From Personality to Individuality

Answers to the Seekers on the Path

Talks given from 30/12/84 pm to 28/01/85 pm

English Discourse series

CHAPTER 1

Man is born with a question mark in his heart

30 December 1984 pm in Lao Tzu Grove

Question 1

OSHO,

WHAT PLACE HAS MYSTICISM IN YOUR RELIGION?

My religion is pure mysticism.

There is nothing else in it.

The other religions have no place for mysticism in them. They cannot have, for the simple reason that they have answers for every question – bogus answers, without any evidence, with no argument.

But for the gullible humanity they are consoling. They demystify existence.

All knowledge demystifies existence.

I don’t teach you knowledgeability.

On the other hand all the religions do just that: they make you knowledgeable. They have a God as the creator. They have messengers of God bringing all the answers from the original source, indubitable, infallible.

These religions could exploit humanity for a simple reason: man feels a kind of inner unease when there are questions and there is no way to find the answer. Questions are there – man is born with questions, with a big question mark in his heart – and it is good.

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CHAPTER 1. MAN IS BORN WITH A QUESTION MARK IN HIS HEART

It is fortunate that man is born with a question mark, otherwise he would be just another species of animal. Buffaloes have no questions – they accept whatever is, unquestioningly – they are really faithful, religious. Trees have no questions, birds have no questions; it is only man and man’s prerogative, his privilege. In the whole of existence he alone is capable of asking a question.

The old religions have been trying to destroy your privilege. They have been forcing you down to the level of the animals. That’s what they call faith: ”undoubting faith.” They want you to be buffaloes, donkeys, but not men – because man’s only special quality that defines him as separate from animalhood is the question mark. Yes, it is a turmoil. Certainly to live without any questions is peaceful, but that peace is a dead peace, it has no life in it. That silence is the silence of a cemetery, of the graveyard.

I would prefer man to be in a turmoil, but alive.

I would not like him to become a graveyard. That peace, that silence is at a great cost: you are losing your life, you are losing your intelligence, you are losing all possibility of discovering an ecstatic way of life. That question mark is not there without significance. It is not the work of the devil that each child is born with doubt, not with faith.

Doubt is natural.

Each child is asking a thousand and one questions. The more a child asks the questions, the more potential he is showing that he will be able to discover something. There are dumb children too –

not literally dumb, but psychologically dumb. Parents like them very much because they don’t create any trouble, they don’t ask any questions – even a small child can destroy all your knowledgeability.

I am reminded of my own childhood and so many things that will help you to understand the beauty of the question mark. And unless you understand the question mark as something intrinsic to your humanity, to your dignity, you will not understand what mysticism is.

Mystifying is not mysticism.

Mystifying is what the priests have been doing.

They have taken your question mark.

They have destroyed the possibility of your exploring the mystery of existence. But they have to give you some substitute, some lollipop that is mystifying. And that is what all the scriptures have been doing; their basic methodology has been the same.

For example, in Hinduism the scriptures are written in a very difficult language, Sanskrit. Not a single Indian speaks it; it is a dead language. And as far as I am concerned, I have tried hard to find out whether it has ever been alive and I have not found a single piece of evidence. It has always been dead from the very beginning; it was born dead. It was invented by the priests. People have never used it, people cannot use it. It is so sophisticated, so grammatical, so mathematical, so phonetical that people cannot use it.

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CHAPTER 1. MAN IS BORN WITH A QUESTION MARK IN HIS HEART

When people use a language, the language starts becoming less grammatical but more alive; less mathematical but more meaningful. It becomes raw, it is no longer polished and sophisticated – and it starts growing. Sanskrit has never grown. A dead thing cannot grow. It is exactly where it was five thousand years before – no growth. Obviously a dead thing cannot grow.

A living language used by people goes on growing. Its words become more and more rounded, just like stones slipping into the river start becoming round. The continuous flow of the river, the continuous hitting against other rocks, against other stones, gives them a roundness. This can be seen; and you can immediately describe, define which languages are dead and which languages are living.

The living languages will never be perfect – dead languages will be always perfect – because living languages are used by imperfect, fallible, human beings, and from mouth to mouth they go on changing. They become more and more usable.

For example, in India English was introduced from the outside. A few words were bound to go into people’s use – for example, the word station. Now there has never been anything like a station in India before; it came after the English language had already come. Then the railways were introduced and of course the word station was there.

But if you move all over India in the villages, you will never find a single Indian – I mean of the ninety-eight percent of Indians who don’t know English using the word station. It is too difficult, too sophisticated. Through use, they have made – without anybody actually making it, just by use – they have come to the word tesan. That is simple. ”Station” seems to be a little difficult, it is a strain, so

”tesan.”

”Report”... now, it came with the English language, the police stations and your having to ”report.” But go to the villages and you will be surprised: nobody uses the word report, they use the word rapat. It has become rounded, ”rapat” – the sophistication of ”report,” the difficulty of ”report” is gone.

”Rapat” that seems to be human. And so many words... and they tell a tremendously meaningful story: when words are used by people then they start taking a shape of their own. By mere usage they go on changing.

Sanskrit remains static. Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Latin – they all remain static, far above people’s heads, far above their hands. Sanskrit was never the language of the people and this was mystifying

– the whole country depended on the priesthood, and in Sanskrit they would be saying pure rubbish.

Once you know it, you will be surprised – what is sacred about it? But chanted in Sanskrit, you don’t know what it means, you are mystified.

To keep the scriptures sacred it was necessary to keep them secret. They should not reach the people, people should not be able to read them. Whenever they need, the priest is available, he will read it. When printing was introduced Hindus were very reluctant for their scriptures to be printed: what would happen to the mystifying that they had been maintaining for thousands of years?

Hindus have mystified the whole country with the idea that they have all the secrets in their sacred books – but of those sacred books, ninety-nine percent is simply cow-dung! For Hindus it may be holy, but for nobody else is it holy. When those sacred books were translated into other languages From Personality to Individuality

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the mystifying process stopped; Hinduism lost its height, its glory, because then you could read it in any language – all those scriptures were available.

Mahavira never spoke in Sanskrit, Gautam Buddha never spoke in Sanskrit – for the simple reason that they were trying to defy the priesthood. They spoke in the language of the people. They were condemned by the priesthood: ”This is not the right way. You should speak in Sanskrit. And both of you are perfectly well educated ” – both were sons of great kings – ” you know Sanskrit, so why do you speak ordinary people’s languages?”

They said, ”For a certain reason: we want people to know that this mystifying has to be exposed.

There is nothing in your scriptures, but because they are in a language which nobody understands, it is left to the people’s imagination.”

Even the priest may not understand what he is reciting because Sanskrit has to be learned by memorizing, not by understanding. There is a great difference between the two. Sanskrit has to be learned by rote, by memory; you have to memorize it. Its whole emphasis is on memory, not on understanding. There is no need to be bothered what it means; all that you should be concerned about is how it is chanted.

And of course Sanskrit is a very beautiful language, having the quality of singing. You can memorize a song more easily than the same length of prose. Poetry is easily memorized; hence, all the languages which have depended on memory are all poetic, they look like songs, they sound beautiful Meaning? – you should not ask, because the meaning may be just as stupid as any of today’s newspapers, perhaps even worse because it is a five-thousand-year-old newspaper.

When a brahmin is chanting it you will be mystified by his chanting; it creates a certain atmosphere of song. And what is the meaning of what he is chanting? Perhaps the passage he is chanting is a prayer to God that means: ”Please destroy the crops of my enemy, and let my crops be doubled over last year’s. Let the milk disappear from my neighbor’s cows and let all that milk come to my cows.” When you understand the meaning, you will say, ”What nonsense! Where is the sacredness?

Where is the religion? This is religion?” – but the meaning is not to be bothered about.

The Mohammedan, if you listen to him calling from the tower of his mosque... you will be thrilled with its singsong quality. Arabic is tremendously touching, goes directly to the heart. It is meant to go there, it is not meant to go to your intellect, your reason. It is meant to touch your feelings, and it certainly touches them.

So when you hear Arabic you will be thrilled that there must be something immensely beautiful in it.

If just the sound makes you so thrilled and excited, what about the meaning? But please don’t ask the meaning, because the meaning is going to be so third rate and ugly that you will not even be able to believe that this kind of crap can be put into such a beautiful language.

Hence it is not to be allowed that the people learn the sacred language, the holy language. It is only for the priesthood – that is their monopoly.

This is the mystifying. This is a substitute to satisfy you, because they have taken away something of immense potential – the question mark – which would have made the whole existence a mystery.

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CHAPTER 1. MAN IS BORN WITH A QUESTION MARK IN HIS HEART

They had to give something as a substitute, a toy to play with. And they are ready with every kind of answer. Even before the child has asked, they start stuffing him with answers. Just look at the process. If the question has not been asked, the answer is irrelevant.

This is what I was going to tell you. In my childhood they started giving me answers... because there was a special class for Jainism in the Jaina temple and every child had to attend it, one hour every evening. I refused.

I told my father, ”In the first place I don’t have those questions for which they are supplying answers.

This is stupid. When I have questions I will go and learn their answers and try to find out whether they are correct or not. Right now I am not even interested in the question. Who created the world?

My foot! – I am not interested. I know one thing for certain: I have not created it.

My father said, ”You are a strange child.

All the children from the family are going, from the neighborhood, everybody is going.”

Jainas tend to live in a neighborhood, a close-knit neighborhood. Minorities are afraid of the majority so they remain close to each other; it is more protective. So all the children of the neighborhood go and their temple is in the middle of the neighborhood. That too is for protection, otherwise it will be burned any day if it is in a Hindu neighborhood or in a Mohammedan neighborhood.

And it will become difficult: if there is a riot you cannot go to your own temple. And there are people who will not eat without going to the temple. First they have to go to the temple and worship, then only can they eat. So Jainas live in small sections of the town, city, village, with their temple in the middle, and surrounding it is their whole community.

”Everybody is going,” my father said.

I said, ”They may have questions, or they are idiots. I am not an idiot, and I don’t have those questions, so I simply refuse to go. And I know what the teacher goes on teaching the children is absolute rubbish.”

My father said, ”How can you prove that? You always ask me to prove things; now I ask you, how can you prove what he says is rubbish?”

I said, ”Come with me.”

He had to go many times to many places; it was just that the arguments had to be concluded. And when we reached the school, the teacher was teaching that Mahavira had these three qualities: omnipotence, all-powerful; omniscient, all-knowing; omnipresent, everywhere-present. I said, ”You have listened, now come with me to the temple.” The class was just by the side of the temple, a room attached to the temple. I said, ”Now come into the temple.” He said, ”But what for?”

I said, ”Come, I will give you the proof.”

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What I had done was on Mahavira’s statue I had just put a laddoo – that is an Indian sweet, a round sweet, just like a ball – I had put a laddoo on Mahavira’s head, so naturally two rats were sitting on Mahavira’s head eating the laddoo. I said, This is your omnipotent Mahavira. And I have seen these rats pissing on his head.”

My father said, ”You are just impossible. Just to prove this you did all that!” I said, ”What else to do? How else to prove it? Because I cannot find where Mahavira is. This is a statue. This is the only Mahavira I know and you know and the teacher knows. And he is omnipresent so he must be present here seeing the rats and what they are doing to him. He could have driven those rats away and thrown away my laddoo. I was not here. I had gone to pick you up

– I had all the arrangements to make. Now prove to me that this man is omnipresent. And I’m not bothered at all – he may be. Why do I care?”

But before a child even asks a question, you stuff his head with an answer.

That is a basic and major crime of all the religions.

This is what programming is, conditioning is.

These religions condemn me, that I am conditioning people; I am simply deconditioning people.

The conditioning, they have done: they have already filled your mind with all kinds of answers. I am simply destroying those answers so you can find your question. They have covered the question completely, so completely that you have forgotten that you had any question.

In fact you have never asked any questions. No chance has been given to you to be acquainted with your question, with your questioning intelligence. The religions are so afraid that once you start questioning-just once – then it is going to be difficult to force answers against your will, because that questioning intelligence will be raising doubts; it will raise more questions against their answer than you could have imagined.

So the best way is to commit this basic crime: the child should be caught – the earlier the better –

and he should be spoon-fed theology, dogmatics, doctrines, catechisms. Before he becomes even aware of the question he knows all the answers.

If you are a Christian how do you know that there is a trinity? – that God the father, the Holy Ghost, the son, these three make the highest power monopoly, that they dominate the world, that they are the real dictators – how do you know it? It has been told to you. Perhaps you have forgotten who told you. It was told to you so early that unless you go deeper than that, further back than that, you will not be able to find who was this fellow who corrupted your mind.

The virgin birth... if you are not a Christian, you will immediately object: How can a virgin give birth to a child? But if you are a Christian, you simply don’t question it because before your questioning arose, the answer was put into you. They have been behaving with you as if you are a computer –

they just go on feeding the answer.

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CHAPTER 1. MAN IS BORN WITH A QUESTION MARK IN HIS HEART

And if somebody says anything against Christianity, you are ready to kill or be killed for this rubbish that you are not even responsible for discovering on your own. And the person who forced it on you did not himself know either: the same was done to him.

For centuries it goes on and on. Each generation goes on giving all its stupidities and superstitions to the new generation, thinking that they are helping you to become knowledgeable.

And once you become knowledgeable. the doors of mysticism are closed for you.

Mysticism means looking at existence without any prejudice.

Hence I say no so-called religion can be really mystic – mystifying of course, but never mystic because they cannot fulfill the basic condition to be a mystic.

You have to drop lal your knowledge, all that you have taken on faith has to be thrown down the drain.

Nothing is valuable in it, so don’t be worried; it is not a treasure, it is a tragedy. if you can get rid of it you will feel light, you will feel suddenly unburdened; your eyes fresh like a child’s eyes.

All these layers of knowledge: Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan, Jewish....

All these layers of

knowledge – it does not matter who has committed the crime against you; all the religions are in the same boat, committing the same crime. And because they are all committing the same crime, nobody objects.

The whole of humanity is in their grip.

And whenever a person like me objects, obviously he is to be condemned by all, criticized by all – but not answered. Nobody has ever answered me. from my childhood I have been continually asking.

Nobody has even answered a single question – there are no answers. When you understand it, that all answers are arbitrary, created by man just to make you feel at ease....

It is just like the mother telling the child who is not ready to sleep alone in the room ”Don’t be worried, Jesus is with you. You can sleep. You are not alone.” How can the child think that the mother is deceiving him? – his own mother? Nor does the mother think that she is deceiving; she believes it. Her mother poisoned her; she is doing the same to her own child. Naturally, what else can you do?

The child is afraid to be alone, but he has to learn to be alone, to sleep alone. Soon he will be going to a boarding school, he has to learn to stand on his own. He cannot go on clinging to his mother’s frock – for how long? She finds a good reason for saying, ”If he starts feeling the presence of Jesus or God and goes to sleep....”

The child will also feel at ease, less afraid. Nothing has changed – it is the same room, he is alone, the darkness is there – but now there is a little comfort, that Jesus is looking after him, that God is looking after him, that God is everywhere. His own mother says so, his father says so, his teacher says so, his priest says so; everybody cannot be wrong. And God is invisible so you cannot see Him, but a certain at ease-ness comes to him.

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CHAPTER 1. MAN IS BORN WITH A QUESTION MARK IN HIS HEART

That’s what all this knowledge has ben doing to you. It relieves you from enquiring, and enquiry is troublesome.

In this world you cannot get anything unless you are ready to risk something to get it. And God you have got so cheap, without even asking. Now what value can this God have? Religion you have got so cheap.... This religion, this God, are ways of mystifying existence so that your question remains repressed.

My effort here consists in demystifying.

Perhaps that is why the question, What place mysticism has in my religion? has arisen – because I am continuously demystifying.

The questioner does not understand the difference between mysticism and mystifying. He thinks they are synonymous, they are not: they are against each other.

It is mystifying that prevents mysticism from growing. And there is no other way except to destroy mystifying completely, uproot it completely.

And then there is no need for me to give you any answer. Your question is there, and existence is there.

Who am I to come between you and existence?

Face existence.

Look at the sunrise, the sunset.

Then you don’t have any answers – you just see what is there: a tremendously beautiful sunset.

You will be overwhelmed. You would love to sing or dance or paint or just lie down there on the grass and not do anything, just to go on looking. And a certain communion between you and the beauty of the sunset starts happening.

Something transpires – this is mysticism.

You know nothing – and yet you know.

There is knowledge which does not know at all.

And there is an ignorance which knows everything, because ignorance is innocence.

I can say to you, blessed are the ignorant; but the second part of my sentence cannot be that they shall inherit the kingdom of God. No, because that will be mystifying. I will say: Blessed are the ignorant, for theirs is the kingdom of God already, now, here. It is not a question that they shall inherit sometime, somewhere in some life after death – that is mystifying.

Mysticism is cash.

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Osho

CHAPTER 1. MAN IS BORN WITH A QUESTION MARK IN HIS HEART

Mystifying is a promissory note.

Nobody knows whether you will be able to cash this promissory note. The government may fail, the bank may go bankrupt. Only banks can go bankrupt, who else? And this promissory note can be cashed only after death, that is the condition on it. ”In God we believe... in God we trust.” And the pope promises you that this much will be given to you after death but it is always after death. They have been exploiting people with such simple means of exploitation that anybody who has a little bit of intelligence can see it.

Life is mystery.

Scriptures are mystifying. Scriptures are dead.

And the priesthood lives on these dead scriptures.

A real authentic man lives life, not scriptures.

And by sheer living, intensively, totally, he is surrounded by mystery all over. Each moment is a mystery. You can taste it, but you can not reduce it to objective knowledge.

That’s the meaning of mystery: you have a certain way of knowing it, but there is no way to reduce it to knowledge. It never becomes knowledge, it always remains knowing.

You have a sense of knowing, but if somebody insists, ”If you know, then give me the answer,” and you are a true, honest man, you will say, ”I have a sense of knowing but I also have another sense that it cannot be reduced to knowledge.”

That’s why Lao Tzu refused to write anything his whole life... for the simple reason that the moment you write it, it is something else. But this can be detected only by one who has some acquaintance with mystery.

It is not a question of scholarship: a scholar cannot detect anything wrong in Lao Tzu. Confucius was a great scholar in Lao Tzu’s time, his contemporary. The world knows Confucius more than Lao Tzu, naturally: he was a great scholar, a well-known wiseman. Great emperors used to visit him for advice. The emperor of China, who must have been the greatest emperor of those days – because China has always been a continent unto itself – appointed Confucius to be his prime minister, so that he was always available to him for advice.

But when Confucius went to see Lao Tzu, do you know what happened? He came back with almost a nervous breakdown. Lao Tzu was known at least to those people who were in search. And when the disciples of Confucius came to know that he was going to Lao Tzu they waited outside – Lao Tzu was living in a mountain cave.

Confucius did not want anybody else to accompany him because he knew that that man was strange, unpredictable. How he may behave, what he will do, what he will say, nobody knows. And before your own disciples... he may cut you to pieces. It is better to go alone first.

So he said to his disciples, you wait outside. Let me go.” And when he came out, he was trembling.

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The disciples said, what happened?”

He said, ”Just take me home. I am not myself That man is a dragon, never go to that man.” What had happened there inside the cave? Lao Tzu’s disciples were there, that’s why we know what happened, otherwise a great meeting would have been missed. Lao Tzu’s disciples were also very shocked even his disciples, because Confucius was older than Lao Tzu, far more well-known, respected. Who knew Lao Tzu? – very few people.

And the way Lao Tzu behaved with Confucius was simply outrageous. But not for Lao Tzu. He was a simple man, neither arrogant nor humble, just a pure human being. And if it hit hard – his purity, his innocence, and his ordinariness – if it hit hard on Confucius, what could he do?

If you go to a mirror and the mirror shows your face to be ugly, is it the fault of the mirror? You can do one thing, you can avoid mirrors – never look in a mirror. Or you can manufacture a mirror that makes you look beautiful. That is possible. There are hundreds of types of mirrors, concave and convex, and who knows what.... You can manage to look long, and you can manage to look fat; you can manage to look small, and you can manage to look beautiful.

Perhaps the mirrors you have are deceiving you. Perhaps the manufacturers are creating mirrors to give you a consolation – that you are so beautiful. Particularly women, standing before the mirror forget everything else. It is very difficult to take a woman away from the mirror. She goes on looking in the mirror. It must be something in the mirror, otherwise people are just homely.

Lao Tzu’s disciples said, ”What did you do?”

He said, ”I have not done anything, I simply reflected; it was my response. That idiot thinks he knows, and he is only a scholar. Now what can I do if I made it clear to him that all scholarship is rubbish, and told him,’You don’t know anything at all’?” And when you face a man like Lao Tzu you cannot be dishonest either, at least in front of him.

Confucius remained just like a statue, frozen, because what Lao Tzu was saying was right.

Scholarship is not knowing. You are quoting others, have you anything to say on your own?” And Confucius had nothing to say on his own. He was a great scholar he could have quoted all the old ancient scriptures but on his own? He had never thought about it, that anybody was going to ask, Have you something to say of your own?

And when Lao Tzu looked at him Confucius knew that that man could not be deceived. Confucius asked him about something. Lao Tzu said, ”No, I don’t know anything.” Then Confucius asked, ”What happens after death?” And Lao Tzu was just like a flare, became aflame, and he said, ”Again! Are you going to drop your stupidity or not? You are alive – can you say what life is? You are alive – can you reduce your experience of life into objective knowledge and make a statement of what life is? And remember that you are alive, so you must know.

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CHAPTER 1. MAN IS BORN WITH A QUESTION MARK IN HIS HEART

”You don’t know life while you are alive and you are bothering about death! You will have enough time in your grave. At that time you can meditate on what death is. Right now, live! And don’t live lukewarm.”

Many people go on living on dimmer switches. They go on dimming, dimming. They don’t die, they simply go on dimming; they simply fade out. Death happens to only a very few people, those who have really lived and lived hot. They know the difference between life and death because they have tasted life, and that experience of life makes them capable of tasting death too. And because they know life, they can know death. If living, you miss life; dying, you are going to miss death.

”And you are wasting your time; just go out and live!” said Lao Tzu to Confucius. ”And one day you will be dead. Don’t be worried: I have never heard of anybody living for ever, so one day you will be dead. Death takes no exceptions – that you are a great scholar or a prime minister. You will die, that much I can predict. Nothing else is predictable but that much can be predicted easily – that you will die. And in your grave, silently, meditate on what death is.” Confucius was trembling. The king also asked him, ”You have been to Lao Tzu – what happened?” Confucius said, ”All that I was afraid of happened. He made me look so idiotic that even after forty-eight hours I am still trembling. I am still afraid of that man’s face – I had nightmares for two nights!

That man is following me, and, it seems, will go on following me. And he had some eyes! They go just like swords into you.” He said, ”One thing I can say to you as your adviser: don’t ever think of meeting this man. He is a dragon, he is not a man.” Mysticism is to know life, without knowledge standing in between you and living.

But you go on living a borrowed kind of life, as if somebody else is living. You are like a zombie, sleepwalking, a somnambulist. And this whole situation has been created by the religions.

The trouble is that people think that the religions have been a great blessing to the world; just the contrary – they have been the greatest curse to humanity. They destroyed all that was living in you and replaced it with something dead.

Your question was a living phenomenon.

Your doubt was breathing, beating in your heart.

But they told you, ”Don’t doubt – otherwise you will suffer.” My father used to tell me, ”I am concerned about you. You use such words against religion, God, heaven, and other doctrines, that I am concerned; you may suffer for it.” I told him, ”I am ready, but before that suffering happens, let me live my life, and I will not have any grudge, I will not complain. In fact, I should be concerned about you, because all this knowledge is hocuspocus; and you think this boat made of paper is going to take you to the further shore. I tell you, you will drown.

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”I am from the very beginning trying to swim – I am not depending on any paper boat. If I drown, okay, it was my own choice. Nobody else is responsible for it, and I have no complaint. I enjoyed life.

I enjoyed denying all that was bogus and borrowed. I enjoyed being myself And if this is the reward that existence gives to an authentic man, I take it with grace.

”But what about you, when your boat – made of paper, holy paper, made out of scriptures – is drowning? You missed your life. You cannot feel grateful, because for what will you feel grateful?

Life, that may have made you feel gratitude, has slipped out of your hands, and now you are drowning and you don’t know how to swim because you never doubted the boat. I have every chance of reaching the other shore if I can swim.”

He was a good swimmer himself. And I loved swimming so much that whenever my family wanted to find me they had to go to the side of the river to find where I was – because I had to be somewhere in the river. For four to six hours every day I was in the river. Once in a while we both used to go for a swim. I used to invite him particularly in the rainy season.

And he would say, ”Don’t do that,” because in the rainy season the river was a mountainous river. It would suddenly become so wide, and so big; otherwise it was a small river.

In the summer you could not conceive how much bigger it became – a hundredfold at least – miles broad. And the current was so heavy that if I wanted to cross the river – and I have crossed that river hundreds of times in the rainy season – it would take me at least two to three miles downstream.

Only then would I be able to reach to the other shore. Directly it was impossible. To move directly from this point straight to the other side was impossible. The current was so strong that crossing it I would be carried at least three miles down river.

But I said, ”I manage it, and you certainly are a better swimmer, with more strength than me. I am just a child. You are a strong man, you can make it. Only once he came with me, and that too because I created a situation that he had to come.

My sister had got married and her husband had come to visit us. He was a wrestler; he was the university champion. It was a joke in the university, because when I entered the university – that was his last year, final M.A. – I stayed in his room. So it became a joke because two champions... I was the university champion in debate, and he was a wrestler.

But everybody was worried about how we were managing because I was continually arguing and he knew only one argument: fighting. He was accepted by the university and passed all the examinations, but it was not that he was passing those examinations.... The university wanted him to remain in the university because he was the all-India champion. Champions are valuable; they raise the credit of your university.

He knew nothing of what the examinations were about. From the morning, he was doing hours of exercises; in the evening, more exercises – and he was continuously wrestling with people, and his teacher. He was certainly a very good wrestler, I have seen him fighting. He finally became our sannyasin, but unfortunately he died very early. He was not more than fifty-five when he died.

He had come with me from the university and I asked my father, Today, we are both going swimming.

He is also a swimmer as well as a wrestler. You have to come.” He could not say no in front of his From Personality to Individuality

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son-in-law – that would have looked a little as if he was afraid. And the son-in-law could not say anything because the father-in-law was coming – an old man. And I was very young and he was an all-India champion wrestler; so how could he expose that he was afraid?

When he saw the river he said, ”Really, are we going to cross it?” I said, ”Of course.”

My mother was trying to prevent us; my sister was trying to prevent her husband, but I was all for it. I said, ”This chance will never come again; let us see what happens. At the most we’ll be taken three, four miles downstream, we will just have to walk four miles up again.” So when I jumped, they had to jump. And it was terrible – the current was so strong that my brother-in-law said, ”It would have been better if I had said that I was afraid before; now to go back is impossible. We are right in the middle, and I don’t see any hope of reaching to the other side.” My father said, ”I always knew that one day this boy was going to create some trouble for everybody.” But I said, ”When we have crossed half, it is proof enough: the other half we can cross because we have already crossed half” Many times they both agreed to turn back, but I said, ”You are being absolutely foolish, because to return is still the same distance. And for your whole life you will be known as a coward. What is the point of returning now? In the same time, with the same energy, we will reach the other shore. Even if you return, I am going to the other shore.” That pulled them out of it; they felt, ”If he goes on and reaches the other shore – and he is going to make it because he has been going across continually – and we turn back now, he will spread the rumor in the whole city:’Look, this is the all-India wrestling champion, and this is my father, who has been swimming his whole life. They both turned back from the middle of the river leaving a small child to go alone to the other side.’

”Now,” they said, whatsoever happens, even if death happens, there is nothing to do but follow him.

He will not turn back.” My father said to my brother-in-law, ”You don’t know him, he is not the type to go back on anything. He would rather die – and we are both going to die with him! And we have unnecessarily got ourselves into trouble. I have been avoiding this for years, but just because of you, I agreed.”

And my brother-in-law said, ”Just because of you, I agreed. He played a trick on both of us.” But finally we reached the bank and I said, ”Now, what do you say? Just a little courage and a little readiness to take the risk, and to go into the unknown.... And you were trying to go back, which was the same distance – but it was known. That shore was known, so you felt that perhaps it was easier because it was known, and this side was unknown. The unknowability made you afraid, otherwise what arithmetic is this?”

We reached the other shore. We walked three, four miles up again, but they were not prepared to swim back because if we wanted to reach the other shore at the same point we started, then we would have had to go on four miles further. They said, ”Four more miles walking? – and this experience of almost dying? We are going to catch the boat from here!” – because that was the From Personality to Individuality

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point from where the boat used to leave to the other shore to take passengers from this side to that side.

They said, Now whatever you want to do, you can. If you want to go four miles on, you go; we are not coming. We have decided – we both have decided – that whatsoever happens, if people call us cowards, okay.”

I said, No, I am not going to spread the rumor about you, and I am not going four miles just to prove you cowards. This is my usual practice: I walk up again, and then from four miles further up, I swim across and reach the spot where I have left my clothes. But I will not do that; that will be too much.

”I have already done more than is supposed of a son; I will not do this. But remember one thing: it is better to be ready to swim rather than to wait for boats which are unreliable; better to rely on your own hands than to rely on some knowledge which may be just arbitrarily created by clever people.” Mysticism needs no other qualification except a simple open mind.

You are not a Hindu, you are not a Mohammedan, you are not a Jaina, you are not a Buddhist – you are simply you.

And then look – life has no answers.

All answers are mystifying.

Life can be lived, can be loved, can be danced, can be drunk, can be tasted.

You can do so many things with life.

Just remove the dimmer switch.

Livva – not a little hot, livva real hot!

And life becomes immediately a mystery.

My religion is pure mysticism.

Question 2

OSHO,

MANY THINGS WHICH ONCE GAVE A PERSON A SENSE OF BELONGING ARE

DISAPPEARING: THE TRIBE, THE FAMILY MARRIAGE, EVEN FRIENDSHIP. WHAT IS

HAPPENING? WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT?

IT is something beautiful that is happening, something really great.

Yes, the tribe is disappearing. The family is disappearing, marriage is disappearing, friendship is disappearing... so far so good – because it leaves you alone to be yourself From Personality to Individuality

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The tribal man is just a number in the tribe. The tribal man is the most primitive man, the most unevolved, closer to animals than to man. He lives only as a number in the tribe. It is good that tribes have disappeared. The disappearance of the tribe created families.

At that stage, the family was a great advantage because the tribe was a big phenomenon; the family was a small unit. You had more freedom in the family than in the tribe. The tribe was very dictatorial and very powerful. The head, the chief of the tribe was all-powerful, even enough to kill you. There are still a few tribes in very undeveloped countries. In India there are a few tribes of aboriginals.

I have been to those tribes. I got myself appointed in Raipur as a professor just because not far from Raipur is the nearest and the most primitive tribe in India, in Bastar. It is a small state, a tribal state.

People still live naked and eat raw meat. Perhaps these are the people from the time when fire had not been discovered, and they have carried on the idea of eating raw meat.

They are very simple, innocent; but as far as the tribe, its conventions and its traditions are concerned, absolutely orthodox. There is no question of anybody rebelling against the tribe. He will be immediately killed, sacrificed to the god, because anybody going against the tribe means he is angering the god – and the tribe cannot afford to make the god angry.

The tribe is carrying on the tradition created by the god himself They don’t have scriptures, they don’t have any written language; so the priest, who is also the chief, has all the powers. And it is impossible in that tribe to rebel and still remain alive.

You cannot escape, because outside you will not be acceptable at all. They don’t know any language that is spoken outside their tribe, they are naked.... They put on small wraparound clothes only on the twenty-sixth of January every year, when a small group of them goes to Delhi, to participate in the celebrations for Republican Day, when India became a republic.

Just a small group is trained to speak a little Hindi and to use some clothes: ”And don’t be naked in Delhi, particularly when you are passing before the president and the prime minister and all the ambassadors and the invited guests from the world. At least at that time you should be properly dressed.” So a small group is trained. The same group goes every year because nobody wants to bother with all this.

From Raipur it was so close that I used to visit those people just to see how the tribe has a hold over its people. It has an absolute hold because it does not leave you in a position to revolt. You can leave the tribe, but you cannot live outside the tribe. All that you know is the tribal way of living.

If you are caught outside the tribe eating raw meat – they simply kill the animal and start eating it –

you will be immediately taken by the police. Naked, you cannot go outside you – will be immediately caught.

They don’t know any language, they don’t know any skill. All the skill that they know is useful only in their tribe. For example, a certain dance, a certain kind of drumming; but that is not used anywhere else except in their tribe. So nobody can move out of the tribe; mobility is impossible.

And living inside the tribe and against the tribe and its conventions is impossible. The moment the chief finds out, he has found a sacrifice for the god. Then the whole tribe gathers together, dances From Personality to Individuality

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and creates so much noise – and a bonfire And the man is pushed into the bonfire as a sacrifice to the god.

The tribe was a collective mind.

It is still existent in your collective unconscious.

The family was a development at that time because it made you part of a smaller unit, gave you a little freedom. And your family became protective towards you. Now the family is also disappearing because something which is protective at one point is bound to become prohibitive at another point.

It is just like when you grow a small plant and you put a protective fence round it. But don’t forget to remove it when the tree is grown up, otherwise the same fence will not allow the tree to grow.

When you put it there, the tree was thin like a finger; that’s why you put a small fence around it, it protected it from animals, from children. But when the tree trunk grows wider then the fence that was protective becomes prohibitive, you have to remove it.

That time has come.

The family is no longer protective.

It is prohibitive.

It was a great step out of the tribe.

Now another step has to be taken:

From the family to the commune.

The commune can give you all the freedom that you need, and all the protection that is needed without prohibiting you at any point.

So I say it is good that the tribe has disappeared, that the family is disappearing.

Yes, you will miss it because you have become addicted; these are addictions. You will miss the father, the mother, but that is only a transitory period. When there are communes established around the world, you will be immensely surprised that you have found so many uncles and so many aunts, and you have lost only one mother and one father. What a gain!

And having one father and one mother is psychologically dangerous because if the child is a boy, he starts imitating the father; if a child is a girl, she starts imitating the mother – and great psychological problems arise.

The girl imitates the mother but she hates the mother, because the girl is a woman; she loves the father. This is an absolutely, biologically solid, scientifically proved fact: the girl loves the father and hates the mother. But the girl cannot imitate the father, she is a girl; she has to imitate the mother.

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The boy loves the mother because he is a man, and she is a woman – and the first woman in his life. He loves the mother, he hates the father. He is jealous of the father also because the father and mother are in love; he cannot tolerate it. And small children show it in many ways. If the father and mother are sleeping in bed, the boy will come and sleep just in the middle of both. It is not just that he wants both. No, he is separating both: ”Get away!” The girl is also jealous of the mother. She would like to take the place of the mother and be the father’s beloved. And this is not only about the child. If the father shows too much love to the daughter, the mother immediately starts giving him a headache. If the mother is too loving towards the boy, the father starts feeling left out.

But the father and the mother are fading out: soon they will be gone. But they will leave this whole psychological mess in the children.

Now the girl will hate her mother her whole life; and anything that appears to be similar to the mother, she will hate. And strangely enough, she will behave exactly like the mother, so she will hate herself too. She will see her face in the mirror and she will remember her mother. She will look at her behavior and she will remember her mother. And the same is going to happen to the boy.

This mess is creating almost fifty percent of the psychological diseases in men and women around the world.

A commune will have a totally fresh psychological health. This is possible only in a commune, because the child... of course the child will be born from a mother and will have a father, but that will not be the only boundary around him. He will be moving in the whole commune and all men of the age of his father will be his uncles – and an uncle is a nice person. The father is always a little nasty, just because of his function. He is a powerful man, he has to show the power; he has to discipline the boy.

The same is true about the mother: she has to discipline the girl. She is afraid of what the girl is going to be like if she is not forced into a certain ideal which fits with the society – out of love, with good intentions.... But the uncle is not trying to impose anything.

And when there are so many uncles and so many aunts, one very great phenomenon comes into existence: you are not carrying a single person’s image in your mind.

The boy carries the mother’s image in his mind: he would like a woman exactly like his mother to be his wife. Now, where can you find your mother again? So he will fall in love with a woman who has some similarity, but similarity is not going to work. Strange things people become attracted to: the color of the hair, the way the woman walks, the color of her eyes, the length of her nose, the cut of her face. If something is similar... but only something can be similar what about everything else?

So with the similar you fall in love. But you are also falling in love with the whole person, not just the way she walks. She will cook also, and it’s not going to be your mother’s cooking. Then you will know that just walking is not going to help. She screams also, she shouts also. She is not behaving like your mother. She is your wife, why should she behave like your mother? She has not come to babysit.

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She has been in search of a husband, and because there was something in you similar to her father

– the length of your nose, the length of your ears – she fell in love with you. Now what to do with your ears? How long can she go on playing with your ears? And you won’t like it either: ”What nonsense is this? I am not just ears, I am a whole person!” But the whole person she has no desire for.

This is the trouble that exists, and it is because of a certain reason: every boy has an idea of a woman, and that woman is his mother; every girl has an idea of a man, and that man is her father.

That’s why all love affairs are bound to fail.

No love affair can succeed, because the basic psychology is against its success.

So the only successful love affair is one which remains only in your mind, but never materializes. The great lovers of the world: Laila and Majnu, Romeo and Juliet, Shiri and Farhad, Soni and Mahival –

they are great lovers whose story the world has remembered. But if they had got married, finished; their love story nobody would have ever heard. Because they could not materialize their relationship into actuality, it only remained in their mind. The society and the parents or something came in between, and they had to remain apart, separated. The love remained aflame because it was only in imagination.

In imagination there is no problem. You create your lover the way you want. Now, in your imagination your lover cannot say, ”No! I am going to smoke” – because it is your imagination. If you want him to smoke he will smoke; if you don’t want him to smoke, he will not.

But a real husband will smoke even if you say he should not smoke, that it stinks, that if he smokes you cannot sleep with him in the bed. The more you insist, the more he will resist: ”Go to hell, sleep anywhere” His cigarette is far more important than you. It is far more significant for him because it gives him support, help, friendship, company – thousands of things in such a small cigarette. And what can a woman do? So if there is a choice he will choose the cigarette and leave the woman.

But in your imagination you can manage whatsoever you want.

And so the man goes on managing the woman: in his imagination she does not perspire, needs no deodorant. In his imagination she never becomes a pain in the neck because imagination cannot go to the neck, imagination remains in the head. And it is just your painting so whatsoever color you want to put there, you go on putting. There is no problem. There is no resistance from the painting like: ”I am not going to take this color,” or, ”I am not going to wear this sari....” So the only love affairs which are famous in the world are the love affairs which never materialized.

All other love affairs... what happened to them? – nobody bothers about them. In every story, when the lovers get married the last sentence is: ”Then they lived happily ever after.” It’s strange: every lover in every story then lives happily ever after? In fact, after that the real story begins Before that, what was the story was all imagination.

It is good that the family is disappearing.

And with it nations will disappear because the family is the unit of the nation.

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So I am tremendously happy whenever I see the family disappearing, because I know behind it will go the nation. With it will go the so-called religions, because it is the family which imposes religion, nationality, and all kinds of things on you. Once the family is gone, who is going to force Christianity on you, Hinduism on you; who is going to insist that you are an American, that you are an Oregonian?

Once the family is gone, much of psychological disease will be gone, much of political insanity will be gone. You should be happy that they are disappearing.

Marriage was an invention against nature.

It has tortured man long enough, but there was a time when it was needed. It was needed because there were powerful people and there were weaker people. The powerful people used to collect all the beautiful women for themselves, and the weaker people remained without wives. Their biology remained unsatisfied. So marriage had to be invented – it was invented by the weaker men. The weaker men got together, must have got together some time in the past and must have decided on it, because when weaker men are together then the stronger man is no longer the stronger. He is stronger than a single man, but he is not stronger then the whole mass of weak people.

The weak people got together and they said, ”One man, one wife” – because that is the ratio in which children are born. It was enforced by the weaker man over the stronger people; otherwise it was bound to be that they would collect all the beautiful women to their harem and the weaker people would remain sex-starved. That situation was not good. The family helped, and the monogamous family came into being. It was of great importance that the weaker people were no more sex-starved.

But now the family is no longer needed, now it is phony. It is possible now that the woman can earn, the man can earn; they need not depend on each other. It is possible for a woman not to have children. It is possible for a woman to hire another woman to have her children grow in the other woman’s womb, or she can arrange for a test-tube baby.

Sex and children are no more connected.

You can have sex and it does not mean that you have to suffer children too.

Now the family is absolutely out of date.

The commune has future.

A commune means many independent individuals, not belonging to each other in the old ways of family, tribe, religion, nation, race – no. Only in one way are they related to each other: that is they are all independent. They respect your independence, and the same they expect from you: to respect their independence.

That is the only relationship, the only friendship, the only thing that is the cementing force in a commune: that we respect each other’s individuality, independence. The other’s way of life, his style of life is absolutely accepted, respected.

The only condition is that nobody is allowed to interfere with anybody else in any sense.

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So it is good that all this dead past is disappearing, and freeing us to create a new man, a new humanity, a new world.

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CHAPTER 2

To define is to confine – existence has no boundaries 31 December 1984 pm in Lao Tzu Grove

Question 1

OSHO,

WHY DO I FEEL THAT IF LIFE IS MEANINGLESS AND EMPTY? IT SEEMS THAT I AM DEATHLY

AFRAID OF BEING ALONE. HOW CAN I GO TOTALLY INTO MY ALONENESS WITH JOY

INSTEAD OF FEAR?

THE word ”meaning” is irrelevant to life.

Life is neither meaningful nor meaningless.

But for centuries man’s mind has been conditioned to believe that life has great meaning. All that meaning was arbitrary. Hence only in this century, for the first time in the whole history of man, has the question, ”What is the meaning of life?” become one of the most important, because all old lies are exposed.

Life was meaningful with a God. Life was meaningful with a life beyond death. Life was meaningful because the churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, were continuously hammering the idea in man’s mind.

A certain maturity has come to man, not to all, but to a very small minority.

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CHAPTER 2. TO DEFINE IS TO CONFINE – EXISTENCE HAS NO BOUNDARIES

I would like you to remember five significant names. First is Soren Kierkegaard. He was the first man who raised this question and was condemned universally, because even to raise the question created suspicion in people. Nobody had dared, ever, to ask, What is the meaning of life?

Even the atheists who had denied God, who had denied the afterlife, who had denied the existence of the soul – even they had never asked what the meaning of life is. They said, Eat, drink and be merry – that is the meaning of life.” It was clear to them that these joys – ”eat, drink, be merry” –

were what life is all about.

But Soren Kierkegaard went very deeply into the question. He created, unknowingly, a movement: existentialism. Then followed the four other names: Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, Gabriel Marcel, and the last but not the least important – in fact the most important – Jean-Paul Sartre. These five people went on hammering on the whole intelligentsia of the world: that life is meaningless.

Now, anybody who has some kind of intelligence is bound to come across this question, and he has to find some way to encounter it.

I do not agree with these five great philosophers, but I give them the respect that they deserve. They were courageous, because once you take meaning out of life, religion disappears, because religion up to now has been nothing but an effort to give meaning to your life: to fill it so that you don’t feel empty; to surround you with God and angels so that you don’t feel lonely.... You have not been going to the church, the synagogue, and the temple without any reason.

For thousands of years man has not been bowing down to the priests without any reason. He was gaining something. Of course they were exploiting him, but even in their exploitation man was finding a certain consolation. He was not alone, he was being looked after. Life was not futile, it had tremendous meaning, spiritual, esoteric, profound... so high and so deep that your intellect could not comprehend it.

Still the majority of people, ninety-nine percent, are not bothered by the question. How can they be bothered? They easily find consolation from the dead past. To them it is not a dead past.

I have told you about Bishop Jenkins of England who declared that there was no resurrection, that it is a myth; that there was no virgin birth, it is an absolute lie, and that there is no need for anybody to believe in all these mythologies to become a Christian. Of course, there he is not right because he says, ”I don’t need all these things – I can still believe in God.” I can’t see what reason he can give for his faith in God.

Christians were not fools to go on believing in absurdities for two thousand years. The reason was, without those absurdities, you cannot support God the ultimate absurdity. Now, it is like taking your legs and your hands and your head and everything away and saying I still believe in you. Nothing is left behind.

All the theologians, from Thomas Aquinas to any modern preacher, understand perfectly well that God needs support.

Every lie needs support.

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Only truth can stand on its own feet.

The lie cannot stand on its own feet. It needs borrowed legs, a borrowed head, a borrowed heart –

everything borrowed. If you go on taking things away piece by piece, and then you say in the end that all these things are not needed, that you still have faith in God.... So for a Christian, according to Jenkins, these things should not be required as a fundamental part of Christianity. I don’t know whom he is befooling. Certainly he is befooling himself, because these are the supports, and if you have taken all the supports, the house will fall down. And he has not given a single reason now for faith in God.

But I have remembered him again today because a few days ago lightning struck one of the most beautiful cathedrals in England, York, and almost the majority of the masses believe that it is not a coincidence: it is God punishing the church for installing a man like Jenkins as a bishop. He was the fourth in the hierarchy; he had just to pass two people to become the archbishop of England. And it would not have been difficult to pass these two people. Life is so full of accidents – they may die or something – one can always hope. And he was not so far away, just close.

But all over England now, it is believed that God has punished the church. But this is a strange God, and a strange punishment, because Jenkins was not the bishop of this cathedral. This is strange. Jenkins was two hundred miles away. Your God is such a great shot – He missed him by two hundred miles! A master archer.

And what has the cathedral of York to do with Jenkins’ statement? Lightning should be on Jenkins or on the cathedral or church where he was the bishop, or on the archbishop of Canterbury because he had appointed him. But this cathedral in York is in no way connected.

But people have found a relationship – it is not a coincidence. Then life becomes related to profound realities, even your small stupidities. Now even if God si there, do you think He will bother about Bishop Jenkins? And if He does bother then what kind of anger is this? He should at least learn a little marksmanship. And He must have been doing this for millions of years; so much training....

I am reminded that a king who was a very great lover of archery – and he himself was a master archer – always wanted to meet anybody who was better than him. But his whole life he could never find anybody who was better than him. But one day when he was passing through a small village, he saw on every tree a strange thing – perfect marksmanship, a master far better than him. On every tree, on the wooden fences, everywhere, he found a round circle with an arrow just exactly in the middle.

He stopped his chariot and asked, ”Where is this great archer? I would like to honor him. I will take him to the palace – he should be my master. I have been in search but I have never found anybody better than me. But this man seems to be a hundred percent accurate. Not even by a minute part of an inch does he miss; he exactly hits the center.” He went to a few trees and measured and it was the exact center. He asked somebody from the village... because people had gathered; the king was there, the golden chariot was there – and what is he doing? And he asked them, ”Where is this great archer?” From Personality to Individuality

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They all laughed, they said, ”He is no archer, he is the idiot of this village.” They said, ”You don’t understand.”

”You are all idiots!” the king said. ”Such a great archer and you call him an idiot?” They said, ”First, try to understand. He is no archer, he is just a fool. First he shoots the arrow and then he draws the circle. Of course it is perfectly accurate, the circle he draws afterwards. So wherever the arrow goes, there he makes the circle. Don’t get worried about him, just go on your way. He is a complete idiot.

”We have been telling him that this is not the way of archery. First you make the circle and then you shoot, but he goes on doing it his own way: he shoots first. He says, ’What does it matter which you do first and which you do second? This way it is always perfect. Your way does not work at all, I have tried it.’”

Now, God, for millions of years, has been threatening people with lightning, killing people with lightning. Hinduism believes that lightning is nothing but the arrow of the lord Shiva. So whenever there is lightning they have to make a sacrifice to Shiva, to pray or do some rituals, because lightning is the perfect symbol that Shiva is angry, and they have to find the person who has made him angry.

But in the twentieth century, in this last part of the twentieth century, in one of the most educated and sophisticated countries like England, most of the people believe that it is a punishment sent by the lord to Bishop Jenkins! If this is God’s archery then I don’t think any man is a lesser archer than Him. You won’t miss by two hundred miles! Even that idiot who discovered the right way was far more intelligent than this God.

But why do people go on believing in such things? It is not without reason. The reason is that all these things are giving meaning to their lives. A God above makes you feel safe, secure. If there is no God then the whole sky is empty, and you are left alone. You are so tiny, and the emptiness is so vast. Fear is bound to strike you – just to think of the emptiness of the sky, which is infinite, because there cannot be any boundary anywhere. The old religions all believed there is a boundary, but that is absolutely illogical. A boundary means there must be something beyond it, otherwise how can you make a boundary? Yes, you can make a boundary around your house because of the neighbor’s house. You can create a fencing around your house because the earth continues beyond your fencing.

But if you are creating a fencing where the earth ends, and there is nothing else beyond your fencing, your fencing will fall into the emptiness. How will it be supported from the other side? To create a boundary, two things are needed; one on this side and one on the other side.

Obviously existence cannot have any boundary.

It is fearful to conceive infinity, the emptiness continuing forever and ever. You will never come to a point where you can say, ”Now we have reached the end.” There is no end and there is no beginning.

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Now, think of a story which has no beginning and no end. It was one of my pastimes.... I have never been much interested in novels, but once in a while when I had nothing else to read I had my own way of reading a novel – just from the middle, because that gave it some authenticity. With no beginning, you have to work out what must have preceded because you start suddenly in the middle. And I would never go to the end. Again I would stop halfway – halfway through the second half First I would try to figure out what the beginning could be and what the end could be; then I would start reading from the beginning.

And I was puzzled that I always managed to figure out the beginning and the end. I never missed, not only in details but on all the basic points, because it is a man – created thing, and the mind works in a certain fashion. It has a routine way of working. If this is the middle, created by a human mind, and if I understand the human mind, I can figure out what the beginning will be and what the end will be.

Yes, if the book is written by a madman, then certainly I am not be able to figure it out. But madmen don’t write books. That is very compassionate of them. But in fact if they start writing books, their books will be far more interesting than the books written by scholars, intellectuals, because the intellect has a certain pattern of work.

I am not in favor of all these five ”existentialists” – in quotes – because I am not even ready to call them existentialists. Kierkegaard never really lived, or if you call his life, life, then it was worse than death. He came out of his house only once a month, and the house was not much, just a small room. His father, seeing that his son seemed to be a little crazy – continuously reading and writing

– tried to read his books, and threw them away because he could not manage to figure out what Kierkegaard wanted to say. And he goes on and on about nothing, much ado about nothing.

Kierkegaard never got married. One foolish woman was in love with him... must have been foolish, because he was an ugly man in the first place, and a strange type, eccentric, who lived in the darkness of his room. Once a month he had to go out because his father, before he died, had put money in the post office and made an arrangement that every month Kierkegaard could draw a certain amount. He knew that Kierkegaard was not going to earn any money; he would simply die in his room, so his father sold everything and deposited it in the post office. That’s why Kierkegaard had to go out once every month; the first day of the month he would go out.

He lived in Copenhagen, and the whole town waited because it was a rare opportunity – Kierkegaard coming out of his room. The children used to follow him to the post office; it was almost a procession.

And he had written a book, EITHER OR, which had just been published and that had become his nickname in Copenhagen. So the children would be shouting ”either-or” – that was his real name to them – ”Either-or is going to the post office!”

It was a great insight on the part of the children to name this man Either-or, because he was exactly that. That’s why he could not marry the woman, because he continued to think: either-or. All the favorable points for marriage, and all the unfavorable points for marriage all balanced out. He could not decide. The woman waited for three years, but he said, ”Forgive me, I cannot decide. It is still either-or.”

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nature, who never communed in any way with existence.... If he feels life is meaningless, no wonder

– it has to be meaningless. But he is projecting his feeling of meaninglessness on everybody.

And then came these four other so-called existentialists. I am calling them so-called because they had no communion with existence at all. The only way to have communion with existence is silence; and they didn’t know the language of silence – how could they commune with existence? So what were they doing? They were exposing the lie that the religious people have imposed on humanity.

And it was a lie.

The meaning that religious people have given to human life is arbitrary. These people are exposing the arbitrariness of the religious people’s meaning – but that does not mean that life is meaningless.

It simply means that the meaning that was given to life up to now is found invalid: God is not the meaning of life.

Life beyond death is not the meaning of life.

Jesus Christ is not the meaning of life. But that does not mean that life has no meaning.

But because you have been thinking that this is the meaning of life, when suddenly it falls apart, you pick up the polar opposite idea of meaninglessness.

I want you to remember my standpoint.

I am an existentialist. And I say to you that life is neither meaningful nor meaningless. The question is irrelevant.

Life is just an opportunity, an opening.

It depends what you make of it.

It depends on you what meaning, what color, what song, what poetry, what dance you give to it.

Life is a creative challenge.

And it is good that it hasn’t any fixed meaning, otherwise there would be no challenge. Then it would be just a ready-made thing: you are born and the meaning of life is given to you and you carry it your whole life; this is the meaning of your life. No, existence is far more profound than any meaning.

Existence is just a challenge to creativity.

It allows you all the space that you need – and you think it is empty? Just try to use the right words, because words have a certain context. ”Empty” is a sad word; it seems something is missing, something that should have been is not there. But why call it empty? Why in the first place expect that something should be there waiting for you? Who are you? Give it the right name.

It is one of the basic arts of living to call things by their right name, the right word, to make the right gesture... because even a slightly wrong word brings wrong associations. Now, ”empty”...

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the very sound of the word reminds you of something futile. No, I give it a different meaning: it is spaciousness, uncluttered with anything.

Existence is so spacious that it allows you absolute freedom to be whatsoever you want to be, whatsoever you have the capacity to be.

It allows you an unhindered space to grow and to blossom. It does not impose anything on you.

God imposes things on you. He wants you to be a certain kind of man, having a certain kind of personality, morality, ethics, etiquette. He wants to put you into a cage. And you think to be caged is to have found meaning? To be caged is to be dead.

Nietzsche is far truer when he says, ”God is dead and I proclaim to humanity that now man is free.” He is saying two things: ”God is dead” – that is the least important part of his statement, which has angered all the religions of the world. The most important part is the second part: ”Hence man is free.” Just think a little bit about it.

God is equivalent to slavery.

No God is equivalent to freedom.

And freedom is bound to be spacious – don’t call it empty. Yes, it is empty of any hindrance. It is empty of any structure. It is empty of any guidance. It does not force you to move in a certain direction, to be someone.

No, life gives you all the space you need, perhaps more space than you need. Space out, rather than bothering about why life is empty. It is good – this spaciousness without boundaries, with no guidelines, with no map. You can move like a cloud in the sky: untethered, unforced. Wherever the wind takes you, wherever you reach, that is the goal.

Ordinarily we have been taught that there should be a goal and then you start reaching towards it; if you reach then you have succeeded. But really you have missed immense opportunities. In going for this particular goal you have lost immensely the whole richness of life.

Why does one feel life is meaningless? – because in the first place you expect some meaning to be there. Who told you that you have to expect some meaning?

This is what I call the wrong that religions have done to man. They have told you there is meaning; you accepted it – and when you don’t find it, you are frustrated, you feel lost.

So many intelligent people go on committing suicide. The greatest numbers of suicides in any single profession is in the profession of philosophy. More philosophers commit suicide than any other profession. Strange! Professors should be wise people, philosophers particularly so. But what goes wrong? – their expectation of finding meaning. They try hard to find it, and it is not there. It was never there in the first place.

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is wrong with them; but they never feel that they have to commit suicide because life is meaningless.

They have not searched; meaning was always there. They have not cared. They have not listened to the priest, to the wiseguys who are all around, who are giving advice freely – although nobody takes it.

Advice is the only thing in the world that everybody gives and nobody takes. And everybody knows it.

These people – Jaspers, Marcel, Heidegger, Sartre, they have moved to the opposite polarity.

Religions say that life is meaningful because God cannot create a meaningless life; it has an intrinsic meaning, a significance. You have to fulfill it, and you will be rewarded for it. Religions gave this hope but these people found that there is no God, that nobody has created a meaningful life, that there is no destiny – man is just driftwood going nowhere. So they moved to the opposite polarity –

life is meaningless.

Just see the point: religions say life is meaningful, and these so-called existentialists have impressed on the intelligentsia of the world that life is meaningless. But to me they are both making the same mistake.

I say that meaning is irrelevant to life. Let me explain to you. Now, what is the smell of the color red? You will say, ”It is irrelevant – smell has nothing to do with color.” And if you start searching for a certain smell in the color red – because scriptures say, priests say, religions say, and thousands of years of traditions say that the color red has a certain fragrance – you will find that there is no fragrance. Color and smell are totally different dimensions; they never meet. Neither has smell any color, nor has color any smell. That does not mean that color is futile, throw it away.

Life and meaning are totally different.

Meaning is a logical concept, and life has nothing to do with logic.

People who want to live have to put logic aside otherwise you cannot live, logic will come in everywhere preventing you from living...”either-or.” You will think much, but you will not live much.

And the more you think, the less is the possibility of living.

Living needs a little transcendence from thinking.

Zorba the Greek says to his boss, ”Boss, only one thing is wrong with you – you think too much.” And he is right; even his boss realizes finally that he is right. The whole day Zorba works hard, labors

– and then he dances and plays some instrument. What is it in Italian... santuri? – or in Greek...

santuri? I think whatever it is, santuri is a good name! Anyway all names are made up. Let’s call it a santuri.

He plays the santuri, he dances, he goes mad, dancing – and the boss simply sits. One day Zorba says, ”What are you doing sitting there? There is a full moon, there is the river, the sands are calling, and the winds are so cool – come along with me.” With very hesitant feet the boss goes with him because Zorba is dragging him, and Zorba is a very strong man.

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The boss is just a boss as bosses are supposed to be: a rich man, intellectual, but not strong. That Zorba just pulls him and starts dancing and playing on his santuri. And the boss also tries a little bit, but finds it exhilarating – the wind, the moon, the river, the sand, and the mad way Zorba plays his santuri, and the mad way he dances.... Slowly slowly, he forgets that he is boss and starts dancing.

It takes a little time to slip out of the mind, but he does. It is only for a few moments, but now he too knows that life has a different taste.

Life is not available to thinking.

Perhaps it is available to dancing, to singing.

One thing is certain, that thinking is the most dry dimension of your life. It is a desert with no oasis.

If you feel life is meaningless, that simply means you don’t know how to live. You don’t know that meaning has nothing to do with life.

This has to be a fundamental principle:

Life has nothing to do with meaning.

It is not arithmetic.

It is not logic.

It is not philosophy.

Living in itself is such an ecstasy – who cares for meaning? Can’t you visualize experiences which are intrinsically so joyous that even to ask the question about meaning will look idiotic? Nobody asks, What is the meaning of love? But these people who are asking, What is the meaning of life?

are bound to ask, What is the meaning of love?

There is one Russian story, a small story. In a village a man, a young man, is called an idiot by everybody. From his very childhood he has heard that, that he is an idiot. And when so many people are saying it – his father, his mother, his uncles, the neighbors, and everybody – of course he starts believing that he must be an idiot. How can so many people be wrong? – and they are all important people. But when he becomes older and this continues, he becomes an absolutely sealed idiot; there is no way to get out of it. He tried hard but whatsoever he did was thought to be idiotic.

That is very human. Once a man goes mad he may become normal again but nobody is going to take him as normal. He may do something normal but you will suspect that there must be something insane about it. And your suspicion will make him hesitant and his hesitancy wi]l make you suspicion stronger; then there is a vicious circle. So that man tried in every possible way to look wise, to do wise things, but whatsoever he did people would always say it was idiotic.

A saint was passing by. He went to the saint in the night when there was nobody about and asked him, ”Just help me to get out of this locked state. I am sealed in. They don’t let me out; they have not left any window or door open so that I can jump out. And whatsoever I do, even if it is exactly the same as they do, still I am an idiot. What should I do?” From Personality to Individuality

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The saint said, ”Do just one thing. Whenever somebody says,’Look how beautiful the sunset is,’ you say, ”you idiot, prove it! What is beautiful there? I don’t see any beauty. You prove it.’ If somebody says,’Look at that beautiful rose flower,’ catch hold of him and tell him,’Prove it! What grounds have you to call this ordinary flower beautiful? There have been millions of rose flowers. There are millions, there will be millions in the future; what special thing has this rose flower got? And what are your fundamental reasons which prove logically that this rose flower is beautiful?’

”If somebody says,’This book of Leo Tolstoy is very beautiful,’ just catch hold of him and ask him,’Prove where it is beautiful; what is beautiful in it? It is just an ordinary story – just the same story which has been told millions of times, just the same triangle in every story: either two men and one woman or two women and one man, but the same triangle. All love stories are triangles. So what is new in it?”’

The man said, ”That’s right.”

The saint said, ”Don’t miss any chance, because nobody can prove these things; they are unprovable. And when they cannot prove it, they will look idiotic and they will stop calling you an idiot. Next time, when I return, just give me the information how things are going.

And next time when the saint was coming back, even before he could meet the old idiot, people of the village informed him, ”A miracle has happened. We had an idiot in our town; he has become the wisest man. We would like you to meet him.”

And the saint knew who that ”wisest man” was. He said, ”I would certainly love to see him. In fact I was hoping to meet him.”

The saint was taken to the idiot and the idiot said, ”You are a miracle-worker, a miracle man. The trick worked! I simply started calling everyone an idiot, stupid. Somebody would be talking of love, somebody would be talking of beauty, somebody would be talking of art, painting, sculpture, and my standpoint was the same:’Prove it!’ And because they could not prove it, they looked idiotic.

And it is a strange thing. I was never hoping to gain this much out of it. All that I wanted was to get out of that confirmed idiocy. It is strange that now I am no longer an idiot, I have become the most wise man, and I know I am the same – and you know it too.” But the saint said, ”Never tell this secret to anybody else. Keep the secret to yourself Do you think I am a saint? Yes, the secret is between us. This is how I became a saint. This is how you have become a wiseman.” This is how things go on in the world.

Once you ask, What is the meaning of life? you have asked the wrong question. And obviously somebody will say, ”this is the meaning of life” – and it cannot be proved. Then one thing is proved automatically: that life is meaningless. But that is a fallacy. That’s why I say that all these five existentialists – great names because theirs is the only great philosophical school that has arisen in these last few decades – have defeated all other philosophical schools with the same trick, the same one that the idiot used. About any painting they will say, ”Meaningless!” Of any poetry they will say, ”Meaningless!” And there is no way to prove beauty; either you see it or you don’t see it. There is no way to prove love; if you have to prove it, you are finished. Can you prove your love?

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It is good that people take it for granted, at least in the beginning, that they love each other without asking, ”Do you really love me? Where is love? Prove it first.” Then love would disappear from the world because nobody can prove it. How can you prove it? At the most you can say, ”You can listen to my heartbeat.”

And the other person can listen to your heartbeat and say, ”I can hear your heartbeat, but I don’t hear any love. I don’t hear any song or dance or any bells ringing. It is just a heartbeat.” You can find a stethoscope and listen to it more accurately, more loudly, so then it becomes really loud, but you will not find any love there. Love is not a heartbeat.

Then what is love?

Has anybody ever been able to define it?

No, there is no way to define it.

There are things which are indefinable, hence I call my religion pure mysticism, because I accept things which cannot be explained, which cannot be defined, which can only be lived, which can only be known by experience. If you try to think about them you are going to miss them.

All these five great philosophers have missed life absolutely because they asked the wrong question, they accepted the wrong answer, they fought the wrong answer and they moved to the polar opposite. And remember, if you move from one wrong thing and to oppose it, you go to the polar opposite, you reach another wrong thing – because only wrong can be the polar opposite of another wrong, not right.

Life is simply an experience.

Your birth is only the beginning.

You are not born ready-made.

You are born with all dimensions open.

That’s the beauty and dignity of man.

A dog is born as a dog; he will remain a dog. He comes with a certain structure, lifestyle, morality, religion, philosophy. He brings with him everything ready-made; in fact nature provides him with everything. He never feels meaningless. He never bothers about meaning – it is only man who bothers. Hence he thinks he needs a very great philosophical understanding. The dog comes into the world completed.

Man is born incomplete, open; it is left to him what he is going to become, what he is going to make out of his life.

This creates problems, but all those problems are challenges to be accepted, faced.

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You have to be in constant effort for your own growth. Yes, many times you will move in a wrong direction, but don’t be worried, that’s how we learn-by making mistakes.

My father used to stop me, saying, ”Don’t do that, you are doing it wrong.” I said, ”One thing should be settled between us: let me find out that it is wrong, and never stop me when I am going to commit a mistake.”

He said, ”What! You are going to commit a mistake and I am not to stop you?” I said, ”Yes, because without mistakes I will never learn. And how long are you going to be with me?

Are you going to live for me, on my behalf? I have to live myself So please be kind enough: let me fall, let me make mistakes, let me go wrong, allow me to see what is right and what is wrong. Yes, I am groping, but only through this groping will I find out. And that which is found by you is only yours.” Jesus may have found truth, Buddha may have found truth, but it is all hogwash, just meaningless to you. You will have to travel the path, many paths, out of which some will take you in the wrong direction and you will have to return to find the right one. But if you go on searching you are bound to find, because when you start finding that the path is wrong, you are already starting to feel what is right. It may not be very clear to you, but the moment you see that something is wrong, side by side somewhere inside you, you have already achieved a glimpse of the right.

To know something as a lie means that you have got a vague idea of what is truth. So just moving in wrong directions is not wrong, because it is through that movement that you will slowly, slowly, crystallize the idea of the right. And once you find what is right then you will jump out of your bathtub and run naked in the streets shouting, ”Eureka! Eureka! Eureka!” That’s what happened to Archimedes. He ran into the palace of the king, naked, into the court! –

shouting just one word, ”Eureka! I have found it!” But the king said, ”Don’t be so excited – at least you should have put some clothes on. Along the whole street people have gathered and you are standing in the court.” Then he looked and saw that he was naked. He said, ”in fact, I was in my bathtub, and that’s where I found it.” A great present had been given to the king which was made of gold. The king had given him the job of finding some way of telling whether it was pure gold or was there some mixture?

The king said, ”I don’t want you to destroy it and I don’t want you to cut it. I don’t want you to poke into it to find out whether it is also pure gold inside. Work out a method where you don’t touch it, and find out whether it is pure gold.” And that’s what he had found while he was in the tub.

The tub was full of water, absolutely full. When he entered the tub he saw water spilling out. As he lay down in the tub, he saw more water spilling out. And a sudden flash in the mind – he jumped out of the tub and saw how much water had spilled out, and how much the water level had gone down.

And he saw it was exactly his volume. He had found the way!

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Now, find some pure gold and put it in water. The bath should be full, then water will spill out because you have put the gold into the water. Now weigh the water that has overflowed, and then you know how much water spills out when you add a certain weight of pure gold. Then bring the king’s present, and put it into the water. You are not destroying it, not touching it. If exactly the same amount of water spills out as did from the same weight of pure gold, then the present is pure gold.

Otherwise it is impure; some other metal is there.

After the discovery he was so ecstatic that he forgot all about the bathroom, and the clothes, and he just ran And the king could understand. He said, ”I can understand when someone finds something on his own, it is so ecstatic.” Just a small thing – he had not found God or nirvana or enlightenment.

No, he had just found a way to decide whether the gold was pure or not. But even that, the flash of finding something, makes you aware of your own intelligence. The greater the finding, the greater you feel your intelligence.

When you find what life is by living, then you will not find yourself surrounded by emptiness, you will be surrounded by space, pure space, which allows you to grow in every direction.

Existence is freedom.

And yes, I agree with Nietzsche: man is free.

Up to now the religions have tried to make man a slave – spiritually, psychologically, but a slave all the same.

Nietzsche is not right that God is dead, because God has never been there. It was just his emphasis

– I know that he was a man of tremendous insight and could not commit such a mistake. When he says, ”God is dead,” he does not mean that God was there and is now dead. He wants to emphasize the fact that there is no God: forget about God and forget about all the mythologies that you have lived by up to now. From now onwards you are free. Live in freedom, and create yourself Why be created by God? And anyway God is not capable of creating you. just look: He created Eve out of a rib from Adam – a great creator! In the first place is He a certified surgeon? I don’t think that He is an F.R.C.S., and He is doing surgery without anesthesia. Adam was just asleep and He took out his rib. But when you are stupid then you are going to believe in any stupid thing. And from the rib how can you create the woman?

I don’t see any way to create a woman from a rib. This is pure crap! – and so insulting to women that at least women should stop going to all the churches and all the synagogues – because God has dealt such an insult He cannot be forgiven! Let him apologize. What do these liberation women go on doing? They should protest before every church, before every synagogue, that no woman will enter unless that statement from the Bible is removed.

Woman is created from the rib of Adam? Why could He not also create woman the way He has created Adam? The word Adam means earth, mud. First He made Adam with earth, and then breathed life into him. Now, when He was making woman, was earth missing? Was all the mud finished with one Adam? It would have been easier to make the woman also from earth. Why take a rib from this poor man?

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And after that, you know what used to happen? I have just heard about it, I don’t know whether it is true or not. Every night when Adam came home and went to sleep, the first thing Eve would do was count his ribs, because she was afraid God might create another woman. Every night.... It was a natural fear because if another rib was missing then Adam would have been in real trouble. But God never did the same operation again.

Humanity’s past is full of myth, and a myth simply means an invented story to give you a bogus feeling of meaning.

And man, even very educated people, cultured people.... I had one professor, my colleague in the university, who was a great follower of these people: Soren Kierkegaard to Jean-Paul Sartre. He himself thought that he was an existentialist. I asked him, ”Do you really think there is no God?” He said, ”Yes, there is no God, no Holy Ghost, no Jesus Christ.” He had been a Christian.

I said, ”If I can manage some meeting with one of these three fellows....” He said, ”What! A meeting! How can you manage a meeting? Nobody has ever seen them. It is all just superstition.”

I said, ”Okay, come to my house tonight.”

He started becoming a little afraid: ”But what will you do?” I said, ”That you don’t ask. First let the meeting happen.” He said, ”With whom?”

I said, ”Don’t be bothered – with whomsoever I can get the appointment. I don’t know yet with whom I can get the appointment. You come with me tonight. Eat with me, sleep in my house and I will try my best.”

He said, ”But I am very busy today.”

I said, ”There is no problem, then tomorrow. It is going to happen one day so this busyness without business won’t help – you are not busy.”

He said, ”That’s right, I am not busy. I was just trying to get out of this.” I said, ”Why? I am going to make an appointment, and you are trying to get out of it. You deny them, and having denied them then you say life is meaningless. I will make your life meaningful tonight.” He said, ”My God! Okay.”

But sitting with me in my car, he would look at me again and again, and he would say, ”With whom are you going to make...?”

I said, ”Don’t worry, that is my business. And I have done it many times so don’t worry!” From Personality to Individuality

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But how could the poor man stop worrying? A minute or two minutes would pass, then again he would say, ”You can just tell me. Are you joking, kidding?” I said, ”I am a serious man and this is no joke – making an appointment with one of the fellows in the trinity.”

Eating, he was not there, he was just afraid.

And I told him, ”Now I am going to make the

appointment. This is the room for you to sleep in. You rest or you can read. I will be here nearabout ten tonight.”

He said, ”Where are you going?”

I said, ”I have a place where I can arrange to have a contact.” He said, ”A place! Are you mad or something?”

I said, ”You just wait. It is only a question of one night and it will be decided.” I had a friend in the medical college. I went to him; he was a professor, and I told him that I wanted one skeleton just for the night. He said, ”What are you up to?” I said, ”Don’t be worried, nobody will be killed and no problem will arise out of it.” He said, ”It is not permissible for me. They are under my... I have the key. If one skeleton is missing tomorrow I will be caught.”

I said, ”Before morning it will be back here. It is just that I have to make one appointment with a man.”

He said, ”What appointment?”

I said, ”Don’t be worried. Just let me finish, don’t waste my time. Just give me a skeleton.” He said, ”If you insist, take one, but before morning it should be back.” I said, ”Don’t be worried; perhaps there will be two skeletons. I don’t know what will happen, because this is just an appointment. A meeting will happen and then after the meeting nobody knows. It is with the Holy Ghost.”

The medical professor said, ”I am coming with you. It seems there is some risk.” I said, ”You can come. There is just enjoyment, entertainment – no risk. Come with me” – and he did.

I was living in a big bungalow so I had given the professor of philosophy a side room which had a bathroom attached and a small walk-in closet. We reached home. I left the skeleton in the garage.

I knocked on the door; he came, looking afraid. He opened the door and said, ”What about the appointment?”

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I said, ”Everything is fixed, the appointment is going to happen. You just rest in your bed and whenever you hear three knocks you should go into your bathroom.” He said, ”In the bathroom?”

I said, ”What can I do? I tried my best to tell him that there is a good sitting room, but the Holy Ghost is the Holy Ghost.”

He said, ”I will meet him in the bathroom if you insist.” I said, ”I have no objection, and I don’t think you have any objection.” He said, ”Holy Ghost! – in the bathroom?”

Only in the bathroom was it possible, because from the back there was a door into the bathroom so I could bring the Holy Ghost in from the back. Otherwise from where to bring it into his room? In India, just to clean the bathroom, you have to have a door from the outside because the people who clean the bathrooms cannot go through the inside of your house. That is impossible in India. So I had kept that door open from the very beginning.

He went to bed and covered himself with the blanket. I put the light off. He said, ”No. Keep the light on.”

I said, ”Don’t be worried, because when the Holy Ghost comes, the light comes on, he is so illuminated. Don’t be worried.”

He said, ”But still, keep the light on. And where will you be?” I said, ”I will be in the next room. If there is any trouble, or if the Holy Ghost does any unholy thing to you, either you can hide in this closet and lock it from the inside so he cannot do anything to you, or if you still have any voice left, you can call me – I will come immediately. But my experience, because this appointment has happened many times before, is that people lose their voice. They want to say something, they want to scream, but they cannot; they are just choked – just the presence of the Holy Ghost!”

He said, ”I was an idiot to talk to you about this meaninglessness of life. Perhaps there is meaning.” I said, ”No need to change your philosophy so soon. First let the meeting happen.” And the meeting happened. I persuaded him to put the light off because otherwise the Holy Ghost wouldn’t come. So I put the light off. I brought the skeleton in through the back door and put it in the right place in the bathroom. Just nearabout twelve – the other professor was also staying with me in my room – we knocked on his door. I had told him, ”The moment the Holy Ghost knocks on your door, open the bathroom door and have the meeting. Whatsoever question you have to ask, you can ask. Everything else is then up to you. With the appointment my work is finished.” We knocked on his door. He jumped out of his bed and fell on the floor! In the darkness he could not figure out where he was. He really wanted to get out of the room, but instead he went into the bath From Personality to Individuality

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room where I had kept the light on. The skeleton was there. He saw it and just fell down and went unconscious. I called the medical professor and said, ”Now you help – this is the second skeleton!

I’ll remove the first one to my car, and you take care of this man. That’s why I have brought you with me. You thought it was for some other reason, but a medical doctor is always needed when such encounters happen. Now look after him!”

He said, ”You are a real trouble. Now I have to look after him, and perhaps he may die or anything may happen and I will be responsible because I am medically attending him.” But he did not die. He opened his eyes, looked at the professor, looked at me, closed his eyes again and said, ”Has... has he gone?” The first thing he asked was, ”Has he gone?” I said, ”Who?”

He said, ”The Holy Ghost... and I do believe in God the father, the Holy Ghost and Jesus Christ and I will never say anything about it again.”

I said, ”This is good! I have converted you into a Christian.” He said, ”My God! What an experience. My wife will not believe it, nobody wi]l believe it. Even I would not have believed it if I had not seen it. Has he gone?” I said, ”You can look in the bathroom.”

He opened the bathroom, looked and said, ”Yes, he is gone.” And that man started going to church and became a very very religious person. The whole university was amazed at what had happened.

I told them, ”It is the result of a great encounter.”

”What encounter?” they asked; and I spread the whole story.

And I told him, ”Don’t be a fool! Come with me to the medical doctor; he can tell you that I brought the skeleton. There was no Holy Ghost, no appointment. You are simply a coward.” He said, ”You cannot befool me now – I have seen with my own eyes. Am I to believe my eyes or your words – or any medical professor? I don’t care what anybody says, from now onwards I am going to remain a Christian. You cannot destroy my Christianity.” He is still a Christian, very pious, helping others to be Christians – and all that he had seen was only a skeleton! I told him – I brought the medical professor and he told him – ”You can come and we will show you the same skeleton so you can recognize it.” He said, ”I am not going. You showing anything to me....” He said, ”I don’t trust this man: if he can manage an encounter, a meeting with the Holy Ghost, he can manage anything. Perhaps the Holy Ghost is going to be there again, wherever you are both trying to take me. I am not going again, not before death.” And he crossed himself; each time he would say ”Holy Ghost” he would make the sign of the cross. Such a conversion!

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But people have been living under all kinds of superstitions which may have been founded on some reason in the past; but that reason they have not been able to understand clearly. It is true that Jesus did not die on the cross, but it is untrue that there was a resurrection. He was taken down from the cross and he escaped from Judea. While escaping from Judea, of course he met a few people, and certainly a few of his disciples. And they all thought that he was back, he was resurrected!

But he escaped from Judea because he knew perfectly well.... That was the suggestion given to him by Pontius Pilate – because he allowed him to escape. The whole credit goes to that Roman governor-general of Judea. It is a strange coincidence that Rome became the citadel of Christianity: it was Rome who crucified Jesus, it was a Roman governor-general who had helped him to escape.

But it was made clear to Jesus that he should not be found inside Judea or nearby because then Pontius Pilate would be held responsible; so he had to escape as far away as possible.

And Jesus escaped really far away: he died in Kashmir in India. I have been to his grave. He lived a long life of one hundred and twelve years. But those six hours on the cross were enough: he never tried again to prove that he was the messiah. And in India nobody would have bothered about him; messiah means nothing there. There are hundreds of living incarnations of God any time, any day, any night.

Once I happened to stay in Allahabad. I was attending a Hindu world conference. Somebody by mistake had invited me thinking that I was a Hindu. They found out, but it was too late. By that time I had disturbed everything that they were planning: how to convert the whole world into Hinduism.

I was staying with hundreds of other guests in tents by the side of the Ganges, a beautiful place they had chosen for the conference. In those tents at least five incarnations of God were present. In India it is so easy. Nobody can object – you can declare yourself an incarnation of God. About that India is very nice. Who cares? Who bothers? It is your business: if you think you are an incarnation of God, good; be an incarnation of God. You are not doing any harm to anybody.

But that one experience of Jesus’ was so bad, so horrible, that he dropped the idea of messiah-hood, and he dropped the idea of solving the problems of the whole of humanity. He had found what happens if you try to redeem humanity – you are crucified!

But his escaping helped a religion to be born. Now, Christians have no report of what happened after his resurrection. If he was resurrected, okay. Then what happened? When did he die? Where did he die? Where is his grave? Why have you not preserved his grave? because that must be the holiest thing for you. All that they have preserved – Sheela has just informed me – was the foreskin of Jesus Christ... because he must have been circumcised.

The poor Christians... and even that has been stolen from the Vatican yesterday! Now they have nothing! It was not much anyway. What can you do with the foreskin? And I don’t think it was his foreskin; anybody’s would do because foreskins are just foreskins. It is not written on it, ”Jesus Christ” – but somebody has done a really great job, stealing it Now the whole of Christianity is shaken because their greatest treasure is lost.

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CHAPTER 3

Beware! I am here to destroy your dreams

1 January 1985 pm in Lao Tzu Grove

Question 1

OSHO,

I HAVE HEARD YOU SAY THAT ONLY CHRISTIANS DREAM OF JESUS, AND FOLLOWERS OF

KRISHNA DREAM ONLY OF KRISHNA SANNYASINS ARE DREAMING OF YOU, OSHO. WILL

YOU COMMENT?

DREAMING is a substitute for the real.

It is a mind device to console you.

If you have been fasting, you will dream in the night of a feast because the hunger needs food, and without food sleep will be difficult. The mind has to provide you some substitute, that’s what dreaming is. It gives you the feeling that you are no longer hungry; you are eating and you are eating good food, delicious food, food that you like. Now you can sleep without any trouble. The mind has drugged the body through the dream.

But a dream is not reality. You can dream of eating but that is not going to nourish you. The mind can befool the body for the time being but the body is going to suffer. Reality is reality, and you need real food.

A Christian dreaming of Christ, a Hindu dreaming of Krishna, or a sannyasin dreaming of me –

all are doing the same thing. It makes no difference of whom you are dreaming; that is irrelevant.

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Krishna, Christ, Mahavira or Buddha, Zarathustra... you can dream of anybody. The object of the dream is irrelevant, what is significant is that you are dreaming.

So the first thing to be remembered is that there must be a certain hunger behind it, which the mind is trying to fulfill. Read the message clearly: you are not what nature intends you to be; you are missing something immensely important in you; you are not yet your authentic self The dream of Christ, Krishna or me is symbolic. It shows that you are groping in the dark: Who are you? Krishna?

Christ? Me? You are none of these people.

So remember that the dream indicates a certain hunger in you. That is the first thing to remember. It is very significant, because all people are not dreaming of Krishna, Christ and me. Millions of people are dreaming of money, millions of people are dreaming of power, prestige. Men are dreaming of women, women are dreaming of men. And the market is vast, you can choose any commodity to dream about. Somebody is dreaming of becoming the president of a country; somebody is dreaming that he has become the president of the country.

Chuang Tzu has a beautiful story about this. And he was a man not to tell a story but to act it.

Chuang Tzu is one of the rare beings who have happened on this earth – unique in every way. One morning he awoke and sat up in his bed, very sad. Nobody had ever seen him sad. He was a man of laughter, a very non-serious man. Not only non-serious, he was known as the most absurd man

– playing jokes upon himself, upon his people, upon his Master, upon his disciples. This too was a joke, but everybody was puzzled because he had never been sad; and they asked, ”Why are you sad?”

He said, ”I am in such trouble but I don’t think any one of you can help me, so what is the point of telling you?”

They became even more curious. They said, ”Please tell us! Who knows; we may be able to do something. All together we may be able to find some way. If there is a problem, there must be some solution. If there is a question, somewhere there must be an answer to it.” Chuang Tzu said, ”If you insist I will tell you what the problem is. The problem is not a question that you can find an answer for. It is a riddle which has no answer, and I am caught in the riddle; that’s why I am sad. Last night I dreamed that I had become a butterfly, flying from this plant to that, from this flower to that flower. And I completely forgot that I was Chuang Tzu, the famous, great Master: I was really the butterfly, Chuang Tzu was nowhere at all.” The disciples said, ”This is not a problem – everybody dreams. We don’t see the riddle.” Chuang Tzu said, ”Wait a little, I have not told you the whole thing. Now waking up, the problem has arisen: perhaps now the butterfly has gone to sleep and is dreaming that she is Chuang Tzu. And I am caught in it: what’s what? Has Chuang Tzu dreamed of a butterfly or is a butterfly dreaming of Chuang Tzu?”

They were all silent, then they said, ”Perhaps you are right that we cannot help you. Nobody can help you.”

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But he had raised a tremendously important question. His question remained unanswered because I was not there! Naturally, for twenty-five centuries the question has waited for me. It is so simple. If I had been there I would have hit him really hard and awakened him.

The butterfly had no problem; it was not worried about what happened to Chuang Tzu. It was not concerned at all with Chuang Tzu – Chuang Tzu is concerned. The butterfly was alone, but you are not alone. Now you are sitting up in your bed concerned about what is right, what is real; whether you are Chuang Tzu or the butterfly.... all these things prove that you are not a dream, you are a reality.

The butterfly was just a dream. In a dream you are asleep. There are no questions, no problems.

You don’t even think that it is a dream: you are it, you are totally identified with it. Now you are not identified with it. You cannot be a butterfly, that much is certain, because butterflies are not concerned about such great philosophical problems. It is only the prerogative of man to be puzzled, to be worried, to be riddled.

You dream of Jesus, Krishna, Zarathustra, Mohammed – why? There must be some hunger in you which you feel is fulfilled by Jesus. That’s what the Christian has been told: that Christ has arrived, and you have not yet arrived. Somehow you have to arrive. But you can never be another Christ; existence never repeats itself. History repeats itself because history belongs to idiotic humanity, hence it goes on moving in a circle, doing the same stupidities again and again and again. It never learns.

But existence never repeats itself It always produces only unique pieces, one of a kind, and that is enough. What is the point of repeating it? It is not an assembly line in a car factory where every minute a car comes out similar to another car and they go on coming off the assembly line, exactly the same.

Nature does not manufacture people, things, birds, flowers.... There is no assembly line, there is no model; it goes on exploring new dimensions. So it is certain that you are feeling starved: Christ is your food, somebody else’s food is Krishna. These are simply different kinds of disease.

A Hindu has become accustomed to a certain dish. Of course, when he is hungry he cannot dream of a dish which he knows nothing about. You can dream only about something you know. Can you dream of something that you don’t know? It is impossible, because a dream is only a repetition.

A dream is not creative; yes a dream can be compositive but never creative. See the difference between these two words: compositive and creative. It can compose something. For example it can take the head of Jesus and the body of Krishna and compose something which is both Krishna and Christ....

That’s what people like Mahatma Gandhi have been doing their whole life: composing – taking something from the KORAN, something from the BIBLE, something from the GITA, something from Mahavira, something from Buddha and trying to make something that in India is called khicharee.

In English, the closest term is ”hodge-podge,” but it is nothing to be compared with ”khicharee.” With the legs of one man, the hands of another man, the hairs of somebody else, the eyes from somewhere else, you can make khicharee. You can make a composite man having everything –

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eyes, nose, ears, head, legs, everything – but it will still be dead. By composing, you cannot create life, you cannot create consciousness. A dream can be a composite. You can see a horse flying –

no horse flies, but there are things that fly: flying saucers, flying planes and flying birds, and it is not very difficult to compose a horse which flies.

What dream is to man, mythology is to society.

The Mohammedans say that Mohammed never died; but then the problem arises, where has he gone? It is time, now that he has millions of followers – six hundred million followers – it is time he came out. Where is he hiding and what is he doing? No, Mohammedans have a myth. A myth is a dream dreamed by the whole race, a collective dream – but it is composite.

Mohammed used to move from one place to another on a beautiful horse; and Arabian horses are the most famous horses in the world. Jesus would have looked very poor because he was just using a donkey. And it is good that Christians have not created the myth that Mohammedans have created: Mohammed never died, one day he simply flew up with his horse towards God. The horse has also gone with him into heaven! It is more fortunate to be a horse with Mohammed than to be a Mohammedan and a man.

And I say it is good that Christians have not dreamed of the same dream, otherwise Jesus would have gone with his donkey. And in heaven what will these horses and donkeys be doing? – because there are many donkeys from ancient times already there. All your saints and all your sages... what are they? Now, this is mythology.

Prophets die, but Mohammedans have to make something special for Mohammed – that he never dies, he’s alive! Every other prophet has entered heaven after death, Mohammed is the only one who goes there alive. He not only goes alive, his horse also goes with him. Naturally, the horse had to fly.

So you will see in the Mohammedan sacred days of Muharram, horses made with wings. Horses don’t grow wings but one horse has done it. They cannot make the image of Mohammed because Mohammed is against images; so they simply make the horse with wings, and you have to imagine Mohammed on it. You will only see a horse made of paper; you have to imagine Mohammed on it –

and there are Mohammedans who do see him.

My village had a big population of Mohammedans, and in my childhood it was still not the way it turned out later on, that Hindus and Mohammedans started killing each other. It was because of the same man I told you about – Mirza Allama Iqbal. He is a great poet, there is no doubt about it. I mentioned his name to you because he had written that poem, ”My country is the best in the whole world.” Hindostan hamara sare jehan se achchha.

He uses the word Hindostan for India, but later on the same man created the idea of Pakistan.

He was the originator of the idea that Hindus and Mohammedans should separate, that they could not live together because their religions were different, their cultures were different, their languages were different, and that there was no need for them to live together, they should separate. Everybody laughed: the whole idea was Don Quixotic, absolutely absurd, because Hindus and Mohammedans had lived together for centuries, and there was no problem.

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But soon, a great politician, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, got hold of the idea of Allama Iqbal. For thirty years he went on emphasizing, ”We need Pakistan, we cannot live with Hindus” – and he created Pakistan. India was divided into two – the same India, Hindostan, which was ”the best in the whole world.” And the same man created the idea and the philosophy of Pakistan. The word Pakistan means ”holy land.”

Naturally he had to create something better than Hindostan. Hindostan was after all just a country, but Pakistan was a holy land. And millions of Hindus and Mohammedans were cut to pieces, killed and butchered. But in my childhood it was not so. Hindus used to go to Mohammedan saints without any difficulty; Mohammedans used to take advice from Hindu saints with no difficulty.

In Muharram, which is a yearly Mohammedan sacred festival, they make these mementoes...

from past memories, fourteen hundred years old. They cannot make Mohammed’s image, that is prohibited. We don’t know how he looked. We have some idea of Jesus; perhaps it is not very true because photography was not available then. Perhaps it is more imaginative than real, because the people who made the pictures must have tried to do their best, and they must have created the picture to look like a prophet. Whether the man looked like a prophet or not is questionable.

I know of Jewish sources which say that Jesus was only four foot five inches high. Not only that, he was very ugly; not only that, he was a hunchback. Perhaps this is just enmity, perhaps there is some truth in it. Perhaps both are imagination – one of the enemies and one of the friends – and between the two the real is completely lost.

I am absolutely certain that Buddha never looked like his statues because those statues were made five hundred years after him – after Buddha had already been dead for five hundred years. After those five hundred years, Alexander the Great visited India. The image of Buddha is closer to the face of Alexander the Great than Buddha himself, because the face is Greek, the nose is Greek, the eyes are Greek. Buddha’s statue does not look like a Hindu statue.

When Hindu sculptors saw Alexander they got the idea, a good model. Alexander was really a beautiful man. To make Buddha in Alexander’s image was very easy; and there was no proof that he looked otherwise.

If you see the Buddhist monasteries and temples in China, you will see a different Buddha, because the Chinese have their own idea of beauty. It may not appeal to you, but that is your problem; it appeals to them. For example, the nose should not be so pointed and so long, it should be flat.

Nobody in the whole world likes a flat nose, but what to do? Chinese have flat noses, and they are one fourth of the whole world: out of every four people one is a Chinese.

I have heard of a man who had three sons, and he said, ”Now we have to stop.” His wife said, ”Why?”

He said, ”The fourth is going to be Chinese. I have read it: out of every four men, the fourth is a Chinese. From a very reliable source I have read it. I am not going to have any more children. Three and we stop – we don’t want any Chinese in the house.” From Personality to Individuality

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If you go to Japan you see a totally different Buddha. If you put a Japanese Buddha and an Indian Buddha together, you cannot believe these two statues are of the same man. You can stretch your imagination as far as possible but there seems to be no possibility that these two statues can be of the same man. The Indian Buddha’s belly is in, his chest is out. The Japanese Buddha is just the opposite: his chest is in, his belly is really sticking out.

Now, no Indian can accept that this is beauty. Alexander was an athletic personality, well-trained, well-polished – and athletes have always liked the belly down and the chest forward, just like a lion.

And this Japanese Buddha looks like a strange fellow with such a belly: a laughingstock. And his head is also Japanese, his face is also Japanese.

Just a few days ago Sheela brought a picture to me. That picture was sent from a sannyasin from California. California is just next to Oregon in that way.... The sannyasin has been growing a bump on his forehead. It must be a growth of some kind, perhaps some cancer or something.

But people love.... Even if you have cancer, somebody can say, ”This is not cancer, this is a sign of enlightenment” – you will be overjoyed. Ramdas has the same kind of growth. So Ramdas has spread the story in America that when a man becomes a Buddha, awakened, this bump on the forehead grows. And he has produced a picture from somewhere of a statue of Buddha with a bump on the head.

I have never seen any statue of Buddha with a bump on his forehead. That picture was my first experience. And nobody knows whose statue that is. It is only on Ramdas’ authority that it is Buddha’s statue. It has no similarity to Buddha – Indian, Japanese, Chinese, or Tibetan, all the countries which have been Buddhist. None of them has any statue which has a bump on the forehead.

Now either it is a photographic trick or somebody may have made a plaster of Paris statue of Gautam Buddha with a bump. Then the photograph has been taken, and Ramdas is going around with that photograph, telling people, ”Look, it also happened to Buddha.” And in California you can believe anything. This is the most religious land in the whole world: all the saints are born in California.

Now, this sannyasin sends me the picture because the same bump has grown on his forehead, and he says, ”Osho, does it mean that I have become enlightened? – Ramdas says so.” The picture is supplied by Ramdas. The sannyasin has the same bump. He sends the pictures of himself from all sides to show his bump clearly: from above, from this side, from that side, so that there is no suspicion about his bump. And he is really exhilarated.

And I told Sheela to tell the poor guy to go to a doctor and let it be examined. God forbid that it may have something to do with cancer. Be quick, and don’t be befooled by people like Ramdas. And if you can take Ramdas also to the doctor.... As far as I am concerned, if I meet Buddha I will put him into our medical center. His bump has to be removed even at the cost of his enlightenment. If it disappears, let it disappear, but this cancer has to be taken care of first. Enlightenment can happen again. But fools are fools. The sannyasin will be hurt by my answer. He would have loved it if I had said, ”Yes, you have become enlightened.”

It is a strange world!

Here people want consoling lies.

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Nobody is ready for the truth.

But we do have some idea of Jesus’ face, something close... of Buddha’s maybe something close.

But about Mohammed we have no idea at all because for fifteen centuries Mohammedans have persistently destroyed every possible trace of Mohammeds personality.

One of my friends, a Hindu saint, created a temple, a temple of all religions. That was his lifelong work. A beautiful temple he created, and it was very difficult for him to collect that much money.

It was all made in pure marble, and he made the statues of all the religious people, forgetting completely that you cannot make the statue of Mohammed. He thought he was doing a great work.

He made Buddha, Mahavira, Lao Tzu, Jesus, Moses, Zarathustra. About them there was no problem. Even if no actual photograph exists, some kind of description is available. It just needed a creative artist, imaginative enough to figure it out. And if an artist is really imaginative and creative he can come close to a photograph.

There exist in all great police departments, artists.... You have to describe the face of the thief that you saw in the night, disappearing in the darkness. You can’t be certain what kind of man he was, but you just describe him, and the artist is capable of figuring out, from your description, the picture of the thief; and he draws the picture. I have seen these pictures, and when these thieves are caught, they are so similar to their picture that the artist seems to be simply intuitive: he got the idea from a very meager description.

Even the witness was not certain whether the man had a mustache or not, because in the night when you are in danger – the man is carrying a gun, and your safe is broken – who bothers whether the man has a mustache or not? How long? How small? – whether it is an Adolf Hitler cut.... You are not in a state to think about all these things like what color his eyes are, and in the night.... But you give any description, whatsoever comes to your mind and the artist figures it out. And I have seen really impossible things. The artist manages somehow, and through his picture being published in the newspaper the thief is caught.

So there is a possibility... and this man had great influence on many people. He managed to get some body to make Mohammed’s statue, but he was not aware that he was going to be in great trouble. His temple was completely burned, broken, every statue broken, because he had done the most profane act possible according to the Mohammedans. His whole life’s work was demolished within hours. There was no temple left at all.

I had seen the temple, and I have also gone to the place after the temple was completely demolished.

There were just ruins: statues broken, pillars half standing, the roof burned. Somehow the man who made this temple escaped, otherwise they would have killed him also, because this is one of the greatest crimes against Mohammedanism – to create the image of Mohammed.

But man after all is man, he needs some substitute. So when Mohammedans dream a dream of the horse with the flying wings, of course they must be seeing somebody sitting on it but they must not tell it to anybody. That is dangerous. Mohammedans know only one punishment: to just cut off your head. Beheading is the simplest thing for them to do.

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You have a hunger. The dream indicates the hunger, but the dream is not going to fulfill it. It is only indicative. Take the indication, then start getting rid of the dream; its work is fulfilled. Don’t follow the dream, don’t try to become Christ, Buddha or Zarathustra, no. That was not the meaning of the dream.

If you start trying to become a Jesus or a Buddha, the most unfortunate thing is that you may succeed. If you fail there is no harm – most probably you will fail. Two thousand years have passed and nobody has been able to become a Christ again; that’s enough proof. But that does not mean that people have not tried.

Millions of people have tried to become a replica, but fortunately they failed. But there is a possibility, unfortunately, that you may succeed. That means you have gone insane. It means nothing else; it simply means you have gone insane, you have started believing that you are Christ. Your dream has taken possession of you so much so that now it is no longer a dream, it has become a reality to you.

To go insane is to go farthest from yourself.

That’s the meaning of insanity to me.

Sanity means to be closer to yourself, closer and closer. A day comes when you are just at the very center of your being; then you are the sanest person in the world... when you are just yourself and nobody else, just pure, authentic, with no shadow of anybody else falling on you.

To be at the center of your being is to be sane.

And to go far away from yourself is to be insane.

Now, if you become Christ, you have reached the farthest point from yourself; or if you become a Buddha or you become me, you have reached the farthest point from yourself It may be very satisfying: you will never see mad people frustrated, you will never see mad people committing suicide. Have you ever heard of it? You will never see a mad person miserable. No, because now his dream has become his reality. He is as happy as you can think a person can be.

One of my sannyasins, you know him, Narendra – his father had phases: for six months he was sane and for six months he was insane. It was a fixed period. The strangest thing to his family, to the doctors, to the whole city, was that when he was insane he was the happiest person in the world, and the healthiest. And when he was sane, he became miserable, unhealthy, with all kinds of sicknesses; everything was wrong, he was complaining and grumpy. His family continually prayed,

”If he remains mad the whole year, it will be the greatest blessing” – to him and to the family.

But he had his own routine: six months. When he was insane, his whole family regained balance because he was not disturbing anybody, and he was enjoying himself in every possible way. I have seen him doing things – Narendra was very small, but when his father was insane even the smallest child in the house used to watch the shop.

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and he would shout to his mother, ”Come... come quick Ka-Ka has opened the safe!” His mother would come rushing, and all the children too. He had many children, I think a dozen, and they all would come running; even the smallest child used to spy on him.

He would be going to the market, and the smallest child, a five-year-old, would be following him. If I came across them I would say to the child, ”Where are you going?” He would say, ”After Ka-Ka...

because he goes on borrowing things from everywhere and we have to pay.” He would go to the sweet shop and eat as much as he wanted, and he would invite anybody walking past, strangers, to join him: ”Come on!” And the child would be forcing him, ”Ka-Ka, you have to come back home, otherwise I will bring mother right now.”

The only person that he was afraid of even in insanity was his wife. That proved to me another maxim, that even insanity cannot change the relationship of husband and wife. And he would go on giving things to anybody. Somebody had to follow him, so all these children did; there was nobody else, just these twelve children and the wife. He was happy in those six months, and everybody in the town was happy because he was just a joy to be with, always laughing. He immediately started becoming fatter, healthier, stronger. And the moment those six months were finished he would become weak, sick. He would be sitting in the shop – there was no need to spy on him – but he was miserable.

Insane people are not miserable. So if you are miserable, be happy! – at least you are not insane.

At least you still have some sanity left, hence the misery.

What is misery?

Misery is the feeling that you are not yourself.

It is the gap between you as you are, and you as you feel you should be.

The gap is the misery. The bigger the gap, the more miserable you are. Idiots are not miserable, for the simple reason that they do not have the intelligence to see the gap.

The most intelligent people in the world are the most miserable, because they can see the gap so clearly that it is impossible to forget it, to just put it aside. It is always there, whatever they are doing, the gap is in front of them. And that gap hurts: ”Why can’t I be just myself?” That’s why I say if unfortunately you succeed in being a Christ or a Krishna or me, it means that you are no longer part of the sane world, you have become completely mad. Now you cannot distinguish between the dream and the real – and to forget the distinction between the dream and the real is a great loss: it is spiritual suicide.

I would have said to Chuang Tzu, ”There is no problem in it, just get up from your bed.” I would have gathered his disciples and told them to bring icecold water and pour it over the man so he comes to know that he is not a butterfly. And I know perfectly well that before they started pouring he would have jumped out of bed, and he would have said, ”Wait! I am Chuang Tzu. I was just playing a joke.” Only Chuang Tzu can see the distance between the real and the unreal. The butterfly cannot see it

– the butterfly is only a dream.

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A dream has no intelligence of its own. A dream is just a cloud around you; because of your sleep you become identified with it. In your waking also, you are not really awake. That’s why you get identified with so many things.

You become a Hindu; that is an identification. You become a Christian, a Jew; that is an identification

– and that shows that your wakefulness is not there. You are just awake in name only. It is such a thin layer of wakefulness that it is disturbed by anything, and you fall asleep immediately. A beautiful woman passes by, and you are asleep. You have gone into a dream of how to get her, of how to possess her. You have completely forgotten that this is not sleep.

One of Dostoevsky’s novels, CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, has an incident in it. Raskolnikov is the main character in the novel; he is a student in the university. He lives in a small room in front of a very palatial building in which an old woman lives – perhaps eighty, or eighty-five or even ninety years old. In Russia that is not difficult. In Russia you can find people one hundred and fifty years old at least, even more, sometimes one hundred and eighty, and still working. And not just one or two, but in thousands, particularly in the Caucasus area, from where Gurdjieff came. A man of one hundred and fifty, sixty, seventy, is still working in the fields, just like any young man.

Raskolnikov is of a very philosophic type of mind, and he goes on seeing this old woman from his window. She has so much money, she owns almost half of the buildings of the city. And she has nobody else, she is alone, and she lives in that big palace. She is so miserly that she has not even a servant. Her whole business is lending people money at a high rate of interest.

Raskolnikov, just sitting there, sees poor people bringing things, because she will not give money unless you leave something in her custody. He sees these poor people bringing their things and getting some money on interest. They know perfectly well, and Raskolnikov knows, that they will never be able to pay back even the interest, what to say about the original money! And what are they leaving? – for example they may leave a watch, a clock, some jewelry, something that they had that is then gone. And the woman used to give only half the value of the item that was left in her custody.

Raskolnikov becomes angrier and angrier and angrier, looking at this cheat the whole day. And he starts thinking, what is the purpose of this woman? She has nothing to live for. She has lived enough and she is still exploiting thousands of people. Why has somebody not killed her? He starts thinking that there is no crime in killing her; hence the title of Dostoevsky’s book, CRIME AND

PUNISHMENT. He philosophizes about it so much, month by month, year by year, because he is there watching her, that by and by he starts thinking: Nobody is going to kill her, I have to do it.

And finally, one day he decides: Now, it is enough, I cannot tolerate it. And a necessity has also arisen so he can go to her, because he has to fill in the examination forms and deposit the fee for his final postgraduate class – and he has no money. So he goes in the evening. He takes his wristwatch and waits till everybody has left, and it is getting dark.

The lady is so miserly she will not even use candles. When it gets dark, she closes the door, locks the door from inside and disappears for the whole night. So before she does that, he enters. She is just coming down the stairs to lock the door as he comes in and says, ”I am in great difficulty. You know me, I live in a house just in front of yours. You can keep my wristwatch but you have to give From Personality to Individuality

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me money right now. Tomorrow morning I have to fill in my examination forms. If I miss tomorrow my two years are wasted.”

So she says, ”Okay, you come along with me.”

He goes behind her, ready to kill her. He has imagined so many times how to kill her, because it is not going to take much, she is so old: you just have to press her throat and that will do. He has imagined it, dreamed it, philosophized about it: that it is not a crime, it is not a sin. In fact you are preventing a great criminal from doing so many crimes every day against the whole city. You are a savior! God cannot be so misunderstanding, and when he knows the whole story He will reward you. Raskolnikov has convinced himself that murdering this woman is not a crime. And anyway she is going to die any day. Why let her continue to exploit people any more?

He gives her his wristwatch. It is getting darker so she goes close to the window to look at the watch to see how much it is worth – because she won’t burn a candle. And just by coincidence she has a heart attack, falls there and dies. And Raskolnikov thinks – because he has lived out this whole idea of killing her so many times, dreamed it so many times – he believes that he has done it.

He escapes, goes to his room but he knows the police will be coming soon; it is not right to stay here.

He goes to the furthest corner of the city to stay with a friend. But the friend cannot understand,

”Why are you so nervous? What has happened?”

And he says, ”Nothing has happened, I have not done anything. Don’t be suspicious.” And naturally, the friend says, ”I am not being suspicious, and I am not saying that you have done anything.”

But Raskolnikov says, ”Yes, you are not saying anything but your eyes show it. Do you think I am such a stupid guy that I cannot understand what is going on in your mind? Do you think I am a murderer?”

The man says, ”You are just crazy! Why should you be a murderer?” Raskolnikov cannot sleep. He wakes up again and again and says to the friend, ”Did you hear something? I just heard a police whistle.”

The friend says, ”Nobody is here, no police. What would they come here and whistle for?” Raskolnikov says, ”No, perhaps I dreamed it.” And again: ”Did you hear the knock? I heard boots, police boots coming towards the house.”

The man says, ”Are you obsessed by the police?”

Raskolnikov says, ”Who is obsessed? You must be obsessed. It is your house, not my house. I have not done anything in the first place... and people die on their own. It does not necessarily mean that somebody has killed them.”

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By the morning he has driven the friend crazy, and finally he himself begs the friend, ”Take me to the police station because they are all around, they are going to catch me. They must have found out by now that that old woman has been murdered by being strangled. And they must have found my wristwatch in her hand, which is a proof enough, because how come that wristwatch was there?

And somebody must have seen me going into her house or coming out of her house. There is no point.... It is better to surrender.”

He goes to the police station. He tries to convince the police. The police say, ”You are just mad. The woman has died of a heart attack – the doctor’s report has come.” Raskolnikov says, ”I... you are trying to convince me? I am the man who has killed her – I confess to you.”

This is the meaning of crime and punishment: a guilt arises; he starts punishing himself. And the dream that he had dreamed so many times – now he cannot figure out whether it is a dream or whether he has really done it. He has not done it but he tortures the police. He goes to the doctor and says, ”Your report is wrong. I know perfectly well I have killed her, the wristwatch is proof.” The doctor says, ”The wristwatch is not proof We have examined everything and she died of a heart attack.” But this man needs punishment. Finally the police decide to put him in the lockup for his satisfaction. What else to do? As he is locked up, he is at ease.

This is insanity: when a dream becomes a reality, when you cannot make the distinction between the dream and reality.

And there are millions of people walking, talking, working, and they are not able to make the distinction between the real and the unreal.

How many superstitions do you go on carrying? What is God other than a superstition? You have not even dreamed Him; it is not even your dream that you are identified with. Perhaps Jesus dreamed Him, but he suffered enough for his dream. Now why are you torturing yourself?

But there are people.... I have heard of a man who believed that he was the resurrected Jesus Christ. His family tried to persuade him, ”Don’t say such a thing to anybody – they will think that you are mad.”

He said, ”Let them think so, but what I am, I am; and whether I say it or not they are going to find out, so it is better to declare it. And it is not a shame, it is a glory – and you should all be happy that I am Jesus Christ.”

They took him to a psychiatrist, saying, ”This poor guy has got the idea that he is Jesus Christ.

Something has to be done.”

The psychiatrist tried many ways, all the tricks that he knew. Nothing worked. How could they work on a man who is God’s messiah? The psychiatrist, just a poor psychiatrist, what can he do? Can he deprogram ”Jesus Christ? Impossible! Otherwise there would have been no need to crucify him –

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– there is no messiah, no son of God. He comes back to the earth: he knows that he is Joseph’s son, not the son of the Holy Ghost, that he is a carpenter, he should go back to his work – what is he doing here?

He is not supposed to give sermons on the mountain. He should go to his father’s workshop where the poor fellow is still making furniture: ”Just cut logs and do things that are needed. Help the old man. What are you doing here?” Only a deprogramming was needed, but it is difficult to deprogram people like Jesus Christ. This man, although he was not Jesus Christ, believed it. Finally the psychiatrist took him before the mirror. He said, ”Just look at yourself in the mirror. Do you look like Jesus Christ?”

He looked in the mirror. He said, ”Of course. Do you think you look like Jesus Christ? You idiot Anybody can see it. The mirror cannot lie.”

Then the psychiatrist tries his final way. He takes his paperknife, cuts Jesus Christ’s finger, blood comes out. He says to him, ”Two thousand years have passed since the crucifixion and nothing has been heard of Jesus Christ. He must be dead; this is simple arithmetic. He cannot live two thousand years, nobody has lived that long. The only way is that you may be the dead body of Jesus Christ.

But dead bodies don’t bleed, and blood is coming out of your body. That proves you are alive.” And Jesus Christ, this so-called Jesus Christ, laughed and said, ”This only proves that dead bodies do bleed and you did not hear me right in the first place: I am the resurrected Jesus Christ. I have left death far behind, two thousand years ago.” You cannot convince a madman by cutting his hand and showing him proof that dead men don’t bleed. The insane man has his own logic. He says,

”That simply proves that dead men do bleed.”

You cannot argue with a madman. Can you argue with a Christian? – a reborn Christian? Can you argue with Witnesses of Jehovah? – impossible. Can you argue with Hare Krishna people? I have argued with all these kinds of people. It is impossible.

In the first place they don’t listen to what you are saying. They go on saying what they want to say; they don’t listen at all to what you are saying – they start reading from the Bible. You can see a film covering their eyes. You can see their ears are closed. You can feel that the man is asleep, he is not awake.

But all these religious people are asleep and dreaming a thousand and one things. Those dreams their scriptures have given them.

I am not here to give you a dream, just the contrary.

I am here to destroy all your dreams.

Even if you meet me in your dream, just cut my head off immediately, then and there. And don’t ask where to get the sword from. If you can get me in your dream, get a sword from the same place. If you can dream of me, you can also dream of a sword.

This is what happened. A man was looking for a job. He heard that there was a place available on the ship that was just going to leave port. He rushed. The captain asked him, ”If the winds are very strong, and the currents are very strong, and you feel that the ship is sinking, what will you do?” From Personality to Individuality

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He said, ”I will throw the anchor into the water.” The captain said, ”That’s right.” Again he said, ”The waves become even stronger and the wind starts becoming even faster. What will you do then?” He said, ”I will put down another anchor.”

And the captain said finally, ”Now it is almost impossible to save the boat. The waves are going higher than the boat and the wind has taken the highest speed. Now what will you do?” He said, ”I will put down a bigger anchor.”

The captain said, ”But from where are you getting these anchors?” He said, ”From the same place from where you are getting these waves, and the wind – from the same place.”

So just remember: never ask me from where to get the sword – from the same place. You know perfectly well that if you can create me in your dream it won’t be very difficult to find a sword and just cut off my head. And don’t be bothered if dead men bleed, because I am going to bleed! But it is only a dream. The sword, me, the blood, all is dream. In the morning you will not find that your bedsheet is full of blood, and a body is lying down in your room. Don’t freak out! Just throw cold water on your eyes and everything will be okay.

