughts, no thinking – is the very foundation of listening. It does not mean you have to agree. There is no question of agreement, because a man like Nietzsche is not so mean that he wants you to agree with him. He simply wants you to understand him, and then it is up to you what you do with it. Agree or don’t agree – but at least listen!
Naturally, there are only very few people in the world who are capable of being silent, meditative, capable of listening. It is a strange phenomenon: if you can learn the art, it is not a question of listening to my words or Nietzsche’s words. It is a question of the art of listening.
It is within you.
Said differently, I call it meditation – just being silent. Even listening does not give you the accurate description of the state that is needed for you to find the truth of your own self. But listening is certainly one of the easiest processes of meditation.
The whole function of being with a master is to learn to listen not only to his words but his silences. Not only his silences but also his gestures, his eyes, his very being, his heartbeat.
Because the heartbeat of a master is in tune with the heartbeat of the universe. If you can be in tune with the master, without your knowing you have fallen in tune with the universe. The master was
only a device. Perhaps the universe was too much – if somebody had said to you, “Go and listen to the universe” it would have been too much, almost incomprehensible.
The master simply says, “Listen to what I am saying and listen so carefully that you don’t miss the silences.” With a simple strategy, the master is bringing you closer to the universe. And as you become able to listen, the master will disappear, will withdraw, and let you listen to the winds and the rain and the clouds and the whole heartbeat of the universe. In that listening, you will open up; your bud will become an open rose.
I will go through the question because it is exactly what I am doing here. HERE, THERE SPEAKS NO PROPHET.…
All the religions, their priests, their high priests, are against me for the simple reason that I say anybody who has claimed to be a prophet is insane. The future is always unknown. That’s its beauty, that’s the whole adventure of life: to go on continuously into the unknown. The prophet is declaring that, “I know what is going to happen tomorrow. I know what is going to happen twenty- five centuries later.” The prophet is declaring that for him, there is no future; for him there is nothing unknown. He has reduced everything unknown into the known.
Naturally, he does not ask you to listen; he simply wants you to believe. It is not a question of your understanding, it is a question of your surrender, total acceptance, faith. It is not incidentally that all religions are called “faiths.” They are based on faith. And none of the prophets has proved right in all his prophecies.
The very idea that “I know and you don’t know” is inhuman. It is uncultured, it is uncivilized. It may be that I have experienced something that I can share with you, but I cannot denounce you as ignorant. I can only say, “Perhaps you have missed it, perhaps you have bypassed it. Perhaps you are innocent and you have not looked at it.”
I cannot call you ignorant and propose that I am the knower and you are ignorant and reduce you, take your dignity, your freedom, your inquiry, and ask you just to believe. All the prophets have been doing that. The prophets are very high-class criminals, because they have destroyed man’s freedom, his dignity, his own search and inquiry. They have simply given you commandments. Who are they?
And just look into the lives of these prophets and you will be surprised that these people must have been insane. But they were worshipped – they are still worshipped. Nobody can question it.
In India, Krishna is a great prophet – and he was the cause of the greatest war that has happened in India. He tried to convince the leader of one party – Arjuna, his disciple – to go to war. It is good that Ronald Reagan has not found any Krishna. Arjuna tried hard, argued hard; the whole SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA is Arjuna’s argument for peace: “There is no need for war – what does it matter whether my brothers rule or I rule? Anyway, the war is going to be a massacre of millions of people. The victory will not be a great victory; it will be a victory over millions of dead people. I would rather go to the Himalayas and renounce the world.”
But Krishna would not let him go. And the final strategy was, when all arguments failed and he could not convince him for war, he said, “Listen, this is God’s decision; I am just speaking as a vehicle of God. I am the perfect incarnation of God; my word is God’s word. It is your destiny to go to war.”
Now there is no question of argument. You don’t argue with God. Even if you meet him you don’t argue with God, it does not look right. And when Krishna said, “I am God’s perfect incarnation,” Arjuna simply went to war and crippled the whole country for five thousand years. The war was so destructive, its wound in the soul of India’s being is still unhealed. India became so much afraid of war that all kinds of preachers of nonviolence... No war arose. It is not coincidental. Without the Mahabharata, the great war that Krishna created, there would have been no possibility for a Mahavira to teach people against war, or for Buddha to teach people nonviolence, because people have seen what violence can lead to.