Dreams are indicative. Your innermost self is telling you that you are not yet what you are meant to be, that your destiny is still unfulfilled, that your being is still starved. But that’s all that the dream signifies. The dream is not saying, ”Come follow me. Become a Christ, become a Buddha, become a Krishna.” No, that will be going against yourself.

Just be yourself, utterly yourself. And don’t be bothered what kind of flower you turn out to be.

It does not matter whether you are a rose or a lotus or a marigold. It does not matter.

What matters is flowering.

Let me repeat: the flower does not matter, what matters is flowering, and the flowering is the same whether it is a marigold.... The marigold is a poor flower. I don’t know about here, but in India the marigold is the poorest flower. Just to give him consolation perhaps, we call him mari-gold, otherwise it is a poor flower. Roses are rich people, lotuses are just super-rich! But it does not matter.

When the marigold opens up there is the same ecstasy surrounding it as when a rose opens up.

There is no difference in the ecstasy, because the ecstasy comes neither from the color nor from the fragrance, nor from the size.

No, the ecstasy comes from the phenomenon, the miracle of flowering, opening.

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The marigold has become a marigold, it was its destiny. The rose has become a rose, it was its destiny. Both are fulfilled. That fulfillment is exactly equal.

The moment you become yourself you will not be me, you will not be Christ, you will not be Krishna; you will be yourself. But the ecstasy that surrounds me will surround you. I cannot say for certain about Jesus, I can only be absolutely certain about myself. I don’t know whether he was really fulfilled or just a madman. There is no way for me to decide. I cannot say that about Buddha – he may be awakened, or he may be just a great philosopher philosophizing about awakening, a great dreamer dreaming about awakening.

Have you not dreamed sometimes that you are awake? I think everyone has sometimes dreamed that he is awake, and only when he wakes up does he find, ”My God, that was a dream! I thought I was awake.” You can dream within a dream, within a dream....

For example, you can dream that you are going to your bedroom fully awake. You are going to your bedroom – in a dream – lying down on the bed, pulling your blanket up, falling asleep and dreaming that you have gone to see a movie. And you see the movie. In the movie you can see a man who is asleep and is dreaming – it can go on ad infinitum. You can go on stretching the idea: a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream – there is no problem in it.

You can dream that you are awake – and there are many people who think they are enlightened...

they think! I have come across such people. One man came to see me when I was in Raipur.

This man was a very famous Hindu sage, Jagatguru Kripaludasji Maharaj. Jagatguru means a world teacher; Kripaludas, servant of compassion; and Maharaj, the king! He had many, many followers. Particularly in Raipur, he was the most famous teacher, and people believed that he was enlightened.

Somebody told me, ”Kripaludas is visiting the town. Wouldn’t you like to come?” I said, ”Certainly, because I never miss any opportunity.” I went up to the stage, went close to Kripaludas and gave him the indication that I wanted to say something in his ear. So he gave his ear to me, and I said, ”I think you are enlightened.” He said, ”Really?”

I said, ”Really.”

That was all. He enquired about me and the next day he came to visit me, and he said, ”How did you find out? – because I also think the same, that I am enlightened.” I said, ”There is no problem in it – you look enlightened.” He said, ”Absolutely right. Many people have said to me, ’You look enlightened.’” Then I said to him, ”Please, enlightenment has no certain way of looking.

And you are not

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think you are enlightened,’ I gave support to your dream. You are dreaming, because you yourself say that you also think you are enlightened. Nobody who is enlightened thinks that he is enlightened: he simply is enlightened. What business has thinking to do with enlightenment? Thinking can only create imagination. Thinking is part of the imaginative process.

”Thinking is dreaming in words, and dreaming is thinking in pictures. That’s the only difference between the two.”

Dreaming is a primitive kind of thinking. Because the primitive man has no words, he thinks in pictures.

The same is the case with the child, because the child is a primitive man. Look at any children’s book: big pictures, strong attractive colors, and few words. ”A big mango” – that the child understands immediately. And through that mango – because he knows the mango, he knows the taste of the mango, he knows the smell of the mango – seeing a mango in the picture he is reminded of the taste, the smell; and through that association, the word underneath, mango, slowly gets into his mind.

Then as books become of higher grades, the mango goes on becoming smaller and the words become more, with more descriptions of the mango: what kind of fruit the mango is, what kind of taste, where it is found. And the mango goes on disappearing, becoming smaller and smaller. And one day there are no pictures in the book.

Now, you have learned a new way of dreaming: that is through words. But the shift from the mango to the word mango is a great jump.

But when you are unconscious, fast asleep, again you fall back to your primitive language. Then you forget about the language that you have learned.

One of my friends was in Germany. He went to Germany when he was only seven or eight years old. His father was there so he went there, and he lived in Germany for thirty years. He was educated in the German language, but he was born in Maharashtra; he knew Marathi, that was his mother tongue, but he had completely forgotten about it. A seven-year-old child – he was not able to understand Marathi at all, he had never learned to read Marathi. But he had an accident, a car accident, and became unconscious, and in his unconsciousness he would speak only Marathi.

His brother was called from India because the father had died. They said, ”We cannot understand what he says, and this man has never used any other language than German.” But the language that he had learned from his very birth was only in the unconscious mind. That layer of seven years was there, and it was deeper; German was on top of it. But the top layer was now unconscious. So the deeper layer started speaking.

Whenever he would become conscious he would forget that had been speaking in Marathi, he would speak in German; he then couldn’t understand Marathi. His brother would speak in Marathi and he could not understand. And he was continually going in and out of unconsciousness. He would fall back again into unconsciousness, and again he would speak in Marathi; back to consciousness, he would speak German.

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In your unconscious you are still primitive, and that’s why Sigmund Freud paid more attention to your unconscious – because your unconscious is more innocent, childlike, primitive. It cannot lie, it cannot be deceptive; it will simply say whatever is the truth. But the conscious mind is cunning. It has been made cunning through education, culture, and everything.

One day I was just playing; I must have been four or five years old, not more than that. My father was shaving his beard when somebody knocked on the door; my father said to me, ”Just go and tell him, ’My father is not at home.’”

I went out and I said, ”My father is shaving and he says to tell you, ’My father is not at home.’” The man said, ”What? He is inside?”

I said, ”Yes, but this is what he has told me. I have told you the whole truth.” The man came in and my father looked at me: What had happened? And the man was very angry, he said, ”This is something! You had called me to come at this time, and you send a message with the boy that you have gone out.”

My father asked him, ”But how did you find out that I was in?” He said, ”This boy has said the whole thing, that ’My father is in. He is shaving his beard, and he has told me to tell you that he is out.’”

My father looked at me. I could understand; he was saying, ”Just wait! Let this man go, and I will show you.”

And I told him, ”I am going before this man leaves.” He said, ”But I have not said anything to you.”

I said, ”I have understood everything!”

I told the man, ”Just stay here. First let me get out, because there is going to be trouble for me.” But on departing I said to my father, ”You insist with me,’Be truthful....’ So,” I said, ”this is a chance to be truthful, and to check whether you really mean me to be truthful, or is it just that you’re trying to teach me cunningness?”

Of course he understood that it was better to keep quiet, not to quarrel with me then, because when the man was gone, I would have to come home. I came after two or three hours so that he would cool down or other people would be there and no problem would arise. He was alone. I went in, he said, ”Don’t be worried – I will never tell you anything like that again. You have to forgive me.” He was in this way a fair man, otherwise who bothers about a four, five-year old child, and asks – being a father – ”Forgive me”? And he never said anything like it again his whole life. He knew that with me he had to be different than with other children.

As you grow up, as the society goes on teaching you to be this way, to behave this way, you start be coming a hypocrite, and you become identified with your hypocrisy.

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My function here is to destroy all hypocrisy in you.

To me honesty is not a policy.

Just at supper I was telling Vivek that the man who first made up this maxim, ”Honesty is the best policy,” must have been a very cunning man. Honesty is not policy; and if it is policy, then it is not honesty: you are honest because it pays, you will be dishonest if that pays. Honesty is the best policy if it is paying, but if sometimes it is not paying, then dishonesty of course is the best policy.

The question is, what is going to pay?

And Vivek reminded me that just today she has seen in a book, in one sentence, two words that were very revealing. She had never joined those words together: policy and politics, politeness and politics. What is politeness? It is a kind of politics. Both words are derived from the same root. All three words – policy, politeness, politics – have the same root, they all mean the same thing. But politeness you think is a nice quality. You would never think of it in terms of politics, but it is politics.

To be polite is a defense measure.

In Europe you shake hands. Why do you shake the right hand? – why not the left? It is really part of politics. To shake hands is nothing friendly. It is just a gesture that ”My right hand is empty so don’t be worried. And let me see that your right hand also is empty, that there is not a knife or something in it.” And when you are shaking right hands you cannot pull your sword out because with the left hand... unless you happen to be a leftist. It is just a way of giving certainty to the other person, that you are not going to harm him, and he is giving certainty to you that he is not going to harm you.

Slowly slowly, it became a symbol of greeting each other.

In India, you greet with both hands, but that too is simply showing that both your hands are empty. It is far better than shaking hands, because who knows about the left hand? Sometimes even the right hand does not know about the left hand, so it is better to show that both hands are empty; that is far better, and far more polite also. But you are saying, ”I am completely defenseless. You need not be wary about me or worried about me. You can relax.” These are symbols that people have learned.

In India if you go to a so-called guru, you have to give him a salute which is uniquely Indian. It is called satsang dandawat. You have to lie down on the floor with all your limbs touching the floor, because that is the most defenseless position. Even if the other man wants to kill you, he can kill you immediately. That’s why it has become the symbol of surrender.

In wartime when prisoners are caught, they are ordered to lie down flat on the ground with their arms stretched out. Why? They cannot do anything in that position and then you can search them, and take anything they have. Or else you tell them to stand up with outstretched arms, with their hands up against the wall, which is the same – vertical or horizontal, it is the same.

In war it seems to be perfectly right, but somehow the same war is going on continuously between every individual in the society. So a certain culture develops it as a gesture of tremendous respect.

It is not a gesture of respect, it is a gesture of humiliation, that ”I humiliate myself completely. I am at your disposal. If you want to cut off my head you can. I cannot do anything in such a position.” And of course the other person feels great, his ego is satisfied.

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Our culture, our education, our religion – they all teach us to be hypocrites in such subtle ways that unless you go deep in search, you will never find out what you have been doing.

Why do you smile when you meet a friend? What is the need? If you are not feeling like smiling, why do you smile? You have to do it. This is a policy that is paying, because some day you may need this man’s help, and if you have always been smiling at him, he cannot refuse. If you have never smiled at him and never even said ”Hi,” then you need not bother even to approach him; he will throw you out of his house with a ”Go to hell!” One has to understand all these layers and detach oneself from all of them.

Become a watcher so that you cannot become identified with any dream.

That’s my work; and if you start dreaming about me, you are destroying my whole work. Take the indication, then drop the dream and then find real food. Just dreaming of a feast is no good. When a real feast is possible then why be satisfied with a dream feast? When real joy is available, then why a phony smile? When authentic ecstasy is just close by your hand, perhaps not even that far, then why be satisfied with being miserable, crying and weeping, feeling empty, feeling worthless? Your treasure is within you, and you are becoming a beggar.

My effort is to wake you up. Perhaps it will be hard on you in the beginning because you have been a beggar for so long that you will think I am taking your kingdom. Hence sannyas is difficult.

On the surface I have made it so simple because I know, inside it is so difficult; to make it difficult on the outside also would be inhuman.

So on the surface I have made it absolutely simple – it cannot be simplified more – because inside the real work is hard.

But it has to be done. Without doing it you lived without knowing what life is. You existed in a way which cannot be called living, it can only be called vegetating.

Don’t be vegetables, cabbages, cauliflowers. Yes, these are the two classes of people: cabbages are uneducated people, cauliflowers are college – educated cabbages; but there is not much difference.

The only thing that makes a difference is: Wake up!

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CHAPTER 4

Jealousy: society’s device to divide and rule

2 January 1985 pm in Lao Tzu Grove

Question 1

OSHO,

WHAT IS JEALOUSY? DOES OUR JEALOUSY SHOW THAT WE ARE VERY FAR FROM

ALONENESS?

SOCIETY has exploited the individual in so many ways that it is almost impossible to believe.

It has created devices so clever and cunning that it is almost impossible even to detect that they are devices. These devices are to exploit the individual, to destroy his integrity, to take away from him all that he has got – without even creating a suspicion in him, even a doubt about what is being done to him.

Jealousy is one of those tremendously powerful devices.

From the very childhood every society, every culture, every religion teaches everybody comparison.

And the child is bound to learn it. He is just a tabula rasa, a blank paper without any writing; so whatsoever the parents, the teachers, the priests write on him, he starts believing that is his destiny, it is his fate.

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spoiled. And spoiled by those who think they love him – crushed, crippled, conditioned with all the good intentions in the world.

But what can you expect from good intentions?

You are poisoning somebody with good intentions.

I know that you are not aware that you are poisoning them, because you have been poisoned in your turn and this has been going on since Adam and Eve.

What did God the father do to Adam and Eve? He deserves to be called father; whether He exists or not does not matter, but He deserves to be called father because He fulfilled all the conditions of being a father. His orders were to the children, Adam and Eve, His creation, ”You are not to eat from two trees the tree of knowledge and the tree of eternal life.” And this man you call father?

He is preventing you from the two most important things! Nothing can be more important than the exploration of your life and its eternity. And without a tremendous enquiry into knowing, into wisdom, you are not going to figure out what life is, where it is moving.

God prohibits Adam and Eve from the most important things that make you an individual, that give you self-respect, that confer on you integrity, authenticity, beinghood. He wants you to remain ignorant forever. He wants you to be unaware of your own life source. Of course, this man is your father.

And since this great father, all the small fathers have been doing the same.

I cannot forgive God. I can forgive all the other, small fathers; they are poor people. They are doing to you what has been done to them, they are simply transferring their inheritance. What else can they do? But I cannot forgive God. He has no father. He cannot find the excuse, ”Because it has been done to me I am doing it to them. I don’t know any other way.” No, it is His invention.

Because God does not exist the whole burden falls on the heads of the priests, the priesthood.

They have found ways to keep you away from yourself. And if you are away from yourself so many things are absolutely certain. You will remain miserable forever; from one misery to another misery, that is going to be your life.

Yes, you will be hoping that tomorrow things will be different, but tomorrow never comes and things go on getting worse. Yes, they are different, but not better. You are going down the drain every day.

But the hope keeps you alive, otherwise there is nothing to support you in even breathing for a single moment. Everything is missing, because you are missing. Even if everything is available, what is the point of it if you are not there?

Jealousy is one of the greatest devices.

Look at it very closely: what does it mean?

Jealousy means to live in comparison.

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Somebody is higher than you, somebody is lower than you. You are always somewhere on a middle rung of the ladder. Perhaps the ladder is a circle because nobody finds the end of the ladder.

Everybody is stuck somewhere in the middle, everybody is in the middle. The ladder seems to be a round wheel.

Somebody is above you – that hurts. That keeps you fighting, struggling, moving by any means possible, because if you succeed nobody cares whether you have succeeded rightly or wrongly.

Success proves you are right; failure proves that you are wrong. All that matters is success, so any means will do. The end proves the means right. So you need not bother about means – and nobody does bother. The whole question is how to climb on up the ladder. But you never come to the end of it. And whosoever is above you is creating jealousy in you, that he has succeeded and you have failed.

One would think that spending your whole life passing from one ladder to another ladder, always finding that somebody is still ahead of you – can’t you simply jump off the ladder? No, you cannot jump. The society is very cunning, very clever. It has polished, refined its methods over thousands of years. Why can’t you get out of the circle? – because somebody is below you and that gives you tremendous satisfaction.

You see the strategy? Somebody is above you; that creates jealousy, misery, suffering, humiliation, a feeling of worthlessness, that you have not been able to prove your mettle, that you are not man enough. While others go on moving, you are stuck. It makes you feel just worthless, meaningless, useless, a burden on the earth and nothing more.

If only this was the case you would have jumped off the ladder and you would have told those people on the ladder to go wherever they want to go. But you cannot jump because there are people below you; as far as you can see there are rungs below you and rungs below them. That gives a great satisfaction, a great feeling that you have passed so many people; you are not absolutely useless.

You have proved that you have some strength of will and you are not a failure; these people under you are enough to prove it.

You are now in a dilemma:

Whenever you look upwards, a great misery descends on you; whenever you look downwards, a great satisfaction.

Now, how can you jump off the ladder? – because in jumping off it, you will be jumping from both, and nobody will be below you. Nobody will be above you, certainly, but nobody will be below you; and you will be left alone if you jump off.

Here on the ladder you are with everybody else, part of the society, culture, civilization – and it is only a question of a little more effort. And people go on telling you, ”Bravo, go on! Don’t be depressed, don’t be pessimistic, remain optimistic. The night is not going to last forever.” They go on saying to you, ”When the night is darkest, the morning is the closest, so don’t be afraid of the darkness, of failure.” They will give you a thousand and one examples.

In my middle school I heard for the first time about a Mohammedan conqueror of India, Mahmud Gaznavi. He attacked India nineteen times and he was defeated eighteen times. When he was From Personality to Individuality

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defeated the eighteenth time he was hiding in a cave, and he saw a spider trying to weave its net in the front of the cave. He was just hiding there with nothing to do, so he started looking at the spider and its efforts. It was raining, and the stones were very slippery. The spider went on falling; coincidentally he fell eighteen times but he succeeded on the nineteenth.

Mahmud suddenly became optimistic. He had been thinking to stop this foolish effort. Eighteen times... his whole life he has wasted, thousands of people have been killed to no purpose. He had been defeated again and again by a single man, Prithviraj Chauhan – who was on the border of India; he was the ruler of the frontier of India. Mahmud was never able to enter the country because just on the border he was defeated, and by a single man. It was really too much – he was thinking to commit suicide, because ”I am no longer able to show my face to my people.” Mahmud was the king of his own kingdom, there was no need to invade India. But nothing satisfies, nothing is enough; it is always less than you want, and there is always much more that is available.

He had a small kingdom, and just by its side was this vast country, India. It was immensely rich at that time – it was called the Golden Bird in those days – because the population was very small, only twenty million people. Now there are more than seven hundred million people. That was at the last count; right now there must be nearabout eight hundred million.

It is estimated that by the end of this century there will be one thousand million people; it will be the biggest country in the world. China will be left behind because China is controlling its birthrate very carefully. Right now the population is ahead of India, but by the end of the century it is going to be left behind. At least in one thing India will be the Olympic winner.

When it was a country of only twenty million people, naturally it was rich. There was no reason for anybody to be poor. So much land, so much gold – there was more of everything than anybody needed. It attracted invaders, obviously. Continually for three thousand years, India has been attracting invaders. Now anybody is trying to invade India; in fact the last invaders, the Britishers, found finally that they had sucked India totally, there was nothing left.

Then it was more of a liability than an empire. You had to take care of so many poor people, otherwise you were blamed; you had to take care of so many criminals, otherwise you were blamed.

For everything that went wrong the empire was blamed because it was your enforced slavery that was causing every trouble.

This is not a valid argument. Mahatma Gandhi was very careful to remain always truthful, but about the basics he was not. It was not true to say to India that it was only because of the British Empire that all the problems were there. Because now – after’47 and up to’84 – although there has been no slavery and the country is free, it has fallen far more deeply into misery and suffering.

You will be surprised that since the British left India, the price of things has gone up seven hundred times. Today if you have seven hundred rupees, it is only worth what one rupee was worth in 1947.

So today, to earn seven hundred rupees – which is a big salary in India – is just like earning one rupee in 1947. It was not only the British Empire that was responsible for India’s problems; for three thousand years so many people had been sucking India dry.

Mahmud gained confidence.

He said, ”If a small creature like a spider has such tremendous optimism... am I inferior to this spider? I will try one time more.” And what a coincidence! – on From Personality to Individuality

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the nineteenth time he succeeded. In fact he succeeded because Prithviraj Chauhan had simply dropped the idea that this man would have the courage to invade again. Eighteen times defeated...

with what face could he come back again?

So Prithviraj Chauhan simply dropped the idea that there was going to be any invasion. All the preparations that he had been making continually for the eighteen invasions were dropped. It was no longer an emergency. Mahmud was the only enemy on the borders of Prithviraj Chauhan’s land

– and he was crushed. Prithviraj Chauhan also thought, ”In such a situation I would have committed suicide. Any man with just a little bit of self-respect would rather die than be defeated eighteen times.” So he simply dropped the idea. The army was dispersed, sent back to work, and Mahmud invaded at a time when he was not expected at all. He won.

This story was told to me in my class by the teacher of history. He said, ”This is the way one should be. Never be pessimistic. One never knows: if this time you fail, don’t be worried; next time perhaps you will succeed, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. But never lose heart; to the last breath go on struggling.”

I stood up and told my teacher, ”Please forgive me. I think this man Mahmud was an idiot. In the first place, to invade somebody for no reason....” Those people had not committed any crime, and in fact they were powerful enough – they had defeated him eighteen times – to have invaded him. But Prithviraj Chauhan never went beyond his borders. He could have defeated Mahmud, thrown him out and come back. But he never invaded, otherwise it would have been the simplest thing to do.

If the enemy is defeated then why leave him his kingdom? He could have finished this man Mahmud in the first attack. He could have taken over his kingdom and there would have been no chance for Mahmud to attack again. But Prithviraj Chauhan was a man of far superior humanity; Mahmud was never attacked. Prithviraj Chauhan was told again and again by his prime minister and court people, The best way is to finish this man and take his kingdom. If you leave him, within two or three years he will again gather forces and be back, and again we wi]l have to fight. This is strange – why do you leave him be?”

But Prithviraj Chauhan said, ”Those people of his kingdom have not done any wrong to us nor done any harm to us. How can I invade them? My army is not to invade countries, it is only for those rare moments when some fool attacks us. Then it is a defense force.” He was a man of a sophisticated mind, a man who could see that this was stupid. He said, ”Don’t be worried. This man, sooner or later, is going to drop the idea.”

I told my teacher, ”Don’t praise Mahmud in front of me and don’t tell me,’He was such a great optimist and you should be like him.’ I can forgive the spider, nobody expects a spider to have any intelligence, and I can certainly say that the spider was not counting the number of times that he had fallen. He may not have even been aware of what was happening.” Spiders, ants, and those kind of people – you throw them away, and by a strange logic they will immediately run back towards you. The whole room is available, but from wherever you throw them they will run back in exactly the same direction. What stubbornness! If they have some intelligence, at least that direction has to be avoided. It is possible for it to escape anywhere... but strange, you go on hitting a spider and it will come back again towards you.

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”That spider was not counting, was not optimistic. This was just Mahmud’s old ego finding some excuse again, finding some way to go to his people and say,’Don’t be worried – perhaps this time we will win. And one never knows about tomorrow, so let us try once more.’ But don’t tell me that this Mahmud was an ideal person. To me he is an ugly man, just a spider. I don’t count him among human beings. And if this is going to be taught in the history class, then it is not for me. You are teaching us in a clever way to fight, to destroy, to kill, to put others lower than ourselves.” Parents go on teaching from one’s very childhood, ”Look at our neighbor’s boy – he has come first in the school. And what have you been doing for the whole year? Don’t you have any intelligence?” In the class they will be telling you the same. They will give gold medals to those who come first and top the whole school or the whole college or the whole university. My parents and my teachers in the school used to say, ”You can easily be always at the top, but you never take any care about the examinations, you don’t care about examinations.” This was my routine, that I would always go to the examination fifteen minutes late. This I followed my whole career in school, in college, at university; I would go fifteen minutes late. It was well known. The examiner knew that my seat had to be kept empty; I would be coming, but exactly fifteen minutes late. And I would leave the examination hall fifteen minutes before everybody else, before the end. The time allowed was three hours and I could see that the examination could be managed in two and a half hours; there was no need to waste half an hour more there.

The teacher, who was there looking after the students to see that they were not copying and not doing some mischief, that somebody was not concealing a book, would say, ”There is no hurry; there are fifteen minutes left. Why are you finishing?” I would say, ”I have finished. I began fifteen minutes after the start and I finish fifteen minutes before the end. And it is going to be this way forever because I don’t see that it needs three hours; in fact two and a half hours is more than enough. And I have far more important things to do.” They all said, ”Why don’t you care about the examination?” I said, ”For the simple reason that I don’t want to be part of a jealous circle. I don’t want to be in the game of comparison. It does not matter to me whether I pass or whether I fail; it will not make any difference to me. If I come first, good; if I come last, even better – because to be the first seems to me a little violent because you have taken somebody’s joy. And to me it is not a joy at all so I am simply wasting the place; somebody else could have been there who is now second to me, and he would have immensely enjoyed it. Perhaps in the rest of his life he may not find anything else to enjoy, and this chance I have destroyed and I am not enjoying it anyway.

”So it will be better if I am last. At least I will have the solace that I have not spoiled anybody’s career, I have not been violent, pushy; I have not tried to invade somebody else’s space – nobody is behind me. And because there is nobody behind me, I cannot feel superior.” And there is the logic, simple logic: if you don’t feel superior, you can’t feel inferior. They both come together, they both go together. If you drop one, you cannot save the other. If you don’t feel superior to anybody, how can you feel inferior to anybody? – you simply feel yourself From Personality to Individuality

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But strange as it was, I almost always managed to be the first. My teachers were amazed, my parents were amazed: ”This is strange. You never care about the examination. You don’t go regularly to school even if you go, you are thrown out of the class, and you stand outside the class the whole day. You disappear from the school any time, any moment. You don’t ask for permission from any teacher or the principal; you don’t even inform them.” My simple way was: ”I want to live my life – why should I ask anybody? They can do whatsoever they want to do. They can punish me, they can fine me, they can report me. I will bring the report to you, but that is between you and them; I have nothing to do with it. I simply do what I want to do.” When I was feeling so much like going to the river, I was not going to listen to a fool talking about some Mahmud who won on the nineteenth try, although he was defeated eighteen times. He was an ugly man. He didn’t behave with Prithviraj the same way Prithviraj had behaved with him – Prithviraj never imprisoned him. Eighteen times Prithviraj defeated him but never imprisoned him, because he said, ”Leave him to his kingdom. Why should we bother to imprison him? It is enough that he got defeated, that his army is finished. It’s enough punishment.” But Mahmud was not a man, he was just animalistic. He caught Prithviraj Chauhan; not only that, he took out both his eyes. Prithviraj was a very beautiful man, and this was Mahmud’s revenge for being defeated eighteen times: he blinded him.

But Prithviraj Chauhan was a great archer. His court poet, a friend, got imprisoned with him, knowingly, to help him. When Chauhan and this poet were brought into the court, Mahmud was sitting in the balcony high above. He was still afraid of this man although he was blind and chained.

What fear! But the man had defeated him eighteen times and thrown him out of the country, not even bothering to imprison him. Must have been a lion!

And the poet said to Mahmud, ”You don’t know Prithviraj. I would like to tell you that there is none in the whole world who is such a master of archery as Prithviraj is. Before you kill him, give him a chance to show his art.”

But Mahmud said, ”Now he is blind, how can he be a great archer? He may have been.” The poet said, ”Don’t be worried. He is such a great archer that just the sound is enough for him to hit the target.” And all this talk was going on so that Prithviraj could figure out where Mahmud was sitting from the sound of his voice. And he killed Mahmud. Mahmud was thinking that he was going to show his skill in the art of archery but Prithviraj simply killed him from the sound, with an arrow exactly in the heart.

I was always thinking of all these people – Alexander the Great, Tamerlane, Genghis Khan, Napoleon Bonaparte. Why are you going to teach innocent children about these people? – to create in them the desire to be conquerors, to be rich, to be presidents, to be prime ministers –

not to be themselves. Nobody teaches you to be yourself. You can be anybody, but just don’t be yourself. And they create jealousy. Alexander the Great – what is great in that man? And why should you go on keeping alive the names of Nadirshah and Tamerlane and Genghis Khan? Just murderers, the greatest criminals the world has known.

Small criminals you go on putting to death, and the big criminals make your history.

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I told my history teacher, ”Your history is just a history of crime, and you are trying to make everybody a criminal. Can’t you find some innocent human beings and talk about them and teach us that these were the real, authentic people?” But no, history is full of all these other people. All the history of the whole world needs to be flushed down the toilet, so that we can start from scratch. Then we can be ourselves – because no comparison will exist.

In the university, when my postgraduate examinations came along, my professor, who loved me immensely, was very concerned that I used to go fifteen minutes late and I used to leave fifteen minutes early – that it meant I might miss what was my right. I told him, ”It is not my right to come first, to top the university, to have the gold medal. If I get the gold medal I will throw it into the university well immediately, immediately after the convocation, so the vice-chancellor and the whole procession of deans and professors and students – everybody – can come and see me dropping the gold medal in the well. I simply don’t like the idea of people being put into categories: lower and higher, superior and inferior.... If it were in my hands people would simply be educated.” There is no need for examinations. What is the need of an examination? What have you been doing for two years – fooling around? What has the teacher been doing for two years? For two years the teacher has been teaching you, for two years you have been learning; that’s enough. There is no need for an examination and there is no need to start putting people higher and lower. This is the beginning of comparison; they come from the university and they know where they are standing on the ladder.

So my teacher, Doctor S.K. Saxena, used to come to the hostel to pick me up. It was just a two-minute walk from my hostel to the examination hall, but he would come and pick me up in his car and force me to enter the examination hall exactly at seven. He would wait outside for three hours so that I could not get out fifteen minutes early. But I have my ways. First I would meditate for fifteen minutes, and at the end I would also meditate for fifteen minutes. The examiner said, ”That poor fellow, your professor, is standing outside for three hours, and you have still managed....” I said, ”Don’t tell him, because he will unnecessarily feel hurt. There is no need to tell. I will do my thing. What he wanted to do, he has done. I have not refused; I entered.... He said seven, I said okay. But how can I drop my whole life’s way? For fifteen minutes I meditate, because this paper is not worth three hours, it is just for two and a half hours. And I have more important things to do.

Because I cannot go out, meditation is the best that I can do, so I will do that.” The examiner certainly told Doctor Saxena, ”You are unnecessarily trying to force him. He won’t do anything that he does not want to do.”

Saxena asked, ”Then what is he doing there?”

The man said, ”He meditates for fifteen minutes. He did not even see the paper for fifteen minutes.

He put it upside down and meditated for fifteen minutes. Then he took his paper, looked at it, and just fifteen minutes, exactly fifteen minutes before the end he closed his copy and handed it over to me. He said, ’Now this is the time for my meditation.’” Saxena said to me, ”You are impossible! Missing half an hour? You will lose the gold medal.” From Personality to Individuality

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I said, ”Who cares about the gold medal? And if you are so interested you can give me a gold medal.

You want me to have a gold medal on my chest? give me a gold medal! You can manage it, you have enough money.”

He said, ”You don’t understand; it is not just a question of a gold medal, it is a question of topping the whole university. It will make your career.”

I said, ”My career is going to be made by a gold medal? Do you think your examination is going to make my career?”

He said, ”Yes, because if you come first then you can get... I have arranged everything – you will get a scholarship for a Ph.D. If you don’t come first, you won’t get it.” I said, ”Finished! So I will not have the scholarship and I will not have the Ph.D. Who cares about your Ph.D.? What have you got? You have two Ph.D’s, one D.Litt. What have you really got?

You cannot deceive me – you live a frustrated life, you have been defeated twice. You wanted to be elected dean of the arts faculty, but you could not win. And I know that you have wept over it, actually wept tears.

”You have fought for election as vice-chancellor, and you could not manage to get even twenty votes. Out of one thousand professors you got only twenty votes. Who is going to give votes for a professor of philosophy against a man who is a seasoned politician? He has been chief minister of the province. You think you can win against that criminal? – impossible! People are so afraid of him, because there is every possibility that he will again become chief minister and if they don’t vote for him, then he will take revenge.”

And that’s exactly what happened. This man, Dwarika Prasad Mishra, was chief minister of my state, Madhya Pradesh. But because he spoke against Jawaharlal Nehru.... There was a conspiracy.

Morarji Desai was chief minister of Bombay state, Dwarika Prasad was chief minister of Madhya Pradesh; a few chief ministers of other states joined together to revolt against Jawaharlal’s dictatorial regime. Dwarika Prasad was foolish enough to speak first.

Jawaharlal was so angry that he immediately threw him out. It happened so quickly that Morarji and others had second thoughts about whether to then go ahead according to the conspiracy plan or just back out. And they all backed out, so this man alone was caught. But he was of the same quality as Morarji Desai, just a third-rate gutter politician. He managed, for the time being at least, to be the vice-chancellor of a university... and wait for the right time.

And he was clever. He immediately managed to become vice-chancellor, managed to become very closely connected with Indira. Indira was not prime minister at that time but she was the president of the congress party, which was the ruling party. He became so close to Indira that she started trusting in him and calling him uncle. And she persuaded her father, Jawaharlal, the prime minister, to forgive him and take him back. He was forgiven and taken back and became the general secretary of the all-India congress committee, and again he was back as chief minister of Madhya Pradesh.

He took revenge on those twenty people who had voted for S.K. Saxena. He threw them all out of the university, because the chief minister is the chancellor of the university; anybody who is the chief From Personality to Individuality

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minister becomes the chancellor of the university. So as chief minister he became the chancellor also and threw out all those people.

I asked Doctor Saxena, ”What have you gained from all this trying to go higher? And are you teaching me to get into the same trap in which you have suffered? If you are really loving towards me, help me not to get into this trap.”

He said, ”My God! You want even me to go along with you? No – I will fight against him. I will fight again, and you will see that one day I will become the vice-chancellor.” I said, ”Even if you become the vice-chancellor, what does it mean? I know you: you will be as miserable as you are now. First you were a lecturer, you were miserable. You became a reader, you were miserable. You became a professor, you were miserable. You have now become head of the philosophy department, you are miserable. I know you. Do you think by your becoming the dean of the faculty of arts your misery will disappear?

”I know the dean of the faculty also. He is far more miserable than you are because he is just one step short of becoming the vice-chancellor. You are two steps back, he is one step back. His misery is more because he is so close. And every time somebody else jumps in from outside, he goes on missing, and his misery is really intense. You will not be surprised if he gets a heart attack.” But strangely, because I was not interested in the examinations and I was not interested in the textbooks, but was interested in the whole world of philosophy – my interest was universal – of course my answers were far richer than anybody else’s. They could only repeat what was in the textbook; I could say something which even the examiner was reading for the first time. Otherwise...

I know examiners, I have myself been an examiner for nine years. I never read any copy of any examinee.

To one intelligent student who was trustworthy, who wouldn’t say anything to anybody, I just said,

”You will get half the money. Just check all these books, and remember nobody is to be failed, so everybody gets above the thirty-three mark. And nobody gets above sixty percent because I think nobody is that capable. So these are the limits, thirty-three to sixty. Then you can go on doing it howsoever you want.” And I knew when I was a student that my professors’ research scholars were examining the papers.

I said to Doctor Saxena, ”Sometimes things can work in my way too. Just wait.” And certainly they worked in my way because I was so rich in my answers and so original, because I had never bothered about the textbooks. Textbooks I avoided because they can get stuck in your mind.

Textbooks I never purchased.

But I have been collecting books from my high school days. You will be surprised that by the time I was a matriculate I had read thousands of books and collected hundreds of books of my own –

and great masterpieces. I was finished with Kahlil Gibran, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gorky, Turgenev – the best as far as writing is concerned. When I was finishing my intermediate I was finished with Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Bertrand Russell – all the philosophers that I could find in any library, in any bookshop, or borrow from anybody.

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In Jabalpur there was one beautiful place where I was an everyday visitor; I would go for at least one or two hours. It was called the Thieves’ Market. Stolen things were sold there, and I was after stolen books because so many people were stealing books and selling them and I was getting such beautiful books. I got Gurdjieff’s first book from that Thieves’ Market, and Ouspensky’s IN SEARCH

OF THE MIRACULOUS from that Thieves’ Market.

The book was fifty rupees; from there I got it for half a rupee, because in the Thieves’ Market, books are sold by weight. Those people, they don’t bother about whether it is Ouspensky, Plato, or Russell.

Everything is all rubbish; whether you purchase old newspapers or you purchase Socrates, it is the same price. I had collected in my library thousands of books from the Thieves’ Market. Everybody used to ask me, ”Are you mad or something? Why do you go continually to the Thieves’ Market? –

because people don’t go there. To be associated with the Thieves’ Market is not good.” I would say, ”I don’t care. Even if they think that I am a thief, it is okay.” To me the Thieves’ Market has been the best source – even books which were not in the university library I have found in the Thieves’ Market. And all those shopkeepers were selling stolen books, and every kind of stolen thing. In India, in every big city there is a Thieves’ Market. In Bombay there is a Thieves’ Market where you can find everything at just throw-away prices. But it is risky because it is stolen property.

I once got into trouble because I purchased three hundred books from one shop, simultaneously, in one day, because a whole library of somebody’s had been stolen. Just for one hundred and fifty rupees, three hundred books! I could not leave a single one. I had to borrow money and immediately rush there, and I told that man, ”No book should go from here.” Those books had seals with a certain man’s name and address, and finally the police came. I said,

”Yes, these are the books, and I have purchased them from the Thieves’ Market. In the first place this man is almost ninety years old – he will be dying soon.” The police inspector said to me, ”What are you arguing about?” I said, ”I am simply making things clear to you. This man is going to die sooner or later; these books will be rotten. I can give you these books, but you have to give one hundred and fifty rupees to somebody, because I have borrowed the money. And in fact you cannot catch me because that shopkeeper is there; he will be a witness for me that the books were sold to him. Now, he cannot go on remembering who is selling him old newspapers, and old books; he does not know who has brought them.

So first you have to go to that man and find the thief If you find the thief get one hundred and fifty rupees from him or from anywhere you want. These books are here, and they cannot be in a better situation anywhere else. And that ninety-year-old man won’t be able to read them again, so what is the fuss?”

The inspector said, ”You sound sane, logical, but these are stolen books... and I cannot go against the law.”

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I said, ”You go according to the law. Go to the place from where I have purchased them – and I have purchased them, I have not stolen them. That shopkeeper has also purchased them, he has not stolen them. So find the thief.”

He said, ”But on the book there is a seal and the name.” I said, ”Don’t be worried – next time you come there will be no seal and no name. First you find the thief, then I am always here, at your service.”

And as he went away I tore one page from each, the first empty page which means nothing, and I just signed the books. From that day I started signing my books, because it might have come in handy someday if my books were stolen – at least they had my signature and the date. And because I had taken out the first page, I would sign on two or three pages inside also, in case my books were stolen, but they never were.

My professors used to ask me, ”You are reading day and night, but why are you so averse to the textbooks?”

I said, ”For the simple reason that I don’t want the examiner to see that I am a parrot.” And fortunately that helped me. I came first in the university and won the gold medal. But I had promised, so I had to drop the gold medal down the well in front of everybody; the whole university was there, and I dropped the gold medal. I said to them, ”With this I drop the idea that I am the first in the university, so that nobody feels inferior to me. I am just nobody.” The vice-chancellor was present. That evening he called me in and said, ”This is not right. The gold medal is a prestigious thing; you have topped the whole university. And you have got me in trouble now because I was to give you the scholarship for a Ph.D. You have thrown away the gold medal in front of everybody else, and they will say,’That man is strange – why are you giving him a scholarship for three years?”’

I said, ”Don’t give it to me.”

But he said, ”Just because you did that.... You threw away the gold medal and you told the people there,’Now I am just nobody; don’t take me as the first in the university. Please don’t be jealous of me, I am not superior to you. It is just chance. Somebody was bound to be first; it is just a coincidence that I happen to be the first. But it makes nobody inferior.’ What you said has gone into my heart and I feel that I will take the risk and give you the scholarship.” He certainly gave me the scholarship but no professor was ready to guide me, because I wanted to do research on religion and they each said, ”You will create trouble, and as your guide it will be a constant fight between the two of us. We know your ideas and we know that perhaps you are right, but to accept you and to sign the papers that say I have been guiding you means that I am somehow agreeing with you – and your ideas are outrageous! In private I can agree with you, but not in public.

”And what about the two other examiners who will be there from some other universities? They will be just shocked because you criticize Krishna, you criticize Rama, you criticize Buddha, you criticize Jesus. Is there anybody whom you don’t criticize?” From Personality to Individuality

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I said, ”If I come across somebody I will mention his name, but if I don’t come across anybody, what can I do? Of course when Galileo discovered that the earth goes around the sun, he had to criticize everybody without exception – all the scriptures of the world – because nobody had even thought of it. All religions and all scriptures and all books said that the sun is going round the earth as it appears to. But appearance is not reality, so how can you be certain?

”It may be possible that as far as religion is concerned I am the first man who is right, because if Galileo can be the first man, just three hundred years before.... Before Galileo, thousands of years had passed. If he can be the first man who was right and everybody else before him was wrong, why do you think I cannot be the first man who is right?” One of the professors said, ”This is the problem! You find somebody else. I will suggest a few names go to these professors.”

Philosophy professors were not ready to accept me. They suggested, ”It would be good if the research could be done under psychology. You will just have to change the subject to psychology of religion. Do whatsoever you want, just change the title.” I said, ”I will try.”

The psychologists said, ”If your professors, your own professors of philosophy are not ready to accept you, why should we take this unnecessary trouble on our heads? You criticize Sigmund Freud, you criticize Jung and you criticize Adler – and our whole department stands on these three people, we teach them.”

I said, ”So should I change the subject again? – politics of religion, economics of religion? I am ready to make up any subject.”

I told the vice-chancellor, ”You find me a guide. Religion has to be there. In front of it, he can put anything: mathematics of religion, economics of religion, geography of religion any subject I will manage.” But nobody was ready to accept me so I could not get the scholarship. But I was immensely happy: these are your professors, your topmost intellectuals, who in private are ready to accept a certain thing, but in public are afraid. Are they worth being jealous of? Are these people superior?

And I have no desire to feel anybody is inferior. Yes, it is possible that in one thing you may know more, somebody may know less. In one dimension you may be talented, in another dimension somebody else may be talented. That simply shows that people are unique, they have different qualities. But each individual has his own standing, incomparable. I have never thought of anybody as inferior; I have never thought of anybody as superior.

I am myself, you are yourself.

Comparison does not arise.

But all children are being forced to compete, compare, and naturally jealousy arises because somebody succeeds and you are not succeeding. Somebody is getting those things that you are not getting.

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I have heard: a Baptist priest and a rabbi lived opposite each other, across the road, and there was great competition continually going on. Naturally, it is a two-thousand-year-old conflict; it started with Jesus, and I don’t know with whom it is going to end. I hope it ends with pope the polack. But that’s just a hope; you cannot be certain about it. For two thousand years they have been in conflict and this has become more and more personal.

If the priest brings some rose flowers and some plants for his garden, immediately the rabbi will bring double. One year it happened that the Baptist priest purchased a Lincoln Continental. This was too much for the rabbi. And just while he was standing on his porch, the priest came out and poured water on the Lincoln Continental.

The rabbi said, ”What are you doing?”

He said, ”I am giving it its baptism, making it christian.” He said, ”Okay.”

The next day the rabbi purchased a Cadillac limousine – far costlier, a six-door. Just standing on his porch he waited for the priest to come out. The priest came out, and the rabbi went inside, brought out some instruments and started doing something. The priest said, ”What are you doing?” The rabbi said, ”Circumcising.” He was cutting the exhaust pipe!

Jealousy, competition, it can drive you nuts. If you can baptize, he can circumcise. He is making the Cadillac a Jew. And I think in America the Cadillac is a Jew, because when I told Sheela to have a Cadillac for the Foundation, and the Foundation’s president, she said, ”No, you don’t know: the Cadillac is a Jew.”

I said, ”My God! Cars are also Jews?”

She said, ”Yes, the Cadillac is a Jew, and I cannot have a Cadillac.” Perhaps cars can be converted.

These people, even though they are priests and rabbis, are just as stupid human beings as anybody else; and the same is true about their God. There is not much in their God either, because it is their projection, and a projection is bound to be less than the one who is projecting it.

Another story I am reminded of: a rabbi and a Christian minister are playing golf and each time the rabbi misses, he says, ”Shit!”

The minister says, ”This is not good for a religious man, and a rabbi at that, a priest! This is not right.

God will get angry.”

But what to do with a habit? – again the rabbi missed and he said, ”Shit!” The minister was very angry. He said, ”If you say it a third time, I tell you, God will punish you.” From Personality to Individuality

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And after he missed a third time and said ”Shit!” God really did. A flash of lightning came down and from the sky was heard ”Shit!” – because the lightning hit the minister! It is a Jewish God – what else can you expect?

A rabbi, a Jewish God, they cannot be very different: the same projection, the same mind.

Jealousy is not seeing a simple fact – that you have been taught to see yourself as inferior to someone, as superior to someone.

And you have become so unconscious of it that you are constantly judging people as inferior, as superior, as good, as bad, right, wrong.

Don’t judge.

Everybody is just himself.

Accept him as he is.

But this is possible only if you accept yourself as you are, with no shame, with no feeling of worthlessness.

The questioner is asking if jealousy means that we have gone too far away from ourselves. Yes. In comparing, you have gone far away in both directions. In one direction there is an unending line of people superior to you; in another direction, another line of people inferior to you – and you are in between.

You have no time to see to yourself. You are constantly struggling to take the place of the man who is ahead of you, and at the same time pushing down the man who is behind you, because he is trying to take your place. He is pulling on your leg just as you are pulling On somebody else’s leg. It is a strange chain in which everybody is pulling on everybody else’s legs – and all are in trouble, all are being stretched.

When, in India, my back started giving trouble to me, they started giving me traction. I told – them devaraj was there – ”Do you know from where the word traction comes, and what you are doing to me?”

He said, ”No. Traction is a perfectly good medical device and it is used everywhere.” I said, ”It was invented by Christians in the Middle Ages to torture people. It was a Christian device to torture people! You pull their hands at one end, their legs at the other end, and naturally, if you want any confession they will have to confess. If you want the woman to accept that she is a witch, on traction she is going to accept it because there is a point where she sees,’Now my hands are going to be pulled off my body, my legs are going to be pulled off my body. It is better to say, ”Yes, I am a witch,” and get finished with this traction.’ But once she has accepted she is a witch she is going to be burned alive.”

It was a torture device. It was just by coincidence it was found.... One man who was thought to be a heretic was being given this traction. He had a back pain, and when he was released from traction he said, ”My God! The back pain has disappeared.” Just by coincidence it was found that it can help the back pain. Since then it has been medical; before that it was part of the church.

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But your life you see as a psychological traction; hence you have no time, no energy, no space for yourself. You are always looking at somebody else, either to feel good....

One Christian priest, Stanley Jones, very famous in his time – now he is dead – was a world-famous Christian teacher, and of course a great orator, not like the idiot Billy Graham. He was really a great orator, a profound orator – Billy Graham is just an Oregonian. You should look into it; he must have been born in Oregon. His face is typical of that retarded....

No, Stanley Jones was really an impressive personality, and known worldwide. He was wandering around the world giving sermons but he had his headquarters in India: in the Himalayas he had made a Christian ashram. He used to come to Jabalpur also, where I was a professor.

In one of his sermons, at which I was present, he told a very beautiful anecdote. Not being aware that a strange person was sitting just in front of him, he said, ”There are two kinds of people. One always looks at the high skyscrapers of other people, feels miserable because the lawn is always greener in the neighbor’s garden.”

It is always greener. From faraway things look different; your own lawn does not look so green. Your own house looks dirty, the other house looks so beautiful. Your wife, when you go in, is continually quarreling. When you go to meet your neighbor, they are both smiling, but you forget one thing: when your neighbor comes to you then you are also both smiling. People go on looking at what other people have and then they start feeling that they are missing it – anything!

Stanley Jones recounts a story. He said, ”I have a lifelong friend who is always hopeful, optimistic.

He really sees a silver lining in every dark cloud. First I used to think that it was only a philosophy, but the second world war proved conclusively that he meant what he said. It was not just a philosophy, but his very Christian being.

”After the second world war I went to see him because he had lost one eye, one hand, and one leg in the war. On the way I was thinking that perhaps he had also lost his positivistic attitude, but to my amazement he was even more positive than ever. I asked him his secret.

”He said, ’It is simple. It is the very fundamental of Christianity. I thank God that at least I have one eye, one hand, and one leg – because there are many who have lost both legs, many who have lost both eyes, many who have lost both hands, and millions who have lost their whole lives. I think of them and feel fortunate and blessed.’”

Stanley Jones emphasized through this anecdote that this should be every Christian’s approach –

that positive philosophy is the greatest contribution of Jesus Christ.

I stood up and said to him, ”It is impossible to feel fortunate comparing yourself to those who are in an inferior position – and yet not feel inferior because there are also certainly people who are in a superior position. It is impossible to divide inferior and superior and just choose one; they are aspects of the same coin.”

The most amazing part was that the great orator and preacher became very angry, threw down his notes and went inside the house. While he was leaving I told him, ”This seems to be the real From Personality to Individuality

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Christian philosophy. But just being angry and escaping is not an argument; and whenever you come back again to this city, remember, I will be here to remind you of the argument – because you are leaving it inconclusive.” As it happened, he never came back to Jabalpur.

You will be surprised that comparison is not just to do with money or power, but can be about anything. In my childhood, just as girls in India had earrings – and now that disease is spreading in the West too – in my childhood rich people’s boys used to have earrings also. My ears still have the marks of those old holes. I resisted very much but I was too small, and my parents said, ”It doesn’t look good that every boy in the neighborhood has golden earrings, and you go out without earrings.

And everybody is saying to our family,’What is the matter, can’t you afford even two gold rings?’ It is insulting!”

Now, what do earrings have to do...? I said, ”It may be insulting to you but to me it simply seems that you are destroying my ears. You will make holes in my ears and I will have to suffer the pain.

If God had intended.... If He can make so many things, just two holes in the ears are not much craftsmanship. Even the Holy Ghost could have done it.” But they wouldn’t listen, because it was a constant trouble: relatives would come and they would say, ”What! Your boy has no earrings?” Now earrings had become a necessity – that too is part of the competitive society. And they forced me; just four people had to keep me down on the bed, and they pierced both my ears.

I said, ”Okay, I am small and helpless – you can do any nonsense that you want to do, but remember I am not going to forgive you for it. It is being done against my will, and I am not going to wear your earrings. Are you going to follow me twenty-four hours a day? Now we will see....” Many times they put earrings on me and I threw them away. Finally they got tired, and it was costly because they were gold earrings and I would throw them away. The moment I got the chance I would throw them away.

Finally they said, ”Leave him alone.”

I said, ”If you had left me alone before, my ears could have been saved. I don’t have any hope of being saved in life, but my ears would have been saved.” Competition in everything, strange things.... If you are living in a commune or a community of hippies, then the dirtier you are, the greater you are. What I mean to explain to you is that it has nothing to do with money or power or anything in particular. It can be to do with anything, and you can use it to feel superior or inferior. Now the hippy who never takes a bath is certainly superior to the other hippies who are not so seasoned and once in a while need a shower. Certainly he is far superior; he never takes a bath, never cleans his teeth, never uses soap or dirty things like that.

He remains completely natural. Perspiring, he remains natural; smelly, he remains natural. He will be thought to be somebody higher – you are not that strong. Once in a while you are weak, you start feeling like taking a bath. But if a hippy takes a bath he tries to hide it.

In India there are such monks. One Hindu monk used to stay in my home; he was a friend of my father, a childhood friend. My father had a cloth shop, so whenever the monk came, my father would From Personality to Individuality

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make good clothes for him; if it was winter then winter clothes, woolen clothes. And what would the monk do? First he would make them dirty; he would rub them against the ground, make them old and dirty because a monk is not supposed to have beautiful clothes and be up-to-date.

My father would try to use the best that he had in his shop, and I told him, ”You are just wasting them.

That man even makes holes in them and tears them and makes them look old” – because then he is on a higher stage of monkhood. Those who cannot afford such dirty clothes, old clothes, rags...

they are still interested in clothes. They are still attached to material things. There is competition in that too: in who has more rotten rags than you.

There are Hindu monks who will not just eat the food that you give them. First they will dip it in the river to spoil it completely, then mix it all together in their begging bowl so that salty things and sugary things and everything is mixed; and then they will eat it. That is thought to be austerity. And those who will not do it are thought to be still far lower, living still for taste and food – they have to destroy the taste.

Certainly, if you go on in this way – being jealous and competitive of everybody around you – how can you come to yourself? The world is too big, and there are so many people and you are in competition with everybody... and you are. Somebody has a beautiful face, somebody has beautiful hair, somebody has a beautiful, proportionate body, somebody has a great intellect, somebody is a painter, somebody is a poet.... How are you going to manage? All this, and you alone to compete?

You will drive yourself nuts – and that is what all of humanity has done.

Drop competition, drop jealousy.

It is absolutely pointless.

It is absolutely a cunning device created by the priests so that you can never be yourself – because that is the only thing all the old religions are afraid of.

If you are yourself you have found contentment, fulfillment, ecstasy.

Who cares about God then? – you ARE God.

You have tasted godliness, and within yourself.

Now you are not even bothered about the emperor; you are not thinking that he is superior to you.

How can he be superior to you? You have tasted something of such tremendous dimensions that what that poor fellow.... You can feel sorry for him, but you will not feel inferior. Even towards a beggar... you will not feel that he is inferior, because you know that what you have found he is also carrying within himself.

There is no qualitative difference between you, the beggar, and the emperor. The only difference is just on the outside: in the clothes, in the titles, the elephant on which the king is sitting – and the beggar in his rags. But these are not real differences, not the difference that makes a difference.

Inside yourself you will find a tranquility, a serenity, a silence, a treasure unfathomable.

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And in finding it you will know everybody has got it; whether he knows it or not, that’s a different matter.

Knowing and not knowing – that is the only difference.

But as far as existence is concerned, everybody has all the beauty of the world, of the universe; all the ecstasy and dance of the universe. Yes, in different ways it will express itself.

There is no need to think that somebody who is expressing it through dance is better than the one who is expressing it through a song or one who is expressing it through his silence.

What is being expressed is exactly the same ecstasy.

And you will find it only when you have entered your world of aloneness where there is nobody else.

There, you have left the society far behind... because that society has been preventing you. You have left all the priests, all the religions, all the political parties far behind.

You are now almost nobody.

I say ”almost” because in fact you are, for the first time – but on a totally different plane. You have never even thought about it, that this can be your very being, so profound and so full and so eternal.

And what are you going to lose by dropping jealousy and competitiveness and comparison?

Nothing.

You have nothing to lose but your chains, and you have to gain the whole kingdom of God which is within you.

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CHAPTER 5

Sannyas: the odyssey of aloneness – a journey to the center of your being

3 January 1985 pm in Lao Tzu Grove

Question 1

OSHO,

OUR COMMUNE IS NOT LIKE ANY OF THE TRADITIONAL ASHRAMS OR MONASTERIES.

WOULD YOU TALK TO US MORE ABOUT THE FUNCTION OF YOUR COMMUNE?

IT is necessary first to understand the traditional structure of an ashrama, and also of a monastery.

It will give you the background to understand the meaning of my commune.

The ashrama is an Eastern concept based on renouncing society, its comforts, conveniences. An ashrama is a group of people living together in austerity, self-imposed poverty, starvation in the name of fasting; torturing the body in order to have control over the physical by the spiritual; doing all kinds of exercises so that they become able to concentrate on the idea of God if they are Hindus, or on the idea of the ultimate growth of human consciousness if they are Buddhists and Jainas.

But the goal is far away for all the three – you can call it God, you can call it the Buddha, you can call it the Jina. They are different words signifying nothing, but pointing towards a further shore, so far away that you cannot even conceive it. It remains just a vague idea, a cloudy idea in your mind.

For this cloudy idea you have to sacrifice everything that is real, tangible, touchable, which you can see, which you can feel, which you can live. All that is alive has to be sacrificed for something which is nothing but a utopia.

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Do you know the exact literal meaning of the word utopia? Its literal meaning is that which never happens; the hoped for... but which never happens. It can keep you engaged for centuries, and it has kept millions of people engaged for centuries. And they are still engaged in the same effort: losing this for something for which they have no evidence, no proof, not even an argument.

The word ashrama is very beautiful, but is used in a very wrong context. Ashrama means a place to relax. Yes, in the very beginning, five thousand years ago, in the times of the VEDAS, an ashrama was actually a place of relaxation; it was not ascetic. You will be surprised to know this, because for five thousand years asceticism has prevailed so strongly that people have completely forgotten how it used to be in the beginning. It was just the opposite of what it is today.

The rishis, the munis – these two words you have to understand.

Rishis means poets of

consciousness. It is only in the East that we have two words for poet: kavi and rishi. Kavi literally means the poet, but for rishi, in English there is no equivalent.

The rishi is the awakened poet. He still sings, but those songs are not composed by him; they filter through him, they come from existence. Just as flowers blossom, poems blossom. The poet is a composer: he plays with the words, with their rhythm, with their sound, and he is capable of creating meaningful, rhythmic songs.

But it is good not to meet the poet. Take it as a basic policy never to meet the poet because that will be a disappointment. His poetry is so beautiful but the poet so extra-ordinary. I don’t mean extraordinary as one word. I am using the word extra to emphasize the word ordinary: extra ordinary.

I don’t know who coined this word extraordinary, because it simply means the last, the very last –

not simply ordinary, but extra ordinary. The people who must have used this word first were thinking of ”extraordinary” in the sense of being above the ordinary; but extraordinary can mean both. One thing is certain, the poet is not ordinary: he can be above the ordinary, he can be below the ordinary.

There are many words which have this same ambivalence. For example, psychologists use the word abnormal. Now, abnormal can mean insane, crackpot, nuts and bolts – anything. But abnormal can also mean one who is above normal: a Buddha, a Jesus, a Moses, a Zarathustra. Both are abnormal in the sense that both are not normal, but there are two sides of not being normal. In the same way the word extraordinary has always been used for those who are above the ordinary. I don’t know, I have tried to find out why, why it has not been used for those idiots who are below the ordinary.

They are also extraordinary. Why this unfairness?

The original ashrama, the very word ashrama, means time to relax, a place to relax. Shram means labor, work. Ashram means you have done what was to be done, now it is time to be in a state of nondoing. You have acted your whole life. When are you going to know the strange and extraordinary world of inaction? – so totally silent that nothing moves there. It was a beautiful word and the people who invented it were really doing just that. But it is a five-thousand year old story which these five thousand years have been destroying continuously.

You will be shocked to hear that the rishi – which can be translated as the seer.... The ordinary poet is blind, he is groping in darkness; the rishi is one who has eyes. The blind man can also sing songs of beautiful sunrises, sunsets, flowers, colors, rainbows – yes, the blind man can sing....

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In fact blind people are good singers for the simple reason that eighty percent of our body’s energy is used by our eyes, and when a man is blind, that eighty percent of his energy starts being distributed to the ears, to the nose, to the mouth – into the other four senses which ordinarily have to share only twenty percent of the energy. With eyes non-existent they enjoy one hundred percent of the energy amongst themselves. Hence the blind man has a very subtle way of hearing. You cannot hear what he hears. He remembers through hearing.

I was traveling in a train in the middle of the night and I entered the compartment which was reserved for me. It was a small, two-couch compartment. One, the upper one, was already occupied, the lower was reserved for me. As I sat on the lower bunk and gave the money to the porter, and gave instructions to the servant about when I would like to have tea in the morning, and when I would like to have my breakfast, I had no idea who was on the upper berth. But the man said, ”Is that not you there, Osho?”

I looked up, I could not recognize the man. I said, ”Yes, but who are you?” He said, ”Have you forgotten me? I am Sharnananda.” He was a very famous Hindu sage; but he was blind. I had met him twelve years before. In those twelve years I must have met millions of people; it was impossible to remember him. How could he manage to remember me when he was blind, birthblind?

I said, ”Sharnananda, you are doing a miracle! You can’t see me, yet you recognize me. And I can see you but I could not recognize you.”

He said, ”It is because of your eyes. I cannot see – I remember through my ears. Your sound, your way of speaking: those little things become part of my memory. And the meeting with you was so memorable, and the way you talked.... I could even hear the same way, the same sound, while you were talking to the servant, to the porter. I immediately recognized you. Nobody else talks like you.

”When you said to the servant,’Don’t wake me up because my morning begins when I wake, so let the tea wait. When I am awake, I will ring the bell, then you bring the tea.’ The moment you said,’My morning begins when I wake,’ I said this man cannot be anybody else. I don’t know anybody else in the whole world whose morning begins when he wakes up – the morning begins when it begins –

but you can say that, only you can say that!”

A seer is one who is not groping in darkness, and just imagining things.

Yes, a blind man’s

imagination becomes very powerful because he cannot see; his whole energy is available inwards.

Otherwise, the energy moves outside from the eyes, eyes are the doors opening outwards. When the eyes are closed, the energy moves inwards.

That’s why meditators close their eyes. It is a simple strategy: close the eyes and you lock the doors; the energy cannot move out, it moves in. So blind people become very imaginative. They can talk of color although they have never seen it. They can talk of light although they have never seen it.

But still, howsoever beautiful their imagination, it is untrue, it is not real.

In India we call these people kavis, poets. But don’t go to see them, because the poet will be a very ordinary person. Just the other day – it has happened so many times I feel it almost a rule to be From Personality to Individuality

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followed. Just the other day I saw for the first time a film of an Urdu singer, Gulam Ali. He is one of the topmost Urdu singers in the East, he has his own way and style. There are many singers, but Gulam Ali stands far above any of them. But I had always heard Gulam Ali on records, I had never seen him; it had never happened.

We were both moving around the same country but by chance it never happened that we were in the same city. He wanted to meet me. His disciples.... In India a great musician, a great singer, is called ustad, maestro. He has disciples just as spiritual masters have disciples, because Eastern music needs a long discipline. It is not like jazz music that any idiot can start jumping and shouting and it becomes music; it is not the music of the Beatles. It takes twenty or thirty years of training, eight hours or ten hours a day. It is a whole life’s work.

Gulam Ali has worked hard and still works hard. It is said that if you don’t practice Eastern music for three days, people will recognize something is missing. If you don’t practice for two days, only your disciples will recognize something is missing. And if you don’t practice for one day, only you are certain to feel that it was not the same thing. Not even a single day has to be missed.

But just the other day somebody from Pakistan sent me a video film of Gulam Ali. And what I was expecting, happened. His personality is so poor that to connect that beautiful voice with this man who looks like a clerk in some post office, or a ticket collector in some railway company, or a conductor in some bus, that type of man....

I had to keep my eyes closed because his face, his eyes, his hands, his gestures – everything was disturbing. I thought that I should send him a suggestion, ”You should sing behind a curtain. You are not worth presenting, you destroy your music. The music is almost divine, then you see, standing behind, a donkey – you cannot connect them.”

The same happened a few days before. I have never seen Mehdi Hasan – another great singer, far more modern than Gulam Ali. Gulam Ali is very orthodox, his training is orthodox. But Mehdi Hasan has a very innovative genius. He is trained in orthodox music but he has not kept himself confined to it. He has improvised new ways, new styles, and he is really a creative man. Gulam Ali is not a creative man; he recites those songs exactly as they have been recited for thousands of years.

Listening to him you are listening to thousands of years, the whole tradition behind him.

These singers all have what is called gharanas – gharana means family. They don’t belong to the family of their father and mother, they belong to the family of the master from whom they have learned. That is their gharana. They are known by the name of their master, their master is known by his master. Their gharanas are thousands of years old, and each generation teaches to the next generation exactly the same tone, the same wavelength.

But Mehdi Hasan is ultra-modern, and he has a creative genius which is far more significant. I have loved him because he has brought a new light, new ways of singing the same old songs. He is so creative that the whole song seems almost new, reborn, fresh, like a just-opened flower with the dewdrops still on it.

But what a misery to see him. He is far worse than Gulam Ali! Gulam Ali at least seems to be a conductor on a bus, but Mehdi Hasan is not even worthy to be conductor. While Gulam Ali does From Personality to Individuality

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not fit with what he is singing, Mehdi Hasan is exactly contradicting what he is singing. Strange that the two persons I have seen on the screen, I have not met. This has been my general practice my whole life in India. I have read poets, heard poets on the radio, but I have not met them because my early experiences of meeting poets were just shipwrecked.

Maitreyaji is sitting there – he knows one great Indian poet, Ramdharisingh Dinkar. They belong to the same place, Patna, and they were both friends. He has written some high-flying songs. He has contributed much to Indian poetry. He was known as the great poet, mahakavi; not just kavi, a poet, but the great poet. He was the only man known as the great poet.

He used to come to see me, unfortunately. He loved me, I loved him, but I could not like him. Love is spiritual, you can love anybody, but liking is far more difficult. Whenever he came he would talk of such stupid things that I told him, ”Dinkar, one expects something poetic from you.” He said, ”But I am not a poet twenty-four hours a day.” I said, ”That’s right!

But come to me when you are!

– otherwise don’t come, because my

acquaintance is with the poet Dinkar, not with you.” Whenever he came, he would talk about politics

– he was a nominated member of parliament – or he would talk about his sickness continually; he was making me sick! I told him, ”Stop talking about your sicknesses, because people come to me to ask something of value, and you come to describe your sicknesses.” But if I prohibited him from talking politics, he would talk of sicknesses. If I prohibited him from talking of sicknesses, then he would talk about his sons: ”They are destroying my life. Nobody listens to me. I am going to send them to you.”

I told him, ”You are too much. And you are spoiling my joy for when your book comes out: I cannot read it without remembering you. In between the lines you are standing there talking about your diabetes, your politics....”

He would talk about diabetes, and he would ask for sweets! ”these,” he would say, ”I cannot leave.” He died because he continued to eat things that the doctors were prohibiting. And he knew it; he would tell me everything that the doctors had prohibited and ask me, ”Osho, can you tell me some way that I can manage to eat all these things and still the diabetes...?” Maitreyaji knew him perfectly well.

In Jabalpur there was one famous poetess, Shubhadra Kumari Chauhan. I had read her poetry from my very childhood; her songs had become so popular because of the freedom struggle – she was continuously fighting for freedom and revolution – that even small children were reciting them.

Before I was able to read, even then I knew a few of her songs. When I went to the university I discovered that she had also moved to Jabalpur. That was not her original place; her original place happened to be near my village. That I discovered later on, that she was from just twenty miles away from my village and that she had moved to Jabalpur just two years before I moved there.

But seeing that woman, I said, ”My God! Such beautiful poetry, and such an utterly homeless – no, I mean homely.... I got so distracted by her that I forgot even the word homely! Because she was worse than that, and I don’t know any other word that is worse than that. ”Ugly” does not look right From Personality to Individuality

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to use for anybody; it seems to be condemning, and I only want to describe, not to condemn, hence homely. Homely means, you need not pay any attention; let her pass, let her go.

Then there was another poet, of all-India fame, Bhavani Prasad Tiwari, who was in immense love with me. I was very young when I started delivering public discourses; I must have been twenty when I delivered my first public discourse, in 1950. He was the president.

He could not believe it, and he was so overwhelmed that rather than delivering his presidential address he said, ”Now I don’t want to disturb what this boy has said. I would like you to go home with what he has said, meditating over it. And I don’t want to give my presidential address – in fact, he should have presided, and I should have spoken.” And he closed the meeting.

Everybody was in a shock because he was an old man and famous. He took me in his car and asked me where he could drop me off. That day I became acquainted with him. I said, ”It is a shock to me. You are certainly a loving person and also an understanding person. I have read your poems and I have always loved them. They are simple but have the quality of raw diamonds, unpolished.

One needs the eye of a jeweler to see the beauty of an uncut, unpolished, raw diamond just coming out from the mine – just born.

”I can also say I have always felt, reading your poetry, like when the rainy season first begins in India, and the clouds start showering, and the earth has a sweet smell of fresh, thirsty earth; and the smell of that earth getting wet gives you a feeling of thirst being satisfied.

”That’s how I have always felt reading your poetry. But seeing you I am disillusioned” – because the man had on both sides, inside his mouth, two pans, betel leaves, and the red, blood-like juice of the betel leaves was dribbling from both sides of his mouth onto his clothes.

That was a chain thing the whole day. All that he was doing was making new pans. He used to carry a small bag with everything in it. And whenever I saw him he was always – this is the way: tobacco in his hand, rubbing the tobacco, preparing it, chewing the pan, and the red juice was all around.

I said, ”You have destroyed my whole idea of a poet.” Since then I have avoided poets because I came to know that they are blind people; once in a while they have a flight of imagination. But five thousand years ago, in the East, they must have understood that we have to make a distinction between the poet who is blind, and the poet who has eyes.

A rishi is one who speaks because he sees. His poetry also has a different name; it is called richa because it comes from a rishi. Richa means poetry coming from the awakened consciousness of a being.

These people were not ascetics. They had wives, they had children, they had beautiful ashramas

– so beautiful that even kings used to be there for their holidays. Kings used to send their children to live with the family of a rishi, in an ashrama, because there was nothing more beautiful than an ashrama.

Ashramas were deep in the forest, in the mountains, near the great rivers of India, and with an awakened being. He had a wife, he had children. He was just as simple and ordinary as you are –

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he was not on any power trip. And he was not worried about God, and paradise; he was enjoying life here.

Even kings were jealous, and they used to come for advice because these people were not just spiritual guides, they had the eyesight they could use for anything. They were not averse to riches.

All the ashramas were, in the beginning, tremendously rich, because the kings continued to pour in as much money as possible. And it was not only one king coming to one rishi, because rishis and their ashramas were not part of any kingdom.

That much respect the East knew; that you could not claim the ashrama of a rishi as part of your kingdom. So he was independent. Other kings were also coming to him. He was not possessed by any king who could say, ”You can only advise me. I have given you the land and I have given you so much money, and so much luxury and so much comfort and protection, so you are only to be my adviser.” No, such a thing was inconceivable.

If the rishi has accepted all that you have offered, he has obliged you. He could have refused. You were to be thankful to him that he did not refuse you. You were to be obliged to him that he gave you the honor to serve him. He was nobody’s possession. His territory was an independent territory.

And in his territory anybody could take refuge, even a criminal. And then he was beyond the powers of the rulers from whom the criminal had escaped. You could not catch hold of him or bring the police and the army into the rishi’s campus. That campus was sacred.

It was literally true that there was no comparison between the ancient Eastern ashrama and anything else, even a palace of a king. On each special occasion, the king would go to receive the blessings.

He would touch the feet of the rishi, because he knew he himself was blind, and that it was good to be blessed by someone who had eyes, and to be guided. And many times it happened, many wars were simply avoided because both kings went to the same rishi to ask, ”Our armies are standing face to face – what to do?”

The rishi would say, ”You ask me what to do? Just take your armies back to your homes! There is not going to be any fight. While I am still alive your armies are not going to face each other again.” And that was so. The war was delayed till his death; before, that war could not happen. There was no question of denying him. He had no political power, no army, but they both knew that he had eyes, and if he saw that this was going to be blissful for both, then let it be so. ”We are blind. We will step back.”

But the birth of Buddhism and Jainism, the two other religions in India, created trouble. They transformed the whole character of the ashrama. Buddhists and Jainas don’t have ashramas –

that’s the first thing to be noted. To destroy the ashrama – because the ashrama was the stronghold of brahminism, Hinduism – and yet without somebody being a pope, chosen, elected....

No, you cannot elect a Buddha! How can you even think of electing a Buddha? What grounds, what criteria will you use? Just think of blind people electing someone who has eyes. Now, how can they determine that he has eyes? They don’t have eyes so they can’t see. Two persons are standing as candidates, saying ”We have eyes, give us votes.” Do you see the absurdity? Now, blind people will say, ”How can we decide? We don’t have any eyes so we don’t see whether you are both blind, both have eyes, or one has eyes and one is blind. We cannot determine in any way.” From Personality to Individuality

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A Buddha, an awakened human being, has to declare himself. There is no question of anybody selecting, nominating. Who can select? Who can nominate? Who can elect?

There is a poem sung by this man I referred to, Mehdi Hasan, in which a sentence comes, ”I am a man with eyes selling glasses in the city of the blind.” When I heard the line, ”I am a man with eyes selling glasses in the city of the blind,” I said, ”You cannot have eyes; one thing is certain, you don’t have eyes. Otherwise a man with eyes, selling eye-glasses in the city of the blind simply proves that he is far more blind than the people to whom he is selling the glasses! Blind people cannot tell who has eyes and who has not.”

So these rishis were not popes. The pope is an elected person; two hundred cardinals elect him.

All those two hundred cardinals are secretly campaigning for themselves to be elected. It is a secret thing. For twenty-four hours the doors of a particular place in the Vatican are closed. For twenty-four hours those two hundred people are inside, just so that the world does not know how the selection happens, how the person is elected.

And they are all campaigning for themselves, each campaigning for himself, or for somebody who will help them. And it takes twenty-four hours to find one person. That too is not a unanimous choice. Sometimes there are two candidates, then a vote has to be taken; sometimes there are three candidates and none are ready to withdraw. By voting, two hundred fallible cardinals – by voting – choose one infallible pope... This world is really strange.

That was not the case with the rishis. But Jainism and Buddhism transformed the whole character of the Eastern way of life. First, to destroy the ashramas they decided that they wouldn’t have any ashramas. So Jaina monks, Buddhist monks, are wandering monks; they don’t have any ashramas

– because if you have an ashrama there is a possibility that you will start collecting conveniences, comforts, luxuries. It is very natural.

People will love you, respect you and they will go on giving you things. And you will keep things for certain seasons: the rains will be coming, and you will need umbrellas so you keep the umbrellas even in winter when they are not needed. So you will start possessing things. In the rains it will be difficult to go out, so you will collect food, foodstuff. In winter you will need clothes, woolen clothes, so you collect woolen clothes.

You cannot avoid possessions – and that was one thing that Jainism and Buddhism both were determined about: that the monk should not possess anything and the Jaina monk, absolutely nothing. He was naked, without even a begging bowl, which had always been accepted. Nobody had even questioned whether a begging bowl was a possession.

But Jainism did not allow even the begging bowl; you had just to eat from your hands. If all the animals can do without begging bowls – you are men, far more intelligent – you can do it. So they drink from the hands, they eat from the hands; that is their begging bowl. They were not allowed to have ashramas because ashramas would become properties, possessions. They had to continually move. A Jaina monk cannot stay more than three days in a place.

Certainly there is some idea behind it, because I have watched: if you stay in a place, it takes some time.... For example, the first night you may not be able to sleep at all – a new place, a new house....

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Nothing is uncomfortable, it’s just the newness. Perhaps you are accustomed to sleeping in a round bed, and this is a square bed, and that is enough! You are accustomed to sleeping in a square room, and this is a round room; you almost feel as if you have fallen in a well or something. Even in your sleep you will wake up many times.

The first night it is very difficult, the second night it is easier, and by the third night you are comfortable. This is my experience, because I have been traveling for thirty years, staying in strange places, strange houses. You will not believe it – from the rotten – most house you can imagine to the best palace in the world I have been a guest.

It was really a problem because I was continually moving about, not staying for even three days. I am not a Jaina monk; not even three days were available to me. In the morning I was in Calcutta, in the evening I was in Bombay; by the night I had moved towards Delhi. Mostly I was in trains, planes, cars, but rarely in houses. In fact I have to confess to you, that I became so accustomed to sleeping in airconditioned trains that in houses I felt uncomfortable. I felt comfortable only on the train, with all the noise, the movement, the hustle and bustle of each station, and the passengers coming in and getting out. All that became part of my comfort.

When I used to sleep in a room, I would wake up a few times, and no station? – because Indian stations are very noisy: all kinds of things are being sold, even in the middle of the night. The whole station is agog, alive, and full of people, because except for the airconditioned class, all the classes are so cramped. The third class, which is the class for everybody, is always overcrowded. You can see, it is written on the compartment that it is reserved only for thirty people – and you will find sixty, ninety. How they manage....

Once or twice just to have the experience I have traveled third class. And it really is a great experience to travel in the third class in India. A compartment made for thirty people, and ninety or a hundred people are in it.... Not even a single inch anywhere can you move. You cannot go to the bathroom – in fact in the bathroom also people are stuck. In the first place there is no way to reach there. Even if you do reach, somehow, treading over people, there is no space in the bathroom; it is already full. People are traveling even on the roof of the train. They are hanging out of the doors, the windows.

Once I traveled third class from Gwalior to Delhi, just to enjoy it. Because I had slept, and there was now no need – and it was night, a full-moon night – I said to myself, ”Enjoy yourself, go third class.” I had an air-conditioned-class ticket. When the ticket collector looked at my air-conditioned-class ticket and then looked at me, he thought I was crazy. I said, ”You are right” He handed the ticket back to me.”

He said, ”This is strange. What are you doing here? Your seat is reserved and it is empty.” I said, ”Let it be empty. If I get fed up with this experience I will come along.” He said, ”What experience?”

I said, ”You don’t know what is happening here. If you want, you can stay with me just for one station.”

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He stayed and he said, ”Really, it is an experience.” What was happening was at the station, the lights of the compartment would come on, and as we left the station behind the lights would go out. And ninety people in that small space... and who is pulling whose leg? It was such a joy! I enjoyed it like nothing else in my life.

A Hindu monk was sitting by my side. I was hitting his head, and he would tell me, ”Osho, somebody is hitting me.”

I said, ”In the dark it is very difficult. Remain patient, and if you want to hit, hit anybody! There is no question of who is hitting who.”

A woman who was sitting in an upper berth... somebody pulled her leg and she fell down. And she said, ”This is strange – someone is doing this to a woman. Who is this nasty fellow?” In the darkness nobody could be identified as nasty, and as the next station appeared, everybody was sitting perfectly correctly. And in the station the lights would come on. If it had been the other way round things would have been simpler. If the compartment lights had gone out at the station, there would have been no problem because the station lights were there.

The train was going really crazy, and people were shouting in the darkness, ”Somebody is pulling on my leg.” And, ”Who is this fellow?” And, ”I will try to find out, but it will be difficult.” ”Please don’t pull my leg!” – but no answer came. In the third class it is certainly the real India you meet. In the air-conditioned, it is not part of India.

In saying three days the Indian Jaina monks decided very psychologically, because this is my experience too – that after the third day you feel at ease. Not to allow you to feel at ease they decided on three days. There must have been somebody among them who had experienced this. It is exactly so because I have told a few of my friends to try it, and they all said, ”It is true: after the third day you start feeling relaxed, at home. The new place is no longer new. It takes that much time to be acquainted with it, to have a certain rapport.” Yes, a rapport is needed – even with the walls, the furniture, the people, the food... a certain kind of acquaintance, and it takes a little time. What they decided was perfectly right – they measured it perfectly correctly – that the Jaina monk is not to stay more than three days, so no attachment grows. Because once you start liking a place, that is the beginning of attachment, desire. Then you would like to stay a little longer, then....

I am reminded of a story. A great Master was dying. He called his chief disciple to his side and whispered in his ear, ”Remember one thing, never, never allow a cat in the house” – and he died.

”What kind of message...? And for this you called me:’Never allow a cat in the house’?” The chief disciple enquired from a few old, elderly people, because perhaps there was some meaning in it.

”Perhaps it is a code word, otherwise why should he say that? And he died without giving any explanation. I was just going to ask, ’Why are you against cats? Your whole life... and this is the ultimate conclusion of all your discipline, practices, scriptures, scholarship: don’t allow a cat in the house’”.

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One old man said, ”I know what the matter is. This is the message given to him by his master too, because his master got into trouble because of a cat.” The old master had lived outside the village. He had only two... in English it is difficult to translate because nothing like that exists. You have underwear, in India they have langots – they are just strips of cloth. It needs a little practice to put on. It is just a long strip of cloth which you simply wind around yourself and that functions as underwear, or the onlywear. For a monk that is the onlywear.

He had two onlywears – that is my translation for langots – but the trouble was there were a few rats, and they used to destroy his onlywear. He asked somebody from the village, ”What to do with these rats? They are very cunning.”

The man said, ”It is very simple. What we do in the village is just keep a cat. You keep a cat I will bring you a cat. She will finish off those rats and your onlywear will be saved.” The old master said, ”This is a simple solution.” The cat was brought. She really did her job, she finished off the rats, but the problem was the cat was hungry and she needed milk. She was always sitting in front of the monk, hungry. Cats, when they are hungry, look really poor. She had done her job, and without saying it she was saying, ”I have done all your business, all the rats are finished, but I am hungry now.”

So the old master asked again, ”Now what to do? The cat sits in front of me, looking hungrily at me:’Provide food, otherwise I am going and then rats will come back.’ She does not say all that but I can see in her eyes that she is threatening me, challenging me. I need some milk.” The man said, ”Every day you will have to come for the milk, so I will give you my cow. I have many cows, you can take one.”

He took the cow but his problems went on increasing: now the cow needed grass. He again went to the town, and the townspeople said, ”You are a strange fellow – problem after problem, problem after problem. Why don’t you start growing something around your hut? – there is so much land lying fallow. We will give you seeds; take the seeds and start growing something. It will help you also; you can eat some of it and the cow can eat some.” So he, poor man, started sowing some seeds. But this was great trouble: now the crops had to be cut. And he was a monk; he was not supposed to do all these things. But now one thing was leading to another. He went to the village and he said, ”This is difficult. Now those crops have to be cut; I don’t have any instruments, and I will need helpers.” The people said, ”Listen, we are tired of you. You are worthless; you can’t find any solution for anything. Do we have to solve everything? It is simple: One woman has become a widow and she is perfectly capable of taking care of you, your cow, your crops, your kitchen, everything – cat, rats....

She is a perfectly experienced woman.”

”But,” he said, ”I am a monk.”

They said, ”Forget all about that monkhood. What kind of monk are you! You have a cat, you have a cow, you have a field, a crop – and you think you are a monk! Forget about it. And anyway this From Personality to Individuality

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marriage is just a bogus marriage; you need not have any kind of relationship with the woman. She is poor and in difficulty, you are in difficulty; both of you together will be good.” The man said, ”That’s right. If it is just a legal thing, there’s no harm, because my master never said anything against that. He said,’Don’t get married but I am not getting married; it is just for show, for the village, so nobody raises any objection that I am living with a woman. I can say that she is my wife, but I don’t have to be her husband really, nor does she have to be my wife really.” He talked to the woman. The woman said, ”I am not interested in a husband – one was enough –

but I am in trouble, you are in trouble; and this is good, we can help each other.” So they got married. Now things went on growing.... Sometimes he was sick and the woman would massage his feet. Slowly, slowly, he started liking the woman. A man is, after all, a man; a woman is, after all, a woman. The woman started liking the man. They were both feeling lonely. In the cold winter nights they were both waiting for somebody to say, ”It is too cold – why can’t we get close?” Finally the woman said, ”It is too cold here.”

The monk said, ”It is cold here too.”

The woman said, ”It seems you don’t have any guts.” He said, ”That’s right. You come here – I don’t have any guts. I am a poor monk, and you are an experienced woman: you come here. Together it will be warmer.” Of course it was warmer! That’s where his whole monkhood went down the drain. And when he was dying he told to his disciples, ”Don’t let any cat stay with you.” And the old man told the chief disciple, ”Since then, it is traditional on your path that each master says to the disciple,’Beware of the cat.’ It is very difficult to be aware of the cat – the cat comes in somehow or other. Life is so strange.

But Jainas and Buddhists have tried to avoid the cats, all kinds of cats: ”Don’t stay longer than three days. Don’t stay in any family, because the warmth, the coziness of the family, may distract you.

Always stay in the temple which is always cold, never warm.” Jaina monks are not allowed to burn wood, to have a bonfire in the night as Hindu monks are allowed, because any experience of warmth is dangerous. And it is violent too because you are killing trees, cutting trees, burning wood; and in burning wood you may be burning some insects, some flies – anything is possible. So they can’t have a bonfire, they can’t even have a lamp in the temple.

I used to go to visit Jaina monks sometimes because they invited me, and I would say, ”In the day I don’t have any time, I can come only at night.” And in the night I became aware that they don’t have any lamp or any candle – no light. I had to sit with them and to talk with them in darkness. It felt so strange. I told them, ”But somebody else can put the switch on; I can put it on, you will not have done anything.”

First they went on refusing, telling me, ”No, that is not right. Light will be there and it is prohibited.” From Personality to Individuality

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But I was continually hammering on the idea: ”If you don’t do it then there is no harm.” And one Jaina monk, the head of a big sect, finally agreed for the simple reason that during the day I had spoken and he had spoken, but he could not use the microphone – electricity! Now there was no electricity in Mahavira’s time. Of course he had not prohibited it, but he had not said that it should be used either.

But he was clever enough. He had said, ”Things which are not mentioned are not meant to be used. Only things which are mentioned are to be used.” So although he had no idea, he was clever enough to say, ”Many things will be coming later on, which I cannot prohibit because I don’t know about them.”

I told that to the monk but he said, ”Mahavira has prohibited it.” When I spoke there were at least twenty thousand people there, and everybody could hear me.

They applauded and they were laughing and they enjoyed it. But when he spoke, who could hear?

– not more than two or three rows in front. Twenty thousand people were just yawning. I said, ”Just look: this is what your Mahavira has done to you. Now allow me.” I just took the microphone, put it in front of him and said, ”You simply speak. It is none of your business if someone puts something somewhere – who are you to prevent me? Just start!” He got the idea – he thought the idea was good – and the fool started speaking. I condemned him later on and said, ”You fell into the trap. You saw that I was putting the microphone in front of you, you knew what it was and you knew that everybody was able to hear you. You cannot befool anymore.

Do you think that you are befooling Mahavira who is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent? He was present there watching you doing this. You have fallen.” But Jainas destroyed ashramas completely and they created the wandering monks. And because of the wandering monks.... It is a strange thing about the human mind that it is very much impressed by somebody who goes through austerities. It is a sadistic, masochistic psychology. Why should you be so respectful to a person who is torturing himself? But strangely, everywhere around the world, the martyr is honored. If he is starving, fasting for a great cause, you respect him. You will not respect a man who is feasting for a great cause.

You are not concerned with the cause, remember, otherwise you should respect the feasting also, because he is feasting for a great cause. You are not concerned with the cause; the cause is only an explanation, a rationalization. You are interested in the fasting: the man is capable of having control over his body.

Mahatma Gandhi was the uncrowned king of India for the simple reason that he was able to torture himself more than anybody else could. For any small reason he would go on a fast ”unto death.” Every fast was ”unto death,” but within three, four days, it would be broken – there were methods to break it – and soon there would be a breakfast; everything was arranged.

But people can be deceived very easily.... He goes on a fast, and the whole country prays to God that he should not die. All the great leaders rush towards his ashram and pray to him to stop but he won’t listen unless his conditions are accepted – any conditions, undemocratic, dictatorial, idiotic –

any conditions.

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For example he fasted against Doctor Ambedkar who was the head of the untouchables. Ambedkar wanted the untouchables to have their own constituencies and their own candidates, otherwise they would never be represented in any parliament anywhere. Who would give votes to a shoemaker? In India a shoemaker is untouchable – who is going to give him the vote?

Ambedkar was absolutely right. One fourth of the country is untouchable. They are not allowed in schools because no other student is prepared to sit with them, no teacher is ready to teach them.

The government says the schools are open, but in reality no student is willing.... If one untouchable enters, all thirty students leave the class, the teacher leaves the class. Then how are these poor people – one fourth of the country – going to be represented? They should be given separate constituencies where only they can stand and only they can vote.

Ambedkar was perfectly logical and perfectly human. But Gandhi went on a fast, saying, ”He is trying to create a division within the Hindu society.” The division has existed for ten thousand years. That poor Ambedkar was not creating the division, he was simply saying that one fourth of the people of the country had been tortured for thousands of years. Now at least give them a chance to advance themselves. At least let them voice their problems in the parliament, in the assemblies. But Gandhi said, ”I will not allow it while I am alive. They are part of Hindu society, hence they cannot have a separate voting system” – and he went on fasting.

For twenty-one days Ambedkar remained reluctant, but every day... the pressure of the whole country. And he started feeling that if this old man dies then there is going to be great bloodshed.

It was clear – he would be killed immediately, and millions of the untouchables would be killed everywhere, all over the country: ”It is because of you that Gandhi died.” When the whole arithmetic of how it would work out was explained to him – ”You figure it out soon, because there is not much time, he cannot survive more than three days” – Ambedkar hesitated.

He was perfectly right; Gandhi was perfectly wrong. But what to do? Should he take the risk? He was not worried about his life – if he was killed it was okay – but he was worried about those millions of poor people who didn’t know anything about what was going on. Their houses would be burned, their women would be raped, their children would be butchered. And it would be something that had never happened before.

Finally he had to accept the conditions. He went with the breakfast in his hand to Mahatma Gandhi,

”I accept your conditions. We will not ask for a separate vote or separate candidates. Please accept this orange juice.” And Gandhi accepted the orange juice.

But this orange juice, this one glass of orange juice, contains millions of people’s blood.

I have met Doctor Ambedkar. He was one of the most intelligent men I have ever met. But I said,

”You proved weak.”

He said, ”You don’t understand: the situation was such that I knew I was right and he was wrong, but what to do with that stubborn old man? He was going to die, and if he died then I would have been responsible for his death, and the untouchables would have suffered.” I said, ”That is not the point. Even an idiot could have suggested a simple thing to you. You should have gone on a fast unto death. And you are so overweight” He was a fat man, four or five times From Personality to Individuality

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heavier than Gandhi. ”If you had asked me.... A simple solution: just put another cot by the side of Mahatma Gandhi, lie down, and fast unto death. Then let them see! I promise you that Gandhi would have accepted all your conditions within three days.” Ambedkar said, ”But this idea never occurred to me.” I said, ”You are a fool if this idea never occurred to you! That was the idea with which that man was controlling the whole country – and it never occurred to you. The only difficulty would have been to go on a fast – particularly for a man like you: fat, eating four times a day. Naturally you would not have been able to manage it. Gandhi has practiced his whole life, he is an experienced faster; and you may not have ever missed a single breakfast.” He said, ”That is true.”

I said, ”Otherwise if it had been my problem and he was being so illogical, I would have just lain down, even if I was going to die, and let him be responsible. He would not have allowed that, because my death would have taken away all his mahatmahood, all his aura, all his leadership of the people. He would not have allowed me to die; he would have accepted my conditions.

”But unfortunately I am not an untouchable, and anyway why should I be bothered with you two idiots? To me both of you are idiots. You have one fourth of the country in your hands and you can’t do anything; that man has nothing in his hands – but just by fasting.... He has learned a womanly trick. Yes, I call his whole philosophy a feminine psychology.” That’s what women do every day. Gandhi must have learned it from his wife. In India women do it every day. The wife will fast, she won’t eat, she will lie down. And then the husband starts shaking.

He may be right, that is not the point.

Now there is no point of right or wrong; now the point is how to persuade her to eat? Because she is not eating, the children are not eating – and who is going to do the cooking in the first place? Is he also going to fast? And the children are weeping, and they want food, and the wife is on a fast

– so you agree. She needs a new sari, you bring it. First you bring the sari, then she goes into the kitchen. This is an old Indian strategy of all women in India. Gandhi must have learned it from his wife, and he used it really very cleverly.

But there is some strange side of the human mind which is impressed by anybody who is capable of torturing himself.

For some strange reason.... I know what the reason is. The reason is your own fear – you cannot do it. You go to the circus to see a man jumping from sixty feet high, pouring spirit on himself, setting fire to the spirit. Burning, he drops from sixty feet; he falls into a small pool of water, and you see it with your breathing stopped. At that moment nobody breathes.

I have watched it – people were watching a poor circus fellow; I was watching the people – was anybody blinking, anybody breathing? No, nobody blinks an eye, they completely forget. Even an unconscious process that goes on automatically – you need not blink, your eye blinks; you need not breathe, your chest breathes. But even the automatic processes of blinking and breathing simply stop, you are in awe.

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And there is nothing in it. Those sixty feet are calculated. That man has been practicing continually: it is calculated that within the sixty foot fall, he is not going to be burned. And it is not kerosene, it is not petrol, it is pure spirit. Falling in the water, within seconds the fire is gone, and the man comes up. And he is a hero because you cannot do it. Just a little practice is needed and a calculation of how long it will take for spirit to burn you: the time limit has to be less than that. And you have to be able to jump.

I used to love jumping into the river from the hills, from the railway bridge, because the railway bridge over my river was the highest place from where to jump. But I slowly worked up from small hills to bigger and bigger hills, until finally I was jumping from the bridge. The bridge was continuously guarded by the army because it was British Empire days and some revolutionary may have blown up the bridge. So they would catch me, and I would say, ”I am not going to blow up the bridge. Just see – I don’t have anything. You have nothing to be worried about. I want this bridge to be here, and I am happy that you are guarding it because I need it every day.” Once they said, ”For what do you need it?”

I said, ”You just see” – and I would jump! And they would be standing there in awe. Once they knew that this boy simply came to jump, they didn’t bother. I told the revolutionaries of my town, ”If any time you need... I am the best man because the guards don’t even look at me now. They say, ’That boy is just crazy. One day he is going to kill himself. But it seems that he is growing more and more accustomed to it. It will be difficult for him to die; this bridge is very small. He needs a bridge at least four times higher – perhaps that may do it.’”

I told the revolutionaries I knew – they used to visit my house; my uncles were part of their conspiracy

– I said, ”Any time you need to blow up the bridge, I am the best man. Nobody will ever suspect me, nobody will ever prevent me. I can take your bombs there, leave them wherever you want and simply jump into the river and swim downstream. Then you can do whatsoever you want to do.” They said, ”You are not reliable. You may go and give the bombs to the guards; you will show them where we are hiding, and you will jump certainly and swim down the river.” They never gave me the bombs. I again and again requested them to. They said, ”We don’t believe you. We know that you are the best person to reach that bridge because nobody else can reach it; it is continuously guarded.”

One guard was continuously patrolling up and down, and at both ends there were guard rooms. It was an important bridge: all the main trains crossed over it. If you blew it up, you would cut one half of the country from the other. But they never relied on me.

I said, ”You can rely on me, even those guards rely on me.” They said, ”That’s the fear. They rely on you, we rely on you – and what you will do only you know.” For any austerity you need only a little practice. Fasting is very simple – just the first five days are difficult. I have fasted. The first five days are the most difficult, the fifth is the worst; you are almost ready to break the fast. But if you pass the fifth, you have passed the most dangerous, the most vulnerable period. From the sixth day your body starts functioning in a new way. It starts eating From Personality to Individuality

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itself. From the sixth day onwards things become simple. On the fifteenth day, you are absolutely unconcerned with food; you don’t have any hunger. The body is absorbing its own fat, so hunger does not arise.

A man who is perfectly healthy can fast for ninety days without dying. Of course he will become just a skeleton, but for ninety days he can stay alive because a perfectly healthy body goes on accumulating fat for any emergency. This is an emergency situation so the body has an emergency system. If food is not coming from the outside, then the body starts eating from the inside. That’s why you go on losing weight every day.

In the beginning you will lose two pounds per day. Then the body becomes aware that perhaps the emergency is going to last longer: then you lose one and a half pounds a day. Strange, the body has its own wisdom. Then you will lose one pound a day, then half a pound a day, because the body will start trying to save as much as possible, and to live on as little as possible; to keep you alive as long as it is in the body’s hands.

So it is not something like a miracle, but people get impressed because deep down they feel, ”We cannot do this.” If somebody is enjoying a feast, you don’t have that feeling, because you can also enjoy the feast. It is just that you are not invited, that’s why you are feeling angry – even against that man who is enjoying himself – that he is just a glutton; that he believes only in the philosophy of eat, drink, and be merry; that he is not a spiritual man. This is jealousy, anger because you have not been invited. You are also capable of enjoying the feast, but a fast? – you have never tried it.

And in the beginning a fast is not a joy. Five days seem like five months. It seems that the clock no longer moves, and the hunger goes on growing. It hurts in the stomach; the intestines feel as if they are shrinking. Your whole body is in a turmoil because it is not getting its daily ration. All the parts of the body are in a strange situation; they cannot figure out what has happened, why the ration has been stopped. You have not informed them; you cannot because you don’t know their language, they don’t know your language.

There is chaos in the body – but only for five days. After that the body automatically moves itself onto the emergency system; then there is no problem. And all these mahatmas have learned only that: the strategy of five days. Once you have learned it, then it is not very difficult to last five days.

Jaina and Buddhist monks both impressed the whole of the East so much that the Hindu ashrama, which was really a beautiful place, became condemned.

Those seers, those sages, became

condemned by people: ”These are as materialistic as we are. The real mahatmas and sages are the Jainas, the Buddhists. These people are nothing compared to them.” Naturally Hinduism had to change its whole structure.

It is a competitive world: to remain in existence, Hinduism changed the whole style of the ashrama.

The ashrama became ascetic but they still retained the old name, they forgot to change the name.

It is no longer an ashram because there is no relaxation, no rest, no joy, no blissfulness.

Go to an ashrama today and you will find selftorturing people, psychologically sick, masochistic, suicidal – but egoistic, because all this torture is bringing to them one thing: great respect from the people. The whole country pays tremendous respect for what they are doing. But the beauty of the real ashrama has disappeared.

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The monastery is the Western equivalent of the modern Hindu ashrama, because at the time when the real Hindu ashramas were in existence, the West was absolutely barbarous: it had no religion, no culture, no civilization. Your greatest man was born only two thousand years ago. In India it is difficult to decide this, because Mahavira, who was born twenty-five centuries ago, is the last and the greatest Jaina tirthankara, the twenty-fourth. Before him twenty-three tirthankaras had passed; and that must have taken at least ten thousand years if in twenty-five centuries there was only one tirthankara. And there are relics of cities discovered at Mohanjodro and at Harrapur where Jaina statues have been found.

Now, a Jaina statue can be immediately recognized – the naked statue – because Jainas are the only people.... Romans have made naked statues but they are sensuous, sexual, provocative. They are playboy magazines in marble. You can see that this statue is just a sensuous, sexual statue: all Roman statues are. The Jaina tirthankara statue is nude but not naked. Yes, it has no clothes, but it won’t give you any idea, any vague idea of sexuality, of sensuality. No, just the contrary.

The whole structure of the Jaina statue is nonsensuous, non-sexual. The eyes are closed, the hands are hanging loose on either side. The body is standing. In the ears birds have made small nests, because the man has been standing for six months in the same position, he has not moved his head. And he is not going to scare the bird away saying, ”What are you doing? – this is my ear that you are making a nest in.” Creepers have started moving up his body. It has a beauty of its own.

Creepers, green creepers, have reached up to his neck or up to his head. They have blossomed, their season has come.

Now, this statue is not the Roman type. It has no parallel in the whole world. This kind of statue has been found at Mohanjodro, which by very strict and orthodox scientific methods was found to have existed at least seven thousand years before Jesus Christ was born. So from today, ten thousand years back is not claiming much.

The Western monastery is a copy of the ashrama that exists in the East now. It had been brought to the West by Western travelers, Western philosophers. Jesus himself went to Buddhist universities, Tibetan lamaseries, Ladakh monasteries; Pythagoras traveled deeply into the East – and these people brought all these ideas to the West. The Western monastery is, in a way, nothing but a carbon copy of the Eastern ashrama. It has nothing unique to contribute.

My commune is a totally different phenomenon.

It is neither an ashrama, modern or ancient, nor a monastery, Christian or Mohammedan.

My commune is, in the first place, non-ascetic.

It basically tries to destroy all psychological sicknesses in you – in which sado-masochist ideas are included. It teaches you to be healthy and not to feel guilty for being healthy. It teaches you to be human, because my experience is that people who have been trying to be divine have not become divine, but have fallen far lower than humans. They were trying to go up beyond humanity – yes, they have gone beyond humanity, but below it.

In the monasteries, people are almost animals, because the more you torture yourself, the more you start losing your intelligence; intelligence needs comfort.

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Intelligence is a very delicate flower.

Don’t try to grow roses in the desert.

Intelligence is a very delicate flower.

It grows in luxury. It needs a luxurious ground, fertile, creative, full of juice; only then can it blossom.

And without intelligence, what are you?

My effort is first to help your intelligence become a flame, and to help that flame to consume all that is not your authentic self. You become a fire and you burn everything that is rubbish, thrown by others onto you.

So first intelligence, and second meditation.

Meditation comes out of intelligence – burning all crap from your being. Then you are pure, alone, just the way existence wants you to be.

The commune is just a place where people who are interested in this journey, in this odyssey inwards, live together – helping everybody to be himself allowing everybody enough space, not interfering in any way, not imposing in any way. If they can support you, good: if support also becomes a hindrance then they will not even support you, they will withdraw themselves. They respect your integrity, your individuality, your freedom.

The word commune I have chosen because it is a communion: A communion of rebellious spirits.

It is not another society, it is not a monastery, an ashram. It is individuals remaining individuals, Still being together; being alone and still interacting, responding; leaving the other also alone.

Aloneness, to me, is the greatest religious quality.

So we are together but not in any kind of bondage, very loose.

No relationship is binding in my commune.

No relationship is really a relationship, it is only a relating, a process. As long as it goes, good, and when paths divert, change their course, that too is perfectly good because that’s how, perhaps, your being is going to grow. One never knows.

We may walk together for a few feet, a few miles, and then depart in gratitude – that it was a joy to be together.

Now let us celebrate separation.

You helped me, I helped you.

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Now let us help each other to move in the directions that our beings want us to take.

The commune is a totally new phenomenon.

It has nothing to do with anything that has preceded it. The old, ancient ashramas were beautiful but they were part of the society. They propagated the same structure of the society: the four-caste system. The untouchable was untouchable. The untouchable could not enter the ancient Hindu ashram. Only the brahmin could be the seer. That is strange, that only the brahmin could have eyes. That was a brahmin strategy to remain in power, and they were powerful. But they were good people, although not revolutionaries... nice, but not rebels.

The rebel is both.

He is a sword and also a song. It depends on the situation. He can become a song or he can become a sword.

This is a communion of rebels.

We are not supporting any society, any politics, any nation, any race, any religion. We have left all that far behind.

We have come alone, to be with those who have also come for the same reason – to be alone.

So remember it, that aloneness is something sacred.

You should not trespass on anybody’s aloneness, freedom, individuality.

Commune, love, be together, rejoice, but remember always you are alone.

You are born alone, you will die alone, you have to live alone.

And all those who are here, they are all individuals, alone. They are not following any doctrine, any dogma, they are simply following their own inner voice. Try to hear it and follow it.

Yes, it is a very still small voice, but once heard, you cannot do anything else but what it says for you to do.

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CHAPTER 6

Anxiety: Who are you? Anguish: Who am I?

4 January 1985 pm in Lao Tzu Grove

Question 1

OSHO,

WHAT IS ANGUISH? IS IT JUST ANOTHER NAME FOR ANXIETY?

ANGUISH has something of anxiety in it, but it is not just anxiety. It is much more, much more profound.

Anxiety means you are concerned with a particular subject, in a state of indecisiveness. You cannot figure out whether to do a thing or not to do it. What will be the right way to do it? What to choose? –

there are so many ways. You are always standing on a crossroad. All the roads seem to be similar; certainly leading somewhere, but whether they lead to the goal that you have been aspiring to....

Anxiety is that condition of to do or not to do, to choose this or to choose that. But the object of the anxiety is clear: that you are indecisive about ways, indecisive about two persons, indecisive about two jobs.

Anguish has no particular object.

Anguish is felt by very rare people. Anxiety is felt by everybody, it is a common experience. Anguish is felt only by the genius, by the highest peak of intelligence. It has no particular object; there is nothing for you to choose between, no ”this or that.” There is no question of choice. Then what is the problem with anguish?

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You will have to understand a certain phenomenon. There are things in the world – animals, birds, man... anxiety happens to all... to the trees, to the animals, to the birds, to man. As far as anxiety is concerned it is universal.

But anguish is felt only by a very few rare men. They are the very cream, the highest peak of consciousness.

I will try to explain it to you. It is a little difficult to understand but not impossible. A rock is born, a tree is born, a lion is born, an eagle is born, but they differ from man. The difference is: Their being precedes their existence.

For example, a rock is there; it is alive, it grows. The Himalayas are still growing – one foot every year. Somebody should say to it, ”Now it is meaningless, you are already the highest. Don’t take so much trouble.” It must be a troublesome thing: thousands of miles, thousands of peaks, the work must be enormous. Even to grow one foot every year is no small thing for the Himalayas. ”And now there is no need. Howsoever big you become, you will remain only the highest mountain in the world. You have surpassed all the mountains, you have left them far behind.” But the Himalayas go on growing, it is a living being. Mountains don’t understand. Man does not understand, what to say about mountains!

A rock, a tree, a lion, an eagle – their essence precedes their existence. What they are going to be, they are already programmed for. That is their essence. A rose is going to be a rose. Even before the flowers have come, you know those flowers are not going to be marigolds. The bush is of a rose; the essence of the rose is already there – only existence has to happen. The basic program is already provided by nature, it has just to be manifest.

It will be good to be reminded of a certain discovery in the past decades that happened in the Soviet Union. Just an amateur photographer, but a very creative genius, using his cameras, studio, chemicals and photographs, was trying to find different ways to bring something new to photography.

And just by chance he happened to discover one of the greatest discoveries of human history: Kirlian photography.

He can take a photograph of a rosebud. He has refined his instruments now so much that you put the rosebud in front of his camera, and he takes a photograph of the flower that the rosebud is going to be. He catches hold of the essence which is still unmanifest but somehow is manifest because the camera is catching it. Our eyes are not able to catch it. And when the rose blossoms, it is strange, but it is exactly the same as the photograph he has taken.

Somehow the rose energy, which later on becomes available to our eyes, was moving in the same pattern as the flower it was going to be. It was an energy flower, just pure rays of light and color, but in exactly the same shape, preparing the ground for the manifestation. His camera catches those rays and gives you a blueprint of the future rose. Perhaps tomorrow or the day after tomorrow it will be available to your eyes. That means that the rose, before it becomes existent, is already there in essence. Hence the saying: essence precedes existence.

In the second world war Kirlian photography worked miracles. It is going to help medicine immensely in the future. It is unfortunate that scientists are also divided according to political lines. What is From Personality to Individuality

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happening in Soviet Russia is kept secret; what is happening in America is kept secret. This is a sheer wastage of genius, energy, time – and time is very short.

Before the curtain falls and the drama is finished, it would be better if the scientists of the whole world themselves declare: We are international.” And we, our commune, will be supplying them with international passports belonging to no nation. But if the scientists have any courage, they can open up a totally new dimension and carry the passport – neither Russian, nor American, nor British, nor Indian – an international passport. Of course many will be caught and imprisoned, but that’s nothing to be worried about – how long could it go on?

If all the scientists of the world decide, then all the Nobel prize-winners follow; then all the poets, engineers, doctors, the intelligentsia of the world.... How can you put all these people in jails? What will you do? What will your idiot politicians do? Without them they will be nothing.

And Rajneeshpuram should be the headquarters. We are ready to issue the international passports.

It will create a revolution. Don’t be bothered by national boundaries. At least someone has to begin it. Let the poets of all the world meet, let the scientists of the world meet, and pour your energies into a single pool.

Now, Kirlian photography is still not being used outside the Soviet Union. In the Soviet Union it is doing miracles. In the second world war it was discovered, and Kirlian was given the job of finding out – if it works on a rose flower, how does it work on human beings?

A man’s hand has been cut off, because he was damaged in the war. Kirlian takes the photograph, and strangely enough, the photograph shows a faint energy – hand with all the five fingers intact –

and the hand is missing from the body. It shows just a little fainter than the rest of the body. The hand is no longer there but the energy that used to move in the hand is still moving. You cannot see it with your eyes, but a sensitive camera catches it.

Now, this gave the idea that if the energy is still moving, there is a possibility of creating a hand through which energy can continue to move; then it will be a real hand. It will not be a wooden hand, a plastic hand, or something, it will be as real as real hands are... because what is the reality of the hand? Why is it alive? Why is it moving? It is moving because of the energy inside.

And when you become paralyzed, what happens? It is not your hand getting paralyzed, it is the energy inside which has stopped flowing. The hand is there, the bones are there, the blood is there

– everything is there. What is missing? What is paralysis? The energy is no longer moving, the energy has stopped for some reason. If we can arrange for energy to move again....

That’s what acupuncture in China has been attempting for five thousand years, to move the energy again.

And acupuncture has succeeded in doing great things: a paralyzed man is no longer paralyzed. And what they do looks very childish; to the observer it doesn’t look such a great thing.

They just go on putting needles in at certain points in the body. The hand is paralyzed, but they may not touch the hand at all. They may be pushing their needle in somewhere else, because they know which part can obstruct the flow of energy in the hand. If that needle removes the blockage, the energy starts flowing: the hand is back, alive.

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Another thing that Kirlian photography discovered was that just as a flower can be photographed before it has even opened its petals, when it is just a bud... Kirlian discovered that among the healthy people he was photographing, some parts of their body were not the same as other parts, and he said there was some danger coming.

One man said, ”There is no problem, I am perfectly healthy.” But danger came after six months, exactly at the same spot. The energy was already preparing the ground, perhaps for a cancerous growth.

Kirlian photography is the only possibility right now.

If we can catch hold of cancer before it

materializes, we can get rid of it. There is no need for any surgery; all that you have to do is to stop that energy pattern, change that pattern, change the program, and the cancer will never happen.

In the East it is widely believed – and I have seen it with my own eyes, so it is not a question of belief for me, I never believe in anything unless I see it – that before a man dies, six months before, he stops seeing the tip of his nose. His eyes just won’t go down that far to see the tip of his nose; he cannot see the tip of his own nose. Within exactly six months he is going to die. That is an ancient, perhaps a ten-thousand-year-old discovery of ayurveda. When the ayurvedic physician comes to see if the patient is in the last stage, the first thing he wants to know is, ”Please, can you see the tip of your nose?”

Now, any allopathic doctor seeing this will think this is stupid: ”What has seeing the tip of the nose to do with his death? He is dying and you are joking, kidding? What are you doing?” The doctor is not aware of a strange phenomenon: that the eyes slowly stop turning downwards. When the man dies, they turn completely upwards. If you see a dead man you will see his eyes are completely upturned; you will see only the whites of the eyes. That’s why in all traditions, all over the world, the dead man’s eyes are closed immediately – because he may freak out many people who see his eyes. Just the whites are visible; the black has turned up.

It must have been this experience that gave the idea, ten thousand years ago, that if the eyes ultimately, in death, turn completely upwards, they must start turning up some time before that –

because life is always a process; nothing happens suddenly. There is nothing like suddenness in existence. So by and by, watching, they discovered that six months is the time when the eyes start getting less and less flexible, more and more rigid; more and more turning upwards, less and less turning downwards. And if the man cannot see the tip of his own nose, the physician suggests to the family, ”Don’t waste time unnecessarily. Prepare him for death. Help him to die peacefully, silently, meditatively, with gratitude.”

Only in the East has it been possible to prepare even for death. People don’t prepare even for life.

They come to know that they were alive only when they are dying or perhaps dead. Then suddenly a shock comes to them: ”My God! What has happened? I was alive and now I am no more alive.

Those eighty years, ninety years have passed and I have not done anything, not felt for a single moment fulfilled, contented. Not for a single moment could I have said, ’I am blessed.’” Except for man, everything – every bird, every animal – in existence comes in this way: essence first, then manifestation. They are programmed by nature; their whole life is not an evolution but an From Personality to Individuality

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unfolding. All that they are going to become is already in the basic program, and they cannot move a single inch from the program. It is not in their power to decide whether to be a rose or to be a marigold. Hence there is no anxiety about this. They are never asked to decide about their essence.

They are never on the crossroads, they are always following a single route. There is nothing for them to choose about ”being.”

Buffaloes, horses, donkeys, elephants – they don’t feel anxiety within their program. Yes, anger they can feel if you obstruct them. Destructive they can be, violent they can be if you misbehave with them. They all have a certain code of conduct. If you just keep to yourself without interfering with their territorial imperative.... For example, every elephant has its own territory. If you enter his territory you will be in danger. If you just keep out of the territory, and that territory you don’t know –

but the elephant knows... once you enter his territory you are in danger, you have trespassed.

Anger they can feel. Superior, inferior they can feel. Just go to a tree in which many monkeys are sitting, and you will be surprised: the boss is sitting on the highest branch, and on the lowest branches are the servants. The boss has all the beautiful ladies. He may be old, he may not be able to reproduce any more, but the boss is after all the boss.

The younger generation, many times, kills the old monkey for the simple reason that he is obstructing them from reaching the ladies, and while he is alive he won’t let anybody approach the ladies. He has a harem; whether he is in a state to reproduce or not – he does not bother about that. His kingdom, his chiefhood, depends on how many ladies he has got.

It is from the monkeys that Sigmund Freud got the idea that sometime a younger generation must have killed some old man who was possessing all the beautiful ladies. The younger people were getting, of course, angry: ”It is time for this man to die!” But he was not dying, and he was not allowing them either....

Sigmund Freud’s idea of God is that because the younger people killed the father, they felt guilty....

He was their father, their boss, and they had killed him just for the women. Now, two conclusions –

Sigmund Freud has drawn only one conclusion.... I am surprised how he missed the second, which was more likely to be drawn by him, but even geniuses are fallible.

Sigmund Freud drew one conclusion: that because of killing the father they felt guilty, and to compensate for the guilt – just to get rid of it – they started worshipping the relics of the father, maybe his bones, his dead body that they had buried. They made a small memorial, and they started worshipping, otherwise his spirit may take revenge, his ghost may take revenge. And they knew that he was a strict man and very jealous, and that to fool with his ladies.... His ghost can create trouble for you. So sacrifice something, worship him, ask his forgiveness, and confess your sin.

Sigmund Freud derived the whole of Christianity, the whole of religion in fact, from the idea that God the father is really father the God.

First the father was killed, and just to console his ghost they made him God the father. They said,

”You are still our boss; even from here we are under you, we are your servants, your worshippers.

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everything; we hope you will forgive us.” This is the way religion must have started – that’s the conclusion of Freud. There are no historical facts about it but there is every possibility he is right.

The second thing – and I have always wondered how he missed it – was that they had killed the father for the younger ladies. Now, the second conclusion is so simple: that to give solace to the father, all religions went against the women. It was the woman for whom they had killed the father!

The connection is so clear, and Sigmund Freud completely missed it. Even a blind man would not have missed it. It is so clear that they had killed, not for any other reason, only to get hold of the young ladies which the dirty old monkey was keeping in his possession. But it was because of the ladies....

So certainly religion should have two sides: one, worship, pray, praise the lord; and two, condemn the woman. When I first read Freud, I looked in all his books for the second conclusion – which is more Freudian – but he never comes to it. The first is a farfetched philosophical idea, but the second is a very clear-cut Freudian concept. But now Freud is dead, all that we can do is supplement it.

I emphasize the fact that because the killing was for the women, all religions are against women. If it were not for the women, they would not have killed the father. The story of Adam and Eve also says the same thing: it is because of the woman that man’s fall happened.

Religions can never forgive the woman.

They have been condemning her for centuries.

Freud could have seen clearly both things: the people who believe in God and worship God disbelieve in the woman and think of her as an agent of the serpent, the devil, as the original cause of the fall, and have condemned her for it.

The same hierarchy as you will see in the monkeys, you will see in all the animals. But it is programmed, it is not a question of anxiety. Have you seen two dogs barking and trying to fight, but before the fight starts somehow it is settled? It never comes to the logical end. So what was all that shouting and barking, jumping and showing teeth to each other? It was simply that they were trying to show to each other, ”Look how much stronger I am.” They are very intelligent people. What is the need to fight? They just show their strength to each other and judge who is the stronger.

Once it is judged which one is stronger, they both agree: the one who comes to understand that he is weaker turns with his tail between his legs. That is a signal that ”you are stronger” – but there is no cowardliness in it; it is a simple fact – ”What can I do about it? I am weak, you are stronger; you bark louder, you jump louder, you look bigger: what is the point of fighting? Why unnecessarily shed blood?” He simply gives the signal, turns his tail between his legs, and immediately the other is no longer an enemy. The fight is finished; before it began it is finished.

Seeing dogs... because from my very childhood I have been curious about everything, and in India there are so many dogs. The municipal committees cannot kill them because it is violent and immediately there would be trouble from the people: ”You are killing” – so their number goes on growing. Just as the number of people goes on growing, the number of dogs goes on growing.

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and again I saw it happen, and I could see the tremendous intelligence of dogs. They are far more intelligent than man.

Even if you understand that you are weaker than the other person, still you will fight because you cannot accept that you are weak. You will try; perhaps by some chance... at least nobody will be able to say to you that you never even tried. You will fight, and you will be beaten. Now, this is absolutely useless; on your part and on the other man’s part, it is stupid. But you are not programmed, that is the trouble.

You cannot be decisive, certain. The other man may look bigger, that is a certainty, but a smaller man may be more sharp, more clever, more cunning, may have known aikido, judo, jujitsu, and who knows what. The stronger man may not know anything, may be just a heavyweight, not a heavyweight champion, and the smaller man may throw him off.

We are not programmed. Dogs are programmed and they can read each other’s program easily.

They give all the signs of their program: ”This is what I can do. These are my teeth, you can see them. This is my bark, this way I jump, this way I will hit. You show YOURSELF.” They both put their cards on the table. And when you see that one person has all the great cards, what is the point...?

Now it is finished. But man is not made that way; that is the only difference between man and the whole of existence.

In man, existence precedes essence.

First he is born, and then he starts discovering what he can be. That is anguish.

He has no program, no determined guidelines given from nature, no map to follow. He is just left as pure existence. He has to work out everything on his own. Life is every moment a challenge, so every moment he has to choose. Whenever he has to choose there is anxiety – but anxiety is particular.

Anguish is a general state of the human being. He is in anguish from birth to death because he has no way of knowing what his destiny is, where he is going to land. Of course, very few people feel anguish because very few people are so conscious about themselves, their existence, where they are moving, what they are becoming, what is going to happen. They are too concerned with trivia.

So all human beings experience anxiety.

Trivia creates anxiety.

In a certain job you can get a better salary but it is not respectable. In fact that’s why a better salary is given, because it is not respectable. In another job which is respectable, the salary is less in the same proportion. Now, anxiety arises – what to do? You would like both the respect and the higher salary, but you can’t get both.

Society consists of vested interests.

And they are clever.

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To be a professor in the university is respectable, but the salary is not much. You can earn more just being a pimp than you can earn by being a professor. But a pimp, after all, is a pimp. You cannot manage to be called Professor Pimp. But in fact, linguistically it is not wrong because that is your profession. You can call yourself Professor Pimp! There are people who call themselves professors, magicians particularly, who have nothing to do with professors in the universities. Magicians call themselves professors; they mean by professor, professional magician.

In India there was one very great, world-famous magician, Professor Sarkar, a Bengali gentleman, perhaps the best-known magician in the world. I asked him, ”I have no questions about your magic, but I have a question about your professorhood. What is this’professor’? Where do you teach, in what university? – because I have not heard of a university especially devoted to magic or a college especially devoted to magic. I have never even heard of any university with a magic department –

so where do you teach?”

He said, ”It has nothing to do with teaching, it is just that traditionally magicians have been using it.

It is our profession, and professor simply means a professional.” I said, ”That’s a great idea. Then anybody can call himself professor; whatever profession he is in, he is a professor.” But one thing is certain: by being a pimp you can earn much more than being a professor. Of course as a professor you will be very respected, but you will remain poor, at the most middle class. So the choice arises.

And wherever there is choice, there is anxiety.

So everybody, on each step, at every moment of his life is faced with anxiety. Anxiety is a common, everyday affair.

Anguish is very profound.

Both words come from the same root, hence the question. In anguish there is some anxiety because you are worried, you are concerned. But the concern is not about any job, any thing, anything in particular; no, it is a general vague feeling of, What am I?

Gurdjieff stretched the point to its very logical end. I like that man although I may not agree with him on many points. He has a tremendous insight into things, but he is a victim of a particular logical disease; that is, stretching something to its very logical end. The trouble is, whenever you stretch something to its very logical end, you come to something wrong. If you stretch it on one side, you will come to something wrong; if you stretch it on the opposite side, you will again come to something wrong.

Extremes are always wrong.

Avoid extremes.

It is far more probable that you will find the truth somewhere exactly in the middle, between the two opposite extremes.

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Gurdjieff stretched this idea of anguish to its extreme: he said man has no soul. This is a simple conclusion. If existence comes first and essence has to be discovered later on, that simply means that man is born without a soul. The soul is your being, your essence. So you are born only an empty box, with nothing in it. Naturally, anguish will be felt: you are empty inside, with nothing in you. Even a rose flower is far richer than you, even a dog is far richer than you. At least he has a program, a certainty of what he is going to be. He is predictable.

I always imagine that among dogs there must be astrologers, palmists, face readers, mind readers and all kinds of esoteric people, because there, everything can be read. The future can be told in detail. But strange is the fact that all those astrologers, palmists, face readers, mind readers, tarot card readers, I Ching readers – and there are so many areas available – all exist in the world of man.

But actually it’s no wonder – what will they do in the world of the dog, the elephant, and the camel?

No camel is at all in anguish. He perfectly naturally follows the program. He is not worried about tomorrow. He knows tomorrow he will be a camel, and the day after he will also be a camel. Just as his forefathers have been camels, he will be a camel. There is no chance to become an elephant or to be worried or to choose, ”What do I want to be?” There is never a question of to be or not to be.

There are no alternatives open, he has a fixed being. The business of astrologers and palmists is not going to flourish; they will all go bankrupt if they move from the world of man.

But in the world of men, why do these astrologers and palmists go on flourishing? I have seen them so many times but they all are doing the same thing. In one place in Kashmir, in Srinagar, a pundit

– a very old scholar who was very famous in Kashmir for his predictions – was brought to me as I was having a camp in Srinagar. Somebody who was attending the camp knew the old man and told him, ”Come to see this man and see if you can predict something about him.” I thought he would be looking at my hands so I said, ”Okay, you can look.” He said, ”No, I never look at the hands, I look at the feet, at the lines on the feet.” That was a revelation! I had never heard about it. He said, ”This is something special in Kashmir. The lines in the feet are far more certain than the lines in the hand.” And he had a certain reason.

He said, ”The lines of the hand go on changing, but the lines of the feet remain almost unchanging, for the simple reason that the skin of the feet is harder.” It has to be harder, you have to walk on it, your whole weight is on it. Hands don’t have that hard a skin, they don’t need it. On the softer skin it is easier for lines to change; on the harder skin it is almost like the lines on a stone. He said, ”We have a tradition in Kashmir to read the lines of the feet.” I said, ”Okay, you read the lines of my feet; but one thing you should remember, whatsoever you say I will not allow to happen. Just the opposite will happen.” He said, ”It is the first time I have heard this type of statement. People want to know what is going to happen, and you are saying to me that whatever I say, you will try to do just the opposite.” I said, ”Certainly, because I want to prove you absolutely wrong.” All palmistry, all astrology, is just an exploitation of man’s anguish. Because he is in anguish he wants somehow, some way, somebody to tell him what he is, what he is going to be, what is his future.

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It is out of anguish that all these sciences have sprung up. And they have exploited man for thousands of years, for the simple reason that man is bound sometime or other to be concerned with what this life is all about: What am I doing here? Is it really meaningful or meaningless? Is it leading me somewhere or am I moving in a circle? And if it is leading somewhere, am I going in the right direction or in the wrong direction?

One of my professors, Doctor S.N.L. Shrivastava, used to teach me logic, he was my professor of logic. And he was very angry with me because he could not tell me not to argue, because in a class of logic.... I had made it clear from the very beginning that in a class of logic you cannot stop me from arguing. ”I have really come to learn argument, what else is logic?” – so he could not prevent me from arguing. And on each point there was trouble. He got so fed up; and the students were praying to me, ”Because of you it seems there is not going to be any teaching from the textbooks.

From each point it takes weeks to move on; it will take our whole life to finish this book!” After two months, S.N.L. Shrivastava got so tired that he asked for one month’s leave – he was an old man. He wanted to go to the hill station just to rest from logic, from argument. By coincidence it happened... I had no idea that he was going to the hill station. It was a Saturday and I had gone to a friend’s farm. At the farm he had beautiful mangos, but I told him, ”These are nothing. If you come to my village you will know for the first time what a mango should be. These are just wild mangos, small and not so juicy.”

So he said, ”Why not today?”

I said, ”I am always for today,” so we dropped everything and rushed towards the station which was not very far away. But the train was just leaving, so I jumped in and my friend who was carrying his suitcase and this and that – he was left behind. And in the compartment was S.N.L. Shrivastava.

He said, ”What! Are you also going to the hill station?” I was going to my village which was on the way. The hill station was one hundred and fifty miles farther on from my village. But just to joke with him I said, ”But this train is not going to the hill station; this is going in the opposite direction. What are you doing here?” He said, ”Help me” – because he had made up his bed and everything in the first class compartment.

He just made it, and I somehow managed to push him out with his bag. When he was out my friend came running, and as the train was moving off, he asked Shrivastava, ”Why did you get down? I missed the train because I could not catch up with my friend; I was carrying all my load, and he went on ahead – he didn’t have anything. We are going to his house so he has everything that he needs, but I need clothes and things. But why did you get off?” S.N.L. Shrivastava said, ”This train is not going to the hill station.” The boy said, ”What are you saying? This is going to the hill station.” When after two days I came back, the way S.N.L. Shrivastava looked at me I cannot forget; anytime I can close my eyes.... He just went on looking. I said, ”Will you say something, or will you go on just looking?”

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He said, ”Is there anything to say? I had taken one month’s leave; I had booked a hotel, and with much difficulty I had persuaded my wife to go – and then you appeared in that compartment. I had never expected you there. And it is not good what you did to me.

I said, ”What have I done?”

He said, ”You said that train was going in the opposite direction.” I said, ”That’s exactly what I believed, because I had to return from the next station. I also wanted to go to the hill station and that train was certainly going in the wrong direction.” He said, ”Now don’t try to befool me, because I have enquired from the station master, and your friend himself has told me that the train was going to the hill station.” I said, ”There seems to be some confusion. Either I was told something wrong... because I asked another passenger and he said,’This train is not going where you want to go, so get down at the next station, go back and catch the other train which will be coming soon.’ Perhaps you are right, perhaps that man was right; but now there is no way to decide.” He said, ”You are such a pain in the neck! I used to have so many anxieties before; now I have only anguish. And it is because of you that all my anxieties have disappeared and I have only one anguish, day and night. Even in the night I dream of you, that you are arguing and creating trouble, and I am in difficulty answering you.”

That day he used the word ”anguish,” that’s why I remember him. He said, ”You are my anguish.” I said, ”That’s absolutely wrong.” I said, ”Here the argument begins again. Anguish is something internal, it cannot be external; if it is external then it is anxiety If I am your anguish, then you are using the wrong word; I may be your anxiety. Anguish is that, Professor S.N.L. Shrivastava, which you have to work out within yourself: Who are you? Do you also think you are Doctor S.N.L.

Shrivastava? Do you think you are a Hindu? Do you think you are a man?” He said, ”If I am not a man, if I am not a Hindu, if I am not Doctor S.N.L. Shrivastava, then who am I?”

I said, ”That is anguish! You meditate over it. If you find out the answer your anguish will disappear.” But before his anguish disappeared he threatened to resign from the college. He said, ”Holidays won’t help; after all, I have to come back again. And even in the hill station I would have been thinking of this problem that has arisen, and which I don’t know how to solve.” He was an old man, trained in Aristotelian logic, and I was studying things which were against Aristotle, things of which he had never heard; so he was in continual trouble. He could not say, ”I don’t know about it” – because to have accepted in front of people that, ”I don’t know about it,” would have seemed humiliating.

He had to pretend that he knew about it, and then he would get into trouble because he had no idea of what he was getting into – then he was in my hands. I told the principal of the college,

”This S.N.L. Shrivastava is a well-known and respected professor, has written many books, has big degrees, honorary degrees, but he is not a man of truth.” From Personality to Individuality

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The principal said, ”How can you say that? I have never felt that he lies or anything. He is a really religious man – not only a professor of philosophy but religious also.” I said, ”I have checked it a hundred times: he lies.” He said, ”You will have to give me proof.”

I said, ”I am always ready, but that’s the problem: I ask him for proof.... I am perfectly happy – I will give you proof. You give me any fictitious name of a book which does not exist.” He said, ”What will that do?”

I said, ”You just write it down.” So he wrote down ”Principia Logica.” Yes, there are books called PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA and PRINCIPIA ETHICA, but there is no book like Principia Logica.

But it sounds perfectly right, on the lines of these famous books – PRINCIPIA ETHICA, PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA – so there must be a Principia Logica. I said, ”This will do. I will be back soon.” I went to the class of S.N.L. Shrivastava and I asked him, ”I have read this statement in Principia Logica; what do you think about it?”

He said, ”Principia Logica? Yes, I don’t exactly remember because I read the book twenty or thirty years ago.”

I said, ”Just come with me to the principal’s office.” He said, ”For what?”

I said, ”Just come. He has asked me to bring you to his office.” I took him there and I said, ”Professor S.N.L. Shrivastava says that he read this book Principia Logica thirty years ago. He remembers perfectly the name of the book, but he cannot remember the exact quotation that I gave him.” The principal asked him, ”Shrivastava, have you read this book?” He said, ”Yes, of course.”

The principal said to me, ”Forgive me – you are right.” S.N.L. Shrivastava could not understand what was transpiring between me and the principal. He said, ”What is right? And what is the problem?”

The principal said, ”Nothing. This boy was just proving that you are a perfect liar, and you proved to be. This was coined by me, this title. There exists no such book, there has never existed any such book – how did you read it thirty years ago? You have some nerve to say such a thing – and to these students who have come to study under you. You are blatantly lying.” S.N.L. Shrivastava resigned, because now he was losing face completely. I went to his home to give him solace; he said, ”Please, I don’t want your solace.” From Personality to Individuality

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I said, ”Once in a while I will be coming, whether you want it or not. I know you need it.” He said, ”Is it ever going to end or do I have to commit suicide? – because now I am saying I don’t want it, and you say,’You may not want it but you need it. Now you will raise the problem: Is there is a difference between wanting and needing?”

I told him, ”Yes, needing is something different. You may not be aware of your needs. You may know about your wants, and your wants may not be necessarily your needs. Looking at somebody’s beautiful hat you may want it. It may not be your need; your need may be for better shoes. Want and need are totally different.”

He said, ”Yes, they are totally different, but please don’t come.” But strange coincidences.... When I became a professor I was appointed to a university where he was the head of the department of philosophy! As I entered the philosophy department, he said,

”What! What are you here for?”

I said, ”They have appointed me as your assistant.” He said, ”will you leave me alone or not? When you were a student that was enough. Now you are a professor – and my assistant!” Again he used the word: ”It seems you are going to remain my anguish.”

I said, ”S.N.L. Shrivastava, six years have passed but you have not learned anything. Again, anguish? Call it anxiety. Anxiety has an object, a particular situation; anguish is within you, you have to look withinwards.”

He said, ”Of course, now sitting in the same staff room I have to look withinwards; otherwise I have to look at you, and just looking at you, I lose all my sanity. You drove me out of that college. Now you have come here, and I know we cannot coexist in this staff room. And you are not a person to leave, so I suppose I will have to ask the government to transfer me somewhere else.

”And you have spoiled my wife’s mind because she says I am simply afraid of you and I am escaping from every place, wherever you are. She tells me, ’How long can you escape from that man? If he is determined to follow you, he will.’”

And I had all the qualifications to follow him anywhere, to any university, wherever he was going.

I said, ”If I am determined I can follow you, but I don’t want to be your anxiety, I want you to feel anguish. Your death is close, you are getting too old; now is not the time for anxiety. Anxieties are for young people who are choosing alternatives, this and that. But for you... before death comes solve your basic problem.”

Anguish is, in short, the quest of who you are.

One of India’s greatest seers of this age, Raman Maharishi, had only one message to everyone. He was a simple man, not a scholar. He left his house when he was seventeen years old – not even well educated. It was a simple message. To whoever would come to him – and from all over the world people were coming to him – all that he said was, ”Sit down in a corner, anywhere....” From Personality to Individuality

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He lived on a hill, Arunachal, and he had told his disciples to make caves in the hills; there were many caves. ”Go and sit in a cave, and just meditate on, Who am I? All else is just explanations, experiences, efforts to translate those experiences into language.

The only real thing is this

question, Who am I?”

I have come in contact with many people, but I never came in contact with Raman Maharishi; he died when I was too young. I wanted to go, and I would have reached him, but he was really far away from my place, nearabout fifteen hundred miles. I asked my father many times, ”That man is getting old and I am so young. He does not know Hindi, my language; I don’t know his language, Tamil. Even if somehow I reach there – which is difficult....” It was almost a three-day journey from my place to Arunachal... changing so many trains. And with each change of train, the language changes. As you move from the Hindi language territory, which is the biggest in India, you enter the language of Marathi. As you pass from Marathi, you enter the state of the Nizam of Hyderabad, where Urdu is the language. As you go further you enter Telugu-and Malayalam-speaking areas, and finally you reach Raman Maharishi who spoke Tamil.

I said, ”For me to travel it will be... and you are not even supporting me with a ticket. I will have to travel without a ticket. For a hundred miles I can manage, I have managed. When you won’t give me a ticket I simply go to the ticket collector and say, ”This is the trouble: my father will not give me a ticket, but I want to go so I will have to travel without a ticket. But I don’t want to travel like a thief, so I am informing you.”

And it always happened that the man thought, ”No person who is traveling without a ticket comes to the ticket collector to inform him.” But the ticket collector would say to me, ”Okay. You sit down, I will take care. After a hundred miles I will be waiting for you at the gate so I can let you off at the station; otherwise you may be caught there – if you are not caught on the train. I am the ticket collector on the train for the next hundred miles; but on the station you may be caught, so I will be there.” I have traveled many times in my early childhood without a ticket because my father thought that if a ticket was not given to me how could I go? But soon he learned that I have my ways. He asked me,

”Can you tell me how you manage not to be caught?” I said, ”I cannot tell you, it is a secret. But I have told my grandfather; you can ask him.” People around the world are all living in anxiety.

Even if it is told to you – and that’s what Raman was telling to people – ”Go into the anguish....” I could not manage to see Raman, but I met many people who had been his disciples, later on when I was traveling. When I went to Arunachal I met his very intimate disciples, who were very old by then, and I did not find a single person who had understood that man’s message.

It was not a question of language, because they all knew Tamil; it was a question of a totally different perspective and understanding. Raman had said, ”Look withinwards and find out who you are.” And what were these people doing when I went there? They had made it a chant! They would sit down, chanting, ”Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?” – just like any other mantra.

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There are people who are doing their JAPA, ”Rama, Rama, Rama,” or ”Hari Krishna, Hari Krishna, Hari Krishna....” At Arunachal they were using this same technology for a totally different thing, which Raman could not have meant. And I said to his disciples, ”What you are doing is not what he meant.

By repeating,’Who am I?’ do you think somebody is going to answer? You will continue to repeat it your whole life and no answer will be coming.”

They said, ”On the one hand we are doing what we have understood him to mean. On the other hand we cannot say you are wrong, because we have been wasting our whole life chanting,’Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?’ ” – in Tamil of course, in their language – ”but nothing has happened.” I said, ”You can go on chanting for many more lives; nothing is going to happen. It is not a question of chanting’Who am I?’ You are not to utter a single word, you have simply to be silent and listen.

At first you will find, just like flies moving around you, thousands of thoughts, desires, dreams –

unrelated, irrelevant, meaningless. You are in a crowd, buzzing. Just keep quiet and sit down in this bazaar of your mind.”

Bazaar is a beautiful word. English has taken it over from the East, but perhaps they don’t know that it comes from ”buzzing”: a bazaar is a place which is continuously buzzing. And your mind is the greatest bazaar there is. In each single mind in such a small skull, you are carrying such a big bazaar. And you will be surprised to know that so many people reside in you – so many ideas, so many thoughts, so many desires, so many dreams. Just go on watching and sitting silently in the middle of the bazaar.

If you start SAYING, ”Who am I?” you have become part of the bazaar, you have started buzzing.

Don’t buzz, don’t be a buzzer; simply be silent. Let the whole bazaar continue; you remain the center of the cyclone.

Yes, it takes a little patience. It is not predictable at what time the buzzing will stop in you, but one thing can be said certainly: that it stops sometime or other. It depends on you how much of a bazaar you have, for how many years you have carried it, for how many lives you have carried it, how much nourishment you have given to it, and how much patience you have to sit silently in this mad crowd around you – maddening you, pulling you from every side.

Have you ever been in a madhouse? Just sit there and you will have some taste of your mind. One madman may start pulling your hand, another madman may start shaving your beard, somebody may start taking your clothes; they all will become engaged around you. You simply sit silently. How long can you sit?

One of my sannyasins, Narendra’s father, used to get mad for six months every year. And when he was mad he was in such great spirits that he would do strange things. He would go on a journey, a pilgrimage to holy places... anything. One time he went mad and escaped from the house. People searched but could not find him. Everywhere he was looked for – as far as it was possible. But he had really taken a very fast train going to Agra. Perhaps he was going to see the Taj Mahal or whatever; one never knows about mad people. And by the time he reached Agra he was very hungry; he had no money, so he went into a sweet shop.

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father. It is called khaja. Khaja has two meanings: one is ”softness.” The cake is very soft; you just press it a little and it will fall apart in many pieces. But khaja has another meaning: ”Eat it.” So Narendra’s father asked, ”What is this.?”

The shopkeeper said, ”Khaja,” so he started eating.

The man said, ”What are you doing?”

He said, ”Eating. You said to.”

A crowd gathered but he was still eating. And he was a strong man; he said, ”If he says,’Khaja,’ I will finish it – the whole pile that he has in the shop.” The shopkeeper said, ”This man seems to be mad! I have been selling khaja my whole life, but this is my first experience of a man who takes the meaning of khaja as’to eat.’ I have never thought of this possibility.”

And Narendra’s father said, ”You said’Eat it,’ so I am simply eating it.” He was brought to the police court and they found that he was mad, so he was put in a madhouse in Lahore for six months.

Lahore was so far away – now it is in Pakistan, not even in India – it was the farthest corner of the country. Narendra’s family remained concerned. We could not get even any hint as to where he had disappeared, because the court had ordered him to be taken to Lahore. Lahore had one of the biggest madhouses of India.

Narendra’s father was very friendly to me because I was the only one, perhaps, in the whole town who appreciated his madness. We used to talk – Narendra, by and by, became acquainted with me just because of his father – and we used to go to swim together, we used to go to the market.

With him it was a joy because I was not needed for any mischief to happen; he was doing so much mischief that just to be with him was enough enjoyment.

He told me that after the fourth month.... Up to the fourth month things went perfectly well in the Lahore madhouse, where there must have been at least three thousand mad people. ”Those four months,” he said, ”I don’t remember – they went by just as if I was in paradise. But after four months an accident happened that created trouble.”

He went into the bathroom and found a container which was filled with some kind of soapy substance to cleanse the toilets and the bathrooms. He was mad, and it looked like milk, so he drank the whole container. It gave him such diarrhea that for fifteen days doctors tried everything to stop it. Nothing would work – that chemical was not meant for the human body! And he had drunk the whole container – not a small dose of it – which was meant to clean all the bathrooms of the madhouse.

But it cleaned his madhouse completely: after fifteen days continual diarrhea, he became sane. A certain cleansing happened.

But then came the tragic part: the two months.

He would go again and again and tell the

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and we were pulling each other and shouting and screaming and biting. Everything was going on –

it was a free-for-all. But now I am not mad.

”This is the difficulty: I cannot hit them – I feel sad for them that they are mad – but they are continually hitting me, beating me, pulling me down from my bed. Somebody comes and sits on my chest.... One man shaved half my head, and four other mad people were holding me, so I could not escape. I asked them again and again,’At least do the full job,’ but that was all that they wanted to do; then they moved on to another person to shave him. And that madman must have been a barber, so he was really practiced, and was still practicing his old job, his old habit. Those two months....” But the superintendent said, ”I cannot do anything. Court orders are orders – they are for six months.

And moreover, everybody says,’I am not mad.’ Whom am I to believe? What proof have you got that you aren’t mad?”

What proof have you got? If someday you are caught in a madhouse and they ask, ”What proof have you got that you aren’t mad?” it will be impossible to prove that you aren’t mad. And if they are determined that you are mad, if they have decided it, whatever proof you give will be a proof of your madness.

”Those two months,” Narendra’s father said, ”I felt the question for the first time: Who am I?

Sometimes I am mad, sometimes I am not mad, but these are only phases around me. So who am I? – who gets into madness, who gets out of madness?” I said to him, ”Those two months have given you a taste of anguish. Don’t forget those moments.

Now you are out, use that anguish for your meditation – try to find out.... Because you may become mad again and before you become mad at least have something figured out: who you are.” But it was too much to expect of that poor man, because within a month he was mad again.

But what to say about the whole of humanity?

You are aware of anxiety.

But you are not aware of anguish yet.

In the first place, when you do feel anguish, you will feel in a tremendous turmoil, in a very deep depression... a fathomless abyss just opening in front of you, and you are falling into it. It is terrible in the beginning, but only in the beginning.

If you can be patient, just a little patient, and allow whatever is happening, soon you will be aware of a new quality in your being: All that is happening is around you, it is not happening in you. It is something without, not within. Even your own mind is something on the outer side.

At the innermost center there is only one thing:

That is witnessing, watching, observing, awareness.

And that’s what I call meditation.

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Without anguish you cannot meditate.

You have to pass through the fire of anguish. It will burn much rubbish and leave you cleaner, fresher.

And your being is not far away. It is there, very close by, but just the buzzing of all the thoughts does not allow you to hear it, to see it, to feel it.

Anguish is the enquiry into one’s self putting the question mark unto oneself.

You have asked things like, ”Who is God?” and ”Who created the world?” All those questions are just for retarded minds.

A mature mind has only one question.

Not even two, just a single question: Who am I?

And that too you have not to ask verbally, you have just to be in that state of questioning.

You are not to repeat, ”Who am I?” you have just to be there, watching, looking; not verbally asking, but existentially asking.

And that existential question is terrible in the beginning, painful in the beginning, but brings all the blessings in the end.

Gautam the Buddha has said, ”My path in the beginning is bitter, but in the end, very sweet.” What path? He is not talking about the Buddhist religion; although that’s how the Buddhist monks will interpret it. He is talking about the path that I am talking to you about – the path that takes you inwards.

Yes, it is bitter in the beginning but sweet in the end. It is deathlike in the beginning and eternal life in the end.

And all the blessings of the existence are yours.

You are so blessed that you can bless the whole of existence.

That’s the meaning of the word, Bhagwan: the Blessed One.

The Blessed One is born out of the birth pangs of anguish.

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CHAPTER 7

Conditioning: socially-sanctioned child abuse

5 January 1985 pm in Lao Tzu Grove

Question 1

OSHO,

IS J. KRISHNAMURTI ENLIGHTENED?

YES, he is enlightened, but something is missing in his enlightenment. It is like when you arrive after a long journey at an airport. You have arrived but then suddenly you find your luggage is missing. With J. Krishnamurti something more serious has happened: the luggage has arrived but he is missing!

It is a little bit complex but it is not unusual. It has happened many times before but for different reasons. The reason with Krishnamurti is certainly novel, but the situation is not. There have been people who were enlightened but they still remained Christians, Hindus, Jainas, Buddhists. To me it is unbelievable. Once you are enlightened you are finished with all the conditionings of the mind.

Then how can you still be a Christian?

What was your Christianity? It was a coincidence that you were born in a certain family and those people conditioned your mind in a certain way. They gave you a certain ideology, gave you a certain religious outlook, gave you a certain theological jargon; and you learned it like a parrot.

I know a child cannot do anything against it, he is helpless; he has to learn whatsoever is being taught to him. Even without being taught he picks up things from the environment, parents, friends, neighborhood. He goes with his parents to the church, to the synagogue, to the temple, and he is 116

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continually imbibing influences. Whether you are directly teaching him or not, he is being conditioned indirectly.

But parents and teachers don’t take any chances; they don’t leave it just to indirect influences.

They make every effort, directly, to convert the innocent child who comes into the world absolutely unconditioned – a pure mirror capable of reflecting anything. But the society, the culture, the religion

– they start painting on the mirror.

They can paint a Krishna, they can paint a Christ, they can paint a Moses, they can paint anything.

They can paint Karl Marx, they can paint Christianity, communism, fascism – anything. And the child is so helplessly dependent he cannot say no. He really has no idea of no.

The child believes and trusts the people who are giving him everything, helping him, supporting him: the mother, the father, the family... the warmth, the coziness. They are providing all the opportunities for his growth; they are not to be distrusted. The question does not arise in the mind of the child, and it is natural that it does not arise.

But because of this natural situation all the religions have committed the greatest crime in the history of man; and that is, making the child a Christian, a Mohammedan, a Jew, a Hindu, a communist –

without the child’s acceptance, without the child’s readiness, willingness. Of course the child has not said no, but he has not said yes either. If people are sensitive they will wait for the child’s yes.

If they are really loving they will wait till the child asks them, ”What is this church all about?” They should make every effort to see that he is not being influenced indirectly; the question of direct influence should not even arise. He should be left clean, pure, as he is born, till the time when he picks up some intelligence.

Growth takes a little time.

Just a little patience is needed.

He will ask questions, because everybody is born with a potential for search, enquiry. He will come up with questions; then too, if you are alert, loving, compassionate towards this young fellow traveler.... He is not your possession, he has just come through you. You have been only a passage

– never forget that. He does not belong to you, he belongs to the whole existence. You have been just a path for him to come into this body.

Don’t destroy the child’s natural potentialities.

Don’t divert the child according to your vested interests.

Don’t be political, at least with your own child.

But all over the earth, all the parents, all the teachers, have no idea of what they are doing.

In the name of religion they are committing a sin.

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Ordinarily I don’t use that word. To me in life there may be mistakes, errors – not sin – because man is fallible. Man is not born omniscient, knowing all. He is not a born pope – infallible. He will fall many times, and he will get up again. This is the way he will learn how to walk; this is the way he will learn how to see, how to enquire.

Yes, many times he will go on a wrong path. Nothing is wrong in that. In going on a wrong path, you are learning that it is wrong, because when you are moving in a wrong direction you cannot feel comfortable: that is a natural indication. You will feel uneasy, your stomach cramped; you will feel tense – because wherever you are going is not the natural way for you. All these are indications to change the route and know forever that this is not right for you.

But about religion I cannot use very ordinary words like mistake, error – no. Something really heavy is needed.

So I say the so-called religion is the only sin in the world because it commits a crime against somebody who is absolutely helpless and in your hands. And it is a crime of tremendous proportions.

So if you become a Hindu, if you become a Christian, if you become a Buddhist, that is understandable. But when a man becomes enlightened what does it mean? It means really the undoing of what society, culture, religion, the state, the education system, the parents – all together in conspiracy against the small child – have done. To undo it is to be enlightened: to regain your childhood, to regain that freshness, that mirror-like quality of simply reflecting with no judgment.

The mirror simply reflects. When you stand before the mirror, the mirror is not making any judgment about you – good, bad, beautiful, ugly – no judgment at all. The mirror simply reflects. It does not get involved in any way.

I remember my own childhood. The moment I became aware of what was happening – it must have been nearabout the age of four or five – that I was being driven in a certain direction that I had not chosen, I asked my father, ”Do you think that just by being born a son to you I will have to follow your religion, your politics; that I will have to become a member of the Lion’s club, that I will have to do your business? Does it mean that because unfortunately I am born to you, I will have to do all these things?”

He said, ”Who said to you that you have to become a member of the Lion’s club or that you have to become a member of the political party of which I am a member? Who said this to you?” I said, ”There is no need for anybody to say it, for five years continually you have been doing it. Why have you been taking me to the Jaina temple? Who are you to decide about it? Why have you been telling me to bow down before Mahavira’s statue, before certain scriptures I know nothing about?” I was not even able to read at that time. The scriptures were just books like any other books, but everybody was bowing down to them.

I said, ”You were bowing down and you were encouraging me to bow down, and it looked awkward for me to stand there when everybody else was showing so much respect. But you had not asked me; it was not with my consent that you took me to the temple. Just by the side there is a mosque

– my friend is being taken there. Why don’t you take me there? Why don’t my friend’s parents take him to the Jaina temple?

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”What else is politics but this? You are giving me certain ideas, filling me with certain attitudes. And you started so early that I was not even aware of what was happening.” I said, ”From now onwards, stop it; leave me alone. Now I am capable of saying no. And remember, unless I am capable of saying no, how can I be capable of saying yes? The capacity to say the one is also the capacity to say the other; they both come together.

”So don’t be offended by my no. I will say yes, but you will have to wait. Perhaps I may not say yes to this temple, but to some other temple; not to this book, but to some other book. Nothing can be predicted right now; I am not a thing, predictable. Tomorrow the chair will still remain a chair, the table will still remain a table; they are predictable. What to say about the child of a man? – I am not predictable.”

One drunkard, completely drunk, went to a sweet shop. He gave the shopkeeper one rupee, purchased sweets for half a rupee and asked for the remaining change. The shopkeeper said,

”I don’t have any change right now. Tomorrow morning, when you pass by, pick it up. Or you can take your rupee, and tomorrow morning you can give me haU a rupee – whatever pleases you.” The drunkard said, ”Okay, tomorrow morning I will pick up the change.” But he thought, What if the shopkeeper changes his address? – the world is so cunning.... I should make some arrangement so that he cannot change his address without my knowing. So he looked around and he saw a bull sitting in front of the shop. He said, ”That’s good. The shopkeeper may not be even aware that bull is sitting there in front of the shop.”

The next morning all that the drunkard remembered was that there was a bull sitting in front of the shop, and that he had to collect half a rupee from there. He went in search of the bull, obviously, because that was the only proof that he had. But a bull is not a static thing: the bull was sitting in front of a barber’s shop.

The drunkard went in, dutched the man by his neck and said, ”You son-of-a-bitch! Just for half a rupee you change your profession, you change your caste; and just overnight the sweet shop has disappeared and you have become a barber!”

The man said, ”What are you talking about? Yesterday my shop was closed.” The drunkard said, ”Great! You can’t deceive me. Look at the bull. Even though I am drunk, I am not that foolish. I knew there would be some trouble so I made a point of remembering the bull; the whole night I had to remember it again and again. And the bull is still sitting in exactly the same position, in front of your shop.”

The barber said, ”Now I understand what the trouble is, because I also saw the bull sitting in front of the sweet shop last night. You please go there. A bull is not something that remains in one position, he moves; he has moved! What can I do about it?”

But people go on thinking that the child will remain the same as they are making him. Yes, most people remain the same because it is comfortable, convenient. Why bother? When all the answers have been given to you, why be skeptical?

Skepticism is condemned by all the religions.

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In reality, skepticism is the beginning of a really religious man.

Skepticism means enquiry.

Skepticism means: whatsoever you have told me I cannot accept unless I experience it.

But it is inconvenient. You will have to travel a long way, and you never know whether you will reach to the point where you find the answer on your own.

Most people, the greater mass, want convenience, comfort, ready-made things, ready-made answers. It is understandable. It is an ugly fact about human beings, that even for truth they are not ready to take a little trouble.

Even truth people want cheap.

And because you want truth cheap, there are peddlars who are selling it cheap.

Not only cheap, they are selling it without taking anything from you. Not only that, they are rewarding you: if you purchase their truth they are going to reward you. The Christians will call you a saint, the Hindus will call you a mahatma, a sage. Without any effort, without paying anything you gain so much respectability. All that you have to do is to pretend, to be a hypocrite.

The whole human society is pretending.

What do you know about Christ’s experience?

Without having some taste of it, you are a Christian?

If this is not hypocrisy, then what is hypocrisy?

Knowing nothing about God, you believe in God.

If this is not dishonesty....

Then what else can dishonesty be?

You are not even honest towards God.

An honest, sincere person will start from skepticism. He will enquire. He will put a question mark on every aspect of conditioning that his parents and his society have burdened him with.

But it is understandable about the general masses; they can be forgiven. But how to forgive a man who has attained enlightenment? His enlightenment means he has done away with all the conditions, conditionings, all the programs. He is a deprogrammed man, he is a dehypnotized man. But for an enlightened man to still say that he is Christian is unforgivable, yet this has been happening all through history.

Only very rarely have a few people simply declared their aloneness.

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They have taken a small footpath of their own and they have left the super-highway where everybody is moving – of course comfortably. And when you leave the super-highway you will have to create a path just by walking. There is no path ready-made, available to you.

That’s why I say truth is costly.

You will have to pay for it.

When you walk without there being any path, your feet will bleed. Your mind will try to persuade you to go back to the highway where everybody else is moving, and say, ”Don’t be a fool! Here you can get lost. There you were with the crowd; it was warmer. And when there were so many people, it was certain that we were moving in the right direction – so many people cannot be wrong.

”Alone, what guarantee is there that you are going in the right direction? – you don’t have any evidence. On the highway there are millions of people ahead, millions of people behind, millions of people with you. What more proof do you need?”

I can understand that the common man would prefer the super-highway. Whether it is Christian, Hindu, Jaina or Mohammedan doesn’t matter – he has to be with a big crowd. As far as you can see there are only crowds and more crowds, and that gives you a deep conviction that you must be on the right path.

I can forgive you. But how can I forgive Saint Francis? He is enlightened and yet he is a Christian and goes to the Vatican, to the pope to touch his feet! Now, this is sickening: The pope! – who is not enlightened, who is just an elected person.... Anybody who is cunning enough, clever enough to campaign for himself can become the pope.

But why did Saint Francis go there?

Because all over the whole country people had started respecting Francis, loving him, accepting what he was saying and that news, coming continually to the pope, was shocking. A man who has not been sanctified by the pope as a saint is already being accepted by the people as a saint! The pope was simply bypassed – that could not be tolerated. This man was sabotaging the whole Catholic system, and no bureaucracy can tolerate such sabotage.

So according to the church, if he has become enlightened, first he should come to the pope, and if the pope gives him a certificate that says yes, he is enlightened – if he gives him the sanction of enlightenment.... That’s the Christian meaning of a saint – sanctioned by the pope.

Become anything else – but never become a Christian saint. A Christian saint simply means,

”sanctioned by the pope.” And particularly now, don’t become a Christian saint, whatsoever the price you have to pay. Sanctioned by a polack pope! What kind of saint will you be?

But Saint Francis, seeing that the pope was getting angrier, and that messages were coming saying,

”You have to come first to the pope,” went, touched the pope’s feet and prayed with folded hands:

”Bless me, and tell me how I can serve Christ, his church, Christianity and you.” And the pope was perfectly happy: Francis was sanctioned as a saint.

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I can understand the pope and his stupidity because nobody expects anything else from a pope.

But what is Saint Francis doing? Something is missing in his enlightenment. He is enlightened but is still imprisoned in the old conditioning.

Although now he knows, ”I am not the conditioning,” he is not brave enough to jump out of his prison.

On the contrary, he decides to use the prison itself, the conditioning itself, the language given by the conditioning itself, to bring his message to the people. This is cowardly. And this is why so many saints in the past in all the religions have lost my respect.

I know that they had come to understand, but their understanding was not fiery enough, it was very lukewarm. It was not revolutionary, it was orthodox. Perhaps they were common men, and the fears of the common man were still lingering somewhere back in the shadows and influencing their actions. Their language, their behavior, their actions, give indications that they were enlightened, but they also show that they were not able to overthrow their whole conditioning. Perhaps they thought if they overthrew it they would not be able to communicate with the people, because the people had the same conditioning.

To think in this way is right for a business man, but it is not right for an enlightened person. Who cares whether people understand or not? If they understand, it is good for them; if they don’t understand,

”Go to hell!” – that is their business. But why should I go on carrying unnecessary luggage, which I know is just crap, for your sake?

In this way many enlightened people of the past have lost my respect. I cannot deny that they were in that space where I would like you all to be: they were in that space, but they remained like buds, they never opened up like flowers. They were so afraid that they remained buds. They were afraid to open.

Opening is always risky.

Who knows what is going to happen when you open up?

One thing is certain, your fragrance will be released.

And that can create trouble for you.

An enlightened person’s fragrance is revolution, is rebellion....

Perhaps it is better to remain a closed bud like these people who were not brave enough –

enlightenment was in the wrong hands.

With J. Krishnamurti the situation is totally new. He is enlightened, and he is not orthodox – but he has gone to the other extreme: he is anti-orthodox. Anti should be underlined.

When I was a student in my final post-graduate year there were two girls in my class. We three were the only students of religion. You can understand that the man who was the professor was a religious man; and as you should expect from a religious man, he was very much infatuated with one of the girls. He was a celibate. He had really been following the Hindu tradition because he wanted From Personality to Individuality

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to become a monk one day, and he was preparing: practicing yoga, concentration and visualization exercises, and continually repeating, chanting mantras. But all these things are on one side; biology is on the other side, and that is far weightier.

Put all your scriptures on the weighing scale – all the scriptures of all your religions – and put biology on the other side. The biology side will touch the earth and all your scriptures may go to heaven.

They don’t have any weight. They need idiots to function as paperweights, to keep them down on the earth.

Now this man was in great trouble. One girl was homely; you would not bother about her. In fact she was a little more than homely. She had a little mustache that she had to shave – what else could she do? She was a Punjabi, and it happens in Punjab.... Punjabi women are strong, hard workers, and work almost like men in the fields. I think with so much work and exertion and strength, that perhaps a mustache and beard start growing – because I again saw it in Shri Aurobindo’s ashram.

In Aurobindo’s ashram everybody had to do certain, very arduous exercises. Most of the population in his ashrams were young girls sent by their parents – who were followers of Aurobindo – to be trained there for a spiritual life. But I was surprised that almost all of them were growing little mustaches. Strange! I said, ”If it happens in an ashrama, then all ashramas should be destroyed.” I enquired about it from the man who was in charge.

He said, ”I also feel a little awkward because everybody asks that, and I don’t know what is happening.”

I said, ”Three-hour morning exercises, three-hour evening exercises – these exercises must be doing it.” And those exercises were almost like in the army! It has something to do with that. Too much exertion and too much exercise perhaps changes some hormones in the body and the girls start growing beards and mustaches – because I knew that one girl and she was a little more than homely. In fact if you just passed by her, you wouldn’t even look at her, and I don’t think anybody ever looked back again.

But the other girl was a rare beauty. She was from Kashmir, and Kashmir produces perhaps the most beautiful women on the earth. My celibate professor was wavering and bobbling. And the greatest trouble for him was that the girl was interested in me, not in him. So he was very angry with me, because he would try in every possible way to make the girl interested in him, but she was simply taking no notice of him.

I was not interested in the girl, but the girl was certainly interested in me. She used to come to ask this, to ask that, to take this book.... And when she came to me it was natural that whatever she wanted I arranged for her. And that man was burning up!

It came to a climax one day because the girl invited me to her house – she lived in the city – for dinner, and this celibate, religious professor heard that I had been invited by the girl to her house.

She was the daughter of the collector of the city and she wanted me to be introduced to her parents, her father and mother. Only she knew her purpose; I was completely out of it.

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unaware of it and I am not part of it at all. I can come for dinner – you are inviting me, I will not refuse it – but that’s all.”

She was shocked. I said, ”You can take your invitation back, there is no problem – I will not be hurt.

In fact I am hurting you.” But this is not the thing that I wanted to emphasize. When the professor heard about the dinner, and that the girl was going to introduce me to her father and her mother and family, he cornered me in the library.

I had my own corner. It was a small room which I had chosen inside the library, allotted to me by special permission from the vice-chancellor so that I need not sit with so many people coming and going but could have my own place. I wanted to be alone so I used to keep it locked from inside.

My interest in books has been immense. I have read perhaps more than anybody else in the whole world, because I was not doing anything else except reading. I used to have three or four hours of sleep, that was all; otherwise I was continually reading.

Somebody knocked on the door. It never used to happen, because I had told all my professors that even if the university was burning down I was not concerned; they were not to bother me. I had told the librarian, ”If you want to close the library you can – I will remain here the whole night – but don’t ever knock on my door. I don’t like that kind of familiarity, not at all.” Somebody knocked; it was the first time. I thought, ”Who can it be?” I opened the door. The celibate, red with anger, closed the door behind him and asked me, ”Do you love this girl?” I said, ”I don’t even hate her.”

He said, ”What do you mean?”

I said, ”Exactly what I say to you: I don’t even hate her; the question of love does not arise. There is not even a hate relationship between me and her – you are unnecessarily getting red and hot.

You just get out of the room. And as far as the dinner is concerned I have canceled it, so don’t be worried. But if you want dinner in the house, I can manage it.” He said, ”No, no, I don’t want any dinner, and particularly not managed by you.” Again he asked,

”But what do you mean: ’I don’t even hate her’?”

I said, ”It is so simple – and you are a professor of religion: can’t you understand a simple thing?

Because love is a relationship, hate is a relationship. Love can become hate any day, and it does –

not any day, every day. Vice versa also is true: hate can become love. It is a little rare but it happens, because love and hate are just the same energy arranged in a different way. You have the same sofa, the same chairs, the same table, but you can arrange them in a thousand ways. And people go on doing that. So I simply said, to cut the whole problem from the very root,’I don’t even hate her,’

so be completely at ease.”

Why did I remember it? I remembered it because of J. Krishnamurti. He hates orthodoxy, he hates all that has passed in the name of religion. Remember the difference: I criticize it but I don’t hate it.

I don’t even hate it! Krishnamurti has a relationship with it – I don’t have any relationship with it –

and that is where he has missed.

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He was brought up in a very strange situation – by Theosophists – to be declared a world teacher.

Now, you cannot manufacture a world teacher. World teachers are born, not forced. And world teachers need not declare themselves world teachers: they are. It is not a question of declaration, it is a question of recognition on the part of the world; it is none of his business.

Whenever there is a man who has the capacity to attract people from all around the world – intelligent people, people who are seekers, enquirers, people who are ready to risk and gamble – there is no need for him to declare, ”I am the world teacher.” The whole world will laugh at such a man. The world teacher has nothing to do with it; it is for the world to decide.

But what Theosophists were doing was just the opposite: they were trying to create a world teacher.

So of course they were disciplining J. Krishnamurti from the age of nine – now he is ninety. He was picked up by the Theosophists while he was bathing naked in a river which flows through Adyar in India – where the headquarters, the world headquarters of the Theosophical movement is. At that time it was a great movement: thousands of people were interested in it. All that was missing was a world teacher.

There were very clever people like Leadbeater, Annie Besant, Colonel Olcott, but none of them had the charisma. To be a Master, one thing is absolutely essential: the person should have some magical quality, some charisma. Not only his words, but his very being should be capable of pulling you like a magnet. That was not there.

Annie Besant was a nice lady, but what to do with a nice lady? – there are millions of nice ladies.

Leadbeater was a great writer, but no world teacher has ever been a writer. Not a single world teacher worth the name has ever written, because the spoken word has a magic about it which the written word cannot have. The written word can be written by anybody.

Do you think it will make any difference whether Jesus writes it or you write it? Perhaps your handwriting may be better. But just because Jesus writes it, it won’t have charismatic impact. But as far as the spoken word is concerned... the word that Jesus speaks has a certain impact. You can speak the same word but it is not going to have the same impact.

All the Christian missionaries are continually repeating the same words. Jesus has not left much; in fact a single sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, contains his whole teaching. And he was not an educated man so he could not use very sophisticated language: it is simple, raw, rough. From a carpenter’s son, what else can you expect? But its impact must have been tremendous. People are not crucified for nothing.

If the Jews and the Romans both agreed to crucify this man, you can take it for granted that this man had something in him which made King Herod tremble on his throne. The high priest of the Jews, who had all the religious powers in his hands, listening to Jesus immediately understood that no scholarship could defeat this man.

It is not what he is saying, it is the way he is saying it – or even better – it is his presence, the space from which he is speaking that brings a certain fragrance with it, a certain quality of penetration that just goes into your heart. And there is no way to prevent it. Later on, perhaps you may find a thousand and one arguments against it, but in the presence of the man – whether he is right or wrong – his impact is absolute. In his presence you cannot doubt him.

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Now, you cannot create such a person by giving him lessons in oratory, by teaching him better ways of speaking, expression, language, by making him in every way proficient. But the Theosophists worked hard on J. Krishnamurti until he was twenty-five, and then they thought, ”Now is the time to make our declaration – he is ready.” But they had really picked a great man.

They had picked a few other boys also because it was just chance who turned out to be the right one. So they were training at least half a dozen boys, but Krishnamurti proved, to them, the best.

And of course he was the best – but not for their purposes. For their purposes, from those other five, anybody would have done.

One of them, Raj Gopal, is still alive.

He had been, his whole life, personal secretary to J.

Krishnamurti, but just a few years ago he betrayed him, and really betrayed him badly. Everything –

all powers of attorney, all royalties, all books’ copyrights – everything was in the name of Raj Gopal so that Krishnamurti need not bother about it.

When Krishnamurti was eighty – ten years ago – Raj Gopal simply took possession of everything: millions of dollars, all future royalties, books and all the donations that had come during this fifty-year period. It was a big fortune. He simply denied Krishnamurti, saying, ”I am no longer your secretary.

And you forget about all these things – or if you want to go to the court, you can.” This man, Raj Gopal would have proved far better for the Theosophical movement and their purpose.

He proved extremely clever, cunning, and of immense patience, really a man of strong will. He waited long enough to betray Krishnamurti: he must have been carrying the idea for fifty years but nobody could detect it in him. Even Krishnamurti was completely unsuspicious. How can you believe that a person who has been serving you for fifty years will suddenly one day cut off your head? – someone who has not even raised a single question, a single doubt, about you. Raj Gopal would have been far better for the Theosophists.

J. Krishnamurti certainly was the best, but not for their purposes. That was proved immediately, because the day he was going to declare himself the world teacher.... They had prepared every word of his speech, listened to it again and again so that he could repeat it exactly, because it was going to be a document of historical importance; nobody had done such a thing before.

Six thousand representatives from all over the world had gathered in Holland. One old lady of the royal family had donated her castle and five thousand acres of land so that it could become Krishnamurti’s world headquarters. Everything was prepared on a grand scale.

Krishnamurti stood up, and he said, ”I am nobody’s Master and nobody is my disciple. The only declaration I have to make is that I abandon the movement that has been created around me. I dissolve the organization called the Star of the East which has been especially made for my work, and I return the castle and the money, the donations, the land, to their owners.” Annie Besant was crying; she could not believe her eyes. It was such a shock: ”What has happened?

We have come from all over the world, and the man simply says he is not anybody’s Master and there is no need for one.” But for anybody who could understand how human psychology functions it was very much expected.

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The Theosophists were forcing it on him, and this was the first chance that he had to stand up and speak in public – he did not want to lose it. Up to then he had been kept in secrecy, and all over the world rumors were being created that he was being initiated into higher and higher degrees of spirituality. ”Now he has passed the three-star degree, now he has passed the five-star degree, now seven stars; now he has attained all nine stars and the time has come.” That’s why the organization specially created for the world teacher was called the Star of the East, because he was the first man who attained to the highest peak of consciousness: nine stars.

It seems like a five-star hotel! – a nine-star hotel!

And of course when you fall from a nine-star hotel.... The whole movement was crushed. Not only was the Star of the East organization dissolved, the shock was so much that Theosophy started falling apart and withering. Now it is just history.

The problem with Krishnamurti is that now sixtyfive years have passed and still he goes on telling people: ”Die to the past; live in the moment” – continually. It is an obsession. My understanding is that he has not been able to die to his past – his past: those years of discipline, and training, and hypocrisy. Those people who were almost torturing him with yoga discipline – wake up in the morning at three o’clock, take a cold bath, do all the exercises, repeat all the mantras – they have left scars in him.

He says to you, ”Die to the past,” but he has not been able to forgive those people who are all dead.

And he has not been able to forget those early years of torture in the name of training, discipline.

It is a strange coincidence that just for the first time today I have seen J. Krishnamurti on the television screen. One time it happened, I was in Bombay, he was in Bombay, and he wanted to meet me. One of his chief disciples in India came to me and asked me – he knew me and he used to listen to me – ”J. Krishnamurti wants to see you.” I said, ”I have no problem – bring him.”

But he said, ”That is not the Indian way.”

I said, ”Krishnamurti does not believe in Indian or European or American ways.” He said, ”He may not believe in them but everybody else does.” I said, ”I am not going to meet everybody else. You say J. Krishnamurti wants to meet me: bring him. If I wanted to meet him, I would go to him, but I don’t see the need.” But again and again his emphasis was: ”He is older, you are younger” – I must have been only forty at the time, and Krishnamurti was almost double my age.

I said, ”That’s perfectly true, but I don’t see any need to meet him. What am I going to say to him? I have no questions to ask, I have only answers to give. It will look very awkward if I start answering him when he has not asked anything. He will be expecting a question from me. That is impossible –

I have never asked. I have only answers, so what can I do?

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”And of course he is enlightened, so what is the need? – at the most we can sit silently together.

So why unnecessarily take me ten or twelve miles?” And in Bombay ten or twelve miles sometimes means two hours, sometimes three hours. The roads are continuously blocked with all kinds of vehicles. Bombay is perhaps the only city which must have all models of cars. The ancientmost, that God used to drive Adam and Eve out of paradise – that too will be in Bombay. There is no other possibility; it cannot be anywhere else.

I said, ”I am not interested in taking three hours, unnecessarily bothering.... And I have had such experiences before: it is absolutely futile. You go and ask him; if he wants to ask me something perhaps I may think about coming just because of his old age. But I have nothing to ask. If he just wants to see me, then he should take the trouble of coming here.” Of course Krishnamurti was very angry when he heard it. He gets angry easily. That anger is due to his past; he is angry with the past.

Just today I saw a B.B.C. interview with Krishnamurti – that was my first acquaintance with how he looks – and I was simply shattered! Again, it was the same story I was telling you yesterday

– the same story. He has no charisma at all, no impact. I was sorry to see the interview. I know he is enlightened, but it would have been better if I had not seen his face, his gestures, his eyes, because you cannot find in anything even a shadow of enlightenment. The luggage has reached –

the passenger has got lost somewhere on the way.

I still say he is enlightened because I have read thousands of enlightened people’s words –

Krishnamurti’s words are far more accurate in describing the experience. And the way he revolted is perfectly in tune with enlightenment. But there is a difference between revolt and rebellion, a very delicate difference.

Revolt is a reaction.

Rebellion is not a reaction, it is an action.

Please try to see the difference: reaction is bound to remain concerned with the situation it was the reaction to. That’s what keeps dragging him backwards. He cannot drop those shadows – which are nothing but shadows – but he is surrounded by them and he is still reacting to them. While he is speaking to you, it is not you that he is speaking to: you are just an excuse to condemn those dead people who have done something wrong to him.

I think he would have become enlightened anyway, if not in this life then in another life. But if he had been on his own then there would have been a totally different quality to it. Then it would have been an action, not a reaction. Then it would have been a rebellion.

I am not reacting to anything. Whatever I am saying, I am saying not as a reaction to something but as my experience. If it goes against something, that is a separate matter; that is a side effect.

For Krishnamurti, what he is saying is the side effect; his original concern remains to destroy those people and what they did to him. He is ninety years old but those shadows are around him; and because of those shadows he has not been able to flower into a charismatic being. That’s what I saw today: he has no charisma at all.

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Ninety years is a long life. And beginning his career at nine – since the age of nine he has been in the spiritual world for eighty-one years continually. Perhaps nobody ever before has been in the spiritual world that long. But eighty-one years... and that magnet is still missing.

He has been speaking all around the world; he must be one of the most prominent speakers in the whole history of man. Jesus was confined to Judea, Buddha was confined to Bihar, but Krishnamurti has been roaming around the world for all these years. He has only special places where he speaks, for example in India: New Delhi, Bombay, Varanasi and Adyar.

I know about his Bombay meetings because I lived for four years in Bombay, and my sannyasins were going to his meetings and reporting to me. One thing: not more than three thousand people listen to him in Bombay. In Bombay he has been speaking for his whole life, and he comes only one time a year, for two or three weeks. In a week he speaks only twice, or at the most thrice; still there are only three thousand people. And the strangest thing is that you will find almost the same people, most of them very old because for forty years they have been listening to him – the same old fogeys.

Strange: for forty years you have been listening to this man, and neither he seems to get anywhere nor you seem to get anywhere. It has become just a habit: it seems that he has to come to Bombay and you have to listen to him, every year. By and by old people go on dying and a few new people replace them, but the number has never gone beyond three thousand. The same is the situation in New Delhi; the same is the situation in Varanasi... because I have been speaking at his school in Varanasi.

At his school there I asked, ”How many people come here?” They said, ”Fifteen hundred at the most, but they are always the same people.” What impact! And this man has made an arduous effort. Jesus, in three years, created the whole of Christianity – almost the biggest religion in the world, rightly or wrongly. But the day Krishnamurti dies, soon after – except from your Krishnamurti Lake – his name will disappear. I could see the reason why, today.

He is not a man who goes within you, bypassing your intellect, so that your intellect may be struggling but he has already captured your heart – and that is where you are. Intellect may try a little fight, doubt this and that, but if the heart is captured, the intellect is poor.

The intellect has to follow the heart. Yes, if before something reaches your heart the inte]lect catches hold of it, then it can spoil the whole thing.

A charismatic personality means a person who can reach directly to your heart without your intellect being even aware of what is happening, what is transpiring.

By the time the intellect comes to know that the heart is throbbing with some new joy, it is too late.

Intellect cannot undo anything in the heart, that is impossible.

Intellect cannot move backwards. Just as you cannot move backwards in time, intellect cannot move backwards towards the heart: it is just at the gate.

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The charismatic personality somehow enters the gate while the watchman is either away or asleep or is lost in some thoughts.

The moment it hears bells ringing in the heart then the watchman wakes up; but it is too late, somebody has gone in.

And the watchman cannot go in, there is no way – movement backwards for the intellect is not in the nature of things. Yes, if intellect can catch you at the gate, then the heart will never come to know.

And it is the heart that transforms you, connects you, creates a golden bridge.

Intellect is a very superficial thing.

Today, seeing Krishnamurti’s interview I could just feel sad for the man. His whole life he has been working, taking immense trouble, but the result is nil. The reason is not hard to find: he has no charismatic vibe, he has no aura. He is surrounded by past shadows, he is overshadowed by them.

He is anti-orthodox, anti-tradition, anti-convention; but his whole energy has become involved in this hatred.

It is a hate relationship with the past, but it is a relationship all the same. He has not been able to cut himself totally from the past. Perhaps that would have released his energy; it would have opened his charismatic qualities, but that has not been the case.

The people who become interested in him are mere intellectuals remember, I say mere intellectuals

– who don’t know they have a heart too. These intellectuals become interested in him, but these intellectuals are not the people who are going to be transformed. They are just sophists, arguers; and Krishnamurti is unnecessarily wasting his time with these intellectual people of the world.

Remember, I am not saying intelligent people of the world – that is a different category. I am saying mere intellectuals who love to play with words, logic... it is a kind of gymnastics. And Krishnamurti just goes on feeding their intellect.

He thinks that he is destroying their orthodoxy, that he is destroying their tradition, that he is destroying their personality and helping them to discover their individuality. He is wrong, he is not destroying anything. He is just fulfilling their doubts, supporting their skepticism, making them more articulate – they can argue against anything. You may be able to argue against everything in the world, but is your heart for anything, just one single thing?

You can be against everything – that won’t change you.

Are you for something too?

That something is not coming from him.

He just goes on arguing.

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I have met thousands of Krishnamurti-ites, but not a single one of them is transformed. Yes, they are very vocal. You cannot argue with them, you cannot defeat them as far as argument is concerned. Krishnamurti has sharpened their intellect for years and now they are just parrots repeating Krishnamurti.

This is the paradox of Krishnamurti’s whole life. He wanted them to be individuals on their own, and what has he succeeded in doing? They are just parrots, intellectual parrots.

This man, Raosaheb Patvardhan, who wanted me to see Krishnamurti, was one of his old colleagues. He came to know me just in 1965 when I spoke in Poona; he lived in Poona. He is no longer alive. I asked Raosaheb Patvardhan – he was a very respected man – ”You have been so close to Krishnamurti all your life, but what is the gain? I don’t want to hear that tradition is bad, conditioning is bad, and it has to be dropped – I know all that. Put that all aside and just tell me: what have you gained?”

And that old man, who died just six or seven months afterwards, told me, ”As far as gaining is concerned, I have never thought about it and nobody ever asked about it.” But I said, ”Then what is the point? Whether you are for tradition or you are against tradition, either way you are tethered to tradition. When are you going to open your wings and fly? Somebody is sitting on a tree because he loves the tree; somebody else is sitting on the same tree because he hates the tree, and he will not leave the tree unless he destroys it. One goes on watering it, the other goes on destroying it, but both are confined, tethered, chained to the tree.” I asked him, ”When are you going to open your wings and fly? The sky is there. You have both forgotten the sky. And what has the tree to do with it anyway?” That’s why I remembered the incident of my celibate professor and my saying: ”I don’t even hate her.”

I don’t hate any religion.

I simply state the fact:

Religions are nothing but crimes against humanity.

But I am not saying it with any hate in me. I have no love for them, I have no hate for them: I simply state whatsoever is the fact.

So you will find much similarity between what I am saying and what J. Krishnamurti is saying, but there is a tremendous difference. And the difference is that while I am talking to your intellect, I am working somewhere else... hence the gaps. Hence the discourse becomes too long! Any idiot can repeat my discourse in one hour – not me, because I have to do something else too.

So while you are waiting for my words, that is the right time: You are engaged in your head, waiting.

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And I am stealing your heart.

I am a thief!

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CHAPTER 8

Rajneeshism: womb for transformation

6 January 1985 pm in Lao Tzu Grove

Question 1

OSHO,

PLEASE DESCRIBE AN ORTHODOX RAJNEESHEE.

IT is a contradiction in terms, but I will not dispose of the question so easily. I will try to squeeze as much juice out of it as possible.

Yes, there is some way to define the orthodox Rajneeshee. It is going to be a strange definition because two terms which are contradictory to each other are used together. But still I feel it is significant.

The first quality of an orthodox Rajneeshee will be: He will not be orthodox – in no possible sense, in no direction.

He will be totally committed to the spirit of rebellion.

He will fight against everything that is bad but that still goes on burdening human consciousness; things which should have been thrown away long ago.

But because of a strange habit of the human mind, many dead things go on keeping their grip on you; and the more ancient they are, the deeper and stronger is their grip on you. The reason has to be understood.

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Before anything like education came into existence, there was only one way to learn, and that was from the people who were experienced. Naturally, the older generation would teach the younger generation. The older generation had experience, and experience was the only school; there was no alternative. The younger generation had to accept whatever the older generation was saying; there was no way to bypass the older generation.

The older generation was the only source of knowledge, hence the older people became respected.

The older they were, the more respected, because the greater was their experience, the longer was their experience – and it gave them a certain authority.

There was no possible authority to compete with it, the older generation had the whole monopoly.

Because of this situation – and this must have prevailed for thousands of years – the mind has got the habit, and habits die really hard. And habits which have been accumulated over thousands of years become engrained. They become a kind of program in you.

I was criticizing Mahatma Gandhi my whole life but no Gandhian replied to my arguments. I cannot blame them, because there was no argument on their side: whatsoever they would have said would have looked stupid – and they knew it. In private they had admitted to me, ”What you are saying is right, but that you are saying it is not right. Just to say something against a man who is worshipped by millions of people is not right; you are hurting their feelings.” I said, ”Do you mean I have to lie not to hurt their feelings? Do you mean I have to stop saying the truth? – and Gandhi’s whole life can be described as a deep search for truth? He entitled his autobiography, THE STORY OF MY EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH... a man who thinks that his whole life is an experiment with truth. And you are his intimate followers, you have lived with him: you have got some nerve to tell me that I should not say it even though it is true.” In public, not a single Gandhian had the courage to accept what I was saying, but they were not able to find any argument against me either; so they found one thing which in India is tremendously appealing. All the Gandhians all over the country started saying that I was too young, inexperienced; that when I became old enough, I would not say such things. Even Morarji Desai....

He thinks himself to be now the only living successor of Mahatma Gandhi, and he enjoys one thing very much.... Gandhi was called Bapu all over India. Bapu means father, but it is far sweeter than father, closer to daddy or even dad. If it is to be translated exactly I will have to use Jesus’ word for father, abba. That is Aramaic, and it has exactly the same meaning as bapu. Bapu is a Gujarati term. Morarji Desai is also Gujarati; and now he is old enough, ninety, it is time he should be called Bapu – because that’s what Gandhi was called by the whole country.

Morarji Desai was deputy prime minister when he criticized me, and this was the only criticism that I was too young. After a few years, when he was no longer in the government, he wanted to meet me.

He wanted me to help him throw Indira Gandhi from power, and he wanted my advice about what should be done. When I went to see him – it was not like him but now he was in a difficult situation

– he was standing at the gate to receive me. That was not like him – I had seen him before, when he was in power.

He took me by my hand into his house and made me comfortable. A few of my hairs had started becoming grey, so he said, ”Last time your hair was not grey.” From Personality to Individuality

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I said, ”What to do? To prove myself right I am making a tremendous effort to make my hair grey.

Unless my hair is grey, I am wrong.”

He could not understand. I said, ”Let me remind you. You criticized me when you were deputy prime minister of the country, saying that I was too young. Since then I have been trying to become older.

And I still have the same arguments – more strongly, because now I am more experienced. In a way you were right, but as far as I can see, the older I become, the sharper my arguments will be. I don’t see any hope that I can ever accept stupidities – whether they are propounded by Mahatma Gandhi or by God Himself.”

Morarji Desai was very much embarrassed, and I said to him, ”If age is an argument, then have you heard my remark? – that ’Morarji Desai has become senile. If he were a little bit younger he would understand what I am saying. It needs intelligence, and he is senile. And the more senile he becomes, the more idiotic and stupid will be the ideas that have a grip over his mind.’ ” But strangely enough, Kaka Kalelkar, Morarji Desai, Vinoba Bhave, Shankarrao Deo – all great Gandhians in India – used the same argument, that I was young. As if to be young is to commit a crime, as if to be young is enough to be wrong, and nothing else is needed.

I told Shankarrao Deo, ”How old was Jesus Christ when he was crucified? I am older than him – he was only thirty-three. According to your argument, all that he said should be just thrown away, it is just meaningless. What meaning can it have? A man who is just thirty-three, what authority can he have... so inexperienced?

”But,” I said, ”you may be willing to throw out Jesus Christ because you are not a Christian, so let me remind you how old Shankara, the greatest Hindu philosopher was. He was also thirty-three when he died. If age is a determining factor, then Shankara should never be mentioned again – and Shankara has the greatest hold on the Hindu mind.” No, when it is in your favor – when the young are just following the old without having any skepticism

– then their youth is not to be even mentioned. Their youth comes to be questioned only when they are skeptical, when they start raising doubts against the older people.

In ancient times it was impossible... because young people could not give an equal weight to what they were saying; their experience was so small. Now the whole thing has changed, so much so that I can say that it has moved one-hundred-and-eighty degrees. Because of the educational systems, now experience is not the only way to know; in fact it is a very long way to know. By education you can know by a shortcut. What a man may be able to know in ninety years of his life, you can know within one year.

Whatever Bertrand Russell has written in a long life of almost one century, you can read within six months. It actually happened.... Bertrand Russell had a student, Ludwig Wittgenstein, a German, who went through all the books of Bertrand Russell – which is not difficult. Bertrand Russell has written everything that occurred in his mind – he was one of the greatest intellects of any time – but he had to write all that in a long life.

Ludwig Wittgenstein was a young man. He went through all Bertrand Russell’s books because Russell was going to be his teacher and he wanted to be absolutely acquainted with what went on in From Personality to Individuality

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the mind of this man. The day he entered Russell’s class he knew much more than Bertrand Russell knew. Bertrand Russell was ancient; Wittgenstein was very young, but he knew more, because he knew all that Bertrand Russell had written and much more that others had written; much that enemies of Bertrand Russell had written. And he found many fallacies and many loopholes in Bertrand Russell’s writings.

Bertrand Russell was simply shocked, but he was an authentic man, an honest man. He accepted that: ”Ludwig Wittgenstein, although my student, knows far more than I know because he went by a shortcut and I had to go by a long route. He went by a shortcut, became acquainted with everything that I had written, and started arguing against me in such a way that only a tremendously experienced person could.”

Bertrand Russell was so impressed in his few days’ contact with Ludwig Wittgenstein that he said to Wittgenstein, ”Don’t waste your time, you have nothing to learn from me. You already know more.” Wittgenstein used to write a few notes in the class. Bertrand Russell just asked him, ”I would like to see your notes.” And when he saw those notes he said, ”These notes are so significant that they should be published.”

But Wittgenstein said, ”I am not writing for publication, I was just noting down any idea that was coming to me. This book is very raw, it is not a book for publication.” Bertrand Russell said, ”Publish it as it is, and I am going to write the introduction for it.” Those notes have been published and they proved revolutionary. They are just fragments, because they were not written as an essay or an article – just any ideas that came to him. But because the book, TRACTATUS LOGICO-PHILOSOPHICUS, became so famous – it was only a tract, but it became so famous that no other book in philosophy is as famous in this century – and was so profound, it gave an idea to Wittgenstein. He never wrote any other books in a different fashion – it became his style just to write notes, fragments.

The fame of the book proved that when you write an essay your idea has to be spread all over the essay and it loses its intensity, its sharpness. It becomes more understandable but less penetrating.

When it is just like a maxim, a bare, naked statement with no decorations around it, it simply hits deeper, although it will be understood by only very few people – people who have the capacity to see in the seed the whole tree, which is not yet existent but is only a potentiality.

And a man can see in the seed the whole tree.

Wittgenstein’s statements are just like seeds. You will have to figure them out, what potential they have. He does not give you any clue, he simply puts the seed in front of you and goes ahead putting down other seeds. He never tries to connect them; you will have to connect them.

To read Wittgenstein is really an experience. To read anybody else is like having the food chewed for you and then you eating it. With Wittgenstein, it seems he is simply placing the food in front of you: you have to chew it, you have to digest it. You have to find out what it means.

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Ordinarily the philosopher tries to convince you of what he means. He tries to prevent you going astray from his meaning, and he gives you the whole package with all the details. But he leaves nothing for you, no homework for you. He is not helping your intelligence; he is, in fact, destroying you. When you start living on liquid food, soon you will be incapable of digesting solid food. The liquid food will destroy your capacity to digest the solid food.

But Bertrand Russell didn’t say to Wittgenstein, ”You are too young” – no. And that should be the attitude of a genuine thinker.

Education has brought in a new methodology. Within days you can read, just sitting in a library, in a university, all that took Pythagoras his whole life to collect; and it is all available to you. So when a boy comes home from the university... trouble has arisen in the world. In the past it was always the father who was right, the grandfather was even more right. Now it is not so; it is now the young man who is right, because even if the father had been to university, that was thirty years before, and in thirty years so much has changed.

When I entered the university to study psychology, my professor was an old man, well-studied, but all that he knew and had studied was half-a-century old. Those names that he used to quote had been completely forgotten in the world of psychology. Who bothers about Woodworth? And when I told him, ”Woodworth? Are you mad or something? It was perfectly okay before the first world war, but two world wars have happened. Have you been asleep or what? – Woodworth is no longer any authority.” But when my professor was at university Woodworth was the authority. I told him, ”You should read Assagioli.”

He said, ”Assagioli? Who is this fellow?”

I said, ”If you don’t know Assagioli, resign! – because psychology has passed from Freud to Adler, to Jung, to Reich; it has come to Assagioli. Assagioli preaches psychosynthesis; Freud was teaching psychoanalysis, it is just the opposite.” And I told him, ”When I came to study psychology, I did not come here to study some rotten old stuff which is no longer relevant. You died with Woodworth!

What are you doing here? You don’t know the name of Assagioli? – and if you don’t know about psychosynthesis you are out of date.”

I told him, ”You remind me of a madman who lives in front of my house. He comes every day to me, early in the morning when I am just taking tea, for the newspaper. I go on giving him any newspaper

– one month old, two months old – and he takes it joyously and reads it happily. He never bothers about the date.

”I asked the madman,’You are so interested in newspapers, but one thing is strange about it: you don’t bother about dates.’ The madman said,’I am interested in news – when it happened, who cares? And what does it matter that it happened last year or two years before? It happened, that is enough, and I enjoy it.”’

I told this old professor, ”I will come to your house and sort out all the old stuff you are reading.” He said, ”No, you should not come to my house, because you will throw everything away. The way you are talking.... I was really thinking about my reading room, because you will throw away all my books; they all belong to my student days.”

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I told him, ”Then you will have to get up to date, otherwise you sit in the class and I start teaching.

If you are not ready to get up to date, then why bother? You sit – at least you will be learning something. I don’t see that I can learn anything from you. If Woodworth is the end of psychology to you, then....”

He said, ”I will try my best.” He was a nice man, and he accepted the fact that it was true – that many professors would be benefited if they could accept that after they leave the university they never read, they never go to the library. In fact I went to the library and checked: ”How many professors come to the library?” And I was surprised that the librarian said, ”Professors? The library is meant for the students – professors don’t come.”

I said, ”This is something weird. Professors have to be acquainted every day with what is happening, because things are moving so fast, and they are stuck thirty years, forty years back.” In these years so much progress has happened in knowledge that you cannot compare these thirty years with the past three thousand years. What has not happened in three thousand years has happened in thirty years; and what has happened in three years has not happened in the past thirty years.

You can see the fact that now scientific discoveries are not published in book form, they are published in periodicals as papers, for the simple reason that by the time you finish the book it will be already out of date. The book will take time, perhaps one year, to write properly in the old format – giving all notes, footnotes, appendix – and it will take one year or two years to finish it. But by that time somebody else may have already published papers which are far more profound than your book. So the scientist today rushes immediately to publish whatsoever he has found, in the smallest paper, in a periodical. One never knows what is going to happen tomorrow.

So now the younger man knows more than the older. The fresher your knowledge, the better. But it was not so in the past. It is not yet so in the uneducated countries – for example in India where only two percent of the people are really well educated. They say eight percent of the people are educated; but six percent are ”educated” because they can write their signature, nothing else. Even if we count those, then too ninety-two percent of the people in the villages are uneducated.

In the villages it is still the routine: the father knows; the son has to accept it – and the grandfather knows even more. The older the person, the more respectable, because he is more wise. It is not strange that all the religions paint God as a very old, ancient man. Have you ever seen God painted as a young man in blue jeans? That will not suit Him, it will look insulting, but really that should be the case today.

The way you have been painting God in the past was okay; at that time the older was the wiser –

naturally you could not paint God as a young man. But now, the older is simply out of date; the younger, the more up-to-date, is more correct, closer to the truth.

If you want God to be closer to the truth, put Him in blue jeans. It will look a little odd because He has never been in blue jeans. He may feel a little difficulty, but what to do? – things have changed.

But the mind goes on keeping, somewhere deep inside, the program.

My sannyasin has to be absolutely unorthodox.

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I will not say anti-orthodox, for the simple reason that if you are anti-orthodox....

Perhaps in

America I should not say anti-orthodox; here they say ”ant-eye-orthodox”! I cannot say that, it is so ludicrous. ”Sem-eye-automatic weapons”.... These Yankees are doing strange things with a beautiful language. No, I will continue my own way.

I will not call my people anti-orthodox, because if you are anti – , somehow you are still attached. It is as an enemy, not as a friend, but there is a relationship. It is not of love but of hate, and hate is a far more binding relationship than love.

Have you observed that love is very momentary? – comes and goes just like a breeze. It is here, and you feel so full of love towards someone that you cannot imagine that this love can ever disappear.

In such moments people get romantic, start saying things which are only allowed for mad people or poets. But that moment is so overwhelming, they start saying, ”I will love you forever!” And it is true

– for the moment. They are not lying, that’s what they are feeling in the moment, that: ”If there are other lives I cannot conceive of loving anybody else than you.” Still the person is not lying, he is absolutely honest. He is so full of love that he feels this is how it is going to be, that life is going to be too short to fulfill this love, to share this love. But he is not aware that it is just a breeze which comes from one side, from one door, and moves on to the other side, to the other door, leaving you in the same state as you were before, again back on the earth.

Those wings had suddenly appeared, and you were flying high – ”higher and higher, Osho, higher and higher.” Those wings... then you look all around. and they are not there. Suddenly you feel lower and lower, lower and lower. You are not even on plain ground, you are falling into a ditch!

Love is momentary – it fades.

But hate seems to be far stronger.

You fall in love, you fall out of love.

But once you fall in hate....

It is rarely heard that a man has fallen out of hate. He is stuck, glued. Hate has some force, it keeps you glued to it. Enemies remain enemies for generations.

In my neighborhood – and neighbors are the worst enemies; where else can you find better enemies than your neighbors? Perhaps it was an afterthought of Jesus Christ’s.... First he said, ”Love your enemies as yourself.” Then later on he said, ”Love your neighbors as yourself.” That is a second thought, because neighbors are really the enemies. You don’t have to go far away in search of enemies, you find them just by your side.

So the family that lived by the side of my house had been my family’s enemy for generations. I was prohibited from going into their compound, into their garden, and I was not to play with their children as ”they are our enemies.”

I simply said, ”They may be your enemies. I have not even been friends of theirs, how can I be their enemy? At least first let me get acquainted.”

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My father said, ”You should not argue about it. We have been fighting in the courts, we have been fighting physically... and this has gone on. This enmity is something that has become almost sacred.” I said, ”I am no longer a part of it. I am going to play with their children and I am going into their garden, because they have more beautiful mangos than you have. They have such a beautiful....” There is a special type of well that is made in India.

I don’t know whether it is made in any other country or not. It is an old type. On one side you can draw water by a bucket with a rope, but on the other side it has steps. It is called a baodi. So if by chance you don’t have a bucket and a rope, you can go down by the steps and get the water.

Particularly in places by the side of the road in a jungle, they will make a baodi, not a well, because sometimes a traveler may be thirsty but may not have the means to reach the water, so both possibilities have to be made available to him. If he can pull the water out, that is best, that is preferable. The alternative is only for an emergency, because people going close to the water may dirty it, may start drinking just with their hands. So to go down is not encouraged very much. But I enjoyed this way because then I could have a good bath in our neighbor’s well.

I said to my father, ”Your well is simply a well, and they have a baodi. Your enmity, you take care of; your forefathers have taken care of it – I am not interested in it. And they have nice children and they are good people, why should I be inimical to them? We don’t know in what circumstances your forefathers and their forefathers became enemies. And what has that to do with us? – we have never fought. And whenever I have gone there they have always welcomed me joyously, for the simple reason that they could not believe it:’It has not happened for centuries between the two families.”’ I was the first to break the barrier.

The neighbors were very happy; they said, ”We wanted to break the barrier, but who should take the initiative? They would seem to be weak.”

I said, ”I am not coming to you out of any weakness. I cannot understand what kind of intelligence you and my family have. You don’t even know the names of the people who started this fight.” –

neither my father knew, nor they knew who was the first – and you go on fighting. It has become almost a religion to you.

”I am not coming out of any weakness, I am coming from strength. I have come to tell you that it is sheer stupidity to prolong this hatred so long. Nobody prolongs love so long, so why hate? And moreover I am not interested in you, I am interested in the mangos, in your baodi; and I have to enter this compound. Whether you are enemies or friends, that is your business.” I told my father, ”Nobody can prevent me from going there. And they have received me, welcomed me, and said,’We always wanted to break this thing, but who should take the initiative?’ I think anybody who has more intelligence should take the initiative, the stupid will lag behind.” And slowly, slowly, because my family could not force me – they knew the more they forced me, the more I would be there. I told my father, ”If you insist too much I will start sleeping there, I will start eating there; and they really have invited me.”

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He said, ”Okay, I won’t insist on anything, but don’t eat anything offered by them. They are enemies

– they can poison you.”

I said, ”Forget all about it. They are nice people. I know them more than you do or your forefathers did. I am going there every day, they are so nice. They have not even prevented me from jumping in their well, just for the simple reason that’this is the first person from the other family to enter our compound; let him have a bath in the baodi. Don’t prevent him – it doesn’t look good. After so many generations, the first person has entered, has dared to.’

”And don’t be worried about me being poisoned, because I have already eaten things from them. I have not told you because I knew this is what you would say. So first I had to eat and see that there was no poison, and there was nobody interested in poisoning anybody. They don’t prevent me from taking their mangos and their other fruits, simply for the reason that this is the first person from our family who has come into their compound. I am going to invite their children into our compound, into our garden, and I would expect you to be at least gentlemanly.” And when I started bringing their children, of course my family was nice to them. How can you be against small children who have never done anything, who have just come into the world?

But hate has a very long life.

Love has a very short life.

Perhaps that’s the way things are.

There are so many roses in the morning, but by the evening their petals have started falling, they are disappearing. But the rock? It was there in the morning, it will be there in the evening, it will be there again the next morning. Many roses will come and go and the rock will remain.

Hate is something rocky.

Love is something like a flower.

So I will not say, then, that my people have to be anti-orthodox, anti-traditional, anti-conventional.

No, they have to be unorthodox, unconventional, untraditional.

Unorthodox means you are not related to orthodoxy in any way, positive or negative. You are indifferent, you couldn’t care less. You are not for, you are not against, you are simply not interested

– because ”for” and ”against” are just different sides of your interest.

So an orthodox Rajneeshee will be unorthodox in every possible way.

His life will be a life of continuous rebellion.

Let me repeat: continuous rebellion.

Rebellion is a continuum.

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It is something like a river that goes on flowing.

It is not like a water tank.

That’s the difference between revolution and rebellion.

Revolution is like a water tank – the French revolution, the Russion revolution, the Chinese revolution... Just look at what happened. The Russian revolution happened, but it is not a continuum.

it happened in 1917, then what happened to it? It also died in 1917. Since then there has been no revolution in Russia.

Since then revolution has become their orthodoxy, since then revolution has become their tradition, since then revolution has become their status quo. it is not flowing, it is not moving: it is stuck at 1917. They pay respect to that date every year. They pay homage to the great revolution that happened in 1917. What kind of revolutionaries are these, who look backwards?

Even God is not so much of a reactionary as the Russian communist is today.

You can see it clearly: God has not given you twe eyes at the back of your head. A right God – right according to all the orthodoxies – should have really given you eyes behind your head, not in front, because what use are your eyes in front? You have to see backwards, not forwards.

It happened in India: a man with his friend was going from Jabalpur to Nagpur – it is not very far, just the distance from here to Portland – on a motorbike. It was cold on the motorbike and the winds were blowing against them. So the man who was driving the bike had a an idea; he turned his coat back-to-front because the winds were too cold, and this way was more protective. But they had an accident, perhaps because of that coat, and he was wearing a helmet...

Somebody was coming from the opposite direction – a sardarji, a Sikh driver. Ninety percent of drivers in India are Sikh sardar drivers; I don’t know why they have chosen that profession. in the night, seeing a man sitting on a bike backwards, the sardar lost his nerve. He could not hold his steering wheel properly, and there was an accident. And that was not the end of the whole thing, there is still something more – this is just the beginning!

The sardar got out to see what happened. He found this motorcyclist and thought, ”My God! it seems in the accident his head has gone round the other way.” Sardars are sardars: he forcibly turned the man’s head according to the direction of the coat. The man was then still alive, but now no longer. He had tried to somehow get out of the hands of the sardar, but you can’t get out of the hands of a sardar – they are strong people and absolute idiots – and he wouldn’t listen to the motorcyclist. he said to him, ”You keep quiet!” The sardar turned the man’s head, and he was quiet forever.

I reached there at that point – I was coming from Nagpur – and I saw what was happening. I asked the sardar, ”What is the matter, sardarji?”

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truck to help these people, I saw one man unconscious and this other man... his head must have been turned around.”

I went to see. I said, ”Sardarji, you have killed the man! It was not his head but his coat that was turned around. And it is simple: it is so windy and the wind is blowing in this direction. This poor man must have turned his coat around.”

The sardar said, ”Is that so? Then I should have changed the coat rather than change the direction of his head... because he was alive and I told him to shut up! And then I tried to tell him,’Now you can open your mouth, you can speak. Say what you want, where I should take you in my truck; I can take you. Forgive me that I told you to shut up’ – but he did not speak at all.” I said, ”Now he is dead. Now don’t bother him anymore! And don’t tell any of this story to anyone; otherwise you will be caught, because you have done two things – the accident, and the greater accident that you turned his head around.”

God has given you eyes to look forwards.

And the people who are for tradition or against tradition are always looking backwards.

J. Krishnamurti is anti-orthodox, anti-traditional, anti-conventional. That’s where my differences with him are: I am unorthodox, untraditional, unconventional. So an orthodox Rajneeshee – and remember, whenever you write ”orthodox Rajneeshee,” put it in inverted commas because it is a contradiction in terms – will be a continuous rebellion. Not just a revolution that happens once and is finished: then it itself becomes a tradition.

Jesus was a revolutionary, but Christianity is not. Buddha was a revolutionary, but Buddhism is not, because the revolution happened twenty-five centuries past. We have left it far behind.

Now the Christian is as much orthodox as the Jews who crucified Jesus. If Jesus comes again he is sure to be crucified by the Vatican. This time, of course, the scene will not be in Jerusalem, the scene will be in the Vatican; but a crucifixion is certain.

It happened: I was staying with a Christian family in Hyderabad. The whole day I was engaged in meetings and interviews. In the night when I was just going to sleep, my friend, who was much older than me, said to me, ”The whole day I could not find you and I did not want to disturb your appointments, but I have a problem. It is late at night and you are going to rest – forgive me – but I have to tell you.

”My young son was a Jesus freak. Nobody took it seriously, and there was nothing wrong in it, that he was continuaUy reading the BIBLE and quoting the BIBLE. We thought that it was just a phase and it would go, but unfortunately now the Jesus freak is no more a Jesus freak, he has become Jesus Christ!

”For two months now we have been really concerned. Up to being a Jesus freak it was okay: You read Jesus’ sayings – we are Christians – you worship Jesus.... That too is okay, although it was getting a little weird because twenty-four hours a day of ”Jesus, Jesus....” We are also Christians; From Personality to Individuality

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on Sunday we go to church for one hour, and that’s enough. Jesus is satisfied with one hour every Sunday. You don’t have to devote your whole life to him; there are other things also to be done. And we cannot do miracles – turn stones into bread, water into wine, so we have to earn our bread and do other things. One hour is enough, all that we can devote.

”But still we tolerated it, thinking that this phase would pass – just the foolishness of a young man who has become obsessed with an idea – but now this is not a phase: he has become Jesus Christ.

Now he is no longer quoting Jesus Christ, he simply speaks on his own authority. Now he has become a laughingstock.

”He is standing on the crossroads declaring that he is Jesus Christ, and people laugh and urchins throw stones. Now we are really concerned and sad. His whole career is finished, and you cannot make a career out of being Jesus Christ. Everybody knows what happened to Jesus! – even he was not able to make a career out of it, so how can my son make a career out of it?

”Who is going to give this man a job? He is a postgraduate, a first-class post-graduate – he could get a good job – but for Jesus Christ, even if he is a first class, nobody.... The moment they hear that he thinks he is Jesus Christ they will say,’It will be difficult, because we need an assistant manager, and Jesus Christ as assistant manager? The place is not worthy of him!’ So what to do?” I said, ”Tomorrow morning I will have to talk with Jesus Christ – what else to do? Let me meet him.” I knew the young man – I had stayed in the family before. And I knew that he was a freak, but he had never bothered me, although I was staying in the family. He knew that if he was a freak, then I was a double freak! So once and for all I had settled it: ”You remember – with me this BIBLE and this Jesus Christ won’t do; you better torture others. Moreover, I am a guest in your house, you behave like a host.” So he had understood it perfectly well, but that was when he was only a freak – now he was Jesus Christ.

I said to his father, ”First let me be acquainted... what is the situation?” So the next morning, rather than his father bringing him to me, I went into his room and I said, ”Hello, Jesus Christ.” He said, ”You said ’Jesus Christ!’”

I said. ”Yes.”

He said, ”But nobody believes me – not my father, not my mother, even my friends have left me.

Since I became Jesus Christ I don’t have any friends.” I said, ”You can rely upon me. I don’t like freaks, but Jesus Christ.... It is a great idea! You come with me. Now we can talk, now we are in the same boat.” He said, ”What do you mean?”

I said, ”Just come. We are in the same boat; you will understand what I mean.” I tried in many ways, but he was very defensive and very alert that maybe his father was behind me, working through me and trying to persuade him to come down and just be a Jesus freak: ”Now, this is too much. This is From Personality to Individuality

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the twentieth century, and it will be difficult.... Even in Jesus’ time is was very difficult, this time it is going to be more difficult.”

But he wouldn’t listen to anything. Then his father came, and I said to his father, ”I think he IS Jesus Christ. Now what he needs is crucifixion.”

The young man said, ”What!”

I said, ”Without crucifixion you won’t come to your senses.” He said, ”Crucifixion!”

The father also was shocked when I said he needed crucifixion, but I said, ”Make arrangements.” And the young man said, ”Are you serious?”

I said, ”I am always serious; and I told you that if you are a Jesus freak, I am double that. If you are Jesus Christ, I am double that too. I will see that you are crucified; and until the resurrection I am going to remain here.”

He just went to his father and he said, ”Forgive me, I am just a Jesus freak. I don’t want to be crucified because I don’t think I will be able to resurrect. That is too much trouble.” For two thousand years Christians have been looking backwards; for two thousand five hundred years Buddhists have been looking backwards. If you look around the world you will see everybody’s eyes are turned backwards; and do you know, we are always moving forwards. Our legs are going forwards and our eyes are focused backwards.

Even for a man like J. Krishnamurti it makes no difference: Your eyes still remain focused backwards.

Now you are an enemy; first you were a friend. But to me it makes no difference because your eyes are still looking backwards.

Hence I prefer the word rebellion – because revolutions have happened but they have always become static, they freeze too quickly. A new orthodoxy is created, a new convention is created: new gods, new heaven, new hell – everything is new, but soon it starts becoming old.

Now sixty years have passed since the Russian revolution; more than sixty years, now it is a sixty-year-old tradition. Marx, Engels and Lenin are their trinity; DAS KAPITAL is their BIBLE, their KORAN, their GITA.

And strangely this similarity is such that one cannot believe it. Neither the Mohammedan reads the KORAN... he worships it but does not read it. Who has the time to read the KORAN? And it is good in a way that he does not read it, because if he reads it he won’t worship it because there is nothing in it worth worshipping.

You can either worship it or you can understand it. Once you understand it, it is finished; there is nothing much in it to understand. So the religious priesthood is not interested in your understanding the KORAN, the BIBLE, the GITA, no: they are interested that you go on worshipping them.

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This is fossilized revolution.

Yes, those words spoken by Jesus had fire in them.

They were words on fire.

But in the BIBLE do you think you will find fire?

It would have burned the BIBLE long ago.

In the BIBLE you will find a hairlock your mother has been keeping from the days when your father used to love her and she had cut a few of his hairs. They are in the BIBLE – where else to keep them? The BIBLE is the safest place; even a thief is not going to steal it.

You will find strange things in BIBLES. Your daughter or your sister may be keeping her love letters in the BIBLE, because that is the best place. Neither the father opens it nor the mother opens it; nobody ever opens it. Phone numbers which are very important and secret and which you don’t want everybody to know – keep them in the BIBLE. The BIBLE is a great safe deposit with no lock.

It goes on gathering dust. You can write your name on any Bible with just your finger, because there will be enough dust – no need for any ink or any color.

These are revolutions.

Once there was fire.

But now there are only ashes left.

My sannyasin has not to look backwards.

He has not to think of a revolution that happened in the past. No, he has to live the revolution every day.

And his revolution is never going to stop. That’s why I call it rebellion, just to make the distinction.

His rebellion is something alive.

It is not an incident in history.

It is an explosion in his being.

It has nothing to do with time.

It has something to do with his inner space.

And then it is a continuity.

He lives it. He breathes it.

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It is his heartbeat.

My sannyasin can never become orthodox: How can a constant rebellion be converted into an orthodoxy? That’s why you will find my statements so contradictory.

The reason is that I have never read any of my books, so I don’t know what is in them. It helps me immensely, because then I don’t have to bother about whether I am contradicting myself changing, saying something else. It keeps me free. If you ask me, then whatsoever I am saying right now is the truth. Tomorrow will take care of itself I cannot guarantee that this will be the truth for tomorrow too, because tomorrow.... The whole universe is in a continuous flux.

I am not giving you dead rocks.

I am offering you living flowers.

What it will be like tomorrow neither I nor anyone else can say.

Only tomorrow will bring the revelation.

I have been constantly inconsistent so that you will never be able to make a dogma out of me. You will simply go nuts if you try. I am leaving something really terrible for scholars. They will not be able to make any sense out of it. They will go nuts; and they deserve it, they should go nuts. But nobody can create an orthodoxy out of me, it is impossible.

If Christianity is possible, then of course Jesus is responsible. His words may have been fiery but they were too consistent; it was too easy to make a dogma out of them. He was not careful enough.

He made such simple statements that anybody could make a catechism out of them.

From my words you can get burned, but you will not be able to find any kind of theology, dogmatism.

You can find a way to live but not a dogma to preach.

You can find a rebellious quality to be imbibed, but you will not find a revolutionary theme to be organized.

My words are not only on fire.

I am putting gunpowder also here and there, which will go on exploding for centuries. I am putting more than needed – I never take any chances.

Almost each sentence is going to create trouble for anybody who wants to organize a religion around me.

Yes, you can have a loose community, a commune.

Remember the word loose: everybody

independent, everybody free to live his own way, to interpret me in his own way, to find whatsoever he wants to find. He can find the way he wants to live – and everybody unto himself.

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There is no need for somebody to decide what my religion is. I am leaving it open-ended. You can work out a definition for yourself, but it is only for yourself; and that too you will have to continuously change. As you understand me more and more, you will have to change it. You cannot go on holding it like a dead thing in your hand. You will have to change it, and it will go on changing you simultaneously.

One great Master, Nan In, was on his deathbed. He is one of those people who I can say was religious, really religious. His whole life is full of incidents, anecdotes, stories, which give a clear indication of a man of tremendous insight.

He was dying. He had told his disciples, ”I would not like my death to be mourned. because it is not death, so you will be unnecessarily wasting your tears and crying and weeping. And I will be laughing from the other shore, because I will see,’These fools! The whole of my life I have wasted, and they have not understood a simple thing.’

”I would like you to dance and sing and laugh and rejoice, because death is not death. I am going, leaving this house because it is no longer useful. This body is now more of a trouble than a convenience; I am just changing it. So there is no need to mourn. You should be happy that your Master is going into a new life.”

To whatever he said they listened, but their faces were showing that they were all ready to burst into tears. They were sad – and who would not be sad when a man like Nan In leaves the world? But Nan In had made arrangements.... He said, ”A few things to be remembered... this is my will.” In the East it is a tradition, perhaps in the West also, that before you burn or bury a body you wash the body and put new clothes on it. I know the reason in the East is that he is going on a faraway journey; maybe there will be some chance to have a bath, or maybe not. And certainly he will need new clothes, so new clothes are given, a bath is given. This is just a way to say goodbye from this shore: ”From now onwards we cannot help, you take care of yourself.” Nan In said, ”Don’t give me a bath because I have just taken one. And I don’t like baths in such a cold winter; even if I am dead, I don’t want another bath. I have taken one which was necessary.

I have done it myself because I was concerned that if you give me a bath I won’t know how much water you pour in, how cold, and what else you do. I have taken my bath, so that ritual has not to be done.

”And don’t change my clothes. You see, I have already changed, because I don’t like clothes which don’t fit, which are too loose or too tight. You know I am fussy about that, so I have my dress ready

– you can see it is new.” And they saw that he had taken a bath and he did have a new robe.

Nan In said, ”So these two things are not to be done – this is my will – but anything else you want to do, you do. Don’t weep, don’t cry, don’t mourn. That would not be the right kind of goodbye for me”

– and he died.

And although he had said, ”don’t cry” – but what to do? Tears are not in your hands, just to stop or... To lose such a man, such a tremendously alive man, disappearing into who knows what. ”And how much he has given! Now towards whom are we going to look? Questions will be torturing us, From Personality to Individuality

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doubts will be arising and who is going to say,’Don’t be worried, continue: you are on the right track and the goal is not far away.’ And his voice was enough to bring courage again, strength again. Now who is going to help?”

They were crying and they were weeping, but they could not manage to do it for long. People like Nan In are really creative geniuses. When his body was put on the funeral pyre they all started laughing in spite of themselves; tears were coming to their eyes. It was a strange situation: that man had hidden in his clothes many things – firecrackers and small bombs!

That’s why he had prevented them from changing his dothes, that’s why he had taken his own bath.

And his dress was specially made with many pockets inside where he was hiding almost a three-hour celebration. The people were laughing and crying, and the bombs were bursting and firecrackers were going off – colorful, beautiful, because in Japan they make the best. Nothing can be compared with Japanese firecrackers, they make them in such artful ways.

What Nan In was continually telling these people appeared in the sky, in writing: ”Beware!” A firecracker would go up and burst into small, flower – like pieces and they all would fall together and make the word, ”Beware.”

His disciples were looking at the sky and they forgot completely that it was a funeral; it became a beautiful exhibition of fireworks! They realized only as the fire died out and the body was consumed by the fire... only then did they realize that that man had been doing the same thing his whole life.

He had even made arrangements before dying so that after death also his work would continue in the same way, uninterrupted. Death made no difference: Nan In was still doing the same thing.

In the same way, in each of my words... I am putting enough fire, enough explosives to go on exploding for centuries!

Nobody can be an ”orthodox Rajneeshee” unless you change the whole meaning of ”orthodox Rajneeshee” to be according to me, as I described to you.

If by ”orthodox Rajneeshee” you can mean one who is untraditional, unconventional, unorthodox; rebellious as a continuity, with rebellion as his life...

with no tight, regimented, bureaucratic,

hierarchical organization, but just an open commune of friends who are only agreed upon one thing

– that they love this crazy man....

On everything else they can disagree.

Their whole orthodoxy is confined to only one thing: That they love this crazy man.

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The law of karma: A conspiracy of the priests to manipulate your mind

7 January 1985 pm in Lao Tzu Grove

Question 1

OSHO,

WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THE LAW OF KARMA?

I have very little to say about it – but it will still take two and a half hours!

The law of karma, in the first place, is not a law. That word gives it an aroma as if it is something scientific, like the law of gravitation. It is merely a hope, not a law at all.

It has been hoped for centuries that if you do good you will attain to good results. It is a human hope in existence which is absolutely neutral. If you look at nature, there are laws – the whole of science is nothing but discovery of those laws – but science has not come even close to detecting anything like the law of karma. Yes, it is certain that any action is going to bring certain reactions, but the law of karma is hoping for much more.

If you simply say any action is bound to produce some reactions, it is possible to have scientific support for it. But man is hoping for much more. He is asking that a good action inevitably brings a good consequence with it, and the same with a bad action. Now, there are many things implied in this.

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First, What is good?

Each society defines good according to itself.

What is good to a Jew is not good to a Jaina; what is good to a Christian is not good to a Confucian.

Not only that, what is good in one culture is bad in another culture.

A law has to be universal. For example, if you heat water to one hundred degrees centigrade, it will evaporate – in Tibet, in Russia, in America, even in Oregon. In Oregon it will be a little puzzled, but all the same at one hundred degrees water will evaporate.

A law has to be universal if it is a scientific law. If it is a law created by people themselves, by creating a constitution, a legal system, then it is nothing to do with science and nothing to do with existence. Then it is applicable only within the society that creates it. It is arbitrary, artificial. You can change it – and laws do go on changing. Something that was legal yesterday is illegal today; what is illegal today, tomorrow may become legal. These are man-made laws.

Certainly the law of karma is neither a scientific law nor part of any legal system. Then what kind of law is it? It is a hope. A man wandering in immense darkness, groping his way, clings to anything that gives a little hope, a little light – because what you observe in life itself is something totally different from the law of karma. A man who is a well-known criminal may succeed and become the president, the prime minister; or vice versa: he was not a criminal before, but when he becomes the president or prime minister of a country he becomes a criminal.

Lord Acton’s famous statement I have thought about from every possible angle, and I have found it always gives some new insight. Acton says: Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

I don’t think so, because I don’t see it happening the way Lord Acton is saying. But Lord Acton was speaking from his whole life’s experience; he was a politician himself, and what he was saying was not unfounded.

Still, I dare to disagree with him, because my understanding is that power certainly corrupts, but it corrupts only a person who was potentially corruptible.

He may not have been known as corrupted before because he had no opportunity, he had no power.

But power itself cannot corrupt a man who has no potential for corruption. So it is not the power that is corrupting the man; in fact the power is simply revealing the man to you. The power is making actual what was only potential; it is exposing the person to you and to himself.

If you look in a mirror and you see an ugly face, are you going to say that the mirror corrupts? The poor mirror simply reflects. If you have an ugly face what can the mirror do about it?

I have heard about a mad woman, who whenever she came across a mirror would immediately destroy it. She was ugly, but her belief was that mirrors were the reason for her ugliness. If there were no mirror she would not be ugly. Perfect logic!

In a certain way she is not being absolutely illogical. If she were alone on the earth – no mirror, no eyes, because eyes are also mirrors – do you think she would be ugly? Alone on the earth without From Personality to Individuality

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any mirrors, without any eyes to mirror her, she would be just herself, neither beautiful nor ugly.

But she would just be the same. The change that has happened is that now she cannot see her reflection. Nothing has changed, only the reflectors have been removed.

The same is true about Lord Acton’s famous dictum, ”Power corrupts” – it seems so.

I would like to say that power mirrors.

If you are potentially ready to be corrupted, power gives you the chance. And if you have an absolute potential – like an Adolf Hitler, a Joseph Stalin, a Mussolini – then what can power do about it?

Power is simply available to you.

You can do much with it.

If you are a corruptible person you will do what you always wanted to do but did not have the power to do. But if you are not potentially corruptible, then it is impossible for power to corrupt you. You will use the power, but it will not be corruption, it will be creation.

It will not be destructive:

It will be a blessing to people.

And if you have the potential of being a blessing to people, then absolute power will be an absolute blessing in the world.

But man’s life has many strange things in it. Only the potentially corruptible person moves towards power. The potentially good person has no desire for power. The will-to-power is the need of a corrupted being, because he knows that without power he will not be able to do what he wants to do.

Adolf Hitler first wanted to be an architect, but all the schools of architecture refused him because he had no potential as an architect. He could not even draw a straight line. He wanted to become an artist – if not an architect, then an artist – but no school would accept him. If the school of architecture was not going to accept him, then.... Art, particularly painting, needs an even greater caliber, and he had no talent for art. Disappointed everywhere, rejected from everywhere, he started moving towards power.

Adolf Hitler’s will-to-power was really strong. A man who was not able to become an architect or a painter became so powerful that the whole destiny of humanity was in his hands. But you will be surprised to know that the first thing that he did after he became powerful, absolutely powerful, was to make designs for buildings: architecture. He made the designs for many ugly structures. And the government had to build them because, although no architect was ready to accept that these designs were worth even a second look, if they were coming from Adolf Hitler you could not reject them. Their rejection would mean your death, because that was the only language he knew: Either you are with me or you are no more.

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It is one of the blessings of the second world war that all Adolf Hitler’s great buildings were destroyed; otherwise he would have left those ugly structures behind. But his designs have been found, and they are enough proof that this man simply had no qualities to conceive buildings.

The moment Adolf Hitler became powerful, in his spare moments he was painting; and of course, then, everybody had to appreciate his paintings. And none of his paintings were worth calling a painting; they were just a wastage of canvas and color, without any significance. Not only that, they were ugly, nauseating. If you had kept his painting in your bedroom, in the night you would have suffered nightmares.

Power brings into actuality what is hidden in you.

But strangely, the good man has no need to be powerful, because good can manifest without power.

There is no need for good to have power.

Good has its own intrinsic power.

Evil needs some outside power to support it.

Kahlil Gibran has written a beautiful story. This single man has written so many beautiful stories that there seems to be no comparison to him in the whole history of man. This story is a very small story, and that is where Kahlil Gibran’s beauty is. He does not write big stories that can be made into films; his stories are only of a few lines, but penetrating – to the very depths of man.

The story is: God created the world, and He created everything else that was needed. He looked around and He felt that two things were missing: beauty and ugliness. So the last things He created were beauty and ugliness. Naturally, He gave beauty beautiful clothes and to ugliness, ugly clothes; and He dropped them from heaven to come to the earth.

It is a long journey, and by the time they reached the earth they were feeling tired and dusty, so the first thing they decided to do was to take a bath. It was early morning, the sun was just rising, and they went to a lake, dropped their clothes on the bank and both jumped in. It was really refreshing and cool, and they enjoyed it.

Beauty went swimming far into the lake, and when she looked back, she was surprised; ugliness was missing. She came back and she found that her clothes were missing too. Then beauty understood what had happened: ugliness has taken her clothes and run away. The story ends: since then ugliness is hidden in the clothes of beauty, and beauty is compulsorily wearing the clothes of ugliness. Beauty is running after ugliness, searching for her, but she has not yet been able to find her.

It is a beautiful story. Ugliness needs something to hide itself behind, to help it pretend – to have a false mask. Beauty had not thought about it at all; the idea had not even occurred to her that this was possible, that ugliness would steal her clothes and run away.

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energy. That, good brings with itself. He will create music, he will compose poetry, he will sculpt beauty in marble; he will do something for which power is not needed. All that is needed is already provided for him. That’s the beauty of good, that it is intrinsically powerful.

Let it be very clearly understood: You can be certain that anything that needs power from outside is not good. It is something intrinsically impotent; it will live on borrowed life.

So in life this strange situation happens: bad people reach good positions, become respectable or honored, not only in their time but throughout history. It is full of their names.

In history, Gautam Buddha, Mahavira, Kanad, Gautam, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu – people like these you will not find even in the footnotes. And Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Nadirshah, Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler – they make up the major portion of history. In fact, we have to write the whole of history again because all these people have to be completely erased.