But even these prophets... Mahavira insisted so much on nonviolence that he stretched the logic beyond sanity. You cannot even cultivate, because if you cultivate you will have to cut plants, and every plant has life. So the followers of Mahavira don’t cultivate. It is understandable that you should not kill just for the sake of eating; it is inhuman and barbarous. But to extend the argument to the point where it becomes stupid and absurd.…
But Mahavira is absurd in many ways. One should not possess things. It is understandable, because if people possess things it is bound to create poverty and richness and class struggle, and one day there is bound to be communism and the clash between communism and capitalism. If Mahavira is listened to – “Don’t possess, but share” – there will be no poverty and there will be no richness, but there will be a comfortably happy life. But stretch anything to the extreme and you become absurd. Now Mahavira stretched the point and he dropped his clothes because he cannot possess anything.
Do you want the whole of humanity to remain nude? That will be sheer nonsense. Man is no longer capable of being nude in all the seasons. Perhaps millions of years ago there may have been a time when man was just like any animal without clothes, but then he had hair all over his body to protect him. When winter comes, animals grow hair and when summer comes, they drop their hair. But now the body has forgotten that language completely. You keep anybody naked and just see whether in winter his body grows hair or not! Most probably he will be dead. Or hardly alive and shivering all the time because shivering creates a little heat. His teeth will start chattering because that creates heat.
But Mahavira insisted: “If you want to know the truth you have to achieve to the state of utter nudity.” That’s why he denied women the possibility of attaining to truth. First they have to attain birth as a man, because only a man can attain to truth because only a man can be naked. Just because of clothes, women cannot... clothes are preventing women from realizing their soul.
Sanity means balance. Sanity means always to be in the middle, and insanity means always to go to the extreme.
Mahavira claimed that he was the last prophet of his line – and his line is only of twenty-four prophets; twenty-three had happened already, he is the twenty-fourth. There was great competition for the twenty-fourth; there were eight persons contemporary to Mahavira who were claiming, “You are not the twenty-fourth, I am the twenty-fourth.” Now who is going to decide? They don’t have numbers, tattooed on their bodies saying, “This fellow is the twenty-fourth.”
But Mahavira proved much more insane than the other seven.
Gautam Buddha was also part of it; he was also one of the contenders. But he could not be so insane as to drop the clothes; he fell out of the contest. There was no point. Mahavira was so outrageously extremist that he would not allow even a blade to cut his hair or his beard. He would pull out his hair with his own hands because to use a blade is to be dependent on things. Ultimate freedom means you should not depend on anything, so he had to pull out his hairGautam Buddha
could not manage to do that. It was too much, that man was too mad; it was better to get out of the competition.
All the other six were of the same status, of great intelligencebut one thing they were all trying
was to be someone special, a prophet. And this was the last chance. Now millions of years will go by – after that, again the first prophet will happen. So this was not an easy thing to lose – “No harm, let him be prophet today, tomorrow I can be.” Tomorrow was very far away.
According to the Jaina tradition, when this existence ends and another circle of existence starts, then there will be again twenty-four tirthankaras. So after Mahavira, it will take millions of years – unless Ronald Reagan really goes mad.
But I don’t think even he has guts, and anyway he knows nothing about Mahavira.
The six others had to find their own ways to be special. Gautam Buddha, seeing that it was difficult to compete with Mahavirabecause Gautam Buddha had a more delicate body. He was a more
beautiful person, had been raised in such luxury that he could not compete with Mahavira, who had a very strong body, could fast for thirty days continuously, could remain naked in winter under the sky.
But Buddha had to be special, so he created an idea that “I am not of the line in which Mahavira is the twenty-fourth. I belong to another line of prophets. In fact, my line is my own reincarnation twenty-four times. I have been in this world twenty-three times before, and this is my last coming.”
That number twenty-four became so important because Jainas were saying, “We have twenty-four tirthankaras.” And Buddha created absolutely fictitious... Jainas had twenty-four tirthankaras but Buddha created an absolutely fictitious twenty-three. His own incarnation!
Hindus were at a loss because up to now they had believed in ten incarnations of God. Now they looked very poor. Buddhists have twenty-four, Jainas have twenty-four, and you have only ten? After Gautam Buddha and Mahavira, all Hindu scriptures dropped the idea of ten. They also managed twenty-four. Twenty-four became an absolute necessity.
And the reason Hindus had ten was because your hands have ten fingers. One counts – particularly in primitive times – on the fingers, so ten was the ultimate number. And in fact, it is the ultimate number. After ten, it is repetition: eleven, twelve, thirteen.that is another repetition of ten. You can
go to millions, trillions, but it will be again and again ten – more ten.
Jainas, seeing that Hindus had the idea of ten, and they don’t want to be imitative of anybody, figured it out in a different way. They said, “Just as day and night have twenty-four hours, exactly like that,
the whole circle of existence has twenty-four tirthankaras. Twenty-four hours, and each hour needs one tirthankara.”
Jesus was trying continuously to convince the Jews only of one thing, because Moses had prophesied that “I will come to save you” so Jews were waiting for him to come. And Jesus said, “I have come – I am the prophet about whom Moses has prophesied.” And Jews could not believe that a carpenter’s son, illegitimate, uneducated...
And they had great learned rabbis – Jerusalem in the days of Jesus was the seat of great learning and wisdom. They could not accept this uneducated fellow who was behaving like a buffoon. He could not afford more than a donkey – sitting on his donkey, followed by twelve uneducated, illiterate, poor people, and they had become his followers because he had given them the consolation and the promise that “If you follow me, I am God’s only son. I will take you into the kingdom of God.”
Those poor fellows knew perfectly well that on their own they could not go into the kingdom of God, and this fellow... who knows? may be right. You can suspect, but you have nothing to lose in following him. There is a possibility he may prove right in the end. If he does not prove right, then too, you have nothing to lose. You don’t have anything.
All those twelve apostles, following him, and he proclaiming himself – sitting on his donkey – from village to village: “I am the only begotten son of God, and I am the last prophet of the Jews.” The Jews could not tolerate it. It was too much. A joke needs some limits. And Judea was a small place, an unknown corner of the world. It was a harassment every day to come across this fellow who looks at you as sinners, and only his twelve followers are the virtuous saints. And he is the only begotten son of God! And the last prophet of the Jews!
Finally they got so freaked out... Jesus had not done anything, the crucifixion was absolutely wrong, but the crucifixion shows how much he harassed people. Jews are not violent people; he must have provoked them again and again.
They were telling him, “We have heard the whole thing. You just take your donkey somewhere else. We believe – you are the only begotten son of God! But don’t harass us. Can’t you go somewhere else? The whole world is there.” But he went on trotting into that small area. Naturally, if somebody on a donkey moves around, harassing you – “Listen, where are you going? I am the son of God” – even you will start thinking, “Should we shoot this fellow or what?”
All these prophets needed psychiatric treatment. I am absolutely in agreement with Friedrich Nietzsche when he says:
HERE, THERE SPEAKS NO PROPHET. NONE OF THOSE GRUESOME HYBRIDS OF SICKNESS
AND WILL TO POWER CALLED FOUNDERS OF RELIGIONS. His insight is very clear. He is saying all these founders of religions are nothing but will to power. To create a religion, to create believers, to have millions of followers gives you tremendous power.
Now just look at the pope: if he is standing here in M.G. Market, you will not see anything spiritual in him. Just a stupid-looking man. I have heard that in Poland there are great idiots, but I have never thought that from Poland will come a person to become the pope! What is his power? His power is six hundred million Catholics.
You will be surprised to know that the pope is chosen by the cardinals, and up to now the pope has behaved – they usually die within one or two years. This has been the tradition for centuries. They choose somebody as pope only when they see that he will die, and others will have the chance for power.
But they never knew that this Polack is not going to die so easily. Unless Christians themselves crucify him, he is not going to die. He is strong enough, and now the cardinals are so sad about what they have done. They thought that he would follow the tradition, and he seems to be getting every day younger and younger. They never considered that people in power become healthier because power fulfills their ego. People in power become stronger, live longer; once they are out of power, they die very soon.
Now this pope is going to torture the Catholics, one knows not how long. But there seems to be no sign of any sickness, or any signs of death. He is going perfectly well. Cardinals are now realizing that they have committed a mistake.
There is a hierarchy, from the priest to the bishop to the cardinal, and then those two hundred cardinals choose the oldest, the most possible candidate for death, as the pope. That means, for a year let him enjoy the power. It is a Rotary Club.
But this man from Poland does not understand that he has to die. It is time, but he is becoming stronger and stronger. I see his pictures – every day he looks younger. There will be no surprise if Catholics finally get tired of him and shoot him, because it is a Rotary Club; each year the president has to change and that has been the case up to now for eighteen hundred years. Very few popes have lived more than one and a half years, that was the limit. This man doesn’t understand that what he is doing is absolutely unorthodox.