Even the memory of them should not be carried on, because even their memory may have evil effects on people.

A better humanity will not give these names even a place in the footnotes; there is no need. They were nightmares; it is better they are completely forgotten so they don’t follow you like shadows.

And we have to discover people who have lived on this earth and made it in every way beautiful; shared their joy, their dance, their music, shared their ecstasies – but lived anonymously. People have completely forgotten even their names.

People don’t have any idea how many religious people have lived on this earth and are not known.

The reason that you know those few names that are known, is not simply that they were religious –

there are some extra reasons. Just think: If Jesus was not crucified, would you have ever heard his name? So it is not Jesus – not his qualities, not his goodness – but crucifixion which makes him a historical figure.

You know Gautam the Buddha, not because he was an enlightened man, but because he was the son of a very great king. And when the son of such a great king renounces his kingdom, of course the whole country far and wide buzzes with his name. It is not because he is religious but because he has renounced such a big kingdom – the same kingdom that you have been aspiring to and dreaming of perhaps for many lives. And this man has some nerve – he just drops the whole kingdom without ever looking back.

That’s why you remember Gautam Buddha. Somewhere they have to mention his name because he was a king who renounced his kingdom. If he had been a poor man’s son then nobody would have even heard about him. And there have been many whose names are not known at all. Even while they were alive only a few people came to feel that they had a different kind of presence. Goodness has its own intrinsic power, and it has its own benefit, blessing. It is not somewhere else in some other life – that if you do good now, in your other life you will get paid for it. That is a strange kind of law – and that’s what the law of karma is.

If you are living a poor, miserable, suffering life, the law of karma says it is because in a past life you committed evil acts – this is the result of them. If somebody is enjoying good health, money, power, all the joys of life, you need not be jealous of him: he has done good deeds in a past life and now he is reaping the crop. He has sown the seeds in his past life.

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But why so much distance between sowing the seeds and reaping the crop? Is it that always in one life you do good or bad, and in another life comes the result? To me there seems to be some conspiracy in it. It is not a law, it is a conspiracy, because the priest cannot manage to explain why somebody is rich when everybody knows that what he is doing is evil – and still he goes on becoming richer. And we know that somebody is good, but he is starving. So what good is good?

Now, the priesthood is in a difficulty to explain this situation which is occurring everywhere. Good people will be found in every corner of the earth – poor, starving, suffering. Bad people will be successful. The cunning – who are ready to cut anybody’s throat, who have cut many people’s throats, who have been stepping up on people’s heads towards power and riches, who have used people as if they were things – they have all that should really belong to the good people.

How is the priest going to explain it away? He has found a way: the law of karma. He cannot explain it herenow so he shifts the whole scene. He makes death come in between your actions and their results; results will be after death, in the next life. But why? You put your hand in the fire and you will be burned in the next life? If you put your hand in the fire now, you will be burned now.

So any priest, any monk, anybody coming from the East talking about the law of karma – take him to the fireplace. Tell him, ”Put your hand in the fire so we can see whether the law of karma works herenow. Or does it take so much time that it is necessary for death to happen first, and then the result will follow? Action – death – result? Death has to intervene absolutely?” I know he will not be ready to put his arm into the fire.

That’s why I said I don’t have much to say about the law of karma, only very little, just two words: boo boo.

Now I will have to explain to you – it is an Oregonian story. If I am not mistaken, Senator Fatfield had gone to visit his constituency. This particular place that he was visiting was a reservation for Red Indians. He used to go there only once in five years, just when the election was coming closer. The Red Indians had become perfectly aware that he only comes once every five years, promises great things and then disappears; and those things never happen.

Again he appeared after five years, and again the same game. Red Indians are simple people....

Their chief gathered them all into one place that used to serve as their common meeting place.

Senator Fatfield started the same promises: ”Forgive me for last time.

There were so many

difficulties, so many problems, a financial depression, and so many wars, that I could not manage to make the bridge over the river, the road to your reservation, or good houses for you.” And each time he said something – ”a bridge” – they would say, ”Boo boo!” and they would rejoice and almost start dancing. Fatfield was feeling very good, seeing how they appreciate him. They would clap and shout and scream, ”Boo boo!” and that gave him more incentive and more inspiration.

He gave free rein to his imagination: ”I will make a hospital, a college, a university...” When you are simply going to promise something and never fulfill it, it does not matter what you promise; you can promise paradise, you can promise anythng. And actually that is what he did; ”Within five years you will see this place will be a paradise on earth” – and they all shouted, ”Boo boo!” Senator Fatfield was very happy, so happy that he said to the chief, ”I would like to go around the reservation to see if anything else is needed.”

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The chief said, ”That is okay; just one thing. We Red Indians are absolutely childlike: we use the whole field like it is an open toilet. So if you are going around – I have no objection – just be careful not to step in the boo boo.” Now Fatfield understood the meaning of boo boo, but it was too late.

The law of karma is nothing but boo boo. And you understand the meaning now, so there is no problem.

To me, certainly each action has its result, but not somewhere far away in a future life. the action and the result are continuous, they are part of one process. Do you think sowing the seed and reaping the crop are separate? It is one process. What begins in sowing the seed, grows, and one day the one seed has become thousands of seeds. That’s what you call your crop. It is the same seed which has exploded into thousands of seeds. No death is intervening, no afterlife is needed; it is a continuum.

So the one thing to be remembered is: in my vision of life, yes, every action is bound to have some consequences, but they will not be somewhere else, you will have them here and now. Most probably you will get them almost simultaneously.

When you are kind to someone, don’t you feel a certain joy?

A certain peace?

A certain

meaningfulness? Don’t you feel that you are contented with what you have done? There is a kind of deep satisfaction. Have you ever felt that contentment when you are angry, when you are boiling with anger, when you hurt somebody, when you are mad with rage? Have you ever felt a peace, a silence descending in you? No, it is impossible.

You will certainly feel something, but it will be a sadness that you again acted like a fool, that again you have done the same stupid thing that you decided again and again not to do. You will feel a tremendous unworthiness in yourself. You will feel that you are not a man but a machine, because you don’t respond, you react. A man may have done something, and you reacted. That man had the key in his hands, and you just danced according to his desire; he had power over you.

When somebody abuses you and you start fighting, what does it mean? It means that you don’t have any capacity not to react.

Gurdjieff’s father was dying. His last words to Gurdjieff are immensely significant; perhaps no father has ever advised a son with such a great insight. And Gurdjieff was only nine years old, so his father said, ”I know you may not be able to understand right now what I am saying, but I have no more time, I have to say it now. But you have time – just remember the words. Whenever you have enough maturity to understand what these words mean, then act on these words. But don’t forgetl Remember, it is a simple sentence.”

He told Gurdjieff to repeat the sentence three times, so he could die peacefully. And he said,

”Forgive me because I am not leaving any inheritance to you except this sentence.” And what was the sentence? – a very simple sentence. He said: ”Remember, if somebody creates anger in you, tell the person you will come back after twenty-four hours to answer him. For twenty-four hours, wait; and after twenty-four hours, whatever comes to you, go and do.” Strange advice, but not strange if you understand. And this simple advice changed Gurdjieff’s whole life. This single sentence made a man like George Gurdjieff – and that kind of man is created only From Personality to Individuality

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after centuries. But the old man must have been a man of great insight. He left nothing else; he said to his son, ”Now you will have to look after yourself. Your mother is dead, I am dying. You will have to earn your bread. You will have to learn things on your own.” A nine-year-old child... but this became a great opportunity for Gurdjieff, because he started moving around with nomads.

Gurdjieff was born near the Caucasus in Russia – still there are nomads, wandering tribes. Even sixty years of communist torture has not been able to settle those nomads, because they consider wandering to be man’s birthright, and perhaps they are right.

Nomads all over the world believe that it is the woman who has created the house. Man has made it, but it is the woman who has tethered the man to the house; otherwise, man is basically a wanderer, he would have liked to move. A tent was enough; a tent, a horse, a bullock cart – that’s enough.

And who bothers to live in the same place year after year? The nomads go on moving – a few days here, a few days there.

This nine-year-old child having nothing else to do joined a nomad group. Then he started moving from one group to another. He learned many languages of the nomads, he learned many arts of the nomads. He learned many exercises which are not available to civilized people any more, but nomads need them.

For example; it may be very cold and the snow is falling, and to live in a tent.... Nomads know certain exercises of breathing that change the rhythm of the breath, the temperature of your body increases.

Or if it is too hot, if you are passing through a desert, then change again to a different rhythm... and your body has an automatic, inbuilt, air-conditioning system.

Gurdjieff learned his first lessons in hypnosis with these nomadic groups. If the wife and the husband are both going to sell some things in the market, in the village, what to do with the children, the small children? These nomads have used hypnotism for centuries. They will just draw a ckcle around the child and tell him, ”Till we return you cannot get out of this circle.” Now, this has been told for centuries to every child. From the moment he could understand, he has heard it. He is hypnotized by it. The moment it is uttered, the moment he sees the line being drawn around him, he simply relaxes inside: there is no way to get out, he can’t get out.

Gurdjieff was very puzzled, because he was ten or twelve years old then: And what nonsense is this? And each child in every nomad camp is just surrounded by a line, and that’s all. The father and mother disappear for the whole day to work in the town. By the evening when they come the child is still inside the circle.

Gurdjieff started wondering how it happened, why it happened, and soon he was able to figure out that it is just a question of your unconscious accepting the idea. Once your unconscious accepts the idea, then your body and your conscious mind have no power to go against it.

In his own exercises that he developed later on when he became a Master, Gurdjieff used all these nomad techniques that he had learned from those strange people – uncivilized, with no language, no written alphabet, but who knew very primitive methods. And he was surprised to see that hypnotism works not only on children but on grown men, because those children become young adults; then too it works. Then they become old, then too it works. It does not change with age.

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Gurdjieff used to play with the old people, drawing a circle around them, and the old person would shout, ”Don’t do that, don’t do that,” and before the circle was complete he would jump out. If the circle was complete then it was impossible, you were caught. And this boy – who could know whether he would be coming back again or not? When the circle was half completed, something was open: you could escape. Then you were saved, otherwise you were caught in it. And many times Gurdjieff succeeded in making the circle complete. Then even the old man would simply sit down, just like a small child, and would pray to him, ”Break your circle.” Gurdjieff used that technique in many ways – and many other techniques that he learned from those people. He used to have an exercise called the ”stop exercise,” and he exhibited it all over the world, particularly in America and Europe. He would teach dances, strange dances, because nobody knew those dances that the Caucasian nomads dance... strange instruments and strange dances They had strange foods that Gurdjieff learned to make. His ashrama near Paris was something just absolutely out of this world. His kitchen was full of strange things, strange spices that nobody had ever heard of, and he himself would prepare outlandish foods. He had learned it all from those nomads. And those foods had a certain effect. Certain foods have certain effects; certain dances have certain effects; certain drums, instruments, have certain effects.

Gurdjieff had seen that if a certain music is played and people are dancing a particular dance, then it is possible for them to dance on red-hot, burning coals and still not be burned. The dance is creating a certain kind of energy in them so that they can escape the law of fire – which is a lower law. Certainly, if consciousness knows something higher it can escape from lower laws.

All the stories about miracles are nothing but stories about people who have come to know certain higher laws; naturally, then the lower laws don’t function. Gurdjieff had seen all these things, he had experienced them when he was a child, and children are very curious. There was no father, no mother to prevent him from doing anything, so he was experimenting with everything, in every possible way. And once he was finished with one nomad group, he would simply move to another because from other groups he had other things to learn. He developed all his exercises from these nomadic people.

The stop exercise was tremendously significant, perhaps one of the greatest contributions to the modern world – and the modern world is not even aware of it.

Gurdjieff would tell his disciples to be engaged in all kinds of activities: somebody is digging in the garden, somebody is cutting wood, somebody is preparing food, somebody is cleaning the floor. All kinds of activities are going on, with the one condition that when he says ”Stop!” then wherever you are, in whatsoever posture you are, you stop dead. You are not to be cunning, because then the whole point of the exercise is lost.

For example, if your mouth is open and you see that Gurdjieff is not there to notice, and you just close your mouth and rest, you have missed the point. One of your legs was up – you were just moving – and one leg was down; now suddenly the ”Stop!” call comes. You have to stop, knowing perfectly well that soon you will fall down; you cannot stand on one foot for long. But that is the whole point of the exercise: whatever the consequence you simply stop as you are, you just become a statue.

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You will be surprised that such a simple exercise gives you so much release of awareness. Neither Buddha, nor Patanjali, nor Mahavira was aware of it, that such a simple exercise... it is not complex at all.

When you become just a statue, you are not even allowed to blink an eye; you stay exactly as you are at the moment you hear the word ”Stop!” It simply means stop and nothing else. You will be surprised that you suddenly become a frozen statue – and in that state you can see yourself transparently.

You are constantly engaged in activity – and with the activity of the body, the mind’s activity is associated. You cannot separate them, so when the body completely stops, of course, immediately the mind also stops then and there. You can see the body, frozen, as if it is somebody else’s body; you can see the mind, suddenly unmoving, because it has lost its association with the body in movement.

It is a simple psychological law of association that was discovered by another Russian, Pavlov.

Gurdjieff knew it long before Pavlov, but he was not interested in psychology so he never worked it out that way. Pavlov also got the idea from the same nomads, but he moved in a different direction

– he was a psychologist. He started working on the lines of the law of association.

Pavlov would give food to his dog, and while he was giving the food, he would just go on ringing a bell. Now the bell and the bread had nothing to do with each other, but to the dog they were becoming associated. Whenever Pavlov gave the dog some bread, he would ring the bell too. After fifteen days he would simply ring the bell and the dog’s tongue would start hanging out ready for the bread. Now, somewhere in the dog’s mind, the bell and the bread were no longer two separate things.

Gurdjieff was doing far higher work. He found a simple way of stopping the mind. In the East people have been trying for centuries to concentrate the mind, to visualize it, to stop it – and Gurdjieff found a way through physiology. But it was not his discovery, he had just found what those nomads had been doing all along.

Gurdjieff would shout ”Stop!” and everybody would freeze. And when the body suddenly freezes, the mind feels a little weird: What happened? – because the mind has no association with the frozen body, it is just shocked. They are in cooperation, in a deep harmony, moving together. Now the body has completely frozen, what is the mind supposed to do? Where can it go?

For a moment there is a complete silence; and even a single moment of complete silence is enough to give you the taste of meditation.

Gurdjieff had developed dances, and during those dances suddenly he would say ”Stop!” Now, while dancing you never know in what posture you are going to be. People would simply fall on the floor.

But even if you fall, the exercise continues. If your hand is in an uncomfortable position under your body, you are not to make it comfortable because that means you have not given a chance for the mind to stop. You are still listening to the mind. The mind says, ”It is uncomfortable, make it comfortable.” No, you are not to do anything.

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In New York when he was giving his demonstration of the dance, Gurdjieff chose a very strange situation. All the dancers were standing in a line, and at a certain stage in the dance when they came dancing forwards and were just standing in a queue with the first person just at the edge of the stage, Gurdjieff said ”Stop!” The first person fell, the second fell, the third fell – the whole line fell on each other. But there was dead silence, no movement.

One man in the audience just seeing this got his first experience of meditation. He was not doing it, he was just seeing it. But seeing so many people suddenly stop and then fall, but falling as if frozen, with no effort on their own to change their position or anything.... It was as if suddenly they had all become paralyzed.

The man was just sitting in the front row, and without knowing he just stopped, froze in the position he was in: his eyes stopped blinking, his breath had stopped. Seeing this scene – he had come to see the dance, but what kind of dance was this? – suddenly he felt a new kind of energy arising within him. And it was so silent and he was so full of awareness, that he became a disciple. That very night he reached Gurdjieff and said, ”I can’t wait.” It was very difficult to be a disciple of Gurdjieff; he made it almost impossible. And he was really a hard taskmaster. And one can tolerate things if one can see some meaning in them, but with Gurdjieff the problem was that there was no obvious meaning.

This man’s name was Nicoll. Gurdjieff said, ”It is not so easy to become my disciple.” Nicoll said, ”It is not so easy to refuse me either. I have come to become a disciple, and I will become a disciple. You may be a hard Master, I know; I am a hard disciple!” Both men looked into each other’s eyes and understood that they belonged to the same tribe. This man was not going to leave.

Nicoll said, ”I am not going. I will be just sitting here my whole life until you accept me as a disciple” and Nicoll’s case is the only case in which Gurdjieff accepted him without bitching; otherwise, he used to be so difficult. Even for a man like P.D. Ouspensky, who made Gurdjieff world-famous –

even with him Gurdjieff was difficult.

Ouspensky remembers that they were traveling from New York to San Francisco in a train, and Gurdjieff started making a nuisance of himself in the middle of the night. He was not drunk, he had not even drunk water, but he was behaving like a drunkard – moving from one compartment to another compartment, waking people and throwing people’s things about. And Ouspensky, just following him, said, ”What are you doing?” – but Gurdjieff wouldn’t listen.

Somebody pulled the train’s emergency chain, ”This man seems to be mad!” – so the ticket-checker came in and the guard came in. Ouspensky apologized and said, ”He is not mad and he is not drunk, but what to do? It is very difficult for me to explain what he is doing because I don’t know myself.” And right in front of the guard and ticket-checker, Gurdjieff threw somebody’s suitcase out of the window.”

The guard and the ticket-checker said, ”This is too much. Keep him in your compartment and we will give you the key. Lock it from within, otherwise we will have to throw you both out at the next station.”

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Naturally Ouspensky was feeling embarrassed on the one hand and enraged on the other hand –

that this man was creating such a nuisance. He thought, ”I know he is not mad, I know he is not drunk, but....” Gurdjieff was behaving wildly, shouting in Russian, screaming in Russian, Caucasian

– he knew so many languages – and the moment the door was locked, he sat silently and smiled.

He said to Ouspensky, ”How are you?”

Ouspensky said, ”You are asking ME,’How are you?’! You would have forced them to put you in jail, and me too – because I couldn’t leave you in such a condition. What was the purpose of all this?” Gurdjieff said, ”That is for you to understand. I am doing everything for you, and you are asking me the purpose? The purpose is not to react, not to be embarrassed, not to be enraged. What is the point of feeling embarrassed? What are you going to get out of it? You are simply losing your cool and gaining nothing.”

”But,” Ouspensky said, ”You threw that suitcase out of the window. Now what about the man whose suitcase it is?”

Gurdjieff said, ”Don’t be worried – it was yours!” Ouspensky looked down and saw that his was missing. What to do with this Master! Ouspensky writes: ”l felt like getting down at the next station and going back to Europe... because what else would Gurdjieff do?”

And Gurdjieff said, ”I know what you are thinking – you are thinking of getting down at the next station. Keep cool!”

”But,” Ouspensky said, ”how can I keep cool now that my suitcase is gone and my clothes are gone?” Gurdjieff said, ”Don’t be worried – your suitcase was empty. Your clothes I’ve put in my suitcase.

Now just cool down.”

But later, when he was in the Caucasus and Ouspensky was in London, Gurdjieff sent Ouspensky a telegram: ”Come immediately!” – and when Gurdjieff says ”Immediately,” it means immediately!

Ouspensky was involved in some work, but he had to leave his job, pack immediately, finish everything and go to the Caucasus. And in those days, when Russia was in revolution, to go to the Caucasus was dangerous, absolutely dangerous. People were rushing out of Russia to save their lives, so to enter Russiaand for a well-known person like Ouspensky, well-known as a mathematician, world famous.... It was also well-known that he was anti-communist, and he was not for the revolution. Now, to call him back into Russia, and that too, to the faraway Caucasus....

He would have to pass through the whole of Russia to reach to Gurdjieff who was in a small place, Tiflis, but if Gurdjieff calls.... Ouspensky went. When he arrived there he was really boiling, because he had passed by burning trains, stations, butchered people and corpses on the platforms. And how he had managed – he himself could not believe that he was going to reach Gurdjieff, but somehow he managed to. And what did Gurdjieff say? He said, ”You have come, now you can go: the purpose is fulfilled. I will see you later on in London.” From Personality to Individuality

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Now this kind of man.... He has his purpose – there is no doubt about it – but has strange ways of working. Ouspensky, even Ouspensky, missed. He got so angry that he dropped all his connections with Gurdjieff after this incident, because this man had pulled him into the very mouth of death for nothing! But Ouspensky missed the point. If he had gone back as silently as he had come, he may have become enlightened by the time he reached London – but he missed the point.

A man like Gurdjieff – may not always do something which is apparently meaningful, but it is always meaningful.

Nicoll became his disciple, and he had to make it through so many strange tasks, strange in every possible way. No Master before Gurdjieff had tried such strange ways. For example, he would force you to eat, to go on eating; he would go on forcing you, ”Eat!” – and you could not say no to the Master. While tears were coming to you he was saying ”Eat!”... and those spices, Caucasian spices

– Indian spices are nothing! Your whole throat was burning, you could feel the fire even in your stomach, in your intestines, and he was saying ”Eat! Go on eating until I say stop.” But he had some hidden meaning in it. There is a point for the body.... I said just the other day to you that a point comes for the body, if you fast, when after five days it changes its system. That is, the body starts absorbing its own fat, and then there is no more hunger. That is one method which has been used. This is also a similar method – in the opposite direction.

There is a point beyond which you cannot eat, but the Master says, ”Go on.” He is trying to bring you to the brink of the capacity of your whole physiology, and you have never touched that. We are always in the middle. Neither are we fasting, nor are we feasting like Gurdjieff; we are always in the middle. The body is in a settled routine; hence, the mind is also settled in its way of movement.

Fasting destroys that.

That’s why fasting became so important in all religions. It brings you to a moment after fifteen days when you simply start forgetting thoughts. Bigger gaps start appearing: for hours there is not a single thought, and after twenty-one days your mind is empty. It’s strange that when the stomach is totally empty it creates a synchronicity in the mind – the mind becomes totally empty.

Fasting is not a goal in itself. Only idiots have followed it as a goal in itself It is simply a technique to bring you to a stage where you can experience a state of no-mind. Once that is experienced, you can go back to food. Then there is no problem, you know the track. And then, eating normally also you can go into that state any time you want.

Gurdjieffwas doing just the opposite because that’s what he had learned from the nomads. Those are a totally different kind of people. They don’t have any scriptures. They don’t have any people like Buddha, Mahavira, or any others, but they have passed on by word of mouth, from generation to generation, certain techniques that were given by the father to the son. This technique Gurdjieff learned from those nomads. They eat too much, and go on eating, and go on eating, and go on eating. A moment comes when it is not possible to eat anymore – and that is the point when Gurdjieff would force you to eat.

If you say yes even then, suddenly there is an immediate state of no-mind because you have broken the whole rhythm of body and mind. Now it is inconceivable for the mind to grasp what is happening.

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It cannot work any longer in this situation. It has not known it before because – always remember –

mind is exactly like a computer. It is a bio-computer, it functions according to its program. You may be aware of it, you may not be aware of it, but it functions according to a program. Break the program somewhere.... And you can break the program only at the ends, only at the boundary, where you are facing an abyss.

Gurdjieff would force people to drink so much alcohol – and all kinds of alcoholic beverages – that they would go almost crazy; so drunk that they would forget completely who they were. And he would go on giving it to them. If they fell he would shake them, sit them up and pour them some more, because there is a moment when the person has come to a point where his whole body, his whole consciousness is completely overtaken by the intoxicant. In that moment his unconscious starts speaking.

Freud took three years, four years, five years of psychoanalysis to do this. Gurdjieff did it in a single night! Your unconscious would start speaking, would give all the clues about you of which you have not even been aware. And you would not know that you had given those clues to Gurdjieff – but he would know. And then he would work according to those clues: what exercises would be right for you, what dances would be suitable for you, what music was needed for you.

All the clues have been given by your unconscious. You were not aware of it because you were completely intoxicated. You were not present when he worked on the unconscious and persuaded it to give all the clues about you. Those were the secrets about you – then he had the keys in his hands. So if somebody refused, ”Now I cannot drink any more,” he would throw him out. He would say, ”Then this is not the place for you.”

The law of karma is something psychological: neither legal, nor social, nor moral, but something psychological. It has not been worked out that way up to now.

Whatever you do contains in itself its consequence.

It does not matter whether you call it good or bad, because what you call it – good or bad – will depend upon your conditioning.

If you are eating meat, and you are a Mohammedan, or a Christian, or a Jew, there is no question of

”bad.” Others may be doing the same act, but their moral interpretation may be different. If you are a Jaina or a Buddhist or a brahmin – in the first place you cannot eat meat, and if you are eating it, you are doing the same act but your interpretation is that you are doing a bad act, a bad action.

Now, a Jaina eating meat, and a Christian eating meat – the acts are the same, but to the Christian conscience it is good, to the Jaina conscience it is bad. The action is exactly the same but the consequence will be different, because it is a question of psychology, it is not a question of nature.

Otherwise, the consequences would have been the same.

Both their psychologies are different; both have different minds, different conditionings. The Jaina will feel guilty, immediately, and will feel a great fear. He will fall into self-condemnation and feel that he is absolutely unworthy, that he has fallen from grace. Now, this is the consequence, but this is not the consequence of the act: It is only the consequence of the act through his psychology.

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The Christian feels nothing bad about it, in fact he is very happy – it was a good treat and he enjoyed it. And he is now sitting in his resting chair with his cigar in his hand, enjoying himself really relishing how tasty the food was. Now do you think it was a consequence of the act? No, it is not. It is just a different psychology.

If you really want to know what the act brings, then you have to drop your psychology; then you will know the law of karma – not before that. Before that you will know only that law working through your psychology, and your psychology will change it completely.

To a Jaina, it is a sin and he is going to hell; to the Christian there is no problem. Jesus was eating meat, Moses was eating meat, and I guess God also must be eating meat, particularly the Jewish, the Christian and the Mohammedan God. You cannot deprive Him of such nourishing, delicious food. Or do you think you are going to keep Him vegetarian?

In front of me once lived a doctor, a Bengali doctor, Doctor Datta. Bengalis are not vegetarian. Once in a while, if I was sick or something – he was very friendly to me and he would come to see me. My aunt, who used to live with me, would ask him, ”Doctor Datta, anything about food – what he should eat, what he should not eat?”

And Datta would say, ”No need to worry. You are just grass-eaters. What can be cut from your diet? – you are dieting continuously. Now, I cannot give you any suggestions. We can diet; we can become grasseaters just as you are – that will be dieting for us. But for you it will be.... If you diet then you will be finished; there is nothing else to eat – so don’t bother about it.” To a Jaina it will be a sheer impossibility to conceive that Jesus can be enlightened: he eats meat, he drinks wine. And most amazing, he not only drinks wine, he turns water into wine. Now, to a Jaina the real miracle will be somebody turning all the wine of the world into water. That will be a real miracle, a religious miracle. You call this a miracle? – turning water into wine? This is a crime!

Your psychologies, unless you drop them.... For example to me, who has no psychology – in between me and my life there is no mind: I am in direct and immediate touch with my life. If I eat meat, it is not that it is going to throw me into hell. No, that is stupid.

In the first place there is no hell. In the second place, there is no law of nature that by eating meat you will go to hell, because if that is the case then all the animals and almost all men will be going to hell; heaven will be absolutely empty. And because all the animals are eating meat, there is no possibility for animals to grow towards higher consciousness.

I used to say to Jaina monks, ”You are preaching a stupid thing. You say that animals go on growing, moving upwards; finally they become man. How can they become man? If meat-eating throws people into hell, then how can meat-eating animals grow in consciousness and become men? And if animals, by eating meat, grow and become man, then man by eating meat will grow and become God. There is no problem, growth is not prevented.

And those Jainas would say to me, ”With you, argument is just impossible. From where do you get these ideas? We have been reading the scriptures our whole life, and we have been reading that animals grow and become man, but this idea never occurred to us. Yes, it is true: if they are eating meat and growing in consciousness then what is wrong in eating meat?” From Personality to Individuality

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”And particularly,” I said, ”eating the meat of growing animals, who are growing upwards, will be a great help for evolution.” In fact that’s what Mohammedans say. They have a very strange idea – it’s this idea that I am telling you. They say that you have to eat animals because only by eating them do you transform them and make them capable of moving upwards. Because you absorb their body and their soul, it goes upwards: so release as many animals as you can. And God has made it clear in the Koran that He made the animals for man to eat. What else, what other authority is needed?

I am not a Jaina or a Jew or a Mohammedan, because I don’t have any psychology. These are all psychologies created by different religions for their own purposes.

I have dropped all psychology.

I don’t eat meat, because to me the act itself is ugly.

It is not a question that in a future life I will suffer. No, the very act, even the idea that you have to destroy life just for your taste buds, which are not many – just at the back of your tongue, perhaps two inches.... If your tongue is cleaned a little deeply with a razor, all your taste will disappear.

It happened in the second world war that a man got shot in his neck. He was saved by medical science, but his food pipe had to be closed. Now there was trouble, so they made a small hole into his stomach through his side and fixed a pipe there. He used to put food in it, and it was working perfectly well, but he was very unhappy because there was no taste. You could put anything in his pipe, no problem, but he was very angry: ”This is not a solution; there is no taste. Life is meaningless

– without food, more than half your life is finished.” So finally the doctor decided, ”You do one thing: first chew the food, and then drop it in your pipe, so you have the taste” – because his tongue was perfectly okay; only his food pipe was closed so he could not swallow food directly. And the idea worked. That man lived almost twelve years after this, chewing food. And he enjoyed it more than you do, because he chewed for longer. That was his only joy, so why chew and just swallow?

Because your swallowing is so close to chewing, you never chew perfectly. If you want to chew perfectly, you have to chew forty-two times. I have tried, but by twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two....

It becomes so boring – forget about the scientific law – I just swallow it. But if you chew exactly forty-two times then you have chewed your food perfectly well.

That man may have been chewing even eighty-four times – there was no problem – and then dropping the food into his pipe. We are also doing that, but our pipe is joined; his pipe was separate.

Twelve years he lived, joyously eating all kinds of delicious food.

But just for those small buds on your tongue, killing, taking anybody’s life is simply unaesthetic. It is not a question of morality, it is not a question of religion, it is a question of aesthetics: your sense of beauty, your sense of respect for life. And by not eating meat, you are not going to heaven –

because there is no heaven either.

But to me, just to attain to this aesthetic sensibility is to be in heaven. The man who has no aesthetic sensibility is below human. He is still an animal – walking on two legs of course, but just walking on From Personality to Individuality

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two legs instead of four can’t make much difference. Or do you think it can make much difference?

If that is the only difference between human beings and animals – that they walk on four and you walk on two, that they are horizontal and you are vertical.... Do you think geometry is the difference between you and animals?

And once you were certainly horizontal like those other animals. That’s why when you sleep you feel so restful, because you come back to your primitive state, horizontal; and the mind moves into the collective unconscious, far back when you were also moving on four feet.

Animals, if you look at their faces, you will find graceful. Have you seen any animal in the same kind of states as you see in man’s changing faces? No, because there is no emotion, no sensibility, their face remains the same. But your face is continuously changing – you have sensibility. Your sensibility is the basic quality that differentiates you from animals.

To me, if your aesthetic sense allows you an act, you will feel immensely fulfilled immediately.

I don’t issue any promissory notes to you. All the religions have done that. I am absolutely for cash!

I don’t believe in promissory notes, I believe in cash. My religion is a cash religion.

You act, and out of your action you get the result immediately, connected to it as a continuation; there is no discontinuity. This is my law of karma.

This is absolutely different from all the philosophies of the law of karma that have been preached in the past, particularly in the East. But my law of karma has a different dimension: it is aesthetic.

The more your aesthetic sense becomes alive, the more you become full of reverence for life – this is bound to happen. With sensitivity, you will become so respectful that even to pluck a flower from a plant will be an ugly act.

One very great painter not much known in the West, although he was a Western man – he lived in the Himalayas. He was a Russian, Nicholas Roerich, and he belonged to the czar’s family. So while the revolution was happening and nineteen members of the czar’s family were slaughtered, even a six-month-old child – sometimes these revolutions can be so ugly – Nicholas Roerich escaped; he was just a boy at that time.

He lived in the Himalayas. He was a painter, but not a painter for art galleries and marketplaces. He never sold any of his paintings – not because people were not ready to purchase, but because he was not willing to sell. He said, ”It is not a commodity, it is me spread on the canvas. How can I sell it?” He died with all his paintings in his house.

I have been to his house – he was very old at that time – and seeing that he was vegetarian, I asked,

”You are a Russian, why should you be vegetarian?” He said, ”Because of my paintings. I cannot even destroy a painting, which is not alive. How can I destroy a living being for my food? And if I can destroy a lion or a tiger, then why not destroy a man?”

Because human meat will be more digestible, more in tune with you, what is wrong with the cannibal? Why is everybody against the cannibals? Just because they are eating human beings?

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But cannibals say human meat is very delicious. They say there is nothing so delicious on the earth as human meat, particularly the meat of small children. If deliciousness and taste are decisive....

And perhaps they may be right, because they have eaten other foods also, and if they are saying it –

and all cannibals agree.... But you can’t think of eating a man. How can you think of eating a tiger?

How can you think of eating a deer? Just if there is no mind given to you by the past, or if you can put it aside and see directly, you will be simply amazed at what people have been doing.

Vegetarianism should not be anything moral or religious. It is a question of aesthetics: one’s sensitivity, one’s respect, one’s reverence for life.

To me this is the law of karma. All other interpretations of it are absolutely wrong, just boo boo.

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CHAPTER 10

Christianity: just a nice Jewish boy’s hang-up

8 January 1985 pm in Lao Tzu Grove

Question 1

OSHO,

YOU SAY CHRIST WAS THE LAST CHRISTIAN. ARE YOU THE LAST RAJNEESHEE? PLEASE

EXPLAIN.

IT was not me who said that Christ was the last Christian. I was simply quoting Friedrich Nietzsche; it was Nietzsche who made that statement. In a certain sense Nietzsche is absolutely right, because in this world no individual is ever repeated.

The uniqueness of the individual is absolute.

Not only in contemporary times is nobody like you; in the whole of eternity there is never going to be a person like you again. There has never been a person like you before. You are simply you, incomparable.

Hence I support Nietzsche’s statement in this sense, that the last Christian was crucified two thousand years ago. But I would like to add something more to it.

First: Jesus was not only the last Christian, he was also the first Christian – the first and the last Christian.

But this is only one sense of the statement. In other ways I am not in agreement with it, because as far as the word Christian is concerned – Jesus never even heard the word.

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He was born a Jew, he lived as a Jew; he tried his whole life to prove himself to be a real Jew. In fact he was crucified because he was trying to prove himself to be a Jewish messiah. He had never heard the words christ or christian because he knew no Greek, no Latin; he knew only Aramaic and a little bit of Hebrew. And both languages have the word messiah, but christ is a Greek translation of the word messiah.

The word christ came into existence after Jesus, after three hundred years had passed; and out of the word christ comes christian. Slowly people completely forgot that poor Christ had no idea that he would be called Christ and his followers, Christians.

You will be surprised to know that in India the Hindi word for messiah is masiha, and the word for christian is masihi. Masihi is far closer to the Aramaic and Hebrew than what the Christians all over the world go on calling themselves.

Perhaps the Hindi words masiha and masihi came into existence because Jesus, after escaping from the crucifixion – it was not a resurrection, it was an escape – lived in India for really a long time, to the age of one hundred and twelve years. His most beloved disciple, Thomas, followed him.

Indian Christianity is the oldest in the whole world. The Vatican is a late development. Jesus remained in Kashmir completely tired, perhaps finished with humanity and the hope for some better future for it, because if this was the result – that you crucify a person who works for you and for your redemption, your salvation.... Of course he was not an idiot: he learned the lesson.

For the remaining time Jesus stayed silent. Yes, a few people came to him on their own. But it was not a problem because in India there have been so many incarnations of God, and it is an accepted fact that it is nobody else’s business: if somebody feels he is an incarnation of God, let him be.

What is wrong in it? Somewhere else the same person will be crucified, will be imprisoned; he will be psychoanalyzed, deprogrammed. All kinds of stupid things will be done to the person because he thinks he is an incarnation of God, but in India he will be worshipped.

Nobody will object to it. There is no question of objecting, because one thing is certain: that you cannot judge whether he is or he is not; there are no criteria, no methods to measure. And India has seen so many people like Jesus that it has come to realize that each one of them was so unique that you cannot derive any criteria from one which can be applied to another.

Buddha was just himself. No similarity between Buddha and Krishna can be found; everything in them is just the opposite to each other. But India has lived thousands of years of religious philosophizing, teaching, arguing. It has attained to a certain liberality of mind as far as religion is concerned.

India knows that a Krishna can be an incarnation of God, although he lives in a palace with every luxury; Buddha can be an incarnation of God although he renounces his kingdom, luxuries, comforts; Mahavira can be an incarnation of God, although he discards even his clothes and lives naked.

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respect. Perhaps he is right; and if he is wrong, what are you losing? Giving respect, even to a wrong person, is not bad.

So in Kashmir Jesus was not troubled by anybody. He was not news there. In India such people are not news. Thomas, he sent to the south of India for a special reason. Northern India is very sophisticated, and all these great teachers, Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, Patanjali, Gorakh, Kabir –

it is an unending line – were all born and lived in northern India, for the simple reason that northern India is Aryan.

South India is non-Aryan, it has negroid blood. Once south India was just part of South Africa; South Africa has drifted away. Now it is a late discovery in geography that continents go on drifting, they are still drifting. The drift is very small, one foot in a year, so you cannot feel it. But continents are continuously drifting, they are not fixed: in thousands of years, of course, much change happens.

It was a great insight of Jesus to send Thomas to South India where it was possible to preach and spread Jesus’ word. In northern India nobody would have bothered about it. Northern India was so full of philosophical reasoning, argumentation; was so sophisticated that Thomas, a poor, uneducated man – who was going to listen to him?

But perhaps South India would be receptive; and it was. The whole state of Kerala is eighty percent Christian; and it is not a new phenomenon – it was Thomas’ work. Goa is completely Christian –

Thomas’ body is still in Goa.

It reminds me to tell you of one thing: Thomas’ is the only body, outside Tibet, which is still the same as it was on the day the person died. It has not been preserved by any chemicals, or by any scientific methods. It is one of the rarest phenomena on the earth. Every year the body is brought out of the inner chambers of the church for the public to see.

And I have seen the body, and you can see: it is as if the man has just gone to sleep, and not even died. Yes, he is not breathing, but in two thousand years the body has not deteriorated. Scientists have tried to find out how it is preserved. There is nothing to find because it is not preserved by any preservatives; it is through a long training in yoga and certain breathing exercises that have the capacity to change the inner workings of biochemistry.

For thirty years Thomas practiced yoga. Thomas lived like a Hindu brahmin. If you see a picture of Thomas you will be surprised. What kind of Christian is this? – his head shaved like a Hindu brahmin monk, with a small piece of hair on the top of his head left uncut, the choti. He even wore a thread, yagyopavit, that is only worn by born brahmins. He used only a small piece of cloth just to cover the lower part of his body, the loincloth as it is called.

If you have seen Mahatma Gandhi’s picture you know the cloth that just covers him from his waist to his knees – that’s enough. And in the south they use it just as a wraparound; Thomas used just the wraparound lungi, only up to the knee. And he used the wooden sandals. He looked a perfect Hindu.

He became vegetarian when he was in India. He tried to learn as much yoga as possible and he really performed a miracle. He said, ”After my death don’t bury my body and don’t make a grave for From Personality to Individuality

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me. I have managed to change its inner workings.” It was predicted by Thomas – and that prediction may come true – that his body would remain preserved till the very end of the world. Two thousand years have passed and the body is preserved. Only last year, for the first time, was a little sign of deterioration detected. Perhaps the end of the world is close.

If the man was right about his body, saying not to destroy it, it is going to remain till the very end of the world – and according to many sources the end of the world is coming closer – his prediction may also be true.

Only last year, that was 1984, for the first time a little deterioration appeared. Perhaps by the end of this century the body may have deteriorated completely. Thomas’ prediction is: the day my body deteriorates completely, that is the end of this world.

Thomas and Jesus both brought to India the word messiah which became masiha. It happens, when a word changes from one language to another language, it has to be adapted to the whims of the other language. ”Messiah” will not fit in Hindi; ”masiha” fits. ”Messiah” would have remained something foreign, but ”masiha” is transformed, is no more foreign; and the Christians have been called for two thousand years, Masihi.

What I want to point out is that Jesus had no idea, not at all, what a Christian is, what a christ is.

He had never heard those words. In that sense Nietzsche’s statement is not right. In the same reference I would like to say to you: although I have heard the word Rajneeshee, I am neither the first nor the last.

I don’t belong to any group, any religion, any organization. Even in your commune I am an outsider, just a guest – a guest of Rajneeshees.

I am not a Rajneeshee.

A Christian is comparable to a Hindu, to a Jew, to a Buddhist, to a Jaina, to a communist even, because they all believe in tight organizations. They all believe in one leader, one prophet, one messiah, one God, one holy book. Nietzsche’s statement cannot be applied to me because as far as Rajneeshism is concerned there is no God, there is no holy book, there is no messiah.

I am not a messiah.

To be a messiah, first a God is needed.

I have left myself without a leg to stand on by declaring that there is no God. Now I cannot declare myself a messiah; that possibility is closed. It is God who sends messiahs and messengers – and now there is nobody.

There is nobody above me and there is nobody below me.

There are only two ways to be superior. Either you are sent from high above, from the great boss, as Jesus is sent, as Mohammed is sent.... They come from the great boss, with all the powers invested in them. That is one way to declare yourself superior to others. All are not begotten sons of God, it is only Jesus. All are not messiahs, it is only Jesus.

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Jesus is declaring his superiority: you are just sheep; he is the shepherd. He is the only shepherd; amongst millions of sheep, the only shepherd. I don’t like such company. Millions of sheep and I am the only shepherd? What kind of company is this? – and you are judged by your company. Even if you are a shepherd it is not much to brag about, but it is a way to prove yourself superior.

The other way is followed by the Buddhists and the Jainas, because neither of them believe in God, so that possibility is closed. They have found another possibility, and that is the tirthankara – the Jaina equivalent to the messiah – who is not sent by God, because there is no God, but who attains to the same state of cosmic consciousness through millions of lives’ effort. You are millions of lives behind him, below him. It will take millions of lives for you to be able to reach that state.

That is the other way of declaring superiority – perhaps far better a way, because it is so arduous.

To become a messiah all that you need is a retarded mind, stupid, stubborn – and you can declare yourself

And to declare yourself the only begotten son of God, what do you need? Just no sense of shame, that’s all; otherwise such stupid things.... Any intelligent person, even if he is the only begotten son of God, will try to hide the fact: if somebody hears, what are people going to think about it?

Even if he knows that he is a messenger from God he will not tell anybody.

He will deliver

the message and escape because it looks so foolish that you are the son of a poor carpenter, uneducated, and you have been chosen to be the messenger of God.

God could not find an educated, sophisticated rabbi? – and there were thousands! In fact rabbis are some of the most scholarly people in the world. God seems to be crazy: He should have chosen somebody refined, cultured, knowing all the scriptures, but Jesus was not even able to read. And there were people whose whole life was devoted to study, to thinking, to contemplation – it was a traditional thing.

Judaism and Hinduism are the only two basic religions in the world.

Other religions are

offshoots either of Hinduism or of Judaism, but Judaism and Hinduism remain separate. There is no connection between them, no communication has happened between them; and both are tremendously scholarly.

If God chooses Krishna as an incarnation it can be understood. Krishna has that understanding, wisdom, education – the best that was available was available to him; the most famous teachers were his teachers. He was trained to be a wise man, and he was a wise man.

And there were so many rabbis commenting on the TORAH; and such intelligent commentaries that if you look at those commentaries even today you will find them immensely contemporary. Perhaps they are three thousand years old but so insightful and so beautiful. Small statements in the TORAH

or the TALMUD have been made in the rabbis’ commentaries, so significant that when you see the statement by itself, you think there is not much in it.

But when you see the commentaries and commentaries upon the commentaries, you become aware of the immense dimensions opening from that stale statement. There was nothing in it – you could not have found anything in it – but these commentators have some third eye. They go on looking –

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something like an X-ray – and they go to the very depth. Perhaps they create the depth: they are so creative that they bring something significant out of an absolutely insignificant statement. God should have chosen these people, not a carpenter’s son.

But Jesus proclaimed himself to be the messenger of God. He must have looked like a buffoon. I can’t help saying it. He used to travel on a donkey declaring himself the only begotten son of God.

The messiah that you have been waiting for for centuries is coming on a donkey!

People must have laughed. In the beginning he was just a laughingstock – yes, it was funny – but this man went on and on. Soon people started realizing that it was no longer funny, it was becoming a serious business because Jesus was gathering a few idiots around him who were saying that he was the messiah.

And there was, as there has always been, a class of people who are rejected by the society: thieves, prostitutes, gamblers, tax collectors. These people are rejected people; and these were the people who Jesus collected. It was easy to collect them because they were rejected by the society and Jesus was rejected by the society. They had found a great messiah – ”so let’s join him.” Not a single rabbi went with Jesus. This is strange; this has never happened anywhere else.

Buddha was speaking against brahmins, against Hindus, but all his great disciples were brahmins.

It seems sensible because he was appealing to the best in the society. Although he was against brahmins, the brahmins were the topmost, and out of the brahmins came the greater part of intelligentsia.

Sariputta was a brahmin, Moggalayan was a brahmin, Mahakashyapa was a brahmin. They all had come to Buddha, not because they were illiterate idiots, the rejected – gamblers, prostitutes, tax collectors, thieves – no, but because they were great scholars and they could understand that what Buddha was saying was right. And they were not nobodies.

When Sariputta came to Buddha, he himself had five hundred disciples of his own coming with him

– all great scholars. He had come first to have a discussion, and Buddha was very happy: what could be more welcome? But Buddha asked, ”Have you experienced the truth or are you only a great scholar? – I have heard your name.”

Looking at Buddha for a moment in silence, as if looking in a mirror, utterly naked, Sariputta said, ”I am a great scholar, but as far as knowing the truth is concerned, I have not known it.” Buddha said, ”Then it will be very difficult to argue. Argument is possible between two people who don’t know truth. They can argue till eternity because neither knows. Both are ignorant so they can go on playing with words and logic and quotations and scriptures, but because neither knows, there is no possibility of their coming to a conclusion. At the most what can happen is whoever is more clever and cunning and tricky may defeat the other, and the other will become the follower of the more cunning or more sophisticated. But is this any decision about truth?

”Or there is a possibility of a meeting of two people who both have realized the truth, but then there is no way to argue. What is there to argue about? They will sit silently, perhaps they may smile, or hold each other’s hands, but what is there to say? Looking into each other’s eyes they will see that From Personality to Individuality

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there is nothing to say – we both know the same things, we are in the same space – so there will be only silence.

”Or the third possibility is that one knows and one does not know. Then it is going to be very troublesome because the one who knows cannot translate what he knows into the language of the ignorant one. And the one who does not know will be unnecessarily wasting his time, his mind, because he cannot convince the one who knows. The whole world cannot convince the person who knows, because he knows and you don’t know. You may be all together....” Buddha said, ”You have come with your five hundred disciples. You don’t know, and it is absolutely certain that in these five hundred disciples no one knows; otherwise he would not be your disciple, he would be your Master. You are more scholarly, they are less scholarly. You are older, they are younger. They are your disciples.

”But how are we going to discuss anything? I am ready, but I know. One thing is certain: You cannot convert me. The only possibility is that you will be converted, so think twice.” But Sariputta was already converted. Seeing this man.... And he was intelligent enough, he had defeated many great scholars.

It was a tradition in India in those days, that scholars would move all over the country defeating other scholars. Unless a person had defeated all the scholars, he would not be recognized by the scholarly mob as a wise man. But to stand before a Buddha, before one who knows.... It is not a question of your scholarship and how many scholars you have defeated.

And Buddha simply said, ”I am ready. If you want to argue I am ready, but what argument is possible?

I have eyes, you don’t have eyes: I cannot explain to you what light is. You cannot have any idea what light is. You will hear only the word light but the word will not have any meaning for you. It will be contentless, heard – but not understood.

”So if you are really interested in truth, and not in getting defeated or being victorious... because that is not my interest. I have arrived. Who cares to defeat anybody? For what? If you are really interested in truth then just be here and do what I say. You can argue later on when you have come to know something substantial, existential. Then you can argue.” But Sariputta was a tremendously intelligent man. He said, ”I know that neither I can argue now, nor will I be able to argue then. You have finished my argumentation. Now I cannot argue because I don’t have eyes; then I will not be able to argue because I will have eyes. But I am going to stay.” He stayed with his five hundred disciples. He said to the disciples, ”Now I am no longer your master.

Here is the man; I will be sitting by his side as his disciple. Please forget me as your master. If you want to be here, he is your Master.”

Now if a man like Buddha could have said, ”I am a messenger of God,” he would not have been laughed at. But he didn’t say that because he and Mahavira were contemporaries and both had an absolute trust in their experience that there is no God. But they found another way.

To me it is the same. Whether you descend from above; then you are special.... They ascend from below and go on above you, so far away. Millions of lives you will have to work and then you will be able to reach that state – it is almost impossible.

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I cannot declare myself a messiah because there is no God.

I cannot declare myself a tirthankara or an avatara, because to me truth is not obtained by arduous effort in millions of lives.

Truth can be attained instantly, immediately, herenow, because you have it already. So it is not a question of achieving it; you have not to go somewhere to find it.

You are carrying truth within you all the time.

It is just that you are not awake.

But awakening does not need millions of lives.

Just a good hit on your head and you will be awake – more than awake.

So I don’t see myself superior to you. I don’t see anybody inferior to me; I don’t see anybody superior to me either – neither Jesus, nor Buddha, nor Mahavira. I don’t see them as superior to me, because it is such a simple human experience. Why make so much ado about nothing? Somehow even in Mahavira and Buddha some shadow of the ego is still persisting. They have arrived but they are not whole. Perhaps a leg is missing, a hand is missing; something is missing, something is left behind.

Pakhtoonistan is a very small country between Pakistan and Afghanistan, almost a part of Afghanistan. Once it was a part of India; now legally it is part of Pakistan. But the Pakhtoons don’t want to be part of Pakistan, they want to be part of India; and if that is not possible they want....

Because now, Pakistan is in between. They are Mohammedans but a different race.

The Pakhtoon is a really beautiful man, perhaps the tallest in the whole world, the strongest in the whole world, and lives longest in the whole world. You will not find a single Pakhtoon who is fat –

they are so proportionate and so tall and so beautiful, as if sculptured by someone like Leonardo da Vinci. They don’t want to mix with Pakistan, they would rather be together with Afghanistan.

These tribal people have a strange idea. I am reminded of it because I said that it is as if Buddha has left something behind, as if Mahavira has left something behind. Pakhtoons believe that when a man dies he should die with his body complete. No part should be missing because God will ask,

”Where is your hand? – because when I sent you into the world you were whole.” So they never allow any operation, any amputation. They would rather die than have their kidneys taken out, because they are simple people, primitive people, and their logic is simple: when God asks, ”Where are your kidneys?...”

A beautiful story happened. In Lahore, a Pakhtoon, in the first world war, got shot in the hand. The situation was such that if his hand was not cut off, then his whole body would be poisoned. The decision had to be taken immediately, because even a few moments delay and it would be too late.

The Pakhtoon himself was unconscious, in a coma. His family was somewhere in Pakhtoonistan and difficult to find, because Pakhtoonistan still has no postal system, no telegraph, no telegrams, no telephones, no roads.

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Only one road passes from Pakistan to Afghanistan, and even to pass through that road is very difficult because Pakhtoon children go on practicing shooting – shooting drivers, shooting passengers in the buses! They are very primitive and simple people. Where to learn? They don’t think of making a target – and what is the point when there are so many targets?

When I was traveling in Pakhtoonistan, my driver said, ”I won’t allow you to drive here.” I said, ”Why? It is such a beautiful country.”

He said, ”You don’t know: drivers are just targets! I won’t allow you. You sit in the other seat, the passenger’s seat; I will have to drive. I have driven on this road so I know where the danger is and how to avoid it and what to do. They are continually shooting – just children. From the very childhood all that they want is a gun.”

So where to find his family to get their consent to cut his hand off? And he is a Pakhtoon: when he comes back to consciousness and finds that his hand is missing, he is going to create trouble. But there was no other way. The doctor, who was an Englishman, said, ”I take the responsibility. I know the man and I will convince him somehow. Cut off his hand.” When the man came back to consciousness he was really furious. The doctor listened to his anger then explained to him that the situation was this: ”I have taken the whole responsibility, and look, I have preserved your hand.” He had kept the hand in a big jar full of spirit. He said, ”I have preserved it, so when you die we will put your hand with you.” They are simple people; he understood the logic. He said, ”That’s right. What else could you have done? That’s perfectly good. So you keep it, because we Pakhtoons are continually traveling.” They used to travel all over India because from Pakhtoonistan they used to bring dry fruits – the best grow in Pakhtoonistan – and woolen clothes: blankets, sweaters. These two things they would carry from Pakhtoonistan to India to sell.

Really, since Pakistan has been divided you don’t see Pakhtoons coming into India. You don’t get that quality of dried fruits that they used to bring. It was the most superior you could get anywhere.

So he said, ”I am continually traveling. Now, to carry this hand everywhere will look odd. Secondly, I may forget it. It may get dropped somewhere. It is in a glass thing – it may be broken. You keep it, and I will tell my family that when I die they should get the hand from you.” The doctor said, ”That’s perfectly okay.”

But an accident happened: the hospital got burned, and with it, the hand of the Pakhtoon. But the doctor was not very worried about it because he was being retired and was going back to England, so far away from Pakhtoonistan that those people could not bother him in any possible way. Who was the doctor and where had he gone? Where were they going to find him? And they could not go to England, they were poor people.

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hand. He got a right hand from a hospital and kept it preserved in his bedroom so that if some time somebody came....

The story is that one night somebody knocked on the door. The doctor opened the door and the Pakhtoon was standing there, furious. The doctor could not believe his eyes. The Pakhtoon didn’t say anything, he simply showed him his left arm and asked, ”Where is my hand?” – not verbally; he just showed him his arm: ”Give me my hand.”

The doctor almost had a nervous breakdown. He just got hold of the flask and took it out. At that moment he realized the mistake, that it was the right hand! And the Pakhtoon seeing it, kicked the flask over, took the hand and threw it into the room. He said, ”Tomorrow night I will come again. You find my hand!”

Perhaps the second part of the story is psychological. For the doctor this became a nightmare.

Every night.... The doctor gets into this insane idea that the Pakhtoon has died. Perhaps somebody from Lahore – a colleague, another doctor – has informed him that the Pakhtoon has died, and to be aware. Perhaps it is only his own imagination, but he thinks he sees the ghost of the Pakhtoon.

Whatever the case – I don’t believe in ghosts, but you can imagine....

If you can imagine God, why not a ghost? – just a very small creature. If you can see Jesus and Krishna and Buddha, then there is no problem: you can hallucinate just a poor Pakhtoon. And there was cause enough – the doctor had broken his word.

Pakhtoons are very truthful. If they give a promise they will fulfill it whatsoever the cost. Even for a small thing they will risk their life; if they have promised, they will do it. So he was afraid perhaps because of that. The doctor had lived amongst Pakhtoons in Lahore and he knew what kind of people they are: even after death.... And particularly in England, ghosts appear more than anywhere else.

England is somehow very attractive to ghosts. There are proportionately more houses in England than in any country which are haunted by ghosts. Britain has a certain magnetism for ghosts.

Perhaps that is why British people look so serious, afraid.

Don’t start a conversation with Proper Sagar unless you are properly introduced before. Perhaps there is also a fear of getting into conversation with a ghost: you don’t know who he is. If somebody you know introduces you, then it is okay; otherwise who knows who is who? This doctor must have been a Proper Sagar.

The story is that he died because of this continual nightmare. One morning he was found dead.

He must have thought that the Pakhtoon had pressed on his neck and throat, but actually he was pressing on his own throat; and in the morning, when he was found, he had killed himself. But he must have thought, hallucinated, got into the idea and killed himself. He must have died thinking that the Pakhtoon was killing him! But the idea of the Pakhtoon, that you should be whole when you go back, is significant.

And Buddha has left something behind: he is still somehow saying to you that he is higher. He declares that he has attained the highest cosmic consciousness, which nobody had ever attained before.

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Now, this is the same game, played more sophisticatedly. But what he is trying to do is the same as what Jesus is trying to do in saying that, ”I am the only begotten son of God. Nobody was before, nobody is going to be afterwards; I am the only son.” He is making his place superior forever. Buddha is doing the same; of course he says that he is coming from millions of lives.

In one life he was an elephant – but then too he was superior. He tells the story that when he was an elephant the jungle caught fire. The fire was spreading so fast, and the wind was so strong, that all the animals were running out of the jungle. He was also running, but finding a big shady tree he stood there just to rest a little in the coolness of the shadow.

As he was just going to move and had lifted up one of his feet, a small rabbit, running in just the same fear of the fire, also came under the shadow of the tree, and rested there just where the elephant was going to put his foot. Now, to put his foot down would kill the rabbit, but not to put his foot... how long could he stand on three feet? And you should understand: an elephant standing on three feet is a really heavy job, just the one foot up is enoughl But Buddha said, ”I kept my foot up and saved the life of the rabbit, although because of balancing that great a load I tumbled and fell sideways and died. But because I had done that good deed, I was born as a man.”

Now, even while he was an elephant he was a superior elephant, not an ordinary elephant; otherwise I don’t think any elephant is going to be bothered by a rabbit. In the first place he won’t even see if the rabbit is there. Elephants are big but their eyes are very small. Have you seen that strange combination? – such small eyes in such a big animal. Who is creating these designs? A little proportion is needed. Or do you think the elephant can see the rabbit who is just sitting underneath his feet? I think it will take long yoga practice for the elephant to look down; it is not easy for an elephant to look that far down.

Just draw a picture of an elephant – I have drawn one and I have tried in every possible way to imagine myself as the elephant, but I couldn’t see the rabbit. The foot is there, and the rabbit is underneath the foot – but such small eyes in such a big body... it is just not possible.

Even in his elephant life Buddha was so non-violent, non-hurting, that he preferred his own death rather than killing a rabbit. He tells many stories of his past lives, and in every life he is superior.

That superiority continues even into this last life: now he is the suprememost enlightened man.

For you it will take millions of lives – you may not yet be at the stage of the elephant. Would you be ready to die to save a rabbit? You won’t be even ready to save your wife – particularly your wife, because married life is such that people say to each other....

One lover was saying to his beloved, ”Without you I will die, I can’t breathe. Without you I can’t see any meaning in life. Without seeing you, my whole day becomes dark and dismal, but on the days I see you I am so full of joy that I can see stars even in the daytime.” Women are more practical; they don’t listen to all this garbage. She knew that he must have learned this dialogue that he was speaking from some film or somewhere. She said, ”What about tomorrow?

Are you coming tomorrow?”

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He said, ”If it does not rain – because I don’t have my umbrella repaired yet.” Poetry is one thing, but when things come to reality then it is a totally different world.

Buddha is trying to prove himself not only higher than YOU.... He tells the story, ”When I became enlightened all three Hindu gods....” Just like the Christian trinity, Hinduism has the trimurti, the three faces of God – one body but three faces. It looks almost more logical than the Christian trinity – God the Father, the Holy Ghost, and Jesus Christ the Son.

This trinity looks a very incomplete family: there is no mother, no brothers, no sisters. And the story is so old that it must have been a joint family. In those days such a nuclear family – only one son, and that too without a wife! Great birth control – even the wife is dropped. It doesn’t seem that it can be real.

The Hindu God seems to have some logic behind it: one body, three faces. Brahma is the creative face who creates the world; Vishnu is the sustainer, who sustains the world; and Shiva is the destructive part, who destroys the world. This seems to be more logical, perhaps more scientific too.

It is a strange thing: science goes on dividing and dividing – molecules have been divided into atoms and atoms themselves have been divided – and the ultimate division science has arrived at is into three. One is positive, that can be the creative part; the other is neutral, that can be the sustainer part; the third is destructive, negative, that can be the third face of the Hindu God.

Sooner or later Hindus are going to brag that this is what their three faces mean – electron, neutron, proton – that this is the new way of saying the same thing; but it is one body, it is the same electricity, the same force. What does Buddha manage to do with this? He says, ”When I became enlightened all three Hindu gods, Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh – all three came to touch my feet.” Now, this is even better than Jesus. Jesus after all is just a son. Buddha manages to have all the three Hindu gods touch his feet, because those three gods say, ”The enlightened being is far higher than God. We also desire, in some life, to gain the same state of being.” In Hinduism, gods are not permanent beings. They have a certain period of time in heaven that they have earned through being good in the world, a certain bank balance of virtue. They will live in heaven till that bank balance is finished. Once it is finished they are thrown back into the world, again on the road – in the wheel of life and death. The enlightened being does not go to heaven, he goes to moksha.

Moksha is above heaven, from where no fall is possible, because it doesn’t happen through virtue or good deeds, it happens through awareness, total awareness. And once you are totally aware, how can you fall? So Buddha uses a far more clever strategy to prove himself superior. Mahavira uses it in the same way. A tirthankara becomes a tirthankara through millions of lives of arduous austerities; and there are only twenty-four tirthankaras in one cycle of creation.

Only recently has Western physics become aware of such immense spans of time, but Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism have been aware of them for a long time. In English you cannot find the equivalent to many numbers which are available in Indian languages. One cycle is not a small thing From Personality to Individuality

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but of millions and millions of years. Creation does not begin like Christians say – which looks very childish – four thousand and four years before Jesus Christ.

Now, the Eastern people will laugh and say, ”Whom are you kidding? Creation happened four thousand and four years before Christ?” China has been for at least ten thousand years. India has been, according to Indian scholars, for at least ninety thousand years.

If you don’t believe them it is difficult to argue against their argument because in the RIG VEDA the Hindus have a description of stars in a certain combination which happened – according to scientific astronomers – ninety thousand years ago. If that particular combination of stars was known to the people who were writing the RIG VEDA, it is enough proof that the RIG VEDA is far older than ninety thousand years.

Even if the RIG VEDA was written later on, at least in the memory of the people that particular combination of stars was kept in mind – and the RIG VEDA says it happened exactly ninety thousand years ago. Their book is ninety thousand years old; your creation is only six thousand years old –

from today. So it is very difficult to argue that it is not so. Hindus will laugh and say, ”What are you talking about?”

Jainas are even more mathematical. In the RIG VEDA, their first tirthankara’s name is mentioned.

That becomes even more complicated a problem because their first tirthankara, Rishabadeva, is mentioned by name with great respect.

It is very logical: to show so much respect to a person who is against your religion makes one thing certain – he can’t be contemporary. These are simple, logical ways to think. In the first place, if somebody is your contemporary, you are full of contempt towards the man – perhaps that is the meaning of contemporary – you cannot believe in him.

That’s why they could not believe in Jesus Christ. They couldn’t believe in him. When Buddha was contemporary, Hindus did not recognize him. But five hundred years after he died they had to recognize him as one of the Hindu incarnations of God because his influence had grown so much.

Now to reject him meant to reject all the Buddhists. That would have been a great loss to the Hindu priesthood. It was better to absorb them, to keep them under the Hindu fold so that you could go on exploiting them; otherwise they would move apart.

So for five hundred years Hindus were continually criticizing Buddha, but after five hundred years they changed their tactics, their strategy. Up to that time they had only ten incarnations of God, and there was no room to allow for Buddha, but Buddhists wouldn’t agree for any lesser position than that. So they had to increase the quota! Five hundred years after Buddha, the Hindus changed and started saying, ”If we have twenty-four avataras... just as Jainas have twentyfour tirthankaras and Buddhists have twenty-four Buddhas, we also have twenty-four avataras.” Gautam Buddha was born in a Hindu family, obviously – just like Jesus was born in a Jewish family

– so he was a Hindu, and he died as a Hindu. They reclaimed him and declared him one of the incarnations of the Hindu God. But for the contemporary Buddha there was nothing but contempt.

It is so common a practice all over the world – that you can respect a man who is dead, and the longer he is dead, the better. If he is outside the scope of your history then you can respect him very easily, then there is no problem at all. He is so distant from you, it does not hurt.

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But somebody sitting by your side declaring himself the only begotten son of God! You cannot believe this guy – perspiring, stinking – is the only begotten son of God. You feel like kicking him!

The only son of God? You feel angry at him, at God, at everything that this man.... But after two thousand years have passed nobody is worried; nobody seems to be concerned whether Jesus was really the son of God.

Christians have accepted it but Jews don’t talk about him. Mohammedans have accepted him because they have no problem about him. Hindus, Jainas, Buddhists, have no trouble with Jesus.

You cannot convert a single Jaina to Christianity, or a single Buddhist to Christianity, because Christianity is a far more primitive religion. Those people are far superior in their arguments and their logic.

Many Christians have become Buddhists; not a single Buddhist becomes Christian. There is nothing in it to appeal to them. Do you think a Bud&ist will be impressed by the fact that Jesus is the son of the virgin, Mary? He will simply laugh; he will say, ”You are joking!” What has Christianity got?

One Christian missionary went, with his BIBLE, to see a Zen Master. He started reading the Sermon on the Mount, of course; that is the best part. In fact that’s all that Christianity is about. He had read only one or two sentences when the Zen monk said, ”Stop. Whoever the guy was, he was a bodhisattva” – bodhisattva means in some future life he will become a buddha. ”Be finished! These sentences are proof enough that in some future life this guy is going to become a buddha. But don’t be bothered with him, he is not a buddha right now – only a bodhisattva.” Bodhisattva means essentially a buddha, but everybody is a bodhisattva essentially. You may take lives to make your essence actual; that depends on you, but you are a buddha. Not only you, the trees, the birds, even the dogs are essentially bodhisattvas. They may take a little longer, or maybe some intelligent dog rushes ahead and leaves you behind. It is happening: all intelligent dogs have come to Oregon. They have made a party – 1000 Friends of Oregon. They are known as watchdogs!

I was wondering why they are called watchdogs. Finally the revelation came to me that they are dogs, but very intelligent. Most of them are in the legal profession; they have changed themselves into watchdogs. Even dogs, even watchdogs of Oregon are bodhisattvas. So that Zen Master was not saying much, but that missionary was overjoyed. And the story was being told all over, in Christian churches that a Zen Master had accepted Jesus; but the missionary did not understand the meaning of bodhisattva.

Bodhisattva does not mean buddha. Sattva means essence, potentially; but potentiality may always remain a potentiality – there is no necessity for a seed to become a tree. A seed may remain just a seed forever – there are different types of seed. Some seed may choose to sit upon a rock. You can go on meditating sitting on a rock, but you are not going to become a buddha. On a rock a seed will remain a seed.

To become a tree the seed has to die into the earth, dissolve itself completely; on its death is the birth of the tree. Its death is absolutely essential. Here it dies, and on the other side the tree is born, a small sprout, but alive. The seed was almost dead. I say ”almost” because it had the potential of life. But a seed can remain a seed – and millions of seeds do remain seeds.

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So it was nothing much; that Zen Master really joked with the missionary. He said, ”Stop, enough!

Those two lines are enough. Whosoever said it....” He did not even bother to ask who had said it.

He said, ”Whosoever has said it, he is a bodhisattva. Close the book – now talk business.” I am not the first Rajneeshee or the last Rajneeshee.

I am not a Rajneeshee at all.

I am just an outsider.

You may be Rajneeshees, but don’t drag me into your Big Muddy Ranch. You enjoy the Big Muddy Ranch – leave me outside.

I am just a guest, because in the first place I don’t want to be crucified – no interest in it at all. I don’t want to be deified – no interest in it at all.

Whatever I am is so fulfilling that I don’t see any need to be something else. I don’t see anybody superior to me, I don’t see anybody inferior to me.

In fact both those things exist together. Anybody who thinks somebody is superior must think somebody else inferior, and vice versa: if you think somebody is inferior to you, you are bound to think of somebody as superior. It is the same mind; and those two dimensions are not two dimensions but two polarities of the same thing.

I am simply out of it. I am just not playing that game of being superior and inferior.

If you are really interested in what I am doing and saying and being, then never let ”Rajneeshee” become something like Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, no. Never get serious about it. It is just a word to demarcate.

It is not a creed, a cult, a dogma that you have to fight for, that you have to go on a crusade for. No,

– you need not become Don Quixotes – you are not to convert anybody.

Rajneeshee is simply a name.

Some name is needed, X, Y, Z, anything will do, just to give you a demarcation. You are not Hindus, you are not Mohammedans, you are not Christians. People are going to ask, ”Then who are you?” I have never voted. My name is not even on the census reports in India because whenever the census people came there was a clause which had to be filled out: To which religion do you belong?

I said, ”This is difficult – I don’t belong to any religion.” But they insisted the form had to be filled out completely, only then was it acceptable. I said, ”Forget about it. Don’t accept it – I don’t care about it. Your form is your business. Just get lostl I am not going to fill in that clause because that would be a lie: I don’t belong to any religion.”

But those poor people insisted, You must belong to something. If you are an atheist you can say, ’I am an atheist.’”

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But I am not an atheist. I am not obsessed with the idea that there is no God, and I am not after Him. If there is no God why should I be after Him? And why should I call myself an atheist when there is no God?

Theism is belief in God.

Atheism is disbelief in God.

My God! – disbelief in God?

I told these people, ”I don’t believe, I don’t disbelieve: I simply have nothing to do with God.” They said then, ”But you must be doing some prayer.” I said, ”Never. I have never done any prayer. Why should I do any prayer?” And they were almost angry at this. Once it happened that they had come to my house and went away very angry. Then they came to the university, but they did not recognize me because in the house I had been simply sitting with a lungi on, my body half-naked, and in the college I had on a robe. So they could not figure out that I was the same person: again they brought out the form.

I said, ”Listen, if you show me this form again I am going to hit you really hard.” They said, ”Again? but we have never met.”

I said, ”You have forgotten. That guy who was....” Then they looked again and they said, ”Yes, that’s true. Now we will be continually aware of beards. We may come across you again somewhere.” I was at that time really strong – one hundred and ninety pounds – and I was running eight miles every day, morning and evening, whenever I could find time. So that when I said to anybody, ”I will hit you hard,” they understood it would be hard.

I had enjoyed jumping, running, swimming so much that my family was always worried: ”Will you do anything else in life or not? And you create such a nuisance for other people.” I said, ”But I simply do my thing. I don’t get in anybody’s way.” But they had something at hand –

some report had arrived. So they said, ”This is not true. This morning at four o’clock, what business did you have that you were running backwards? We know there are people who go running, but BACKWARDS?”

The place where I lived was in the most beautiful area – with big, tall trees and a long row of bamboos, so it was always shadowy near the bamboos. It was a full moon night, and I was just doing my exercises by the side of those bamboos. It is more joyous to run backwards because you are moving into the unknown; you can’t see what might happen. And at four o’clock the street was almost empty. But there is an Indian belief that ghosts walk backwards....

There was a man who used to live at the corner of the road who had a small tea shop. He used to get very afraid, but only in the beginning. Then I went to him and told him, ”You need not be afraid: From Personality to Individuality

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I am a man, I am not a ghost, and every morning you see me; so once and for all be settled about it and go on sleeping – don’t get disturbed.”

But what happened that day was that the milk man.... They come early in the morning because they bring milk from nearby villages with two big drums full of milk on a bicycle. The milkman was coming along the road when suddenly he saw me. He lost his balance and fell from the bicycle. Because the drums fell and made so much noise, I turned back wondering, What is the matter? I saw the bicycle, the drums and the milk all over the road. And the man running far away!

I simply forgot that it was not good to follow him. I just wanted to help him and tell him that I was not a ghost, so I followed him. And because I was always running he could not escape me. When he saw me coming behind him, he simply fell down, unconscious. And I was trying to tell him....

By that time the man who lived at the corner came and said, ”Look, this is what used to happen to me. And if he fell from his bicycle, what business was it of yours to follow him?” I said, ”I was simply trying to help – so that he was sure that I am a man.” He said, ”Now have you made sure? Now he has almost become a ghost!” That report had reached my family and that was why they were saying: ”This is not right. You should not get in people’s way.”

Those census officers said, ”Sir” – because there they were respectful to a university professor. At my house I was in the garden, digging a hole. There they were very angry with me, thinking me a gardener or somebody who was just talking absurdities in saying that he could not fill in this line. In the university they said, ”Sir, one thing please remember: if we come across you again, you remind us and we will simply leave. We will not say anything.” So my name does not exist on the Indian voters’ list. I have not voted in my whole life because my name never appeared on the voters’ list. It was not in the census list even, for the simple reason that I could not say what my religion was.

You are fortunate, you can say what your religion is. But it is not to be taken seriously.

You are not to fight for it.

You are not to die for it.

You have to live it, enjoy it, relish it.

And please, leave me out of it!

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God – the phantom fuehrer

9 January 1985 pm in Lao Tzu Grove

Question 1

OSHO,

ALAN WATTS ONCE DESCRIBED THE UNIVERSE BY SAYING, ”IT IS AS IF GOD IS PLAYING A GAME.” IF THERE IS NO GOD, WHO IS PLAYING AND WHAT IS THE GAME?

ALAN Watts was a nice guy but that statement he made was stolen from Hindu mythology. That’s what he was doing his whole life, although to the West it appeared as if he was giving original insights.

Basically he was trained as a Christian priest and, like every Christian priest, acquired a certain knowledge about all the religions so that he could prove Christianity to be the best, the highest, the truest religion.

But Alan Watts – that’s why I say he was a nice guy – seeing the Hindu religion could not say that the Christian religion was the highest religion that had happened on earth. He was an honest man.

He renounced his priesthood and remained almost a beggar his whole life. But he was tremendously impressed by Eastern religions – emphatically with the Hindu idea of God playing a game. In Hinduism it is called leela. That is one of the contributions of Hinduism to world thought.

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is God who is seeking; it is God in men, it is God in women. To Hinduism, existence is made of the stuff called God, and it is not a creation. The concept of creation has implications which Christianity, Judaism, and Mohammedanism are incapable of answering.

First: Why in the first place should God create? What is His need? One creates something because of a certain need. You create a house because you need a shelter. You create because there is a certain desire to be fulfilled. Is God full of desires? Then what is the difference between man and God? Is God in need? If even God is in need then there is no possibility of a state where you will be free of need: need is going to follow you like a shadow wherever you go, and you can never be free from it – and unless you are free from need, desire, wanting, you are a slave, and you will remain a slave.

A God who has a certain need to create is a slave.

The implications are very significant. Was it compulsory for Him to create, or was it optional? If it was compulsory, then God is not all-powerful. Somebody above Him orders Him to create, and there is no option, He has to do it. Or if you say it was optional, then the question arises, Why does He choose to create rather than not to create? There must be some reason for choosing to.

What reason can God have to choose creation? Then that reason becomes more important than God Himself If even God has to follow rationality, then why should you have to bother about God?

You should think about being reasonable, following reason, which even God cannot throw away.

Why did God create at a certain moment, at a certain time?

What was He doing before that?

For eternity He was unemployed. What was that fellow doing all that time?

Sleeping? In a coma? Drunk, or what?

And suddenly one day He starts creating. There is no reason that Christian theology, Mohammedan religion, or Judaism can supply as to why, at a certain moment, there was this urge to create.

In fact the urge to create is something biological, sexual.

Sexual energy is your creative energy.

Women have not been great painters and poets and sculptors for the simple reason that their desire to create is immensely fulfilled by bringing up children. To give birth to a child, alive, radiant – what else can be compared to it? You create a painting; howsoever beautiful, it is a dead thing after all.

You can create music, you can create song.

But what are they compared to a beautiful child?

Just look into the eyes of a child and all your paintings are nothing.

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The child smiles, and all your songs fall flat on the ground.

The child tries to walk, and the joy when the child feels ”I can walk.” All your science, all your art, are nothing compared to that joy.

And when the child speaks for the first time, have you seen the ecstasy?

The mother watches from the first moments in her womb when the child starts moving.

An

experienced mother, one who has given birth to one or two children, can tell whether the child is a boy or a girl, because the girl remains quiet and the boy starts kicking very early: he is in a hurry to get out. The girl remains silent. And that difference continues in childhood, in youth, in old age.

A woman has a certain stability, a centeredness, a grounding, which a man has not. He is always on the move. Even on holidays he can’t sit silently. He will start fixing the clock which is working perfectly well. He will take it apart.

There is nothing wrong with the clock – something is wrong with the man! He can’t sit still. He will open the bonnet of his car, start doing something, and create a mess. And he will be more tired after the holiday than he ever is after he comes from the office, because for the whole day he cannot just sit still.

I have heard: a woman hired a nurse to look after her children – she had almost a dozen children.

She said to the nurse, ”Today I will be coming home a little late. These children will create trouble for you but there is no other way, I have to go. Somebody has died, and they are close relatives. I may be back late, so forgive me and be patient. And somehow make all of them go to sleep.” When the woman returned in the middle of the night, she asked, ”Have an the children gone to sleep?.” The nurse said, ”All of them have gone to sleep; just one was creating so much trouble I had to beat him.”

The wife said, ”Which one?” – and the nurse showed her.

She said, ”My God! It is my husband!”

”But,” the nurse said, ”he was the most troublesome. The whole day he was doing this and doing that. I somehow kept hold of the others, but this one was too big in the first place. But then I thought that if he won’t understand any other language... so I started slapping him. I threw him forcibly onto the bed, but he would sit back up again and try to escape.” Man is restless.

And in the mother’s womb, very early on the mother can feel whether it is a boy or a girl. She feels so contented in giving birth to a child, in helping the child to grow; and that’s why she does not need any other kind of creativity. Her creative urge is fulfilled.

But man is in trouble: he cannot give birth to a child, he cannot have the child in his womb. He has to find a substitute, otherwise he will always feel inferior to the woman. And deep down he does feel that he is inferior.

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Because of that feeling of inferiority man tries to create paintings, statues, dramas, he writes poetry, novels, explores the whole scientific world of creativity.

This is all nothing but an effort of man to say to woman, ”I am a creator. You are just an instrument in the hands of biology – the child is not your creation. Any woman can do that, but any man cannot become Picasso, or Nijinsky, or Nietzsche, or Dostoevsky. This is creativity.” This is how man compensates and covers up his inferiority. And this is the way he has followed for thousands of years; and by and by has convinced himself, and the woman too, that he is superior to her. And he has not allowed the woman the same freedom to create these things because he knows perfectly well that woman can be as creative as him.

A woman can create like Picasso and Dostoevsky and Bernard Shaw and Russell; there is no problem in it. All that she will have to do is drop the idea of being a mother, because it is difficult to be a mother and to be a Bertrand Russell. There is a conflict of interest. It is difficult to be a woman, a mother, and at the same time be a Picasso, because Picasso’s paintings demand – just like a woman – his whole being. His paintings monopolize him. Now, the woman cannot allow that monopoly.

In fact when the first child is born, a rift starts happening between the husband and wife for the simple reason that the woman is now monopolized by the child; the father is secondary. From now onwards he cannot be primary, he cannot have priority. Obviously nature is in support of the child because he has a future, and the father is going to die sooner rather than later.

Nature is always with the new, with the growing.

Nature is always with the sunrise, never with the sunset. And this is perfectly logical. What is the point of being with the sunset?

Why does God have to create? Either God is not He but She.... Then God is a woman, and this whole universe is Her womb. But then you are bringing God down to the same level of biology as man, as animals, as anybody else....

Or, God is a man but feels somehow inferior to some woman about whom we don’t know anything.

With which woman is He feeling competitive? There must be a woman in His life, and He feels incompetent, inferior. By creating this whole universe He wants to prove to the woman, ”Look, this is creation.” But then God is no longer God: He is just as human, as animal as we are.

”Creation” is indefensible.

And what kind of creation has He made? If He is serious – and creation has to be serious – then this life with so much misery, so much suffering, which finally ends in death and darkness, has no meaning at all. If He wanted to create, there was no need to create such a miserable existence, full of anguish, suffering, agony: an existence which is more a curse than a blessing.

One of Dostoevsky’s characters in his greatest work, BROTHERS KARAMAZOV.... It is perhaps the greatest novel in the whole world, in any language. One of the Karamazovs – there are three From Personality to Individuality

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brothers, and one of them says, ”If I meet God, all that I want is to return my ticket and for Him to tell me where the exit is. Everywhere I see the entrance, but where is the exit? And who is He, that without asking me, produced me, created me? On what authority? – I was not even asked whether I want to be created; I was not given any alternative.” This is totalitarian, absolutely dictatorial. God seems to be some magnified Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin. You were not asked, and yet you have to suffer. You were not asked, and you have been given instincts for which you will suffer here and perhaps hereafter.

The same theologians, the same priests, go on telling you to destroy your instinctive life completely.

God gives instincts to you: he is responsible. If anybody has to suffer in hell it is only He alone; nobody else is responsible for anything.

A murderer comes with the instinct to murder. A rapist comes with the instinct to rape. Who is responsible for all this? Yet these religions go on telling you that you are responsible. God is the creator and you are responsible? – and you were not even asked, What instincts do you want?

If you had chosen to be a rapist, a murderer, then of course it would be your responsibility and you would have to suffer the consequences. But you simply come with an inbuilt program, so whoever programs you, only He and nobody else is responsible.

Alan Watts understood very clearly that he could not answer this question which has been raised in the East again and again. Hinduism has found an answer; at least it appears to be an answer.

Certainly it is better than the idea of creation, but it has its own problems – which Alan Watts was not aware of because he was not well trained in the Eastern roots of religion. It appealed to him –

the idea of leela, play, seemed to be far better. Life is nothing serious; it is just a game, a play, a drama.

In a drama you may become a thief; that does not mean that you have become a thief – you just play the role. In a drama you may become an incarnation of God, Rama, Krishna; that does not mean that you have become an incarnation of God, but on the stage before the audience it is accepted without any question. Questioning it would be absolutely foolish: everybody knows that everybody is playing a role.

Hinduism says that this whole existence is just a drama and God is just playing a game. The word leela, playfulness, takes away seriousness and its implications. But it brings in new implications: Why can’t God sit silently? – because the people who teach that God is playing a game also teach,

”Sit silently in meditation.” Why can’t He sit silently in meditation and stop all this nonsense?

But Alan Watts could not ask that question; it may not have occurred to him, but it can occur to me: What is the point of all this nonsense? All Hindu sages are teaching: Sit silently, unmoving, without any thought, utterly silent, then only will you taste what religion is. It seems God has never tasted religion – he is continuously playing.

At least in creation there was one thing; that is, in six days He was finished. On the seventh day, Sunday, He rested, and we don’t know what happened after that. But the Hindu God has to be constantly playing. Now, there is a time to play and there is a time to study – or so each child is being told – and there is a time to sleep.

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But this mad Hindu God... no time to sleep, no time to study, no time for anything else: just playing and playing and playing. He seems to be obsessed. And what a big play! – infinite, eternal. And why should He go on playing? Is He not tired? And the same game....

In my village I had a friend whose father used to go to the ”movie-talkie” every day. The same film used to continue at least for six or seven days; it didn’t matter, he had to go every day. I asked him,

”It seems a little strange that you go to see the same film for seven days.” He said, ”Who bothers to watch the film? I really sleep! Once in a while in the seven days I see the complete film. Sometimes I see the beginning part, sometimes the middle, sometimes the end. And if someday I am feeling good, then I connect all the parts and see the whole film.”

”But,” I said, ”You can do it in one day.”

He said, ”I don’t want to do it one day. What will I do the remaining six days?” – because in that small place the movie house was the only entertainment. Where else to go? I could understand the difficulty of the old man.

But what is God’s difficulty? Why does the same game go on and on? And is He still entertained?

– He must be an idiot. If this is entertainment, even an idiot will start feeling bored: the same type of people continue being born, the same love affairs, the same children, again and again – and the wheel goes on moving. The same spokes come up and go down; again they come up and again they go down. It is the same wheel, the same spokes.

I am not worried about the wheel, I am worried about the man who goes on moving it – for what purpose? Of course you cannot ask Hindus about the purpose as you can the Christians – not with the same emphasis, because it is a play. But I still ask: play is okay, if once in a while He plays, it is understandable, but this continuous play, this repetitive play...? It seems that we are in the hands of a mad God.

And then these same Hindu sages go on saying that you will suffer the consequences of your acts.

Strange: God is playful and yet we are going to suffer for our acts – which are God’s play! If He wants me to play the role of a thief, okay, but why should I suffer the consequences? The same people on the other hand say, ”It is God’s playfulness.” Great! Accepted – but what about the players?

They should be completely freed from any consequences – it is God’s play. You play cards: you get defeated, or you become victorious – you win, or you lose – but do you think something happens to the king and the queen and the joker of the cards? Whoever wins or whoever loses does not matter to them at all; they are just playing cards.

We are just kings, queens, and jokers – mostly jokers.

Why should we suffer?

In Hinduism there cannot be these two things together. That was my constant conflict with Hindu sages, shankaracharyas, Hindu pandits: if existence is out of playfulness then it is too much to say that we should be thrown into hellfire. If it is somebody else’s play and He is never thrown into hellfire, why should we be? Both these concepts put together are absolutely opposed to each From Personality to Individuality

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other. There is no way to make them complementary. I have tried my best – they cannot be made complementary.

If it is God’s play, all the consequences are His: We are just puppets in His hand.

Then the law of karma is simply crap.

With a playful God, what is the meaning of worship?

You can’t be serious....

If God Himself is playful, you have to be playful.

Ramakrishna was right.... There was a low caste woman of Calcutta who was an untouchable, but who was a queen – Rani Rasmani. She made this beautiful temple of Dakshineshwar, in Calcutta, on the banks of the Ganges; it is one of the most beautiful shrines.

She had enough money and enough of everything, but no brahmin was ready to worship in her temple because that temple was made by an untouchable.

So that temple had also become

untouchable, and the god in the temple, he had also become untouchable – and these brahmins are the people who say that it is all playfulness. Even God becomes untouchable because the temple statue has been purchased by the money of an untouchable.

Rani Rasmani never entered the temple, knowing perfectly well that if she entered the temple then there would be no possibility of finding a brahmin priest. She never touched anything of the temple.

She used to come just to the boundary of the temple and bow down from there. And it was her temple – she had poured millions of rupees into it. But no brahmin was ready to enter.

Ramakrishna was a poor brahmin, uneducated. His name at that time was Gadawar. ”Ramakrishna” was later on, when disciples gathered and started feeling that he had some kind of synthesis of Ram and Krishna in his being. Hence they started calling him Ramakrishna. But his name then was Gadawar. He was uneducated: only up to second grade of Bengali was he educated. Where was he going to find a job? His father died and he had to take care of his mother and his family. He was in such difficulty that he accepted the offer to become the priest in the temple of Dakshineshwar.

All the brahmins said, ”Once you become the priest of Rani Rasmani, you are boycotted; you are no longer a brahmin.”

He said, ”I don’t care, it does not matter – I will be worshipping God. Who has purchased the statue, who has made the temple, is not my concern.”

He became the priest, but soon complaints started coming about him. Rani Rasmani was very puzzled. What could she do? If she threw him out it would be difficult to find another brahmin.

And after her waiting for a few years, this one courageous young man had come; but now so many complaints from people....

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And they were strange complaints about things which could not be accepted, in no way allowed: that when Ramakrishna brought food to God, first he would eat some himself in front of God. He would taste the sweet and then offer it to God. Now that was absolutely unheard of.

In the West it would not make much difference. I see people every day placing their roses on the bonnet of the car as only Westerners can – first they smell it; in the East it is impossible. And it is out of love; what they are doing is absolutely out of love and respect, there is no question about it.

They smell the rose, they kiss it, and then they put it on the car.

That’s what Ramakrishna was doing in India. But in India, once you have smelled a flower you cannot offer it to God. Kissing a flower and offering it to God! But he was doing worse still: he was eating the food. Half of the sweet he would eat and half he would offer to God.

Rasmani had to call Ramakrishna and ask him, ”Don’t you know a simple thing? – that first you have to offer the food to God? You spoil all the food and then you offer it to God. We would not even offer it to a guest, and you are offering it to God?”

Ramakrishna said, ”My mother used to do it.

She never gave me anything without tasting it

first,’Because,’ she said,’if it is not the right taste I will not give it to you.’ If my mother did it for me, I think it is perfectly right for me to first taste whether it is worth offering to God or not. Sometimes it is not worth offering – sometimes too much sugar, sometimes too little sugar; sometimes the taste is just weird.

”Do you want me to give all these things to God? I cannot do that. I can resign from the post, but I cannot do such an inhuman act as offering things which I have not tasted. Perhaps something may be poisonous – the food comes from the market – who knows? I have to be absolutely certain that nothing wrong goes to God.”

Rasmani was a woman of great understanding. She said, ”I understand. I am a woman and I can feel your mother’s mind and I can feel you. You continue. It is my temple; and anyway, no other brahmin is ready to be a priest. And your argument is valid. It is my temple, you are my priest. Your salary is doubled from today.”

But then there was another problem. Some days he would not open the doors of the temple but keep it locked. The whole day there was no worship; nobody else could enter – it was locked. Other times the worship would continue the whole day. He would dance – people would come and go, but from morning to evening he would be dancing and singing, dancing and singing. And for some days he would simply lock the temple.

Rasmani asked Ramakrishna, ”This is now new trouble. What are you doing? Worship has to be done every day; but you need not do it the whole day. Are you trying to do it wholesale? So far you have done it the whole day for three or four days. There is no need.” He said, ”No, that is not the point. Sometimes I get angry at God. Then I say, ’Okay, I will see you tomorrow. Remain locked up!’ So I keep Him locked up. Within three to four days He comes to His senses; then of course I go and I say, ’How are you? Understood the point? Now behave.’” Rasmani said, ”You punish God?”

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He said, ”Of course, if He does not behave rightly. For example, if I pray for hours and no answer comes from His side, I will not tolerate such a thing. If I have been praying there for hours, the whole day, and He just remains standing there dead, I will teach Him a lesson: for three or four days, no food, no worship, and He remains locked up. And then He comes to His senses. When on the fifth day I open the doors, He is immediately smiling and welcoming, and within just a few minutes He is ready to answer me.”

Rasmani said, ”Now, it is very difficult to argue with you, but you are exactly the right person, because if God is playing with the whole world, you have every right to play with Him. Go back to the temple: your salary is doubled again.”

Slowly, slowly, Ramakrishna’s fame started spreading, that he was a strange priest, and nobody could stop him because the temple belonged to Rasmani; it was private property and brahmins could not even enter to see what was happening there. They were dying of curiosity! And that man’s salary went on increasing; it was now four times what it had been. He had started with twenty rupees per month; now it was eighty rupees per month.

In those days one rupee was seven hundred times more valuable than the rupee is today. Eighty rupees was enough for the whole year: clothes, good food, good house – everything comfortable.

Eighty rupees for the whole year... and he was getting eighty rupees per month! There was great jealousy among brahmins, because even in the best temples they were getting two rupees; five rupees at the most. And Ramakrishna was doing such strange things.

Finally they sent a non-brahmin representative to Rasmani to say, ”This man should be thrown out

– he is not serious enough.”

But Rasmani said, ”But that is the whole Hindu philosophy – that the existence is playfulness. Why should he be serious? I am also not serious. That’s why the more complaints come to me, the more I go on increasing his salary. That has stopped the complaints and now nobody comes to complain because they know complaints mean his salary will be doubled again.

”I had to stop the complaints somehow, and I have; now nobody is complaining. I enquire myself; I go round the temple and I enquire of people,’Do you have any complaints against Ramakrishna?’ They say,’No, he is the right person’ – and they know you can’t find a wronger person than Ramakrishna as a priest!

”He knows nothing of Sanskrit; he talks in Bengali – and who has heard that God knows Bengali?

And to God he insists, ’You have to reply in Bengali because I don’t understand any other language.’” Now, this was absolutely playful. But Hindus on the one hand go on saying it is God’s play, and on the other hand they are very serious people. For each small thing everything will be counted, either for or against you. On the one hand God is playful, but Hindus don’t allow man to be playful. With whom is He playing? If He is playing He will need another party also to be playful; or is He playing football alone, taking both sides? Then He must have scored millions of goals... and there is no problem because He is alone on the field. But then it seems stupid.

No, to me there is no God.

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I cut the problem from the very root so there is no question of creation and no question of playfulness.

Alan Watts has simply borrowed the idea from Hinduism. He shocked Christians, but to me it is nothing: it is just another kind of theology. To him it was new and very revealing, but to me nothing is very revealing: I know all the theologies. They may give different explanations but basically the same questions are relevant to all explanations. If you ask why God created the world, you can ask why does He need to play? Can’t He relax? Just take a hot bath and relax? And just for His play, so many people are suffering. Is this God’s playfulness? – Adolf Hitler’s gas chambers.... Must be, because Hindus say, ”Without His will not even a leaf can move.” So how can Adolf Hitler put millions of Jews in gas chambers? Not without His support... perhaps His playfulness.

But now playfulness becomes more serious than creation.

Millions of Russians simply disappeared in these past sixty years. You cannot even enquire where they have gone because Stalin never believed in bothering about wasting time with people who were suspected of being against communism. Just suspicion was enough, and the man disappears. In the middle of the night the cops come; the man disappears and is never heard of again.

Stalin never believed in putting people in prison, because if you put people in prison, sooner or later you will have to release them. And how many people can you put in prison? And how many prisons will you have to create? Economically it is meaningless because you have to feed those people, you have to clothe those people, you have to take care of their medical needs. For what? And if any day you release them they are now more confirmed enemies than ever. It would have been better not to catch them.

Perhaps at that time it was only a suspicion – the man was not really against communism, but now he certainly would be. So Stalin simply believed in cutting off their heads, in finishing the person immediately, disposing of him. It was a shortcut, economical, and no trouble for the future.

This is God’s play?

The Hindus themselves have been dying of starvation, famine, floods, earthquakes – all these things happen in India; I think no other country can compete. Every year something or other... and the country goes down and down. This is God’s play – an earthquake?

Just now in Bhopal a gas plant exploded. Is this God’s play? Three thousand people immediately died; and it was not an easy death. I have just seen a film on it – it was terrible. Those people were just like fish thrown onto hot sand. They could not rest: the gas was making them writhe about, churning something inside them. They died the most terrible death you can conceive; and one hundred thousand people are still waiting to die in the hospitals.

Is this God’s play? No.

If this is play then what can crime be?

What can sin be?

I reject God completely because God is simply a problem which idiots have invented thinking that He will solve all your problems.

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God has become the only problem which cannot be solved. Whatsoever you do with Him, He remains a question mark – unnecessarily.

I simply want to cut the very root:

There is no God.

There is no creation.

There is no play going on.

Existence is enough unto itself; it does not need any outside agency. It has its own energy, it has its own intelligence, it has its own life.

Existence needs no hypothetical God.

And God doesn’t help anything.

Remember one fundamental principle of all sane thinking: Don’t bring in a hypothesis which doesn’t help to solve anything. On the contrary, because of the hypothesis a thousand other problems start arising. A hypothesis is brought in to solve problems, not to increase them.

God is the most useless hypothesis ever propounded by man. Because of Him there has been so much trouble, so many crusades, so many butcherings, so many people slaughtered, so many women raped – in the name of God. Please just flush Him down the toilet.

Forget about God.

Existence is enough unto itself

That’s what I teach.

And then we cannot throw the responsibility on anybody’s head: there is no God, then the whole responsibility falls on us. That is my hidden desire.

Why am I throwing God down the toilet?

Because I want man to understand that he is responsible.

Because man has the highest

consciousness in the whole of existence, you should accept the greatest responsibility. Stars, trees, animals, birds are far below you; you cannot throw the responsibility on them.

To be conscious means you are mature enough now to accept all responsibility for yourself and for the existence that surrounds you.

Then the explosion in the gas factory in Bhopal is our responsibility. It was some stupid people there who were not careful enough; it was carelessness. And I would not like these people to be punished in hell – no, there is no hell – they should be punished herenow so such an accident does not happen again. There are thousands of similar factories around the world: if it can happen in From Personality to Individuality

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one factory it can happen in any factory. And this was only a poisonous gas. Now there are nuclear plants: just one man’s carelessness and the world can be finished You have created things which are so dangerous, but you have not created a comparable consciousness which can be careful about these things.

If you create nuclear weapons... I am not against them because those nuclear weapons can prove creative, immensely creative. Anything that can be destructive can always be creative – it all depends on you. The sword in your hand can kill somebody and can also save somebody. The sword is neutral; it is up to you how you use it.

I am not against atomic, nuclear, and other weapons. Though they are tremendously dangerous in the hands of man as he is today, but still I say we cannot go back: we cannot dispose of nuclear weapons. That is impossible, because movement backwards is impossible; we can only go forwards.

Then what has to be done?

All over the world great concern is being shown by politicians, the intelligentsia, and other humanitarian people that there should be some stop put to it: no more piling up of weapons. Nobody can stop it, it is impossible, and what they are saying is not the right solution. I don’t agree with it.

I say: Increase man’s awareness in the same proportion as he has increased his dangerous powers, and there is no problem.

Don’t put a sword in a child’s hand – that’s true – but let the child learn with a wooden sword. Let him mature, let him become more aware. I am not in favor of disposing of the sword. It cannot be done in the very nature of things.

In the whole history of man is there any precedent where we have gone back a single step on anything? It is against the law of existence to go backwards.

So don’t just hit your head against a wall, do something else: Increase man’s consciousness, his awareness.

A prince was sent to a Zen Master to learn swordsmanship. It is a strange phenomenon, but in Japan it has become a reality that a Master of consciousness, a Master who teaches meditation, also teaches swordsmanship. To me it is very significant. That is what is needed.

The prince went to the Master and he said, ”My father has sent me. He is old and he is not going to live long – maybe one year, two years at the most. He has sent me to you with the urgent message to prepare me before he dies. He would like to see me with your recommendation saying that I am ready, because if I am not ready then he cannot die peacefully.

”In every other way I am ready: I have learned archery, swordsmanship and all kinds of things that are needed in war; I am a master in every dimension. And I went back from the university to my father to say that I had all these medals and trophies and certificates; I was ready.

”He said, ’No, you are not ready yet, because the basic thing is missing. All that you have brought is good, maybe it will be of use some day, but first go to this Master to learn meditation, and to combine From Personality to Individuality

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all your warrior’s training with meditation. Unless meditation is supporting the warrior in you, you are just an ordinary warrior, and dangerous: I cannot put the kingdom in your hands. I will have to find somebody else. Go fast, and learn fast.’”

So the prince said, ”I am ready. Whatsoever you say I will do, but be quick.” The Master said, ”That is the first requirement, that time is not binding. I cannot say how much time it will take – one year, two years, ten years, fifty years – nothing can be said about it. It all depends on you, on how quick you learn. I will try my best because I am old, I am also in a hurry. I was not going to accept another disciple, but if the king sends you – he is my old friend, we both were under the same Master learning meditation – I cannot refuse you. Your training starts from now.” The prince asked, ”What do I have to do?”

The old Master said, ”You have not to do anything except just ordinary things: cleaning, cooking, drawing the water from the well, cutting wood. But remember one thing, I can hit you any time from behind, so remain alert. Do anything, but remain alert.” The prince said, ”What kind of training is this? – but my father has sent me to you so it must be right.” And he was continually being hit. The old man was really a great, skillful man. He would walk without any noise; you could not hear the sound of his feet, and suddenly from nowhere he would jump out and hit you hard!

Within fifteen days the prince’s whole body was aching. It was difficult to sleep on one side because there it was hurting, and it was difficult to sleep on the other side because it was hurting, but he was happy too because now he had started hearing his Master’s footsteps. Awareness had grown.

Before he was not so conscious, so those footsteps were making a certain noise but it was so small, so subtle, that it was not in his grasp. Now his awareness, in such conditions, was bound to grow.

He had to be alert, continuously alert: while doing everything he knew that the Master would be coming. He would be chopping wood, but no other thought would be there other than about the old man: from where would he appear and how would the prince defend himself?

The old man would try to hit him and the prince would just catch his bamboo staff. Within three months the old man could not hit the prince a single time in the whole day. The prince was very happy; he thought, ”This is a great day!” And his body was no longer hurting: in three months of continual beating his body had become like steel. Now he understood that he had gained a certain strength that was never in him before.

Now when his hand held a sword, it was not a human hand but one made of steel. He was happy about his body, the way it had become stronger under his Master’s hits. He was happy that he had become so alert that even when the old man was far away in the other room, he would be able to detect it. He would shout from his room, ”Don’t try anything – I am alert” The Master used to come in from his room. One day the prince listened out for noises from the other room for twenty-four hours; and the Master could not beat him a single time. The Master called the prince to him. The prince was very happy, the old man was also very happy; he said, ”Now the From Personality to Individuality

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second part starts. Up to now I have been hitting you with a bamboo – from tomorrow it will be a real sword.”

The prince thought, ”A real sword! The bamboo was one thing – I managed somehow and remained patient – but now a real sword! If I miss even one time I am finished. And this old fellow, if he can hit me with the bamboo so hard that he has made my whole body like steel, what will he do with a real sword?”

The old man took out his sword and he said, ”This is my sword, so look at it. Watch it! This is now going to be after you continually.”

The prince’s awareness arose like a pillar of light. He could feel it, because danger was there and now it was not a joke: it was a question of life and death.

So the old man started trying to hit him but could not succeed for three months; not even a single time did he hit him. And the prince’s awareness was going higher every day: he could save himself immediately. From the back the Master would try to hit.... And all kinds of work the prince was doing.

With closed eyes he would be sitting in meditation: the Master would go to hit him and he would jump aside and save himself

The Master called him, and he said, ”I am happy. The second part of training is over.” The prince said, ”I am tremendously grateful and happy. I never thought that there was such a possibility inside me to be so alert. Not even a small breeze can pass by me without me knowing it. Not even a single thought can move within me without me knowing it. And I am happy that there is still something to learn.

”At first I was very hesitant, reluctant, unwilling: I was here just because my father had sent me. But now I am here because I want to be, and I don’t think of my father and the kingdom or anything else.

All I think of is to bring my consciousness to its highest peak, because the joys that I have known I was not even aware of, I could not have even dreamed about them. So start the third step.” The Master said, ”The third step is: while you are sleeping I will be hitting you with the real sword.” The young man said, ”That is perfectly right – I am ready. I was afraid even of the bamboo; now I am not afraid of your real sword, not even in my sleep. Lately I have been watching myself sleeping.

Turning, I know I am turning. When sleep comes to my body I know that sleep is descending...

descending... descending, that it has taken over my whole body. But I am just like a flame inside, not asleep.”

The Master started trying to hit the prince, but the moment he entered the prince’s room, the prince would wake up. For three months he tried, but he could not strike the prince even once. Then the Master gave the prince his sword and said, ”Your father will understand, because he knows this is the sword my Master had given to me. Now you are capable of having a sword because you also have a higher quality of consciousness. Now the need for the sword is left far behind.” Increasing man’s consciousness has to be done.

The responsibility is man’s.

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God has been a very dangerous hypothesis:

It took all responsibility from you.

God was responsible for everything, and you were not responsible for anything at all. He created everything, He will dissolve everything. He sends His son to save you. You are just a puppet: you can be saved, you can be created. And what a humiliating way He created you – with mud!

I think it must have happened here, in the Big Muddy Ranch; otherwise from where could He find so much mud? And why is it called the Big Muddy Ranch? – He must have created man just here.

He created you from mud. Couldn’t He be a little more respectful? He could have created you from gold, from platinum – something precious. And if He could create from mud He could create from gold, but He is an old Jew, miserly: from mud!

That is the meaning of humus – humidity mixed with mud: humus. From humus come the words human, humanity. Adam also means mud, earth – that is Hebrew. You are just playthings in Go*s hands. Whether He creates you seriously or non-seriously it doesn’t matter: one thing is certain, that He is the sole proprietor of the whole drama. Where is your responsibility? There is no possibility of your responsibility if there is a God.

If humanity has become irresponsible it is because of God, not in spite of Him. It is because of Him and because of all the religions that have been teaching you that God created the world, and God is compassionate and kind. All rubbish. He is not there at all. And what kindness? What compassion?

He is a creation of the cunning priesthood because without Him they cannot exploit. That is an absolutely necessary hypothesis for exploiting man.

Drop the idea of God and suddenly you will feel a freedom, a spaciousness, an expansion and a great responsibility.

There is just nobody above you.

You are the highest peak of creation, of existence, of life.

There is nobody above you.

A sense of great responsibility arises in you.

To me that is what makes you religious.

You start feeling responsible for all the animals, the birds. How can you be violent to them? How can you go on eating meat? Impossible. You are the highest in consciousness, and this is what you are doing to poor animals? You cannot afford to do it. With responsibility, your humanity becomes awake. For the first time you can raise your head and you can stand straight.

Freedom and responsibility come together

And when the joy of freedom and the joy of responsibility meet, it is so great that I have called that moment, the moment of ecstasy.

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Then you are so blessed that you can bless the whole existence.

Your very being is a blessing, a continual blessing to everyone far and near, man or animal You cannot misbehave even with a rock. You will be respectful without any regard to whom it concerns.

Your respectfulness will be simply there, unaddressed. You will be grateful just because so much freedom, so much responsibility, so much joy, and so much ecstasy, are born to you. How can you avoid feeling gratitude?

People ask me what, in my religion, will be the place of worship, of devotion, because they think worship and devotion are impossible without a God.I want to say to you that they are impossible with a God. The whole idea of God is so ugly that I cannot be devoted to such an idiotic hypothesis. I cannot worship God, I don’t see any reason to worship Him.

To me devotion is the refined quality of love

It has nothing to do with to whom. It is not a question of to whom it is addressed: Jehovah, God, Jesus, Buddha. It is not a question of it being addressed.

Devotion is a quality in your heart

You feel full of reverence for everything that is.

You feel a great love for all that is.

It is not a question of whether the person is worthy of it or not... because love is not a business. It is not a question of whether the other is worthy or not, the question is whether your heart is overflowing with love or not. If it is overflowing it will reach to those who are worthy, it will reach to those who are un-worthy.It will not discriminate at all.

The cloud is full, and it showers. Do you think it showers on good people’s forms only, and avoids bad people’s forms? – that it showers only on good Christians, good Hindus, good Jews, and it simply does not shower on the form of an atheist? It simply showers because it is so full.

Devotion is overflowing love.

Ordinary love is addressed to somebody. That is the raw quality of love, not yet refined. It needs some object, and it is in a very small quantity – that’s why lovers are so jealous. There is a reason behind it which they may not know. They may think jealousy is not good, and of course it is not good; but why it is not good they don’t know. They think jealousy is not good, but that is not the point. To have such a small quantity of love energy, that is not good – -and out of that, as a by-product, comes jealousy.

The woman is afraid her lover may be loving some other woman too. And he has such a small quantity of love, how can she afford for him to go to some other woman? If he goes to some other woman then she remains starved, because she knows him and how much love he has. It is not even enough for herself, so how is she able to have a project of share-a-home? – no.

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The man is so afraid that if his wife is just laughing with the neighbor, that is enough to make him boil within, because he knows how little laughter she has. If she is wasting it with the neighbor then what about him? So if she is happy with the neighbors – laughing, smiling, gossiping – and when the husband comes home, she is Lying down; she has a headache.... Strangely enough, as the husband enters the compound, immediately the wife starts having a headache. Just a moment before she was laughing with the neighbor, but her husband – the very word gives her a headache.

”So he is back again – the same rotten old fellow.” But the real problem is because both have such a small quantity of love – and both are aware of it.

And you know that if love is given to somebody else then your share is lost. It is like share-a-home, but you don’t have any home anymore – somebody else is sharing it.

Devotion is love overflowing. Even when there is nobody, it is overflowing – to things, to tables, to chairs, to walls. It is just overflowing, it is not a question of to whom. And this you have to understand.

It is a fundamental law of my religion:

As awareness grows, simultaneously love grows.

They cannot remain separate, they move together.

If you can grow in love, you will grow in awareness.

If you grow in awareness, you will grow in love.

It is easier to grow in awareness because there are very definite, scientific ways to grow in awareness. With love it is difficult, because it is a very slippery thing, it slips out of your hand.

Awareness you can hold tight. But don’t be worried: if you are growing in awareness, simultaneously your love will always keep on the same level as your awareness. This is my experience.

I never say a single thing which is not my experience. I have not ever seen in me a single inch of difference between awareness and love. Just let your awareness go higher, and love immediately moves to the same level. They always keep the same level. When awareness is at its peak, love overflows; and that overflowing love is devotion.

And when love and awareness are there, are you just going to sit and not do anything? Perhaps once in a while there will be a man like me who will simply sit and do nothing; but most probably everybody is going to do something. And that something will come out of awareness and love.

I call that act, worship.

Whatever you do – you cook food, you clean a floor, you chop wood – whatever you do, your awareness and your love is showering. It is worship. No mantra is needed, no prayer is needed, no God is needed.

In my religion there is a place for devotion.

There is a place for worship.

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But there is no place for God at all.

I am keeping everything that is essential and discarding everything that is non-essential.

The priesthood was interested in the non-essential because that non-essential could be used for exploitation.

The essential cannot be used for exploitation.

The essential will destroy the priesthood immediately.

If your awareness grows and your love becomes devotion, one thing is certain: you will not be a Jew, you will not be a Hindu, you will not be a Mohammedan. Your awareness cannot allow such stupidities. Your love, your devotion, will not allow you to go to a temple, to a mosque, to a gurudwara, to a synagogue, to a church, because it is simply idiotic, just Oregonian.

There is no point in going anywhere.

Wherever you are, your devotion is flowing.

Wherever a religious man sits:

There is the temple.

There is the church.

There is the synagogue.

A small, beautiful story.... The founder of Sikhism, Nanak, was one of those beautiful people for whom I have immense love. He was a simple man. He had just one disciple, and that too because he loved to sing. All his teachings were delivered in singing, spontaneous singing – not like a poet composing – and his disciple would play on a simple instrument just to give some music to what the Master was saying.

Nanak traveled – he is the only Indian teacher who traveled outside India too. Mahavira and Buddha never went outside their state, Bihar, not even all over India. Shankara went all over India but not beyond India’s boundaries. Nanak is the only exception; he went to Arabia. He reached Mecca, where the sacred shrine of the Mohammedans is, the black stone, Kaaba.

The stone is rare. Scientifically, it is a very big stone, perhaps fallen from some star or planet; it is not of the earth.

Almost every day, twenty-four hours a day, thousands of stones fall. In the night when you see one and you say, ”A star is falling,” it is not a star; it is just a stone that was floating in the vacuum around the earth and suddenly comes into the gravitational field of the earth, and then the earth pulls it down. Thousands of stones fall every day, sometimes very big stones.

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This stone, in Kaaba, is perhaps the biggest that has fallen. It is not of the earth – that much has been scientifically determined – that is, it is a meteorite. And how are meteorites created? They are created when a star dies or a planet dies and falls into fragments. For millions of years those fragments may go on and on moving in the vacuum till they come to some gravity field; then they are just pulled downwards. The pull is so tremendous that the falling stone and the air struggle against each other so the stone burns up. It is just the forced entry the stone makes in the air that makes it burn.

You see those ”stars” falling; those are not stars, stars are very big. If a star falls onto the earth, the earth is finished! Our sun is a star. It is sixty thousand times bigger than this earth; and it is a very mediocre star – there are stars millions of times bigger than our sun. Our earth is a very small place.

Nanak reached Kaaba. Mohammedans could not believe it because they could see that he was a great teacher, but when night came he slept, keeping his feet towards the Kaaba. That is very disrespectful. The keepers came and said to him, ”You being a great teacher, this behavior seems to be very unlikely. You come from India where people know how to be respectful, and yet you are keeping your feet towards our sacred stone? You are hurting our feelings. To us this stone represents God, to us this stone IS God; so please turn your feet in the opposite direction.” Nanak said, ”I knew you would come, hence my feet are towards the Kaaba. Now you want me to turn them in the opposite direction?” They said yes. Nanak said, ”You do that – but remember, YOUR God may be just confined to this stone, MY God is not so confined. Wherever you move my feet He is there.”

The story – which must be just a story – is that they moved his feet, but wherever they moved his feet the Kaaba moved. This must be a story because stones, even if they have fallen from the sky, are after all stones. And man hasn’t that much sensitivity: you can’t expect from a stone that it will move.

But the story is beautiful. It simply says that wherever you are, if you are full of awareness and devotion the temple is there, the shrine is there. In fact your overflowing love creates a shrine around you. You move with it wherever you go.

Bodhidharma was asked, ”If you are thrown into hell, will you resist?” He laughed and said, ”For what? – because wherever Bodhidharma is, there is the lotus paradise.

I will be immensely happy because my entry into heaven or into hell is exactly the same. I am Bodhidharma. If I enter into hell, hell will be immediately transformed into a heaven. I would prefer to go to hell, because otherwise who will transform it?” My religion has devotion as part of awareness.

The meaning of devotion is of love, not towards a God, but towards all that is.

My religion has worship; but then worship is not a certain chanting of mantras, prayers, Ave Marias....

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Worship is your creativeness with a heart full of love and a being overflowing with awareness. And then whatsoever you do is worship.

Or if you happen to be a man like me, lazy, then not – doing is your worship. I have never felt for a single moment that I am not a worshipper.

My worship is just not to do anything:

Just to sit silently, doing nothing.

And the grass grows by itself... and real grass!

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CHAPTER 12

Death: The ultimate orgasm

10 January 1985 pm in Lao Tzu Grove

Question 1

OSHO,

IN OTHER RELIGIONS DEATH IS ALMOST NEVER SPOKEN OF AND WHEN IT IS MENTIONED

THE TONES ARE GRAVE AND FEARFUL. IN YOUR RELIGION, DEATH IS TALKED ABOUT

FREELY AND HAPPILY IS THIS SIGNIFICANT?

IT is certainly one of the most significant things.

It determines whether a religion is authentic or pseudo.

The pseudo-religion knows nothing about death.

In fact it knows nothing about life either, hence the fear, fear of both. It is not possible to be afraid only of death, because death is not separate from life, death is part of life. It is not the termination of life, it is an incident in life; life continues. Death happens many times, millions of times; it is a mere incident. But the pseudo-religions are afraid of both.

The pseudo-religions are afraid of living too.

You should understand that first; only then can you understand why they are afraid of death. They are all in favor of renouncing life. They are all based on an anti-life attitude: something is wrong in life, life is born out of the original sin, it is not right that you are living. Adam and Eve were punished 205

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because they wanted to live, they wanted to know, they wanted to understand, explore, enquire –

this is their original sin. You are the inheritors of Adam and Eve. You are born in sin.

Pseudo-religions cannot support your living. They cannot teach you the art of how to live, and live intensely and totally. They can only teach you how to escape from life, how to avoid knowing the truth. You can relate it to the story of the original sin.

The original sin was that Adam and Eve wanted to know what life was all about. They wanted to taste eternal life. Why just go on living a momentary, temporal existence which can be terminated any time by anything – a small accident, and you are finished. Is there something more? – or is this all? This was their original sin. So what will be the original virtue? You can infer it very easily.

The original virtue will be to renounce life. Adam and Eve were trying to know the eternal life; they wanted to become eternal, like gods.

The pseudo-religions say you should renounce life totally, so you go against Adam and Eve. You have to go against them if you want to enter into the Garden of Eden again. And you have to renounce enquiry, doubt, skepticism, because these are the ways of knowing. This story is very symbolic. It gives you the whole key to all religions.

What Adam and Eve have done the religions have been trying to undo so that you are again accepted by God, welcomed back into heaven. Religions are afraid of life, are afraid of knowing

– and they are not separate. It is because of this story they appeared to be separate, because in a story they have to be separate: a tree of eternal life, a tree of knowledge.

But in fact, living is knowing.

Knowing is living.

There is no other way to know, except to live. And there is no other way to live, unless you are aware of what you are living.

Knowing and living are inseparable.

The knower becomes enlightened, but he also becomes afire with life.

The pseudo-religions teach you to be afraid of life too – you have forgotten it in your question –

they are not only afraid of death. They don’t talk about death; it is thought unmannerly to talk about death. It is not good etiquette if you are sitting at a dinner table and you start talking about death.

What to say about a dinner table! – even at the grave when people are gathered together to pay their last homage they don’t talk about death.

It was one of my pastimes in my childhood to follow every funeral procession. My parents were continually worried: ”You don’t know the man who has died, you have no relationship, no friendship with him. Why should you bother and waste your time?” – because the Indian funeral takes three, four or five hours.

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catch fire; it will just live half-heartedly and the man will not burn. And everybody is making all kinds of effort because they want to get away from there as quickly as possible. But the dead people are also tricky. They will try their hardest to keep you there as long as possible.

I told my parents, alt is not a question of being related to somebody. I am certainly related with death, that you cannot deny. It does not matter who dies – it is symbolic to me. One day I will be dying. I have to know how people behave with the dead, how the dead behave with the living people; otherwise, how am I going to learn?”

They said, ”You bring strange arguments.”

”But,” I said, ”you have to convince me that death is not related to me, that I am not going to die. If you can convince me of that, I will stop going; otherwise let me explore.” They could not say to me that I would not be dying, so I said, ”then just keep quiet. I am not telling you to go. And I enjoy everything that happens there.”

The first thing I have observed is that nobody talks about death, even there. The funeral pyre is burning somebody’s father, somebody’s brother, somebody’s uncle, somebody’s friend, somebody’s enemy: he was related to many people in many ways. He is dead – and they are all engaged in trivia.

They would be talking about the movies, they would be talking about the politics, they would be talking about the market; they would be talking about all kinds of things, except death. They would make small cliques and sit all around the funeral pyre. I would go from one clique to another: nobody was talking about death. And I know for certain that they were talking about other things to keep them occupied so that they didn’t see the burning body – because it was their body too.

They could see, if they had a little insight into things, that they are burning there on the funeral pyre

– nobody else. It is only a question of time. Tomorrow somebody else from these people will be there on the funeral pyre; the day after tomorrow somebody else will be – every day people are being brought to the funeral pyre. One day I am going to be brought to the funeral pyre, and this is the treatment that these people will be giving to me. This is their last farewell: they are talking about prices going up, the rupee devaluating – in front of death. And they are all sitting with their backs toward the funeral pyre.

They had to come, so they have come, but they never wanted to come. So they want to be there almost absently present, just to fulfill a social conformity, just to show that they were present. And that too is to make sure that when they die they will not be taken by the municipal corporation truck.

Because they have participated in so many people’s death, naturally it becomes obligatory for other people to give them a send-off They know why they are there – they are there because they want people to be there when they are on the funeral pyre.

But what are these people doing? I asked people whom I knew. Sometimes one of my teachers was there, talking about stupid things – that somebody is flirting with somebody’s wife.... I said, ”Is this the time to talk about somebody’s wife and what she is doing? Think about the wife of this man who has died. Nobody is worried about that, nobody is talking about that.

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”Think of your wife when you will be dead. With whom will she be flirting? What will she do? Have you made any arrangements for that? And can’t you see the stupidity? Death is present and you are trying to avoid it in every possible way.” But all the religions have done that. And these people are simply representing certain traditions of certain religions.

The religions have first made you afraid of life; they have condemned it: everything that gives a sign of life in you is a sin. Love is sin, because it is a sign of life. It is life trying to reproduce itself; it is life’s creativity.

Falling in love – what is it all about? It is life trying to go on and continue. It is a biological effort of nature to go on producing more bodies so more lives, souls, or whatever name you give to them, can get new houses, new vehicles.

If biology stops producing bodies, where are you going to get new houses when the old houses topple down? And old houses cannot be continually renovated. A time comes when renovation becomes more of a trouble than to demolish the whole house and make a new house. Biology is trying to provide you with new houses. You fall in love because of a tremendous biological force.

All religions are against biology. Biology means the science of living, life. All religions are trying to prevent reproduction; their monks, their nuns, should not reproduce. In a way it is a very great crime against humanity.

It is one thing that somebody has no biological urge, that his urge has moved into higher realms of creativity. Then it is perfectly okay; he should be allowed to move that way. A poet may not feel like reproducing children. His poetry is enough, more than enough: he feels fulfilled. His biology has taken a new way, but his poetry will live, will have its own life. He has poured his life into it, just as a painter or a musician can pour his life into his music, into his dance, into his painting, and may not feel any biological urge. But he is not against biology, his energy is simply moving in a higher dimension. Then I say okay to it.

But what are your monks doing in the monasteries? What are your nuns doing in the nunneries? In all the religions, they are not creative people at all. They are the most uncreative on the earth for the simple reason that the only creativity they knew was biology. Below biology there is no creative possibility; biology is the bottom. You can move upwards but you cannot go downwards.

Once your biological reproduction is prohibited you are just a fossil, a dead person; you have a posthumous life. You have died already, because the moment your creative energy is prevented you cannot live. Living means creativity.

Even animals are living more than your monks. Trees are living more than your monks – at least they produce some flowers, some fruits. What do your monks produce? They simply go on repeating the BIBLE. It has already been produced. Keep it in the library, keep it in the museum, read it in the university – but every day, go on repeating it like a parrot. Do you think these people are, in any way, living?

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are not allowed to enjoy food because that is part of life. Religions teach that you should not be interested in food, in taste.

In India many religions teach how to destroy the taste of the food before you eat it. There are many traditions in India where the monk will beg and put all kinds of things in one begging bowl, because he is not allowed to beg from just one house. And even if he begs from just one house, then in one begging bowl sweet things are there, salty things are there, all kinds of spices are there, rice is there, all kinds of dahls are there; and they all get mixed up. But that is not enough! First the monk should go to the river and dip the whole begging bowl in the river – they don’t take any chances –

and then mix everything... and then enjoy it! Have a nice lunch, dinner, or whatever you call it.

In fact, once it happened: I was sitting on the bank of my village river, and a monk whom I knew – he used to beg from my house too, and he was very friendly with my father, and they used to chitchat –

was doing this horrible thing of dipping his begging bowl.

I said to him, ”Have you ever thought of one thing? The way you enjoy your food, even a buffalo would refuse it, a donkey would refuse it.”

He said, ”What?”

I said, ”Yes.” And in India if you want to find donkeys, you will find them near the river because the washermen use donkeys to carry their clothes to the river. Only the washermen use the donkey.

Nobody else even touches the donkey because the washerman is untouchable and his donkey is untouchable too. So while they are washing clothes their donkeys are just standing on the bank of the river waiting for the washermen to load them again, and then they will start moving home.

So I said, ”There is a donkey. Just give me your begging bowl; and don’t be worried – if he eats it I will bring you a full bowl again from my house. If he does not eat it, you have to eat it.

He said, ”I take the challenge.”

I put the begging bowl in front of the donkey and the donkey simply escaped. He escaped for two reasons: one was the food, the other was me. That was not known to the monk – that any donkey would have escaped. All the donkeys of my town were afraid of me because whenever I got a chance I would ride on them – just to harass my whole village. I would go to the marketplace sitting on a donkey. The whole village used to say, ”this is too much!” And I would say, ”The donkey is a creation of God, and God cannot create anything bad. And I don’t see what is wrong. He is a poor fellow, and nice.”

So all the donkeys knew me perfectly well. It became so that even from far away, even at night, if a donkey was standing there and I was coming towards him, he would just escape. They started recognizing me. The monk was not aware that there were two reasons for the donkey running away, but he certainly saw that the donkey refused the food.

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But everything that gives any hint of life has to be cut from its very roots. The monk should wear only rags that he collects from streets where people throw them. In India people are very generous about that, they throw things everywhere. Although the municipal committees have specific places to throw away things, nobody takes any notice of it. Who bothers to go that far?

It was too difficult for me to explain to my grandmother that throwing all unnecessary things, clothes, dirt, from the window of the second story onto the street was not right. She said, ”but I am seventy years old, and for seventy years I have been doing it. Don’t disturb me. I am not going to live much longer and I can’t change my habits. I can’t go downstairs and go to the municipal place, no. And in seventy years no problem has arisen so why should it arise for two or three years more? I will manage.”

I told her, ”Every day a problem arises, but you don’t think it is a problem. Your things sometimes fall on people and they shout.”

She said, ”That is their problem!”

People go on throwing things, and the monks have to collect clothes this way; and out of small pieces, any kind of clothes, they will make their robes, clothes. My father used to give new clothes to sannyasins he liked very much, but they would say, ”We cannot accept new clothes. You can give us old clothes and first tear them into pieces, and then we will sew them.” Whom are these people going to deceive? If their God is all-knowing He must know that these are new clothes made into rags. They put them in the dirt, rub dirt over them, and then they are perfectly good for them.

Religions have been against life because they know one thing perfectly well, that if you live and live alertly, you don’t need any religion at all.

Religion becomes a need only when your life is cut. Then you don’t have any way except to be religious. If this life is cut, then you will start thinking of that life: you have to think about something.

You have to live at least in hope, if not in reality.

To distract your mind and your being from this life to an imaginary life somewhere far away in heaven, the religions have used the most solid strategy: to condemn this life.

In Jaina scriptures, which are the most condemnatory of all the religions...

all religions are

condemnatory but Jainas are superb. Jaina monks continually give sermons: ”What is this body? –

blood, flesh, bones, mucus, feces. What does this body consist of? – all kinds of dirty thingS just covered with a thin skin.”

This is described in such detail that you will think, Have these people been butchers or what? Or perhaps they go on tearing apart dead bodies and finding every detail? – because they are not doctors. Particularly Jainas... it is very rare to find a Jaina doctor. It is only within the last twenty or thirty years that a few Jainas have become doctors; before that a Jaina would not become a doctor.

Who is going to do this dirty surgery and go into men’s bodies and...? The Jaina will faint, he will not be able to stand it.

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They are not physiologists, they are not doctors, they are not butchers, but they have collected all

”dirty” details. For what? To create in your mind an image of dirtiness, so when you fall in love with a woman you know what you are falling in love with – with all the mucus, all the bones. Just think!

Just take the thin skin away and look at the woman – and you are falling in love with it! This bag –

that is exactly the word they use – a bag, a skin bag. You are a skin bag, she is also a skin bag, and both are getting deceived by the skin. Just go a little deeper and what will you find? It will be nauseous. The Jaina monks create a continual sense of nauseousness about each other’s bodies

– about your own body too.

And life is possible only through the body. By their condemning the body so much, life becomes impossible. And once your whole energy is blocked it cannot move into life. But energy has to move: it is its intrinsic nature to move. It will find some other way to move. Religions immediately give you a substitute: love God. He is not a bag of mucus and blood and bones!

I used to ask the monks, particularly the Hindu monks, ”You call human beings’bags of every dirty thing’; then your incarnations of God, what were they? What about Rama? – no mucus?” Then he would be as dry as Oregon. He would have died, for the mucus is absolutely necessary. It keeps your body going. It is a kind of lubricant for your inner mechanism. Yes, once or twice a year you get a cold and you throw the mucus out. That too is necessary because that old mucus is no longer useful. It has to be thrown out so that new mucus is created and takes its place, which is just like changing the oil in your car.

Once in a while, the car has a cold; change the oil, otherwise it will stop. That oil is losing its quality of being a lubricant. It has been used enough. Were there no bones in Krishna and Rama? Then their bags would have just collapsed. Without bones, how could they manage to stand? Was there no blood? Then how can there be semen? – and Rama produced two boys! Great, a miraculous bag: no mucus, no semen, no blood, no bones – and he produced two children! This is a far bigger miracle than what the Holy Ghost did with Mary, because at least Mary was a real bag.

But in the story of Rama, Sita is also not an ordinary bag like you. Both bags were spiritual! Inside they were hollow. Either they were hollow.... I asked these people, ”Either you say they were hollow inside – hot air inside, what else? – or they were stuffed. There are only the two possibilities.” And I said to them, ”I would like to be just an ordinary bag, rather than a stuffed bag or a hollow bag with hot air. I simply refuse; I am perfectly okay as I am.” Stupid ideas, but they have persisted for thousands of years just to make these people superhuman.

The first time I spoke in Bombay – it must have been 1960 – I was invited by a Jaina committee.

Bombay has the richest Jaina community of India, and the biggest community lives in Bombay.

Their celebration for Mahavira’s birthday is perhaps the best in the whole country. Everywhere they celebrate it really luxuriously because they are rich people, but Bombay certainly has the climax.

They invite great monks, nuns, scholars, to address them. The first time I spoke in Bombay was on Mahavira’s birthday. At least twenty to thirty thousand Jainas were present. And a man, a Jaina monk... he is no longer a monk. He is also in America now, married to a Jaina woman; he escaped.

But at that time he was at the top – the glory of Jaina monks. Chitrabhanu is his name.

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We had never met before – he had no idea what kind of man I am. Of course he was continually living in Bombay, which is basically not allowed for a Jaina monk: he can stay only for three days in one city. So what have the Bombay Jaina monks done? They don’t go.... Once a monk has entered Bombay he never leaves, because life in Bombay is comfortable, and who wants to go again into the villages, on mud paths with naked feet? And Bombay has every luxury for them, and every arrangement is made for them.

What they have done is they have divided Bombay into many cities; each section, each suburb is a city. From Vileparle they move to Dadar – these are just wards, these are not cities – from Dadar they move to Marine Drive. Bombay is big; there are so many suburbs and so many different markets. It is one of the biggest cities in the world. So the monks go on moving: three days in Vileparle, three days in Dadar, three days in Santa Cruz, three days in Juhu, and three days in Chowpatty – round and round.

This man, Chitrabhanu, had been in Bombay for fifteen years.

He was well respected, most

respected in Bombay. He was the best orator amongst Jaina monks in Bombay, so of course he spoke first. I was an absolutely unknown young man, and not a monk either. And nobody was even certain whether I was a Jaina or not.

Just one man was responsible for bringing me to Bombay, and that was a coincidence. This man, Chiranjilal Badjate, of Wardha, was the chief manager for Jamnalal Bajaj, and Jamnalal Bajaj was one of the super-rich people in India. This man, Chiranjilal Badjate, was the cause of bringing Mahatma Gandhi from Gujarat to Wardha in Madhya Pradesh. Gandhi’s ashram was in Sabarmati near Ahmedabad.

But Chiranjilal Badjate was a unique man, very simple, very loving, and so simple and so loving that he never thought that two persons could be such opposites. He brought Gandhi to Wardha because he persuaded Jamnalal Bajaj. Jamnalal Bajaj’s head office was in Wardha in central India, and his branches were all over India. His son was here last year.

But the cause was Chiranjilal Badjate who, although a poor man, impressed on Jamnalal: ”It will be a great service to the country if we can bring Gandhi to Wardha, and it will be a great service to Wardha also, because Wardha will become automatically the capital of India.” And certainly until freedom came to India, Wardha was the capital of India. Delhi remained the capital for the British Raj, but for the whole of the Indian freedom fighters, Gandhi was the center, and his ashram was in Wardha. All trains and all roads for the revolutionaries were going to Wardha.

Chiranjilal Badjate influenced Jamnalal Bajaj, and Jamnalal Bajaj used to respect this old man because he was really a lovely man. It was impossible not to respect him, although he was only his manager. He went and asked Gandhi to come to Wardha and told Gandhi, ”This Sabarmati is not the right place, because for each single pai you have to depend on other people. I will give you blank checks. Whenever one of your checkbooks is finished, you will immediately get another, and blank. And it is absolutely up to you: whatsoever money you want, you draw from the bank. You need not ask me.”

Now Gandhi was also a born businessman and he saw a great opportunity. It was difficult to run Sabarmati – although it was not much of an ashram, only twenty people were living there. And the From Personality to Individuality

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way they were provided with food and clothes, any ordinary middle-class man could have run the whole show. But it was difficult for Gandhi.

Seeing this opportunity – a blank checkbook every month – Gandhi moved to Wardha. It was such a shock to Gujarat that one of Gujarat’s very famous poets, Nanalal Bhatt, wrote a poem against Gandhi. He was the poet who had been writing poems in praise of Gandhi, worshipping him like a god. And in his poem he said, ”The man who was a saint in Sabarmati is just a sinner in Wardha.” And this was from Nanalal Bhatt, who was a disciple of Gandhi: ”The saint of Sabarmati has fallen so low, just for money.” The whole of Gujarat was disappointed. But strangely enough Chiranjilal was also the cause of my going to Bombay.

He met me in a Jaina fair which used to happen every year near Jabalpur. There is a beautiful temple in the hills, a temple made by a very poor woman who used to grind wheat and earn a little food for herself by grinding. The whole day she was grinding other people’s wheat and she saved, during her whole life, enough money to make this temple on the hill.

The temple is small. And in her memory, on top of the temple – the highest peak of the temple is called a kailas; it is made of gold – instead of a kailas, to respect the woman, people have put her grinding stone there. It is a primitive type of thing that is used in India. You cannot even call it a grinding machine, because there is nothing to it, just two stones: one round stone underneath with another stone on top of it. The upper stone has a handle, and you move that stone on the stone underneath. You put whatever you want to grind between the two and just go on moving the stone; those two stones grind it.

Those two stones have been put on the kailas of the temple in memory of the woman, because it was really a miracle: she was the poorest of the poor, and she managed to make this marble temple.

Although the temple is small, and now many temples have been built around it, it remains the center.

And for thousands of years the fair has continued there in her memory.

I was speaking there and Chiranjilal heard me. When I came out of the crowd towards my car he was standing there. It was winter – he was standing there with a blanket around himself He threw his blanket on the ground. I could not understand what he meant. He said, ”Sit down just for a moment.

I would love to sit down with you. I listened to you. What are you doing here? – you are needed all over India. What you have said, I have not heard before in my whole life, and I have been in contact with all the great intellectuals and revolutionaries and Mahatmas, because of Mahatma Gandhi.” Because he was the general manager for Jamnalal, of course without any formalities he became the general director of Gandhi’s ashram. And Jawaharlal, and Subashchandra, and Maularia Azad – all the great leaders of India – were their guests, and he was taking care of them because he was the chief man. Jamnalal was old and too rich to bother about all this; it was Chiranjilal’s responsibility to take care.

They had made a very big guesthouse where at least five hundred great leaders, thinkers, philosophers, sages could be accommodated, because continually people were coming there to meet Mahatma Gandhi. Continually there were conferences: political, religious, literary – all kinds of gatherings. Because of Gandhi, it was the center there.

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So Chiranjilal said, ”I know everybody in this country, and nobody speaks like you. What are you doing here? You have to come to Bombay for this Mahavir Jayanti.” I said, ”I don’t know anybody there and nobody knows me.” He said, ”You don’t worry. Everybody knows me and I know everybody; I will arrange it. You have to promise to come.”

I could not refuse that man. Tears were coming from his eyes just for the reason that nobody knew about me. And I don’t bother that my words should reach people – what a calamity! To him it was a calamity. He said, ”I will do everything: what I have not done for Mahatma Gandhi I will do for you.

But just one time let me introduce you in Bombay. From there things begin on the right track.” I said, ”Okay, I will come; don’t cry.” A crowd had gathered, and it looked so awkward – an old man crying – so I said, ”I will come.” I gave him the date of my train, but he was an old man with such thick glasses that I could not feel sure that he was able even to see my face rightly, because the way he was looking up and down, above the glasses... he was trying to look at me from the side, to figure me out – what kind of man I was. I said, ”Don’t be worried, I will come. And even if you don’t recognize me, I will recognize you – don’t worry.” I went to Bombay and a strange thing happened because of this old man. Somehow he described everything rightly, but he said I wore a white cap. How did that come to his mind? Perhaps because all the people that he knew who came to Wardha – everybody was wearing the Gandhi cap, the white cap. He had seen thousands of people in white caps; perhaps he had forgotten that there were a few people who didn’t wear the cap at all.

He described me saying that I had a small beard, and I wore white clothes, a long robe; but somehow he got mixed up and said that I wore a white cap. I was standing at the door of the train, and people were running here and there. I could see they were looking for me, but I didn’t see that old man.

I was waiting for the old man because if he didn’t recognize me, I would recognize him. But I didn’t see him: he had fallen sick and could not come, so he had simply described me in a letter And all the people were looking at my head. Nobody looked at my face; they looked at my head and just went on. Finally I was the only passenger left and they were the only people there – twenty or twenty-five people.

Finally I said, ”What is the point now? I alone am left. And I can see that you are looking for something on my head, but there has never been anything on my head.” They showed me the letter.

I said ”Yes, this man Chiranjilal Badjate – he is the man who created the whole trouble for you and for me”

They said, ”But he has written, ’a white Gandhi cap,’ and we are puzzled because we found so many people with Gandhi caps but they didn’t have beards. So we said, ’No, this man is not the one.’ We found somebody who did, but he was not wearing a long robe. You fitted perfectly but the cap was missing.”

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of Indian revolutionaries who were all white – cap people, so the white cap has become fixed in his mind. He must have seen it – I don’t suspect his intentions or anything – but where is he?” They said, ”He has fallen sick. He is very sorry that he has not come, but don’t be worried: he has talked about you to every man of any importance in Bombay. But we were expecting that you would be very old because of the way he described you and said,’Nobody speaks like this man.’ We were not thinking of just a young man, a thirty – year old.” At that meeting naturally, among those twenty, thirty thousand people nobody knew about me.

Chitrabhanu spoke first and he talked about one of the most significant things about Mahavira, the only things that can be called a miracle in Mahavira’s life. A snake, a cobra, bites him; Mahavira is standing naked in meditation and a cobra bites him. Instead of blood, milk comes out of the wounds on his feet. Jainas have always believed that – there is no problem.

When I stood up I said, ”This man Chitrabhanu seems to be a little nuts.” A few people at that meeting later on became my sannyasins. They told me, ”We thought that now there is going to be a riot. Who is this man? He looks like a Mohammedan, with a beard, and the way he is speaking, and the way he is hitting Chitrabhanu who is the confirmed leader of all the Jaina monks and the Jaina community...!”

And I really hit him hard, because when I hit I really hit – or I don’t hit; there is no third way. I said

”this man is mad. He will have to explain how milk can come out of the feet, because for milk a woman needs breasts, a certain physiological arrangement that is in the breasts that transforms her food, her blood, into milk. Either you have to prove that Mahavira had breasts on his feet, or you have to accept that he was a bag full of milk; otherwise take your words back.” There was pin-drop silence. I spoke for thirty minutes, hammering him as much as possible. And I said, ”This type of stupid people are your leaders. Then who are you? If you accept these kinds of idiots as leaders, you are certainly far below them. This man is cunning and he is going to deceive you, because whatever he was saying was simply to buttress your ego. That should not be the way of a man of truth. A man of truth simply says the truth; whether it hits you, makes you an enemy, who cares? The man of truth only cares about truth.

”This man was lying; everything that he has said was a lie, although it is written in the scriptures.

Those scriptures were also written by such people, so I don’t take those scriptures as an authority. I don’t take this man as an authority. He should stand up and answer my questions. He has to prove what he is saying; otherwise, tomorrow I am going to bring a cobra, and the cobra will bite this man, and blood should not come out; milk has to come out. He should make arrangements. I give him twenty-four hours.”

And certainly that man finally deceived those people and escaped to America with a girl from a rich Jaina family. Now he is a professor in New York and teaches laina philosophy. What Jaina philosophy does he know? He still goes on pretending that he is a monk. In America nobody bothers to ask,

”How can you be a laina monk?” He still continues to say that he is a Jaina monk, still carries the symbols of the Jaina monk.

The day he escaped from Bombay he had to leave by the back door because thousands of Jainas were standing there just to kill him, because no Jaina monk had ever traveled by air before. And From Personality to Individuality

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secondly, a Jaina monk escaping with a woman is just not heard of at all. It may have happened some time, but it is not known... and that too, so openly. The police were called because there was every possibility that if they could have caught him, they would have killed him.

Respect can turn into hatred so easily. It just moved to the other extreme because the reasons for which they were giving him respect were no longer there – in fact, what he was doing was just the opposite. And this man who was escaping would pretend all over the world that he was still a Jaina monk and nobody would ever think that having a woman with him....

They wanted to take away all his Jaina monk symbols: his bowl and other symbols that that particular sect has. Under police escort he was taken from the back door to the airplane, and since then he has not gone back to India. He cannot go: they are still waiting for him whenever he comes.

I had asked – and that was my only meeting with him: ”In the twentieth century, you are still asking people to live against life? And you yourself are not capable of living against life. All your desires are there as they are bound to be in everybody; it is natural. You have to accept them and accept that you are repressing them, if you are a man of truth. Or can you say that you have transcended them? Then I will make the effort to expose you.” He was getting red-hot with anger. And I showed them, ”Look at his face. This man with so much anger can be without sex? This man with so much anger, can he be really non-violent? What is his face saying?” And he tried to kill me three times – while remaining a Jaina monk!

I was coming from Poona and an anonymous friend phoned just as I was getting into the car. He said, ”Don’t bring Osho by car because on the way Chitrabhanu’s people are there and it may prove dangerous.” So I had to fly, they had to arrange a special flight. But I told one of my friends to go by car and see – in the same car in which I was going to travel.

They were there – with pistols, and the road was blocked with big stones. When they saw that I wasn’t there they just felt embarrassed. But my friend said that the information was correct. This happened three times. That man was trying to kill me. This was his answer and these people are non-violent.

Violence goes on accumulating. Whatever you reject in your life you accumulate within yourself These people are more lustful than ordinary common people, more full of anger than ordinary people; because ordinary people become angry when they are angry, but it is momentary, it comes and goes. But these people go on accumulating anger. They are sitting on a volcano; they just need somebody to hit them at their weak point.

He never spoke with me from another stage. He used to tell the organizers that only one person could speak, ”Either he speaks or 1. We both cannot speak from the same stage.” But I told the organizers, ”I would love to speak from the same stage. He can choose. If he feels that speaking first is dangerous, because speaking after him I criticize him, I am ready to speak first; let him criticize me. I am ready for any situation. If he wants, he can speak first and then I speak; and then he can answer – for that I am ready. He can speak twice, I will speak just once; but I know my once will be more than his twice. I have seen him.” From Personality to Individuality

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He was sitting there just like a stone, throbbing with anger, trembling, almost shaking. I told the people, ”Look at his hands.” He was holding a piece of paper and the paper was shaking. I said,

”Look at the paper.” On the paper he was taking notes to speak against me but finally decided that it was not going to be of any worth because what proof could he give? Nobody before had argued about it. In twenty-five centuries nobody had asked how it was possible for milk to be coming out of the feet.

No, followers don’t ask. They are trained not to ask any embarrassing question. They are asked to believe, because belief is going to pay, and doubt is sin.

But without doubt there is no knowing; there is no possibility of you ever becoming aware, conscious.

And these people are cutting the very roots from where you can become aware and conscious – it is life, living situations, challenges, opportunities.

But if you simply shrink yourself and withdraw yourself from living, you will never attain to consciousness.

It is said of a Hindu monk, who for thirty years remained in the Himalayas.... His problem was the ego. And some sage – I mean some fool – suggested to him, ”Just go into the silent valleys of the Himalayas, and your ego will cool down. It will take some time, so don’t come back in a hurry unless you are certain.”

And, of course, if you live in the Himalayas, in a deep, faraway valley where you never come to encounter another human being, how are you going to know that you have an ego? The ego needs another ego; then it immediately comes up. If there is no other ego, there is no challenge for it to come up. It goes fast asleep.

Thirty years is a long time, and the man became convinced that he had no ego. By this time his fame was spreading down onto the plains, and people had started coming to worship him. And he was feeling even better: ”I am so egoless.” And certainly when people are touching your feet you can feel egoless. There is no problem in it because your ego will feel satisfied.

But the problem arose because there was going to be a kumbha, a fair which is the biggest fair in the world; at least thirty million people gather for it. Nowhere else in the world does such a gathering happen as happens in Kumbha, the fair in Allahabad, every twelve years.

So the Kumbha was going to happen and people invited that man: ”You are absolutely needed there.

Your being will be a blessing for millions of people who travel from all over the country.”

”Of course,” he said. Now he knew that he had no ego. He came down from the Himalayas to the plains and when he reached this vast oceanic crowd – you could not see where it begins and where it ends, and nobody knew him in that crowd – somebody stepped on his feet, and thirty years disappeared in a flash! He clutched the man by the throat and said, ”I will kill you!” But then immediately he remembered what he had been trying to do: ”What happened to my thirty years? It was a sheer wastage – I am still the same man.”

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You can sit upon a certain thing for thirty lives; it won’t make any difference. The only way to know who you are, of what your mind consists, is to be amidst life and living in as many possible ways as you can find, opening all the doors and windows to every side of life so that you can become aware of who you are within, because each window will open into you and a certain hidden part will suddenly be exposed.

One story I have loved very much. A man was a very, very angry type, as if all his energy was converted into anger. And it was not just verbal; he was really a strong man, and every day he was fighting and beating people for any small thing. One day it was too much; he threw his wife into the well and killed her. It shocked him.

He loved the woman. And if he could do such a thing to someone whom he loves, what could he do to others? Now he was repentant and guilty. A Jaina monk was in the city. This man went to him because he had heard Jaina monks preach non-violence, no anger, ”so perhaps he can teach me some way.”

The Jaina monk said, ”It is simple: renounce life. Without renunciation you cannot get rid of these things. In life, every day your anger will be rubbed against others’ anger, your ego will be rubbed against others’ egos and you will not find even a moment to relax and be silent. So renounce life.

Renouncing life means getting out of all those situations which create trouble so that you can rest at ease and be silent. And I will give you a mantra to chant. You do the mantra.” And you can understand it. The angry type of person is very quick in taking any decision. They can kill. When he killed his wife it was a quick decision, he did not think twice over it. If he had thought twice, he would not have thrown her into the well.

This type of person doesn’t think twice. He said, ”I am ready right now. Give me the initiation. And I don’t like these five stages, I simply want to be at the final stage from this moment.” The Jaina monk was very happy. He was a naked Jaina monk. He was happy because nowadays it is getting very difficult to find new initiates – there are only twenty-two left. There were thousands in Mahavira’s time. Mahavira alone used to move with ten thousand naked monks. He, himself used to move with that company.

Now only twenty-two are left, and when one dies he is not replaced, because it is so arduous.

First you have to pass the five stages, and that takes almost your whole life. You have to go on renouncing, and this is the ultimate renunciation: you renounce everything, even clothes. Then you don’t touch anything.

”This man is a rare man,” thought the Jaina monk. He said ”You are a unique person. You want to be initiated in the fifth stage right now?”

He said, ”Right now” – and he dropped his clothes, the same way he had dropped his wife; there was no difference. But that Jaina monk could not see the point. It was so simple. If I had been there I would have said that what he was doing was the same, there was no difference in it. But the Jaina monk was very happy. He initiated the man and gave him the name Shantinath – Shantinath means

”the lord of silence and peace” – just to remind him that anger had been dropped, violence had been dropped, and that from that day peace had to be his life, silence had to be his vibe.

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After twenty years he had become very famous all over the country. A friend from his village came to see him. He was in New Delhi; he was staying in New Delhi because there the great leaders and the great scholars and great people from all over the world are available, so he had made it his place.

Just the same way... Delhi is spread out even further than Bombay. It does not have skyscrapers, so it is not rising vertically, but horizontally it is spreading – you will need five to six hours to cross from one corner of the city to another.

Delhi has the worst traffic in the world, with all kinds of vehicles: bullock carts, camel carts, elephants, horse and carts, bicycle rickshaws, auto-rickshaws, cars, buses. All the centuries are together on those small streets of old Delhi, which were not made for buses and cars. It takes hours to cross – you can be stuck anywhere.

You can divide Delhi into many villages very easily, so Shantinath, the Jaina monk, was moving around, and remaining in Delhi. Ambassadors were coming, and it was greatly satisfying to see him, because a Jaina monk is really a thing worth seeing. Yes, I say a thing worth seeing: he is an exhibitionist. In the language of psychology, he is an exhibitionist.

There are a few people who, once in a while, are caught by the police because they exhibit their nudity to somebody on a street corner – these Jaina monks are exhibiting themselves to crowds of people. They should be behind bars or in mental institutions. They are perfect exhibitionists, and Delhi is the best place.

This friend from Shantinath’s village, hearing that his name had become so famous and seeing his photographs in the newspapers, became very interested. He went to Delhi to see him. He was a poor man; it was difficult for him to get there but he borrowed money and managed it. He wanted to see his friend who had become such a great world-famous figure.

As the man entered the temple, Shantinath saw him and immediately recognized him, but it was below him by then to recognize such an ordinary person, so he pretended he did not recognize him.

The man could see in his eyes that he had recognized him, and that he was trying to pretend. He went close by and he asked Shantinath, ”Sir, can I ask you your name?” Shantinath said, ”Don’t you read newspapers? I have never seen such a fool; everybody knows my name.

He said, ”I am an ignorant person from a faraway village” – and he told him the name of the village.

”I am just a villager, so forgive me, but please tell me your name.” He said, ”My name is Muni Shantinath Deva.” Muni is the Jaina word for monk.

The man said, ”Shantinath?”

He said, ”Yes! Are you in some doubt?”

And the man said, ”No, I am not in any doubt, I was just thinking....” He said, ”But just one more time because I forgot: What did you say your name was?” From Personality to Individuality

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Now Shantinath was enraged. He said, ”You did not hear me? You are really an idiot. My name is Shantinath Deva!”

He said, ”I will try to remember it. It is so big, and I am such a fool.” He went a few feet away and then came back and said, ”just one more time.”

Shantinath Deva took his staff and said, ”You wi]l not understand easily. You will understand only the right language. Come here close to me and I will tell you who I am.” The man said, ”I have understood – there is no need. I understood from the very beginning, just as you have understood from the very beginning. You were pretending, I was pretending. But Shantinath Deva, nothing has changed; only the name is new, your whole personality is the same. I have simply been asking your name and you have taken your staff in your hand. If there was a well nearby you would have thrown me into it instead of your wife.” Nothing changes if you withdraw from life.

Nothing can change.

Life has to be lived to be known.

And if you live life without any inhibition, without any fear....

There is nothing to fear – it is your life.

Life has been given to you to live.

It is a gift of nature to you. It is not a punishment; it is simply a gift from existence.

Rejoice in it, and burn your life’s candle from both ends together.

Live as intensely as possible, and the very taste of life will give you the clue why death is not to be feared. Once you have known your life, its fire, you will know that there is no death.

This life that one comes to know by intense living is eternal.

The feeling of its eternity arises simultaneously as you live. The deeper, the more intensely you live, the quicker you feel there is no death.

In my religion death is celebrated because there is no death.

It is only an entry into another life.

We celebrate birth – people think we are celebrating death – because there is no death as such because nothing dies, only forms change. Life transmigrates from one form into another; and it should be a moment of rejoicing for all concerned when a person dies, because he is dying only apparently. From our side it feels he is dying; from the other side he is being born.

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Yes, he goes out of one house – and we live in this house so we think he is finished – but he enters another house immediately. Or he may stay a little longer without a house, but there is no death.

Ninety-nine percent of people are instantly born into another form of life.

The higher their

consciousness, the higher will be the form; the lower their consciousness, the lower will be the form. It depends on you, how capable you have become of being aware and responsible. That much responsibility will be given to you by existence – you deserve it. You have proved yourself worthy of being given a better gift. You used the last gift so beautifully that you deserve a reward.

And it is all automatic. Nobody is deciding there; otherwise He could be bribed, He could be persuaded. You could just cling to His feet and say, ”Lord, forgive me. You are a great forgiver, and I am a sinner and nothing, but forgive me.”

Omar Khayyam says – he is a Sufi mystic – he says, ”Don’t stop me from sinning. Don’t stop me from drinking. Don’t stop me from going to women, because your stopping me shows that you doubt God’s compassion. I trust in God’s compassion.” Now, he is saying not to be worried: when you meet God you just hold His feet; harass Him till He forgives you. And it is a single man’s monopoly.

Nobody is above Him, nobody is going to question Him; He is not answerable to anybody. He will forgive you.

No. It is not a one-man dictatorship: existence is autonomous.

Here, when you put your hand in the fire and it is burned, it is not that some god decides that you, somewhere in existence, are putting your hand in the fire and that now you have to be burned; or, if he sees that you are a saint, then you have to be saved, not burned.... For thousands of years man has believed that if you are telling the truth, fire will not burn you. In many countries the fire test has been prevalent – to know whether a man is speaking the truth or untruth.

But it is so easy. I can ask you, ”What is the time on your watch?” and you say, ”Nine:five.” And then I tell you, ”Put your hand over the candle and we can see whether you are speaking the truth or an untruth.” Do you think you won’t be burned because it is nine:five? And if you are burned, then what about other things, other great problems where truth is not so easily decided? – where truth can be in question?

Here there seems no problem, but perhaps there may be a hidden problem; perhaps your watch is slow, or fast – it is not nine:five, it is only nine – and you may be burned. Then I can just ask something else: who is sitting by your side? or how many hands do you have? – even simpler, so no problem arises. Or simply, how much is two plus two? – and put your hand in the fire....

All these people were so against life that they have forced ugly, inhuman, unscientific things on you in the name of God, telling you that if you are true then God will save you. But you can check on it: there is no God and there is nobody who is going to save you; if you put your hand in the fire, you will be burned. You may be true, you may be untrue; it does not matter at all.

As you come to know life, slowly your awareness grows.

And with awareness growing, you start feeling that you are not the body. You are in the body, but you are not the body.

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With awareness growing still more, you start feeling that you are not the mind either; you are in the mind, but not the mind.

Slowly you are coming to your very center.

And that center is simply awareness, from where you can watch your mind, your emotions, thoughts, body, pain, pleasure – everything.

But you are simply a watcher, unidentified with anything else that you are watching.

Now this watcher remains watching even in your sleep. The day you can feel your watcher even in your sleep, that day you know: now death is nothing but a longer sleep. For the body it is eternal sleep, but the watcher simply moves forwards, enters into another womb, into another body. And this movement continues, this transmigration of the soul continues till your watchfulness is absolutely pure.

When the flame is without any smoke, then you disappear into the universal, into the existential.

Then you are not going into another house; you don’t need any house any more, you have learned the lesson. That was a school: moving from one house to another was moving from one class to another. But one day you graduate – you become part of existence.

That’s why we celebrate, because there is no death. Either the man is going into a new house –

a good time to celebrate – or the man is going into the eternal existence. That is the best time to celebrate, and the last time to celebrate.

And celebrating death will help you to understand that there is nothing in life to be afraid of If death is a celebration, then what else can be a cause of fear?

And if you can celebrate death, you have attained a maturity.

It is possible only to those who live life as a rejoicing, a constant celebration. Then death is not the termination, but only a small incident of changing your clothes, your house, your body. But you remain exactly the same forever – nothing changes in your intrinsic being.

From eternity to eternity you are exactly the same.

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CHAPTER 13

The new man: intellect in harmony with the heart

11 January 1985 pm in Lao Tzu Grove

Question 1

OSHO,

HOW CAN WE BELIEVE THAT THE SOUL EXISTS AFTER DEATH AND TRANSMIGRATES TO

ANOTHER FORM OF LIFE, OR DISSOLVES INTO THE UNIVERSE?

I have never asked you to believe in anything.

It is my experience that the soul exists after death, that it transmigrates into other forms of life, and finally when there is no more to learn, no question to be answered, no search, no desire – when that ultimate point of absolute contentment, fulfillment, enlightenment arises – then the soul simply dissolves into existence.

To transmigrate you need to have a desire to live, a desire to be fulfilled; that’s a basic necessity.

It is not you who go on being born again and again; it is your desire that goes on and on, never being fulfilled. You are simply following your desire like a shadow.

I have not said that you have to believe it. I would, rather, like you to be skeptical about it, to doubt it, and to enquire into it. I am simply provoking you into an enquiry, not into a faith.

My religion is not a faith.

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It is an enquiry into the ultimate truth.

So whatsoever I say, the basic reason behind it is always to inspire you – not to believe in a dogma, but to go on in search.

If I say the soul exists after death, it is only a hypothesis for you.

For me this is an experience.

I don’t believe in it:

I know it, and I will tell you how I know it.

When I say that the soul finally dissolves into the universe, it is not a hope for me.

I know it; it has happened.

I am no longer separate from existence.

As far as I am concerned I do not exist at all as an individual entity. I have not been there for many years. But I am not saying to you to believe it.

Again I am provoking you, challenging you to enquire.

Perhaps I am wrong – I am not an infallible pope, I don’t have any divine authority to impose a belief on you; I hold no power, and I am not in any way programming you. I am simply trying to create a longing in you. It is sleeping, dormant. I am trying to wake it up so that you start enquiring.

The people who say to you to believe and to have faith are the people who themselves do not believe and do not have faith. Because I know what I am saying to you is my experience, I can challenge you to doubt, to be skeptical, to try in every possible way to prove that it is wrong – because I know you cannot prove it wrong. The more you try to enquire, the more you will become convinced of the fact.

I am not saying that you have to become convinced, I am saying you will become convinced. Even against your own mind, in spite of your whole doubting, skepticism, enquiry, when the truth comes as a revelation, all doubts, all disbeliefs, simply disappear like shadows You have brought light in, the shadows start disappearing; they never existed.

So only the man who knows can have the guts to say to you, ”Doubt me, question me.” There is one question that a sannyasin has asked: ”Osho, before, you used to talk about the beautiful way of trust, love, the way of the heart. Now your emphasis seems to be more on reason, questioning, skepticism, intelligence. Has your work changed or is it a new phase of your work?” No, it is not a new phase, it is just the other side of the first. I was teaching about trust because you had come from a world which knows nothing of trust. You had come from a world which has trained From Personality to Individuality

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you intellectually and tried to deny you the existence of your own heart, to deny that feeling is also a way of knowing.

I was talking about trust so that I could open the new door of the heart. Without opening the door of the heart I cannot say to you, ”Doubt, be skeptical,” because then I am sending you on a dangerous path which leads nowhere. It is a little complex but try to understand.

A man who knows nothing about feeling, nothing about trust, who has never experienced anything like love – his heart has never jumped with joy, danced with joy in someone’s presence – that man can go on doubting, but he will not find the answer because his doubt will be very shallow. He will not trust his own doubt. His enquiry will be just so-so. He will not trust his own enquiry – he knows nothing of trust.

Enquiry will need trust because you will be going into the unknown. It will demand tremendous trust and courage because you are moving away from the conventional and the traditional; you are moving away from the crowd. You are going into the open sea, and you don’t know whether the other, further shore exists at all.

I could not send you into such an enquiry without preparing you to have trust.

It will look

contradictory, but what can I do? – this is how life is.

Only a man of great trust is capable of great doubt.

A man of little trust can only doubt a little.

A man of no trust can only pretend that he doubts.

He cannot doubt.

The depth comes through trust – and it is a risk.

Before I send you into the uncharted sea, I have to prepare you for this immense journey on which you will have to go alone – but I can lead you up to the boat. That’s what I was trying to teach you –

about the beauty of trust, the ecstasy of the way of the heart – so when you go into the open ocean of reality you will have courage enough to keep on going. Whatever happens you will have trust enough in yourself

Just see it: if you trust me – how can you trust me if you don’t trust yourself? It is impossible. If you doubt yourself how can you trust me? It is – you who are going to trust me, and you don’t trust yourself – how can you trust your trust?

It is absolutely necessary that the heart should be opened before intellect can be transformed into intelligence. That’s the difference between intellect and intelligence.

Intelligence is intellect in tune with your heart.

The heart knows how to trust.

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The intellect knows how to seek and search.

There is an old Eastern story: Two beggars used to live outside a village. One was blind and one had no legs. One day the forest near the village where these beggars used to live caught fire. They were competitors of course – in the same profession, begging from the same people – and they were continually angry with each other. They were enemies, not friends.

People in the same profession cannot be friends. It is very difficult because it is a question of competition, clients – you take away somebody’s client. Beggars label their clients: ”Remember that this is my man; don’t you bother him.” You don’t know to which beggar you belong, who the beggar is in whose possession you are, but some beggar on the street has possessed you. He may have fought and won the battle and now you are his possession.

I used to see a beggar near the university; one day I found him in the market. He was constantly there, near the university, because young people are more generous; older people slowly become more miserly, more afraid. Death is coming close by; now money seems to be the only thing that can help. And if they have money then others may help also; if they don’t have money, even their own sons, their own daughters, won’t bother about them. Young people can be spendthrifts. They are young, they can earn; life is there, a long life ahead.

He was a rich beggar because the university students.... In India a student reaches university only if he comes from a rich family, otherwise it is a struggle. A few poor people also get there but it is painful, arduous. I was also from a poor family. The whole night I was working as an editor of a newspaper, and in the day I went to the university. For years I could not sleep more than three or four hours – whenever I could find time in the day or in the night.

So this beggar was very strong. No other beggar could enter the university street; even entry was banned. Everybody knew to whom the university belonged – to that beggar! One day suddenly I saw a young man; the old man was not there. I asked him, ”What happened? Where is the old man?”

He said, ”He is my father-in-law. He has given the university to me as a gift.” Now, the university did not know that the ownership had changed, that somebody else was now the owner. The young man said, ”i have married his girl.”

In India a dowry is given when you marry somebody’s daughter. It is not just that you marry the daughter: your father-in-law has to give you, if he is very rich, a car, a bungalow; if not very rich then at least a scooter; if not that, then at least a bicycle. But he has to give something or other – a radio, a transistor set, a television – and some cash. If he is really rich then he gives you an opportunity to go abroad, to study, to become a more educated person, a doctor, an engineer – and he will pay for it.

This beggar’s daughter had got married and as her dowry the young man had been given the whole university. He said, ”From today this street and this university belong to me. And my father-in-law has shown me who my clients are.”

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”Yes,” he said, ”I had only one daughter and I wanted to do something for my son-in-law. I have given him the best place to beg. Now I am here trying again to arrange my monopoly in the market.

It is a very tough job here because there are so many beggars, senior ones who have already taken possession of clients. But there is nothing to be worried about. I will manage; I will throw out a few beggars from here” – and certainly he did.

So when the forest was on fire those two beggars thought for a moment. They were enemies, not even on speaking terms, but this was an emergency. The blind man said to the man who had no legs, ”Now the only way to escape is that you sit on my shoulders; use my legs and I will use your eyes. That’s the only way we can save ourselves.” It was immediately understood. There was no problem. The man without legs could not get out; it was impossible for him to cross the forest – it was all on fire. He would have moved a little bit but that would not help: an exit, and a very quick exit, was needed. The blind man also was certain that he could not get out. He did not know where the fire was, where the road was, and where the trees were burning, and where they were not: a blind man, he would get lost. But both were intelligent people; they dropped their enmity, became friends and saved their lives.

This is an Eastern fable. And this is about your intellect and your heart. It has nothing to do with beggars, it has something to do with you. It has nothing to do with the forest on fire, it has something to do with you – because you are on fire. Each moment you are burning, suffering, in misery, anguish. Alone your intellect is blind. It has legs, it can run fast, it can move fast, but because it is blind it cannot choose the right direction in which to go. And it is bound to be continually stumbling, falling, hurting itself and feeling life meaningless. That’s what the intellectuals of the whole world are saying: ”Life is meaningless.”

The reason why life seems to them meaningless is that the blind intellect is trying to see the light. It is impossible.

There is a heart within you which sees, which feels, but which has no legs; it cannot run.

It remains where it is, beating, waiting: someday intellect will understand and will be able to use the heart’s eyes.

When I say the word trust

I mean the eyes of the heart.

And when I say doubt

I mean the legs of your intellect.

Both together can come out of the fire; there is no problem at all. But remember, the intellect has to accept the heart above its shoulders. It has to. The heart has no legs, only eyes, and intellect has to listen to the heart and follow its directions.

In the hands of the heart the intellect becomes intelligent. It is a transformation, a total transformation of energy. Then the person does not become an intellectual, he simply becomes wise.

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Wisdom comes through the meeting of the heart and the intellect.

And once you have learned the art of how to create a synchronicity between your heartbeats and the workings of your intellect, you have the whole secret in your hands, the master key to open all the mysteries.

I could have taught you doubt, but that would have changed you into intellectuals. I would have defeated my purpose and I would have destroyed your life. And there is no contradiction in what I am doing. First I had to teach you the way of the heart because I wanted you to understand that heart is higher than your intellect. I had to deny intellect completely so you forgot all your doubting and skepticism that you acquired from your schools, colleges, universities – which know nothing of the heart, which depend only on the intellect. They create the intelligentsia.

Even their greatest intellectuals, like Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger – they are great intellectuals... but poor, blind; they know nothing. They have immense knowledgeability, but they know nothing. They have not experienced anything at all, because experience is something that happens through the heart.

The intellect can take the heart into that space where experience happens.

The intellect cannot experience it.

The experiencer will be the heart.

But the intellect can be a good vehicle.

If the reins are in the hands of the heart, then the horse of intellect is of tremendous beauty. And this is the harmony which creates a real, authentic seeker.

It was a problem for me: from where to begin? I had to begin somewhere; either I had to begin with doubt or I had to begin with trust. I contemplated and weighed both for years. And you cannot teach both together; it will simply confuse people. The best is to teach one first and then the second. Even then it creates trouble. The question is there, that these two things seem to be contradictory. They are not.

Is the friendship of the blind beggar and the beggar without legs contradictory? What can be more harmonious? Two people functioning like one person – what can be more harmonious? Eyes belong to somebody, legs belong to somebody else; but eyes and legs belonging to two different people are functioning as if they belong to one person.

I would have loved to start with doubt because that is easier; you are already trained in it. That’s what J. Krishnamurti has been doing all his life, and has proved an absolute failure. And now there is no possibility for him to change his way of working. Ninety years of continual teaching of doubt, skepticism, intellect, reason.... He has worked hard; one feels sad for him, but all that he has been able to create are doubting Thomases all around the world.

Those doubting Thomases are blind, and perhaps J. Krishnamurti also cannot see clearly. He is not blind, but his heart is not on top of his intellect; his intellect is sitting on top of his heart. He has not moved anywhere either: whatever he was saying in 1925 he is saying in 1985 – the same.

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Just now Sheela was telling me that one of my sannyasins, Deeksha, went to see Krishnamurti in England. At first he was not ready to see her, but Deeksha is not the type to leave anybody so easily.

She pestered him, and she wouldn’t leave; finally, poor Krishnamurti had to encounter Deeksha.

But the first thing she did, she should not have done. She wanted to take over J. Krishnamurti’s kitchen – it was a good idea, she is a perfectly good cook – but what she did wrong was that she mentioned she had been with me. That was not the right certificate to produce. That was not the right qualification; that was absolutely the wrong qualification, the wrong certificate.

If she had asked me I would have told her how to approach J. Krishnamurti: at least don’t mention my name, ever, because my working is totally opposite to his. And he immediately gets enraged....

The moment she mentioned my name – you cannot believe that a man like J. Krishnamurti would say such a thing – he said, ”Yes, Osho was enlightened, but now he is no longer.” Now this is something great! Nobody has ever heard that somebody who has been enlightened can also become unenlightened. Nobody can fall from there because there is nothing to fall, nowhere to fall, nobody to fall; not a single ingredient exists. Where can you fall? The whole universe is in you, and you are in the whole universe. Where can you fall? – there is no other space. And who can fall? – because the one who could fall has fallen long ago: it is his fall that makes enlightenment possible.

A person exists before enlightenment, not after enlightenment.

After enlightenment, enlightenment exists.

No person, no ego, no ”In – so who can fall?

That is one of the impossible things in existence: to fall from enlightenment.

Yes, one man has been doing it, and that is one of my sannyasins, Gunakar; Germans can do impossible things. He has many times become enlightened. He declares himself enlightened: he cannot wait. He used to become enlightened and then he would write, trying to show his enlightenment in the letter – and it was all rubbish.

He wrote to all the government heads of the whole world; he wrote letters to all the members of UNO

declaring his enlightenment. And in those letters it was all rubbish, but he was advising everybody.

I asked him to come so that I could see his enlightenment. He came, very nervous, and as he sat down in front of me, I said, ”now become unenlightened again!” So he said, ”If you say so, Osho, then.... In fact I was so impatient: I want to become enlightened.” I said, ”It is perfectly good that you want to become enlightened, but you need not declare your enlightenment without becoming enlightened. When you become enlightened, you will be recognized. I will write a letter to you, you need not write a letter to me. Just wait!” So he would say, ”Okay, so I am not enlightened.” From Personality to Individuality

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This has happened three or four times. Since I came to America he has not come here because he does not want to become unenlightened again. But this is the only case in the whole history of humanity. Gunakar is unique! Otherwise, once a person becomes enlightened he is no more.

Now, Krishnamurti saying to Deeksha, ”Osho was enlightened; now, since he moved to America, he is no longer” – that too is strange. Krishnamurti lives in America; his whole life he has lived in America or in England, but his home base is America. I have been here only three years, and I have become unenlightened in three years. What to say about him? He has been here his whole life, almost eighty years – at least twenty-five times longer. He must have become unenlightened! And how can America make a person unenlightened? Yes, it is possible that if you are a born Oregonian you may never become enlightened; that is possible, I don’t see much hope. But even Oregon cannot do this miracle: make an enlightened person unenlightened.

But Krishnamurti is really angry with me. I simply laugh at the poor old fellow. He is nice, but why does he get so angry? And only with me? There are so many gurus around the world, and he is not angry with any of them, so why with me?

The reason is very clear, but perhaps not so clear to him. The reason is clear: what he has been trying to do and has been constantly failing to do, I have managed in a very short period. It is a professional.... The same profession – either of beggars or of Masters, it makes no difference. He has no clients, and I have so many clients that I go on chopping and dropping and somehow sorting out the wrong ones.

He has been looking for people like you, but he cannot find them because of his own strategy. He has chosen doubt as the first step – that’s where he missed. The first step he missed.

I have chosen trust as the first step.

And once you have felt the taste of trust then doubt is impotent.

Doubt cannot destroy your trust.

Doubt will destroy your beliefs:

They need to be destroyed.

Doubt will destroy all that is not authentic:

That needs to be destroyed.

What doubt cannot destroy is trust.

When doubt comes face to face with authentic trust, then doubt accepts the trust – its eyes, its way of feeling – as higher than itself It is so dear, there is no other possibility.

Your doubt bows down to your trust, and a friendship happens in you. Your heart is the master, your intellect becomes the servant.

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And that’s what I mean by intelligence. It is intelligence which will ultimately become enlightenment.

So I started with trust because I wanted people who can take the risk of trusting, who are confident enough to take the risk.

Trust is risky, doubt is not risky. Doubt is really trying to defend you; it is a defense measure so that you are not cheated, you are not exploited, so that somebody does not befool you, you don’t fall into the hands of a con man. Doubt simply prevents you from being cheated. But if you don’t have anything, and doubt goes on protecting you, what is the point of it all? It is like a man who goes on guarding his safe and knows perfectly well that there is nothing in it. Then what are you guarding?

Have a good sleep, because there is nothing! What do you have that can be exploited?

Yes, a man of trust has something:

He has a throbbing, living, feeling heart.

He has a treasure house.

Now doubt can be put on guard.

First I tried to create the treasure in you:

Now I am telling you that you need a guard. You have something to lose, and you should be alert.

There is no contradiction at all. Only for intellectuals will it seem that there is a contradiction; for intelligent people it will be immediately clear that there is a synchronicity. I may look mad – one day teaching you trust, another day starting to teach you about doubt – but my madness has a method in it. It is not just madness, but madness with a method.

I don’t say to you, ”Believe me;” I say to you, ”Take this hypothesis” – and now I can say to you, ”Take this hypothesis...” because this much trust you have in me. I am not asking for a belief or faith, I am simply saying, ”I know something which I cannot make you know; I know something which I cannot even express to you. But I can give you a hypothesis just to begin with, so that you can enquire.” When I say the soul transmigrates, to me it is an experience: I remember my past lives. I have transmigrated; there is no question of doubt for me, but I am not saying for you to believe it. What I am conspiring is to make you interested in this strange enquiry into past lives. If I can know my past lives – because they are all imprinted in the unconscious, nothing is ever lost – you can descend the staircase and go into your unconscious, and you can start knowing about your past lives. When you know, there is no need to believe – because then you know. When you don’t know, never believe, because if you believe you will never know.

So belief is not needed at any stage of life.

When you are ignorant, belief is not needed; it is very dangerous, because if you start believing then who is going to enquire?

Belief stops enquiry, kills enquiry.

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And when you know something, it will be simply foolish to believe in it. What will be the point of believing? – you know. You don’t believe in the sun, you don’t believe in the roses – you know. You believe in God because you DON’T know. You believe in the soul because you don’t know.

I am trying to destroy a]l unnecessary hypotheses, so you are not diverted; then you can move into an enquiry for God. One thing is certain: if God wants to meet you, He will look for you. In this vast universe you should not be so insane that you can search for God.

Man has reached only up to the moon. That too is not very far; it is the nearest planet. The nearest star is four light years away. If someday we can invent – it is impossible but just for argument’s sake

– if someday we can invent a vehicle, a rocket, which moves with the same speed as light, then we will reach the nearest star in four years. That is a one-way journey; the return journey means eight years. In the first place the problem is the speed, because at the speed of light everything becomes light. No matter what metal is used, at that speed everything is transformed into light – just as at a certain speed in air fire is created.

In olden times in India, and even today – in my childhood I have seen it in my village – people who smoked used to carry two stones, the white stones which are available on the shore of any river.

They would put a little cotton between those two stones and rub the cotton between them; that rubbing would create fire, the cotton would burn up. That was perhaps the most primitive lighter.

Perhaps they are still doing it. I have not been to my village for many years – they must be still doing it. Who will bother about a modern lighter? – you need petrol and you need this and you need that.

Those poor people can just get two stones from anywhere, and carry those stones with them. It is the simplest and cheapest way, and they can create fire anywhere.

I have seen people creating fire by rubbing two bamboos together. In the aboriginal state of Bastar in India there seems to be perhaps an even more primitive method: by rubbing dry wood together fire is created. That is how forests catch on fire, because in strong winds trees rub against each other and their rubbing creates fire. Just the other day I was telling you that meteorites fall from the sky and burn up. You see a star falling: it is a stone burning because its speed creates great friction with the air. The friction at that speed creates fire.

Light travels at the ultimate speed. At that speed everything is going to turn into light: the vehicle, the passengers, everybody. You won’t reach the nearest star in four years. And if we move at the same speed – the way we have gone to the moon – it will take perhaps thousands of years, one way; a round trip, thousands more. The people you left behind when you left the earth, you will not find on your return – nobody at all. In those years all those people have gone; generations have passed.... When you come back you will not be able to recognize a single face. And the hazards of such a long journey....

Even the hazards of the journey to the moon were tremendous, anything could have gone wrong; but it was only a question of a very short time. Still things were going wrong: machines, after all, are machines. – And there you don’t have a workshop and mechanics, engineers and scientists. They are all here on the earth with remote controls, and those remote controls sometimes just don’t work.

To depend completely on machines for all those years seems to be impossible.

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is such that if on the day the earth came into existence their light started traveling towards the earth, by the time that light reaches the earth, the earth will be gone. The distance is such that your earth’s few million years of life are not enough for the light to reach here. And there are stars further away than that.

If God wants to meet you, the only way is for Him to look for you; and He has not bothered at all. It is man who is bothering about God by looking above. It was good in Jesus’ time to look above because it was thought that the stars were very close by, just lamps for the night that God has created to give you some light. The world was very small, the stars were very close. Now we know that they are not lamps created to give you light, and that there are millions of stars, expanding continuously with the same speed as light. The universe is an expanding universe.

If God wants to meet you it is up to Him – but I don’t think He is interested.

You unnecessarily get involved in a search for God. All that you will end up with will be your own hallucination, your own imagination.

That’s why I want to drop all unnecessary hypotheses, so you can focus yourself on the most necessary hypothesis – and that is your being, your soul.

Please first find yourself, then try to find God; otherwise you will not even be able to introduce yourself: Who are you? If by chance, by accident, somewhere you come across Him, and He asks,

”Who are you?” you won’t be able to answer Him; you don’t know. Your name will not work, your religion will not work, your degrees will not work; because you are not your name, you are not your degrees and you are not your profession. He will not ask, ”Are you a doctor or an engineer or a plumber?” He will ask, ”Who are you? Engineering may be your education – forget about it! Just tell me who you are.” And you don’t know. This is the basic question.

I say to you, you are; but don’t believe me, just take it as a hypothesis.

That’s why I needed first your trust, a little trust: the trust that this man is not going to give you a wrong hypothesis. This much trust – I am not asking much.

Jesus and Krishna asked for total surrender. I am just asking for a very simple thing, a thing that any scientist will ask of you: ”This is the hypothesis – work on it.” You cannot doubt a hypothesis, remember, because a hypothesis is not a belief so the question of doubt does not arise.

A hypothesis means something temporarily assumed to help you enquire. And once you find, you can see whether the hypothesis was right or wrong. You can put your experience against the hypothesis and judge. And if this hypothesis has given you the experience, then the hypothesis was right. If the hypothesis just leads you into a desert land, and no oasis ever appears, then drop that hypothesis – and the sooner the better. Find something better. But I tell you I have found it.

In a Master you need only hypothetical trust, not a total surrender. How can you surrender totally?

I sometimes feel simply surprised that Krishna told Arjuna, ”Surrender to me totally.” Now, if Arjuna is asking a thousand and one questions about everything, is it possible for him to surrender totally?

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And for Krishna to ask Arjuna, who is continually doubting everything that Krishna is saying and raising question upon question – to tell him, ”Just surrender totally to me”....

Do you think it is a child’s game? How can this man surrender? And Arjuna was a great intellectual: all the questions that he has raised before Krishna are relevant. And all the answers that Krishna had given to him are just to explain away his question, not to explain. There is no way to explain, he is simply trying to explain them away. But Arjuna is insistent: Krishna tries to escape from one question, Arjuna brings another. This goes on and on, and in the middle of it, Krishna suddenly asks, ”You just surrender to me, and leave everything to me.” I am surprised by Krishna’s demand, and that too of an intellectual like Arjuna. Can’t he see that this man is not a gullible type? And even if you can find a gullible type – a man who cannot live totally, cannot do anything totally, can he be expected to surrender totally? Moreover, can surrender be an act on the part of the disciple?

One young man used to come to me; he was a very gullible, believing, devotional type. The situation between me and him was just the reverse of that between Krishna and Arjuna. He would just hold my legs and sit on the floor; and he would say, ”Accept me. I want to surrender totally to you.” Once I said, ”You want to surrender totally to me, but I don’t want your surrender! Are you going to force your surrender upon me? What am I going to do with your surrender? – I don’t need it.

You may need it somewhere else; don’t waste it totally. Save it for some emergency. Somewhere somebody may demand surrender with a gun, then what will you do? You will say,’I don’t have any surrender left, I have surrendered all to one person.’ You will be in danger – you keep it.” He said, ”You are strange. Every master asks,’Surrender.’ And I come to you; I believe in you, and I want to surrender.”

I said, ”Listen, today you have come to surrender; tomorrow you can come and say,’Give my surrender back.’ I will unnecessarily have to take care of your surrender so that it is not lost. I may put it somewhere, and one day you may appear and suddenly ask,’Give my surrender back.”’

He said, ”You are joking.”

I said, ”I am not joking! If you are surrendering, you have the right to take it back. you are the master, I am not the master. You are surrendering to me – who is the master? It is your act, I am simply outside your act. I am not doing anything, you are doing it – but tomorrow you can cancel it. You can find a better master; you can find some fault in me, and you can take your surrender back.” I said, ”I don’t ask anything from you. I don’t need your surrender, all I need is a hypothetical trust.

Do what I say; it may prove right, it may prove wrong. So there is no need to trust me, just do it with a’perhaps.’ I have no interest in deceiving you. By your sitting in silence, meditating, I am not going to gain anything. So let it be clear that I am not going to gain anything by your sitting in silence, by your becoming enlightened; I am not going to have any share in it.

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you? So just hypothetically, that’s enough. More than that I don’t want, because more than that is dangerous. Today you say,’I surrender totally,’ and then you think you need not do anything. What else can you do? – you have done all, you have surrendered totally.” Krishna is asking Arjuna to ”surrender totally, and I will take care of you.” This is certainly destroying the other person’s independence, individuality, his freedom to enquire; you are completely killing the person spiritually. But this has been the way of all the religions. Hence, you see some contradiction between trust and doubt. There is none.

I have taught you trust and the way of the heart so that your heart is open, available; your eyes are there. Now I have to train your intellect. Before I leave I have to complete my work. I have to train your intellect, sharpen it. I have to teach you doubt, because doubt is not a simple thing.

Doubt needs great courage because you will be doubting everything possible.

You will be

surrounded by all kinds of doubts. All consoling beliefs will be taken away, beliefs which gave you a certain confidence, a certain stability, a certain feeling that you belong to a big tradition, a well-respected religion of holy scriptures, messiahs, representatives of God. You had all these things surrounding you. They gave you a cozy feeling that you are not alone. I am trying to do just this: cut away everything that gives you a false, cozy feeling and that keeps you dozing all your life.

Belief is the opium which all the religions have been giving you in good doses.

I am trying to destroy your addiction to the opium.

My whole effort is to leave you alone.

Yes, you will feel fear, you will feel a certain trembling, you will feel all is lost; but this is just in the beginning. A little patience – it is a passing phase. Soon you will feel a tremendous energy arising in you which would have never arisen in the crowd, with its beliefs, because there was no need: you were spoon-fed; there was no need for you to think about your food on your own.

I am taking every consolation, every comfort – I mean spiritually – so you are completely alone in your being.

And then take the hypothesis:

Meditate, be silent, just watch yourself

Somebody has asked, ”How can we be certain that the watcher is not part of the mind?” It is a relevant question but only intellectual. It is not out of meditation, because in his question the man is bringing in three things, of which he is not aware: the mind, the watcher – and who is this third who is thinking whether the mind and the watcher are one thing? There is a third entity which is raising the question.

I say to you: the watcher, your watcher, is part of your mind. And not only that, the second watcher behind it is also part of your mind.

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When you realize silent watching you don’t see any mind anywhere; all thoughts stop. That is the beauty and the revolution of the watcher: when you are in a watching state there is nothing to be watched.

This is the trouble: when there is everything to watch, the watcher is not there; when the watcher comes in, there is nothing to watch. Only one can exist, both cannot exist together. The presence of the watcher simply disperses the mind; it is no longer needed. It was just functioning because the watcher was absent.

Gurdjieff used to tell a story: A very, rich man went on a pilgrimage. He had many servants and a very, big palace where he lived alone with all these servants. He called all the servants and told them, ”One by one, by rotation, you have to be on guard. I don’t know how much time I am going to take, it may be many years; the journey is long, the pilgrimage is hazardous. I may come back, I may not come back, but the palace, the garden, everything has to be present as it is.” They said, ”Of course. Whatsoever you say we will do.” The man went away. Months passed, years passed. By and by the servants started completely forgetting that they were servants because the master had been gone so long. Man’s memory is not that long, and there are things which one does not really want to remember. One’s being a slave and somebody being the master who wants to remember that?

Each servant had to guard the palace in rotation, and when each servant was guarding, he would pretend that he was the master. Anybody coming to the palace or passing by would ask, ”Whose palace is this?” The servant would answer, ”It is my palace, my garden. Don’t you like it?” This was happening with all the guards. Years passed; the guards completely forgot about the master and that he was going to return. ”By now he must be dead, something must have happened.

And it is good that we got rid of that fellow – now we are the masters.” They declared to the whole town, ”We are the masters” – and the town had also forgotten the master. It was long before – only old people remembered that somebody had been there, but it was only very vaguely. When he went, where he went, and what happened to him, nobody was aware.

But one day, the master appeared; he knocked on the door. The slaves looked at him and suddenly fell at his feet: ”Master, you are back!”

He said, ”I told you I would come back, even though it may take a long time.” They said, ”Forgive us, because the city people will say we have committed a crime against you. We had forgotten you completely, and we enjoyed being the master so much that we declared that we were the masters – and the city believes that we are the masters.” Gurdjieff used to tell this story, saying that the same is the case with the watcher. The watcher is absent; the mind – which is just a slave – is pretending to be the master. And it is not a question of a few years – for millions of years the master has been absent. Perhaps the master has never been home; there is no question that he had gone, because once he arrives he never goes. So your thoughts, and the combination of thoughts which you call your mind, certainly, confidently believe that they are the master.

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Just tn, to watch your thoughts.

Remember one thing: Thought itself cannot watch another thought – that is impossible. A thought cannot become a watcher of another thought; so when in your mind the thought arises, ”I am watching,” you have missed, because it is a thought. When the watcher is there you will not even have the idea of ”Aha! Got it!” Lost it! You were just on the verge of getting it and Werner Erhard entered, and EST finished everything: ”Got it!” Even that much, just two words, is enough; the mind is back.

It is always the mind that gets it, or does not get it; the watcher simply watches. No idea is formed, just absolute silence prevails. And in that moment is the seeing, knowing, experiencing – without any thought. Can’t you experience anything without any thought? You will have to learn, because mind has been trained for centuries just to think every experience in words.

You see a beautiful roseflower: immediately the mind says, ”How beautiful!” You may not say it aloud, you are not that insane, but silently you will say, ”How beautiful!” But in saying it, you miss the experience of the beauty of the flower.

The moment you said, ”How beautiful!” you went far away from the flower. You have already compared it with your past experiences of the flower. And remember, your past experiences must have been just like this: they were not experiences because those times also you would have missed in the same way, by saying, ”How beautiful!” You have always been missing the train!

Standing by the side of a roseflower, just stand there. Can’t you keep for a few seconds just a watching state of consciousness, with no interference of words – beautiful, ugly, red, yellow? No, just stand by the side – and it is not difficult; it needs just a little knack, and you can practice it anytime, doing anything. Just don’t allow words to come in between you and what is happening.

Once this knack is learned... the same is the situation inside. Of course, the inside experience is inexpressible, and tremendously more vast and profound than the beauty of a roseflower or the beauty of a sunset; but what you have to do is the same. Just relish it, drown in it, and if for a few seconds....

It has been counted exactly by one person, and that is Mahavira – and I agree with him because I have counted it also: it is exactly forty-eight seconds. If you can manage this state of watching without any word interfering for forty-eight seconds – I am not asking much, not even a whole minute, twelve seconds less. It is something of a law of existence that within forty-eight seconds the experience is complete. Then nobody can take it from you, you cannot fall from it. You can come to America, you can come to Oregon – you cannot fall from it.

I really enjoyed it when Sheela told me that J.Krishnamurti thinks that I have lost my enlightenment.

He must be furious! He cannot be joking, that much is certain. He is not a man to be non-serious, no; he is continually serious. He must have been serious. But what is troubling him? – he started with the wrong step. That is not my fault. If you get out of your bed with the wrong foot, what can I do? It is your bed and your foot, and you go on doing that for eighty years; I have nothing to do with it!

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I was also in a dilemma in the beginning, but sometimes things which are not appreciated prove tremendously helpful. My laziness proved tremendously helpful. I went on sitting on my bed, figuring out which foot to put down first. I would have waited there my whole life.

For almost seven years I never told anybody, ”I am no longer part of you.” Yes, a few people came to suspect – those who had the experience. One was Magga Baba, a very poor man, a beggar. He was the first to take hold of me – with both his hands he shook me – and he said, ”You cannot befool me!”

I said, ”i have not done anything.”

He said, ”You haven’t done anything, that is true, but you have been someplace which you are hiding.”

I said, ”That’s true, but please don’t tell anybody because I don’t want any harassment. I will get out of the bed, but I have not yet decided which foot is the right one to get out with.” I am a lazy man, bone lazy. My physician, Doctor Devaraj, wants to give me Vitamin D because I am bone lazy. Calcium is missing he thinks – perhaps! But it has been tremendous; it is good that it was missing. If I had jumped out of bed, I would have been in the same mess as J. Krishnamurti.

I got out of bed only when I had figured out everything completely. And since that moment I have been moving with every step calculated.

First I taught you about trust, the heart, feeling, love; and now I am teaching you about doubt, skepticism, reason, intellect, because I would like you to be a whole man. You can be completely satisfied with trusting, with the heart, but you will not be a whole man.

I would not call Mira a whole person, I would not call Ramakrishna a whole person. They are beautiful, but the intellect is missing; it is all heart. It is too much sugar, it creates diabetes. I am diabetic. Too much of the heart, too much sweetness, and you suffer from diabetes – and I don’t want any of you to suffer from diabetes. Yes, just living by the heart you will have spiritual diabetes.

Intellect is salty, spicy; it is not all sugar.

I would like you to enjoy the wholeness of your being, when your body, your heart, your intellect all fall in tune. I have called that the new man – Zorba the Buddha.

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The only hope: the enlightenment of humanity

12 January 1985 pm in Lao Tzu Grove

Question 1

OSHO,

WOULDN’T IT HAVE BEEN MUCH EASIER FOR YOU TO WORK WITHOUT BEING ASSOCIATED

WITH THE WORD RELIGION? WHAT IS THE SECRET BEHIND YOUR CHOOSING TO DO IT

THIS WAY?

I would have loved not to be associated in any way with the word religion.

The whole history of religion simply stinks. It is ugly, and it shows the degradation of man, his inhumanity, and all that is evil. And this is not about any one single religion, it is the same story repeated by all the religions of the world: man exploiting man in the name of God. I still feel uneasy being associated with the word religion. But there are a few problems: in life sometimes one has to choose things that one hates.

In my youth I was known in the university as an atheist, irreligious, against all moral systems. That was my stand, and that is still my stand. I have not changed even an inch; my position is exactly the same. But being known as an atheist, irreligious, amoral, became a problem. It was difficult to communicate with people, almost impossible to bridge any kind of relationship with people. In my communing with people, those words – atheist, irreligious, amoral – functioned like impenetrable walls. I would have remained so – for me there was no problem – but I saw that it was impossible to spread my experience, to share.

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The moment people heard that I am an atheist, irreligious, amoral, they were completely closed.

That I don’t believe in any God, that I don’t believe in any heaven and hell was enough for them to withdraw from me. Even very educated people – because I was a professor in the university, and I was surrounded by hundreds of professors, research scholars, intelligent, educated people – simply avoided me because they had no courage to defend what they believed; they had no argument for themselves.

And I was continually arguing on street corners, in the university, in the PANWALLAH’S shop –

anywhere that I could get hold of somebody. I would hammer religion and try to clean people completely of all this nonsense. But the total result was that I became like an island; nobody even wanted to talk with me, because even to say hello to me was dangerous: where would it lead?

Finally I had to change my strategy.

I became aware that, strangely, the people who were interested in the search for truth had got involved in religions. Because they thought me irreligious, I could not commune with them; and they were the people who would be really interested to know. They were the people who would be ready to travel with me to unknown spaces. But they were already involved in some religion, in some sect, in some philosophy; and just their thinking of me as irreligious, atheistic, became a barrier. And those were the people that I had to seek out.

There were people who were not involved in religions but they were not seekers at all. They were just interested in the trivia of life: earning more money, being a great leader – a politician, a prime minister, a president. Their interests were very mundane. They were no use to me. And they were also not interested in what I had to offer to them because it was not their interest at all.

The man who wants to become the prime minister of the country is not interested in finding the truth.

If truth and the prime ministership are both presented to him, he will choose the prime ministership.

He will say about truth, ”There is no hurry. We can do that – the whole of eternity is available – but the opportunity of the prime ministership may or may not come again. It rarely comes, and only to very very rare people, once in a while. Truth is everybody’s nature, so any day we can find that. First let us do that which is momentary, temporal, fleeting. This beautiful dream may not happen again.

Reality is not going anywhere, but this dream is fleeting.” Their interest was in dreaming, imagination. They were not my people, and communication with them was also impossible because our interests were diametrically opposite. I tried hard but these people were not interested in religion, not interested in truth, not interested in anything that is significant.

The people who were interested were either Christians, or Hindus, Mohammedans, Jainas, Buddhists: they were already following some ideology, some religion. Then it was obvious to me that I would have to play the game of being religious; there was no other way. Only then could I find people who were authentic seekers.

I hate the word religion, I have always hated it, but I had to talk about religion. But what I was talking about under the cover of religion was not the same as people understood by religion. Now, this was simply a strategy. I was using their words – God, religion, liberation, moksha – and I was giving them my meaning. In this way I could start finding people; and people started coming to me.

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It took a few years for me to change my image in people’s eyes. But people only listen to words, they don’t understand meanings: people only understand what you sag they don’t understand what is conveyed unsaid. So I used their own weapons against themselves. I commented on religious books, and gave a meaning that was totally mine.

I would have said the same thing without commenting – it would have been far easier because then I would have been directly speaking to you. There was no need to drag in Krishna, Mahavira, and Jesus, and then make them say what they had never said. But such is the stupidity of humanity that the same thing that I had been saying before, and they were not ready even to hear it.... And now thousands started gathering around me because I was speaking on Krishna.

Now, what have I to do with Krishna? What has he done for me? What relationship have I got with Jesus? If I had met him while he was alive I would have said to him, ”You are a fanatic and you are not in your senses, I cannot say that the people who want to crucify you are absolutely wrong, because they have no other way to deal with you.” So this was the only way. When I started speaking on Jesus, Christian colleges and Christian theological institutes started inviting me to speak, and I was really continually giggling inside, because those fools thought that this was what Jesus had said. Yes, I used Jesus’ words – one has just to understand a little game with words and one can make any word mean anything – and they thought that this was the real message of Jesus.... ”Our own Christian missionaries and priests have not done so much for Jesus as you have done.” And I had to keep quiet, knowing that I have nothing to do with Jesus, and that what I was saying Jesus might not have been able to even understand. He was a poor fellow, absolutely uneducated.

Certainly he had a charismatic personality so it was not difficult to gather a few uneducated people, fear-oriented and greedy for the joys in heaven. This man was making promises and asking nothing.

So cheap: what was the harm of believing in him? There was no danger, no harm. If there was no heaven and no God, you were not losing anything. By chance if there were, and this man was the begotten son of God, then you were gaining so much for nothing: simple arithmetic!

But it is significant that not a single educated, cultured rabbi became Jesus’ disciple, because those rabbis knew far better expressions, far better ways of philosophizing. And this man knew nothing.

He was not giving a single argument, he was simply stating things which he had heard from others; and he was a stubborn type of young man.

What I said in the name of Jesus, I had been saying before also, but no Christian community, no Christian college, no Christian theological institute would have invited me. What to say of invitation?

– if I had wanted to enter they would have closed the doors. That was the situation: I was prohibited from entering my own city’s central temple, and they had the support of the police so that I should not be allowed in. So whenever there was a Hindu monk speaking inside, a policeman was on guard outside to prevent me coming in.

I said, ”But I want to listen to that man.”

The police officer said, ”We know, everybody knows, that when you are there, everybody has to listen to you. And we have been called here just to prevent you, not anybody else; everybody else is From Personality to Individuality

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allowed. If you stop coming we would not be bothered because we are unnecessarily standing here for two or three hours every day. While the discourse session continues I will be standing here just for you, one person.”

But now the same temple started inviting me. Again the police were there – to prevent overcrowding!

They said to me – one officer who was still there said to me – ”You are something! We were standing here to keep you out, now we are standing here because too much crowding is dangerous – the temple is old.”

It had balconies and at least five thousand people could sit inside. But when I used to speak there, nearabout fifteen thousand people would turn up. So people would go on the balconies which were usually never used. One day it became so serious that it was almost possible the balconies would fall down – so many people on the balconies, and it was an old temple. Then naturally they had to arrange that from the next day only a certain number of people were to be allowed in.

That created trouble. That officer said, ”Now new trouble! You speak for two hours there, but people start coming two hours earlier, because if they come late they won’t get in.” He said to me, ”But you are something! You were against God.”

I said in his ear, ”I still am – don’t tell anybody because nobody will believe it. And I will always remain against God. Before I depart from the world I will expose everything. But you are not to tell because nobody is going to believe you, and I will flatly deny that I have ever said anything to you.” He said, ”You are something. You are against God and speaking on God?” But then I had to find my own ways. I would speak on God and then tell people that godliness was a far better word. That was a way of disposing of God. But because I was speaking on God, the people who were involved – who were true seekers being exploited by the religious priesthood –

started becoming interested in me. I found from all the religions, the cream.

There was no other way, because I would not have been able to enter their folds, and they would not have been able to come to me: just those few words would have been enough to prevent them. And I could not have blamed them, I would have blamed myself I had to find some way so that I could approach them. And I found the way; it was very simple. I simply thought, ”Use their words, use their language, use their scriptures.

”And if you are using somebody else’s gun, that does not mean you cannot put your own cartridges in it. Let the gun be anybody’s, the cartridges are mine! – because the real work is going to happen through the cartridges, not the gun. So what harm?” And it was easy, very easy, because I could use Hindu words and play the same game; I could use Mohammedan words and play the same game; I could use Christian words and play the same game.

Not only were these people coming to me, but Jaina monks, nuns, Hindu monks, Buddhist monks, Christian missionaries, priests – all kinds of people started coming to me. And you will not believe it: you have not seen me laughing because I have laughed so much inside that there was no need. I have been telling jokes to you, but I have not been laughing because I have been playing a joke my whole life! What can be more funny? And I managed to befool all those priests and great scholars so easily.

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They started coming to me and asking me questions. I just had to be alert in the beginning to use their vocabulary, and just between the lines, between the words, to go on putting the real stuff in which I was interested. I learned the art from a fisherman.

I used to sit by the bank of the river for hours because that was the most beautiful place in my village.

The morning was beautiful, the evening was beautiful; and even in the hot summer there were spots where there were thick trees, just leaning over the river. You could just sit in the river, in the water, and it was so cool you could forget it was summer.

I was just sitting looking at the morning sun, and fishermen were there. In India they put out a bait for the fish. Everywhere fishermen put out bait, but in India it has to be non-vegetarian, because the people who are catching fish and the people who are going to buy fish, both are non-vegetarians.

So the fishermen will cut small insects into pieces which are delicious to the fishes and hook them to their – what do you call it? Fishing line? – fishing line, and the fishes will come and catch the insect. And with the insect there is a hook; the hook will catch the fish. The fish will come to get the insect, but inside the insect the hook has been put, so once she swallows the insect, the fish is caught by the hook and she can be pulled out immediately.

Looking at this fisherman I thought, ”i have to find some way that I can catch my people. Right now they are in different camps, nobody is mine.” I was alone: nobody was courageous enough even to associate with me or to walk with me because people would think that he was also gone, was lost. I found the bait: use their words.

In the beginning people were really shocked. Those who knew me for years, who knew that I had always been against God, were really puzzled, absolutely puzzled. One of my teachers, whom I had tortured for three years continually in my high school because he was a very pious type of man: praying morning and evening, and continually keeping on his forehead the symbol of his religion....

I was continually harassing him about everything; he was incapable of answering any question.

In fact nobody can answer questions relating to fictions. If the reality is there, some way can be found and any question can be answered. But if there is no reality at all and you are just feeling high on something fictitious, you will be afraid even to listen to a question from somebody because that brings a doubt to your mind.

This teacher lived not very far from my house, so I used to go to torture him there because in class he would simply say, ”Get out!” before he took the attendance. I would say, ”Please, first take my attendance; otherwise, I come every day, but at the end of term you will say that my attendance is not good enough and that I cannot appear in the examinations. So please, first take the attendance.” He said, ”That I will do – you need not even come.” And he gave me exactly one hundred percent attendance, but he said, ”First you get out. Before I start my work” – because attendance was the first thing you get out!”

I used to go to his house, and I would say, ”Here you have to treat me like a god because that is what scriptures say: ATITHI DEVO BHAVA:’the guest is equal to God.’ Here you cannot tell me to get out; and English is not allowed at all because it is a religious conversation for which I have come.” He would keep both his fingers in his ears. His wife would say, ”Why are you so afraid of this boy?” From Personality to Individuality

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He would say, ”I don’t want to listen to what he wants to say. I cannot throw him from the house, that is against.... He is right, he is saying’Atithi devo bhava: a guest is God, nothing less; treat him as if God has come.’ But no scripture says that you cannot put your fingers in your ears. I won’t listen to a single word from him, because he creates doubts in me. And that’s his whole purpose in coming here – to create doubt.”

Once his wife said, ”why do you unnecessarily take the trouble to come? – because he does not listen.”

I said, aBut do you see? Do you think your husband is a religious man?” She said, ”since you started coming I don’t think that he is a religious man. A man who is afraid of even listening to anything that goes against his beliefs – what kind of faith is this?” One day, when I was talking to his wife, he must have taken his fingers out of his ears to listen to what I was saying. When he heard that his wife was saying that he was not much of a religious man

– ”Perhaps you are right: he is such a coward, and I never knew” – he came running into the house because I was in the kitchen talking to his wife.

He said, ”Now you are spoiling my wife! Can’t you leave me alone? Now she is saying that I am not a religious man. You have planted the idea in her mind; she will torture me. From you I can manage to escape, I can throw you out of the class, but where am I going to throw my wife?” His wife said, ”Whatsoever the boy says is significant. You have to answer him if you are a real believer.”

This teacher met me almost twenty years afterwards in a discourse in Bombay. I was speaking on the most popular Hindu scripture, the SHRIMAD BHAGAVAD GITA. He could not believe it: thousands of people... and I was speaking on BHAGAVAD GITA! And not only thousands of people but hundreds of sannyasins too. He came to the back and waited there for when I came out.

He said, ”What has happened? You are transformed!” – and he touched my feet.

I said, ”don’t touch them. I am not transformed, I am the same man. And I am very stubborn: I am going to remain the same man to the last breath. Don’t touch my feet” – but he had already touched them.

He said, ”You must be joking! If so many sannyasins....” That’s why I had chosen the orange robe, just to sabotage the whole idea of ancient sannyas. There was now no difference between my sannyasins and their sannyasins: it was difficult to figure out who was who. And my sannyasins were increasing every day, in every place all over the country. And when he said that so many sages were also sitting there, I said, ”None of them is a sage! Keep your eyes open and close your ears.

You should not come here – you are a simple person, this is not for you.” But he said, ”I have heard you – the whole lecture – and I have been reading the GITA my whole life, and nobody has ever interpreted Krishna’s words the way you have. I have read many commentaries, but listening to you I found that all those were third rate.” From Personality to Individuality

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This was happening again and again. Once I was speaking in a Mohammedan institute in Jabalpur.

One of my Mohammedan teachers had become the principal of this institute; he was not aware that I was the same person he knew. Somebody told him that they had heard me speaking on Sufis and that it was something incredible: ”We had not thought about Sufis that way, and our institute will be honored if he comes.”

In India, or in any other country, if a Mohammedan comes and speaks on the BIBLE you feel very flattered, your ego is tremendously strengthened. Or if a Mohammedan, a Hindu, a Buddhist, is speaking on Jesus, praising him and his words.... And particularly in India where Mohammedans and Hindus are continuously killing each other, if somebody who is not a Mohammedan can speak on Sufism.... My old teacher was very happy; he invited me to talk.

I was in search of all these invitations because I wanted to find my people, and they were all hiding in different places.

When my teacher saw me he said, ”I have only heard of miracles, but this is a miracle! You are speaking on Sufism, on Islam, on the fundamental philosophy of Islam?” I said, ”To you I will not lie – you are my old teacher. I will be speaking only on my philosophy. Yes, I have learned the art of throwing in the word Islam to people once in a while. That much I will do.” He said, ”My God! But now we are caught: people are waiting in the auditorium. And you are the same mischievous person, you have not changed. Are you kidding or something? – because one of our trusted teachers who is an authority on Sufism has praised you.,Because of his praise I have invited you.”

I said, ”He has spoken rightly, and you will also praise what I say. But remember always, I will say only what I want to say. It does not matter, it is so simple a thing: if a Buddhist calls me I have only to change a few words, and from Sufism I talk about Zen, not about Sufis. I say the same thing; it is just that Sufism is changed a little here and there. And I have to be alert – I should not forget about whom I am speaking, that’s all.”

And I spoke. Of course he had been sitting there very sad, but when he heard me he was so joyous.

He came and hugged me and he said, ”You must have been joking.” I said, ”I am always joking – don’t take it seriously.”

”You are a Sufi” he said.

I said, ”That’s what people say!”

I was speaking in Amritsar in the Golden Temple which is now creating great trouble in India. This is the Sikh temple, and because of this temple Indira Gandhi has been assassinated; the whole country is shaken. I was speaking in this temple. Everywhere, all around the country, people had asked me thousands of times, ”Why do you grow a beard?” I had become accustomed to the question and I enjoyed answering in different ways to different people.

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But in the Golden Temple when I was speaking on Nanak and his message, a very old sardar came to me, touched my feet and said, ”sadarji, why have you cut your hair?” That was a new question, asked for the first time. He said, ”Your beard is perfectly okay, but why have you cut your hair? – and you being such a religious man.”

Only five things are needed to be a Sikh, very simple things; you can manage them, anybody can.

They are called the five K’s because each word starts with K. Kesh means hair, Katar means a knife; Kachchha means underwear – that I have not been able to figure out. It is the only question I cannot answer. What philosophy is being taught? Strange, but there must be some reason.

I enquired of the Sikh priests and their high priest, ”Everything is okay – grow your hair and have a sword or a knife – but this kachchha...? What theological, theosophical, philosophical meaning does kachchha have?”

They said, ”Nobody has ever asked about it; we just have to follow these five K’s.” Perhaps in Nanak’s time, when he chose the kachchha, it was a time of continual war between Mohammedans and Hindus. He changed the whole caliber of Punjab. He gave them almost a new energy with which to fight, and certainly a martial race was born out of Hindus, who cannot fight, who don’t want to fight – and they were all Hindus. Perhaps in a fight the Hindu dress is not appropriate.

A loose dhoti, a loose gown – they are comfortable, very comfortable, and in a hot country, very airy; they remind one of a time when people did not need to work hard. But you cannot give that kind of dress to soldiers, so Nanak changed the dress: instead of the dhoti he created the salvar, which is a kind of pajama. But in a war... any time your pajama can go bananas because there is only a small cord that is holding it up.

Now Neelam is enjoying this because she is a Punjabi.

She knows the Punjabis – they are

all bananas!

So Nanak must have thought that it was better to give them some underwear also, because their salvar could drop any moment, and then it would look a real mess and be embarrassing – a soldier need not stand naked in the field! Something like that must have been behind it.

This old sardar thought that I was a sardar because nobody who was not a sardar had ever spoken in the Golden Temple; so it was unprecedented. He was certainly puzzled about why I, such a religious man, had cut my hair. And I was only thirty at that time.

So I told him, ”There is some reason in it. I don’t feel yet a perfect sardar, and I don’t want to claim anything that I am not. So I have kept four things but I have been cutting my hair. I will grow my hair when I am a perfect sardar.”

He said, ”That’s right. It is tremendously significant that a man should think about this, that he should not pretend to be a perfect sardar. You are a better sardar than us: we think we are perfect because we have all five things.”

From among these people I found my people. It was not difficult, it was very easy. I was speaking their language, their religious idioms, quoting their scriptures and giving my message. The intelligent people there immediately understood and they started gathering around me.

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All over India I started creating groups of my own people. Now there was no need for me to speak on Sikhism, Hinduism, Jainism; there was no need, but for ten years I had been continually speaking on them. Slowly, when I had my own people, I dropped speaking on others. After traveling for twenty years I stopped traveling also, because there was no need. Now I had my people: if they wanted to come to me they could come.

So it was an absolute necessity; there was no other way to hook my people. Everybody is already divided. It is not an open world: somebody is a Christian, somebody is a Hindu, somebody is a Mohammedan. It is very difficult to find a person who is nobody. I had to find my people from these closed flocks, but to enter their flock I had to talk their language. Slowly, slowly, I dropped their language. Proportionately as my message became more and more clear, their language I slowly dropped.

And after my years of giving sannyas I gave this three-year period, a gap when anybody wanted to leave me, could leave... because I don’t want to interfere in anybody’s life.

If I can enhance your life, good.

If I cannot enhance you and your being, then it is better that you move away from me.

The people who were with me just because they enjoyed my discourses could not stand silence: they have left. Of course when somebody leaves he has to find some excuse just to justify himself; he has to justify himself He cannot just say, ”Because Osho no longer speaks, I am going.” That would simply show that he was here not for me but only to listen to me. And he could have done that through a tape recorder, through a video; he could have read the books – that was not the problem.

He was not with me. He was enjoying what I was saying, but it was not his search, it was only his entertainment.

This gap helped. First I had to find my people; but it is natural when you collect a large mass of people around you, a few unwanted ones are bound to enter accidentally.

For example Neelam is with me – whether I am speaking or not speaking – but her husband escaped.

He was accidental; a nice person, a loving person, but he was only interested in my speaking. He used to come from Punjab to Poona to listen to me; he came here too, but he could not find what he was seeking. It was just an entertainment. But to Neelam it was her life. He simply posed the question to Neelam: ”You can choose either to be here with Osho or come along with me; I am going.”

It was hard for Neelam, difficult, but she chose me, dropped her husband and forgot all about her family life. There she was rich, had her own beautiful house, had her own car, and everything. Here I see her working hard in the garden, on the road; but she is immensely happy and radiant as she has never been before. Her husband waited a few months – perhaps she would come, because her daughter is also here, but her daughter also refused to go.

Her daughter, Priya, chose me, whom she can only see on the drive-by, and dropped her father who loved her very much. Priya is their only child, but she refused; she would not go. Even if Neelam went, then too she was going to remain here. Neelam’s husband got married again, to a very rich From Personality to Individuality

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widow. He was accidental: sooner or later, some way or other, he had to leave. He had just come following Neelam because he loved her.

So these three years helped: we have dropped all unnecessary baggage – because as you move higher you have to drop more luggage. On the plains you can carry much luggage, but when you start moving uphill you will have to decide what is unnecessary and drop it. At a still greater altitude, a few more things have to be dropped.

When Edmund Hillary reached the peak of Everest he had no luggage at all. He was simply standing there with nothing, because everything had to be dropped by and by. When he started, there had been so many things and equipment – this machine and that machine, and oxygen tanks.... He was a scientific mind so there was all that luggage, with fifty servants carrying it. But by and by, at each camp something had to be dropped because it was becoming impossible. Just to carry yourself was enough. Standing on Everest, he was absolutely without luggage; one has to be weightless.

These three years have helped to drop much luggage; hence the difference you will see in my speaking. You will see many things.... Those who have heard me before and are hearing me now will feel in a great difficulty – so many shocks.

But now I am simply speaking the truth that is mine, because now I can trust that you will understand, that you don’t need some via media: Jesus, Mahavira, Buddha, Krishna.

I can talk to you directly, immediately

I don’t need to play a game with words.

So this gap was a discontinuity in a way. The game that I had to play was a necessary evil; otherwise it would not have been possible to find you. Do you think you would have come to an atheist, an amoralist, a godless, irreligious person? If you ask yourself that question you will understand why I had to use religion and religious terminology. I was using it against myself just for you. It was for your sake that I have been doing that whole number, but now there is no need.

Somebody has asked if people are sending me jokes the way they used to in Poona. They started sending jokes. I said no, because now I don’t need jokes. I needed jokes at that time because it was an entertainment. It is no longer entertainment. Just by the way, if a joke comes on its own I am not averse to it. But now I want to speak spontaneously, directly, immediately, the simple truth that is mine.

That’s why the lectures have become so long, because to talk on others was tedious for me, to tell you the truth. I managed to tolerate sixty minutes, seventy minutes, at the most ninety minutes.

With more than that it was possible I may have forgotten on whom I was speaking! I had to keep questions and notes in front of me so I could remember that this was a Zen series, that this was a Sufi series, that this was a Hassid series – and I didn’t get mixed up. Teertha was reading the story and I kept another copy with myself so I didn’t forget the story and get lost, because I could have easily moved in any direction.

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abruptly – I never used to do that. That is true. When I was just entertaining you I gave the right beginning, gave the right middle and gave the right end; rounded, complete. But right now it is all raw, uncut – unpolished diamonds from the mine itself So there is no beginning in fact, and there is no end. Abruptly, I start. Not to shock you I have persuaded Sheela to begin with a question, just to give you the feel that.... Otherwise if I begin speaking abruptly you will think I have gone completely out of my mind! Nobody is asking and I am answering!

But that’s actually the case: nobody is asking the questions, most of the questions I have to tell Sheela to write down. They are not somebody else’s. So poor Sheela has to write down a question, then ask it; and because it is my own question I don’t need to keep it in front of me. And I am free to move in any way. Abruptly I am starting, and abruptly I am stopping – that’s truly existential!

In life things start abruptly, things end abruptly, and you don’t ask why. If somebody suddenly dies in the middle of the road, you don’t tell him, ”At least you could have waited till you reached the other side. In the middle of the road – is this a way to die? You could have chosen a weekend. Now people will have to ask for leave to come. You have raised all kinds of unnecessary problems. Could you not have waited a little – for Saturday or Sunday?” But life ends abruptly, there is never a full stop, it is always a semi-colon. Not a single life has ever ended with a full stop – cannot. Something is always incomplete. Something is always growing and has not come to its full flowering; something is always on the move, and then there comes the abrupt end;

Beginnings are abrupt. If you look closely existence is abrupt, sudden – and I want these discourses to be existential. Yes, I will be stopping anywhere I feel to stop; there is no other consideration. You can see now clearly why I had to use religious language, and why now I am continually telling you to flush God down the toilet, to forget all about heaven and hell, and that the law of karma is nothing but boo-boo.

And I am no longer showing any respect to Jesus, or Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna. I am just treating them as a headmaster treats his children. If they behave rightly then they will not be punished, that’s all. If they don’t behave rightly, then I am going to give them real hits that they will never forget.

Now I have no need for any camouflage.

I can stand fully naked, as I am, open to you.

There is no desire anywhere in me to say a single word that I cannot authenticate on my own authority.

That’s why I am calling my religion godless, religionless.

It looks strange to say a religionless religion, but the word religion in itself is beautiful. People have used it, abused it – that’s why I said I hate it. The original meaning of the word is really beautiful, but who cares about the original meanings?

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The original meaning of the word religion is ”to bring all the parts together, to make it whole.” As man exists he is many, a crowd. Religion means to put the crowd in such a harmony that it becomes one individuality, literally so, because individuality literally means indivisibility: that it cannot be divided, that you are no longer fragments of a jigsaw puzzle, that every fragment is put where it should be and the puzzle disappears. The puzzle was because fragments were in places where they are not supposed to be. Where your heart is supposed to be.

It is not there. Where your intellect is supposed to be.

It is not there. Where your emotions are supposed to be.

They are not there. Everything is misplaced; your house is in a chaos.

Religion means to create a cosmos within a chaos.

The word is beautiful, but in its original sense; hence I still use it. But to avoid misuse and the wrong associations, first I say religionless and then I say religion. All that you have understood about religion up to now, all that religions have been saying, I am denying in the word religionless. And all that has to be said and has not been said, I am saying in the word religion.

Those who are in search of truth will understand it, love it, enjoy it, will be nourished by it, because it is no more intellectual entertainment; it is spiritual nourishment.

I am pouring my heart into you.

And now the time is ripe.

Before it is too late I have to convey all that I have been waiting for years to convey.

A thousand and one things I had to avoid because they would have created immediate trouble. A thousand and one things I said, because that was the only way to catch hold of my people. But now, allow me to relax so I can simply say whatsoever comes on its own.

Not even I know what the next sentence or the next word is going to be. That’s why many times I simply stop in the middle of the sentence. I have to wait. If it comes, it comes; if it does not come, I look at the clock. Whenever I look at the clock you can understand that I am waiting for the word and it is not coming.

Vivek was asking me, ”You go on criticizing J. Krishnamurti; Krishnamurti goes on saying things about you. You must both be giggling inside.” I said, As far as I am concerned, I am certainly giggling. About Krishnamurti I cannot say that. He is incapable of giggling, absolutely incapable. He has forgotten to laugh; he is too serious, and as he is becoming older he goes on becoming more and more serious, I can understand, and I could have been of immense help to him, but he cannot even tolerate seeing one of my sannyasins; otherwise I can give him one whole commune of mine.

Krishnamurti has been looking for people who can understand him and do what he wants them to do. Now I have so many communes around the world, I can give one whole commune to him. It will be a joy to me if he can get a little satisfaction in the last years, perhaps the last days of his life.

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He is ninety, any time he will pop off. Before he pops off I offer him any commune. If he wants this commune he can take this commune – I will withdraw. If he can manage my people... it is up to him.

But he could not even manage Deeksha, although she tried hard to convince him: ”I have left Osho, I am no longer with him.”

He said, ”That is good what you have done, that you have left him, but I won’t allow you in my kitchen

– just get lost!” Why? Deeksha is such a good cook, she would have managed his kitchen perfectly; and he has not much of a kitchen anyway.

In his school, in Brookwood, where he stays in England, there are not more than a dozen boys and girls. And these are the problem children; no school accepts them. When parents are tired, fed up, they send them to Krishnamurti’s school because he allows in anybody who comes. In fact not many come; I think not more than a dozen. Last time one of my friends visited, there were not more than eight children of all ages. And Krishnamurti lives there.

For Deeksha this would have been a very small job, but poor Deeksha would have felt good: if she has missed me, she has at least got hold of J. Krishnamurti. But he does not allow my sannyasins in his kitchen. He does not want to see any of my sannyasins sitting in front in his discourses. But that is his problem, that is not my problem. Many of his followers have become my sannyasins, many of his followers have been my lovers. Many of his lovers, many of his followers have been immensely interested in me. I don’t see any problem.

So I said to Vivek, ”I giggle – the whole situation is so absurd. Poor Deeksha asking to be allowed in the kitchen! He should have allowed her. This is just inhuman, to tell her to get lost. As far as I am concerned I am willing: he can take any of my communes. If he wants people who can risk everything, then I have got the people.”

But he cannot tolerate, he cannot risk being among my people. He is so enraged because what he wanted to do he has not been able to do, and I have managed to do it without much doing.

I don’t do anything.

I have told you, I am just a lazybones.

And that’s how I have been my whole life:

I don’t do anything.

But if there is something in me that attracts people who do – and for no reward except that they are with me, except that they can bathe, be showered, in my presence, in my love.... What other remuneration have they got? And they are risking their whole life.

I can give him the people he has not been able to find because he moved wrongly. He missed the train; but I am in the train and I can pull the emergency lever. If he wants me to get down I can get down and be in his place and he can take my place; there is no problem in it. But that will be a great problem to him because this world that I have created around me can be managed only by a non-existent manager like me.

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He is after people too much. To each single person he will talk for three hours. He is after you too much – he will drive you nuts. One interview will be enough, you will not ask for a second interview.

And you may ask one thing and he will answer something else – completely, totally different. He is not listening to your questions, he is full of his own ideology. Your question is just a jumping board and then he starts throwing his ideology over you. And basically what he is doing is a contradiction: on the one hand he teaches that there is no need for a guide, no need for a Master; and on the other hand he continues guiding people.

And what is it all about, that you go around the world, if you are not teaching people? Are you mad or something? You are teaching people. Perhaps you are teaching them to be against teaching but that does not matter; it is still teaching. You may be saying that there is no Master, no disciple, but they start following that that ”Yes, there is no Master, no disciple; but we are Krishnamurti-ites, we follow you.” You become the Master, they become disciples. You get angry because you put people in a dilemma.

It is a very complex dilemma. If they really understand you, nobody should come to listen to you.

That should be tried sometime: he comes to speak in Bombay or New Delhi, and he simply sits there and nobody comes – because there is no Master and there is no disciple, no teaching, no philosophy, nothing.

So he sits near Jehangir art gallery in Bombay where aU the crows of Bombay gather in the evening great place he has chosen in Bombay! And those crows must have been religious masters in their past lives because they are all speaking simultaneously, all the crows, while Krishnamurti teaches.

And he tells people, ”if you are attentive and aware, don’t be bothered by the crows, you just listen to me.”

But why? They are attentive and aware, and they are listening to the crows and not to you. Why should they listen to you? And the crows are creating such chaos! That is their place: every day they are doing that, whether disciples come or not. You come only once in a year for a few days; you are just an intruder in their territory. But one day nobody should come, then his teaching will be fulfilled. But will he feel happy? No, he wants more people to come. And that’s what goes on troubling him.

So I said to Vivek, ”I can giggle because to me he is not a problem; to me nobody is a problem.” But to him, somehow my existence hurts because this is what he wanted.

Just a few days ago Somendra wrote to one of the sannyasins here. The sannyasin had written to Somendra, ”I am here in the commune, blissful as I have never been. And I don’t think I want to be anywhere else; this is the place.” Somendra must have been trying to pull her away, because he is trying to create a commune in Switzerland.

Seeing by her letter that she is out of reach, he wrote, If you are feeling happy there, then I am happy. God has given Osho what He wanted. I hope that one day God will give me also what I want.”

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also one day, he hopes. Now, poor Somendra, nobody is preventing him.... I can give him one of the communes in Switzerland – we have a beautiful commune. Why give it to him? – because there is no God, I know, and his hope will not be fulfilled; so when I can give him one, why bother God?

Just a single hint from your side, and I give the commune to you, and you do whatsoever you want to do.

But no, he is hoping that God.... And he thinks it is God who has given me what I wanted. Do you think God will help me? I don’t think so. God, if He is somewhere, must be trying hard to destroy everything. He must be entering the governor of Oregon, the attorney-general of Oregon, Senator Hatfield – or is it Fatfield? God must be getting into all the idiots of Oregon, the 1000 Friends of Oregon, all the watchdogs. God is barking from everywhere! And Somendra says that He has given me what I wanted. No, nowhere, in no scripture is it mentioned that God is so generous!

But I am not a god, I am a human being: I can be generous. And with Somendra I have always been joking. He was one of my patent fools – he could not understand it, he does not even understand now.

A commune is not created by your effort or Go*s help.

A commune is a spontaneous phenomenon.

I have never asked you to come to me, I have never written letters to you to come to me.

You have found me on your own.

It is your search that has brought you to me.

Now, Somendra is writing to all sannyasins everywhere, ”Come, we are going to create a great commune.” Nobody seems to be listening, and nobody seems to be coming. This is not the way. In the first place, he betrayed me. I had immense trust in him, and still I have the same trust. I loved him as I love you. And it makes no difference whether you are a sannyasin or not. What difference does it make?