Nietzsche is right. These founders of religion, these prophets, these avataras, incarnations of God, tirthankaras... they are nothing but a fulfillment of a deep desire for power.
Nietzsche was hated and condemned – obviously, because he was perhaps the first man in history to tell the truth, to call a spade just a fucking spade. Nobody has ever been able to forgive him. Spades of course cannot forgive, that is true, but why are others angry?
Truth is the most bitter medicine. Very few people are ready to take truth as medicine.
Lies are very sweet. Lies are sweet because they are your own inventions, you can put as much sugar in them as you like.
But truth you cannot create, you can only discover. And very few people were courageous enough, like Friedrich Nietzsche, to say it. Even though they have discovered it, they have remained silent because there is no point in unnecessarily being condemned by everybody.
Nietzsche was harassed, in every possible way condemned, and the only crime that he was doing was simply saying the truth without clothing it, just naked.
It is absolutely right that the very idea of being superior to others comes out of an inferiority complex, out of sickness. This will to power is the only crime – because it creates wars, it creates nations, it
creates religions, it creates all kinds of violence. Just because a few people want to be presidents and a few people want to be prime ministers.
I have said to my people, “You don’t be worried. Whichever planet you want – I will declare you the King of the Moon or the Queen of the Moon, the First Lady of the Moon.” Whatever you want! Why bother only about this earth? This whole universe is available. And nobody can take you to the court to say, “He is interfering in my territory.” There are millions of stars. Just choose any star and claim that you are the king of that star; wear as many colored stripes as you like.
Why not be a little inventive? Unnecessarily fighting to be presidents, to be prime ministers, and doing all kinds of crimes... you have to, because you have to trample many people; you have to go stepping on their heads. There is no need. It should be a more playful life.
So a few people have written to me... they would like to be the King of Mars. I said, “Perfectly okay. There is nobody who is fighting for the kingship of Mars.”
Why not choose fresh territory? Why go on fighting for ugly, bloody spaces? Everybody knows that the White House in Washington has ghosts. It is a well-known fact that the White House has the ghost of Abraham Lincoln inside it. It has been encountered by many people. In fact, that part where Abraham Lincoln still presides is kept closed.
I can only say that whether it is true or not... in these palaces, these capitals, how many people have been killed? How many people have been tortured and how many people have been raped, destroyed?
Why hanker for power? You cannot eat power and you cannot in any way create something beautiful to enhance life, because no powerful person has ever been creative. What is there that you can say Mahavira created? What is there that you can say Jesus created? A painting? A sculpture? A small bicycle? What is their contribution? The only begotten son of God has not even a bicycle – should be ashamed! God should be ashamed: “Look what my son is doing.”
I have often thought that before Jesus was crucified, God must have committed suicide – seeing this stupid son, only begotten son. Since then, there is no God, no God’s son, but the world is running perfectly well.
There is no need. There is no need of prophets and there is no need of founders of religion, and there is no need of people calling themselves incarnations.
It is enough to be human. It is more than enough to be meditatively human. It is enough to know yourself rather than be powerful over others.
The authentic religiousness is concerned with knowing oneself, being oneself, enjoying oneself, celebrating oneself. It has nothing to do with any superiority, with any will to power.
But nobody has listened to Nietzsche, and I know very few are going to listen to me. Even this many people did not listen to him. He lived a very lonely life because people could not see the truth that he was saying. It was shocking and it was destroying their consolations.
He says:
ONE HAS ABOVE ALL TO HEAR CORRECTLY THE TONE THAT PROCEEDS FROM THIS MOUTH, THIS HALCYON TONE, IF ONE IS NOT TO DO PITIABLE INJUSTICE TO THE MEANING OF ITS WISDOM. HERE, THERE SPEAKS NO FANATIC, HERE THERE IS NO PREACHING, HERE FAITH IS NOT DEMANDED: OUT OF AN INFINITE ABUNDANCE OF LIGHT AND DEPTH OF HAPPINESS THERE FALLS DROP AFTER DROP, WORD AFTER WORD – A TENDER SLOWNESS OF PACE IS THE TEMPO OF THESE DISCOURSES. SUCH THINGS AS THIS REACH ONLY TO THE MOST SELECT; IT IS AN INCOMPARABLE PRIVILEGE TO BE A LISTENER HERE.
Maneesha, truth is a very rare experience. Certainly it is not available in the marketplace and certainly it is not to be found in a crowd. The crowd may call itself Catholics or Hindus or Mohammedans, it doesn’t matter. Truth has to be found within yourself.