But people who drop sannyas get into a very difficult situation. They cannot come back because they feel embarrassed: what to say now? – because when they dropped, people were asking

”Why are you dropping sannyas?” Then they were saying many things against me or against the commune or against the organization. Now, if they want to come back they have closed their doors on themselves. People will ask, ”What happened? You were speaking against all these things; now is everything alright again?” With what face...?

But I want to tell all of the sannyasins who want to come back that they will be welcomed with great joy. It is human once in a while to go astray. It is not something very serious at all, and with me nothing is serious. You wanted to taste the world as a nonsannyasin – perfectly good. Now you feel that it was not worth while, and you want to come back. It is your home – come back.

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kinds of problems. He himself is not yet in a state where he can be of any real help to anybody. He himself needs help. His creating a commune is just like a blind man collecting other blind men and saying, ”Come follow me.”

Perhaps a few blind people may start following you, but sooner or later you will find yourself with all your group in a ditch. One should be absolutely aware: Do you have eyes? Can you see the light?

Do you have that energy that you can share with people? If not, then don’t try such an idiotic act, because you are playing with people’s lives. You are in darkness, and you will lead those people into more darkness.

In those days I had to speak in the name of religion, in the name of God. It was compulsory. There was no alternative: it was not that I had not tried it. I had tried it, but found it simply closes people’s doors. But I could see a simple way out. Even my father was puzzled, more so than anybody else, because he knew me from my very childhood – that I am an atheist, a born atheist; that I am against religion, against the priests.

When I started speaking in religious conferences, he asked me, ”What is happening? Have you changed?”

I said, ”Not a bit, I have just changed my strategy; otherwise it is difficult to speak in the world Hindu conference. They won’t allow an atheist on their stage. An amoralist, a godless person, they won’t allow. But they invited me – and I said everything against religion, in the name of religion.” The shankaracharya, the head of the Hindu religion, was presiding over the conference. The King of Nepal – Nepal is the only Hindu kingdom in the world – inaugurated the conference.

The

shankaracharya was in great difficulty because what I was saying was absolutely sabotaging the whole conference. But the way I was presenting it, the people were getting impressed. He became so angry that he stood up and tried to snatch away the microphone – this old man. While he was trying to snatch it away, I said, ”Just one minute, and I will be finished.” So just for one minute he stopped – and in one minute I managed!

I asked the people – there must have been at least one hundred thousand people – I asked them,

”What do you want? He is the president, he can stop me if he wants, and certainly I will stop. But you are the people who have come here to listen. If you want to listen to me, then you all raise your hands; and to make it clear raise both your hands.” Two hundred thousand hands.... I looked at the old fellow and said, ”Now you sit down. You are no longer president: two hundred thousand hands have canceled you completely. Whom do you represent? You were president – these people had made you president, now these people have canceled you. Now I will speak as long as I want to speak” – it would have been impossible otherwise. And I found hundreds of people from that gathering: Bihar became one of the most potential sources of my sannyasins.

The same way I was moving around the country going into religious conferences and catching hold of people. And once I had my own group in that city then I never bothered about their conferences; then my group was holding its own conferences, its own meetings. But it takes time.

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Now I am not searching for anybody. I have found the people who are enough for my work to spread worldwide.

That’s why I want to complete the circle. Now I want to say things which I wanted to say in the beginning but which were difficult to say because nobody was ready to listen.

Now I have my people – whose hearts are open to absorb me, to take me in.

And before I depart from the body, I would like to pour all that I have in you.

It is almost like lighting one candle by another candle.

You can go on lighting one candle by another candle: Millions of candles you can light.

The first candle does not lose anything, remember. It is not that it has lost so much light because now one million candles are burning. No, it has not lost anything, it has gained.

It was a lonely candle in a dark world. Now, millions of candles are showering their light all over the space.

Their light is the same.

Their flames are different.

Each sannyasin has to be a flame unto himself

But the light of all the sannyasins will be the same: The light that I want to be spread all over the earth – because that is the only hope. Without it humanity cannot last more than fifteen years. But if we can create the light I am talking about, if we can make this whole world afire – and we CAN....

I started the journey alone. People went on coming and joining me; now there are thousands of sannyasins. And do you see? – I have not been very long on the road, just twenty-five years. And the difficulties that I have been facing you will not be facing. The problems that I had to face, you will not be facing. One day, alone, I started. Now my candle is burning in thousands of candles.

Each candle has the same potential:

It can light up millions of candles.

In the coming fifteen years everything will become intense.

The danger will become intense.

The challenge will become intense.

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The possibility of ultimate destruction will become intense.

And the possibility of ultimate transformation will become intense.

In these fifteen years everything is going to take the intense – most form possible because a planet that has been working for millions of years to create human consciousness has come to a space where either death or total transformation will be the only alternatives.

Old religions are just dead. They don’t give any option; they are dying with the dying society, and there is nobody except you.

You should understand the gravity, the significance, the responsibility. There is nobody on the whole earth like you, nobody who has dropped all rubbish that is old and who is ready to become a new kind of man. Don’t be worried that you are such a small minority.

The day I started I was alone. Even at that time I did not think that I was a minority, because truth is never a minority.

Truth is always the whole – not even the majority but the whole, one hundred percent.

My grandfather used to ask me, ”Just alone you are thinking to transform the whole world?” I said, ”Just with a small candle I can burn the whole forest. An atom bomb is not needed, one just has to choose the right timing. If the wind is blowing towards the forest then just a single candle –

and the whole forest will be afire. So don’t think that I am alone, and what can I do?” My grandfather was not alive when I started initiating people into sannyas, otherwise he would have been immensely happy that what I had said to him has happened. You are not a small minority, don’t think in those terms.

A single sannyasin – even a single sannyasin – is not a minority, because the truth that burns in him and the light that he holds in his hands, the torch that he holds in his hand, is enough to create the whole face of the earth.

And It is going to happen – and not with God’s help, because God’s help has been coming for thousands of years and you see what has happened.

This time, without God – at least give it a try this time without God, without heaven, without hell, without all that crap!

Just give a chance to pure humanity, to the ordinary, natural human being.

And I say to you it is going to happen – no God can prevent it.

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CHAPTER 15

Truth said, truth dead

13 January 1985 pm in Lao Tzu Grove

Question 1

OSHO,

WHAT ARE YOU PREPARING US, YOUR SANNYASINS, FOR?

I am preparing my sannyasins for everything and nothing. The second is more important. The first is only a preparation for the second.

”Everything” includes everything that is necessary for a person to get to his being, to be fulfilled, to be contented, to be in that ultimate state where there is no desire, no need; where one is sufficient unto oneself

That blessed state is the state of nothingness.

Everything that is needed to reach nothingness implies a few fundamentals.

The first fundamental is to be a rebel.

All the religions destroy the potential of rebellion in man. Obviously – because to teach rebellion means to teach these people to rebel against tradition, against convention, against society, against religion; and these are their vested interests. Rebellion has to be absolutely slaughtered. But the moment the spirit of rebellion dies in a man, man lives only a posthumous existence – because the spirit of rebellion is your real spirit.

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All the religions have taught just the opposite.

They teach you to believe.

I teach you to doubt.

They teach you to have faith.

I teach you to enquire.

They give you everything ready-made. And I am telling you that unless you attain it by your own effort it is absolutely useless. A God that is handed over to you is worth nothing.

A holy scripture that comes through tradition... to simply imbibe it like a parrot is suicidal. You are poisoning yourself because the more knowledgeable you become, the less is the possibility for you to seek, search and find.

Once you get this stupid idea that you know already, the question of enquiry does not arise. The question of enquiry arises only when you feel that you know nothing.

But no religion lets you know that you know nothing. They go on forcing knowledge, catechisms, doctrines, dogmas on you. They are stuffing your mind with all kinds of empty words. A word is always empty unless it contains your experience.

My word cannot be a real nourishment to you. It will be empty – it is only the container. The content?

– there is no way to convey the content. I can pass you the container, the word, but how can I pass you my experience which is always left behind? The word goes to you and I see an empty, dead word in your hand. And the thing that I wanted to express, to convey, to transfer, is left behind; it never leaves my being.

Hence, truth is inexpressible.

Only idiots go on talking about truth.

And those idiots believe that what they are saying is true. They are only saying yakketty-yakketty-yak, and nothing else.

They are chatterboxes, but they can believe that they are transferring something to you because they themselves don’t have anything other than the word. So they feel that they have transferred something.

But a man who knows can never feel that it is possible to transfer truth. Yes, he can inspire you to enquire, but he cannot transfer to you the truth itself.

So the first thing is the spirit of rebellion – which implies doubt, skepticism, enquiry. It needs tremendous courage because you will be going against all, all those who are in power.

The

politicians, the priests, the super-rich, the pedagogues in the universities – they are all in powerful positions.

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Your effort to enquire is a declaration against all of them, because they are saying, ”Truth has been found by Jesus Christ; you need not worry about it. You simply believe in Jesus Christ.” Now this is as stupid as somebody saying, ”The theory of relativity has been discovered by Albert Einstein. You need not worry about the theory of relativity – simply have faith in Albert Einstein and everything is okay.” Do you think by having faith in Albert Einstein you will understand anything about the theory of relativity? What does your faith in Einstein have to do with the theory of relativity? They are not related at all to each other.

The same is the case with Jesus, Krishna, Zarathustra, Buddha, Mohammed. It is not possible for you to know what Jesus knows, just by having faith in Jesus. In the first place, how do you know that he knows? In the second place, how can you destroy the skepticism which is born in you from your very birth?

Faith is being taught.

Doubt is your natural capacity.

Existence gives you the quality of doubt and the vested interests destroy that quality and cover it with beliefs. Beliefs are in their favor, not in your favor.

I am a little bit crazy because I am speaking against my own profession, but I can’t help it. I could have become a world teacher with millions of followers if I had not been crazy enough to start telling you the truth. The truth is, all the vested interests are against you: your individuality, your nature, your potentiality. They have their ideas, their expectations, and they want you to fulfill their ideals.

They want you to become just puppets in their hands. And the more you behave like a puppet, the more respectable you will be.

One of my professors, S.S. Roy, who is still alive, loved me so much that he used to tell me, ”i am always worried about you. I know whatsoever you do, you do with sincerity, but in this world sincerity does not pay. Authenticity is not respected. Rebellion is crushed. And the people who are in power are powerful enough to crush any individual, because the whole society – the courts, the law, the government, everything – is in their hands. You are powerless.” I told him, ”I know that they have a certain power but please don’t say that I am powerless. I also have a certain power, not of the same category but of a higher category. They can kill me but they cannot kill my truth. And my truth is more important to me than my life, because my life is going to end anyway. If it ends in the service of truth then it will have a certain eternity about it, because truth cannot be killed. You can crucify a Jesus, but how can you crucify this man’s truth? If he had any truth, that truth is going to live. You can poison Socrates....” I told Professor S.S. Roy, ”I love you just like my father, and I know how much you love me and how much you respect me, which is very unexpected – that a professor, well respected all over the country, should be respecting a student – but I cannot accept your advice. You are giving it with all good wishes – I am grateful for that. But let me be crucified, let me be poisoned, let every power be against me; yet I say to you that my experience makes me much more powerful than all those people. Their power is just temporary: the power that truth gives you is eternal.” From Personality to Individuality

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He said to me, ”I understand, still I cannot help being concerned about you. I have nightmares about you – that somebody will shoot you, somebody will crucify you, somebody will poison you.” And all these efforts have been made; he was perfectly right. Whenever an attempt on my life was made, I had always informed him, ”One of your nightmares has come true. But I have survived it, so don’t be worried. Your other nightmares also I will survive.” To have the spirit of rebellion, all that you need is guts; and you have them. You have simply forgotten about them. Every individual is born with tremendous courage. Nature is not partial in that it gives courage to Alexander the Great and does not give you courage; it is not so. As far as nature is concerned it is absolutely communist. Communists are not communists, but existence is absolutely communist. It has no categories: it does not make courageous people and cowardly people. No, it simply creates courageous people. Cowardliness is created by those who want to remain in power forever. They create the cowards, because only the cowards will not rebel.

And it is very easy: they have found, in thousands of years, aU the tactics. They have become immensely crafty. They have found every possible way to weaken you, to destroy the very idea of being a rebel. To make you a coward they have created a hell – which exists nowhere. But from the very childhood you are programmed that if you do certain things you will suffer in hell. And sometimes it is so illogical.

Bertrand Russell is right when he says, ”If all the crimes that I have committed, and all the crimes that I have dreamed about in my whole life are both to be punished, then the cruelest court cannot send me behind bars for more than four years. And Christianity says that you will suffer eternal hell.” Now, any idiot can understand that the punishment is too much.

It seems as if God enjoys punishing people, torturing people; otherwise, what crimes are you committing? Can you commit a crime which deserves eternal hell? Can you think of a crime that deserves eternal hell? However big the crime may be – you may be Adolf Hitler, you may be Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-tung – then too there should be a limit. Even if Adolf Hitler committed millions of crimes, so what! – eternal hell would not be fair.

And what about ordinary people? You may have lied sometimes; you may have done something that your religion prohibits. You may have dreamed something which your society will not approve of You may have escaped, in your dream, with somebody’s wife – only in your dream. But jainism says your dreams will be punished too because it makes no difference whether you escape with somebody’s wife or you dreamed it – in the East life itself is nothing but a dream. Both are dreams

– the difference is only of duration.

In the night when you escaped with somebody’s wife the duration was short, perhaps a few minutes, but the intensity was great. The duration was short but the intensity was great. Those few seconds you enjoyed, you really enjoyed. And because it was your dream the woman could not be bitchy to you – unless you love bitchy women; that’s another matter. It is your dream, it will reflect you. If you dream about bitchy women that simply means that’s what you want, and then naturally that’s what you deserve.

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on one side of a scale, and your other dream with open eyes on the other side of the scale, it is possible they may weigh exactly the same, because one’s length is long but the surface is thin; the other’s duration is short but the intensity is tremendous. In any case both are dreams, and you will have to suffer punishment for both.

From your very childhood every religion is creating fear in you. And the other side of the fear is greed. They are both created simultaneously, they are not two things. On one hand fear is created: if you do a certain thing you will be punished, and the punish ment is made as exaggerated as possible.

If you look at the ideas of all the religions about hell, you will be surprised. These scriptures were written by great saints, and I have always wondered whether these people were saints or some kind of sadists, because even to imagine all these tortures you need the mind of a sadist. And you must be somehow enjoying the imagination.

When de Sade, from whose name the sickness sadism comes – de Sade was finally sent to jail. He was a marquis, so it was very difficult to catch him. He had his own territory, a small kingdom of his own, and it was difficult to find witnesses against him. Every day he needed a new woman to torture

– and he would get hold of any woman, whoever caught his eye; his people would go and get hold of the woman.

He had a special chamber – it would be ironical to call it a love chamber, but it was his love chamber.

In his chamber there were hanging, all around the walls, strange instruments that he had created; he was a very inventive mind. And all those instruments were to torture you. He always used to keep a bag with him, like a doctor’s bag, in case he was somewhere else and an opportunity arose.

So he had a few special miniature instruments in his bag, portable – a portable hell. The real hell was in his palace.

Finally, when he was caught and forced to confess, no one could believe that this man could have thought of so many ways of torturing people. The first thing he would do – the woman had to be naked and he would beat her. She would scream and cry and run and he would follow her and lash her till blood started oozing out of her body; only then would he make love.

This man had written in his diary every detail about how his instruments had to be used, how a certain instrument would force needles under your nails.... And you could not escape; your hands would be caught in the mechanism, and the needles would go underneath your nails. The more you screamed and the more you cried, the more he would enjoy it. He would put the woman on a bed of ice, naked, and make her lie down on it: she would be tied to the bed of ice. Naturally she would try in every possible way to get out of it – and this was his joy.

When I read about his life and his imprisonment also... because he died in prison. He was put in prison because he was a dangerous man and it was not possible to change him. During his imprisonment he started writing novels. As novels they are third-rate, but as far as revealing the criminal mind is concerned there is no competition with his novels. Nobody has ever been able to compete, because what he now could not actually do, he was doing in the novels.

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be called sadists. They were not doing anything but they were writing. That’s what DE Sade did in the last part of his life: he enjoyed writing because doing was no longer possible.

These saints could not do these things because if they did then they would not be saints any more.

They were also imprisoned – in respectability. The whole society was worshipping them, and they could not lose that. So they found a way to write all those things which if there had been a possibility, an opportunity, they would have done themselves. In fact a sane mind, a healthy mind, will not even think of these things.

These are all sick people – and religions have all been dominated by sick people.

Here they create hell; and by the side, for themselves and other saints and those who will listen to their commandments, they have created heaven.

And in heaven there are all kinds of joys. Very strangely, the same things that they condemn here, that they condemn in your life – the same things are abundantly available in heaven.

There seems to be no logical relationship in it. If something is bad on earth, how is it that it suddenly becomes good in heaven? Mohammedans condemn alcohol and all alcoholic beverages: anybody who uses them will fall into hell. But in heaven – if you listen to them, follow them and believe in them – you will be provided, not with alcohol in bottles, but alcohol in rivers! In heaven don’t ask for water; in the Mohammedan heaven, whenever you ask for something to drink it means alcohol.

Water is not available: drink really means drink. There are rivers of alcohol – not only drink, have a bath, swim, drown in it!

It is made available for saints because on earth they were ascetics; they never touched alcohol. A great reward! For not touching alcohol they drown in alcohol – a great reward! Here they never looked at a woman, not even in dreams, because God is such a peeping Tom that He goes on looking into each skull of what you are dreaming, what you are thinking. What kind of God have these people created? Has He not got anything better to do? And so many millions of people....

And now scientists say at least fifty thousand planets must have life, that is the minimum. More is possible, but that much is almost certain: fifty thousand planets like this earth, having life. And do you think only man dreams? Just look at your dog sleeping; look at your cat sleeping, and you can be certain they are dreaming.

The dog will suddenly open his mouth and catch a fly – but there is no fly – and enjoy it and go back sleep. He has been dreaming, and he enjoyed it; but the poor dog will never come to know whether it was a dream or a reality because dogs are not yet in that state of alertness where they can make a distinction between dream and reality.

Small children cannot either. Very small children will get up in the morning crying, and if you ask why they will say that they were playing with somebody and that that somebody has suddenly disappeared. They were having a dream; now they are awake so the dream is no longer there, but to them there is no difference between dream and reality. It takes a little maturity to make the distinction.

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So God must be looking into the heads of the beetles and the buffaloes and the donkeys and the watchdogs of Oregon and just recording about everybody how much punishment and how much reward to give. This whole idea is just to make you afraid and greedy. But without God it is very difficult to manage hell and heaven; a manager is needed, it is such a vast universe.

To manage everybody’s actions and to give everybody the right amount of torture, the right amount of joy, each according to his acts – the law of karma – a great manager, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, a god, is an absolute necessity. Otherwise, who is going to preside over hell and heaven, and who is going to keep the peace? – these people who are in hell will take over heaven at any moment.

Do you think Adolf Hitler, and Stalin, and Mao Tse-tung, and Napoleon, and Alexander, Nadirshah, Tamerlane, and Genghis Khan – that these people will remain silent in hell for eternity? They would have taken over your heaven long ago, because who are your saints? Those poor fellows? – they would have been driven out and thrown into hen: ”Go! Get out of here!” And if Alexander the Great comes to heaven, do you think Saint Francis will be able to encounter him? Or when a man like Nadirshah comes in....

Whenever Nadirshah invaded a country – many times he invaded India – a big army used to march before him to declare that he was coming. A special method that Nadirshah used was to go on burning the villages on the way, the towns on the way. That was his declaration that ”Nadirshah is coming.” There was no need to say anything to anybody: he would just go on putting fire to every village that he went through and immediately everybody in the whole country knew that Nadirshah was coming. So many villages would be on fire, and people escaping and dying... and the army would go on starting fires. No other declaration was needed.

Once a dancing woman whose fame suddenly had reached to Nadirshah.... He was returning from India and on the way somebody said, ”Just very close bg a few miles away, there is a very beautiful woman, a great dancer.”

So he said, ”No problem – just bring her. Tonight will be a celebration.” The woman was caught. She danced till the middle of the night and was rewarded well, because there was no problem: Nadirshah was looting from all over the country. She could not believe what he gave her – so many precious ornaments as she had never seen in her life – but she said, ”Please give me one man also, because with so many precious ornaments.... I don’t know even how much they are worth; I have never seen such things – and I am not a poor woman. Even kings come to see me, but you are a king of kings. Nobody has given me so much reward just for one dance. So send with me at least one soldier, so I feel protected and can reach home.” He said, ”That is not the way of Nadirshah. Let my army go and burn all the villages on the way so people know that a dancer from Nadirshah’s camp is coming back home. And don’t be worried about the darkness, because all the villages will be on fire; you will travel as if you are traveling in daylight.”

And that’s what he arranged: for seven miles along the road all the villages and forests were put on fire. The woman could not believe her eyes – that that man created the light of the day in the middle of the night.

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Do you think you can manage this type of people? And they are not alone there; they are all together.

Now, poor fellows like Saint Francis and Jesus and Buddha and Mahavira will simply escape seeing these people. They themselves will ask them, ”Please send us to hell. We don’t want to live here any more. You are welcome.”

Because of heaven and hell a grand manager is needed, a boss who is so powerful that all these people are nothing before his power.

Small children are being fed a program. This is feeding them a program; this is changing an alive mind into a dead computer. The hell which keeps you afraid is there within you, and the heaven which keeps you greedy is there also. And God is there watching continuously what you are doing, what you are thinking, what you are dreaming. Is this life or some kind of nightmare? And how can you be rebellious in such a situation? It is too risky.

One of Krishnamurti’s friends and followers in India is Dada Dharmadhikari. He is also a great follower and friend of Mahatma Gandhi. And strangely – he is very old – he is also a friend of mine, but with me the friendship is difficult. His son is the attorney general of the state of Madhya Pradesh and lived in Jabalpur where I was a professor; they lived just half a mile away from me.

Dada Dharmadhikari goes, whenever he wants to rest or whenever he is sick, to stay with the son; otherwise he is always on the move. He is one of the great orators of India. He does not believe in hell and heaven and God; he is a follower of Krishnamurti, and not just new – not like a Californian follower who changes like fashion changes. The longest time is three years, that is the average for the Californiac – three years for marriage, then a divorce is needed; three years for a job, then quit it; three years in the university, then drop out; three years in one place, then one is fed up: then move. Three years for the Hare Krishna movement, then three years for the Moonies – three years for everything.

Dada Dharmadhikari is not that type. For fifty years, since the very beginning when Krishnamurti started, he has been with him, so he is completely programmed by Krishnamurti. That, Krishnamurti-ites cannot understand. They can understand that Christians are programmed; they can understand that Hindus are programmed; they can understand everybody else is programmed but Krishnamurti-ites are not programmed. That’s where they have not understood Krishnamurti and his message.

They are also programmed. The Hindu is repeating what he has been told; they are repeating what Krishnamurti has told them. Neither the Hindu has experienced nor have they experienced.

I was telling Dada Dharmadhikari again and again, ”Dada” – dada means big brother, it is very respectful, and he was old enough to be my grandfather. I would ten him, ”Dada, you should understand one thing, that whatsoever you are saying is again a program.

You have been

programmed by Krishnamurti for fifty years. No Hindu is programmed as much because a child listens for a few years to the parents and then he is on his own. Those few years are enough to spoil him. What to say about you? Fifty years! You are spoiled for many lives, from your very roots.

He would say, ”But this is not programming, this is understanding. I know that there is no God, no hell, no heaven – nothing. This is all nonsense and rubbish.” I said, ”Okay; sometime perhaps, God willing, I may be able to expose you.” From Personality to Individuality

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One day his son came running to me and said, ”Dada is asking for you. He is very sick” – he had had a mild heart attack – so I went. I entered the room and he was saying ”Rama, Rama, Rama...” with dosed eyes – because if they are dying, if they have a heart attack in their old age, Hindus remember the name of God. Hindus believe that if you die with the name Rama on your lips, then all your sins are forgiven. These people are very clever: they give you so much fear, and they also give you tricks to avoid it, because all is in their hands. So if at the last moment, even for one time, you say ”Rama” and die, that’s enough.

They have a story: a man was dying who was a murderer, a thief; you name anything, any crime, and he was an expert in it. He was dying. He had a son whose name was Narayana: Narayana is another name of God. Hindus have one thousand names of God, so it is very difficult to find a name which is not a name of God.

I insisted to my parents, ”i won’t have any name which is the name of God, so you have to find something else.” For many years they could not name me. They simply called me ”Rajah”: Rajah means king, it has nothing to do with God.

But that was just for the time being; meanwhile

they searched and found a name. It must be the first time in the whole history of man that my name, Rajneesh, is used because you will not find it anywhere else. Yes, now there are three or four children in India whose name is Rajneesh, after me, because their parents are sannyasins; otherwise, I am the first man to have this name.

It is a created name. You will not find any precedent. I have looked, tried hard, but I have not found any because it was created, it was artificial. Rajni means night, and Rajneesh means the lord of the night, the moon. It was my poet – uncle’s creation. I liked it. I said, ”This will do. At least there is no mention of God in it. It is absolutely purified of religion: no religion in it.

So that man who was a criminal and murderer was dying. He had done every kind of thing and he was never caught. For sure, he was on the way to hell. But at the last moment he called ”Narayana!” to his son and died. His son was outside, he came in; by the time his son had reached him, the man had died. Now the Hindus have the story that the man, because he used God’s name, reached heaven and was accepted as a respected saint.

How these people have been befooling you is that they give you fear, but they also give you a provocation: all lusts are fulfilled in heaven. And they also give you very simple methods – just the name of God on your lips at the last moment, just once. Sometimes it happens that the man dies unexpectedly. Death never comes with a date, informing you that ”At six o’clock in the evening be ready, I am coming.” It simply comes, and once it is there you are gone.

Hindus have found a method for that situation too, because millions of people die without the name of God on their lips. So when they are dead, the brahmin comes, and in the dead man’s ear he repeats the name of God. Into the dead man’s mouth they pour water from the Ganges, because the water of the Ganges is as pure as God’s name – but in a dead man’s body who is no longer there! But these tricks....

Dada Dharmadhikari – a man who is a confirmed atheist, anti-religious, anti-all: hell, heaven, God –

repeating the name of Rama! I told his son, aBe quiet. Let me go close to him.” The room was kept in darkness so he was not disturbed, so I moved slowly and went close to him. He was repeating, not knowing that I was there, ”Rama, Rama, Rama....” From Personality to Individuality

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I said, ”I am here, listening.”

He said, ”Who are you?”

I said, ”The man who wanted to expose you. This is the opportunity! What are you doing? Just a little heart attack and Krishnamurti is finished! Fifty years just washed away, wiped out.” He said, ”This is no time for argument. I am dying – please, not at this time.” But I said, ”When you are dying is the time that I have to keep you straight on the path, because if you die repeating’Rama, Rama,’ you will die an idiot’s death. I cannot leave you.” He said, ”wether you leave me or not...” and he closed his eyes and started, ”Rama, Rama, Rama.” I said, ”What are you doing? The heart attack is over, you are alive. And it was a very mild heart attack – you will be ashamed of yourself later on.” And the next morning, when he was a little better, I went to see him. I said, ”What about,’Rama, Rama’?” He said, ”I am really ashamed. But what happened was that when I heard the doctor whispering to my son and I heard the words’heart attack’ come in, I said,’Now it is not the time to think whether God exists or not, or whether there is a hell or a heaven. For my whole life I have been denying Him.

How am I going to face Him, if, by chance, He really is? So there is no harm in it; in the darkness nobody is there, I can repeat His name. If He is not there I am not losing anything; if He is there I will say, Forgive me. At the last moment I remembered you’!” I said, ”what about your fifty years? What about all your arguments? And I have been telling you again and again that you are like a parrot. It is difficult to change old parrots, but if you recognize that you are also programmed – that will be good. It does not matter who programs you.” My work with my sannyasins is of deprograming.

There are, in America, psychologists who call themselves deprogrammers. They are not – they are reprogrammers. If some parents find their children moving into some religion other than their own, even parents are known to kidnap their children. Something unknown in the whole history of man is happening today – parents are kidnaping their own children from the Moonies, from the Hare Krishna people, and taking them to psychologists who are pretending to be deprogrammers. And what they actually do is not deprograming, it is reprograming.

They erase the effect and the program of the Moonies; up to that point it’s true they are deprograming. But then they reprogram the person to Christianity if he belongs to Christian parents, or to Judaism if he belongs to Jewish parents. This is reprograming These psychologists are in the service of vested interests. They are criminals.

The child was trying to escape somehow from one prison; of course he was getting into another, but at least this one was new, something to explore. At least it was not as rotten as the old. The old was just a dilapidated building ready to fall any time. At least he was moving into a new house. This was going to be a prison also but more modern, with all the latest developments: television, radio, electricity, telephone.

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He was not losing anything: he was neither losing the prison nor was he losing anything else. He was really gaining some new improvements in the prison system. You reprogram him, you force him back into the old house which is going to fall any moment, and you call yourself deprogrammers.

Then you charge the parents. You are criminals charging for your crime.

My work is exactly deprograming. I simply deprogram you. Whether you are Hindu or Mohammedan or Christian or Jesus freaks or Witnesses of Jehovah or Hare Krishna people or Moonies – whatever your kind and whatever your trademark, it doesn’t matter – I simply deprogram you. And I am not giving you any program in its place. I am leaving you alone, to yourself I don’t give you any doctrine that replaces hell, that replaces heaven, that replaces God – no.

I take away everything that you are programmed with and leave you to yourself to seek and search.

Who am I to reprogram you?

So the first thing is: regain the rebellious spirit you were born with – which is not a program, which is your very being.

The second thing: become an individual.

The society tries to make you a person, never an individual. A person is one who has a personality, and a personality is a mask. Society teaches you how to sit, how to stand, how to behave, how to act in certain situations. In every possible way the society is preparing you so that you can fit with the status quo.

My father, whenever he was angry with me, used to tell me. ”you will always remain a misfit.” I said, ”To me that is a word of tremendous respect. Yes, I want to remain always a misfit. In every society, in every place, in every nation, in every country, I want to remain a misfit, because the moment I fit then I am only a cog in a wheel. Then I am no more.

Personality is the mask that has been given to you to keep your original face hidden. It is the whole garb that by and by you become identified with. If something remains fixed on your face for years you will become identified with it, because in the mirror you will see your face, and you will see the mask. In people’s eyes you will see the mask. People will be telling you how beautiful you look, how beautiful your eyes are, and you will get identified. There is no way to find out that this is just a mask, that behind it you are somebody else. This is not what you were meant to be.

Personality is that which society manages to make you.

And individuality is that which society is afraid of: Personality is created by the society according to its own requirements, but individuality is wild, natural. It is not to fit into some mechanism; it cannot be made a cog in the wheel.

I want you to be individuals, not persons.

Drop your personality.

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Drop all the ideas that people have given to you.

Yes, sometimes those ideas are very gratifying. Somebody says, ”How beautiful you are!” Do you have the courage to ask, ”Please give some proof” That’s what happened to one of my principals. He wanted me somehow to fit into his college. I was a misfit and an everyday problem. Almost every day I was brought to him, and he would say, ”This is strange. I have never seen a single student who has been brought every day, regularly. Are you never absent?”

I said, ”I cannot afford to be absent – I enjoy it so much.” He had tried everything on me. He thought perhaps buttressing me would be helpful. Punishing me did not help, expelling me did not help. I had been expelled from other colleges; it didn’t help. So he said, ”you are such a beautiful person, so intelligent....” I said, ”Wait. You will have to give me proof. On what grounds do you think I am beautiful? Give me proofs. On what grounds do you think I am intelligent? Do you think by saying these things you will be able to destroy my individuality?” Because people want to be known as beautiful and intelligent, when somebody says this they accept it; nobody is going to deny it.

I said, ”you cannot play that game with me. As far as I am concerned you are just ugly; and if you want proofs I can bring proofs. As far as I am concerned you are stupid. If you were intelligent you would have seen that’with this person this strategy is not going to work.’ You are not intelligent. How could you believe that you can purchase me so cheaply?” He was shocked but he said, ”You are right. Perhaps I am not intelligent enough, because I never thought that you could say to somebody’You are intelligent,’ and he would refuse to accept it and ask for proofs.”

Say even to an idiot, ”you are great, so intelligent, just full of wisdom,” and even the idiot will not deny it. Such chances don’t happen every day; rarely does somebody say to you that you are full of wisdom. Rarely does somebody bother to tell you that you are beautiful. And a principal saying it to the student.... It was almost a character certificate.

I told him, ”i will not take your character certificate for me, because as far as I am concerned you don’t have any character. So from a person who has no character what value is a character certificate?

And you know perfectly well that you don’t have any character.” He knew that what I am saying I meant, because every night I saw his car standing before a prostitute’s house. I said, ”just think of your car every night where it stands and why it stands there. You are unintelligent: at least you could park it somewhere else. This much intelligence is certainly needed in a principal; you can park somewhere else. Why do you park it just in front of a prostitute’s house? You may not be going to the prostitute but your car would be proof enough.

”I have pictures of your car standing in front of the prostitute’s house and you entering the house,” I said. ”I am just learning photography.” So I said,” this is something really beautiful; some day it may From Personality to Individuality

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be of some use. Perhaps one day you want to expel me; I can simply post the picture on all the boards in the college, and see who is expelled.’

He said, ”You have a picture? Give me back that picture! I am not going to expel you and I am not going to say anything to you again. Let them complain.

”I said, ”You see what you were trying to do, buttressing my ego? That’s how personality is created.” Others buttress your ego, say things – that you are so nice – so that you start behaving nicely because you have to keep up the standard people are expecting of you. They say you are beautiful and you start looking longer in the mirror and arranging your hair and make-up and everything. You have to keep up the standard: people think you are beautiful. And you never think for a single moment that you are being manipulated. Those people are simply pulling your strings, and you are becoming a puppet.

Anybody can easily be manipulated, you just have to know what kind of personality has been given to him. Just a little acquaintance, and then you know the strings from where he can be pulled so that he will dance to your tune. And the whole of society is doing that. People are dancing to the tune of the politicians.

Personality is your enemy.

It is in the hands of those who are exploiting you, who are destroying you.

You have to throw off the personality. You have to throw away all the ideas that have been implanted by others in you: that you are this, you are that – no. You have to discover who you are on your own. It is a little arduous, but tremendously fulfilling. Certainly it is a difficult operation because your personality has become almost your skin, so tight does it cling to you. You are identified with it so much that you never think that you are not it.

The first thing is to remember that you are not your personality. Who you are you are not aware of, because before you could have become aware of it – of your reality, of your original face – the society had already forced a pattern, a model on you. It had already started cutting and chopping away anything that was not suitable to it. It started adding arbitrary, artificial things to you, to make you suitable to the society.

Every society creates its own kind of personality, because every society has a different structure.

In South Africa there is a tribe, still alive, in which when the chief passes by.... You cannot imagine that this could be an expectation in a society but it is the expectation in that society. And there is just the opposite too. For example in India, if a very orthodox woman came to see me she would touch my feet and would then move backwards. She would not show her back to me. No, that is disrespectful; in India that is not expected of a lady. She will move back, the same way she does in the temple. She goes in facing the statue, touches the feet, offers whatsoever she has brought, and then she moves back. She cannot show God her back.

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in somebody’s bottoms.... No, I am using a wrong word, bottoms – just bottom is enough. With numbers I am in trouble! Just thinking of two cheeks I start thinking of bottoms. And the chief inspects them because if he does not inspect them that is disrespectful to those women. Now, in that society that is the personality. Every society can be laughed at by another society, but in your own society you fit, so you don’t see any absurdity.

In the late Middle Ages, even after the late Middle Ages, this system continued: in Europe women were using a certain – what do you call it? – a certain frock, and underneath was a wire frame so you could not figure out the figure of the woman. She looked just like a doll, all round, like an opened-up umbrella. It was an umbrella – type thing, touching the floor. You could not see the feet of the woman.

Bertrand Russell remembers that in his childhood – and he belonged to a lord’s family. He himself was LORD Bertrand Russell, but he dropped using that ugly word. He says, ”It was impossible to see the feet of a woman. And it was enough – if sometimes by chance, a man saw the feet of the woman, that was enough to make him sexually aroused.” You cannot believe it, at least not in Rajneeshpuram. A woman can walk by your side naked, and you won’t look at her again, or you won’t stop even to give her a little respect. That’s the meaning of the word respect: specting again. Respect does not mean anything else, it simply means specting again. Here, you may not even be aware whether the person who passed was a man or woman –

nobody cares.

Russell says, ”In my childhood, to see the naked feet of women was enough.” In England it was thought, up to the beginning of this age, that the queen did not have two separate feet, they were joined! A queen has to be something special. It was natural to think that, because nobody had ever seen the queen’s feet. It was a common belief all over England that the queen was not an ordinary woman: her legs were joined together. It is only now, with the skirt becoming shorter and shorter, that once in a while the wind plays a joke with royalty, and the bottom is not only seen but photographed by journalists! Then you know, My God – it is just the same.

In every society, once a certain idea is imposed, it continues for centuries.

You have to understand all that has been imposed on you in order to drop it.

Just understanding is enough to drop it.

You start feeling a separation slowly growing between you and your personality. You start watching how your personality changes its face. Meeting a poor man, watch your response; meeting a rich man, watch your response – and you will see there is a difference. From where does the difference come? Both are persons of equal value; poverty or richness don’t make the man. But you have been taught that there is a difference, and your personality, without your knowing, immediately changes.

When you are standing before your boss, just be aware of your tail, which will be wagging. Just try to search for your tail and you will see it is wagging When you are facing your boss, you are always smiling Why? That is your tail wagging.

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You have seen dogs. Sometimes when they are suspicious, they do both things: they bark and they wag their tail. They are in a dilemma, they cannot decide what is the right thing to do: whether this man has to be thrown out of the compound, or has to be allowed in. In such a difficulty, a logical difficulty, they do both; so whatsoever happens, it doesn’t matter – one thing can be dropped. If the master comes out and says hello to the man, the dog immediately stops barking and continues wagging his tail. Even the dog has got a personality. He knows what has to be done, what is expected of him.

Watch yourself in different situations. Somebody insults you; what happens to you, what is your response? You have to pay more attention to your response than to his insult – that is his problem.

Your response is your problem. Do you get enraged? Or are you capable of listening silently to whatsoever he is saying without any reaction – because that would be the right thing.

First listen to what he is saying. Perhaps he is right. If he calls you a thief, why get angry? If you are not a thief, you have to correct his misunderstanding. And if you are a thief, either correct yourself or simply feel grateful to him that he has pointed out something in you. But I don’t see the point of anger. Either you are a thief or you are not a thief Just watch your response. If you are a thief then he is simply calling a spade a spade. He is not your enemy. You simply thank him, and say, ”You are right, and I am really grateful that you pointed it out and made me aware of it. Yes, I am a thief” Just watch what reaction happens in that man – because he will be puzzled. He will be in the same position as the dog. He will be puzzled because he was expecting anger from you and you have shown great understanding. He will be simply shocked. He will not be able to believe that by his calling you a thief you are not feeling insulted. And if you are not a thief you can simply say, ”You will have to do a little more homework on it, a little more research. I am not a thief It is up to you – you can go on believing it – but you are living in a misunderstanding.” But I don’t see the point of anger. Just watch all your actions and reactions and see that your problem is your actions, your reactions, your responses. You have nothing to do with the other person’s actions; that is his problem. Return his problem to him – and this is the way to return it.

Then you are completely clean, you come out of it clean.

This way, slowly your personality slips away, and your original face starts showing up – which has a tremendous beauty and grace. It has a beauty not of the body, but a beauty which is something deeper than the body, and a grace which is not attained by years of prayer in churches, in temples.

Suddenly you feel a new color, a new fragrance around you. The moment your original face is discovered you are on the way towards freedom, authenticity, totality, fearlessness.

This is what I mean by the everything that is needed to reach nothingness.

Everything is the circumference and nothing is the center. Everything, the cyclone; and nothingness, the center.

But unless all those things happen – a rebellious spirit, individuality, your original face, freedom, fearlessness, authenticity, totality – you cannot enter inwards.

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as a means. Society cannot use a person who is standing at his center. He is beyond society’s grasp. And the person who is standing at his center – which is nothingness, pure nothingness, just space, pure space.

When you look from that purity your eyes are capable of finding the truth everywhere. Your eyes are capable of finding beauty everywhere. Your eyes are capable of seeing that you were blind before.

And it is not only your eyes, all your senses become tremendously capable. Now you hear, but you don’t listen. Then, hearing and listening are together. Of course you can hear right now because you have ears; but listening needs something more. Behind your ears must be a silent awareness.

Right now there is a crowd of thoughts behind your ears; there is no silence, so you only hear.

I say one thing, you hear something else because that crowd is continuously meddling with everything that you hear. It is changing, editing, adding: it is doing all kinds of things when you are hearing but not listening.

Listening is possible only when your ears are attended by a silent space – when you are just a watcher. Then you can hear the greatest music in the smallest things. Just in the wind passing through the pine trees you can hear the music that no musician can create. You can see beauty in such simple things – a bird on the wing – that you had never bothered about.

You start smelling in a totally new way. It is not only the eyes that are capable of seeing a person.

You will be surprised to know that when your inner space is available to all your senses, you also start smelling a person. If a person is unreal, you smell it immediately; if a person is lying, you smell it immediately. You will be surprised to know that the body smell of each individual is different.

Biologically the body smell has something to do with sexuality. You must have seen animals smelling each other’s sexual organs. Do you think they are mad? Except man, nobody goes mad. It will look strange that through smell the dog is trying to find a girlfriend. He is not looking at her face, not looking at her nose, not looking at her eyes and their color, not looking at her blond hair to see if she is pure Aryan, Nordic, German – he is smelling her. He knows better than you. Unless the smell appeals to him, this girl is not for him, because the smell gives the hint of the biological potentiality of the girl. Her hormonal system is indicated by the smell.

And do you see what man is doing? He is trying in every possible way to hide his true bodily smell with deodorants, with soaps, with perfumes. What are you doing? You may not be aware, you are just doing it because everybody else is doing it. You are trying to hide your sexual smell because you don’t live in a free society like the dog does.

You live in a society which is absolutely a society of slaves. Your husband’s biological smell may not fit you at all; your smell may not fit your husband at all. Now both of you have to hide the smell. And if your smell suddenly, on the road, appeals to somebody, and somebody approaches you and tells you, ”I have fallen in love with your smell” – you will be shocked. ”That man is mad:’Fallen in love with my smell’?”

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smells fit. You may not be husband and wife; you may not be even acquainted with each other.

The bodily smell has nothing to do with acquaintance, introduction, religion, caste, husband, wife, marriage. It knows nothing.

Man has been trying to prevent it because it is dangerous. But even if you don’t prevent it, it is not very dangerous because your nose is clogged. There is no inner space behind it which can detect, not only your sexuality, your sexual appeal, but your authenticity, your truthfulness, your honesty.

When all the senses are around the nothingness I am talking about, you feel existence for the first time, from all the doors, all the windows that open up into existence. But you are absent right now, so who is going to look through the window? The window may be open but you are not there.

You are asking me what I am trying to do with you, with my sannyasins – nothing less than a resurrection, a rebirth, so that I can put you on that spot from where society has distracted you.

Once again you can start from that point and go in the direction which is natural to you. And don’t be afraid. Nature provides you with every guarantee that if you move naturally you will attain the goal, your destiny. It is not faraway, it is just by your side: you have only to stretch out your hand. But your hand has to be authentic. It has to be your hand: not your father’s hand, not your mother’s hand.

It happened that a man was caught murdering another man. He was caught red-handed and brought before the court. There was no problem because he accepted that he had committed the murder.

The judge asked him, ”Would you like an advocate to plead for you?” He said, ”No, because there is no question: I have committed murder and these people who have caught me and brought me here are my witnesses. There is no case at all – I have committed murder. Give me the punishment.”

In his whole life the judge had never seen such an authentic man. He said, ”I feel sorry for you, I feel bad and guilty that I will be punishing you, but you have to understand that I have to follow the law.

The most I can do is give you the minimum punishment.” The man said, ”Do whatever you feel right – minimum, maximum, it doesn’t matter – because when I killed the man I killed with full awareness of the consequences. And these people are just foolish; they were unnecessarily troubling themselves – I was coming to the court myself to declare that I had committed murder. Now what is the punishment?” The judge said, ”I will give you only ten years in jail, although the maximum punishment is death.

This is the minimum; less than that I cannot support.” The man said, ”It is perfectly right – don’t be unhappy about it. But one thing I want to say: the murder was done by my hands, not by me. You can imprison my hands but you cannot imprison me.

You have no charge against me. My hands, you can see, are still covered with blood.” The magistrate thought, This man is really something! But he said, ”Okay, I will sentence both your hands for ten years, but how can you remain outside the jail when your hands are inside the jail?” The man said, ”That is not your problem, that’s my problem.” From Personality to Individuality

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The judge gave the sentence that his hands should be kept in jail for ten years. The man took out both of his hands, which were artificial, put them on the table before the judge and went out of the court

The truth is very close by, but your hands have to be true – not artificial hands, not the hands of your personality, but of your individuality.

My effort is not for anything less than that: Total transformation from the false to the original.

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CHAPTER 16

Superman: the fantasy for the inferior

14 January 1985 pm in Lao Tzu Grove

Question 1

OSHO,

ISN’T THE VISION OF THE NEW MAN SOMEHOW SIMILAR TO THE IDEA OF THE SUPERMAN?

THE idea of the new man is not only not similar to the idea of the superman, it is just the very opposite.

The superman is a continuity with the old man.

The new man is a discontinuity with the old man.

The superman is superior, higher, but still belongs to the same world of the old man. He is better, strong er, more beautiful, more powerful, more intelligent; but the difference is only of degrees, of more or less.

The new man is absolutely unrelated to the old man. The superior man, the superman, is a refinement of the old. The new man is the death of the old man. The new man comes into being when the old man dies; hence, they cannot be similar at all. They may sound similar to those who think only intellectually.

I am not an intellectual, neither am I a thinker.

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I see things.

I am a seer.

And in my eyes the superman and the new man are just the very contrary to each other.

The old society, culture, religion, philosophy – they are not against the superman; in fact the superman is their projection. It is their desire, their hope. They have been working for thousands of years to produce the superman. And in the name of the superman they have tortured the poor common man so much: it is almost impossible to believe how much humanity has been sacrificed in order to bring the superman onto the earth.

What was Adolf Hitler doing? He was fascinated with the idea of superman. He got it from Friedrich Nietzsche. Now, it is a strange thing to understand that the people who have been interested in the superman were very inferior kinds of people. Strange, but not irrelevant. It is in fact your inferiority complex – somehow, deep down, you feel yourself inferior. To forget that inferiority, you start imagining, projecting, just the opposite of it: the superman.

Nietzsche was in love with a woman, Wagner’s wife. Wagner is one of the great musicians, a great master as far as music is concerned; and he was tremendously charismatic. He was not only a maestro of music but his playing had some touch of magic too. That’s what makes a difference. The same music may be played by many people – it may be the same instrument, the same music, the same notes, but somebody simply gives wings to it and it goes on soaring higher and higher. It takes you beyond yourself into unknown spaces.

With somebody else it is just ordinary music. It takes you nowhere; at the most, it is a kind of entertainment. You have nothing to do so you listen to the music. At least it keeps you occupied in the same way that smoking keeps somebody occupied or gossiping keeps somebody else occupied.

But when a man like Wagner plays music he gives a new dimension to your being, he opens up new doors. You start moving into dimensions you have not even dreamed of Nietzsche was learning music from the master, anc fell in love with the master’s wife, not thinking at all that he had a very poor personality, in no way to be compared with Vajna... or Vagner. I don’t know how the Germans say it, so I am using both: one is bound to be right.

Of course Wagner’s wife was not interested; she had not even thought about Nietzsche. He was ugly looking, not even physically attractive like Wagner – what to say about the spiritual quality of Wagner and his artistic mastery of music? In the whole history of man there are not many names which can be compared to Wagner’s, not more than you can count on your fingers. He emerges as one of the greatest musicians.

The woman had fallen in love not only with the man but with the music which surrounded that man and the magic that was somewhere absolutely present almost tangible. There was no question of comparing Nietzsche. When Nietzsche approached her, she simply laughed and she said, ”You must be a fool! Even if God were standing before me my choice would be Wagner, because I cannot believe even God can be so charismatic.

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”When Wagner plays I cannot even believe that I am his wife and so fortunate to be so close to him.

He is so far away and yet so compassionate that he allows me the intimacy. I know that I am not worthy; it is his compassion. Far more beautiful women are mad about him. Anybody who has any sensitivity to music and to the charismatic personality of a person is bound to fall in love with him.

”How could you think,” she told Nietzsche, ”that I could even think about you? Simply forget all about it. You are nowhere in my eyes. And this is disgraceful: you are a student of my husband and he trusts you, that’s why you are allowed in the house. You are just like a son to him, and I am just like a mother to you – age does not matter.”

This was such a shock and such an exposure of Nietzsche’s own inferiority that never again in his life did he approach another woman; he lost his nerve. But after that day he started thinking of a new race of man: the superman. He wrote against Wagner, he became an enemy. Wagner could not understand why, because he had no idea of what had transpired between his wife and his disciple; why Nietzsche had left and gone into the mountains.

Nietzsche took the wound really seriously. It created two things in him: an immense hatred for women... and not only for women but all the qualities that are womanly. For example, he started hating compassion, love, sympathy, kindness – these are all womanly qualities. He started hating Jesus, he started hating Gautam the Buddha for the simple reason that these people were teaching womanly qualities. Nonviolence is womanly, violence is manly; to be a real man you have to be violent. His mind became completely perverted from the shock.

Jesus is talking about humbleness and meekness; these are womanly qualities.

Jesus has

destroyed man’s manliness. This is womanly, that when somebody hits your face you have to give him your other cheek. What else can be more womanly? But can you see how things are associated? One woman, her rejection, caused his rejection of all womankind; and not only of womankind but also of qualities which have something in them which can be called womanly.

He condemned Gautam Buddha, saying ”It is because of Buddha’that India became cowardly – he taught India to be womanly.” He said, ”all these saints are not even worth comparing with soldiers.

Even a third-rate soldier is better than a first-rate saint.” Now, the soldier! – and he himself was not a soldier; he himself was not even tall enough to be accepted in the army. He had tried and was rejected because he was not tall enough.

There is a possibility that somewhere in his parentage some crossbreeding must have happened: he was not Nordic German – neither was Adolf Hitler Nordic German. Nordic Germans, if they are pure blood, are tall, blond, strong people. But neither Nietzsche was strong and tall nor was Adolf Hitler.

Nietzsche says, ”The only beautiful thing that I remember in my life is when one morning as the sun was rising I saw a long brigade of soldiers marching on the street. Their naked swords were shining in the morning sun, almost like lightning. Their boots falling in tune were so musical that I have never heard any music comparable to it. Their dress, their uniforms – and the harmony and the early morning sun...!”

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morning sun and the beauty of the swords shining and the music of their boots... right, left, right, left... in harmony – the music! He says, ”I never came across such a beautiful experience again.” Now he himself was not an athlete, he was not a soldier. I don’t think he would have been able to hold a sword rightly, or know how to keep hold of it. He was a man who knew how to hold a fountain pen, not a sword. For his whole life he was simply writing; fighting he had never done. But he started projecting the idea of the superman.

Nietzsche started condemning the old man without ever thinking that he belonged to the old. It happens... one can set oneself apart, and put the old man on this side and the superman on that side; and then you think you are not part of the old man. But because you are creating the idea of the superman, you start believing yourself that superman is your projection, your idea: you are giving birth to superman – then of course you belong to the superman. That’s how one tries to forget one’s inferiority.

Nietzsche never attempted to approach another woman for the simple reason that that may again have provoked the feeling of inferiority; once was enough. He was a very egoistic type of man; it is a rare phenomenon. If some woman says, ”I am not in love with you,” that does not mean that there will not be a woman who will not be able to accept you. And he had qualities of his own; there was no need to be another Wagner. He was not a musician, but he had his own qualities: he was a great philosopher. But he forgot all about his qualities and he started comparing himself only with Wagner. And the insult went so deep....

He influenced many people – all of them, in a certain way, strange. He influenced George Bernard Shaw – similarly a very egoistic man, a showman. If you read George Bernard Shaw’s books you will be surprised that the book is small but the preface is big. That has happened for the first time in the whole history of the world of literature: the preface is big and the book is small! Why? The book should be enough to explain itself. That’s what art, creativity, means.

The best painters have not titled their paintings, what to say of a preface? They have not even titled them, for the simple reason that if the painting is not explanatory itself, how can a title help? It should be left to the person who is seeing the painting to understand it according to his capacity, understanding, intelligence.

To put a title on the painting means you are worried that your painting is not going to be understood so you have to give a hint. But to give a title to a painting is to make it small and closed; it is a way of framing it. By the title, you have framed it. Now you are telling the person this painting only means this, nothing else. You have taken the multidimensionality of the painting and given it a very small frame. You have destroyed it.

And Bernard Shaw’s books are not difficult; you don’t need to be a genius to understand them. He was writing only dramas – those too, not of a very high quality. Anybody with a little bit of intelligence, even if below mediocrity, would be able to understand them. But perhaps he suffers from some inferiority himself Perhaps he thinks that nobody is going to understand the drama; perhaps he himself does not understand it rightly.

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is in a confusion – hence, the long preface. And the preface destroys the whole drama because he tries to explain everything in the preface. When you have understood everything about the drama, what is left in it?

It is as if somebody tells you the whole story of a movie and then gives you a ticket, saying ”Go, I have brought a ticket for you.” He has destroyed everything by telling you the whole story; now the ticket is absolutely useless. You will be simply bored because there is not going to be any excitement. You know already what is going to happen, you know already the end from the very beginning.

Bernard Shaw does exactly that, and does it so greatly: one-hundred-page, two-hundred-page prefaces for a twenty-page drama. I don’t think that any psychoanalyst has tried – I have never come across anything – but Bernard Shaw needs to be psychoanalyzed. Why is he writing this preface to an ordinary drama? He simply projects himself It seems that if the drama were written by somebody else he would not understand it, he would need a big introduction. That’s what he was doing.

George Bernard Shaw was impressed by Nietzsche’s idea of superman; he wrote a drama on superman too. Strangely enough, he was also rejected by a woman. The name of the woman was Annie Besant. She was the godmother – is it okay to use ”godmother” as well as ”godfather”?

– of j. Krishnamurti. She was the president of the Theosophical Movement for the whole world. She was a very beautiful woman with great charisma of her own, very intelligent, and one of the greatest orators ever. If she had remained in England she would have become prime minister anytime, because none of the prime ministers of her time had the same charisma, or the art of speaking that she had.

Bernard Shaw heard her for the first time in a Theosophical conference, and he immediately fell in love. When he approached Annie Besant she said, ”Please excuse me, I have far bigger things to do.” And certainly she had far bigger things to do than be the wife of George Bernard Shaw. But George Bernard Shaw thought that he was the greatest man on the earth: ”And she has far greater things to do...?” But the wound remained with him.

Annie Besant went on becoming more and more popular. It is simply unbelievable that she became the president of the Indian National Congress. When India was under the British Raj, a British woman was accepted by Indian revolutionaries – who were fighting the British Raj – as their president! You can understand her charisma.

Even the white skin was hated because that represented the rulers, the oppressors. And to accept a woman who comes from the same country with which you are fighting.... And the people who were struggling – the Indian National Congress was the party fighting with Britain to get independence

– accepted her as president. She must have had a magic personality. So if she refused Bernard Shaw, I don’t think that she did any*ling wrong; she certainly had much bigger things to do.

She created the whole Theosophical Movement, for the first time, into a worldwide movement. She created the idea that a world teacher is going to be born and made the idea worth being believed by millions of people. It is not so easy. Even Jesus was not able to convince his own people that he was the messiah. But this woman was saying, ”I am going to introduce to you, at the right moment, the messiah who is going to save the whole world,” and millions of people believed in her word. And she was not the messiah, but she had some quality to create trust in people.

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Bernard Shaw was rejected by Annie Besant, and he carried that wound his whole life; and he started projecting the idea of the superman.

Adolf Hitler was the second person who became a disciple of Friedrich Nietzsche, and he was in every way inferior, intellectually. Even to call him mediocre does not feel justified; the word falls short, he was far below mediocrity. He had no intelligence of any kind; he was absolutely an idiot.

He should have been born in Oregon; it was just an accident that he was born in Germany. Germany is not the right place for such great idiots.

He was rejected from the school of architecture – he wanted to become an architect. He was rejected from the arts school – he wanted to become a painter. He was rejected from the army because he could not prove his mettle in the first world war. He was a coward: he was using every excuse to hide and keep himself behind, and not go forward and rush towards the enemy. And whenever it was time to fight, he would fall sick. He would manage to produce a stomachache, a headache, backache – anything: things which cannot be proved.

Now there is no way to prove whether a headache is there or not. One of my teachers used to begin his class every day with this ritual: ”First listen to my conditions. I don’t accept a headache, I don’t accept a stomachache. Things that I cannot find, I don’t accept. Yes, if you have fever, I accept it because I can check that your temperature is high. So remember, nobody is to ask leave for things which are unprovable. Even a doctor cannot prove whether there is a headache or not.” He prevented almost everything because you had to produce a visible disease, only then could you get out; but I had to find some way around it because this was unacceptable.

He was an old man, so all that I had to do was in the night.... He was old, but very strong and very particular about exercises, about walking, so he used to get up early, at five o’clock, and in the dark he would go for a long walk. So I just had to put a few banana peels in front of his door. In the morning he fell, and had a bad back. I was available immediately because I knew about it.

He said, ”My back is hurting so much.”

I said, ”Don’t mention anything which you cannot prove.” He said, ”But whether I can prove it or not, I am not able to come to school today.”

”Then,” I said, ”You will have to stop your conditions from tomorrow, because I am going to spread the whole thing to the whole school, that if a bad back is accepted.... What proof have you got?

Then why not a headache? Why not a stomachache?”

He said, ”I think you have something to do with these banana peels here.” I said, ”Perhaps you are right, but you cannot prove it, and I believe only in things which can be proved.”

He said, ”You can at least do me one favor: you can take my application to the principal.” I said, al will take your application, but remember, from tomorrow you stop those conditions, because sometimes I have a headache, sometimes I have a stomachache, because I am accustomed to From Personality to Individuality

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eating all kinds of unripe fruits – when you are stealing from other people’s gardens, you cannot ask that they should be ripe. And only before they are ripe can you get them; once they are ripe the people take them. So I suffer from stomachache. ”And certainly from that day he stopped those conditions. He just looked at me, smiled, and started his class.

The students were simply shocked: ”What has happened to him? What about the conditions?” I stood up and said, ”I have a lot of pain in my stomach.” He said, ”You can go.” That was the first time... He told me in the evening when he came to see my father, ”This is the first time I have given leave to anybody for a stomachache... because these people are just so imaginative and inventive.” And he told my father, ”Your boy is dangerous.” I said, Again you are trying to do something which you cannot prove, you are just assuming. I was simply going for a morning walk and I saw you fall, and I just went to help you to get up. Do you think it is wrong to help somebody?”

He said, ”No, it is not wrong to help somebody; but who put those banana peels there?” I said ”That, you have to find out – it is your house. It was just coincidence that I was going for a morning walk; and my father knows that every day I go for a morning walk.” My father said, ”That’s true, he goes every day. But it is possible he may have done it. But unless you prove it, it is no use: we have to prove things to him If argumentatively he wins then, even though we are right, he is the winner and we are the losers. He has told me the whole story about your bad back, and that since then you have stopped your two conditions.” My father had also been his student. He said, ”This is strange, because you never began without those two conditions.”

My teacher said, ”Never before did I have this kind of student. I had to change my whole plan because it is dangerous to be in conflict with him; he would have killed me.” When Adolf Hitler was in the army he continually had headaches, backaches, stomachaches –

any excuse to get into the hospital just so that he did not go on the battlefield. After the first world war he was rejected by the army. Now, this man was unemployed with no qualifications.

He gathered seventeen other unemployed soldiers who had been rejected by the army, and those eighteen people created the National Socialist Party – the Nazi Party. Their ideal was: ”We have to conquer the whole world because that’s God’s mission given to the Nordic Germans, the purest Aryan race. The mission is to rule the world. The world consists of pygmies.” Now, Adolf Hitler was a pygmy in every way; in no way can you find anything which has some value.

But he got the idea moving, and the Nordic Germans started feeling that they had a certain mission, that they were the chosen few of God. Why was he so much against the Jews? One of the reasons was that the Jews have been saying since Moses that they are the chosen few of God.

Now, there cannot be two races chosen by God; so either the Nordic Germans are the chosen race, or the Jews. It had to be proved that the Nordic Germans were, so Hitler started killing the Jews.

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He said, ”The Jews have to be completely erased because they have been pretending that they are the chosen few – while we are the chosen few and have not been even aware of it.” And it got into the minds of people. The mind gets such ideas very easily and makes you afire because you are suffering from so many inferiorities.

Everybody in life comes across boundaries he cannot cross over and feels inferior; comes against walls, gets hit and has to turn back. Everybody in life some way or other has to face the problem of inferiority. If somebody gives you the idea that you are the chosen few of God, you are going to buy it. And Hitler was giving it free, he was not charging you anything – and he was making you the very top. Nietzsche’s books became Hitler’s bible.

The third man who got impressed was in India: Shri Aurobindo. He was also suffering from a tremendous inferiority complex. Shri Aurobindo was educated in England. He belonged to a rich family and was going to become an ICS, a member of the Indian civil service, which was the topmost bureaucracy in India, created by the Britishers. To be an ICS one had to pass many examinations in England, and naturally it was very difficult for Indians to pass those examinations. The examinations were such that Indians were not accustomed to them.

For example, Aurobindo failed only in one subject – horse riding. Indians are not interested in horseriding; English people are. But Indians are not interested at all in horse riding, nobody thinks it of some great value; in fact Jainas prohibit it because to ride on a horse is to be violent. Who are you to ride on the horse? If horses start riding on you would you like the idea? Jainas are averse to it. And in India nobody is interested the way Britishers are interested in horse riding.

So of course Aurobindo was not a good horse rider compared with British students, but in all other subjects he passed. One wonders what an ICS officer has to do with horse riding, but you don’t know the ways of imperialism. The ICS officer had a certain purpose for horse riding. In India, the moment you saw a white man dressed in army uniform with a gun on a beautiful horse... that was the symbol of imperialism and its power.

Now, Aurobindo was a Bengali, so I don’t think he could have managed even to ride a donkey –

because donkeys are also very clever. I have been riding on them so I know. You can try it, and you will find that donkeys have a special trick. They will never walk in the middle of the road; they will always go to the side and rub you against the walls of the houses. It is impossible to keep them in the middle of the road: they will simply move either to this side or to that side and rub against the wall. Of course they will damage your leg and you will have to get down. They are simply saying,

”Get down, get lost!”

Aurobindo was very shocked because he came back having failed, and to be an ICS was his ambition. Someone with an inferiority complex always has great ambitions; the inferiority complex is the base of all ambition. Now, to be an ICS officer was the greatest ambition any Indian could have in the British regime because that was the topmost position you could reach; more than that was not available to Indians. And rarely, out of thousands of ICS officers, one Indian might succeed in reaching it, so it was really something superior.

Aurobindo came back frustrated, with great anger, jealousy, rage; and he joined the Indian National Congress – the party that was trying to throw the British Empire. Just look at the facts. He had From Personality to Individuality

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gone to join the British Empire, and if only he had succeeded in horse riding he would have been a supporter of the British Empire; he would have been killing these people whom he was now joining.

Now he wanted to destroy the British Empire. Can you see people’s minds, how they work?

And he was not a non-violent revolutionary, no. He did not believe in Gandhi, he was not a follower of Gandhi. He was a believer in violence: he wanted the British people to be killed, burned, destroyed.

He was trying to make bombs and he was caught redhanded creating bombs and he suffered a few years in jail.

It is very interesting to look into people’s lives. If you have an unprejudiced mind then strange facts start coming up. When Aurobindo was in jail he suddenly became a religious man. From being thrown out – the ambition that he was trying to fulfill, frustrated – he moved to the opposite extreme: he wanted to take revenge, but now in the name of revolution. Then, when he was put into jail, he saw the whole thing, that it is not so easy to overthrow this great empire by simply creating hand bombs; it is just befooling yourself You may kill one person or two persons or you may destroy one bridge, but that is not going to destroy the empire; it is not possible. The empire has tremendous power.

Then how to fulfill the ambition? He had seen he could not succeed in Britain in becoming an ICS

officer; he had seen that he could not become the great leader of the Indian revolution. He turned to religion. He could become a great saint; at least nobody could prevent him doing that. That is the cheapest way in the whole world. Who can prevent you? There is no competition either.

Aurobindo became a religious person.

He started writing a commentary on the SHRIMAD

BHAGAVAD GITA in jail. When he was released, the first thing he did was to escape from the British Empire. Pondicherry was not part of British India; it was a small place under the French empire. It is part of India – now it is part of India – but three hundred years ago, when all European powers were struggling to capture India, Britain succeeded in capturing the whole of India. France could only succeed in capturing a small place, Pondicherry, and Spain could succeed in having only one small place, Goa, and two small islands, Daman and Diu.

Why did Aurobindo escape to Pondicherry? It was just close to Bengal. He was a coward; now he was afraid to face his revolutionary friends. He could not say to them that now he was no longer a revolutionary, that he wanted to become a saint – which is the safest way to fulfill your ambition to become respectable, honorable and great. In Pondicherry he created his ashram.

He was immensely interested in the idea of the superman. In fact he made it his life’s ambition. He said, ”I am going to bring the superman into myself The superman will descend from heaven into my body, so I am trying to purify my body so that the superman will descend.” For thirty years he remained in a closed house, and his followers believed that he was purifying his body. Now, if you look at his literature you can see perfectly well that for all those thirty years he was continually writing, because that literature is not spoken, it is written. And the volume of literature is so big that I suspect he had no time left to purify his body. And what purification? – the body is pure. What can you do with it? What is wrong with the body? For anything that is wrong you need medical science to help you. In a closed room how are you going to purify your body?

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He became fatter and fatter, that’s all. He had been a very lean and thin young man, but just reading and writing, reading and writing.... And his writing is just the worst possible. One sentence will continue for almost the whole page. You will forget about the beginning of the sentence by the time you have reached the end. By the end of the page you will have to go back again to the beginning to see what words the sentence had started with.

Aurobindo’s books are unreadable, pedantic, verbose. He uses big words because he thinks the bigger the word, the more unused it is by people, the more mystified they will be. And it happened

– people were mystified. People are very strange: they get impressed by things which they cannot understand. If they can understand, they don’t get impressed. Simple is their logic: ”If I can understand it there is nothing in it.” Unless they feel ”I cannot understand it,” they cannot believe that something higher, something of the beyond, is there. The way he has written is just to mystify.

There is no need to write one paragraph or one page as one sentence. It is simply ridiculous if you want your word to reach to people. But no, he wanted to mystify.

I have gone through all his books and I have suffered so much. You cannot believe how much I have suffered through such people. I had gone through all his books simply to see what this man was trying to do. In those books there is nothing. You dig up a whole mountain and you don’t find even a rat! But they are big volumes, one thousand pages; and there are big words. And he was clever enough to make and create big words, for example, ”supramental.” And he would create categories....

For the superman to arrive, first you have to create the state of supramental, and for that you have to purify your body. And he declared that he was going to be immortal physically. Up to now Mahavira, Buddha, Krishna, Christ, Mohammed – they have all said that the soul is eternal. Aurobindo said,

”I am going to prove that only an eternal body can contain an eternal soul. My body is going to live forever, it is immortal.”

Now this kind of thing is simple nonsense.

But there is one thing good about it, about such

statements; you can never prove such statements wrong, because if the man dies, to whom are you going to prove he is wrong? And if he lives, of course he is immortal. This is the trick behind the statement, ”I am going to be immortal. I have purified my body, and the superman is descending, slowly, slowly coming into this body. This body is going to be immortal, and then I will teach my disciples to be immortal.”

Hundreds of people, hoping to be immortal physically, followed Shri Aurobindo their whole life. The day he died, one of my friends was in his ashram; he was his follower. I had been telling him again and again, ”Don’t be a fool! The body cannot be immortal, it is made of mortal things. Perhaps one can live a little longer, but to live eternally...! You can see the body is continually changing: the child is becoming a young man, the young man is becoming old, the old man is becoming older. Death does not come suddenly, it is coming from the very day you were born. Somebody who says his body is going to be immortal has to prove that his body has stopped changing.

That was my argument to my friend, ”If you can manage to send a message” – because Aurobindo used to see his disciples only one time a year, and that too was simply darshan. He would not talk, he would not answer; he would simply sit there and people would pass by him in a line – just for a moment you could see him. So I said to my friend, ”If somehow you can send a message....” And there was a way.

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The woman who was in charge of the ashram was called ”the Mother.” People have completely forgotten her name, they have forgotten even her profession. She was a film actress who just fell in love with Shri Aurobindo. She dropped her husband and became a disciple... because the idea of physical immortality will appeal to women more than to men, obviously.

Women are more physical, more grounded, and have more of a sense of their body. Women, I don’t think, believe much in the soul, because they cannot see any soul in the mirror. What they cannot see in the mirror is just stupid men’s idea. And all women know that these men all go on playing with words and philosophy and religion. The woman is not interested in these things. She is more interested in the gossip, in juicy things; what is happening in the neighborhood, who has purchased a new car and who has purchased new clothes and who has made a new house.

They are not worried about God at all. It is not their concern. If they become concerned it is because of men. Because men are continually worried about God and soul and heaven and hell, the woman thinks, ”perhaps there is something in it; and if so many men are interested in it, who knows? It is better at least to keep quiet about it, not to say anything.” But I know every woman feels that all this is simply jargon.

This French actress became interested in the idea of physical immortality. She was a powerful woman and really capable of organizing, so Aurobindo had a good organizer at hand – he could withdraw. He wanted his whole time to write. He was trying to create the whole philosophy of the superman: all the stages, methodologies to purify the body and the mind, what stages you will reach, what lights you will see and what colors will appear at what stage. If you read him you will think, ”perhaps this man is talking sense, because he talks like somebody talking about geography.

Everything on the map he can show you.”

But looking at his books, all I can say to you is that he was a good linguist and knew how to play with words and language. For thirty years he was in isolation. Nothing was being purified; it was just that he needed time to study and to write. And his voluminous literature is proof enough – nobody could produce that much literature if he were not continually working at least twelve or fourteen hours a day. The sheer volume is proof enough.

So I told my friend, ”send this message to Aurobindo:’If you say you have attained immortality physically, then one thing can be the proof.... Because if you die then whom are we going to ask?

If you don’t die and you continue not to die, of course you are right – because you are living. But I have found a criterion of immortality, and the criterion is that your body should not change anymore

– because death is only a change. If you are young, then you should not become old; if your hair is black it should not grow white. That will be proof enough.’” But my friend said, ”His hair is grey and he is looking older and older every year. We can feel it more clearly because we see him only after one year.” When you see a person every day you cannot detect that he is becoming older. But if you see him after a gap of one year you can immediately see how much change has happened, how much his hair has gone grey, how much his face has wrinkled, how much older he is looking.

So I said, ”If he cannot prevent old age, then be certain that he cannot prevent death, because old age is just a preparation for death.” And that’s what happened: one day Aurobindo died. When he From Personality to Individuality

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died it was a great shock to his disciples who lived there in his ashram and to his followers who were all around the earth, because who does not want to be physically immortal?

There are people in America, at least ten of them, whose dead bodies are preserved – those bodies belong to multi-millionaires – in the hope that within the coming of ten to fifteen years, science will be able to revive a dead man. So those people have put all their money in a trust – that their bodies should be preserved exactly as they were when they died. So if, after ten or fifteen years, science becomes capable of reviving the body, their bodies will be revived.

Do you see man’s ambitions, his poverty, his inferiority, his fear of death, his lust for life?

Even after death they are hoping...! And millions of dollars are being wasted on their bodies because they have a trust; it is their money. They are being preserved, frozen, completely frozen. And even if after fifteen years they come back, what are they going to do? They won’t see anybody around whom they had left. Their wives may have gone, their children may have died. And who will want them – even if the children are there? Who would like to have them back? Just think: your father comes after fifteen years of being a ghost; one day he suddenly comes home. You may die just with the shock of seeing your father standing before you.

And a fifteen-year gap.... People are talking about generation gaps – have you thought about the gap between dead and the living? If after fifteen years a person comes back to life, he will not find anything recognizable, everything will be different. Perhaps he will not find the same world at all; perhaps the third world war will have happened and he may wake up to start the whole game again... to go in search... where is Eve? And if by chance he finds some Eve, then they both will have to think twice before they take the jump: should we start that whole thing again? If they have any intelligence they won’t because once was enough – and what happened to it!

But people are interested in immortality. Aurobindo exploited the idea of the superman; and physical immortality was his contribution to the idea of the superman. Nietzsche was not thinking of that; neither Bernard Shaw was thinking of that nor was Adolf Hitler. But Aurobindo, being an Indian, contributed to the idea. He was not very original because the immortality of the soul has always been talked about. He simply transferred it to the body: immortality of the body.

When he died, for three days they kept it a secret because the Mother, the organizer of the ashram, said, ”He cannot die, that is impossible. It must be a certain stage when he is getting out of the body, and the superman is getting into the body – just the interim stage, the interval.

”Of course if somebody is getting out of a house he has to take his luggage and furniture and mattresses; and so many things are there to get out of the house. Then the other will bring his own mattresses, his own furniture. And who knows what kinds of things that superman needs? He will bring his own paraphernalia. So it is just an interval.” And people are so foolish. That’s why I say, What kind of humanity have we got that they believed in this? – that it was an interval.

The body was kept in secret, and they were praying and waiting for superman to descend. They were rejoicing because they were thinking, ”Now it is happening” – and all that was happening was that the body was deteriorating; it started stinking. Then the Mother became afraid that this is going to.... So the Mother said, ”It seems it will take a longer time for the superman to descend, so we From Personality to Individuality

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have to preserve the body inside a marble grave.” You will not believe it: there are still people in Aurobindo’s ashram who are waiting, thinking that one day he will knock inside the grave and say,

”Now please open up: and superman has arrived.”

The man died; then the Mother started pretending – the same role – that her body has become immortal. Of course she lived long, almost a century, but if you had seen her face before she died, you would have thought this face could only be of a ghost: she was just a skeleton, with wrinkled skin. You could count, even from a photograph, how many bones there were in her neck, and how many blood vessels in her neck were collapsing. There was no need for any X-ray, just seeing her was enough. You could have seen everything that was in her – nothing was left.

People started believing that she was immortal, the same people who had been seeing Aurobindo dying. then she died, and again the same stupidity: three days’ interval, then the stinking body, then again another Grave – and waiting. And people are still waiting.

The idea of superman is basically rooted in your feeling of inferiority, of fear, of death. But the new nan has nothing to do with all this.

The new man is the very ordinary man:

Nothing special, nothing superior, supramental.

The new man is the first man who recognizes that it is enough to be human.

There is no need to be a superman.

There is no need to become gods and goddesses

It is so fulfilling just to be an ordinary human being.

I declare to you:

There is nothing above human consciousness.

Everything that is possible is within you.

You are not to become special, superior.

You have to become absolutely simple, ordinary just nobodies.

One day I had a small meeting with Sheela anc the group that works with her, and Hasya, John anc their group. They were somehow feeling that they were not joining together and somehow the gap was increasing. I had called a meeting of all; I also called Hanya. Hanya is neither of this group nor of that. She is a simple woman, and I had especially called her t see the reaction of a simple nobody.

What I expected happened: she freaked out. She could not understand. What politics? Why should these people be quarreling or arguing or creating. gap? They are both working for me – all are From Personality to Individuality

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working for me. But I wanted to see the reaction of someone who has no political mind, no kind of division, who is simply in love with what I am doing; someone who has no ambitions, has no ideas to make into a reality She freaked out – that was expected.

Sheela told me that Hanya is very much disturbed and wants to leave. I said there is nothing to be worried about; I knew that’s what was going to hap pen. I was expecting it, that she would not be able to understand. Sheela and her group understood, Hasya and her group understood, and the gap has been dropped. The only person who was at a loss was Hanya.

I would like you all to be like Hanya – so simple, so innocent, that you cannot even understand what politics is, why people go on fighting, quarreling. For what? It is such a small life – we cannot be certain even of tomorrow – and we are wasting it for some great ideals in the future; and we start fighting about those ideals.

There was a case in an Indian court: two friends were brought into the court. The whole court knew they were great friends but suddenly they started beating each other. The police came; the friends were caught and taken to the court. The police asked, ”Why are you fighting?” One said to the other,

”You say it,” and the other said, ”You say it” – and both felt embarrassed.

The judge said, ”This is enough. You simply have to answer: What was the reason? Why were you fighting? Why were you creating a nuisance in the village? And you were so angry and violent you could have killed. You both have to say what the reason was.” They both said, ”We feel very embarrassed to say it, but now if you force us, we have to.” One said,

”I was just telling my friend – we were both sitting by the side of the riverbank, on the sand – I was saying to my friend that I was going to purchase a buffalo, and he said,’Nothing doing. You are not going to purchase a buffalo, I won’t allow it.’

”I said,’This is something,”’ the man said. ”’Who are you to prevent me? I am purchasing the buffalo with my own money; I am not asking you to give me money. Who are you to decide it?’

”Then my friend said, ‘I have told you this is not going to happen just because by the side of your field is my farm. If your buffalo enters my farm, I am telling you, I will kill the buffalo. I don’t want any nuisance around my farm.’

”I said,’You will kill my buffalo? Let us see.’ My friend drew his farm on the sand with his finger and said,’This is my farm; now I will see. Bring your buffalo in’ – so with my finger I drew my buffalo coming....”

And that was the point when they started beating each other; and that’s why they were feeling embarrassed, because there was no buffalo, no field, and they were almost on the verge of killing each other!

The whole politics of the world is like that. Why are people fighting in the name of religion, in the name of a political ideology: socialism, communism, democracy, fascism? – just words, just fingers drawing lines on the sand. What are your maps but lines drawn by fingers on the sand? If I say I am coming into your land without a passport, without a visa, immediately your whole army and national guard are ready to kill me. Just on the map: I cannot even say it – it is a criminal act.

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Strange: the earth has no boundaries, but you cannot get into Russia, you cannot get into America.

Although I have been here for four years, I am not here. Rajneeshpuram has been here for four years; there are seven thousand people living here – enjoying, dancing, doing all kinds of things that should be done, and should not be done. But for the government there is no such thing. You don’t exist!

Your city is really unique in the whole history of humanity. There have been cities and there have been no cities; but an illegal city? – never heard before. It is a city, but illegal. It is not recognized that you are. Ignored, you don’t exist.

I am here, and I am going to be here. There is no way to send me back... because I have my own arrangements. I persuaded the Indian government to reject me, so where are you going to send me? You can only deport me to India. India I persuaded beforehand; they are not going to accept me at all. Now I am stuck here in the Big Muddy Ranch. There is no way, no crane to get me out.

But these fools are in power. They have removed from Wasco County city project even the name of Rajneeshpuram. In the Wasco County files Rajneeshpuram does not exist. If seven thousand people suddenly disappear, the Oregon government will not be able even to say that they have disappeared, because then they will have first to accept that we were here – and we are not here!

But in a way it is perfectly good. If we are not in Oregon, then of course we are not in America. This seems to be the new birth of a new nation. Soon we will have to make our own constitution and declare our independence. What else to do? And we are big enough to be a nation. Just the other day Sheela showed me the list of all the nations who accept and respect patents made in America.

Vatican City is also one of the countries listed, and Vatican City is only eight square miles. We are too big – we are almost a continent compared to Vatican City. We can do it.

These lines are just drawn on the sand. The wind comes and all the lines are erased. And the wind of the new man is going to erase all these lines.

The new man will be simply man – not American, not Russian, not Indian; neither Hindu, nor Mohammedan, nor Christian; neither democrat nor republican, nor liberal, nor independent. All these nonsense words will not exist for the new man.

The new man will be simply man.

And I repeat again:

I don’t accept anything higher than man.

I am talking about the ordinary, simple man.

There is nothing higher than that.

The idea of getting higher than that arises out of inferiority. I would like you to be just like Hanya: ordinary, no politics. But I will tell Hanya there is no need to go anywhere. This is your place, and you are the type of person I want all my sannyasins to be.

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Superman is just rubbish.

The new man is the birth, for the first time, of man without any ideology, without any ideals – just the way Adam and Eve entered the world.

Was Adam communist, fascist, socialist?

Was he Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian?

Was he superior or inferior?

He was simply what he was:

There was no question of superiority or inferiority.

I want you to be again Adam and Eve, to go back your authentic nature, to your original face.

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CHAPTER 17

Holy Scriptures: wholly Bullshit

15 January 1985 pm in Lao Tzu Grove

Question 1

OSHO,

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MADNESS AND ENLIGHTENMENT?

THERE is a great difference and also a great similarity. The similarity has to be understood first, because without understanding it, it will be difficult to understand the difference.

Both are beyond the mind – madness and enlightenment.

Madness is below the mind.

Enlightenment is above the mind.

But both are out of the mind.

Hence, you have the expression for a madman ”out of his mind.” The same expression can be used for the enlightened person; he is also out of his mind.

Mind functions logically, rationally, intellectually.

Neither madness nor enlightenment function

intellectually. They are similar: madness has fallen below reason, and enlightenment has gone above reason, but both are irrational; hence, sometimes in the East a madman is misunderstood as being an enlightened man. These similarities are there.

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And in the West, once in a while – it is not an everyday phenomenon, but once in a while – an enlightened person has been understood as being mad, because the West understands only one thing: if you are out of your mind, you are mad. It has no category for above the mind; it has only one category – below the mind.

In the East the misunderstanding happens because for centuries the East has known people who are out of their mind and at the same time above the mind; hence, they are similar to madmen. For the Eastern masses it creates a confusion, it creates a problem. They have decided it is better to misunderstand a madman as being an enlightened man than to misunderstand an enlightened man as being a madman – because what are you losing by misunderstanding a madman as being an enlightened man? You are not losing anything. But by misunderstanding an enlightened man as being a madman you are certainly losing a tremendous opportunity. But the misunderstanding is possible because of the similarities.

I have come across a few madmen who were thought to be enlightened. One man was just thirty or thirty-five miles away from Jabalpur. Nobody knew his name – he was very old. He used to keep a bell in his hand and – nobody knows for what reasons – sometimes he would ring the bell, sometimes he would not ring the bell. Because of the bell he was called Tuntunpal Baba: the bell made the sound tuntun, and nobody knew his real name.

He never talked intelligibly; he uttered sounds but not words. He remained sitting in one place and never moved from that place. In his village people had known him for sixty years. There were old people who knew that when they were very young this man had come, and since that time he had been sitting on a cot in the porch of the house of the landlord, the richest man in the village. He had not moved from the cot, and for sixty years all that they had heard from him was his bell.

I went many times to see him, at different times, to figure him out. He used to drink tea continually; that was almost his only food. He would drink half the cup and then offer the other half to anybody who was there to see him. This was thought to be prasad, a gift, and people enjoyed this gift because it was very rare. Hundreds of people were seeing him every day; only to a few people would he offer the cup. But always first he would drink from the cup itself, then the remaining he would offer. But people thought he was enlightened, so something that he had tasted was blessed.

The more I watched the man, the more I was convinced that he was simply mad; and not totally mad either, because his madness had a certain consistency. It was not without any purpose that he was ringing his bell; it was always to attract the attention of people. Slowly people started understanding that he needed something, perhaps a cup of tea – that was the most needed thing – so immediately they would bring tea.

Those who had been serving him for years had even started understanding the language of his bell: how many times he rings when he wants tea; how many times he rings when he wants the crowd to leave him alone, how many times when he wants people to be allowed to see him, how many times when he wants to go to sleep. It was a language, a code language, that his disciples who lived with him knew.

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of his mouth; the other side never moved. One day, when he was alone, I took his bell from his hand and put it in his other hand. The bell fell, because the other hand was paralyzed. Now it was clear why he was not moving from the cot; it was nothing to do with any austerity.

People thought that it was some ascetic practice; perhaps he had taken a vow that he would remain sitting in the same posture for so many years, or his whole life. But it was simply that he was paralyzed. In fact, that seems to be the clear reason why he was not able to utter intelligible sounds: half of his mouth was paralyzed. With half of your mouth you can make sounds, but to make words is very difficult, almost impossible. You may try but the other will only hear some unintelligible gibberish.

But gibberish has been thought to be one of the methods used by enlightened people. You will be surprised to know that the word, the English word, gibberish, is not English, it is Arabic; and it comes from an enlightened man, Jabbar. Jabbar was certainly an enlightened man, but he spoke so fast that his words would run over each other. It was impossible to make any sense out of what he said because there were no full stops, no commas, no indication of where the sentence began and where it ended. Jabbar simply did not believe in all these mannerisms.

It is because of Jabbar that people started calling his language gibberish, but by and by the word gibberish became completely disassociated from Jabbar. Nobody would think that the English word gibberish is from a Sufi word and has come from a man who was enlightened. Gibberish, in the East, is thought to be a way of enlightened people. They are saying to you: Nothing can be said through words. You will have to understand something besides the words.

But mad people also do the same. And this man Tuntunpal Baba was simply paralyzed, retarded; you could see it from his face. As I went again and again to him and he became more and more familiar to me, and I became familiar to him, we started some kind of communication. I started using his bell, and I made a few code signals with the bell.

I tried writing, asking him, ”What is your name?” and I would ring the bell two times. I knew that he could read because he looked at the slate on which I had written, ”What is your name?” and his eyes had the flash showing that he could read. I made the signal three times and wrote on the slate:

”I understand that you can read.” He looked at it and smiled with half his face. I put the pen in his hand and made the sign of ringing the bell two times, and he wrote his name, Tuntunpal Baba.

I said, ”This is not right – you can’t deceive me that you are enlightened. You have deceived thousands of people for sixty years, but this is not good; you have not gained anything out of it.

Those poor people from the villages have lived with the belief that they are under the guidance, under the blessings, of an enlightened man. This is criminal. And on the other hand you could have been cured, because there is not much of a problem; paralysis can be cured.” I could see the flash in his eyes that he understood that he had made a mistake. If paralysis could be cured.... It was because of paralysis that perhaps half of his brain also had gone numb and created the madness. He wrote on the slate: ”Is it possible that I can be cured?” I said, ”Perhaps now it is too late. For sixty years you have been paralyzed, your brain has been numb for sixty years; I don’t think that after sixty years of paralysis the brain cells can be alive, can From Personality to Individuality

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function again. And now, what is the point? You must be nearabout ninety, ninety-five, or a hundred: what is the point now? Now it is better you remain enlightened – at least people are happy. And you are not feeling in an inferior state – that you are paralyzed, that you cannot speak, that half your brain is not functioning.”

So I said to him, ”I am not going to say anything to anybody. I will keep your secret. You remain enlightened; it is doing good both to you and to people. People need somebody: they are in constant search to follow somebody. At least you cannot indoctrinate them, you cannot give rubbish to their minds. In a way you are innocent. You have not done anything. You have simply offered gifts, whatsoever you had.

”You don’t have anything other than that tea” that was all that he was using, that was all his food.

”And you are feeling in good spirits. Thousands of people gather, and on particular festival days the village becomes a big city. People are enjoying, you are enjoying – I am not going to disturb the game. I simply wanted to find out if it is possible that something which is not enlightenment can be misunderstood as being enlightenment. That is proved by you. And I am grateful to you that you were sincere with me; you did not hide anything.” A tear came into one of his eyes – the other eye was paralyzed – a tear of thankfulness. I continued to go to see him once in a while; it was not far away. Whenever I had time, once in a while, I would go; and he started loving me. Perhaps I was the only person who has sat on his cot. With one of his hands he would pull me up and make me sit by his side on his cot.

People would touch my feet also, and I would say, ”You are already mistaken; now you are again making a mistake. At least don’t commit this mistake.” But they never understood me when I said,

”You are already mistaken. At least don’t commit the same mistake again.” A madman sometimes can have glimpses which the rational man cannot have because the madman has stepped out of the mechanism of mind; of course on the wrong side, from the back door, but still he is out of the mind. Even from the back door he can have some glimpses which are not available to the people who never come out of the house. Certainly he is not so fortunate as to have come from the front door: that needs tremendous effort.

Madness is a disease. It happens to you – you don’t have to make an effort to be mad. It is a sickness and it is curable. Enlightenment happens through tremendous awareness and arduous effort.

Enlightenment is the supreme health.

You should understand the word health carefully. It is not only physiologically meaningful. Of course physiologically it is meaningful, but not only physiologically; it has a far higher meaning too. Health means healing the wounds. It comes from the root which means healing. If your physiology needs some healing then medicine is offered. If your spirituality needs some healing, then meditation is offered. Strangely, health comes from the same root from which comes the word wholeness.

Health means the body is whole, nothing is missing. And from wholeness comes the word holy: the spirit is whole, nothing is missing. Similarly, the word medicine and the word meditation come from From Personality to Individuality

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the same root – that which cures. Medicine cures wounds in your physiology, and meditation cures wounds in your spiritual existence, in your ultimate being.

The madman, if in the hands of enlightened people, can achieve enlightenment faster than your so-called sane people. In the East there has been a longstanding tradition... in this century one man revived it again – his name was Meher Baba. He went all over India seeking and searching for mad people. In all the madhouses, anywhere that he heard there was a madman, he would go. He traveled all over India his whole life, searching for mad people.

His disciples asked him, ”Why are you wasting your time with mad people when sane people are available to work upon, and they want your time?” Meher Baba said, ”You don’t understand. To bring a sane person out of his sanity is very difficult.

But to bring out a madman is very easy because in a way he is already out, but from the back door.

He has tasted something of the outside; we have only to show him the right door and say, ”Please don’t go out from the wrong door, go from the right door. Being out is perfectly right, but choose the right door.” And Meher Baba turned many mad people into enlightened people.

It is a strange world. Here, really great things are never rewarded. Nobody has bothered about Meher Baba. Mother Teresa will get a Nobel prize because she looks after poor orphan children, and nobody thought of giving a Nobel prize to Meher Baba who really did a miraculous job – and he was the on]y man, after centuries.

Sufis call the madman masta; masta means intoxicated. The madman and the enlightened man both have to pass through a certain stage, that is, getting out of reason, out of their mind. They have to cross the same boundary: by the wrong door or right door, they both cross the same boundary, and while they are crossing the boundary they both become mastas – intoxicated.

But the enlightened person soon regains his balance because he has made the effort to get out of the mind; he is prepared to get out of the mind, he is ready to get out of the mind. The madman has got out of his mind unprepared. He was not ready. He has simply fallen out of his mind – it is an accident. Enlightenment is never an accident.

But both the madman and the enlightened man pass through a certain state called masta, the intoxicated, where they both behave similarly; hence, the necessity of a Master has been absolutely accepted. When one gets into the state of masta, then only a Master can take one out of that intoxicated state – because that intoxicated state itself is immensely beautiful.

You must have seen mad people very happy. You can’t find a madman unhappy. That does not happen at all; a madman and suffering, they don’t coexist. A madman is always enjoying. Perhaps he has nothing to enjoy, but he is enjoying. It does not matter whether he has something to enjoy or not, but he is always happy. To be unhappy you need reason, thinking, worrying. Now he is incapable of worrying and thinking. He cannot be bothered with tomorrow; he has no tomorrow and he has no memories of yesterday. The madman also exists herenow – that is the similarity. But he is not aware that he is herenow – that is the difference.

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become unhappy, then he will start worrying. He will worry more than you because he will see that he had gone mad: now he will worry about madness. When he was mad he had no worry at all, he could not care less. Now he will worry that he had gone mad and he will worry that tomorrow it can happen again because it has happened.

I had one friend who was a doctor. His father was a very miserly person, rich but very miserly, and he had a very tight hold on the family. He was a politician; his name was Shri Nath Batt. He was a Gujarati, and he had a very beautiful jeweler’s shop. He was the president of the local Indian National Congress, the party that was fighting for India’s freedom against the British Raj. His son, whose name was Shyam, and I were friends from our very childhood. I hated Shyam’s father more than Shyam hated him, because he was such a miser Of course his son could not do anything about it but I said, ”Don’t be worried; I will do something about it” – and I did.

It was an everyday phenomenon during the British Raj that there were continual processions against the government, strikes against government – and Shri Nath Batt was the leader. There were the two slogans. One slogan was: Bharatmata zindabad – ”Long live Mother India.” Zindabad means long live. And: British Raj murdabad, means ”British Raj die quickly, as soon as possible.” What I did... I would start the slogan, ”British Raj,” and people would repeat ”Murdabad” – ”die soon.” Three or four times I would say, ”British Raj,” and the fifth time I would say, ”Shri Nath Batt.” Because people were continuously saying ”Murdabad,” they would say ”Murdabad.” Shri Nath Batt called me to his home and he said, ”You are tricky; you always used my name after

’British Raj,’ never after ’Bharatmata.’ If you had used my name after ’Bharatmata’ they would have said ’Zindabad’ long live.’ But you are mischievous.” I said, ”No, I was not doing it knowingly.”

He said, ”Next time....”

I said, ”One thing you have to promise: you have to drop your miserliness towards my friend, your boy, Shyam. If you promise me that then your name will come after ’Bharatmata,’ I promise you that; otherwise your name will always come exactly in the middle of ’British Raj.’ Five times it will be,’British Raj,’ and then you; then again five times,’British Raj,’ so people get mixed up.” And I was always on the mike.

So he said, ”Okay, it is a pact: I will not be miserly.” But he was miserly – it was very difficult for him not to be. Shyam became a doctor and I became a professor. Once Shyam became a doctor his father wouldn’t allow him to join medical services. Shyam wanted to join medical services; he wanted to get away somehow from his father and his family, but his father wouldn’t let him go.

Shri Nath Batt opened a shop for Shyam just by his shop so he could keep an eye on Shyam. He put a compounder of his choice, who was his man, and a nurse of his choice, in that shop. They had to keep an eye out to see that no money went anywhere, and every evening all the money that Doctor Shyam had earned went to Shri Nath Batt.

Shyam got married, and one day his wife sent a telegram that she was very sick, and that it would be helpful if Shyam came because he understood her more than any other doctor, although the doctors were doing their best.

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She was at her father’s place because she was pregnant. In India it is a tradition that the first child is born at the house of the wife’s parents, because your mother will take more care than your mother-in-law, of course. A mother-in-law is only a mother-in-law. There is no mother – it is only law. So this is traditional, for at least the first child. By the second child the woman will be capable of understanding many things on her own, but the first child... she is completely unaware about the pain and the trouble.

So Doctor Shyam told his father, ”This telegram has come and my wife is sick.” Now, from my village, Nagpur is not very far away. In those days it was two rupees for a one-way ticket, and at the most it was a ten-hour journey. So two rupees to go and two rupees to come back meant four rupees; and perhaps his wife was seriously sick so Shyam would spend something there. It meant nearabout fifty rupees would be gone – and fifty rupees would give Shri Nath Batt a heart attack.

Shri Nath Batt simply said, ”In Nagpur there are better doctors than you” – Nagpur was the capital, in those days, of central India. ”And there is a medical college with every kind of facility. So what are you going to do there? You have been a student in Nagpur, your professors are there: send a telegram to any one of your famous professors, to some gynecologist, and he will take care of her

”There is no need to go, and I am not going to spend money unnecessarily. Fifty rupees, and who knows? – there you may spend more. And how many days will you be away? The fifty or sixty rupees that you earn here every day also has to be taken into account. If you are there for one week causing me such a loss – and for no reason at all, because it is simple: I will send a telegram. Just give me the name of your professor in the medical college.” But Shyam was very much attached to his wife – he escaped. He tried to travel without a ticket, and because he was without a ticket he was nervous. For the first time in his life he was traveling without a ticket – and he, a doctor, a well-educated person. If he were caught it would be really shameful.

He was so worried about his wife, about his father – what would happen the next morning when he found that Shyam had escaped – about the ticket....

He was standing just by the door because it was so crowded – in India, trains are very crowded.

Particularly in those days they were even more crowded; now there are more trains. So he was just standing there, holding onto the bars on the door as a handle, with such worry in his mind about whether he would be able to see his wife or not – because she was not the type of woman who, knowing his father, would call him unless it were absolutely necessary.

While Shyam was in this tension and worry and the crowd, somebody pushed him, and he fell out of the train. Physically he was not harmed, but psychologically he went out of his mind accidentally.

This is what I mean by falling out of the mind. Suddenly he crossed over the line of the mind. With too much worry, tension, fear, nervousness, the mind was as if in a cyclone. And then this shock of falling from the fastest – moving train.... He simply slipped out of his mind.

He was brought home. People recognized that he was a doctor and by chance I happened to be in the village. I heard about the accident and I went to see him: he could not even recognize me, and he had forgotten his language. There was no harm to the body at all – small bruises here and there, nothing to be worried about – but he just looked vacant, empty. That’s the way the enlightened person looks. If you look in his eyes they are empty, vacant. You may get afraid.

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Shyam was in such a shock, not knowing what had happened – but not worried, smiling. I had not seen him smiling for years, because of his father; nobody could smile in his house. There were five sons, five daughters-in-law and many grandchildren, but Shri Nath Batt was such a Tamerlane that it was impossible for anybody to smile, because even a smile means an unnecessary waste. Preserve everything!

It was Sigmund Freud’s insight that the people who suffer from constipation are miserly people. They preserve everything, they can’t allow anything to go out. Naturally, how could Shri Nath Batt allow anybody to smile? But now he could not do anything: Shyam was out of his mind. He laughed, he smiled – I had never seen him so happy.

He remained mad, and for the first three years he really enjoyed it because no patients came to him anymore. Who would go to a madman? He would sit in his dispensary every day absolutely ready with his stethoscope and bag, and nobody would come except me, once in a while. He wouldn’t recognize me, but it was a joy to be with him, just to laugh and enjoy. And he would try his doctoring on me.

I said, ”Okay, you can, because you cannot find anybody; just no injections, because if your father comes to know that you are giving injections free, then he will create trouble for me. You can do a check, and you can do any kind of work that you want to do – I can lie down.” I would lie down and he would take a cardiogram and all that, but he wouldn’t recognize me. I would say, ”Shyam...?” and he would listen as if I were calling somebody else; he had forgotten his own name too. Those three years were really of great happiness.

His wife was in a terrible mess, but I told her, ”One thing you should see: with Shri Nath Batt alive there was no chance to be happy. But this man, by accident, by God’s grace, has slipped out of his mind. Don’t feel sorry for him. Can’t you see? Yes, he is mad, but what is wrong with it? – he is happy. He was sane but unhappy and miserable. Now he goes into the market and purchases the best clothes possible because he does not have to pay – Shri Nath Batt will have to pay!” His father used to tell me, ”You are spoiling him. First, he is mad; then you take him to the market, and people come to me with their bills; I have to pay. Please leave him.” I said, ”This is not possible. Everybody has left him; now I am the only person. And I am immensely happy that he became mad because in this house you are all mad except him; you are all in misery.

He is happy, so what is wrong with being mad? And if he had not gone out of his mind by accident then I would have tried my way, but he had to go out of his mind. And now that he has slipped out, let him enjoy it But remember, once he gets back into his mind I am going to help him to get out again – of course from the right door.”

But that Shri Nath Batt was really a dangerous miser. He was afraid that I could do something, and that perhaps my association was encouraging Shyam to remain mad, because I used to take him to the hotels, to the restaurants, and I told him, ”You enjoy yourself Don’t be worried about money –

whatsoever you want is yours.”

And he said, ”Is it so?”

I said, ”Just enjoy!”

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He wouldn’t enjoy himself alone; he would ask anybody, say to any stranger, ”Come on!” The whole town was happy, the shopkeepers were happy, but Shri Nath Batt was really enraged. After three years he forced Shyam into a mental home just so that I could not.... And he made it a point to the authorities in the madhouse that I should not be allowed in. My name and my photo he gave to the authorities saying, ”This man should not be allowed to meet my son. Anybody else is allowed, but this photo you have to remember.”

When I went to see him, the officer showed me the photo and the statement that the father had given. He said, ”I am sorry, I cannot help if his father does not want you to see him. He has given us a written statement, and this photo so that we recognize you and don’t allow you in. Otherwise you may come in some other name.”

I told him the whole story. I said, ”First listen to — the story, and if you are a man at all you should throw t this letter and this photograph. What proof has he got that he has given you a letter? And the reason why he does not want me to see his son is that he would prefer him to remain mad rather than become sane and start understanding me and what I want him to do.” I told him the whole story.

The man could not believe that Shyam’s father could be so cruel. He didn’t say anything; he simply tore up the photograph and the letter and threw them in the bin, in the wastepaper basket, and told me, ”Come in – you are always welcome.” So I saw Shyam: he was so happy there, in the madhouse with almost three hundred mad people. He was in rags, unclean – perhaps he had not taken a bath for a few days, he was stinking – but immensely happy. He was not able to recognize me.

Then I moved from Jabalpur. Shyam is still in a madhouse, and perhaps his whole life he will be in a madhouse, but he is in a better position than any sane man. I saw those three hundred mad people – many times I went to see him – they were all happy. One thing is sure: a madman is never in anguish. Why should he be? – he has no problems.

Just see the point: even if you fall below the mind you are happy. It is the mind that is causing you all kinds of misery, suffering, jealousies, hatred, anger, violence, greed; and they all go on making you more and more a pain to yourself You start hurting all over, everybody is hurting all over. Even to fall below the mind – which is falling below humanity, because that is the only difference between you and the animals.... A madman is really back in the world of animals. He has dropped out of evolution. He has gone back; he has turned his back on Charles Darwin. He has said, ”Goodbye.

Goodbye to your evolution!” He has simply fallen back to a subhuman level.

Animals are not happy, but they are not unhappy. Have you seen any animal unhappy? Yes, you will not see them happy – they cannot be happy because they don’t know what unhappiness is. But when a man falls from the human level to the subhuman level, he becomes happy because he knows what unhappiness is. So he is not exactly the same animal that he was before he became man. He is a totally different kind of animal; a happy animal. There is no happy buffalo, no happy donkey, no happy monkey, no happy Yankee. Animals are not happy because they don’t know unhappiness.

But a madman is just happy for no reason at all.

That gives tremendous proof of what I have been teaching you, that if you can get out of the mind –

but not by an accident, not by a shock – you will be blissful.

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It is possible, more than possible – perhaps unfortunately it is going to happen – that in communist countries they will start giving people electric shocks to bring their suffering down to the subhuman level; then they will be happy. And the shock will be given in a certain scientific way so that they will not be mad either. They will be functionally sane, like a computer – but just functionally sane, like a mechanism with no soul. They cannot rebel. They will be very happy, and if they are happy why will they rebel? There will be no question of revolution; they will exist like robots.

There are many experiments going on in Russia and in China to make it possible that a man remains reasonable enough to be able to function in society, in the office, and yet is free of all worry, of all tension, all problems: he is happy. This will be the greatest crime against humanity; but there are scientists who are working on those lines. Even in America the famous psychologist, Delgado, is doing the same thing in a different way; and he has succeeded, he has shown his experiments to be absolutely successful.

He puts electrodes into your head.... One of the most strange things about your skull is that inside it there is no sensitivity. Even if a stone is put inside your skull and the skull is closed, you will not feel the stone because there is no sensitivity. The inside of the skull is absolutely insensitive, for a certain reason: it has the most precious instrument in your body. And the brain is such a complicated mechanism, with ten billion cells working, that if your skull were sensitive you would not be able to live, there would be so much noise coming inside your head. And if something goes wrong – some cell dies, some part becomes unfunctioning – you would become aware of all these things, which would drive you nuts.

And it is such a complex mechanism that many things can go wrong. Even if nothing is wrong, already half of your brain is not functioning anyway. Fifty percent of your brain is absolutely in a state of paralysis. perhaps that is the part of the mind that starts functioning when you become enlightened. The enlightened man can use his mind more efficiently than the greatest intellectual can, for the simple reason that he is outside the mind and has an overall view; and perhaps the half of the brain that is not functioning in normal human beings starts functioning when your consciousness goes beyond your normal reason, as you transcend your rationality. The other part functions only with your transcendence.

This is the experience of all those who have become enlightened. And when I say this, I say it on my own authority. I would not believe it if Buddha ad said it: perhaps he was Lying, perhaps he was misguided; perhaps he was not Lying but was not right.?perhaps there was no intention to lie; but he could be confused, he could make a mistake. But I know t from my own experience, because it is such a tremendous change that you cannot miss it. It is almost Is if half of your body was paralyzed, then one day suddenly you feel you are no more paralyzed; both your sides are functioning. Can you miss it? If a person who has been paralyzed suddenly finds he is not paralyzed, can he miss it?

There is no possibility of missing it.

I know perfectly well the moment before enlightenment happened to me, and the moment after, with absolute certainty, knew that something within my mind – which I was not even aware existed – had stirred and had started functioning. Since then there has been no problem for me. Since then I have existed without a problem, without a worry, without any tension.

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find, and the worst master you can find. But ordinarily the mind is the master – and that too, only half of it. The master... and half paralyzed! When you become the master, the mind is the servant and fully healthy, fully recovered.

Delgado put small electrodes, very small electrodes, into the head. In the mind there are seven hundred centers – exactly the same number as acupuncture had discovered five thousand years ago in China. Acupuncture has discovered seven hundred centers on the body; those seven hundred centers on the body are connected with the seven hundred centers in the mind. So it looks strange

– acupuncture’s way of treating a patient is very strange.

You have a headache and they may push their needles into your knee. You will say, ”What are you doing? I have a headache and you are bothering about my knee.” They will say, ”Don’t interfere; we know what we are doing.”

They have found, over these five thousand years, which center in the body is connected with a corresponding center in the head. And strangely enough, by pushing a needle into your knee or your thigh, your headache disappears. There is a current of electricity – now it is called scientifically bio-electricity – which is a very mild current of electricity but still is electricity. And sometimes very subtle things work miracles.

You have so much electricity always running in your body that you can put a five watt bulb in your hand and it can light up. It ordinarily does not happen, otherwise you would start giving shocks to people. But once it happened that a woman, somehow a freak of nature, started giving shocks to people. First her husband got shocked; he escaped from the house, screaming. Then the neighbors tried, but just to shake hands was enough. Then doctors were called in, and it was found that somehow her body electricity, which moves in a circle, had freaked out; somewhere her inner mechanism had gone wrong.

And actually it was tried: a five watt bulb was put in that woman’s hand – and it lit up! Now, it is a scientifically established fact that subtle currents of electricity are continuously moving in the body, just like the blood. Each center is connected with other centers in the body. The real thing happens always inside the skull, but it immediately reaches the body.

In the second world war, one man’s leg was cut off – it was so damaged that there was no other way, and it was so terrible a pain that the man would regain consciousness, but the moment he felt the pain he would become unconscious again; it was unbearable. Consciousness could not exist with the pain; he could bear that pain only in unconsciousness. There was no need to give him any drugs, just the pain was enough to force him to go into unconsciousness. So they had to cut off his leg. But the strange thing was that when he became conscious again he was still complaining about the pain in the leg. He was covered with a blanket so he had no idea that the leg had been removed.

The doctors said, ”It is impossible.”

He said, ”I am suffering, and you say ’impossible’?” Most of the pain was concentrated in his toe: he said, ”My toe is hurting so much.”

The doctor said, ”Just look,” and he uncovered his body: the leg was gone, the toe was gone. They brought his leg from the lab and said, ”This is your toe and this is your leg. Now how can your toe give you pain? You are just hallucinating, imagining.” From Personality to Individuality

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The man said, ”I can see you have cut off my leg. I can see the leg, and that it is my leg – I know it is, I realize it, I recognize it – and that is the toe that is hurting. But it is hurting here.” This was the first case to give the indication that the toe is connected to some brain center. The brain center was still vibrating in the same way it was vibrating while the leg was still connected. You have disconnected the leg but the center connected with the leg is still vibrating in the same way.

That started great research work on how to get to the centers of the head – because perhaps the leg could have been saved if they had stopped the vibration of the particular center in the head. Then even if the toe were damaged, the man would not have felt any pain, because every experience happens in the head although it may be coming from any part of the body.

This research finally ended up in Delgado’s hands, and he managed to find all seven hundred centers in the mind. Now, he puts an electrode in a particular center in the mind – for example, your happiness center – and he has a remote control with himself He just puts an electrode there and whenever he wants you to be happy he just pushes a button – it is a remote control, no wire is connected to you so you cannot see anything – and you start laughing, enjoying, giggling as if somebody is tickling you. You don’t see anybody – what is happening? And the man may be miles away but he can still control you.

Delgado showed his experiment first in Spain with a bull. He had put an electrode into the bull’s head and he went into the field. Spaniards are strange people. They enjoy a bullfight just as the Americans enjoy football. Strange people I simply wonder.... There are a few idiots running with a ball, a few idiots returning the ball, and millions of idiots jumping up and down and fighting! It seems to be that Charles Darwin is not right: man has not evolved, he is still a monkey. Now, a man fighting a bull, putting a man in danger of death....

Delgado proved that the bull can be controlled; there is no problem. The strongest bull was given to him and he put an electrode inside it. He waved the red flag, and the bull came rushing – just like J. Krishnamurti seeing orange. Jiddu Krishnamurti – that is his full name; Jiddu Krishnamurti. ”J.

Krishnamurti” saves him from some trouble because ”Jiddu Krishnamurti.... jiddu means stubborn; he is stubborn.

The bull came rushing towards Delgado who was standing there waving a red flag. When he was just one foot away and ready to push his horns into Delgado, Delgado pushed a button of the remote control in his pocket and the bull stopped so suddenly that the millions of people who were watching it could not believe it: what happened to the bull? He just stopped, frozen, as if he were practicing George Gurdjieff’s ”Stop” exercise. He remained like a statue, he would not move.

Delgado said, ”We can control every man...” and there is a possibility, sooner or later, that totalitarian governments are going to do it. Perhaps they have already started, because in Russia you cannot give birth to a child in your home – that is illegal – every child has to be born in a government hospital.

Now, when the child is just born is the best time to put an electrode into his skull. The skull is very soft and the centers are very alive; if they grow with the electrode there, the electrode will become almost part of the brain. The child will never suspect throughout his whole life that everything that he is doing is manipulated from the switchboard in the central office of the communist party.

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It can make you happy, it can make you unhappy; it can make you rebellious, it can make you obedient. Obviously, they don’t want any disobedience; they don’t want any revolution, any rebellion, any doubt. Naturally, only those buttons will be used which make you a slave – but a very happy slave. They have reduced you to a robot.

The madman falls out of the mind, but he is better than a robot because the robot is controlled from the outside; somebody else has the remote controls. The controls can be given to you too; that too is a possibility. You can be given a small switchboard: if you are feeling angry and you don’t want to feel angry, you just push the anti-anger button and you are no longer angry.

Now, what is the need of Buddha teaching forty years, and people still get angry, and Jesus teaching people to be humble – and nobody is humble? But with a Delgado switchboard things are very simple. You can have your own switchboard. You can push the button and have any kind of enjoyment that you want, any kind of hallucination, any kind of dream that you want.

I doubt that these remote controls will be given to people; they will be in the hands of the government.

To me, this is more dangerous than nuclear weapons – which can kill you, but at least you will die as a human being, with dignity. But this is worse than death – that from the White House they make you happy. On Christmas day, a slightly bigger dose, and the whole country goes bananas! Everybody will think this must be the work of jesus or his father or the Holy Ghost.

A madman is far better – at least nobody is in control of him. But he also is not in control of himself The enlightened man is out of his mind but he has full control of his mind. And he does not need a switchboard – just his awareness is enough. If you observe anything minutely, you will have a little experience of the enlightened man – not the full experience but a little taste, just a tongue-tip taste. If you observe your anger minutely, anger disappears. You are feeling a sexual urge: watch it closely, and soon it disappears.

If just by your watching, things evaporate, what to say about the man who is continually above the mind, simply aware of the whole mind? Then all those ugly things that you would like to drop simply evaporate. And remember, they all have energy. Anger is energy. When anger evaporates, the energy which is left behind turns into compassion. It is the same energy. Through observation the anger has left – that was the mode, the form surrounding the energy – but the energy remains. Now, the energy of anger, without anger, is compassion. When sex disappears the tremendous energy of love is left behind. Each ugly thing in your mind, disappearing, leaves a great treasure behind.

The enlightened man has no need to drop anything and has no need to practice anything. All that is wrong drops of its own accord because it cannot stand up to his awareness, and all that is good evolves of its own accord because awareness is nourishment for it.

The madman can be helped very easily because he has tasted something out of the mind, but he needs to be shown the right door.

In a better world our madhouses will not only be trying to make those people sane – that is meaningless – our madhouses will be trying to help those people to use that opportunity to move through the right door. A madman going into a madhouse will come out enlightened – not just the same old self again, miserable, suffering.

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So, to me, madness has immense significance. It can become a way towards enlightenment. It should be used as a means. Yes, there is a tremendous difference between the two. The madman is only happy, and not knowing why; the enlightened man is blissful, and knowing perfectly well why.

He cannot be cured because he is not sick; he is incurable.

My father used to tell me, ”You are incurable.”

I said, ”You are right, because I am not sick. You are curable because you are sick.” He used to say that because he could not convince me about certain things he wanted me to do. For example, he wanted me to get married. Naturally, when I came back from the university he wanted me to get married. But he had no courage to say anything to me, or ask, ”What about marriage?” because he knew already that it was going to become a great argument and there would be difficulty.

He thought, ”It is better not to hear ’no’ directly from him, because once he says ’no’ then there is no way to change it into ’yes.’ So I will keep at least one possibility open: I have not asked him yet, I will let others ask first.”

He asked one of his friends who was a supreme court advocate – and he asked him because he was known all over the country. It was known that he had never been defeated in any case in his whole life, he had always been victorious. So my father said to him, he gave him a challenge: ”Here is a case – my boy: you have to convince him about marriage.” The advocate said, ”That is a simple matter. I will come tomorrow.” My father said, ”My friend is coming and he wants to meet you.” I said, ”I know why he wants to meet me – let him come!” My father said, ”How do you know?”

I said, ”Don’t be worried. It is something to do with marriage.” It was that time he told me, ”You are incurable. How did you manage to know?”

I said, ”It is simple guesswork – no need to be a prophet. Why would you bring that idiot to me? You have never brought him before. I have just come from university, finished with university, and I knew from the very beginning that the first thing when I got back home would be the question of marriage.

I have just arrived home and tomorrow he is coming. Let him come!” The advocate came. He started arguing the way he must be arguing in the supreme court. I said,

”You understand one thing first: if you convince me about marriage I will get married, I will be absolutely ready. Convinced, there is no problem. But if I convince you that it is wrong, then are you going to divorce your wife or not? This should be settled, otherwise it is an unbalanced case: only I am the loser. What is at stake? You put your wife, I am putting my life. You are not putting much more than me. I am putting my life – you put your wife.” He said, ”Then I will have to think about it.

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I said, ”No, no need to think about it. Don’t be such a coward. I leave it to you because I believe you are a just man, a fair man. I have always called you my uncle, and I trust you just as I trust my father. So I am not asking for a judge: I leave it to you to make the judgment about whether I am victorious or defeated. Your judgment I will accept.” He said, ”Still, wait. You are putting me into difficulties. You are making me judge also; that is tricky because you are challenging my fairness. You are also saying,’I have have been calling you my uncle and I trust you,’ so you are challenging my integrity. And the real thing is that I have never thought about it, about marriage, because this has never been a case in my life – to convince somebody about marriage. And because you have put it that way, perhaps you are right... because my wife is such a pain in the neck!

”You may convince me; in fact, inside I am already convinced that if I had not got into this trouble it would have been far better. So there is a possibility you may bring my own inner conviction up.

To be truthful with you, don’t bother about marriage, because it is really a trouble. Drop this thing completely. I will try to console your father, to get him to leave you alone.” My father said to him, ”I told you before that you may have been victorious in all your cases but my son is incurable, he is simply impossible.”

The advocate said, ”You are right, because even before starting the argument I was defeated. We had not argued. In fact he managed to have me tell him, ’Don’t get married.’ He reminded me about my wife, and he knows everything about me and my wife, so I could not cheat him and could not lie in front of him. He knows everything. And he had said,’I put my life on one side, you put your wife on the other side.’ In fact I would have liked to lose the case, but my wife and my children and my whole family... it is too much. You forget about this boy – leave him alone.” If you can see the total aspect of anything, no problem arises. The problems arise because you see only one aspect and you don’t see the other aspects. A bird’s eye view is needed; and that is where the enlightened man is different from the madman. The madman has no vision, he has fallen into darkness; he is blind.

The enlightened man has risen into light and he has nothing but eyes, opening into all dimensions.

He can see anything from all possible viewpoints simultaneously; hence, his answer is immediate.

He has not to think about the answer: even before the question arises, the answer is there, because his vision is clear.

He can see far and wide. His whole life is transparent.

He has gone above the mechanical mind into a non-mechanical consciousness.

You can destroy the brain, then the mind will be finished; but you cannot destroy consciousness because it is not dependent on the brain or the brain system You can destroy the body, you can destroy the brain, but if you have been able to free your consciousness from both, you know you are intact, untouched; not even a dent has been made on you.

Mansoor could laugh even on the cross. A man in the crowd asked, ”Why are you laughing?” From Personality to Individuality

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He said, ”I am laughing because they are crucifying somebody else, but they think it is me. I am just as much a watcher as you all are. You are watching Al-Hillaj Mansoor being crucified; I am also watching – we are all watchers. But these people who are crucifying Al-Hillaj Mansoor, they think they are crucifying me. That’s why I am laughing – at how blind mankind is. They are killing somebody else thinking that he is me.”

An enlightened man can laugh even while dying.

Even death is just a laughing matter, because his experience proves that he is above time, above changes, above forms, that he is universal, that he is part of the whole continent of consciousness.

Even death is just a coming back home.

The second question? My hands are not tired yet!

Question 2

OSHO,

ARE THE HOLY SCRIPTURES JUST USELESS? AND ARE THEY HOLY OR NOT?

THE holy scriptures are not just useless, they are absolutely harmful. If they were just useless there would be no need to be concerned with them.

They are positively harmful.

They are

preventing people from becoming religious because they make people knowledgeable, and people start thinking that knowledgeability is wisdom, it is enlightenment. Because they know about great words, theological doctrines, dogmas, philosophies, naturally they think, What else is there to know?

You have crammed the whole BIBLE or GITA or KORAN; then what else is there? And by cramming the KORAN, the GITA, or the BIBLE, you have not gained anything.

So the holy scriptures are not just useless. If they were useless there would be no harm: they could be preserved in libraries where many other useless books are preserved. I have read so many useless books – but they have to be preserved. They are useless only, they are not harmful.

But about holy scriptures I cannot say that they should be preserved. They should be completely destroyed. As far as you are concerned, at least within you, you should make a bonfire of all holy scriptures, because unless you burn all that nonsense you will never be able to know your innocence, you will never be able to know the beauty of your ignorance. And out of that innocent ignorance arises knowing. It is not out of knowledge that knowing comes.

Knowledge hinders knowing because it pretends to be knowing.

Ignorance is sincere, honest. It has no pretensions about it: it simply is ignorance.

And because it is honest, true, sincere, it opens you, makes you available to know; makes you capable of seeing. Your eyes are no more covered with knowledge, thick garbage.

No, the holy scriptures are not just useless, they are positively harmful.

And you ask me: are they holy? Yes, they are one hundred percent holy: fifty percent holy cow dung fifty percent holy bullshit!

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CHAPTER 18

The good shepherd – the butcher’s friend

16 January 1985 pm in Lao Tzu Grove

Question 1

OSHO,

ARE YOU ESPECIALLY AGAINST CHRISTIANITY?

I hate to favor Christianity with any special attention but unfortunately it deserves it. It is the ugliest manifestation of religion on the earth, for many reasons.

The first: Christianity is the only well-organized religion.

The more a religion is well-organized, the less is the possibility of its being a religion.

Truth, by its very nature, cannot be organized.

To organize truth, or to kill it, mean the same thing.

Truth is alive when organization is only functional, loose. Christianity’s organization is very tight, bureaucratic, hierarchical. Because of this kind of organization, it has become more a game of power politics than the flowering of religious qualities.

In the past two thousand years Christianity has done more harm to humanity than any other religion.

Mohammedanism has tried to compete with it but has not been successful. It came very close but Christianity still remains on the top. It has slaughtered people, burned people alive. In the name of 307

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God, truth, religion, it has been killing and slaughtering people – for their own sake, for their own good.

And when the murderer is murdering you for your own good, then he has no feeling of guilt at all. On the contrary, he feels he has done a good job. He has done some service to humanity, to God, to all the great values of love, truth, freedom. He feels excited. He feels that he is now a better human being. When crimes are being used for people to feel better human beings, that is the worst that can happen to anybody. Now he will be doing evil, thinking it is good. He will be destroying good, thinking it is good.

This is the worst kind of indoctrination that Christianity has put into people’s minds. The idea of the crusade, of a religious war, is a great contribution of Christianity. Mohammedanism learned it from Christianity; they cannot claim to be the originators of the idea. They call it jehad, holy war, but they came five hundred years later than Jesus. Christianity had already created in people’s minds the idea that a war too can be religious.

Now, war as such is irreligious.

There cannot be anything like a crusade, a jehad, a holy war.

If you call war holy, then what is left to be called unholy?

This is a strategy to destroy people’s thinking. The moment they think of crusade, they don’t think there is anything wrong: they are fighting for God against the devil. And there is no God and no devil

– you are simply fighting and killing people. And what business is it of yours anyway? If God cannot destroy the devil, do you think you can? If God is impotent and cannot destroy the devil, then can this polack pope do it? Can these Christians do it? Can Jesus do it? And for eternity God has lived with the devil.

Even now the forces of evil are far more powerful than the forces of good, for the simple reason that the forces of good are also in the hands of the forces of evil.

Calling war religious, holy, is the cause of war – because the first world war happened in the Christian context, the second world war happened in the Christian context, and the third world war is going to happen in the Christian context.

There are other religions also, but why did these two great wars happen in the Christian context?

Christianity cannot save itself from taking the responsibility. Once you create the idea that war can be holy then you cannot monopolize the idea.

Adolf Hitler was saying to his people, ”This war is holy”; it was a crusade. He was simply using Christianity’s contribution. He was a Christian, and he believed himself to be the reincarnation of the prophet, Elijah. He thought himself equal to Jesus Christ, perhaps better, because what Jesus could not do, he was trying to do. All that Jesus succeeded in doing was getting crucified. Adolf Hitler was almost successful. If he had succeeded – which was ninety-nine percent possible, just by one percent he missed – then the whole world would have been purified of all that is Jewish, of all that is non-Christian. What would have remained?

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And do you know? – Adolf Hitler was blessed by the German archbishop, who told him, ”You are going to win because Christ is with you and God is with you.” And the same fools were blessing Winston Churchill, saying, ”God is with you and Christ is with you – you are sure to win.” The same fools, even bigger ones, were in the Vatican, because the Vatican is just part of Rome, and Mussolini was being blessed by the pope – a representative, an infallible representative, of Jesus Christ.

One can think the German archbishop is not infallible, the archbishop of England is not infallible –

we can forgive them, fallible people – what about the pope, who for centuries has been claimed by the Christians to be infallible? Now, this infallible pope blesses Mussolini for victory because ”he is fighting for Jesus Christ and God” – and Mussolini and Adolf Hitler are one party. Together they are trying to win the whole world.

Perhaps the pope was hoping that if Mussolini wins then Christianity will have a chance to become the universal religion. They have been trying for two thousand years to make Christianity the universal religion, to destroy all other religions. It is not only that Christianity has contributed to the idea of war....

In Jainism there is no question of holy war.

Every war is unholy.

You may be fighting in the name of religion, but fighting itself is irreligious.

Buddhism has no idea of any holy war; hence, Jainism and Buddhism have never contributed to any single war – and their history is very long. Jainism at least for ten thousand years has been in existence and has not had a single war, holy or unholy. Buddhism is also older than Christianity, five hundred years older, and has as big a membership as Christianity – because except India, the whole of Asia is Buddhist – but not a single war. There has not been a single instance of any Buddhist priest blessing any kind of war.

Wars have been there; politicians have been there in those countries too. They have been fighting –

Japan and China have been fighting and both are Buddhist – but neither Japanese Buddhist priests nor Chinese Buddhist priests were in any way involved, not even by giving a blessing. These people show a little bit of courage. And the pope seems to be absolutely hocus-pocus. He has no guts.

In India, a few years back, China attacked India. For the first time in the whole history of India, a Jaina acharya, head of one of the Jaina sects, blessed the government, the Indian government. His name is Acharya Tulsi.

I had to fight against him, criticizing him; I went all over the country telling people, ”this man should be defrocked and removed from his headship because he has committed a crime for which, in ten thousand years, no single Jaina priest has ever been blamed. This man is a politician – this man is not religious.”

I talked to Acharya Tulsi and I told him, ”If you had any sense of dignity you would resign from the headship, because you have acted like a politician. What business was it of yours? Who has asked you to bless India against China? For a religious man, political boundaries should not mean From Personality to Individuality

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anything. India is yours, China is yours; and if they are fighting, let them fight. You should rather pray that this war stops, that some wisdom comes to these fools – both parties. That would be religious.” And I told him, ”You are acting more like a Christian pope than like a Jaina priest.” He was angry with me, but he had no substantial argument. I said, ”Anger is not an answer to me; it is simply an acceptance of defeat. And why do you go on hanging about in the capital, in New Delhi?

Has this whole, vast country no interest for you? You should go out to people, and you are simply remaining in New Delhi.” There was only one reason for that: in New Delhi he had rich supporters.

Jainas are rich people, and those rich people have power over politicians. Even a man like Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi’s father, who was a very powerful man – even he had to come to see Acharya Tulsi, because those Jainas could give donations to his party, in milE lions, and they were pressuring him to come.

Of course, the head priest of their religion could not come to the prime minister. So Jawaharlal Nehru had to go to him, just because those people were the people who would be supporting him in the next election; otherwise in the next election they would all turn to the opposite parties. And what did Acharya Tulsi do? He was going to do the same to me but I prevented him. The Jaina acharya, the head, or the Jaina monk, is above humanity, he is a superman, so when you greet him in the t Indian way of saluting, you do namaskar before him with both your hands folded. He will not answer your namaskar in the same way, as is expected from everybody else: he will just bless you with one hand. Now, Jawaharlal had no idea of what Acharya Tulsi was doing continually. He went up to him, and just as simple etiquette he did namaskar. Acharya Tulsi put his hand over Jawaharlal’s head, and the photographer who is always there with Acharya Tulsi immediately took a photograph!

A calendar was immediately published and all over India was distributed free – a beautiful colored calendar of Acharya Tulsi blessing Jawaharlal, with Jawaharlal standing with bowed down head and folded hands. I saw that calendar, and I could also see in the calendar the embarrassment on Jawaharlal’s face and the joy on Acharya Tulsi’s face. But poor Jawaharlal could not do anything

– it all happened so quickly. The photograph had been taken and it would have looked odd to say something.

The same people, when I was passing through New Delhi, pestered me, saying, ”You have to come to see Acharya Tulsi.”

I said, ”If he wants to see me he should come. Why should I go to him? I have no desire to see him.” Then they pestered my host. He was an old man, and he loved me so much that he said to me, ”They are really anxious for you to meet him, and what is the harm?” I said, ”You don’t really know me, and you have never seen me encountering such people. Don’t say anything to me later on!” – because he was also a Jaina. ”I am willing to come, but what will transpire there only God knows, and there is no God. In fact, nobody knows.” When we say God knows, it means nobody knows... just a nice way of saying nobody knows.

He said, ”Nothing wrong will happen. Come.”

I said, ”You don’t know. I am not saying that something is expected from that person. No, I am saying that anything that happens will come from me.” But he could not understand, so we went.

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All Acharya Tulsi’s rich disciples were there, and he was sitting on a high pedestal. But I did not do the namaskar – I had seen that calendar before – I just held my hand over his head. Now he was embarrassed; what to do? And I told the photographer, ”Go on, you are not to stop. You do your job.”

I went to the photographer’s studio; of course I could not get that negative. He said, ”What to do? What you did was really a great thing! I hate this man. But you did the right thing – nobody has done that yet. And this is his whole strategy. All politicians, presidents, prime ministers, ministers, governors, ambassadors from other countries, are brought to him and told, ‘his is the way to approach him.’ So those poor fellows approach him that way, and then he blesses them with the photographer there.” The photographer said, ”Someone did the right thing for the first time; and Acharya Tulsi was in such a confusion about what to do.” Now, when I was giving him my blessing he could not give me a blessing: he was in shock! And when I told the photographer, he took the photograph. ”But,” he said, ”before I left they took the reel; they forced me to give them the reel. They said,’That photograph is not to go out.”’

But I told Acharya Tulsi, ”what are you doing here in New Delhi? All this show business is political.

And blessing India shows simply that you are not a man who joins the universal consciousness, you live within boundaries.” But this is the only instance of Jaina involvement in politics, and no Hindu shankaracharya has ever blessed a war.

Now, Christianity deserves all the credit for making war, the most ugly thing in human life, holy.

And then behind the name of a crusade you can do everything: rape women, burn people alive, kill innocent children, old people – anything. This is a blanket term, a cover: a holy war, a crusade.

But what actually happens behind it? All atomic weapons, nuclear weapons, are produced in the Christian context.

It is not that the world lacks intelligence.

If China can produce Confucius, Lao Tzu, Chuang

Tzu, Mencius, Lieh Tzu, there is no reason why China cannot produce an Albert Einstein, a Lord Rutherford. There is no reason at all, because Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu, Lao Tzu, Mencius, Confucius

– any of them is a thousand fold wiser than Jesus or Moses. They are simply pygmies compared to these people. If such geniuses can be created by China, then there is no reason why China cannot create atomic scientists. And do you know, China was the first in creating the printing press? In China the printing press has been in existence for three thousand years.

In India, if they can produce a man like Patanjali, who single-handedly has produced the whole system of yoga; if they could produce Gautam the Buddha, Mahavira the Jaina, Shankara, Nagarjuna – great philosophers; there is no one comparable from the West, not a single person can be held up in comparison to Gautam Buddha. And it is not only philosophers. If you compare Patanjali of five thousand years ago with any physiologist of today, you will find that the physiologist knows nothing compared to Patanjali.

Three thousand years ago in India, Sushrut, a great physician and surgeon, existed. In his books he describes the most intricate surgery that is possible only today – even brain surgery, and with all the instruments. If these people could produce that. what was missing? Why were they not trying to produce atom bombs? India produced mathematics, without which no science is possible. That’s From Personality to Individuality

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why in all the languages you still follow the Indian digital system, because it was produced first in India: the numbers one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

In Sanskrit nine is nava, eight is asth, seven is Sanskrit sapt, six is Sanskrit cha, three is Sanskrit thri, English two is Sanskrit dwa which became twa in Latin, and from twa turned to two. All these numbers in all the languages come from Sanskrit.

Seven thousand years ago they created the basis of mathematics, but they never used their mathematical understanding for destructive purposes. They used it for creative purposes because no religion there was giving them the incentive to war. All religions were saying war is ugly – about that there was no dispute – and those countries were not going to support any program, any project, any research, which was going to lead them into war.

The first astronomical book was written in India four thousand years ago. Those people were far ahead of the West. Four thousand years ago the West did not even have a single name to mention.

The greatest names in the West are not more then twenty-five centuries old. Perhaps with Socrates your greatest name happens, but Socrates was three or four thousand years later. What he said had already been said and what he thought he was contributing to thought was not new. Of course, to him it was new because he was unaware that somewhere people had already talked about this and had gone very deep into it.

I am saying this to make it clear to you that it is Christianity which is responsible for giving science the incentive to war. If Christianity had created an atmosphere of non-violence, and had not called war holy, then we would have avoided these two world wars; and without those two, certainly the third could not happen. Those two are absolutely necessary steps for the third; they have led you already towards the third. You are geared for it, and there is no possibility to come back, to turn back.

Not only has science been corrupted by Christianity, Christianity itself has given birth to strange ideologies, either directly, or as a reaction. In both ways it is responsible. Poverty has existed in the world for thousands of years, but communism is a Christian contribution. And don’t be misguided by the fact that Karl Marx was a Jew, because Jesus was also a Jew. If a Jew can create Christianity....

The context of Karl Marx is Christian, it is not Jewish. The idea was given by Jesus Christ. The moment he said, ”blessed are the poor for they shall inherit the kingdom of God,” he sowed the seed of communism.

Nobody has said it so straight, because to say it so straight you need a crazy man like me – who can call a spade not only a spade but a fucking spade! What is there in just calling a spade a spade?

Once Jesus created the idea that ”Blessed are the poor for they shall inherit the kingdom of God,” it was child’s play to change it to the more practical and pragmatic communism. What Marx says in essence is, ”blessed are the poor for theirs is the earth.” He is simply changing some spiritual jargon into practical politics.

”Kingdom of God” – who knows whether it exists or not? But why waste this opportunity when you can have the kingdom of earth? The whole of communism is based on that single statement of Jesus. It is just a little turn, throwing away the esoteric nonsense and bringing practical politics into From Personality to Individuality

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it. Yes, blessed are the poor because theirs is the whole kingdom of this earth – that’s what Karl Marx is saying.

Strange, that nowhere else – in the context of Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, Taoism or Confucianism – does communism appear; it appears only in the context of Christianity. It is not just accidental, because you can see fascism also appears in the context of Christianity. Socialism, Fabian socialism, Nazism – all are Christian children, kids of Jesus Christ. Either directly influenced by him... because he is the man who says, ”in my kingdom of God a camel can pass through the eye of a needle but a rich man cannot enter through the gates.” What do you think about this man? Is he not a communist? If he is not a communist then who is? Even Karl Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin or Mao Tse-tung, have not made that strong a statement: A rich man cannot enter into the kingdom of God. And you see the comparison he makes? It is possible for a camel – this is impossible – to pass through the eye of a needle. He says even that is possible, but the entrance of a rich man into the kingdom of God is impossible. If it is impossible there, why leave them here? – make it impossible here too. That’s what Marx did.

In fact what theoretically Jesus provided, Marx gave a practical turn. But the original theoretician was Jesus. Karl Marx may not have even recognized it, but in no other context is communism possible. In no other context is Adolf Hitler possible. In India if you want to declare yourself a man of God, you cannot be an Adolf Hitler. You cannot even participate in politics, you cannot even be a voter. You cannot destroy millions of Jews, or millions of people belonging to other religions and still claim that you are a reincarnation of an ancient prophet, Elijah.

In India there have been thousands of people declaring that they are incarnations, that they are prophets, tirthankaras, but they have to prove it by their lives too. Maybe they are phony, most of them are – but even then, nobody can be an Adolf Hitler and still say that he is a prophet, that he is a religious man.

I received a threatening letter from somewhere in America. I had never thought about it, that there is, in America, a Nazi party. The president of the American Nazi party wrote a letter to me saying,

”We have been hearing you speak against Adolf Hitler – that hurts our religious feeling.” I am rarely amazed but I was amazed: their religious feeling! ”Because to us Adolf Hitler is the prophet Elijah, and we hope that you will not hurt our religious feeling in future.” I told Sheela, ”Now I am especially going to hurt them more. I was not aware of that, that religious feelings are hurt by speaking about or criticizing Adolf Hitler.” You cannot think of this happening in India or China or Japan – impossible But in a Christian context it is possible: not only possible, it has already happened.

And if Hitler had won the war, all these Americans and all these Russians and all these British people would be worshipping him as God. He would have been proclaimed as having overcome the world and changed the whole of humanity into Christianity. And he would have changed it; he had the power.

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been the Christianity of Jesus Christ; it would have been the Christianity of Adolf Hitler. The BIBLE

would not have been the holy book any more. Hitler’s autobiography, MY STRUGGLE – what do you call it, Prasad, MEIN KAMPF? Okay – that would have been the holy book.

Christianity has exploited more people than any other religion. Just two or three days ago Sheela brought me three pieces of information. One was that Mother Teresa has praised the government of Oregon because they sent a trivial gift of some food packages to the hungry people of Ethiopia Mother Teresa knows I am here. Not only does she know I am here; because I am here she accepted an invitation from a small group who are trying to create a commune against me near The Dalles.

It is difficult – how to create a commune against me? So they have brought Gandhi’s – Mahatma Gandhi’s – grandson from India. Good ideal He will be the center of the commune, and it will be a Gandhian commune. Mother Teresa was going to inaugurate it, and they must have told her what the purpose of this commune is. The whole purpose is.... There is this whole world, and Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson finds Wasco County in which to open a commune. For Gandhi there is as much land available as they want in India; the government is Gandhian, everything is in Gandhian hands.

They can have as many funds as needed – millions are given to them every year.

In India there is not a single commune of Gandhi’s. Even his own old ashramas are empty, nobody lives there. Now they are just on exhibition, memorials. A few servants are kept to preserve them for visitors to see, for tourist purposes. Do you think it can be just a coincidence that they come to Wasco County? And do you know who is supporting them? The man who lives on the other side of our river – he is giving them the whole money! He purchased this place near The Dalles also just to create some commune against us, but he could not find enough people. And even the grandson of Gandhi was not courageous enough to come so close.

Mother Teresa was willing to come to open it, but in the end she refused because what happened was that the people of The Dalles became against them, just as they are against us, thinking that these Indians are simply trying to take over Wasco County. They could not understand the purpose of those people, and the people could not say directly that they have come just to destroy my commune. So the people in The Dalles simply thought that this is just another trouble.

Mother Teresa had come to Washington; she was just going to fly up and do the opening ceremony.

But from Washington she turned back. She said, ”I have some urgent work,” because, finding that the people of The Dalles – Christians – were against it, she would not take an unnecessary risk.

But praising Oregon’s government for a small meaningless gift that they have sent to Ethiopia! If she had not praised them, nobody would have even known that Oregon had sent anything, because it was not something big – millions of dollars or anything. Some powdered milk and goods have reached Ethiopia from all over the world, but she chooses only Oregon to praise. She wants the Oregon government to have some rapport with her so she can influence them against me. But she need not be worried; they are already against me. Whatever more is needed I am doing. I never take anybody’s help.

The second bit of news Sheela brought to me was that in the 1983 fiscal year a Christian organization, I.C.A. – International Christian Aid – collected thirty-four million dollars to help Ethiopia.

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dollars they collected. Not a single cent has reached Ethiopia: the whole of the money simply disappeared!

The president of I.C.A. was asked, ”what happened to the money? Thirty-four million dollars and nothing has reached Ethiopia?” They said, ”Our policy is not to give to the government; we send the support from independent agencies, so we have sent the whole money through an independent agency in France, an association of doctors called ’Doctors without Borders.’” When the president of ”doctors without Borders” was asked, he said, aWe have received not a single cent, and we don’t know who these people are.” This is what Christianity has been doing down the ages in the name of the poor, in the name of the orphans, in the name of hungry people.

In’84, they collected nearabout fifty-five million dollars again, and nothing is known what happened to those fifty-five million dollars either.

And the third piece of news was just hilarious. The Olympics that happened in L.A. just a few months ago was organized by a Christian association, again to help the hungry people of Ethiopia. Ethiopia is great! They should remain always hungry – they help so many people. They should be kept always hungry. And of course, all the money that was going to be earned by the Olympics was going to Ethiopia. Nobody knows how much money was collected – it must have been billions of dollars – but the whole of the money has simply disappeared!

And the great idea those people had! They had collected the whole of the money – all kinds of bills, small, big – the way you collect wheat or other foodstuffs, in big metal cans, just like we collect our own food here. It was so much money that small safes wouldn’t do: it was collected in big, the largest possible, metal containers. And after the Olympics, when the containers were opened, the money was missing.

The newspaper cutting Sheela brought had a comment at the end: ”Perhaps hungry rats have eaten it. What else?” So it has reached hungry people somehow – if not in Ethiopia, then hungry rats here.

But I don’t think rats are interested in eating money; and even if they eat it, they won’t eat it so totally that not even a fragment of it is left. The containers were absolutely clean. The hungry rats seem to be very hygienic: they must have eaten the money and then cleaned up. Now, it is thought that perhaps a second Olympics should be arranged because those Ethiopian hungry people are still hungry.

These Christian associations and churches are serving people so desperately. They don’t ask you whether you want to be served or not, they simply go on serving you. They remind me of the man I have told you about, the opium addict barber in front of my house, Natthu Kaka.

In India it is almost a tradition, in barber’s shops or hotels or tea shops, to keep all kinds of papers, newspapers, magazines. So people come to look at a magazine and a newspaper, and by the way when they are there they will drink tea, or eat a samosa or something; while they are there reading they will have something. So Natthu Kaka used to have papers, and sometimes people would come.

It would always be only the strangers, because nobody who knew him would even come close to him. A stranger, maybe somebody from outside the city, an agent from some company, an insurance company or some pharmaceutical company, would enter his shop – and he had a beautiful place –

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and they would start reading the magazines. Then Natthu Kaka would start shaving them, without even asking them. He always started from the head, and by the time the man was aware, a corner of his head would be clean and he would say, ”What are you doing!” Natthu Kaka would say, ”Don’t be worried. If you don’t want to pay, don’t pay; at the most, if you don’t want to pay, don’t pay.” But now the man could not go half-shaved – that would be more ridiculous –

so he would say, ”What kind of man are you?”

Natthu Kaka would say, ”There is no problem. It is just that having nobody else, I go on practicing on anybody. And it is not necessary for you to pay: if you want to pay, you can pay; if you don’t want to pay it is okay. Just for my practice....”

I had seen it happen so many times that I told Natthu Kaka, ”You are almost a Christian.” He said, ”What do you mean? I am a Hindu.”

I said, ”No, you are not a Hindu, you are a Christian; you don’t even ask people whether they want to be shaved or not, you just start shaving.”

Christians have been trying to save the world – but who has given you the authority to save anybody?

Even if you save without asking for payment, who has given you the authority? No, they have the authority from Jesus, and Jesus had the authority from God himself I have thought many times: if Jesus had entered Natthu Kaka’s salon, Natthu Kaka would have shaved him free, and then Jesus would have understood that it is not right to save somebody without asking him.

I am not paying special attention to Christianity, but it deserves it. It has done so much harm, so much nuisance. It is impossible to believe that people still go on keeping it alive. The churches should be demolished, the Vatican should be completely removed. There is no need of these people. Whatever they have done they have done wrong. Other religions have also done wrong, but proportionately they are nothing compared to Christianity.

It has been exploiting the poverty of people to convert them to Christianity. Yes, Buddhism has converted people, but not because people were hungry and you provided them food, and because you provided them food they started feeling obliged to you. If you provide them clothes, if you provide them other facilities – education for their children, hospitals for their sick people – naturally they feel obliged. And then you start asking them, ”what has Hinduism done for you? What has Buddhism done for you?”

Naturally, Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism have never opened a hospital, a school; they have never done any such service. This is the only argument. And those people are so obliged that they feel certainly no other religion has been of any help to them, and they become Christians. This is not an honest way, this is bribing people. This is not conversion, this is buying people because they are poor. You are taking advantage of their poverty.

Buddhism has converted millions of people, but that was through Buddhism’s intelligence. The conversion happened at the top. You will see that difference. Buddhism converted kings, emperors, masters, great writers, poets and painters; and because the king of the society became Buddhist, From Personality to Individuality

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seeing that the intelligent people, even the emperor, had become Buddhist, others followed.

Buddhists argued in the courts of emperors. If the emperor was a follower of some religion, the Buddhists argued, and they were ready, if they were defeated in argument, to be converted to the religion the emperor followed. But if the Buddhists won, then the emperor and his whole court had to be converted to Buddhism. This is honest, intelligible, rational procedure.

Jainas have converted emperors. Their first effort was to change the cream, the highest strata, because that makes it simple: then the people who follow those people naturally understand that if their topmost intelligentsia are becoming Jainas that means their religion is not able to argue for its doctrines, its standpoint. Never before Christianity has this been done – converting the lowest strata. But you can see the difference. When the highest strata of the society was converted, the whole society followed.

When the Chinese emperor, Wu, and his court were converted to Buddhism, just because the court had the topmost intellectuals of the country and they were all defeated one by one – they could not answer – the whole of China was converted. They were Confucians, they were Taoists, but they were converted; they could not answer the Buddhist monk. The emperor had simply to surrender –

this seems to be a human, intelligent way – and then the whole country followed automatically.

The emperor goes to the feet of the Buddha, his court goes to the feet of the Buddha; the emperor’s son and daughter become monks and nuns of a Buddhist order. The whole country simply understands that what they have been following up to now, these people they were following, have proved wrong. Something better has arrived – something more sophisticated, something more logical and rational. It changed the whole society.

In India or in China, or anywhere, Christians have approached the lowest strata. But that does not change the whole society, remember, because who bothers about those beggars you change? They are not leaders, they are not the intelligentsia of the society; they are not even capable enough to earn food for themselves. They are just retarded.

To be poor is not just accidental. You need to have certain qualifications to be poor, just as you need certain qualifications to be rich. Even if you inherit riches and you don’t have such qualities, then within two or three generations you will be poor. It is possible that your father had the qualities to create money; he created the money and you simply inherited, and you don’t have any qualities to create money. Remember, either you create, or whatsoever you have will be gone soon. You cannot remain static; either you grow upwards or you fall downwards – you cannot remain in the same position. So you can see: the people who are rich, by the fourth generation may be poor.

And it is not necessary that a poor man remains poor. Very poor people have risen to the highest possibilities of richness. You need a certain caliber, a certain quality. To me, just as a painter is born, a poet is born, a sculptor is born, a dancer is born, so a rich man is also born. Whether he is born in a rich house or a poor house does not matter: he will be rich, he will find ways. Even in countries like India where society is so stratified that mobility is almost impossible, there are people who have been able to move.

The man who wrote India’s constitution after freedom, Doctor Babasaheb Ambedkar, was a sudra, an untouchable. By his sheer effort and stubbornness he fought in every possible way and attained From Personality to Individuality

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to the best legal qualifications possible in his time. He became one of the best legal experts in the whole world.

The Hindu society has followed a constitution written five thousand years ago by a brahmin intellectual, Manu. He was certainly one of the geniuses, so much so that his name, Manu, became almost equivalent to intelligence. Hence in India and in English also, the word man comes from Manu. The Hindi word for man is manushya; that comes from Manu. The word for mind is man; that comes from Manu. He proved to be such a great giant that his name became equivalent to intelligence, to humanity. Now, the English word human, if you derive it from the Latin simply means mud, humus. It is better to derive it from Manu, then it means intelligence; and certainly It does come from Manu.

Manu wrote the Hindu code of life, the constitution that has been followed by Hindus for five thousand years without fail, without any change. Manu would have never thought, or dreamed even, that one day the next constitution would be written by an untouchable. Manu does not allow, in his constitution, for an untouchable sudra – the lowest, the fourth class —Of the society – he does not allow him even to read. He is prohibited from reading because there is no need for him to read or to write. His work is either to make shoes, or to clean the latrines, clean the roads,,l and things like that. They don’t need great intelligence, qualifications, university degrees, and Manu had prohibited them from getting them. And even if they somehow managed to read they were absolutely prohibited from reading religious scriptures. The sentence was nothing less than the death penalty. And many untouchables have been killed because they were tryIng to understand the scriptures.

Ambedkar was a sudra, but he tried hard – he wouldn’t listen to anybody. He was ready to do anything, or to die; these were the only alternatives. And he proved himself a great giant: in every class, in every examination, he was always on top. And it was impossible to refuse him entry into a further class; it was impossible to refuse him a scholarship, because others were lagging far behind, there was no way. He got all the scholarships possible.

He went to England on a scholarship, and in England he also came top in his examinations. When India became free, they could not find another person who was a better expert as far as law is concerned than Ambedkar. This is really a good slap on Manu’s face, that Ambedkar wrote the constitution of India – a good hit to all the brahmins.

He was the chairman of the constituent assembly. Brahmins were only members; he was the chairman, and whatsoever he said became the law because he was a man who could not be refuted on legal grounds. That was impossible.

I was saying that even in a society like India where stratification has gone so deep that mobility is not allowed.... It is not like America or Europe where you can move from one profession to another profession without any difficulty. A fisherman can become a cloth merchant, a cloth merchant can become a university professor, a university professor can become a shoemaker, or whatsoever he wants to. There is no problem, it is up to you what you want to do.

But in India that is not so. The profession is passed down from generation to generation; you inherit it. Your father was a shoemaker, his father was a shoemaker. From the very beginning... perhaps Adam was a shoemaker. And your children will be shoemakers; there is no question about it. But even in such a society if a man has guts he can rise to any height.

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Kabir was even worse than a sudra because he was abandoned by his parents, perhaps both the mother and father. He was just an illegitimate child like Jesus. Perhaps illegitimate children have a certain quality of religiousness, because Kabir is in no way inferior to Jesus; perhaps he may prove superior. He was left on the bank of the Ganges by his mother or his father – nobody knows. Nobody knows to what caste he belonged; nobody knows whether he was Hindu or Mohammedan.

But he was a man of immense courage and quality, because being an illegitimate child in India, it is very difficult even to exist. Being an illegitimate child, his caste is not known, his religion was not known. He might have been a Mohammedan, and perhaps he was a Mohammedan, because Kabir is not a Hindu name. He was found by a Hindu monk, Ramananda.

Ramananda had just gone to take his morning bath, early, when it was still dark, and he stumbled over a child. He brought the child back with him to his ashram. Many people tried to persuade him that it was not good: ”we don’t know the child’s caste, but you are a brahmin and your disciples are brahmins; it will create unnecessary scandal and trouble for you.” He said, ”That doesn’t matter. This poor child, where can I leave him? If it creates any scandal it is perfectly okay. What does it matter to me? If people don’t come to me, so far so good.” Ramananda was a courageous man. People stopped coming to him and disciples left him because he was keeping somebody – nobody knew who he was. All kinds of rumors started going around: ”Perhaps he is his own child,” or ”Why is he so interested that he is ready to destroy his career? He was becoming famous all over the country as one of the greatest masters; now he is spoiling all his career.”

To non-religious people, religion also appears as a career. Only to a religious person is religion not a career. It is not a profession; it is your way of life, it is your very life, your very being. Careers and professions are very mundane and outside things.

Religion is your very heart.

Ramananda did not bother about what people were saying; he brought up Kabir. Kabir was not very small when he was found. He could say his name and speak a few words, but he had no knowledge of his father’s name or his mother’s name. He said if he saw them he would recognize them, but he did not know their name. Perhaps they were from some other place and they had left him in Varanasi hoping that some compassionate person may pick him up. And by chance Kabir found a really compassionate guide.

Ramananda, in the last stage of his life, said, ” have not lost anything. A]l those disciples and scholars were not worth a single Kabir. I have lost a great following, I became condemned, but it was worth it.” Kabir proved to be a real diamond; and still everybody knew he was an illegitimate child. He did not know his father or his mother, he did not know what religion he belonged to – and he did not care at all.

The maulvi is the Mohammedan priest who gives the morning call from the tower near the mosque.

Kabir says, ”Is your God deaf that you have to go up a tower and from the tower you have to shout?” And that really is the qualification necessary for a maulvi, that he can shout. In those days there were no loud speakers or things like that – one had to be a loud speaker and shout from the tower.

Kabir asks, ”Is your God deaf?”

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He has criticized Hindus, he has criticized Mohammedans, but still Mohammedans followed him, Hindus followed him. Strangely, because he had no religion, all the religions were open to him, anybody could follow him. But that people followed such a man certainly means that he had a great charisma.

Kabir lived his whole life in Varanasi.

Now, Varanasi, for Hindus is the most sacred place on the whole earth, and it certainly is the oldest city in the world. You cannot find a single Indian scripture, howsoever old it is, where Varanasi is not mentioned. It has always been there it seems. And if you go to Varanasi you can feel its ancientness; it is almost an eternal city.

Its roads are so small that cars cannot move, buses are out of the question; not even an auto-rickshaw can be used. They are so small that only a man-pulled rickshaw can pass through those streets. And when two man-pulled rickshaws are passing each other it is almost a miracle to see that they have not got stuck to each other.

The roads are so small and the houses so ancient. Their doors are so small because in old times doors were made small and steps were made big so thieves could not escape easily. If somebody is running away, the small door and big steps will stop him. You cannot run; you have to be very careful. The windows are small too – you cannot get out of them or inside through them.

Kabir lived his whole life in Varanasi. Hindus believe that if you die in Varanasi you will be born in heaven – just a simple panacea. All religions have to find some simple thing, because there are aesthetic practices but they will be followed only by a few idiots; anybody who has a little intelligence is not going to follow them. To those unintelligent people you have to give some recipe, very simple.

So if you just die in Varanasi, that’s enough, because from Varanasi you cannot go anywhere else: the route directly goes to heaven.

So people come to die in Varanasi. In Varanasi you will find old people, old women, widows, almost on the verge of death. You will not find that kind of; crowd anywhere else in the world. They have all come to die: they are certain now that there is not much time left, so they come to die in Varanasi.

But when he was sick and old, and was just on the verge of death, Kabir asked his disciples to move!

him from Varanasi and take him to Magahar. Magahar is a poor village, a very small village on the other side of Varanasi. I don’t know how it came about, but the story is that if you die in Magahar, the road directly goes to hell. Perhaps just parallel to Varanasi you have to manage a road to hell too. And Magahar is just on the other side of Ganges; on this side is Varanasi. Kabir said, ”I want to go to Magahar.”

His disciples said, ”Are you mad? You must be!”

He said, ”I have always been mad; but I cannot die in Varanasi, because if I die in Varanasi and reach heaven then what credit is it to me? The whole credit goes to Varanasi. I am going to die in Magahar and I am going to see how they can take me to hell. I am going to die in Magahar AND I am going to heaven; otherwise I am going to create hell there.” From Personality to Individuality

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And he insisted on moving; he forced his disciples and finally they had to take him in a boat to Magahar on the other side. He died there – the only man who ever came to die in Magahar in the whole of history. His samadhi is in Magahar, and on it is written: ”I am going to heaven directly from Magahar.”

You will be surprised that after he died in Magahar, the story that people who die in Magahar go directly hell disappeared, because nobody could think, could, conceive, that Kabir could go to hell.

This was his last, act of compassion towards the people of Magahar.

Those poor people, they would not have been able to change the story; but Kabir, dying in Magahar, stopped the whole trouble about Magahar. Since then nobody says that if you die in Magahar you will go to hell, because what about the samadhi of Kabir? People go to worship there every year.

There is a great fair; almost the whole of Varanasi goes to the other side to pay respect to Magahar and to Kabir. Magahar has now become a holy place just because Kabir decided to die there.

When he was in Varanasi, Kabir was asked to preside over the great council of Hindus which once in while meets to decide matters about scriptures and commentaries. He was illiterate, he had never read any scripture, but he was asked many times to preside. He said, ”I don’t know scriptures. I don’t have any idea what is right and what is wrong, and how scriptures should be commented or not commented on; and what commentary will be in tune with tradition. ”I have no idea.” They said, ”You need not have. Just your presence makes us feel wise.... Just your presence, just your being there. You need not say a single word, but we know that because you are there we are not going to take any wrong decisions.” This is impossible to believe, but in Varanasi it can happen.

And the man was such....

So I say it is a quality in you: if you persist in Being poor, you have a certain qualification for it. A story is told in India.... What I am saying, that you born with a qualification to be poor or rich, was the belief of a certain king. His prime minister did not agree. He said, ”I don’t think that it is something to do with quality. Now, a poor man’s son – what can he do? He has to work from his very childhood, he cannot even play. There is no question of reading or studying; there is no time. By the time he is six years old he is already taking the cows to the jungle or to the river. Whatsoever he can do, he starts working – carrying wood.... He has no time, no space, no possibility.... No school will admit him, no brahmin will teach him.”

All the teachers in India used to be brahmins; even today, almost ninety percent of teachers in India are brahmins. Traditionally that is their profession, to teach. And of course they are far more trained than anybody else because from their very childhood the atmosphere has been of teaching. Their father has been teaching, their grandfather has been teaching; it has come to them as inheritance.

They are more articulate than anybody else.

The prime minister said, ”A brahmin’s son, without any qualification, becomes a teacher or becomes a priest. Your son will become the king – he will not have to prove his qualifications. And,” the prime minister said, ”I will suggest an experiment. A beggar passes along the bridge in front of our palace”

– there was a river, and a beautiful bridge along which a beggar in the early morning would pass.

For his whole life he had been begging. And you say he could have become rich. Does he have a certain qualification to be poor and a beggar?”

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The king said, ”I still believe he does. Tomorrow we will see.” The next day the king brought out a big jar full of golden coins, at least enough for seven generations of beggars. This beggar was the first man to pass by, so naturally it was put in the middle of the bridge: a golden jar, shining in the sun, open, with gold coins in it. No possibility was left that he would miss it; just in the middle of the bridge he was bound to see it. That was the place where he used to sit sometimes, but he always used to pass by that place; wherever he sat on the bridge, he was bound to pass that place.

The king and the prime minister and a few other friends were waiting on the other side to see what would happen. And strange to say, the beggar came onto the bridge, closed his eyes, and, walking past the golden jar without seeing it, reached the other side!

Even the king was puzzled. This was not expected. He had thought that his argument was going to be finished, that the prime minister had won. The jar was so visible, so shiny, that even a blind man would be able to find it; at least he would stumble upon it, put 1 in the place it was. But that man simply walked slowly f by with closed eyes. And because his eyes were dosed he had to hold the handrail of the bridge, so he did not even stumble upon the jar.

They all caught hold of him; he opened his eyes. They asked him, ”what is the matter with your eyes? We have never seen you walking across the bridge with closed eyes.” The beggar said, ”just as I was coming an idea came to me that if I become blind in my old age –

because my eyes are getting old and I cannot see rightly – will I be able to pass over this bridge and get t to the other side and sit there, even if I am blind? I thought it is better to try before; otherwise I should change and live on the other side, because if I get blind.... So I closed my eyes, and I am happy that I managed to cross the bridge perfectly safely. So even if I become blind there is no problem.”

The king said to the prime minister, ”So what do you say now?” The prime minister said, ”Now there is nothing to say – you have won the argument. This man has the qualification.”

The poor have been there always; but to exploit their poverty to increase your population is sheer politics – ugly, mean. Politics is a game of numbers. How many Christians you have in the world

– that is your power. The more Christians there are, the more power is in the hands of Christian priests, the priesthood.

Nobody is interested in saving anybody, but just in increasing the population. What Christianity has been doing is continually issuing orders from the Vatican against birth control, saying it is sin to use birth control methods; it is sin to believe in abortion or to propagate abortion, or to make it legal.

Do you think they are interested in the unborn children? They are not interested, they have nothing to do with those unborn children. They pursue their interest knowing perfectly well that if abortion is not practiced, if birth control methods are not practiced, then this whole humanity is going to commit a global suicide. And it is not so far away that you cannot see the situation. Within just fifteen years the world population will be such that it will be impossible to survive. Either you will have to go into a third world war – which will be a safer method. People will die more quickly, more easily, more From Personality to Individuality

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comfortably with nuclear weapons than with hunger, because hunger can keep you alive for ninety days, and those ninety days will be really a torture.

I know about hunger in India. Mothers have sold their children just for one rupee. Mothers have eaten their own children. You cannot conceive where hunger can lead you. And you cannot blame those people: when somebody has been hungry for thirty days and their child is continually crying and weeping and asking for miLk and food, and you cannot provide any milk, any food – you yourself are hungry and the child Is a nuisance twenty-four hours a day – what to do? A person is not in a sane state.

The mother just out of compassion may kill the child; and when she has killed it, she may see the possibility of eating it. Then at least her hunger is taken care of. It is almost impossible to believe that a mother can eat her own child, but it has been happening in countries like India and Ethiopia.

But just now, a few days ago, the Vatican has come out with a long message to humanity – one hundred and thirty-nine pages: ”Abortion is sin. Birth control is sin.” Now, nowhere in the BIBLE is abortion sin. Nowhere in the BIBLE is birth control sin, because no birth control was needed. Out of ten children, nine were going to die. That was the proportion, and that was the proportion in India just thirty or forty years ago: out of ten children, only one would survive. That was perfectly okay. Then the population was not too great, not too heavy on the resources of the earth Now, even in India – not to say anything about developed countries – even in India, out of ten children, only one dies.

So on one hand medical science goes on helping people to survive and Christianity goes on opening hospitals and distributing medicines, and Mother Teresa is there to praise you and the pope is going to bless you.... There are all kinds of associations – they are even worried about Russia. There is, in America, a Christian association called ”Underground Evangelism,” which works in communist countries to distribute BIBLES freely and to distribute these stupid ideas that abortion is sin and birth control is sin.

Somehow Russia is not starving; they are not rich but they are not starving. Please, at least leave them alone. And it is because of birth control that they are not starving. If birth control is prohibited, if abortion is prohibited, Russia will be in the same position as Ethiopia Then Mother Teresa will be very happy. Then underground evangelists will come overground – a great opportunity to convert people to Christianity.

Now, from where does this polack pope get the idea that it is sin? – because it is not in the BIBLE, it is not in any old scriptures. Has he got a new message from God? Some amendment to the BIBLE?

Should these one hundred and thirty pages be added to the BIBLE as the fifth gospel? What does he want? And who is he to decide that birth control is sin?

The pope says once a child is conceived, if abortion happens then, that child dies. That can be under stood, but at what point can the child be counted as alive? At one week can you say he is alive, he is a human being? At two weeks, three weeks? At what point does he become a human being? You have to decide at what point the child is a human being, because in the beginning he looks just like a fish, he even has a tail – and you are eating fish and animals without any trouble!

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In his last stages the child looks like a monkey. That was the reason why Charles Darwin came to the conclusion he did. He had collected all kinds of arguments; one argument, the most important one, was that in the last stages the child looks like a monkey. He even has a small tail, which falls off before his birth. And you will be surprised to know that you always have the place in your body where the tail would have been – the joining point, the point where tail would fit, is still there. The tail is not there, but the point where the tail would fit is still there.

Charles Darwin missed just one thing, he missed, coming to Oregon; otherwise he would have seen real monkeys who have not evolved, and the comparison would have been very easy. But Oregon is such a mysterious place. In my whole life I had never heard the name. Perhaps Charles Darwin also never heard the name. He left it to me to come to Oregon and see the pillar stage of humanity. It is really a place worth, studying. It should be turned into a zoo so anybody who wants to study undeveloped parts of humanity, can go around Oregon and study them. That will be a great contribution to human knowledge.

I have been seeing on television Oregonian people’s anger and rage against me and my people –

who have not done any harm to them, who are not at all concerned with them. And we are so far away from them that there is no question.... They are not even our neighbors, so we don’t have to love those neighbors or hate those neighbors. And this Christian idea loving your neighbors is not a very good idea.

I used to live in Raipur. I lived there only for six months just through the mistake of government bureaucracy. I was to be appointed to Jabalpur but some idiot wrote Raipur instead of Jabalpur.

And I saw it happen, because I was there, in the capital. So I told the education minister, ”Give the letter to me, hand to hand, and I will go immediately. Why bother about sending it by post? – I am here.” I looked at the letter – Raipur? But I said, ”There is no harm; for a few months let us be in Raipur. I will be absolutely useless there because the college is a Sanskrit college and I have no qualifications for that college. So I will enjoy myself as long as I am there – there is no work for me.” So I went there. The principal said, ”But your qualifications are for a philosophy department, and we don’t have any philosophy department. This is a Sanskrit college. There is a linguistic department, but you don’t have any qualification for it.”

I said, ”I know. But what to do with bureaucracy? They have given me a holiday, so don’t create trouble. They have sent me, and this is given to me directly by the education minister” When I said ”education minister,” the principal thought it better to accept me, perhaps I was related to the education minister or something – because never before had anybody come with an order delivered directly.

It is the formality that the order go through the post.

It was so unusual,

unprecedented, that he told me, ”Can you wait in the common room, just for a few minutes, and I will call you.”

I said, ”But remember, I am going to remain here, otherwise I will call the education minister immediately.” And I knew what he was going to do. His clerk was in his room and after five minutes he called me. The principal had phoned the education minister to say, ”This order has not reached us by post. Somebody can just arrange a false, bogus order and come. Moreover he is not qualified for this college at all, so what are we to do?”

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The education minister said, ”First accept him, and then we will see where to send him, because I don’t know what has happened. I was not aware that something had gone wrong, so we will see.” The clerk told me in the evening that the principal had phoned the education minister to confirm my post. Next day I gave that principal a good beating.

I said, ”Now I have to phone him too, to tell him that you are trying to disobey his order. And you deceived me: you told me to sit there, and you phoned the education minister. He is my friend, and if anybody is to go from this college it will be you; you will have to go. I can immediately arrange for you to be transferred through the same bureaucracy who sent me here. I know the clerk who has done this – you will be transferred.”

He said, ”Don’t create trouble. I was just checking to be sure that I am not in trouble later on. You be happily here.”

I said, ”No more asking from the department!”

So for six months neither the department bothered, nor the principal bothered to do anything. And I was not at all interested in making a fuss about it: it was going perfectly well. I lived in the campus in the Sanskrit college, but for almost the whole day I remained in my quarters. Once in a while sometimes I would go to the library or just chitchat with the professors and come back again. There was nothing else for me to do.

One of my neighbors was very much disturbed by my presence there. I felt it – he looked annoyed.

One day I asked him, ”What is the matter? Whenever I come home you look annoyed and irritated.” He said, ”I will not hide the fact from you: I am in love with my neighbor.” I said, ”This is perfectly Christian, and Jesus will help you. Don’t be worried about it.” He said, ”You don’t understand – it is my neighbor’s wife.” I said, ”I think we should never talk about it. When Jesus said,’Love thy neighbor as thyself,’ he should have added,’but please remember, not his wife.’ But to me it is perfectly good, because his wife is also a neighbor. There is no harm in it; you need not be worried about me. You can go on doing whatsoever you want to do – take it for granted that I am absent. But,”I said this day I have come to understand a new thing that Jesus forgot to mention. An amendment is needed to say that it does not mean the neighbor’s wife.”

That kind of amendment I can understand; but what the pope is suggesting about birth control and abortion is absolutely foolish. You cannot decide what time the child becomes a human being. And if it can be decided, it has to be decided by physiologists, medical people.

But what is wrong in birth control? – because then no conception happens. And if he says that too is wrong because you are preventing a conception from happening, then he has to also declare that each time you make love, if conception does not happen, then you are committing a sin. You follow my idea? Because whether you use birth control methods or not, every time you make love, conception does not happen. All those times that conception does not happen, remember, will be counted as sin. He is asking you why the conception did not happen. It has to happen.

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His whole interest is in bringing many more children into the world, many more orphans into the world. Make it so overcrowded, so poor, that Christianity can become the universal religion. That has been their ambition for two thousand years. It has to be exposed. This ambition is inhuman; and if I have been criticizing Christianity it is not without reason The most important thing is that I am speaking within a Christian context. If I were speaking in a Hindu context, I would not be criticizing Christianity, I would be criticizing Hinduism, or in a Buddhist context I would be criticizing Buddhism. It would be useless to criticize Christianity in a Buddhist context because those people would love it.

I am a person who impresses people and creates enemies, not friends – that is not my policy. I would love the whole world to be my enemy. But all these people are so cowardly that they cannot honestly even accept that they are enemies. Every day dozens of letters are received; they are praying for me, that God should forgive me. These fools! They should pray to me that I should forgive God and them. Why should God forgive me? If there is going to be any trouble I am ready to take it.

One thing is certain: whether God forgives me or not, I am not going to forgive Him. So they should pray to me, not to God. They don’t understand what they are saying. They go on writing letters, ”We pray to God that He should forgive you for what you are saying.” There is no God.

I am speaking against nobody.

That s why I am enjoying it, because if there was a God do you think I would enjoy it? It would be trouble

It is sheer enjoyment – no trouble at all.

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CHAPTER 19

Hell hath no fury like a Christian scorned

17 January 1985 pm in Lao Tzu Grove

Question 1

OSHO,

TODAY, I OVERHEARD TWO BIBLE-BASHING A CHRISTIANS IN HEATED DEBATE WITH TWO

SANNYASINS. I HEARD AND FELT FROM THE CHRISTIANS ANGER, NARROW-MINDEDNESS, AN ACUTE INABILITY TO LISTEN, AND AN UTTER LACK OF HUMOR. WHAT DID JESUS DO

TO DESERVE SUCH FOLLOWERS?

IT is an absolute necessity to be retarded if you want to be a Christian.

Any religion, any ideology, that is based only on belief, faith, is bound to cripple your intelligence.

A belief system is nothing but poison to your capacity to understand.

Good words are used to hide ugly things.

These Bible-bashing Christians are not doing anything unexpected. For two thousand years they have been doing the same thing. They are full of anger if you are not ready to follow them; they are full of love if you are ready to follow them. Their love is conditional, and any love that is conditional carries with it hate, anger, cruelty – everything that is against love. They give you the choice: either you follow them, or you will have to be a victim of their anger, hatred, cruelty.

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something of it comes out even though they try to hide it. You cannot hide a few things; for example, you cannot hide your love. You cannot hide your anger either.

Christians are absolutely unable to listen to anything that goes against them. That’s why I say retardedness is a categorical necessity.

Only the open mind can be ready to listen to something that goes against it.

The closed mind can listen only to that which supports it.

The closed mind has only one dimension open, that is: everything that supports it is allowed in, welcomed in. All other dimensions are kept closed because there is fear. Things may enter you which may shake up your belief system, disturb your so-called peace of mind; they may sabotage your faith. No person who is a believer can afford to be open.

You can be open to all kinds of thoughts, because I am not giving you any belief system.

I am simply helping you to open up in all the dimensions, even if you feel that they are going against your ideas that you have held up to now. Even then, in fact more so, you will be available to them because this is a chance, an opportunity, to judge whether whatsoever you have been thinking is right or not. It is a golden moment when you are encountered by something contrary to your ideas, thoughts, which up to now you have been thinking are rational. But if they are really rational then what is the fear?

It is fear that keeps these people closed.

They can’t hear you – they are afraid to hear.

And their anger is really their fear upside down.

It is only a person who is full of fear who becomes immediately angry. If he does not become angry then you will be able to see his fear. Anger is a cover-up. By being angry he is trying to make you afraid: before you get any idea of his fear, he is trying to make you afraid. Do you see the simple psychology of it? He does not want you to know that he is afraid. The only way is to make you afraid; then he is completely at ease. You are afraid, he is not afraid – and there is nothing to be afraid of in a man who is afraid.

Their anger is an effort to deceive themselves.

It has nothing to do with you.

And these people.... You ask me what Jesus has done to deserve these people. You ask me a wrong question. In fact, whatever Jesus has done, he deserves only these people. The problem is not these people. The problem is the people who have some intelligence and still are Christians.

That is a miracle: having intelligence and yet being a Christian.

Perhaps these intellectuals who are still Christians are schizophrenic: their one part is intelligent and their other part is Christian. And they never meet, there is no communion between these two parts.

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When these Christians are in their lab as a scientist they function not as a Christian, remember, they function as an intelligent being.

But when they are out of the lab and praying in a church, don’t think that they are the same people.

They are not the scientists, not the discoverers, they are not the intellectuals any more. They are just as retarded as these Bible-bashing Christians – no difference. Perhaps they are even more closed.

They have a Berlin wall within their being, dividing themselves in two.

Galileo discovered that the earth moves around the sun. But he was a believing Christian, and when the pope told him that because it went against the HOLY BIBLE he had to change it, Galileo said, ”Of course. Whatever you say is my joy to do.” And now you can see how a person can be schizophrenic.

He touched the feet, kissed the feet of the pope – Galileo, a man of tremendous intelligence! And this pope was just a third-rate mind who had never done anything intelligent. You would not have even known that he ever existed; it is only because of Galileo that his name is remembered. That’s all that he has done to be remembered.

But Galileo touching his feet, kissing his feet, asking his forgiveness.... And then he said, ”I am going to do it. I will change that statement and I will correct it exactly according to the BIBLE: I will write that the sun goes around the earth. But beloved master, I can change the text, but neither the earth will listen to me, nor will the sun: the earth will still go around the sun.” Do you see the schizophrenia? Galileo’s one side is kissing the feet of the pope. His other side reminds the pope that he can change his statement – that is not difficult, it is his book. Whatsoever Galileo wants to write, he can write. But what about the earth? What about all his experiments?

What about his discovery which proved that the earth goes around the sun, not vice versa? In that one simple statement, Galileo’s split personality is clear. Perhaps the dividing wall was very thin.

Perhaps there was a little corner where both sides used to meet, just like neighbors taLking from the windows, the balconies, over the fences.

And that’s what he did. He changed the statement, put a star on it, and in the footnote with the star he wrote, This is what I believe as a Christian. But as far as reality is concerned, the earth goes around the sun. About that I cannot do anything because I am just an ordinary man. It is not within my powers.” That footnote – from where does it come? And the change of statement – from where does it come? There are two persons certainly in Galileo, but he is not capable of seeing this split.

Every believer is bound to be split.

There is no way to avoid it because the moment you believe in something you have decided not to listen to reason any longer.

But it is reason which finds facts, realities, indubitable truths.

So what are you going to do? Either you destroy your rationality completely – that’s why these people, these Bible-bashing Christians, shout and go on talking; they won’t even give you a chance to speak. You may be speaking – they go on reading from the BIBLE and flipping the pages.

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if they really listen to you, they know what they have repressed in themselves: By their belief they have repressed their own reason, and your reason can call up their reason.

There is a certain synchronicity.... This law has to be understood, the law of synchronicity. This is the only contribution of Carl Gustav Jung to the modern world. It is something that is not yet scientifically verifiable, but still it can be understood quite reasonably.

For example, sometimes seeing a stranger, for no visible reason you suddenly feel a tremendous surge of lovingness, or hatred, or anger, or compassion. It seems to be that something between you and him has transpired without any physical traces being behind it. Perhaps it was just in the vibe. It means that one man’s energy is quite capable of arousing a similar type of energy in the other man, so that they both start vibrating in the same climate of feeling.

Carl Gustav Jung came upon it very accidentally. He had two old grandfather clocks. They both stood by the same wall and they always kept the same time. They were very old and they were not expected to have such accuracy. Jung changed the time of one clock to be half an hour slow, and the other to be half an hour fast. But within twenty-four hours they had come back to exactly the same time. It was mysterious and puzzling, but he thought that perhaps subtle vibrations from both clocks helped them to come to a synchronicity.

That accidental discovery Jung tried on human beings, and it proved really to be a profound revelation. He showed that there is a certain law which is not yet known to science – perhaps we’re not yet capable of finding instruments subtle enough to check it, but it is perfectly reasonable and there are hundreds of facts which will prove it. For example, if you are very loving towards a person, you need not even say to him that ”I love you” – because in fact that is needed only when you do not love. That statement, ”I love you,” is required by a husband, by a wife, at least three, four times a day – the more the better.

I have told you that a goldsmith used to live in front of my house. He was a little eccentric – that is far better than being retarded – and an absolutely harmless person. But he used to get into fights with his wife once in a while. That too is common... nothing abnormal about it. What was abnormal and eccentric was that they would fight right in the shop with the doors open, and a crowd would gather there.

And their fighting was not just verbal, it was physical. He would hit the wife and the wife would hit him, because she had learned that there was no other way with this man: unless you hit him hard he was not going to stop. He would catch hold of her hair, and she would catch hold of his hair, and they would be standing there, with a crowd of hundreds of people gathered around. And what I used to do was phone the police, because the police station was not far away.

I would simply phone from my house saying, ”A great drama is happening here. There are hundreds of people, and if this thing goes any further there may be a murder or something. Come immediately.” They were not far away, just one furlong from my house. So the inspector and the police constables would come running. And when they came, they would catch hold of these people holding each other’s hair and hitting each other.

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a conversation.” That was the only eccentric point worth listening to again and again: ”We were just having a conversation, just a family conversation. There is no problem.” He would immediately be angry with the people who were standing outside: ”What are you fools doing here? Don’t you have wives? Don’t you have family conversations? It was simply a dialogue that became a little physical, that’s all.” And he would tell the inspector, ”you need not be worried –

and I know who has phoned you because it happens again and again.” The inspector would say, ”Who phoned is not important; what is important is that you are making a public spectacle. If it is a family dialogue at least you can close your doors and have the dialogue –

and as physically as you want. It is your wife and you are her husband. She does not seem to be afraid of you at all, she hits you far better than you hit her, so we are not worried about her, that you can do any harm to her. But by collecting a whole crowd it becomes a public affair; then we have to interfere. Next time we find you in this public family conversation, I am going to put both of you behind bars.”

Once when they had gone and the crowd had left I asked, ”goldsmithji, everything was perfectly good, just.... You call it a dialogue? Have you heard the name of Martin Buber?” He said, ”no.”

I said, ”You should read Martin Buber – or it would be better if Martin Buber comes and studies you, because he is continually after dialogues. His whole life’s work is to convince people that they should have dialogue. He may not have even thought that the dialogue can be physical. You are very existential. He thought only of verbal dialogue, but you are realistic, pragmatic, practical.” The goldsmith said, ”i know you support me, and you are the person who phoned, because only you have a phone here in this whole neighborhood. And whenever the police come you are missing; the whole crowd is there but you are not. That is enough proof And after the crowd has gone, you come and support me.”

I said, I certainly support you because I want people to be more physical, more grounded. This Martin Buber knows nothing about dialogue. He thinks of just talking, yakkety-yakkety-yak-that is not a dialogue. This is real dialogue: you make it from a fiction into a fact.” These Christians have been in such a dialogue for two thousand years. They are far more dangerous than this poor goldsmith because no bloodshed ever happened with him; it was just a mock fight.

But Christians have killed millions of people, and that was their way of making conversation. They were telling you, ”We can prove our belief by killing you.” Now, by killing somebody you simply prove that you are a brute, primitive. It does not prove that you are right, that what you are saying is true. It simply proves that whatsoever you are, you are just not yet out of the jungle. You should not even utter the word truth; it is not right from your mouth. And from the Christians, Mohammedans learned the art of conversation, dialogue.

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perhaps in the whole world. When Babar, the first invader who remained behind to rule India....

Other invaders came and went away; that had been routine for thousands of years. Invaders would come and loot the country. They would take the beautiful women, they would kill and burn people, and they would go away with all their loot – the gold, the diamonds, and everything that they could get.

Babar was the first man who decided not to leave. He said, ”This is foolish, to come once in a while and loot these people and go away. It is better to remain here and rule these people and go on exploiting them. Why, what is the need to go back?” When he entered Kashmir... the first words that he uttered have become very famous. On his horse, looking back from a very high hill top at the beauty of the Kashmir valley, Babar said, ”I have never believed in paradise, but if there is any paradise it is here.” And certainly Kashmir is paradise.

I asked Jawaharlal, ”Kashmir has enough land – it is all mountains – you can give me a place.” He said, ”I can give you a place but I am afraid, because ninety percent of people in Kashmir are Mohammedans. You will be killed, you cannot remain alive there. The little bit I know about you is enough to convince me that you will be killed, and I am not letting you settle in Kashmir because I would not like you to be killed. Mohammedans will not be able to stand you even for a single day.” From Christians, Mohammedans have learned that it is the sword that decides who is right. Might is right! So if you are powerful, you are right. If you are not powerful, if you don’t have a sword or a gun in your hands, then your belief system is wrong. But this was given by Christians to Mohammedans.

Mohammedans accept Jesus as one of the great prophets. Their only quarrel with the Christians is on a very small point, which is negligible. But even that negligible point has caused a constant fifteen-century struggle between Mohammedans and Christians. You will be simply surprised – and then you will not think that I am exaggerating when I say that these people’s basic qualification is retardedness.

The negligible point is that Mohammedans don’t believe that Jesus had a virgin birth – and perhaps they are right. They say his father was not his father, that much is certain; somebody else fathered him. The Holy Ghost they don’t recognize, they believe that this is just garbage. And it looks like garbage. It seems to be a cover-up story. It seems Mary became pregnant by somebody, and then to make it mysterious, the Holy Ghost was introduced.

Mohammedans accept Jesus as a great prophet of God, but they name him Jesus ibn Mariam –

Jesus the son of Mary. And that is the problem, these three words: Jesus ibn Mariam – Jesus, the son of Mariam, because Mohammedans always use the father’s name with their name. If he were the son of joseph they would have called him Jesus ibn Joseph; that would have been his full name.

But because he is not joseph s son-that much Christians agree-he is the only person in the whole of history of whom the Mohammedans say the mother’s name has to be used instead of the father’s!

We certainly cannot say Jesus ibn Holy Ghost!

This is the only difference, otherwise they agree on everything.

But this simple, negligible,

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Mohammedans and Christians. Now, both need to be absolutely retarded. What business is it of Mohammedans to be bothered in the first place, whether Jesus is bin Mariam, or bin Joseph? All three can go to hell! What business is it of Mohammedans?

And Christians cannot prove anything about the Holy Ghost without any evidence, any eyewitness who has seen the Holy Ghost coming to Mary. Even Mary was not aware of when she was made pregnant. The Holy Ghost must have used some instruments which mankind has not yet discovered.

Perhaps it was an injection, artificial insemination, but even then she would have awakened while being given an injection. Perhaps it was with chloroform.... But then Christians have to provide all these facts: in some way they have to make an arrangement to explain how Jesus got into Mary’s womb.

You ask me why, what poor Jesus has done to deserve such stupid idiots as his followers. You are asking without understanding Jesus. Jesus, and only Jesus, is responsible for all these idiots –

nobody else. It is not that he has done anything wrong, but his whole life and his approach towards life is appealing only to retarded people.

For his whole life Charles Darwin was looking for the missing link. By the missing link, he means that when monkeys became man it could not have been that a monkey jumped and became a man; there must have been a link in between, where he was half monkey and half man. Evolution happens as a process, not as a leap or jump – that you jump from monkey and become man, no. But what is the missing link?

If I had had the opportunity to meet Charles Darwin – now there seems to be no hope – he was also a very sincere Christian, and I would have suggested to him that Christians are the missing link. Where are you looking? You can go to any church: if any intelligent man is found there, then he has to be immediately put into a psychiatric ward; the remaining ones are the missing link. Monkeys have not just jumped and become men, first they become Christians; without becoming Christians there is no way.

Jesus gives no logic to whatever he is saying. When Buddha says something, he gives logic to it, it is absolutely rational. And he is ready for a dialogue – not for a physical dialogue, he is ready to argue with you. He welcomes argument, and if you can rationally convince him, he is willing to follow you. That has been the tradition in the East.

I am reminded of a beautiful story of Shankara’s life. Shankara is one of the most intellectual, rational persons you can find. In the West only Kant can be compared to Shankara, but not totally. He falls a little short because Shankara was one thousand years before Kant, and still his arguments are far more refined than Kant’s. Shankara traveled all over India challenging everybody, whoever wanted to argue with him. The only condition was: ”If you defeat me, I follow you; if I defeat you, you follow me.” It was not like boxing, otherwise Muhammad Ali would have forced Shankara to follow him –

and Muhammad Ali is a religious man. And I am now going to hurt a few people’s religious feelings.

Muhammad Ali goes once in a while to Mecca, to do hajj. Hajj is the Mohammedan’s holy pilgrimage, and Mohammed has said at least once in a life every Mohammedan has to do hajj. If you miss hajj you will not be allowed into paradise. So truth is not important, love is not important, compassion is not important; what is important is a pilgrimage to Mecca. And you can do everything else you want, From Personality to Individuality

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but you should do hajj. Once a person does hajj he is called hajji. And that is a title that makes his paradise a certainty; all hajjis go to paradise. So even poor Mohammedans....

In my village I have seen such poor Mohammedans collecting money, eating only one time a day so that at least once in their whole life... because it will need their life’s savings. And I have seen people selling their houses, their land, borrowing money and remaining always in debt because they could not even pay the interest – there was no question of paying the original money. And they have taken it at such high interest; nobody is going to give it to them at a low interest because everybody knows the money is never coming back. And there is every possibility that this man may die because hajj, in the old days, was almost a suicidal pilgrimage. Now it is a little better, but not much better.

So at such a high interest, perhaps twenty-five percent per month, they have sold themselves for their whole lives, they have become slaves. Their house is gone, their land is gone, and whatsoever they earn they have to give in interest; but people will take this risk because without becoming a hajji there is no hope.

Do you think these people have any intelligence? And who is responsible for this? – nobody but Mohammed, because he made it a rule. Rather than telling his people to be truthful, to be honest, to be sincere, to be open, to be intelligent, he requires them to do a pilgrimage.

And there is nothing in Arabia but desert, suffering, heat, sickness, because millions of people every year gather at a certain period – their holy days, Ramadan – for one month, and there are no hygienic arrangements, no hospitals. Nobody bothers about what they are eating, what arrangements are made by the government for their toilets, for their bathrooms – nothing, no question arises. Millions of people are coming from all over the world, and thousands die every year just in the pilgrimage, either going or coming back.

But Mohammed made it the one absolute necessity. And what logic does he provide? There is no logic in it, because this place that they worship is far older than Mohammed. It used to be a temple with three hundred and sixty-five beautiful statues. It was one of the most beautiful temples in the world, with these three hundred and sixty-five statues of God – one statue for every day of the year.

So one statue was worshipped on one day, the next day the next statue, around the year. It was a round circle of beautiful statues and in the middle was this stone, a black stone which they call kaaba.

Mohammed destroyed all those beautiful statues which were pieces of art perhaps ten thousand years old: a great historical evidence of art, that it was not only Michelangelo.... Ten thousand years before him there were people as skillful as Michelangelo. Mohammed destroyed all those statues because he was against statues. He said, ”There cannot be any statue of God. God should not be given a form.”

But what right have you... if somebody wants to give God a form, and a beautiful form, who are you?

What right have you to destroy somebody else’s statue? But religious fanaticism.... Mohammed was thinking that he was helping those people, by destroying their statues, to come closer to God. He was removing the statues, the forms, so that they could know the formless God. But he saved the black stone which was in the middle of the temple, and now they are worshipping that stone as God.

And Mohammed started the worship!

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These people cannot even see what they are saying, and what they are doing to others, and what they are doing to their own people. Mohammed taught those people to come to kaaba at least once in a lifetime: unless you do it you are going to fall into eternal hell. And Mohammed told people that you have to convert people at the point of the sword. When so much easier methods are available, why bother about convincing, arguing?

When just a sword put on your chest is enough to convert you to the right path, then why bother about arguing? So Mohammedans have been converting people at the point of the sword. But that was not the case in the Eastern religions. These three religions, Judaism, Christianity, Mohammedanism, are sister religions. Moses started the game and he is responsible for all these three kids.

Shankara went around the country arguing. He came to a place called Mandala – I have been to Mandala many times. It is just a two-hour drive from Jabalpur, situated in a very beautiful place.

Narmada, one of the holy rivers of the Hindus, falls in one thousand streams. The mountain is such that the river is divided into one thousand, exactly one thousand, streams. It is a beautiful scene.

The story is that there was one monster who had one thousand hands. Narmada is the only river in India which is virgin, other rivers are married. This Sahasrabahu – one thousand arms.... That is the meaning of the name: Sahasra means one thousand, bahu means arms – sahasrabahu means a one-thousand-armed man. He said, ”I am going to marry this girl. She cannot escape me. I have got one thousand hands; where is she going to escape?” So he tried to catch hold of the river with his one thousand hands. But to destroy the virginity of a woman, according to Hindus, is the greatest sin possible. Christians would have rewarded him, given him some place in their trinity: another holy ghost. But Hindus have punished him – at least in the story it is so; he turned into a stone. And really the whole mountain does look as if the Narmada is falling through one thousand hands.

So Mandala has been an ancient place of pilgrimage and has always been a seat of great Hindu scholars. One Hindu scholar had in his youth moved around just like Shankara; Mandan Mishra was his name. Mandala was called after his name, Mandan, because he lived there. He was so famous that the name of the place was changed and called after him.

When he was young he had moved all around the country and defeated all the scholars and philosophers. He was old when Shankara was young, just thirty years of age – he died when Shankara was thirty-three. After defeating everybody Shankara was a little reluctant to go and challenge Mandan Mishra because Mandan was so old. But without defeating Mandan he could not declare that he had conquered the whole country and convinced everybody that what he was saying was true. Reluctantly he went.

Outside the town, at the we]l, a few women were drawing water. Shankara asked them, ”can you tell me where the house of Mandan Mishra is?”

And all those women giggled and laughed, and they said, ”You need not ask. You just go into the town and you will find it, because even the parrots in front of his house recite the VEDAS. You need not ask anybody, you just go. The very atmosphere around his house will tell you that you have come close to Mandan Mishra.”

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Shankara was a little afraid – he had never heard of parrots reciting the whole of the VEDAS. And in the end he went and he saw with his own eyes a row of parrots in the mango trees reciting the VEDAS in perfect Sanskrit. He thought, ”this man seems to be difficult. But there is no way to avoid it.” He went in, touched the feet of the old man with respect, and challenged him.

Mandan said, ”I am too old, but if you feel that it is necessary, then I am ready. But I feel a little reluctant myself arguing with a young man. You are too young, and I am too old, too experienced and I have won all over the country. You should think twice. Right now you have not been defeated by anybody, but those are the people I defeated in my youth, myself; so think twice.” Shankara said, ”I never think twice. I first take the jump and then think. Are you ready or not? If you are not ready then you will have to become my follower.’

Mandan said, ”There is no problem for me; I enjoy a dialogue, I enjoy discussing – and with a man like you it is really joyful. Even to be defeated is a great blessing. To have found someone who has more intelligence than you is not a disgrace. But,” Mandan said, ”one thing has to be decided. You will have to find somebody who can preside; otherwise the decision will be very difficult.” Shankara had heard that Mandan’s wife was as great an intellectual as Mandan himself In fact, in Mandan’s youth they had a six-month-long discussion, and only then was Mandan able to defeat the woman. But the woman had, from the very beginning, put this condition: ”If I am defeated then you will have to marry me. If you are defeated then certainly I am going to marry you because....” Mandan saw that he was in a dilemma in every way; he was caught. And he could not refuse a woman, that would be too unmannerly; you cannot refuse a woman. So he fought.

And the woman was really a giant; it took six months, and I suspect she got defeated by her own doing. And I have reasons to suspect it, because anyway she was going to marry him. It would look ugly to be victorious and then to marry a man who has been defeated – that would not be nice – and to have a defeated husband.... So my feeling has always been that Bharti – her name was Bharti –

must have arranged it. Six months was enough to prove her mettle. All over the country, for even six days nobody had been able to withstand Mandan. If she could withstand six months, she must have turned the whole of Mandan’s blood to perspiration.

And she must have got herself defeated. Why I suspect it is because of this second debate between Shankara and Mandan. Shankara said, ”I would like your wife to preside.” Bharti said, ”I have no problem, if you choose me knowing perfectly well that I am the wife of Mandan Mishra.”

Shankara said, ”That I know, but I know also that you are a great intellectual, that you were the only one who almost defeated Mandan. And I cannot conceive of you – being Mandan’s wife, and yourself an independent intellectual in your own right – as being unfair I accept you. Whatsoever you decide will be, without complaint, accepted.” The debate again lasted six months. Finally Mandan was defeated. Shankara asked Bharti’s opinion.

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Bharti said, ”Mandan is defeated but you are not victorious yet.” This was the climate of intelligence.

She said, ”Mandan is defeated but you are not victorious yet because 1, being his wife, according to Hindu scriptures am half of his being. So you have only done with one half of Mandan Mishra. The other half is still here. Now you will have to discuss with me.” Shankara was tired enough. Six months with Mandan had been such a difficult job that many times he had thought that he was going to lose. And then immediately to begin another debate.... And he knew the woman had kept this Mandan in debate for six months; now what was going to happen?

But that woman was really intelligent. She said, ”I am not interested in theology – I am a woman – so forget all about your BRAHMASUTRAS of Badarayana; SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA, VEDAS; I am not interested in them, my interest is in Vatsyayana’s KAMASUTRAS” – the first book on sexology in the whole world.

Now, Shankara was a bachelor, thirty years old. He said, ”Vatsyayana? – but I have not even read him.”

Bharti said, ”You can ask for time to study.”

But he said, ”Just study won’t help, because I don’t have any practical knowledge.” Bharti said, ”I can give you as much time as you want. You can get married, you can have practical knowledge. But till you defeat me in sexology, on matters concerning sex and its subtleties, you have no right to declare yourself victorious. Mandan is defeated, Mandan has to be your follower; he can help you. He is old, he is my husband and he knows everything about sex. He can help you now he is your follower. But half of his being still has to be conquered.” Now, Shankara’s disciples must have invented the rest of the story because it seems contrived.

Up to then it was perfectly right, historical. Shankara asked for six months’ leave, and in those six months he entered the body of a king who had just died – because he could not have experience of sex through his own body, he was a celibate monk. And the woman had put him in such a spot

– either he had to accept defeat and become a follower of Bharti.... That would be stupid: Mandan, his follower, and he himself, Bharti’s follower.

I don’t think it is true – Shankara must have experienced sex through his own body. Now let Hindus and their religious feelings be hurt; what can I do? I cannot believe any nonsense that he entered a just – dead king and used the king’s body and left his own body in a cave – I have been to the cave also – with his disciples. They had to protect the body till he returned, so continuously, twenty-four hours a day, they were guarding the body, taking care of the body. And for six months he lived in the king’s body having all kinds of sexual experiences with his many queens.

And after six months he entered his own body; the king died. Shankara went back to Mandan for the debate – and Bharti simply laughed. She said, ”I was just joking. When my husband is defeated, I am defeated. His life is my life, his death is my death, his pleasure is my pleasure, and his pain is my pain. His defeat is my defeat – you need not argue.” Shankara said, ”My God! Then why did you put me to such trouble?” From Personality to Individuality

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But to me this seems to be just the same kind of story as the virgin Mary or as Buddha being born standing. The mother was standing; Buddha came out of the mother’s womb standing, he fell on the earth standing. The first thing he did was, he took seven steps and declared: ”I am the greatest enlightened one who has ever come on the earth.” Now, all these hocus-pocus stories – but these are the things which make these religions juicy, so even retarded people can enjoy a little bit.

Jesus gives no argument at all. He never confronted any rabbi; that would have been the right course. The question is what Jesus did to deserve such followers. He did everything. He created chaos in the great temple of the Jews by throwing the money-changers out of the temple, upturning their tables. This is not the way of a man who says, ”god is love,” who says, ”love your neighbor as yourself,” who says, ”love your enemy as yourself” but I don’t think he loved his enemies as himself And he was not only throwing out these people, who were there for centuries.... And they were playing an essential part; without them millions of poor Jews would have been in tremendous difficulty. It was a beautiful institution. It was created to help poor Jews: they could take loans from the temple at a very minimal interest so that they were not in the hands of local exploiters who would take the maximum interest out of them. And they would never have been able to pay back the original money because the interest was so much; they would have been slaves for their whole lives without being slaves. And this was a great institution.

I don’t think it was wrong. It was perfectly right that the temple provided the poor people with money at the minimum rate. And the temple had so much money. It was perfectly right, in every way ethical to help the poor people because the money was also coming from the same people. But the way the Christians present it is wrong, it is not right. The institution was perfectly right, and Jesus was just creating a nuisance there.

He should have gone to the high priest, argued about it, told him, ”This institution of taking interest from the poor is not right,” convinced him, ”give it to them without interest.” But no, he behaved violently; he was an angry man. And this behavior is not an argument, it is just the dialogue of my goldsmithji. You are not proving that you are right by throwing those moneychangers out of the temple. And you are not destroying the system: they will be back, soon they were back. And soon the whole Jewish system was angry with this man. If they had to crucify him I think perhaps they had no other choice; this man was so arrogant.

I have thought about all those people who have been crucified, poisoned, killed – for example, Socrates. I find him absolutely right, and the people who poisoned him and decided to kill him, absolutely wrong. They were not able to answer any of his arguments. They were not capable, nobody was capable, of as much intelligence as Socrates; those were ordinary pygmies. But it was a ”democracy”....

Up to now there has never been any democracy.

Democracy has yet to come in the world; it has not entered it yet.

It has always been a mobocracy ca]led a democracy.

In the name of democracy the jurors, who were not even worthy to polish the shoes of Socrates, decided by voting – and it was not a great margin, just by one vote: fifty-one were in favor of From Personality to Individuality

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poisoning him, forty-nine were against. They had nothing against him except meaningless words:

”He spoils the minds of people.”

Just the same complaint they have against me, that I spoil people’s minds. I simply spoil their retardedness and help their mind to be free from their retardedness – and that was what Socrates was doing.

Socrates had never done anything that you could say was done out of arrogance, or out of anger, or out of jealousy. He was not standing for any public post, he was not interested in any power politics.

He was not a man of anger at all.

The story is that his wife – she must have been really a monster, but sometimes it happens that such nice people as Socrates get such monster women. It is strange, but perhaps there is some balance.

Perhaps only Socrates could stand that woman; no other man I think could have lived with her for even a single day. She used to beat Socrates and he would simply sit.

If his disciples asked, Socrates would say, ”It is her problem; she is angry. What can I do? It is her problem – she is suffering, and out of her suffering and anger she is throwing tantrums. I just happen to be sitting nearby so she is hitting me. But it is her problem, it is none of my concern.” One day when he was teaching his disciples, she came in angry – because that was one thing that she was very angry about, that he was always teaching truth, freedom, and never giving enough time to her. All kinds of people were coming from faraway places; and with them, strangers, he was wasting his time – strangers, who were of no interest. She was sitting there, boiling: she was his wife and he did not give that much attention to her.

This is a common complaint of all the women of the whole world: that the husband goes on playing chess with somebody, with more interest, goes on smoking a cigar with so much joy, reads his paper the first thing in the morning; and the wife is shouting, and he does not even listen to what she is saying. He says, ”Okay, okay,” for anything. He comes to bed and immediately starts snoring. And with strangers....

So Socrates’ wife came with boiling hot water – she was preparing for tea, but Socrates did not get up from this discussion, and the discussion was going on longer and longer, and the time for tea had already passed; it was lunchtime by then – she came in great anger and poured the whole kettle of hot water on Socrates’ head. Half of his face was burned and remained always scarred. But he continued.

All the people who were there were shocked. They had completely forgotten the matter they were discussing – and Socrates continued. They asked, ”Can you still remember what we were talking about?”

He said, ”Yes – because this is her problem, this is not my problem.” Now, this man has no anger in him, no arrogance, no desire to prove that he is a superman; there is not even a mention that he is more than an ordinary human being.

Jesus is arrogant; naturally, he gets arrogant followers. He is the model. His utterances are not those of a humble man. Although he says, ”Be humble, be meek,” it seems all this teaching is for From Personality to Individuality

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others – he is not humble. A humble man will not say, ”I am the only begotten son of God.” What can be more egoistic?

A humble man will not insist that he is the messiah, sent by God, for whom you have been waiting.

When nobody is agreeing to it, drop the idea. It is up to them: if they don’t want the messiah, if they don’t want to receive the message, what can you do? You are just a postman; and if the man says, ”I don’t want to receive this envelope, you take it back,” what can the postman do? But he was a very arrogant postman. He insisted on delivering the message; whether you wanted it or not, whether you accepted him or not, he would deliver it.

I have thought many times that perhaps the Jews were forced by Jesus’ arrogance and anger, and his continuously harassing them to accept that he was the messiah, to ask for his crucifixion. I don’t think that it was just their fault; most of the responsibility falls on Jesus’ arrogance.

In India we have seen Buddha speaking against the VEDAS, but ready to welcome any argument.

Jesus makes only statements, there is no question of argument; he is the messiah and he has brought the message.

In the whole of the four gospels there is not a single argument for anything. And I can visualize the contemporary scene there in Jerusalem. He must have looked like a buffoon, moving with that company – at least I would not have moved around with that company he was with. All those twelve apostles are just Oregonians. I don’t see any spark in those twelve people: not a single intelligent man, not a single rabbi, not a single scholar, not a single professor – nobody who had some sharpness of mind was amongst those people that were following him.

So it is not just today – even when Jesus was here only idiots were around him. Only Judas was a little educated. The others were all uneducated: fishermen, farmers, woodcutters, carpenters – all were from the very lowest strata of society. And it is not that Jerusalem was lacking, Jerusalem was throbbing with intelligence at that time. It was their peak hour: there were great rabbis and great scholars and great, intelligent people.

Jesus should have converted them. Then you would not have found these Bible-thrashing – or is it bashing? – bashing.... Thrashing is also good. You would not have these idiots who are angry, cannot understand, are not able even to listen.

And Christianity got the major portion of humanity under it for the simple reason that the majority of people are retarded. To be a follower of Bodhidharma you need tremendous qualities; to understand Nagarjuna you will have to rise to your ultimate potential of understanding. But for Jesus nothing is needed. All that he is asking is: ”Have belief in me, have faith in me, and that’s all you have to do.

The remainder is for me to do, and that will be done on the judgment day. I will choose and sort out my sheep and tell my father that these people have to be saved and the remaining ones are to be thrown into hell.”

Now, do you think any intelligent person is going to follow such ideas, with no logic, no reason?

Since that time he has been collecting these people, Jesus freaks, Witnesses of Jehovah. I have met, in India, all these kinds of strange people, but for all of them Jesus is responsible because he behaved wrongly. He did not follow what he was saying. If he had been humble, meek, if he had From Personality to Individuality

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been available to argument, ready to listen – but no, he was an absolute fanatic. Whatever he says is truth; no other evidence is needed. He is the son of God, that’s enough. The son of God cannot tell lies. He has been sent by God – but he should have at least taken a certificate from God to show people.

On what grounds can a person say that ”I am the son of God”? And do you think that any intelligent person is going to believe it? No. Socrates’ poisoning I sincerely feel was a crime against evolution.

Mansoor’s crucifixion I certainly feel was a crime against man’s growing potentialities. But with Jesus I don’t feel the same, because he was responsible for whatsoever happened to him. And he is responsible for what kind of people have been collecting around him.

And these idiots around the world go on purchasing Jesus’ ideas like hot cakes – or would it be more correct to say, like hot dogs? I was thinking of suggesting to my Magdalena people to make something like vegetarian hot watchdogs. They are really going to sell – vegetarian hot watchdogs, not ordinary dogs.

The stupid and the imbecile, the retarded – they have all become Christians, and we have to help them come out of their prisons. They are imprisoned. And the people who become Christians by their own desire – it is okay. If they feel they want to be, that’s perfectly right, but nobody should be forced by birth to be a Christian, or a Hindu, or a Mohammedan. Nobody should be forced by birth.

For a political election you ask that a person be adult, at least twenty-one years of age – to decide about politics, which is a third-rate matter. And to decide about religion, which is the ultimate concern of man, you don’t give any chance for the person to grow, to learn, to remain open and available to all kinds of winds, and then choose. A religion has to be chosen, it cannot be inherited. Even if it takes your whole life, it is worth it because it is your ultimate concern.

So anything that has been given to you by birth is ugly, whether it is Christianity, or Hinduism, or Jainism or Buddhism; anything that is given to you by birth, drop it.

Search for yourself

Be adult, come of age.

Only then, perhaps, will we be able to free people from their imprisonments.

And if all the intelligent people are outside the cages, I have every certainty that many retarded people will start having second thoughts. They won’t be Bible-bashing or Bible-thrashing Christians.

They won’t be angry if something against them is proposed. They will not be ready immediately to cut off your head or shoot you, if you are saying something against their ideology.

A religious person remains open to the very last moment, to his death; to the very last breath he is open.

That is a basic and absolute quality for a religious man: to remain always open – because who knows, tomorrow a few other facts may encounter you and you will have to change your whole idea of existence, of life.

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Nobody knows what tomorrow is going to reveal.

The revelations are not in the BIBLE or in the KORAN.

The revelations are in life.

And every moment is a revelation if you are open.

But if you are closed then you are dead. The day you become closed, you become dead.

There are dead Christians, there are dead Hindus, there are dead Mohammedans; the earth is so full of dead people – but they are walking, talking, teaching, converting, doing all kinds of things. But as I see it, rarely is there a living being amongst them, very rarely somebody who is still alive.

I call that man alive who is always open, who never closes the windows and the doors of his being, because tomorrow is unpredictable.

All that we can say is: ”Up to now this is my experience; tomorrow will take care of itself” From Personality to Individuality

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CHAPTER 20

Fear of hell, greed for heaven, the saviors soft sell 18 January 1985 pm in Lao Tzu Grove

Question 1

OSHO,

IS IT WRONG TO TRY TO SAVE SOMEBODY? IS IT NOT PART OF COMPASSION?

COMPASSION is a very delicate affair. It certainly has some place in making an effort to save others, but there are many conditions which have to be fulfilled first.

The first condition is that you are saved; otherwise, in the name of saving others you will be simply destroying them. And in the effort of saving others you will be missing the opportunity to save yourself Only a person who has come home himself can be of any help to somebody. A blind man cannot help blind people. You must have your eyes opened; you must have seen light yourself before you start telling others what it is.

Compassion certainly includes the idea of saving others, but not against their will. If somebody does not want to be saved, you are not to force him; not at the point of a sword do you have to save him.

That is not saving. That simply shows that in the name of saving you are trying to dominate people.

In Raipur there is an old, very ancient pond. Because of its ancientness it is called budha talub –

old, aged, pond, and it belongs to the part of Raipur which is the ancientmost part. That part is also called budha padu – ancient part, very old; budha means old man. And the pond is certainly very beautiful in its oldness; all the old stone steps are covered with thick moss.

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I used to go there just to sit because nobody goes there. The pond has become dirty; thick moss floats on the water and the water is almost green. The pond has not been cleaned for years, so nobody goes there. And there are other ponds in other places, so there is no need; the water is not used any more. And because it was such a silent place I used to go there every evening to sit and see the sunset.

One day when I was sitting there a man suddenly fell into the pond and started shouting, ”help!

Help!” I had not seen him when he came by, or how he slipped. Anybody could have slipped, those steps were so slippery with moss. I jumped in to help that man and I pulled him out somehow. He was very angry.

He said to me, ”Why did you do that?”

I said, ”This is strange! You were asking for help.” He said, ”Yes, I was asking for help because I became so afraid, but really I wanted to commit suicide – and you prevented me. I would not have shouted if I had any idea that somebody else was present here; nobody comes here. What are you doing here?” I said, ”This is strange, but when you started shouting,’Help! Help!’ I thought you were drowning. I have unnecessarily become wet in this muddy pond and you are now angry.” He said, ”Yes, I am certainly angry because that shout was just out of fear. I was not meaning to be saved.”

So do you know what I did? I simply pushed him back in. What else to do? And he started shouting again, ”Help! Help!”

And I said, ”Now I am not going to help. I have helped twice: the first time by getting you out; the second, by pushing you back in. Now do whatsoever you want.” He said, ”What kind of man are you?” And he was drowning – coming up and going down, and crying, ”Help!”

I said, ”Not against your will.

He said, ”I am saying HELP” – but I simply sat there.

I said, ”You try yourself” He was not far away from the bank because I had just pulled him out, he was just close, so it was perfectly clear that he would manage. And he did manage. He got a little water inside him but he came out and said, ”You are a strange man.” I said, ”I am a strange man? You are a strange man! First I saved you; you were angry. Then I helped you by throwing you back in; you were angry again, and started crying out for help.” He said, ”Yes, when I get into water I become afraid of death, but really I want to commit suicide.” From Personality to Individuality

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I said, ”Then you come at some other time because at this time I am always here, and if you start shouting’Help!’ then it looks very strange not to help. But I cannot help you against your will.

Compassion cannot allow you even to do good to the other person if he is not ready for it.

Compassion gives total freedom, respect and dignity to the other person.

All these people who have been trying to save others are just a by-product of Christianity and its conditioning.

In Buddhism there is no place for saving anybody. Buddha says, ”I can show you the way, but you will have to walk. I cannot walk for you. And if you don’t want to walk, who am I to force you to walk? At the most I can say I have walked the path, and the beauties of the path I can describe, but I cannot force you in any way. That will not be compassion, that will be cruelty. If it is your pleasure to go some other way, then all my blessings are with you. Even if you are going to hell, my blessings are with you.”

Mahavira has taken a very clear stand: ”Nobody has ever been saved by anybody else. It is by its very nature not possible, because if somebody can save you, then somebody can unsave you also.

Then your being saved is not something in your possession, it is given by somebody. It is just like somebody can give you money and somebody else can steal it – you are not the master of it. And at least your self-realization, your enlightenment, must be something of which you are the master, which nobody can deprive you of.

”It is simple logic: if somebody can give it to you, then somebody can deprive you of it; there is no problem in it. If you can be forced to be enlightened, you can be forced to be unenlightened.” Mahavira is very clear, and I agree with him, that at least one ultimate thing should be left to the individual. And enlightenment is the ultimate experience. It should not be borrowed, given, purchased, forced; otherwise it won’t be the real thing.

It is the Christian stupidity that has spread the idea; no other religion before Christianity had ever thought of saving somebody. If you know the way, you know the joys of the way; you can sing the song, you can dance the dance. If somebody feels like moving with you, being a fellow traveler, not a follower, then he is welcome. But there is no enforcement and you are not obliging him.

These are the beautiful points which have arisen in the Eastern consciousness over thousands of years, that even if you show the way, you give the details of the path and you give the discipline, you don’t make the other person feel obliged to you. You are not doing it for him; it is just your own experience which wants to be shared. He is obliging you by hearing you, by giving you a chance to share your experience. He is helping you to be unburdened of the fragrance that you are carrying

– and you want to be unburdened; you have to be thankful to the person – the question of saving does not arise.

But after Christianity it became an almost universal phenomenon.

After Christianity came

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you go on living unsaved you may commit sins and you will suffer in hell. By killing you they are at least taking away all the opportunities of falling into hell.

And to be killed by a savior is almost to be saved. That’s what Mohammedans have been saying, that if you kill somebody in order to save him, he is saved; God will look after it. He is saved and you are accumulating more virtue in saving so many people. Mohammedans have killed millions of people in the East. And the strange thing is that they believed they were doing the right thing. And whenever somebody does a wrong thing believing that it is right, then it is more dangerous. You cannot persuade him otherwise, he does not give you a chance to be persuaded. In India I tried in every possible way to approach Mohammedan scholars, but they are unapproachable. They don’t want to discuss any religious matter with somebody who is not a Mohammedan.

They have a word of condemnation for the person who is not a Mohammedan. Just as Christians call him a heretic, Mohammedans call him kaffir – which is even worse than heretic. Kaffir comes from a word, kufr; kufr means sin, a sinner. Kaffir means a sinner: anybody who is not a Mohammedan is a sinner. There are no other categories, only two categories. Either you are a Mohammedan, then you are a saint.... Just by being a Mohammedan you are a saint, you are saved, because you believe in one God, one prophet – mohammed – and one holy book, the KORAN. These three things believed is enough for you to be a saint. And those who are not Mohammedans are all kaffirs, sinners.

It is a strange fact that India has the greatest population of Mohammedans – even today, after Pakistan was divided from India. Before the division, certainly India was the biggest Mohammedan country in the world. With Pakistan, it was hoped that now Mohammedans were going to have their own country. They got a great portion of the country, according to their population, but all the Mohammedans did not move to Pakistan. All the Hindus in Pakistan were killed, so Pakistan is purely a Mohammedan country. But the Mohammedans who did not move to Pakistan and who remain in India are still more in numbers than in any other country in the world, Pakistan included.

India, although a Hindu country, has the biggest number of Mohammedans. Still it is impossible to communicate. I have tried my best, but if you are not a Mohammedan then how can you understand?

There is no question of any dialogue: you are a kaffir.

I had a professor as my colleague in the university, who loved me very much.

He was a

Mohammedan. I asked him, ”Farid, can’t you manage...?” Because Jabalpur is one of the big centers of Mohammedans and it has great scholars. One very famous scholar, Burhanuddin, was there. He was old, and famous all over India and outside India also as a scholar of Mohammedanism. I asked Farid, ”Find some way for me to have a dialogue with him.” He said, ”Ft is really difficult – unless you can pretend to be a Mohammedan.” I said, ”That too is very difficult, because then you have to teach me a few basic things of Mohammedanism – their prayer and what they do. And moreover that Burhanuddin knows me –

we have spoken many times from the same platform – so it will be very difficult for me to act. I can try, there is no harm. At the most we may get caught and we can laugh at the whole thing.” He said, ”You can laugh, but my position will be very bad. They will kill me because you are a Mohammedan and you are supporting a kaffir, and deceiving one of your great masters.” But he was From Personality to Individuality

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willing to do it. He started teaching me the language, Urdu. It was difficult to learn because it is just absolutely the opposite of any language that is born of Sanskrit. An Urdu book starts from the back and the sentence starts from the right corner and goes towards the left.

It is so difficult to get adjusted: it is just upside down, the whole thing. You have to open the book from the end; that is the beginning. And then the sentence starts from the right and moves towards the left. And because of the way the Urdu language is written a perfect way has not yet been found to print it or type it. The way it is written is not scientific at all; most of it has to be guessed. So those who are accustomed to read it, they can read it because they can guess what it will be. But for somebody who is learning, it is very difficult to guess.

But for six months I tried. I learned enough so that I could deceive somebody into thinking that I was not very educated, but a little bit. I learned their prayers; Farid managed to get a wig for me and cut my beard like the Mohammedans cut theirs. And their beard is so strange that even when I think of it again now my stomach starts churning. But I went through it; they cut my mustache off completely and left just my beard.

I said, ”my God” If you had told me before then I would not have wasted these six months!” In a way they were right, because I know that a mustache is such a difficult thing – particularly a mustache like mine which is not trimmed but is wild. I don’t allow Mukta to trim it. It is difficult even to drink tea or to drink fruit juice because half of it will remain on the mustache. So Mohammedans have found a way: they cut off the mustache, they shave the mustache, and they keep the beard. But that looks so ugly.

But I said, ”Okay, we will do it. Now, for a few days I will not leave my house. Just give me a wig and let me see Burhanuddin.” It certainly changed my face completely when Farid cut my beard like the Mohammedans’ – very thin along the jawline and just a little bit of beard on the chin – like Lenin’s, a little less. Without a mustache and with a wig I looked different.

We went there, but the old man detected something about my eyes. He said, ”I have seen those eyes somewhere.”

I said, ”My God! Farid, where could Maulana” – Maulana means master; he was known as Maulana Burhanuddin – ”have seen me? – because I have never been to this city.” Farid was trembling, he was having a nervous breakdown: we had never thought about the eyes.

That old man continued to look, and he said, ”I suspect something.” I said, ”Farid, he suspects something.” Farid just fell at his feet and he said, ”There is no need to suspect – you know this man. And forgive me, I was just trying to help him because he wanted to have a dialogue with you.”

But he said, ”First tell me who he is, because as far as I can remember, I have known the man and I have seen him many times. You have just cut off his mustache.” I said; ’Now it is better, Farid, that you tell the whole thing, that not only have you cut off my mustache....” I took off the wig and I said, ”Look at the wig.” From Personality to Individuality

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The moment I was without the wig, Burhanuddin immediately recognized me, and he said, ”YOU!

I said, ”What else to do? You know me perfectly but you will not have a personal talk with me. Do you think that just being a Mohammedan is enough to be a saint? And what sin have I committed?

”Certainly I am not a Mohammedan, but Mohammed himself was not a Mohammedan when he was born. Was he a kaffir, a sinner? And can you tell me who converted Mohammed to Islam? He was never converted. Just as Jesus remained a Jew, Mohammed remained a pagan all his life; Mohammedanism is something that started after his death. So if Mohammed, a kaffir, can become the messenger of God, can’t I discuss the message?” Burhanuddin said, ”This is what I was afraid of That s why we don’t encourage any dialogue between Mohammedans and non-Mohammedans.”

I said, ”That simply shows your weakness. What is the fear? I am opening myself to you, to be saved by you. Save me – and if you cannot save me then let me try to save you.” But that man simply turned towards Farid and said, ”Take him away – I don’t want to talk any more.

And you have to come tomorrow to see me.”

And Farid was punished, beaten. I could not believe it: he was a professor at the university, a well-known scholar who was a guide to many research students working on Mohammedanism, on Urdu literature, the KORAN. Burhanuddin had a few hooligans there – they gave Farid a good beating.

He showed me his body; all over his body were signatures of the Mohammedan attitude.

He said, ”I told you before, that if something goes wrong.... They have only beaten me because I am a well-known person – if I were somebody else they would have killed me.” From Christianity the stupidity has moved to Mohammedanism. But except for these two religions no religion believes that you can save anybody; and in fact those other religions know more about compassion than these two religions. This idea of being a savior is simply illogical. Try to understand it.

You have been living for many lives; you have been doing things on your own. Now it is your responsibility to undo all that. How can I undo it? I have not done it, I have never been a partner with you in doing it. You have lived an absolutely free, individual life for many lives, and according to that you have grown and come to this stage where you are. This is not accidental, this is the growth of a long, long process. Now to undo that process you will have to take great responsibility on yourself I can show you the way I have undone my process. Certainly, the same method will help you to undo your process – perhaps with a little modification here and there. That you have to work out.

You can work it out with me, but that is going to be a dialogue, not dictation. I cannot dictate to you, aDo this,” and give you a simple panacea so that you will be saved: ”believe in me and you are saved.” Then not believing in me would be the only problem. Do you think that is the only problem, not believing in me? If that is the only problem then certainly in believing in me the problem is solved, you are saved. But that is not the problem. In your believing in me, your anger will still remain anger, your greed will still remain greed, your jealousy will still remain jealousy.

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Believing in me or Jesus or Mohammed is not going to change anything.

Do you think people who believe in Jesus are different in any way from people who don’t believe in Jesus, who believe in Mohammed, who believe in somebody else? No, they are not different.

Deep down they are the same people, with the same jealousy, with the same arrogance, the same egoism, same violence. Everything is the same, all the garbage is the same.

Believing changes nothing at all, so how can you be saved? The whole idea is idiotic.

Mahavira and Buddha are far more sophisticated than Jesus and Mohammed. One of my arguments with Jaina monks began with this same question. Mahavira says: ”Nobody can save anybody except himself. Everybody has to save himself.” Buddha says: ”Be a light unto yourself” That was his last message before he died.

When Buddha was dying his closest disciple, Ananda, started crying. Thousands of disciples were there, at least ten thousand disciples were there. They were all ready to burst into tears, but they were holding back their tears somehow because Buddha would not like it: ”At least while he is going beyond our reach let him go feeling that his disciples have followed his message.” But Ananda could not contain himself. It was difficult for everybody, but for Ananda it was more difficult because for at least sixty years he had been like a shadow to Buddha, serving him in every possible way without asking anything in return. It was just a sheer joy to serve him and to sit silently while he was talking to others, answering others. Ananda would never interrupt. It is very difficult to find such a devoted person.

He was Buddha’s elder brother, his cousin-brother; he was older than Buddha. Before he was initiated into sannyas Ananda had asked Buddha three things. He said, ”After being initiated I will be your disciple; whatsoever you say there is no question, I have to do it, and I will do it. But right now I am still your elder brother, so as an elder brother promise me three things and then initiate me, because after that I will never be able to ask anything.” He asked three things, but he never used a single promise.

One was: ”you will not say to me,’Ananda, you go somewhere else to spread the word.’ I am going to remain with you to serve you. You have to promise me.” The second was: ”Even if in the middle of the night I bring somebody who needs your help, you cannot refuse them. Anybody whom I bring to you, you have to help; whether you are tired after the whole day’s work or not, it doesn’t matter. If I bring somebody to you, you have to help him, you cannot refuse.” And the third was: ”If I ask a question, you cannot tell me, as you tell others,’Be silent for two years, three years, meditate, and then I will answer.’ No, you will have to answer immediately.” As his younger brother, Buddha promised Ananda that these three things would be granted to him.

But Ananda was a rare man; otherwise, Buddha would have hesitated to accept these conditions, because initiation cannot be given in a conditional way. He could have simply said, ”If you put conditions on me then initiation is not possible” – because many other times a few other people had come with conditions and he had refused them; but to Ananda he gave the promise. That is unprecedented in the whole history of initiation. But I can understand why he did it; he knew Ananda From Personality to Individuality

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from his childhood – he was not a man to take advantage of anything. Buddha knew that Ananda would never use those promises – he could be given them.

And Ananda never used them. He never asked a single question, he never brought a single person; and of course, Buddha never told him to go away. If Buddha had said to, Ananda would have gone-he would not have even mentioned the promise-but Buddha never asked him.

This man could not contain himself: sixty years was so long to be together. He had been just like a shadow-and now he was left alone. Tears came to his eyes. Buddha opened his eyes to look, to have a last look at his disciples. Seeing tears in Ananda’s eyes he said, ”Ananda, be a light unto yourself I was not your light, and I was not your savior. My death makes no difference. In fact, now you will have to understand what I have been telling you for sixty years: don’t remain in any illusion that just because you are serving me and you are being with me devotedly – it is very difficult to find such a devotion – still that is not going to save you.” You have to go through a transformation.

And that only you can do.

It is such an inner work that even the Master cannot reach there.

Except for you, nobody can reach there.

And this is the beauty of the human soul:

It is absolutely unavailable to anybody.

Your center is so protected by existence:

Nobody can even touch it.

The question of saving somebody does not arise. Yes, the man of compassion tries his best to explain to you the way, to explain to you how it has happened to him. But that is simply sharing his story with you. Perhaps out of that story you can get some hints for yourself, but that is up to you.

In these twenty-five centuries since Mahavira and Buddha, Buddhism has completely disappeared from India because Buddhist monks could not compromise with Hinduism in any way. And I think that it is perfectly right: there is no need to compromise with anybody. Rather than compromising they preferred either to be killed, burned, or to leave the country. So a very strange thing happened: Buddhism was born in India, Buddha was born in India, and yet in India there are no Buddhists.

And there was a time when the whole of India was afire with Buddhism. Either they had to die...

but not a single Buddhist is known to have been converted, it is impossible. If you have understood something how can somebody else convert you?