But before you can listen to your own heart, you will have to listen to the song of the river, to the song of the breeze passing through the pine trees. You will have to hear the silence that is prevailing here this very moment. You will have to learn in life only one art: that of a silent listener. And then you can use the same art, going deeper into yourself.
The art is the same whether you listen to the song of the river or the ocean or you listen to the heartbeat of yourself, or you listen just to the silent dance of a roseflower in the wind, in the rain. Watching, listening peacefully, slowly you will come to find yourself.
You can find yourself this very moment.
Maneesha, you are saying, “Osho, this is certainly about you.”
Yes, I can say all these statements are my statements, made by Nietzsche. It doesn’t matter who makes them.
You are asking, “Was Nietzsche your forerunner?”
Yes, but I do not agree with Nietzsche in all his statements. I am thinking to speak on Nietzsche... I have been waiting for your preparation to hear, because every moment, every statement of Nietzsche is going to hit you hard. I am hitting you hard every day just to prepare you.
Nietzsche is certainly my forerunner and obviously a forerunner cannot be absolutely right. He has committed many mistakes. But people have not bothered about Nietzsche. He is the most neglected great man in the history of the whole world. But I will not neglect him.
In fact, what I am saying is preparing you to listen one day to his mad statements – mad because nobody believed, nobody even thought that they could be right. People did not crucify him, they did even something worse: they forced him into a madhouse. Crucifixion has a glory, crucifixion has a dignity. To force a man like Friedrich Nietzsche into a madhouse against his will is far more ugly and far more inhuman.
But Nietzsche will have a revival; his truth cannot die. In comparison to Nietzsche, Jesus and Socrates are very very backward. Nietzsche has yet to find his contemporaries. He still has to wait. Perhaps my people will become his contemporaries.
Just the other day, one journalist was puzzled by the fact that I called Jesus psychologically sick, and all my people are Christian but nobody objected and nobody felt hurt. Nobody seemed to be angry. He was worried that if these people can hear things against Jesus although they have been brought up in a Christian society, in Christian schools, then certainly these people have gone through a transformation. They are not listening through their prejudice. They are listening directly through their own understanding and clarity.
... It is time to be serious.
Kowalski is employed by the local lunatic asylum to take the inmates on special outings. One day, ten of the best-behaved patients are going to a basketball game.
“Okay, let’s get on the bus, nuts!” calls out Kowalski, as they set off for the game. “Stand in line, nuts!” he shouts, when they get to their seats.
“Sit down, nuts!” and all the patients obediently sit down to watch the game.
About half way through the game, the mental asylum receives a phone call from the police, and the director is asked to come over right away.
When he arrives at the stadium, the place is a shambles. “What happened?” asks the director when he finds Kowalski.
“Well,” replies Kowalski, “one guy went past, shouting, ‘Ice cream! Ice cream!’” “Then, another guy came past crying, ‘Hot dogs! Hot dogs!’”
“But then, some guy started shouting, ‘Peanuts! Peanuts!’”
Sister Theresa is finally going to take her first holiday at the sea beach, after many years of devoted service to the priest, Father Sullivan.
Before she leaves, she gives Sister Bernadette detailed instructions on how to look after the old boy while she is away.
Father Sullivan is lying in bed when Sister Bernadette brings in breakfast on the first morning. He tells her that he has a key between his legs and that she has a lock between hers.
“If I put my key in your lock,” says the old priest, “it will open the kingdom of heaven.”
Two weeks later, when Sister Theresa gets back from her holiday, Sister Bernadette eagerly explains to her about the gates of heaven.
“Why, that lying old bastard!” shrieks Sister Theresa. “Twenty years ago he told me it was Gabriel’s horn, and I have been blowing it ever since!”
Sidney Smallpiece is out on a date with his girlfriend Sadie, and they go to see a movie.
The hero and the heroine are locked in a passionate embrace, when Sidney suddenly realizes that his wig has fallen off. He starts to grope around for it in the dark under the seats.
Not realizing what has happened, Sadie starts to moan passionately, “That is it, honey,” she murmurs, “right here. You have got it... you have got it now!”
“No, I have not!” snaps Sidney sitting up again, “I don’t part my hair in the middle!” Okay, Maneesha?
Yes, Osho.
Now, two minutes for silence.
Close your eyes, no movements of the body; just feel like a statue.… Now relax – let go.
... Now, come back to life. Okay, Maneesha?
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