They left the country and spread all over Asia, so the whole of Asia turned to Buddhism. Except for India the whole continent is Buddhist. Buddhists from all over Asia come to India to pay homage to the place where Buddha had become enlightened. The temple that was made as a memorial From Personality to Individuality

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for Buddha’s enlightenment has a brahmin priest because Buddhists disappeared from India so totally that even to find a priest.... For the memorial temple of Buddha’s enlightenment there was no Buddhist available. And a brahmin... Buddha’s whole revolution is against brahminism.

But brahmins are professional priests. You can tell them anything, you pay for it, and they will be the priest – it doesn’t matter. And to them it really doesn’t matter because Hinduism has thirty-three million gods. When you can worship thirty-three million gods, one or two more makes no difference.

And they are not getting involved in your religion: just purely as professionals they perform the worship.

I have talked with this brahmin priest who is worshipping in Buddha’s temple, just as a heritage. For centuries his family has been worshipping there; they are almost the owners of the place. I asked him, ”Are you influenced in any way by Buddha?”

He said, ”The question does not arise – we are professional priests. Somebody is a professional doctor, somebody is a professional engineer; that does not mean that becomes his religion. My religion is Hinduism and I go to the Hindu temple to worship for myself. This is simply a paid job.

I am being paid; and I go on receiving many gifts because visitors come from all the Buddhist countries – Sri Lanka, Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia, Indo-China, China, Korea, Taipei, the whole of Asia. So many gifts go on coming to me, it is a really profitable job, but I am a brahmin and I am against Buddhism.”

Buddhists disappeared because they did not compromise, and Jainism remained a small stream because it did compromise. It was one of the questions of debate for me all over India when meeting Jaina monks or meeting them on a stage in some conference. They would all say, ”Mahavira was born to redeem the whole of mankind from sin.”

I said, ”This is absolutely wrong – you are just put ting Mahavira’s name in place of Jesus Christ. It is a Christian influence, it is not at all in tune with Mahavira. He was not born to redeem the whole world, and if he was, the proof is there that the world is not redeemed. Nor has Jesus’ crucifixion redeemed the world. Nobody has been able to redeem the world – it is nobody’s business to. If you can redeem yourself, that is more than enough. And if you can spread a little bit of light and fragrance around you, you are fortunate and blessed.” Saving somebody is really a thankless job – you know, the way I saved the man in that ancient pond in Raipur. He was shouting, ”Help! Help!” but he could not believe it when I pushed him back. When he came out he said, ”The first time it was okay because I was shouting,’Help! Help!’ – but I was just standing there and you pushed me?”

I said, ”I was simply undoing what I had done, because it was wrong, against your will. If you want to commit suicide all my blessings are with you. If just a little push is needed, I am not so miserly that I won’t give it to you.”

It happened when I was a student that I had a friend who was in love with a Bengali girl. He was not a Bengali, but he was really a fanatic lover. He almost transformed himself into a Bengali; he even started speaking Hindi the way Bengalis speak. It was impossible to detect that he was not a Bengali because he was speaking Bengali very perfectly. That can be understood; but he started speaking Hindi which was his mother tongue, the way Bengalis speak it – and Bengalis destroy it!

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He learned that too just to influence that girl and her parents, to show that although he was not a born Bengali, he was almost a Bengali. He started dressing himself the Bengali way and he started carrying an umbrella, which Bengalis always do – I don’t know why. If it is raining it is okay, if it is hot it is okay; but no matter whether it is raining or not, hot or not, cold or not, an umbrella is always with them. It is a multipurpose thing: to drive dogs away, to beat somebody or to fight with somebody. It has many purposes and is always handy. It has just become part of the Bengali personality – so he started carrying an umbrella.

I said, ”Thakur” – he was by caste a Thakur.

He said, ”You are my friend, but don’t call me Thakur, call me’Thakoor’ the way Bengalis say it”the

”u” in Thakur becomes ”o”: Thakoor – ”otherwise our friendship is finished.” I said, ”I am not a Bengali and it looks so foolish to call you Thakoor; I will be unnecessarily wasting my breath. Thakur is perfectly good.”

But the family refused him, because Bengalis are very arrogant in that matter. They are just like French people in Europe. They think their language is the best and their culture is the best. Even if a Frenchman understands English he won’t speak it, he will speak in French. He cannot fall down so low and just speak English. Bengalis do the same: they can speak Hindi but they won’t.

I have been visiting Calcutta hundreds of times but only Hindi-speaking people would come to listen to me. Even in Calcutta – which is the capital for Bengalis – not a single Bengali would turn up for a meeting. I had a few friends who would come to see me, and I asked them, ”Why don’t you come to the meetings?

They said, ”Unless you start speaking in Bengali, no Bengali is going to come.” You will be surprised that in Calcutta they call everybody who is outside Bengal an Indian. They are Bengalis, and everybody, except them, is an Indian. That was strange to know. For the first time I came to know in Bengal that I am Indian and they are Bengalis.

So the family refused Thakur. They said, ”You may speak Bengali, you may even speak Hindi the way Bengalis speak, you may carry an umbrella; you have managed everything well....” The boy started eating fish and rice, because that is the most important food for Bengalis – rice and fish. He would not eat any other sweets than Bengali sweets. He was really a Majnu, a Farhad, a Romeo –

that kind of person.

But the family refused him, they said, ”We won’t accept you.” But he was not going to take any no from them. He closed himself in his room and his family all tried to persuade him to open the door.

He said, ”I am not going to open the door. I am going to die in this room unless you go and persuade that family. Either I have to marry their daughter or I am going to die.” Now the family said, ”How can we persuade them? Those people don’t even consider themselves Indians. You have become almost a Bengali.”

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”If they have refused you,” the father said, ”they will not even talk to me because that’s far below them. Bengalis have culture, they have great poets and great scientists and everything great. They won’t listen to me.”

Still, he went – what else to do? Thakur was his only son, and he was being so foolish that he wouldn’t open the door. The father went. He was a well-known doctor, but the family said, ”We are sorry, but we cannot give our daughter to an Indian family. You will not be able to give her the comforts, the food, the culture, that she is accustomed to, so it is not going to happen. Just persuade your son.”

The trouble was that the girl was not interested, otherwise I would have managed something. I told the boy, ”It is not a problem of being a Bengali or a non-bengali. I would have managed something if the girl was interested in you, but she is not interested at all; otherwise you could have eloped. I would have managed it.”

I had done it two or three times in my life. I had even arranged for my own brother to elope with a girl, because my younger brother fell in love with the daughter of the landlord of the house where I used to live.

My landlord was furious, but I said, ”Don’t be worried; I will persuade my brother when he comes next” – because he was studying in the engineering college, so he came whenever he had time; the engineering college was almost ten miles away from the place – ”whenever he comes I will explain things to him. Don’t be worried.”

Meanwhile I asked his daughter, ”what do you want? If you are really willing then tomorrow you both escape – I will arrange everything. He is madly in love with you but the question is, are you in love with him?”

She said, ”I am more madly in love with him than he is with me.” So I said, ”Then it is perfect.” I arranged a magistrate, but he was not willing to perform the marriage in Jabalpur because the legal procedure is that one month’s notice has to be posted on the court board:”such and such persons are going to be married. If anybody has any objection....” But one month is a long time; if her father came to know.... I said, ”Do one thing. Post it, back-date it one month tonight. Who will prove that it was not there for one month? On your notice board there are hundreds of notices. Just paste it in a corner. It should be there – back-dated.” He said, ”You don’t know law or anything.”

I said, ”You have to do it. It is not a question of law, it is a question of love. You have to do it! And I have never asked anything of you – and I am not asking for myself. But my young brother and this girl will both suffer their whole life. They will suffer anyway but let them suffer together! If they want that then it is my duty to help – you just help too.” He said okay. In the night he placed a back-dated notice on the board, but he was very afraid that something might go wrong, even in the morning – the court did not open till then. He said, ”What I From Personality to Individuality

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will do is this: I will go to a village nearby where I go occasionally for tours as a magistrate. So you send your brother and the girl there – nobody will be able to prevent them.” So he went away, thirty or forty miles, and stayed in a guesthouse. I drove my brother and his girlfriend there and got them married – the magistrate signed and sealed everything. But his fear was right, because some clerk of his court found that back-dated note. The clerk knew the girl’s father, so he immediately phoned and said, ”Do you know your girl is going to be married? Today is the last day to register any objections, and the magistrate is not here, he has gone on tour.” The father came running from his shop. I was missing, and the girl was missing. They went around the whole town; their whole family was searching to find where we had gone. By the evening we returned. I went to Delhi; I said to my brother, ”I am not coming home for a few days. Go to my father’s house in the village, don’t go to the girl’s father. Go to my father’s house; I will phone my father and tell him, ’I have got one of your sons married and I am sending him and his wife to you, so receive them well at the station.’”

My father said, ”You are just a trouble, because you have already done it without asking me. Now I can’t do anything about it – I will go to the station and receive them.” I said, ”Give them a good reception, because the girl’s father is not going to give any reception. And I will not be there because I don’t want to be seen with them; otherwise... he is my landlord and he will throw me out and make me leave the house.”

After three days I came back. The landlord looked at me and he said, ”Where have you been?” I said, ”I went to New Delhi.”

He said, ”Yes, I see you must have gone, but what happened to my daughter?” I said, ”I don’t know. What happened to your daughter? I am not your daughter’s guardian.” So he said, ”You don’t know anything?”

I said, ”No, I don’t.”

He said, ”They got married!”

I said, ”This is news to me. Who married them?” Then I persuaded him: ”If they have got married then why make an unnecessary fuss about it? Give them a good reception. They are already married – you cannot do anything. Legally she is adult, he is adult; you cannot do anything legally.

And you have showed me the one month’s notice: what were you doing for one month? And now, when they have got married, you think about it? Be a little cool. This will be unnecessarily a scandal for your family. Why make it a scandal? Give them a good reception and say that this is with our wishes that they have got married.”

He said, ”It seems right; there is no point in doing otherwise.” From Personality to Individuality

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So I arranged it; I arranged that my father give a good reception to them. I organized things with the landlord and then I phoned my father, ”Now you can bring the marriage procession to Jabalpur: her father is willing to give a good reception.”

So I told Thakur, ”I have been arranging marriages – there is no problem – but the girl simply hates you, it is not just that she does not love you. Even if she were not in love I would have persuaded her, talked to her; at least she could feel compassion for you”because for six years continually he had been trying to become a Bengali, and he had become one. ”But the girl simply hates you; she says it is impossible!”

But he would not open the door and he was threatening, ”If you do anything I have poison inside.” He did have poison because he had got poison from his father’s dispensary. ”I will drink it if you force me or if you try to break down the doors.”

The father said to me, ”Now do something.”

I went to the door. I said, ”Listen, Thakoor.”

He said, ”So it is you?” – because he understood, nobody else would call him Thakoor.

I said, ”Yes, it is I.”

He said, ”I want to commit suicide.”

I said, ”I will arrange it – just come out with me. Here it will be difficult: even if you take the poison you are not going to die immediately. Your father is a doctor; the door can be broken down and you can be saved from the poison. It is not such a great thing. I found out from your father that that poison can kill, but it will take at least eighteen to twenty-fours hours for the man to die. Meanwhile the poison can be got out or an antidote can be given. So you see, it is simply foolish. Just come with me; my car is waiting outside, just come with me.” He came out and I took him home. I said, ”The best place to die is by the marble rocks. It is one of the most beautiful places in the world.” For two continuous miles the Narmada flows between two mountains of white marble. On the full-moon night it is an absolute dreamland: you can’t believe that things can be so beautiful. So I said to him, ”This is good; although it is not full-moon night it is very close. In just two days time it will be full moon. If you can wait for two days, good; otherwise still it is good light. And you are going to die so what does it matter whether it is a full-moon night or a no-moon night?

”I will drive you early in the morning – because that is the best time. In the night there are people and you may be saved, because when the moon is there many people go for picnics or for boating, so it is full. But in the morning there is nobody. It is a night place. In the day there is no beauty – if you see it in the day you will not believe it is the same place that you saw in the night... a millionfold difference.”

I had actually requested the governor, who was my friend, ”Close this place during the day. Nobody should be allowed to enter to see the marble rocks then because it destroys the beauty of the marble rocks. It should be open only when the moon is there, only for a few nights.” From Personality to Individuality

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He agreed but he said, ”there is no law like that And the Narmada is a holy river for Hindus: it will cause trouble if we prevent people. They will say they are going to take a bath – and this is a religious thing, so don’t get me into trouble.”

I told Thakur, ”Five o’clock will be the right time, so I am fixing the alarm for four o’clock. It takes one hour to get from here to the marble rocks.” So in my room, on a table between our beds, I put the clock. Thakur was tossing and turning; I said, ”what is the matter? You don’t feel like sleeping?

– because this is the last night. Have a good sleep. You will never be able to sleep again, so just sleep.”

He said, ”Are you my friend?”

I said, ”Yes, certainly, Thakoor, I am your friend.” He said, ”You are so interested in my suicide and you are making every arrangement: I wonder whether you are my friend or my enemy.”

I said, ”I am just your friend. You want to die – I am ready to help. If you want to live, I am ready to help. A friend is really known when a crucial moment comes, and this is such a moment. You are going to die – at least I can help you.” I brought the car to the porch, and I said, ”In the morning somebody may get up late, so it is better if I go to the gas station to fin it up now; in the morning, at four o’clock, it may be difficult. We may not find the petrol pump owner, and some problem may arise, so I am making every arrangement.”

The more arrangements I made, the more he became afraid of suicide. And at four o’clock when the alarm went off he immediately put his hand on the clock. I caught his hand there and I said, ”This is not good, because then we will be late.”

He said, ”But I am feeling too sleepy.”

I said, ”You can sleep in the car – don’t be worried. And it only takes a few seconds, you have just to jump; if you cannot jump I can push you. And nobody can come alive out from the waterfall in the marble rocks; nobody ever has. Many people have committed suicide there; it is a special place.

During examination times there are constables on duty twenty-four hours a day, because nobody can come back alive.

”The waterfall is big and it falls onto rocks; so when you take a jump the waterfall takes you down deep, perhaps a hundred feet or a hundred and fifty feet down, and then there are rocks all around.

You may be smashed on the rocks – nobody who has jumped there has ever come back alive.” So I said, ”Don’t be worried: it is sure, guaranteed; there is no problem. Just have a good sleep in the car now.”

He sat in the car very reluctantly. On the way he said, ”Are you really going to the marble rocks?” I said, ”We decided on it.”

He said, ”Just take me to my home. I don’t want to get married to that girl. To hell with that girl! I became a Bengali for her, and now I am going to commit suicide!” From Personality to Individuality

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I said, ”This is strange – you wasted my whole night and all the arrangements I have made. Don’t change your mind – keep to your word.”

He said, ”You are saying that! It is my life and you are preparing for my death.” I said, ”If you want I can leave you at your house, but remember, never mention suicide again.” He said, ”That I understand. I will certainly not mention suicide to you, nobody should mention it to you: you are dangerous.”

I said, ”I am simply helpful.”

He is still alive. He got married to another girl and he has children. The last time I went to Jabalpur in’69, he said, ”If I had followed you and committed suicide it would have been better.” I said, ”I am still ready. You should not mention it to me because if you still want to, there is no problem.”

He said, ”No, I don’t mean it. I am simply saying that getting married and having children and a job

– it is worse than death.”

I said, ”If it is worse, I am still ready to help you.” There are people who are living a life which is worse than death, but they are not courageous enough even to commit suicide. And for transformation more courage is needed than for suicide.

For suicide, only a few moments of courage are needed. Just for a few moments you have to keep hold of yourself, and then take a jump or shoot yourself It is just a question of moments. Any coward can be brave enough for a single moment.

But transformation is a lifelong process – it is not a question of saving yourself for a few moments This is the reason why people got interested in religions like Christianity, because Christianity sells the idea so cheap. You have not to do anything: no transformation – the word transformation does not even appear in the whole BIBLE – no meditation. The word is not Christian or Jewish. All that you need to do is to believe in the messiah and go every Sunday to church. They can talk about anything, because who listens to these boring preachers there? And because they are boring they cannot conceive that there is a possibility of listening to somebody with deep intimacy and love.

I saw on television a panel of three priests: one rabbi and two Christians. They discussed many things about me and about my commune – all rumors, there was nothing true in it. One thing they discussed was: ”Osho has started speaking and He will be speaking every day now. Won’t people get bored?”

Three priests... of course that is their experience. They don’t speak every day for three hours continually. They speak only once a week, and not for three hours; otherwise people would kill them. All the three priests are concerned that my people will get bored. They don’t know me, they don’t know my people.

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I have been speaking for thirty years continually, and I have not seen a single person sitting in front of me, bored. That is impossible, because whatever I am saying is not borrowed. I am opening my heart before you, and you are getting bored? That is impossible. I reveal myself to you, and you get bored? That is impossible. But what those three priests were saying had a certain relevance in their experience and so they all agreed that people would get bored.

The rabbi even suggested, ”We should also start something like this, approaching people – because we have dropped that – talking about truth.” They don’t do that any more because there is no need.

Nobody wants to hear, nobody is interested in their God. Even they are not interested.

I have heard that three rabbis were discussing whose synagogue was the most modern. One said,

”In my synagogue women are even allowed to sit side by side with men. Even girlfriends and boyfriends, those who are not married to each other, are allowed to sit together – even people sitting with others’ wives, who I know are committing adultery. But my synagogue is ultra-modern and we move with the times

The second one said, ”This is nothing, because in my synagogue there is no preaching, no prayer; but a beautiful dinner is served and everybody enjoys it more than the sermon. The real question is enjoyment. With a sermon people get bored. You mention the TORAH, you mention the TALMUD, and they start thinking, How to escape from here? But just because of a delicious dinner everybody from the congregation comes.”

The third one said, ”This is nothing – my synagogue remains closed on Jewish holidays.” These people have nothing to do with truth; nothing to do with transformation, nothing to do with your personality: they are simply part of a business. These are firms of long, traditional standing.

They are all doing business. The question is, whose customer are you? That’s what they mean by saving: ”Why are you being saved by somebody else? We can save you in a less costly way, more cheaply, in a more ultra-modern way. We can even keep the synagogues closed on jewish holidays.

What more do you want?” They are offering you everything – just be saved by them.

That reminds me again of Natthu Kaka. I was a regular visitor to his salon. I had no beard at that time – I was a child – and no mustache, so there was no fear, but I had to use a scarf because I had long hair, and if Natthu Kaka was in the mood he might start cutting. And once he had cut your hair you could not do anything. And he was such a nice man, he would say, ”Why be worried? – you need not pay.” It was, every day, a problem that he had shaved somebody without asking him, and now the man was angry.

Particularly in India, people shave if they become sannyasins; that means they are dying in a ritualistic way. When a person dies, he is shaved; it is just symbolic. Just as when a person dies he is shaved, in the same way when somebody becomes a traditional sannyasin he is shaved. Or if your father dies, traditionally all the sons will be shaved; but now they have found a little more liberal way – only the eldest son has to be shaved. So to shave somebody’s complete head without asking him.... And Natthu Kakka was really a craftsman: with just one hand half of your skull was shaved dean. Now there was no way except to let him shave your whole head, because with it only half shaven you would look more of an idiot than with it totally shaven.

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So it was every day a question of a fight: people would get angry and would be ready to.... And I enjoyed the scene. Natthu Kaka’s shop was just in front of my father’s shop so whenever there was something happening I would immediately go there. But I kept my scarf in Natthu Kaka’s place itself because sometimes I might be coming by and just see some great thing happening there –

somebody ready to hit Natthu Kaka, and him saying, ”You are getting unnecessarily upset. I am an old man, an opium addict. I don’t know whom I am shaving and what is happening – it is all mixed up. Somehow you got into my hands, and it is just an old habit to shave people, sol did it.

So I used to keep my scarf there: the first thing I would do is put on my scarf One day he shaved a man who was a kind of political leader. Of course the man was very angry and he said, ”You have to be punished for this. I am going to the police, I am going to the court.” I was there. I said, ”There is no need to be angry, and even by going to the police and to the court your hair will not be replaced. This poor man is not even asking money from you. And as far as your hair is concerned....” This man was an educated man, and I used to have discussions with him.

So I told him, ”You remember the Zen haiku: ’Sitting silently, doing nothing, and the grass grows by itself’? Why be so worried? Just take out ’grass’ and put in ’hair.’” That day an idea came to me. I made a small board and put it in Natthu Kaka’s shop. Natthu Kaka is dead but perhaps still there in his shop will be the board on which I wrote the haiku, with a note:

”If Natthu Kaka shaves somebody, don’t get angry with him; he is just an old savior. And if he has shaved you, please meditate on this haiku:’Sitting silently, doing nothing, the hair grows by itself’

The hair will grow – don’t be worried.”

Perhaps that board is still there, or perhaps the shop is finished, because his sons were not interested in doing business with him. They were trying to find employment, because, they said,

”With this old man we will lose business because we are not opium addicts. People forgive him because everybody comes running from all the shops around here saying, ’Don’t be angry – he is a nice fellow.’”

When last I went to my village – that was in’70 – he was still alive but very old. I went to see him and he said, ”Since you have left for your studies, nobody comes regularly the way you used to come, and nobody is there to help this old opium addict. I go on doing my thing – I can’t help it.” He would sometimes catch hold of children and shave them, and then their fathers would come and say, ”What have you done?” And his only answer was, ”I don’t ask for any money, can’t I even practice? Where am I supposed to practice? No customers are coming and I am sitting without doing anything.” In 1970 he told me, ”You are the only person who can help me” – because in my childhood there was no legal prohibition on opium or any drugs; everything was available in the market. Only the person who was selling needed a license that cost five rupees per year; the people who were purchasing were not required to have any license or anything. But in 1970 when I went there, things had changed. All drugs were prohibited; and the old addicts, like Natthu Kaka, were given licenses so that they could get a little quantity every day. He was very angry.

He said, ”Only you can help, because I know how many people are opium addicts in the whole country. If you lead us, and if all the opium addicts become united, we can turn over this government.” I said, ”Great, Natthu! You want me to become the leader of the opium addicts?” From Personality to Individuality

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He said, ”I don’t know anybody who would be as understanding as you.” I said, ”The idea is good, but to collect all opium addicts and to persuade them to make a party and overturn the government is a very difficult job. I would have to do everything alone. Your opium addicts would create trouble rather than be any help! Just drop this political act – this is not for opium addicts.”

He said, ”Think about it, because you go around the country: you can just tell all the opium addicts that this is simply unjust. I have lived my whole life with opium and I have not harmed anybody –

except that once in a while I shave people, but I don’t take any money. I have not done any crime; in fact I don’t have any energy to do any crime, I am just enjoying my opium. My opium has made me so simple and so innocent that people come and milk my cow and I go on seeing what they are doing, but only later on I remember that it was my cow, that they were milking my cow and they have taken the milk.

”I have not committed any crime; on the contrary people have been committing crimes against me.

They take soap from my shop, they take mirrors from my shop – and I am sitting there! But I am enjoying my own world. So I don’t see what is the point in prohibiting opium. You can prohibit any other drug – I am not concerned – but opium simply makes a man a gentleman.” I said, ”It is true, Natthu Kaka, but it will be very difficult. I will TRY....” And I actually told Indira Gandhi the whole story.

She laughed, and she said, ”He is, in a way, right, that opium addicts don’t create any trouble.” Opium simply makes them hallucinate, and opium is a drug which makes you very happy, it never makes you depressed; all other drugs have that possibility. Sometimes if your mood is depressed and you take LSD, that will depress you more; if your mood is happy and you take LSD, it will raise your happiness. It depends on your mood: the drug only exaggerates your mood.

Opium does not work that way. It simply relaxes you and helps you to hallucinate beautiful things, nice things. It never gives you any nightmares, because this Natthu Kaka and his friends – I have talked to all of them – never had any nightmares with opium.

So Indira told me, ”What he is saying is right, but to collect these opium addicts will be difficult for you; and to overturn the government with their support – it will be really a revolution if it becomes possible.”

This idea of saving is deeply insulting and humiliating to people.

The moment you say, ”I would like to save you,” you are reducing that person to a subhuman being: You are a savior and he is just to be saved.

It is ugly, it is just sick.

It is not compassion.

Compassion shares.

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And if somebody is available and open he absorbs it.

But the credit never goes to you; you cannot claim, ”I have saved you.” The person saves himself:

That’s the only way, there is no other way.

The second question?

Question 2

OSHO,

I HAVE HEARD YOU SAY THAT YOU ARE NOT HERE TO INSPIRE ANYBODY HOWEVER, THE FACT IS THAT I COME AWAY FROM YOUR RECENT DISCOURSES TOTALLY AFIRE AND

IGNITED BY WHATEVER IT IS THAT HAPPENS BETWEEN YOU AND US. PLEASE COMMENT.

YES, I am not here to inspire.

But you are here to be inspired.

These are two different things.

If you get inspired the credit goes to you. It is not me who is inspiring you, it is you who are open to me. If you bring your candle close to me and it becomes lighted, is it my flame that is responsible or is it you coming closer to me, bringing your unlighted candle? I don’t move a single inch towards your candle, because that I consider a trespass.

I open myself completely to you.

I make my candle available to you.

You can bring your candle.

It is just as when a thirsty man comes to the well: If he drinks and his thirst is quenched, all credit goes to him. In fact the well feels grateful, thankful to him because as more water is taken out of the well, fresh water goes on flowing into the well. If people stop drinking from the well and drawing water from the well, the water dies. Its inner sources become closed; soon the well becomes poisonous.

If a man of enlightenment remains closed – which is impossible, I am just saying it for argument’s sake – if a man of enlightenment remains closed he will destroy his enlightenment.

But it is

impossible. Enlightenment becomes enlightenment only because he opens up. And he goes on opening – there is no end to his opening.

All that he is, is only a presence. That’s why I say I don’t do anything. I am just here for you to do something. You can come close to me. That’s what happens when I am talking to you: unawares, From Personality to Individuality

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you start moving closer to me. Your physical bodies remain where they are – and leave them there!

– but you start moving towards me. Perhaps you will understand what I am saying, because I can see – when somebody starts moving towards me, I can see – the body is left behind and the person has come very close to me. It is in that moment you feel afire, ignited. But the whole credit always goes to you.

I am not the savior.

And I do not want ever to be known, by that ugly word, savior.

I am just a presence.

You can save yourself

You can burn your candles from my fire and my fire will not lose anything.

Yes, you will gain eternity.

You will gain ultimate bliss.

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CHAPTER 21

Priest and politicians: from genesis to genocide

19 January 1985 pm in Lao Tzu Grove

Question 1

OSHO,

ALL THE OTHER MASTERS SEEM LIKE PYGMIES. WHAT IS YOUR SECRET?

THEY ARE pygmies. It is not a question that they seem like pygmies, they are in fact so – for the simple reason that religion is now having its birth.

The so-called masters of the past are just like primitive scientists who discovered fire, who created the spinning wheel, who invented the bullock cart. Yes, they were of great importance, but you cannot compare them with Albert Einstein.

Albert Einstein comes when science has taken roots and has grown mature. It was not possible two thousand years ago to get into the secrets of atomic energy. Yes, there have been people who have talked about atoms; in India Mahavira talked about atoms, but don’t be deceived by the word.

By atom, he simply meant the last divisible part of a thing: you cannot divide it any more. And it was simply a logical ideahe was not sitting in a lab and dividing things. But it is simple: everything consists of smaller parts. The smallest part he called an atom.

Greek philosophers, nearabout the same time, talked about atoms in the same way, saying that if you go on dividing a thing you will come to a point where you cannot divide it any more. Not because they had divided anything – they had no instruments to come to the division where the atom exists

– but because logically, intellectually, there is no problem in it. It is conceivable.

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In Greek thought and in Indian thought, Masters have come up with the idea of the atom. But when Albert Einstein talks about the atom it is not just an intellectually conceivable thing, he has seen the division. He has seen the molecule splitting; not only that, he has found that the atom itself is not indivisible, it too is divisible into electrons. And nobody can say now that electrons are indivisible.

That certainty is not possible any more. In the eighteenth century the molecule was indivisible; then it was divided. Then the atom became indivisible; then it was divided. Now with what face can anybody say that electrons are indivisible? Only tomorrow knows.

But what we talk about today is experimental, not intellectual. And compared to Albert Einstein, the ancient philosophers talking about atoms are bound to look like pygmies. It is not their fault; it is not Albert Einstein’s glory either – just the time factor. In these twenty-five centuries things have moved with a tremendous speed in every direction. Those people were working with primitive words, ideas, instruments. We are in a better situation, a greater opportunity is available to us.

As far as religion is concerned, it is a little more complicated. It is easy to understand scientifically that what Mahavira is saying is just ordinary compared to Albert Einstein. In religion it seems to be a little complex, complicated, because we have accepted the idea that these religions – Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Christianity, Judaism, Jainism – are religions. There is the basic fallacy.

They are only pseudo-religions. They are only preparing the way for religion to come. But of course they could not be aware of it, that they were only preparing a way. They have prepared the way; hence it is possible for a man like me to say things which were not possible for them. Of course they are there in my statements; they have worked for centuries to create this moment. This time is not out of nowhere, it stands on the shoulders of the past.

Of course you are standing on your father’s shoulders. He is standing on his father’s shoulders. You can see further away than your father, than your grandfather. The farther back you go, the more the vision becomes limited, more narrow and more narrow still. You are standing on a height.

So remember that when the true religion is born it is very much indebted to the pygmies because it is standing on their shoulders. Without them it is not possible. Don’t forget it, that you are standing so tall and you can see so far away just because underneath your feet the whole of history is supporting you.

But it always happens that whenever somebody finds something, the human tendency is to exaggerate. A little finding, a small truth, becomes exaggerated. And because it is truth nobody can deny it absolutely. If you have a little imagination – and these Masters are mostly very imaginative people.... They had found little fragments of truth – but don’t forget the tendency of the mind: it is never satisfied with a fragment, it wants the whole. That’s the natural instinct in the mind, to search for the whole. If it cannot &d it, then at least it can imagine it. So that little fragment which has been found is surrounded by imagination, and it is made complete.

All these people – Jesus, Moses, Mahavira, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu – had come to a certain aspect of truth, but they could not resist the temptation to complete it by imagination.

That temptation is a great temptation. It is just like you remember three lines of poetry, then it becomes a strain on the mind; the fourth line is missing. You start trying to find it; you know it must From Personality to Individuality

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be somewhere in your memory. Three lines are there – where is the fourth? You become tense about the fourth, and the more tense you become, the less is the possibility to remember it, because a tense mind loses the capacity to remember.

A relaxed mind can easily remember; things from the unconscious can surface more easily because the mind is relaxed. If the mind is tense, it is so narrow that it does not allow anything from the unconscious to pass through it. It becomes the eye of the needle – and things in the unconscious are like camels, not like rich men.

I have been thinking hard; I can imagine a rich man passing through the eye of a needle, but I cannot imagine a camel passing through the eye of a needle. A rich man, howsoever rich, is still a man; a camel, howsoever poor, is still a camel. It is impossible for the poor camel. The rich man at least is a man: he may find a way to pass through the eye of a needle or may &d a way to bypass it. There is no need to pass through it, he can bypass it. But the poor camel cannot bypass it, he does not have that intelligence. He will go on struggling to pass through the eye of the needle. It is absolutely impossible for him to pass; in fact it is impossible for him even to find the eye of the needle, or to find the needle – where is the needle?

Small fragments of the truth have been found, but the mind has a great urge for completion, things should be completed. To leave anything incomplete makes you tense. Once it is complete you feel relaxed. But if there is no way to find truth in its wholeness, then mind has another faculty – the dream faculty – which helps you. It is of great importance. It is a survival measure, so when you cannot find something in reality, the dream faculty of your mind provides you what is missing. It gives you ideas to put around, to figure out the puzzle. And because you have a small fragment of truth, you can logically fight for your system. That’s how all religious systems have arisen.

Somewhere there is something true in all the religious systems, but the system has grown so big that the truth is lost completely. It was a tiny fragment in the very beginning, then the mind started creating a system around it. As there are more questions, the mind has to create more answers.

Slowly the system becomes so big that the truth for which it was created is almost killed.

You know perfectly well that skeletons of animals have been found which must have been at least ten or twelve times bigger than elephants. The whole earth was full of those mammoth animals. What happened to all of them? Where did they suddenly disappear? You cannot think that somebody killed them. They were too huge, and there were no hunters available – man was not yet on the earth. And those animals were the biggest, most powerful beings around. Your tigers and lions were nothing, your elephants were nothing before them; they were at least twelve times bigger than your elephant. Your crocodiles were nothing; there were crocodiles twelve times bigger than elephants. What happened? There were many species – and suddenly they all disappeared. What happened?

Scientists have been in great trouble to figure it out because their sudden disappearance makes no sense. But slowly they found one thing which is very important to understand: those animals disappeared because they became too big. It became impossible for them to carry their own burden.

The body was created to keep their souls alive, but the body became so big that even to carry it was not possible for them. They died because of their size.

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They could not move; and when they could not move then where to find food? Because of their heaviness of legs, their heaviness of body, they simply started falling down. They had life, but now life was such a small fragment, and the system that was created to protect that life became so huge....

The same has happened to religions. Fragments of truth have been found. Then to protect that fragment, systems have been created – -very articulate, very sophisticated. But then those systems started growing on their own.

Now, Mahavira has no control over preventing a system.... One day he dies, but the system goes on growing; the system takes on its own life. Now, Jesus was not even aware that there was going to be Christianity – -and such a huge system! The biggest organization on earth is that of which Jesus was not even aware. Something, a very small fragment of truth, is bound to be there. Even in the biggest lie there is some truth, because the lie cannot move on its own; it has no legs. It has to borrow legs from truth. That’s why every lie tries to prove, ”I am true.” Truth needs no evidence. But the lie needs a thousand and one pieces of evidence, and still it is a lie.

There is an ancient story: when truth and lie were sent to earth, the first night when they went to bed, the lie was very embarrassed because she had no legs. But a lie after all is a lie – -cunning, clever. Truth was sleeping – -snoring, relaxed: that’s the way of truth. The lie cut off the legs of truth, and since then she has been running on those stolen legs. Now, truth tries to catch hold of her and get his legs back, but without legs how can truth catch hold of the lie?

Truth is truth, but feels helpless. And the lie, although it is a lie, feels tremendously powerful. And I don’t see any way truth will be able to get his legs back. In the first place, how is he going to catch hold of the lie? She is always ahead of him, far ahead.

All the scriptures of the world say that in the end truth is always victorious. Whenever I have read this I have said, ”Yes, in the end, but never before that. Before that, the lie is going to be victorious.” In the end... and when is it going to be the end? And what is the point in being victorious in the end, when all is finished? All the way along the lie was victorious, and in the end, when there is nowhere to move, the lie may give the legs back with a ”Thank you. You can take your legs and do whatsoever you want.” Her purpose is fulfilled. The truth remains without legs for the whole way, embarrassed, knowing that it is truth but it still cannot race and be victorious against the lie.

Every lie at least has some truth: those legs, those two legs. If you look closely at any lie you will always find a fragment of truth without which it cannot stand. And if you look at any truth, you will always find it surrounded by lies, because without those lies it cannot feel complete; something remains missing.

The first book in the whole history of mankind which accepts this truth was written by P.D.

Ouspensky, on the philosophy of George Gurdjieff. The name of the book is IN SEARCH OF THE

MIRACULOUS; the subtitle is FRAGMENTS OF AN UNKNOWN TEACHING. But Ouspensky must have had tremendous courage. If you read the book you will think there was no need to put that subtitle: it is a complete system.

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Why did Ouspensky put that subtitle? If you remove that subtitle you will never be able to think that these are fragments of an unknown teaching, because he is making the teaching known; and reading it you will find it is a complete system, nothing appears to be missing. But why did Ouspensky add a subtitle? He was really a very sincere man.

The subtitle says many things. If you don’t understand the subtitle – -and I don’t think anybody reads subtitles; there is no need. You read the title, you read the book. And in most cases subtitles are useless, but not in this case – -the subtitle has tremendous significance. First, it says these are only fragments. Ouspensky, being a great mathematician, was absolutely unimaginative. You can see the point.

A poet is imaginative, has to be, otherwise he cannot be a poet. Now, all the VEDAS of the Hindus, the UPANISHADAS of the Hindus, the DHAMMAPADA of Buddha, the KORAN of Mohammed, are all poetic. The UPANISHADAS are pure poetry. Jesus was not even speaking in poetry but prose, yet his prose is very poetic. There are poems which are not poetic and there is prose which is poetic.

Just the form is of prose; otherwise it is full of poetry. Hence, the modern poetry has dropped the old form – -now you can write poetry in prose.

That is a great revolution. Up to now, the form was thought to be the poetry, not the substance.

For the first time, in the modern age, we have changed the whole idea: the form has nothing to do with poetry, but the substance has. The form may be of prose or poetry, that is irrelevant: it is the substance which makes it poetic.

Jesus’ statements are very poetic – -the ”Sermon on the Mount” is pure poetry. But with poetry the danger is that it is imagination. It is beautiful, impressive, appealing, touching to the heart, but it is not rational. It can be absolutely irrational, it can be superstitious, yet it will appeal to you; hence all the old religions have used poetry. The whole SHRIMAD BHAGAVAD GITA is pure poetry.

It is not a coincidence that all great scriptures are written in poetic form. There is a fundamental reason. What they wanted to say was a very small, fragmentary truth. To say it, as it was, would not have appealed.

It is just as if you bring a leg of a chair, and you say, ”This is a chair.” The chair is supposed to be sat upon, but the people are going to ask, ”How can one sit on this leg? You must be kidding. Just show us: sit on it, and we can see what happens.” Just the leg of a chair is not going to prove that it is a chair. So you have to substitute with your imagination, and give them an idea of the whole chair on which you can put your real chair leg. But an imaginative chair is needed.

All these people were poetic. There must have been people who had discovered fragments of truth but they were not poetic; hence they remained silent. It is not that only these few people have attained some realization of truth; many more have attained, but they were not poetic people, not imaginative people. And they felt embarrassed to bring out a small piece of something and to brag about it.

One of the great philosophers of this age, perhaps the greatest, Ludwig Wittgenstein, says in one of his aphorisms: ”Things that cannot be spoken of, should not be spoken of” He is not denying that there are things of which you cannot speak – there are – but he says, ”If you come across things which cannot be spoken of, please remain silent, don’t speak.” From Personality to Individuality

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In the first place you will be committing a crime against the truth because the moment it is spoken, it is no more the same.

And if you insist on speaking about it then you will have to substitute much with imagination. And the imagination will go on growing, because it needs no search for you to go on adding to a system with your imagination.

Truth needs tremendous search and risk.

It is going into the unknown.

Ouspensky’s subtitle was FRAGMENTS OF AN UNKNOWN TEACHING. He is a mathematician

– he cannot substitute anything with imagination. That is against his conscience, the conscience of a mathematician. The poet has no such conscience; otherwise he cannot create poetry. The mathematician needs such a conscience; otherwise his mathematics will be just of no value He has to stick to truth, howsoever incomplete it is He has to drop the temptation of completing it with imagination. That’s why Ouspensky says ”fragments.” He cannot say that this is a whole system, although by reading the book you cannot detect why he is calling it fragments.

One of my professors was in tremendous love with Gurdjieff’s and Ouspensky’s teachings. IN

SEARCH OF THE MIRACULOUS was his BIBLE, KORAN, GITA – you can call it anything. He always kept it on his table – I don’t know how many times he had read it. And he was continually writing on the margins. The whole book was lined, double underlined, with notes on the fragments; anywhere there was space, there were notes.

I asked him, ”Can you give me some substantial evidence why Ouspensky calls his book fragments?” He looked at me and said, ”I have read the book dozens of times, but strangely, I never bothered about the subtitle.” That was the only place where he had not underlined! I said, ”First underline’fragments,’ and write down a note underneath it too:’Why?’ You have read it dozens of times: can you support the subtitle? Is it only fragments?” He said, ”I have been reading it as a system, and it is a system.” I said, ”It is not a system, but you cannot detect that because you don’t know what is truth and what is not truth. You have no experience; you are just a professor, a scholar. And you have destroyed the whole book by writing notes on it. This book is not for writing notes, this book is to be practiced.

What have you practiced out of this book?”

He said, ”Practiced? I have been studying it for at least twenty years.” I said, ”You can study it for two hundred years, that won’t help. This is the reason why he is saying that these are fragments. So beware; if you start practicing it, you will still need a Master, because between two fragments there is something missing that you cannot even figure out. How can you figure it out? If you don’t know the truth then how can you find what is missing?” Ouspensky is very truthful and sincere in saying that these are only fragments, and fragments also of an unknown teaching, because he says, ”I cannot declare that they are my knowing, I have only From Personality to Individuality

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heard them from a man, and I don’t know whether he knows or not. One thing, I can certainly feel that he has some sources from where he got them.” Gurdjieff was continually talking about how he had been to Sufi schools and had traveled in India widely, to be with Masters. Not only that, he had been to Tibet – in a disguise, because it was very difficult to enter the palace of Lhasa, the Dalai Lama’s palace, where all the ancient scriptures are collected. The palace is just on the top story, and there are seven basements underneath it. It is a whole mountain carved into basements: seven basements underneath, which are full of ancient scriptures.

How to enter Lhasa? First, how to enter Tibet was a problem. Secondly, even if you managed by bribing the British officers in India – because they were the people to prevent anybody entering Tibet. Britain never wanted anybody to enter Tibet. Britain kept Tibet as a buffer land between India and China, and it was perfectly sane politics to keep a country as a buffer land.

China is a big country. It had never invaded India, they had always been friends; and India has never invaded anybody, so the question did not arise. But China had been invading Mongolia, Korea and other countries. It had never invaded India simply because it was Buddha’s land, and it is ugly to invade one’s own Master’s land. Because of that idea, India remained uninvaded by China while even small tribes were invading and making empires in India. China could have overrun India any time without any difficulty.

Britain was keeping Tibet as a buffer state so that before China could enter India, first it would have to enter Tibet. And if fighting happened, it should happen in Tibet: Britain should fight in Tibet rather than in India. That’s sane politics, to fight in somebody else’s country, because then the other country is destroyed, its people are destroyed. You use it as a battlefield; only your army is involved, your people are not involved.

The Indian politicians, after the freedom struggle, did not have such insight, obviously, because they had no experience. For two thousand years India had been in slavery, so it had no experience; they dropped that buffer state. And strangely enough, as India dropped the buffer state of Tibet and made it completely independent – because it was an independent country; Britain was controlling its foreign policy and its borders, but in everything interior it was free. Tibet had no interest in the outside in any way because it had no contact with the outside world – no railways, no cars, no roads.

It was absolutely unconnected with the outside world. The only airstrip, which was in Lhasa, was owned by Britain. That was for Britain to send its officers or army or anything – or to offer to the Dalai Lama, just as a friendly gesture, if he sometime needed it.

India removed all those armies that were surrounding Tibet, and made Tibet completely independent. It was good, nice, but not politics. China immediately invaded Tibet, and once Tibet was invaded, China was on the borders of India. Then China, for the first time in the whole of history, invaded India.

The Dalai Lama had to be approached in some way, and not only approached: Gurdjieff had to become so intimate with him that he could manage to enter the underground libraries and have some understanding of many things of which he had fragments, but incomplete.

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He managed it through Russia, because through Russia also Tibet can be reached. He entered Tibet with a slightly changed name, Dorjeb, not Gurdjieff. The record is still maintained with the name Dorjeb. And he entered with a certificate from the Russian czar that said, ”We are sending Dorjeb to be a tutor for the young Dalai Lama.” The Dalai Lama was very young, he was eleven, and he needed to be taught about the outside world.

For Gurdjieff it was a double role. He told the czar that he would function as an agent for him, to give him all the information that they needed. And his own purpose was to know about their religious practices. The czar was not interested in the religion. He said, ”That is your business, you can take care of that, but information has to come to us.” With the czar’s letter he entered Lhasa and became the teacher of the Dalai Lama.

As the teacher, of course he was given quarters in the Lhasa palace, and was as respected as a teacher of the Dalai Lama should be. He tried all possible ways, and found methods and people who could help him to read Tibetan and translate it.

Gurdjieff really worked hard in Tibet, India, Egypt, and the Caucasus to find all the people who were alive and had some experience of truth. But what he found were all fragments. He was trying to create a system out of them, and he did create one. But he was neither a poet nor a scientist. He was not a writer, he was not an orator; he had no time for all these things. His whole life he had been searching for people who know, finding how to approach them and how to persuade them that they should tell their truth, what they have found.

Gurdjieff has written three books – only one was published in his lifetime – and his writing is a nightmare. I don’t think anybody who is not as mad as I am is going to read his book, ALL AND

EVERYTHING. Yes, it is all and everything! But one thousand pages of ALL AND EVERYTHING....

He himself was suspicious about whether anybody could understand it or not. And how long he took! He took years to write it, and his way of writing was also strange.

He would be sitting in a cafe in Paris, where people were coming and going. That was really a method. If you sit in the Himalayas and you write something, that’s nothing; it doesn’t show that you are writing with full awareness. You may have fallen asleep and gone on writing; you may be dreaming and writing – because there is no disturbance. So all the writing Gurdjieff did was in different cafes in Paris where much was going on: music, dance, customers coming, shouting, talking... everything was going on. And cafes, particularly in Paris, are meeting places of artists and poets, who are all argumentative. He was sitting in the middle of such a crowd, writing ALL AND

EVERYTHING.

It was a method on Gurdjieff’s part. His disciples said, ”You can find a better place – you have a beautiful place outside Paris.” His commune was in a beautiful place. ”there, in silence, you can write.

You come from the commune to sit in these crowded cafes where nobody has ever written books before; at least religious books have never been written in such circumstances.” But he insisted on writing there. And his writing was such that he would write one chapter, then his disciples would read it. One disciple would read, and Gurdjieff would watch the other disciples: what impact was it having? How much deeper...? No book has been written this way.

If they were understanding it too easily, then Gurdjieff had to change it because that meant, ”If these idiots can understand it, then it is not worth printing.” It took him twenty or thirty years, working From Personality to Individuality

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continually; again he would write the chapter, again it would be read. Again somebody would be yawning, somebody would be sleeping, and he would have to change it. If it created yawning, if it created sleep, then what was the point of writing it? Again and again, hundreds of times, a single chapter was rewritten, and the disciples were tired of reading the same chapter again and again.

In this way he wrote one thousand pages, but still he was not sure that anybody was going to get it, its meaning. So he told the publisher, ”The first hundred pages should be cut and the remaining nine hundred pages should remain uncut, with a note: ”you can read a hundred pages. If you still feel ready to go ahead, then you can cut the remaining pages; otherwise you can return the book and take your money back” – just a sample of a hundred pages.

It is a well-known fact that almost all the books that were sold came back. Not even a hundred pages could people read. And the publisher was at a loss, but there was no question: the money was given by Gurdjieff, so there was no question, it was his publication. He said, ”This is nothing to do with you. Whatever your service charge is, you can have it, but this is how my book is going to be. Unless a person reads a hundred pages, he is not qualified to have it. After reading a hundred pages, if he is ready to open the rest... once you open the remaining nine hundred pages, even a single page, then the book cannot be returned.”

And he was costing the book with no reason – no rhyme, no reason. There was no price printed on it: the price varied according to the customer. That was a great idea of Gurdjieff’s. From one person he would ask one thousand dollars; to somebody else he would give it free. It was according to the customer – the price was not to be according to the book.

That man always had some good ideas. From a man who is really into the book you should not ask for money. The book has to be given as a gift; he deserves it. And from somebody who has too much money, and is going to waste it anyhow in Monte Carlo or in some other gambling place, why not ask ten thousand dollars? And there are people who will purchase it only if it is ten thousand dollars; otherwise it is below them – it is not worthwhile.

His disciples were continually asking, ”Books have prices; you can fix any price. But this seems to be strange, that you are sitting in the bookshop, and you judge the customer. Are you selling the book or purchasing the customer?” And the book is really written in such a way.... No other book has ever been written like that – and I hope no other book is ever written again that way.

Gurdjieff makes strange words, mixing many languages.

He knew many languages, nomadic

languages which don’t have alphabets even. You cannot find dictionaries of them because those languages don’t have any dictionary, they don’t have any alphabet. They are only dialect, not languages; they are only spoken. And one word does not mean one language: one word means two or three languages joined together. And a long word may run a full sentence – one word! He is really taxing you as much as he can – your patience, your intelligence – but if you can go through the whole book it is really paying: slowly you start getting the knack of his almost impossible words.

When you come across them again and again in different places you can start feeling a certain meaning. You may not be able to say what it is but you start having a sense of it. And if you go through the whole book you are absolutely certain what it is about although you cannot say, because it is only a feeling that it has left within you. His whole effort is somehow to bypass your intellect.

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Intellectually, you cannot move even one paragraph into it. your intellect will say, ”Stop! This is nonsense.” And it is nonsense as far as intellect is concerned.

But this book was not written when Ouspensky wrote FRAGMENTS, it was written when Ouspensky was no longer with Gurdjieff. He had left him, because he could not understand so many things in Gurdjieff And he was a mathematician: he wanted to understand things very mathematically, methodologically. And Gurdjieff was just absurd. You could not connect any two of his actions, you could not connect any two of his statements. Today he says something; tomorrow he may simply deny it, saying, ”I never said it” – and you risk your whole life because he said it!

Ouspensky got fed up. But he loved the man, so although he left Gurdjieff, what he did was divide Gurdjieff in two: the Gurdjieff with whom he was, and the Gurdjieff with whom he wasn’t. The Gurdjieff with whom he was not, he was against; and the Gurdjieff with whom he was – he was his Master. So Ouspensky remembers him as ”G”; he never writes the full name because the full name will give you a misunderstanding – you may think he is talking about the whole Gurdjieff – so he simply talks about ”G.” ”G” means Gurdjieff when Ouspensky was with him.

Certainly Gurdjieff had fragments. He tried hard to make a system out of them, but he was not the man – poetic, imaginative – to create the system. So although he wrote three books, only one was published in his lifetime. The next, MEETINGS WITH REMARKABLE MEN, was published after his death. And he had certainly met remarkable people, unknown to history; they will always remain unknown to history. They were remarkable because they had found some fragment of truth, but they were not able to speak about it or explain it. You could be with them and find a way somehow to understand it.

What Gurdjieff used to say was, ”There are people who have found the truth. They cannot say it, they cannot show it to you; you have to be with them to steal it.” Actually he said, ”Unless you are capable of stealing, there is no way. Those people – they know it, and you can see that they know it, but they don’t have the language, they don’t have the concepts, they don’t have the words. And perhaps that’s why their truth is so pure, worth stealing.” Once a person has language, words, imagination, poetry, he can make a system around his truth.

And then the system goes on growing, it takes on its own life – that’s how all theologies have grown up – and you cannot find out where the truth has gone. It was such a small fragment anyway in the beginning, and now the mountain of theology on top of it.... You cannot figure it out, where it is.

The second reason why Ouspensky used the subtitle, FRAGMENTS OF AN UNKNOWN

TEACHING, was because it was not from one man. Gurdjieff had collected fragments from almost all over the East; it was not from one source. Gurdjieff was a great collector, and he must have been a thief because he has stolen authentic fragments. But to fit all of them together was an almost impossible job. That was possible only for a man who knew the whole truth; then he could put all those pieces of jigsaw puzzle in their right places. Gurdjieff carried all those pieces of the jigsaw puzzle his whole life....

The third book has been published just a few years ago. That’s how he wanted it: first, one book while he was alive; then the second book when he was dead; then the third book when he was completely forgotten. But even in all those three books he has not been able to give you the system; From Personality to Individuality

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it still remains fragments – pieces of immense beauty, but not a necklace. They have not fallen into the hands of a jeweler who can cut them, give them shape, give them right proportions, and who can create a rhythm in all those fragments so that they become a single, organic whole. The books remain fragmentary, parts of an unknown teaching. Many people have got lost through them; many people have gone insane through them.

Gurdjieff worked hard his whole life. But this century has two great failures: George Gurdjieff and Jiddhu Krishnamurti. Both men of immense caliber and quality, but both total failures.

You are asking me, what is my secret.

There is no secret.

Or you can say this is my open secret:

That I need not create a system.

Truth, to me, has not been a fragment, it has not come to me as a fragment.

Truth has revealed itself to me as a total, organic unity.

I have not added anything to it. I have not edited out anything from it. And because I am not a theologian, I am not interested in making a theology; hence I can give it to you in simple words, in ordinary language, without any trouble.

My open secret is that I am not bringing in big words and theories and dogmas so that you have to be very intellectual and very sharp, no.

All that you have to be is just as ordinary as I am.

All those people who have been claiming to be messiahs, avataras, paigambaras, tirthankaras, prove only one thing: they had a small fragment but they knew that they still had an inferiority complex.

That small fragment cannot destroy your inferiority complex. Unless you know the truth in its totality, your inferiority complex remains. So they had a fragment and they bragged about the fragment. And they had an inferiority complex still, so they projected some superiority; they are the only begotten son of God, they are the messiah, they are the messengers, they are the reincarnations of God – or things like that.

All those claims simply indicate an inferiority complex deep down.

Anybody who tries to prove that he is superior to others, superior to everybody, is suffering, is sick.

They were all sick with an inferiority complex. They could not say, not a single one of them was able to say, ”I am just a human being as you are, and this is my secret.” I am the first who is saying to you that I am just a human being as you are – absolutely ordinary.

If you can drop your desire to be superior, if you can accept your humanity just as it is, with no desire to change it – if you are not trying to improve upon yourself – with that desire dropping, your From Personality to Individuality

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inferiority complex will disappear. Improving upon yourself is just like trying to pull yourself up by holding your legs. You may try to jump; maybe for a second you will be in the air, but next moment you will be flat on the earth, deeper in the Big Muddy Ranch, from where even to get out is very difficult. It is better not to jump.

Because I have no projection of superiority, I have no sickness of inferiority.

And truth is everybody’s birthright.

It is not something that only a few people are entitled to get: you are born with it.

Just because you go on running after other things, you don’t have time to look.

There is an ancient story. One man had gone for a morning walk. It was dark, and by the side of the village pond he stumbled on something; it was a bag. He was curious to know what was in it, so he sat down, opened the bag and put his hand inside – it was full of stones. He was waiting for the sunrise, because that was his routine: at sunrise he would take his bath, then he would go home.

Having nothing else to do, he started throwing those stones in the pond, and enjoyed the plop, plop, sound; in the silence of the morning after each plop it became even more silent.

By the time the sun was rising, he was just going to throw the last stone. But in the sunlight he was amazed; it was a diamond! You can understand his misery, his anguish. He had thrown away thousands of diamonds. Such big ones – now he remembered the weight. And what an idiot he was! A crowd gathered – he was in tears. They asked, ”What is the matter?” He said, ”This is the matter,” and he showed them the diamond. Nobody had seen such a big diamond, so shiny in the morning sun. They said, ”So you should be happy that you have found this diamond.”

He said, ”You don’t know the whole story. You might be happy if you found this; I cannot be because I found a whole bag full of bigger diamonds than this. And I am such a fool – I went on throwing them, just like a child.”

A famous jeweler was also in the crowd. He came up close and started laughing. The man said,

”Why are you laughing?”

He said, ”this is not a diamond – you are unnecessarily getting into misery! This is just an ordinary stone, a shiny stone but not worth anything.” The tears disappeared and the man was okay; now he threw away that stone also. If it was just a stone what could you do with it?

The jeweler moved on. Another man followed him – because he also knew something of jewelry, though not much – and he took hold of the famous jeweler. He said, ”I am just a learner, but I could see it was a diamond. You are a master jeweler, but you said that it was not a diamond.” The jeweler said, ”I know it was a diamond, but that was the only way to get that man out of anguish; otherwise his whole life would be ruined. Just to save one diamond do you want me to ruin his whole life? Yes, it was a rare diamond. I have never seen such a big diamond in my whole life, but that From Personality to Individuality

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poor man’s life is far more important. If I had said it was a diamond, that man would have lived his whole life in terrible anguish because he had lost so many diamonds. Now he will be happy. It was worth it to have him throw that diamond away. He will go laughing. He will tell the story to people, laughing, enjoying it.”

I am a jeweler in just the opposite story; you all have stones and you are clinging to those stones.

Unless you throw them away, unless your hands are empty and your being is empty – empty of all desiring, of getting this, getting that, reaching there, becoming that....

When you are utterly empty, at that moment you are ordinary.

And to me, to be ordinary is the greatest thing that can happen to a man.

Everything else is worthless.

But I am not telling you to throw those stones knowing that they are diamonds; they are not diamonds. That man was a really courageous man; he took the word of the jeweler – although the jeweler was lying, but lying for his sake. He was open to the jeweler’s suggestion that he had just a shiny stone of no value: he threw it.

You are carrying real stones, not even shiny stones, dirty stones full of crap – perhaps just dry crap, not even stones. They are centuries old, but you are clinging to them and you won’t leave them. If I somehow manage to have you drop them from your left hand, you take them up with the right. And you are such a split personality that your left hand knows not what your right hand is doing; your right hand knows not what your left hand is doing. You drop it from one window and immediately bring it inside through another window.

My secret is simple, but you are complex, not simple.

I am ordinary, you are not – that is the trouble.

You are extraordinary. Whether you say it or not, is not the point: deep down you know you are extraordinary. It is very difficult to find a person who deep down does not know that he is extraordinary. He is made in the image of God, and you are telling him that he is ordinary?

These people – these messiahs and messengers – have all been telling you they are extraordinary, and that you can also be extraordinary because you have the potential to grow. You have the potential to be on the right path, to have faith in the right holy book, in the right prophet. Of course, who is right they decide; you cannot decide it. How can you, in your darkness and blindness, decide?

So they decide what is right – you simply follow it. And they are showing you the way of becoming extraordinary.

What is it all about – getting to heaven?

There is a question somebody has asked – not a question, in fact, but a statement. I had said, a few days ago, that Christians don’t have any idea what happened to Christ after resurrection. I repeat it again: they don’t have any idea. Now I make it even more clear – they don’t have any idea what From Personality to Individuality

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happened before resurrection and what happened after resurrection. They don’t have any idea what Jesus was. He was just a fanatic Jew – nothing more, nothing less.

But somebody says that after nine days, after resurrection, angels came from heaven and they took him away to heaven. The statement must be from some Christian... he has not written his name.

Now, this man may be a sannyasin, but from one door I help him to throw something, and he brings it back inside again from the other door: ”After nine days angels came and took him up...” and why didn’t these foolish angels turn up when Jesus was crucified? That was the time to come, the real moment of the show, when thousands of people were there and they had all gathered to see the miracle. That time God was missing, angels were missing, the Holy Ghost was missing; they all disappeared at the right moment. Only in need do you know whether a friend is indeed a friend or not.

When Jesus was crying and asking, ”Father, have you forgotten me, have you forsaken me?n really, he was left in a limbo. If there is any God, and if God had sent him, then this God is not a God you can trust, not a God who keeps His promises. When Jesus was being crucified, and the final moment of proving had come – because this was the proof, that when he was crucified God would immediately save him. Perhaps the cross would change into a throne of gold. If God was behind the game, then at such a moment where was He, what was He doing?... and the people were laughing and making jokes about poor Jesus.

Never has a man been made such a laughingstock as he was. They had put a crown on his head and written on the cross, ”King of the Jews,” because he used to call himself the King of the Jews.

And he would say that he owns the kingdom of God, and that anybody who was with him, he would allow in the kingdom of God. Of course, it was his father’s, and he was the only begotten son, the only inheritor. If Nietzsche is right and God is dead, then by now Jesus must have inherited the kingdom of God – who else?

But nobody turned up. The poor man cried – he was asking for water because he was thirsty, it was hot – but no angel came. At least a little cloud might have showered; anything was possible. There was no need for an angel to appear, just a cloud might have showered. But nothing happened when it was time, when it was needed.

And after nine days, before whom was he taken to heaven? Have you got any eyewitnesses? And why after nine days? And as least he should have been taken before eyewitnesses, particularly before the Jews who have crucified him. They should have seen that they had committed a mistake.

And if God’s idea of sending His son to the world was to redeem humanity, then stealing him away without anybody knowing does not seem to be the right thing to do. But they had to invent some story because once he is resurrected then what to do with him? – because someday he has to die again. And they don’t have any record of when he died, where he died. I have the record. I have seen his grave, where he died, where he lived.

There was no resurrection. In fact crucifixion never happened, it was sabotaged. After six hours he was brought down from the cross, because the next day was the sabbath of the jews. On that day nothing could be done, not even a crucifixion; naturally he had to be brought down. This was the conspiracy between a very rich lover of Jesus and Pontius Pilate.

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Pontius Pilate also wanted to save the poor man because Jesus was a little eccentric, fanatic –

accepted – but he was harmless. If somebody goes about on his donkey shouting, ”I am the only begotten son,” I think it is free entertainment; no need to make much fuss about it. At the most you can put on some entertainment tax. That too you cannot put on the man; you can put entertainment tax on those people who are enjoying it. Anybody who enjoys this man should have to pay a certain fee to the temple of the Jews. And that would have been perfectly alright.

If I were the high priest this is what I would have done. I would have persuaded jesus, ”Always stay in front of the temple and we can collect entertainment tax. Go on doing your show. Do at least three shows – a matinee show, a first show and a second show. And if you want a little portion of the income that will be given to you – but you are doing such a great job, such a circus!

I don’t think that you have to crucify circus people. He was absolutely harmless. Pontius Pilate was in favor of him. He had given many warnings to the high priest, ”Why are you unnecessarily after this man?” But the high priest and all the rabbis and their council were stubborn: they could not tolerate him. He was pretending to be their messiah; he was making a mockery of their messiah. They said,

”We cannot tolerate him, he has to be crucified.” And Pontius Pilate was afraid for his own post.

This is how politics goes: Pontius Pilate was the viceroy from the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire had sent him there as a representative of the empire to rule over the Jews. He was afraid that if the Jews – particularly the high priest and the council of rabbis – reported against him because they were telling him to crucify a Jew and he wouldn’t.... This was a religious question, and the agreement was that their religion would not be interfered with. He was afraid that he may be recalled. And he had remained so long out of Rome that going back now he would be nobody. In fact he was a very powerful man, that’s why he was sent out. This is how politics works.

Pontius Pilate was from the royal family, and he was so powerful that King Herod was afraid that he could become a competitor. Herod was old, his son was very young. Soon he would die and his small, young son would be on the throne: this Pontius Pilate was so powerful a politician, he might grab the throne. So to avoid this a great post was given to him: he became viceroy in judea.

A similar thing happened with Lord Mountbatten just in this century. He was of the royal family and in his youth he was a playboy, so he was creating scandal upon scandal. The family was in trouble, because being of the royal family, he was defaming the whole family; if he continued to do this....

Then too he was really a very royal figure – powerful, tall, beautiful. He would have really looked a king if he was chosen. He might create some trouble, he was already creating too much trouble: it was better to send him away. He was sent to Burma as a viceroy, far away from England, to do whatsoever he wanted to do in Burma. No scandal would reach England because even the post used to take three months. So there was nothing to be worried about, and who would bother about what Mountbatten was doing in Burma?

They arranged his marriage to a woman who was really ugly. She had some kind of disease which causes leathery skin; her skin was leathery – just like leather, not like skin. She was really ugly. How did they manage to have that poor playboy married to that woman? Perhaps the playboy himself got caught in it. Playboys get caught in such things because they are continually moving, but once in while they are caught in such a situation where they have to get married. So he had to marry that woman.

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They sent the woman with him to take care that he did not create any scandal, and naturally he couldn’t because he was viceroy there. It was impossible for him to mix with common people or even to talk or misbehave in any way. And when he had finished his post in Burma and came back to England, they immediately sent him to India. They kept him continually out of England. Churchill was very much for it, that he should remain out, he should not be in the country – he would create trouble.

Now Lord Mountbatten is dead, but while he was alive the queen was continually troubled by him, because he became the guide of the prince of Wales. The prince of Wales, who was his nephew, followed him rather than his father or his mother, and his parents were very much concerned that this man was going to soil the future king of England. If he had missed the chance to be king, he would do it through the prince of Wales. They must have felt great relief when he died in an accident

– actually, he was killed.

Pontius Pilate, who was a tremendously powerful politician, was sent to Judea. He was afraid that by now people must have forgotten him – people’s memories are very short. For fifteen years he had been in Judea; now who would remember him? In fifteen years, many other powerful politicians must have made their way up. And now the boy was no longer a boy, he was the king – Herod was dead. Herod’s son was now in power, and Pontius Pilate did not know any longer what was happening in the capital. And here he was happy – now he was all-powerful and almost a king. So he was afraid. He had to listen to the priest, but deep down he wanted Jesus to be released.

He made one last effort. There were three people to be crucified. Every sabbath there was the opportunity – if the high priest chose – for one person to be forgiven. Pontius Pilate was hoping that

– those two who were murderers certainly deserved the death penalty but Jesus had not committed any crime – the Jews would ask for Jesus to be released. But the Jews didn’t ask for Jesus to be released. Murderers are just murderers – there was nothing much to do about itbut this man was dangerous because he was mocking their idea of the messiah, mocking the idea of God, creating this stupid story that he was the only begotten son, that he was not born of a human being, that he was born out of the Holy Ghost. He was playing with their whole theology.

They asked that one murderer – Barabbas or something was the name – be released. If they wanted it, then Barabbas had to be released. And do you know what Pontius Pilate did? He did something which Sigmund Freud would have been shocked to know. He went in and he washed his hands. It was Sigmund Freud who, two thousand years after Pontius Pilate, discovered that whenever a man feels guilty he washes his hands, for no reason; they aren’t dirty. There was no reason at all for Pontius Pilate to wash his hands – he was not going to take his lunch or dinner, nothing like that.

There was no reason at all why he should wash his hands.

From the platform, from outside where they asked for one murderer to be released, sad, Pontius Pilate came into his room and washed his hands. Perhaps he did it absolutely unconsciously –

because I don’t think he would have managed to read Sigmund Freud. That seems to be a little too much. Nine days after the resurrection angels may come, but Pontius Pilate reading Sigmund Freud seems to be a little too much!

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that something is pricking their conscience, and they are trying to wash it away without knowing it.

You can see many people sitting just making the gestures of washing; no water, no soap, but still they are washing something. And they are not aware what they are doing with their hands. You must know that your right hand is connected with the left side of your brain; your left hand is connected with the right side of your brain. So your hands are continually expressing what is going on in your brain.

I have heard: two Jews were walking on the road on a cold winter morning. It was very cold, but one was talking continually, and asking the other again and again, ”Why are you silent?” The other man said, ”you go on talking.” But how long can one man talk if you don’t even say yes, no, at least ja, ja? You have to say something... but that man remained completely silent.

Finally the other man said, ”What is the matter with you?” He said, ”Nothing is the matter with me, but I can’t take my hands out of my pockets, it is too cold.” Jews particularly cannot talk without their hands. You can look at me: I cannot talk without my hands. That certainly shows that I am a Jew; if not in this life then in some past life I must have been a Jew. I cannot keep my hands in my pockets – I don’t have any pockets, so whatsoever happens I can always talk!

Pontius Pilate, then, accepted the conspiracy from a rich disciple, who said, ”Give him a crucifixion as late as possible, because by the evening he will be brought down. And then for three days he will be kept with us, and we will help him escape.”

In the Jewish crucifixion it takes a long time for a person to die, at least twenty-four hours; but if the man is strong, forty-eight hours, because very little blood goes on oozing from the hands and the feet. And if the man is strong enough and has enough blood, he can survive. Six hours is nothing, nobody has ever died within six hours.

So they tried to postpone as much as possible. Only in the afternoon did they put Jesus on the cross. And after six hours, when the sun was setting, he was brought down: he was perfectly alive.

And there is evidence in the BIBLE that when they were taking him down, one Roman soldier poked his spear into his side and blood came out. Blood does not come out of a dead man. That is clear evidence that Jesus was perfectly alive. And in the night, everything was arranged: he escaped.

And of course he had to escape as far away as possible. From Judea to Kashmir is as far away as possible. And why Kashmir? – because in Kashmir a lost tribe of Jews had already settled. Moses had gone in search of the lost tribe and died in Kashmir. Kashmir is Jewish; although now they have been forcibly converted into Mohammedans, Kashmir is Jewish. You can see by their faces and their noses it is Jewish. So although Jesus was going out of Judea, it seems very reasonable that he would like to live in a place where his people were living. They would understand his language, they would understand him, and they wouldn’t have the same bigoted mind that Judea had because they were the lost ones, and they were really the rebels.

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going on. From Egypt to Israel it took forty years – desert, all along the way. One third of the people survived, two thirds died on the way. These were the few people, the rebellious type, who saw that this seemed to be just a mad effort. ”Where is Israel? Nobody has heard of it. And when are we going to reach? People are continually dying: by the time we reach nobody will be left. It is better to escape. Let the others go to Israel – we will find some other place.” They moved in the other direction, just the opposite, and they really found a better place than Israel.

Kashmir would have been really a great finding if Moses had been with them. Moses did reach there and find them, but then he was too old so he could not make the return journey. And they were not ready to leave; they had found such a beautiful place that they were not interested in any Israel or anything. Moses died there.

Jesus had known about it. While he was traveling in Egypt and India perhaps he visited Kashmir, visited the samadhi of Moses. He knew about Kashmir; he escaped from Israel to Kashmir. His grave is just by the side of Moses’. It describes everything – his personality, his name. It was his Hebrew name of course because he never knew that he was going to be called Jesus; he was Joshua. So nobody can say that grave is new, because it calls him Joshua and states that a young man called Joshua arrived here and lived here until the age of one hundred and twelve years with his disciples.

The place where Jesus lived, Pahalgam, is named after him, because he used to call himself the shepherd. In Kashmiri, Pahalgam means village of the shepherd. Pahal means shepherd, gam means the village – it is named after him. Just as it will be difficult after two thousand years to find Rajneeshpuram in Oregon, it is difficult to find Pahalgam in Kashmir after two thousand years, because no other trace is left. But the very name... Moses’ grave is also there.

The people who guard the graves – you can see from their faces and everything that they are Jewish.

And those are the only two graves in the whole of India which are facing towards Israel. Hindus burn their dead, so the question of making a grave does not arise. Mohammedans make graves, but their graves are facing towards Mecca. These are the only two graves which are not facing towards Mecca; they are facing towards Israel.

So Jesus was not taken up by angels after nine days. He was taken up by his disciples that very night and put into the cave, and then they escaped as fast as possible.

But, somehow or other, all religious people want their religion to be painted with esoteric, mysterious, unbelievable things. That is a basic thing: something unbelievable is needed, only then does your belief have some meaning. If everything is believable then your belief has no meaning. Belief has to pass the fire test of believing in something unbelievable. So all religions create unbelievable things around their prophets. They are the test: if you have faith then you will believe in them. And if you can believe in any kind of nonsense then there is no fear of you from the priesthood, from the church, from the whole mammoth theological building that has arisen out of a fragment of truth.

I have nothing about me which is unbelievable, I have nothing about me which is mysterious, I have nothing about me which is secret. This is my open secret.

I am just a human being, and I want to declare to humanity that there is nothing above human consciousness.

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You need not search for anything else.

All that you need is to look into your own consciousness as deeply as possible.

Just find yourself and you have found everything.

There is no other God, there is no other heaven.

There is nothing except your flame of life.

And it is in everyone the same.

If I have any appeal to you, that has totally different grounds, because I am not asking you to believe in any mystery, in any unbelievable thing.

If any trust arises in you, that means whatever I am saying, or whatever I am, has touched you.

And I don’t want to bypass your intelligence. I want to approach you in both ways: I want to approach your heart by my presence and I want to approach your intelligence by my words.

In this way I am not leaving any chances for you to escape from yourself.

Old religions appeal only to your feeling.

Atheists appeal only to your reason.

I appeal to your totality.

And seeing that an ordinary man like me can be fulfilled, can be contented, can be in total bliss, is enough for you to become aflame; enough guarantee for you that if it can happen to me, it can happen to you. You don’t have anything less than me. I don’t have anything more than you.

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Countdown to catastrophe: global suicide, or sannyas 20 January 1985 pm in Lao Tzu Grove

Question 1

OSHO,

WHY DO YOU THINK THAT NOW IS THE RIGHT TIME FOR THE AUTHENTIC RELIGION TO BE

BORN?

I do not think. Thinking has fallen away a long time ago. Chronologically the distance is not much, only three decades, but metaphysically the distance is as big as possible. If I look backwards it is so distant – millions of years. Perhaps the reason why I feel so much distance is in the very nature of the gap between thinking and the state of no-thinking. The gap is unbridgeable.

I am reminded of one thing at this point. The day I died as a person, as an ego, and the explosion happened, and only a presence was left with no ego functioning at the center of it, just pure space, I became aware, only the next morning, of a very strange thing. The next morning when I went to the bathroom, I saw in the mirror – I was only twenty-one years old – that the hairs on my chest had become white. Something on me had become suddenly ancient.

I looked in the mirror, into my own eyes, and I could see those were not the eyes that I used to have, because thoughts had disappeared, my eyes were utterly vacant... something like a bottomless abyss. I am only fifty-four but it seems I am almost ancient. Deep inside I feel just like a child, just born, as fresh as the dewdrops in the early morning sun. But in the body I feel as if I have lived many lives together in one life.

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I do not think – there is no need for me to think.

Either I know something or I don’t.

Thinking is a state in between the two:

You don’t know and you are trying to know.

That’s what thinking is all about. It is a groping in darkness for something; you are not exactly aware of what it is. Neither are you aware why you are groping for it, nor are you aware what you are going to do when you find it.

This is an experience of thousands of people: they work hard, think hard, try hard to find something, to figure out something, and finally, unfortunately, they succeed. I say unfortunately because it would have been fortunate if they had not succeeded. Then the effort, the excitement of finding, of the search, of the groping would have continued. They would have felt that they had a certain meaning in their life: They are thinkers, seekers, searchers. That’s why I say unfortunately, once in a while, a few people succeed in finding, because then they are in the same position as when a dog starts barking at your car and runs after you, chases you.

It is difficult for the poor dog. Even if the dog is a watchdog of Oregon, it makes no difference; dogs are after all, dogs. You can give them fancy names, ”watchdogs,” you can let them make a political party, ”1000 Friends of Oregon” – that does not make any difference to their doggishness: dogs chase cars.

I have seen it many times – my car being chased. Not here, because in Rajneeshpuram we don’t have dogs, we have only human beings; we are finished with dogs, watchdogs, all kinds of dogs.

But when I was a professor in the university I had to drive to the university and back home, and once in a while a dog would start chasing the car. I was puzzled. What was he going to get even if he caught the car? What was he going to do? Once in a while I would stop the car just to look at the dog, and I have seen a dog in such an embarrassed condition: he would be standing by the side of the car not knowing what to do now.

This happens to people who are thinkers, philosophers, seekers: they are seeking truth but they don’t know what truth means. They have no idea what they are seeking, and why they are seeking.

And if by chance they stumble upon truth, how are they going to recognize it? They have never seen it before; recognition is impossible.

I have met many people in India who thought that they had seen God, and they were worshipped like great saints, sages, seers – they have seen God! I have asked these people, ”I don’t bother about God at all, my simple question is, ”How did you recognize that He was God? I don’t doubt that you have seen God, you must have seen Him. I never suspect anybody’s intentions – I take it for granted that you have seen God. My question is not with your seeing my question is how did you recognize that this was God? – because you had not seen Him before.” And they were just in the same position as the dog standing by the side of my car, embarrassed, just looking at me with great anger – why had I stopped? – because I had destroyed all his joy of From Personality to Individuality

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chasing, of reaching somewhere, of finding something. These sages looked at me with the same anger.

I said, ”There is no need to be angry. I am asking a simple question. I am not doubting your experience, I am not saying anything against God; I am simply saying that the word recognition cannot be applied. Recognition means cognizing again: you have seen something before, now you are seeing it again; only then can you recognize. Otherwise, you can see that you had an experience, but what it was you cannot give a name, a label. Perhaps you may describe what happened to you in the experience, but you cannot say that you have seen God.” Thinking is a process between not knowing and an effort to know.

I do not think – I know it.

And why do I know it, that this is the ripe time for the birth of an authentic religion? That I can explain to you. You will have to go with me a little deeply into the roots of the religious phenomenon itself Religion only has any validity because of death.

If there were no death, nobody would have bothered about religion at all. It is not life that inspires you to be religious, no – it is death. Death makes you search for something which will be alive in spite of death.

Just think of a world where death does not exist, where nobody dies. The question, ”What happens after death?” will be meaningless, the question of heaven and hell will be meaningless. And when you are eternal, what God can be more than you? Now He is eternal life, and you are a momentary phenomenon, a soap bubble; within a moment you will be gone – hence the fear. And the fear creates the search. You want to know what this death is, and you want to know whether something remains after it or not. Those who say that nothing remains after it are not religious. They don’t go to any temple, they don’t go to any church, they don’t have any holy scripture.

In India there existed a great movement, the Charvakas. That was the movement of atheists.

Nothing parallel to it has happened anywhere in the world. Yes, there have been individual atheists like Epicurus, Diderot, Karl Marx, Lenin; but these are individual atheists. The Charvakas were a movement and the name of the man who founded the movement is Acharya Brihaspati.

India is, in many ways, rare. Even though Brihaspati founded the movement for atheism, still he is respected as a great acharya, a great Master, even by those whom he was destroying at their very roots. This you cannot find happening anywhere else. India has a great respect for all kinds of seekers – even if a seeker says that there is nothing to seek; and that’s what the Charvakas were all about, the whole movement.

Brihaspati said, ”There is nothing more than this life; eat, drink, and be merry. All religions are invented by the greedy priests to exploit you in the name of God, in the name of an afterlife.” And he describes the priests the best way they can be described. He describes them as dogs with hanging tongues, ready, wagging their tails, asking for food.

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That’s why I say India is a rare country: even Brihaspati is accepted as an acharya. Whatsoever he says is debated, confuted, argued about, but that does not mean disrespect to the person. Of course he is a founder of a movement, and what he is saying needs to be argued about – but you need not kill him, or crucify him. He is challenging you: ”All your religion is bogus; it is just because of the fear of death. And nobody has returned after death to say that he is still alive, so you don’t have any evidence at all. Death simply annihilates everything.” Karl Marx said, after five thousand years, what the Charvakas had been saying in India for that long a time. Of course Marx uses a more scientific terminology. He says, ”Man’s consciousness is an epiphenomenon – it is not a reality but only a by-product.” Marx says that it is just like when a clock moves and has a certain life because it moves, but you know that there is no soul in it; you know that its movement is mechanical. It is arranged in such a way that it can be automatic, that while one part is unwinding, the other part is winding. So when one part is unwound, the other part is ready to run the clock because it is wound. And the same goes on: those two parts, one unwinding, the other winding. The whole function is just a mechanical phenomenon. That’s why he calls it an epiphenomenon: not a true phenomenon but only a by-product.

So it is with man’s consciousness, Marx says.

It is just a combination of certain physical

mechanisms, chemical combinations; and out of this whole bio-mechanical system, man speaks, man thinks, man tries to be somebody – even starts looking for truth, for God. But all these are just by-products.

Once you take all the chemicals out of man – and this is scientifically proved, that a man can be changed into a woman just by a change of hormones. Strange! If the man can be changed into a woman just by injecting hormones, then his manhood was nothing but hormonal. If a woman can become a man just by changing her hormones, her womanhood was nothing special; it was hormonal, a chemical by-product.

There are hormones which can be taken out of you and then you cannot be angry. Then saying, Don’t be angry, drop your anger.... And for centuries and centuries man has been preached to from every pulpit, from every religious preacher: ”You have to drop anger.” But how can a man drop anger? – those chemicals are there. First you have to take those chemicals out.

That’s what Marx is saying. Just take those chemicals out and then tell the man to be angry – and he cannot be angry. Just take all his sexual chemistry out of him and then tell him to be sexual; it will be as difficult for him to be sexual as it is now for him to be celibate. And just by sermonizing you are not going to change his chemistry, because your sermons have nothing to do with chemistry.

His chemistry remains his chemistry, his physiology remains his physiology: your sermon just goes into his memory system. That is a computer, that collects things, that’s all.

Do you think a computer can be a celibate or a playboy? A computer can be neither. But you can program the computer for celibacy, feed it all great teachings about celibacy, and the computer will be able to repeat them. You can feed the computer all great romantic ideas, great love affairs, and the computer will be able to repeat them. But the computer cannot become a Romeo or Majnu.

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computer the information that ”you are a woman, a very beautiful woman,” and you feed another computer the information that ”you are a man, a very great man; all the women around are mad after you.”

Perhaps, if you can manage to feed two computers in this way, they may fall in love. But you will know that this is all nonsense. The one computer will repeat what you have told it – the woman, very shy, saying no and meaning yes. The other computer may repeat great dialogues like the great lovers of history – the great Majnu, Romeo, Farhad or Mahival; these are the great lovers of history.

You may not even prompt the computer; once you have fed in the information, he will repeat the dialogue. And this is exactly what your mind goes on doing, there is no difference.

It is a very strange discovery, that the mind functions absolutely as a computer. And they have experimented with the mind by touching certain centers with electrodes. And strangely enough as you touch a certain spot the man starts saying certain things. You take the electrode off, the man stops. You put the electrode back and the man starts from the very beginning again – the same! He is just like a gramophone record.

And the unwinding process seems to be automatic: the moment you take the electrode off, it unwinds, it goes back; it goes back to the beginning. You put on the electrode: strange, the man starts speaking. It is beyond his control, he cannot stop himself He will say the whole thing, unless you remove the electrode. Once you remove it, he simply closes his mouth, but within a second his mind is back into its old position, ready to repeat it again – a thousand times! The man will repeat the same dialogue; you just have to touch the same point.

So all your sermons go in this computer. They don’t touch your physiology, they don’t touch your chemistry. Hence Marx says, ”Consciousness is just a by-product.” Brihaspati uses a language that was available to him five thousand years ago, but means exactly the same as Marx.

In India people are in the habit of chewing pan – a certain leaf with a few things put into it. And when they chew it the mixture of all those things makes their lips red. It seems to be an out-of-date method of lipstick, but it is more than lipstick. Lipstick tastes terrible, but lovers have to pass through so many fire tests! They have to taste somebody’s lipstick too – and not only taste it, they have to enjoy it. But in love and in hate everything is justified.

Pan leaves are far better, they really taste good. And pan is used after food in India, so it takes away any food taste left in your mouth. It cleanses your mouth, and keeps your mouth fragrant. Brihaspati takes the example of the pan leaf. He says, ”Neither the pan leaf nor any of the ingredients that are put into it is red. But the combination, when you chew it, creates the color red. This red color has no existence of its own, it is a by-product.”

Naturally, five thousand years ago, when there was no computer, no other mechanism, he had found a good example. Put all those four, five things separate, and nothing is red, no constituent in itself is red. Then from where does redness come? Does it descend from heaven? No, it is just a by-product; from the combination of those four, five things, redness comes as a by-product. If you remove those five things, you can’t expect that the redness will remain behind; no, it will disappear.

So when a man dies, everything subsides; there is no soul left.

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Brihaspati must have been a man of guts. None of his books have survived; perhaps they have been destroyed, burned. All that has survived is the criticism in the books of other people who are criticizing Brihaspati. Of course, to criticize him they have to quote him.

Their quotations are not very reliable, because – and this is a more or less universal phenomenon

– critics first try to distort the teaching which they are going to criticize. Then it becomes easy to criticize because they have already managed the quotation in such a way – taken it out of reference, out of context, changed a few words here and there – that it becomes more vulnerable to their criticism. But still something of it must be from the original man. And I can detect almost precisely what has been added and what is exactly Brihaspati’s own saying, because I am also the same type of man.

If Brihaspati meets with me, he may not be able to agree and go all the way with me, but I will agree and go all the way with him. I will go a little further. He stops, but the point where he stops is on my path. I can go with him the whole way, his way; of course he is going to stop at a certain point. I will agree with him totally, but he cannot agree totally with me, he will agree partially. Hence I am in a better position to appreciate and to conceive what this man was saying – because I have followed the same route.

The critics quote him as stating ”Rinam kritva ghritam pivet”: ”Even if you have to borrow money, borrow it, but drink ghee.” Ghee is refined butter. Only in India do they have refined butter; otherwise the whole world is making do with butter. But Indians have reached a higher stage than butter, that is ghee. You cannot go higher than ghee, ghee is the ultimate, nothing can go beyond it. That shows India’s tendency: they will go to the very end. The people who have starved only on bread and butter don’t have the tendency to go to the very completion of a thing. Butter is just half way there, it is not the last stage; ghee is the last stage.

And in India ghee is loved immensely because India is a vegetarian country. All delicious food is invented by vegetarians. Non-vegetarians don’t invent delicious food for the simple reason that what they are eating is delicious enough. But a vegetarian cannot just go on eating vegetables, boiled vegetables. Only once in a while someone – a man like me – can manage it, but a whole country cannot.

I can manage it because when I am eating in the evening I don’t remember about the morning; I have forgotten all about it. I go on eating the same thing for many years, morning and evening. Vivek gets tired, fed up, angry. She is not even eating it, but just serving me every day, twice, the same thing.... I can understand her trouble. You don’t know the difficulties of living with an enlightened man. It is terrible! Just think: for ten years she has been giving me the same food.

And I can see she is tired, bored: the same food...! But you can ask her, she has never seen me bored or tired – I am excited every meal. Sometimes I think I must be mad; there is nothing to be excited about – she will be bringing the same things again!

And my physician, Devaraj – you can’t find a more miserly physician in the whole world! He goes on measuring everything. He won’t even let me have one pound weight more or less, no. He keeps a record of how much ghee.... A little more ghee means half a pound per week my weight will increase: he will not allow it. And I am not allowed in the kitchen anyway – he manages it. And he goes on analyzing every vegetable, every food: how much vitamin, and how much....

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I used to weigh one hundred and ninety pounds: just because of his great work, now I am only one hundred and twenty-seven pounds. Just the other day my mother was saying, ”One hundred and twenty-seven pounds? You used to weigh that much when you were a child!” I said, ”But what to do? I am absolutely helpless about it.” My cook won’t listen to me, she listens to Devaraj; Vivek won’t listen to me, she listens to Devaraj. I am simply nobody! I have just to finish the final act. They do everything, I have just to do the final act. But I am still excited.

In India they have invented thousands of kinds of delicacies, but all the delicacies are deeply fried in ghee. In certain areas of India, for example, in Rajasthan.... When I used to go to Rajasthan it was a problem, because in Rajasthan they pour ghee on everything. First they deeply fry everything, then they come with ghee and they pour ghee on top of everything. Unless the whole Indian tali, the plate – it is four times bigger than your plates – unless the whole tali is full of ghee and things are floating, they have not served the guest well.

Whenever I was invited to Rajasthan I used to write to them, ”I can come, but please don’t treat me like a guest; I cannot digest that much ghee. So unless you promise me that my tali will remain dry, and things will not be floating in ghee, I am not coming.” And in India the tradition is that whatsoever is given to you in your tali, you have to eat it all, you have to finish it, you are not supposed to leave it. Leaving anything is unmannerly; it means you did not like the food.

So what to do with all that ghee? In Rajasthan they simply drink it! Only in Rajasthan could I understand this Charvaka, this Acharya Brihaspati, and why he said, ”Rinam kritva ghritam pivet.” Ghritam means ”ghee”; rinam kritva means ”borrow money”; ghritam pivet means ”and drink ghee.” Before I went to Rajasthan I never thought that anybody could drink ghee, but in Rajasthan that’s how they do it. In the morning they will bring milk, and they pour ghee into the milk. I said, ”Are you mad or something? – because the milk already has butter, already has ghee in it, and you are pouring more ghee on top of it.

So when Brihaspati says it, he actually means it. And in Rajasthan, which is a desert, perhaps people can absorb that much ghee. It is so hot, and ghee brings an inner cooling to the body. The Vitamin A gives you a certain protection against heat, and ghee is pure Vitamin A. The cooler the place, the less you can absorb ghee; the hotter the place, the more you can absorb ghee – and India is a hot country. So I can imagine that he was right.

And the next question you will ask, you are bound to ask, is, If you are continuously borrowing, how are you going to pay it back? And Brihaspati says, ”Don’t be worried about paying it back, you need not pay. There are so many people: you need not borrow from one person again and again, just go on finding other people. And it is a small life: once dead, nobody will be asking you to repay them.

There is nobody left, neither you nor the person who had lent the money to you; all is finished. So whether you do good deeds or bad deeds does not matter. All that matters is: doing bad deeds, don’t get caught! Stealing is not bad, being caught is bad.” Brihaspati is absolutely logical: if there is nothing after death, then whether you were a saint or a sinner, what does it matter? Both will end in the same dust ”dust unto dust” – and you will not be able to make any distinction between the dust of a saint and the dust of a sinner. It is said of Brihaspati that he used to take his disciples to the Indian parallel of a cemetery, the place where funerals take From Personality to Individuality

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place. Saints are burned there, sinners are burned there, murderers are burned there. He would take his disciples and ask them, ”Can you make any distinction? So many piles of ashes are there

– which one belongs to a saint and which one belongs to a sinner?” Dust is simply dust.

I used to have a friend who was a real follower of Acharya Brihaspati – not knowingly. He was not aware, he had not even heard the name of Brihaspati I told him, ”You are really a follower of Acharya Brihaspati.

He said, ”Who is this?”

I said, ”You don’t be worried about it, that is not your business, but the way you are living is exactly as he has prescribed.”

This man was well educated. He had a Ph.D. from Delhi university and could have been on any good post; he had all the qualifications. He had a beautiful personality, very impressive. He needed that impressive personality, some charisma around him, because he lived by borrowing. He would go on moving from one place to another place because he said, ”The world is so large, and there are millions of people hoarding money unnecessarily. If I can manage to unburden them a little bit, I don’t think that I am committing any sin.”

And he was capable of persuading people to give him money. He was a good card player, really the best I have seen. He was a good chess player, a very good hand reader, a palmist; he had accumulated enough astrological knowledge to befool anybody. All these things helped him to find friends anywhere. If he was in the train, just sitting by your side, within five minutes you would be giving money to him. Within five minutes, his just sitting by your side was enough. He would look at your hand and say, ”My God! You are still not married?” You would be immediately impressed, and you would say, ”Do you know how to read palms?”

He would say, ”That’s all I know,” and would start saying things about your past life, and about your future, and soon you were impressed by him, his personality. He had long hair and a beautiful beard; he looked like jesus Christ, he was a tall man, very educated, and could talk in many languages because he was traveling all over India. He knew Bengali, he knew Gujarati, he knew Hindi, he knew English, he knew Urdu. He was able to persuade many kinds of people within minutes; and if you started talking to him, you were finished, your pockets would soon be empty.

And he had so many friends; anybody would like to be his friend, he was such a charming person.

He used, once in a while, to stay with me, although he could never manage to borrow money from me because I had no money at all. In fact what used to happen – I used to borrow money from him.

He would say, ”This is too much, that’s why I don’t come to you so often. But once in a while I start missing you. Just going on cheating the fools, I start missing you – the one person I cannot cheat.

”But I come only to you when I have enough money because I know you don’t have any money. You will take me to a hotel and order everything and then the bill will come, and you will say, ’Daya’” –

his name was Daya – ”’pay the bill!’ So when I have enough money, then I gather courage to come to you. And I cannot influence you because you know all my tricks, and all the things that I manage to predict about people.”

But I said, ”How long are you going to do this?”

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He said, ”How long am I going to live? Forty years I have lived; at the most I will live forty more. If I could manage for half my life, it is simple logic, simple arithmetic that I am going to manage the other half even better, because every day I am becoming more and more experienced about more and more people, and I am gaining friends everywhere.” And certainly if he had played chess with somebody and you saw him, then you would like to play chess with him, even if you knew that he was going to borrow money. In the middle of the game, when no chess player wants to stop – even if the house is on fire, no real chess player wants to stop in the middle – in the middle he would say, ”Ten rupees? – because I am in immense need; otherwise, I cannot play the game.” And you had to give it to him because you had to finish the game, the game was coming to such a beautiful turn.

He would always ask at the point when you were going to win. You had just managed for hours, and at the moment when you were taking the critical step he would say, ”Wait! I need ten rupees first.” If you had played cards with him, you would never find such a good player, so intelligent.

So he said to me, ”I am going to manage.” I saw him last in’69. I was in Calcutta and he was there just by accident. I was getting out of the train, and people had come to receive me. I have traveled all over India, and in every place the people who received me with great love and respect used to come with garlands of flowers, roses, mogra, chameli – all beautiful and fragrant flowers. But strangely, only in Calcutta were they always coming with the most fragrant flower, nargis. It is not a beautiful flower, but it is so fragrant.

I have never smelt anything so strong – just one flower and the whole room would be vibrant with its fragrance. It is not beautiful, so poets have not paid much attention to it. It is a simple white flower, very homely – looking, nothing exotic, nothing – what do you call it? – fantastic. One of the great Urdu poets, Mirza Ghalib, has said about the nargis, with great compassion, that ”The nargis cries and weeps for centuries for its ugliness. Only then, once in a while, somebody of intelligence comes and recognizes its beauty.”

But certainly in Calcutta – I have been to Calcutta hundreds of times – they were always coming with nargis garlands. Just one garland is enough for the whole house, and they would come with dozens of garlands and just go on putting them on – I would be covered up to my eyes.

At that time, Daya was going to catch the train I was getting out of He saw me and just told his porter,

”Now I am not going.” He came to me and said, ”i am coming with you. So many garlands.... You may not have any money but the people who are with you do.” I said, ”But you have got a ticket and you were just getting....” And he said, ”Forget all about the ticket. I cannot leave these people.” And it was true, those were all the richest people of Bengal, particularly Calcutta. I tried to persuade him, but he said no. So I had to introduce him, knowing perfectly well that he would cheat everybody.

I received a letter from him in 1975 saying, ”The group you gave me in Calcutta is the best in the whole country. Mostly now I live in Calcutta, changing from one person to another.” From Personality to Individuality

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And Calcutta is so big that when you move from one person to another, it is a rare possibility that you may accidentally meet again. It is too big a place, the biggest city in the whole world. So just to thank me, after six years he wrote the letter: ”Calcutta seems to be just a treasure. And now you need not be worried about my future. For these few years that are left – who knows, twenty, twenty-five, or maybe not even that much – Calcutta alone will do.” Eat, drink and be merry: this is what Acharya Brihaspati had said to his followers. He created a great movement. He was not religious, you can’t find anybody more anti-religious than him; but this is what I respect about India, that they accepted him as an acharya. Acharya means a master. Certainly he was a master, and to create a movement and to gather followers for such a rotten philosophy, one needs a really great, sharp intelligence.

I can agree with him, but he is only the Zorba. For the other part, Zorba the Buddha... he will stop at Zorba, he cannot go the remaining part with me. That’s why I said I can understand him perfectly well, better than he can understand himself, because I have a better perspective, and a bigger perspective. I can understand Buddha, which he cannot understand. I can understand the Zorba, Brihaspati, which Buddha cannot understand. But this is nothing to do with thinking; it is my seeing. If you think, then Zorba the Buddha is a contradiction. In thinking you cannot manage to put them together.

Sri Lanka is a Buddhist country. The ambassador of Sri Lanka in America wrote a letter to me: ”I appeal to you not to name your hotels ’Zorba the Buddha.’ It hurts our religious feelings.” I told Sheela to write to him: ”It hurts the followers of Zorba too, because this is a great insult to the followers of Zorba. He was against the Buddha. What am I supposed to do? – because I am both, Zorba and the Buddha. And my hotels or restaurants or discos have nothing to do with you and your Buddha. Can’t you see ’ZORBA the Buddha?’ Is that the name of your Buddha? Your Buddha’s name is Gautam the Buddha. This is a totally different Buddha.” I told Sheela to explain, ”This is our Buddha, who is first Zorba, and then Buddha: both together. Neither you have to be disturbed nor does any atheist have to be disturbed.”

Atheists have been disturbed. In India, the son-in-law of Amrit Dange – the Indian communist party’s president – has written a thesis against me because I am confusing people’s minds. It is difficult to figure out whether I am atheist or theist, whether I am a religious man or an anti-religious man.

Through the whole of his thesis he tries to figure who I am – and finds that it is impossible, and that I am simply a confuser.

Amrit Dange, the president of the Indian communist party and one of the oldest communists in the world, was part of the international communist party at the time of the Russian revolution, he was one of the members along with Lenin and Trotsky. Just by chance we were in the same compartment, traveling.

He said to me, ”Have you seen? – my son-in-law has written a book about you. For three years he has been studying you. You have created so much literature that it is going to be impossible to do research on you. He was going mad, day and night. And you seem to be impossible: it is not only that you contradict yourself one time, you contradict again, and you contradict again. Finally it became impossible to find what you mean, because.... And that’s the conclusion that he reached.” From Personality to Individuality

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I said, ”You throw the book out of the train. He is a fool, tell him. Why did he waste three years? Life is so short and you are a communist: Rinam kritva ghritam pivet – borrow ghee, drink ghee. Why waste time with a madman like me?” – and I took the book from his hand and threw it out of the window.

He said, ”This is too much!”

I said, ”You can pull the emergency cord. What purpose has the red cord always hanging there?

Pull the cord.” But by that time we were miles away from the book, and it was midnight.

Amrit Dange said, ”There is no point in pulling the cord – and even if I pull the cord, we have come miles, and it is midnight – where are we going to find the book? And there is no need to be worried: my son-in-law has all the books. They are not being sold because people say that either....” There was a clear-cut division in India – either somebody was for me, or somebody was against me. Those who were for me were reading my books; they wouldn’t waste their time with his thesis. And those who were against me did not want even to hear my name – what to say about the book.

So he said, ”We have all the books. Perhaps you are right; he is a fool. Three years he has wasted, and he has published it with his own money. No publisher was ready to publish it,’Because,’ they said,’the country is clearly divided; there are no neutral people available, so who is going to purchase the book?’ He published it with his own money and now he is sitting on the whole lot.” I said, ”You can go on distributing this way, the way you distributed it to me. Distribute it. Let people read it even if they cannot get any substance out of it – because he has not been able in three years to find out what I mean. Nobody is going to find out, because I am not stating logical, philosophical maxims. I am a whole presence. I can absorb Zorba without any difficulty, and I can absorb Buddha without any difficulty.”

In fact, to me, unless both are absorbed with the same joy, with the same respect, you cannot be truly religious. And that’s what I mean by authentic religion.

Authentic religion will not be theistic or atheistic.

Authentic religion will not be materialistic or spiritualistic.

Authentic religion will be wholistic. It will not divide life into compartments, it will destroy all the compartments of sinners and saints, heaven and hell.

Again I remember Mirza Ghalib. He is really a very insightful poet. In one of his songs he says to God, ”Will it not be good if we can withdraw the fence between hell and heaven.... Just a little more space for a morning walk: what is the harm?” Now this man I say is insightful. He is saying to God,

”Just withdraw this fence, it looks ugly. And what is wrong with just a little more space for a morning walk? Let heaven and hell meet.”

But religious people would not like heaven and hell to meet. They would not like Zorba and Buddha to meet, because if Zorba and Buddha meet then all the religions disappear. And that is my meaning of the authentic religion.

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All the religions up to now I call pseudo.

They only appear to be religious, but they are not religious because they don’t have courage enough to be whole, they are only a part. But what will you do with the other part, which is intrinsic to you?

And I say it is not my thought – I feel it, see it, know it. It is exactly like when a woman is pregnant

– she knows. It is not a thinking that she is pregnant: she can feel the movement of the child in her womb, she can feel another life growing within her.

To you I say religion is going to take birth, but to me it is totally different.

I am pregnant with the authentic religion.

Yes, let me repeat: I am pregnant with the authentic religion.

I can see its movement within me, around me, in those who are close to me. They have become almost part of me, because I am not a person, I am a presence.

The presence can surround you like a fragrance.

You are drowned in it without knowing.

My sannyasins are drowned in me.

They are dyed in my color, my fragrance.

To me the religion is already moving, kicking.

And why do I say that this is the right time? Just go back a little. I told you it is death that created the pseudo-religions; the fear of death created the pseudo-religions. Now, for the first time, the world is coming close to a global death; hence I say that this is the ripe time for an authentic religion to be born.

Up to now it was only an individual death; the society continued, the world continued. Yes, people came and went away – old people disappearing, young children coming up – but the continuity was there, life was always there. Yes, individual life has been a problem, but only the individual was concerned about it.

The priest was capable of exploiting the individual very easily. He is so weak and so small, so limited, and he knows that he is going to die – he has to seek the priest’s help to find something to cling to which is undying, eternal, which will take him beyond death. And the priest has been promising that. But it was never a problem that the whole society was confronted with.

Today, now, the whole of humanity is confronted with the problem. Such a crisis has never happened before; hence pseudo-religions, pygmy religions, were enough.

Small doses were needed for

individuals. For the first time we are close to the death of the whole of humanity – not only the whole of humanity but the whole of life as such. Death encountering life in its totality makes the time right for a total religion to be born.

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Sheela brought a news cutting a few days ago. It was a declaration from the American government that ”even if the Soviet Union is capable of destroying all our atomic reservoirs, nuclear reservoirs, all our bases on the land – just for argument’s sake – even if the Soviet Union is capable of destroying all our nuclear ability on the land, sea and air, we will still have our submarines which are hidden, twenty-four submarines. Each submarine is loaded with nuclear weapons and missiles. Each submarine can send one missile towards the Soviet Union every thirty seconds, and has enough stock for twenty-four hours.”

Just visualize the destructive force: every thirty seconds one nuclear weapon will move towards the Soviet Union, and for twenty-four hours continually nuclear weapons will be simply showering on the Soviet Union. In fact, one submarine has enough nuclear weapons to destroy every large and medium-sized Soviet city. If all land bases, ships and the air force are destroyed – which is only for argument’s sake, because to destroy all these bases is not simple; the question is only of ten minutes. Whoever attacks first has only ten minutes left; within ten minutes the other will be ready to counterattack.

In ten minutes neither America can destroy all the Soviet Union’s nuclear bases which are hidden and underground and not known to the public.... Perhaps the places that are known are bogus.

When you find a notice declaring, ”Entry is closed for army reasons,” those boards may be just bogus, to deceive the enemy, to deceive his agents; the real places will not have boards. So neither the Soviet Union has the capacity to destroy all the American bases within ten minutes, nor does America have the capacity to destroy all Soviet bases in that time. And how much have the Soviet and American bases accumulated, apart from the submarines which have now for the first time been declared?

Both countries have so much nuclear power that it can destroy the earth seven hundred times.

Never before has humanity faced death on such a great scale. Nothing can be greater than that; now you cannot increase this destructive power any more. You are already sitting on a volcano which can destroy humanity within minutes. Hence, I say this is the right time and right reason.

If man wants life to continue, then Hinduism will not be of any help because it was not created for such a crisis; nor will Christianity be of any help, nor will Mohammedanism be of any help – swords are no longer of any use – nor will Buddhism be of any use. Sermons will not do, austerities will not help, fasting is not going to change the situation. Something absolutely new is needed because the situation is absolutely new.

Hence I say this is the right time for the birth of an authentic religion.

This will be just religiousness.

And it has to be wholistic: so comprehensive that it can contain all and every possibility, so comprehensive that no human being is rejected from it, so comprehensive that saints and sinners can sit side by side without any barrier.

In jainism they have a story that when Mahavira used to move around, his influence was such that lions and cows would drink together in a river or in a pond. That seems to be just a lie, a fiction. But From Personality to Individuality

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what are they saying? They are saying that when a man of nonviolence like Mahavira is present, then violence disappears, even from animals. The lion who would immediately grab hold of the cow is drinking water and the cow is drinking water with the lion, unafraidthere is no problem because Mahavira is there, nearby. His influence is enough to make the lion non-violent, to make the cow brave enough to stand with the lion.

But Mahavira’s own son-in-law betrayed him.

He was Mahavira’s disciple too, but he wanted

Mahavira to make him his successor. Naturally he would have thought that as he is Mahavira’s son-in-law.... And Mahavira had only one daughter, no son, no other daughter. Naturally – he was almost his son – he should inherit whatever Mahavira has: if not the kingdom, then all his influence and followers. And it was not less than a kingdom, it was bigger than a kingdom, because many kings were his followers, many kingdoms were just at his feet.

The son-in-law was just harassing him continually, ”You declare me your successor.” Finally Mahavira said, ”It is not possible. I am not going to declare anybody my successor because I am the last tirthankara now for the whole of this creation. Only in the next creation – when the whole universe is destroyed and again a new universe starts – will there be another tirthankara, and for that, somebody has already earned enough virtue.” That was his chief disciple, Gautam Ganadhar.

That is the Jainas’ mythology, that the last tirthankara’s chief disciple will be the first tirthankara in the next cycle of existence. That’s how they connect: each cycle remains connected with the past twenty-four tirthankaras through that one chain. Mahavira said, ”It is already declared: he is my chief disciple and he is going to be the first tirthankara – and that too will be millions of years later. I cannot declare you my successor”

Mahavira’s son-in-law went against him, he betrayed him. He took five hundred disciples of Mahavira with him. Lions are losing their violence, cows are losing their cowardliness – and Mahavira’s own son-in-law has not dropped ambition, jealousy, competition, the whole power number! And he not only left, he had enough influence that five hundred other disciples went with him; he had a clique.

Now seeing this situation, I cannot think that cows and lions were drinking water together, unless they were trained circus lions and cows; then it is a different matter. Prepared for the same occasion, for an exhibition – that is another matter. Or perhaps it was only a lion’s skin and inside there was a man. That happens once in a while. Hunters use that method.

I have heard... two hunters were doing it. One hunter was sitting on top of a tree from where he would shoot the lion. A cow had to be underneath the tree, tied to the tree, so she could not escape; then the lion would attack the cow, and the lion could be shot from the top of the tree. But they had not been able to find a cow. Because they could not find a cow, they tried this old method. They had the whole skin of a cow, so one man dressed himself in the skin and stood there. There was no need to tie him because he was a hunter, but he said, ”Be aware, don’t let the lion attack me. If he attacks, then even if you kill him I am gone.”

The other hunter said, ”Don’t be worried,” and he kept his eyes on the lion... because a lion was there, far away, watching the cow. So he was pointing his gun towards the lion – and meanwhile, what happened? A bull came by and that created a whole nuisance, because he started making love to the cow! The man jumped out of the skin and said, ”To hell with your lion and your hunting.

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We had never thought of this possibility. Now shoot this bull!” So perhaps for some show purposes...

otherwise, I don’t think that Jaina story about Mahavira and the lions and cows drinking together was true.

So no old religion is capable of facing the challenge that is coming closer every day.

The second news was about the man in charge of arms control talks, from the American side. He is a topmost boss, a mediator between the Soviet Union and America to bring some kind of dialogue and some solution. Some journalists asked that man’s small son, showing him the map of the world,

”Can you recognize the countries? – because your father is continually moving from this country to that country.”

He said, ”I can recognize them” – and he recognized every country except the Soviet Union.

The journalist asked, ”Why have you left out that country? – it is so big.” The boy said, ”My father said that only bad guys live in that country.” So the journalists approached the man and asked him what he thought. He said, ”There is no possibility, there is no hope of any dialogue. Those people are simply continually Lying. You cannot have a nice conversation with the Soviet leaders.” Now, if your mediators have such ideas, that it is impossible, hopeless, and that those people are all Lying... as if these people are all telling the truth! Nobody is telling the truth; neither they are telling the truth, nor are you telling the truth. Both are Lying, and both know it. But such is the stupidity of man And this man is in charge of mediation, and a similar kind of man must be there, in the Soviet Union, in charge of mediation.

This man is teaching his son that ”Only bad guys live in that whole country, you should not even think about that country” – what was the purpose of it? It simply shows the man’s mind.

These politicians cannot solve the problem. And religions don’t have methods, strategies, because they were invented long ago – they were not prepared for this crisis.

A totally new vision... and the time is absolutely ripe. In fact, it is already late, because time is running fast, and these fools are accumulating more and more nuclear weapons, piling them up.

And war is pointless, absolutely pointless. By the end of this century either we prevail over the earth, or... there is nobody else to prevail.

Either Zorba the Buddha takes over, and the Mohammedans, the Christians, the Hindus, forget all their nonsense and start being more human, not superhuman.... Either they forget about hell and heaven and start thinking about this earth or this earth is going to be destroyed. And before anything goes wrong we need thousands of intelligent people around the earth who are capable of being simply religious: without following a dogma, without being part of any nation, without having any membership in any congregation – just purely human, natural, ordinary.

If we can release intelligence – and we will have to release it because this is not the time for ifs and buts; it is a question of the survival of the whole of humanity. All its creativity, thousands of years of evolution, are going to be finished by a few foolish politicians?

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CHAPTER 22. COUNTDOWN TO CATASTROPHE: GLOBAL SUICIDE, OR SANNYAS

Is nobody going to create a conscious energy?

That’s what an authentic religion is:

A conscious force around the world, against all kinds of stupidities – of religion, of race, of blood, of color, of caste, of nation. All are stupidities.

The time has come when the earth should be one.

That’s the only way to save it from destruction.

There is no need for negotiation between the Soviet Union and America. There should be no Soviet Union and no America! What is the need? Each city should be a self-sufficient unit in itself Only once, and only for a short while, a little democracy has existed in the world, and that was in Greece in the time of Socrates. Just a little democracy existed, but it was a democracy of city-states: every city was a state unto itself Then it was direct democracy. You were not choosing representatives, you were directly involved in the functioning of the whole government.

The world needs smaller communes – not big, huge, monstrous cities, just small units, communes, so small that they can be direct democracies.

And the map of the world should be one.

There should be no passports, no visas, no questions about anybody’s movement.

Movement should be a birthright:

The whole earth is ours!

It is a tremendous job, but it has to be done. It will have to be done because there is no other alternative.

It is suicide or sannyas.

We have to propagate the idea to everyone who has ears to hear and eyes to see, and any intelligence to understand the clear-cut alternative: you create a new kind of religiousness that has never existed before – earthly, physical; not against the spirit but in tune with the spiritual.

That’s what I mean by Zorba the Buddha.

That is my name for the new man.

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CHAPTER 23

Bored to death? – you’re on the trail to transformation 21 January 1985 pm in Lao Tzu Grove

Question 1

OSHO,

WHAT IS BOREDOM? ARE YOU NEVER BORED WITH LIFE?

IT is one of the most significant questions to be asked, because it is only man’s privilege to be bored. No other animal has the capacity. Why has man the capacity to be bored? It is a by-product of intelligence. Nothing is wrong about it. Only idiots are not bored – or the enlightened ones, but they are few and far between. The major part of humanity between these two poles of idiots and the enlightened ones feels more or less bored.

Boredom means that you are intelligent enough to see that life is meaningless, that it is just futile to go on living: nothing comes out of it. Life is an effort to make your signature on water – not even on sand, because on sand it may remain for a while before the wind comes and destroys it. It is writing on water, and it disappears as it appears – immediately, instantly – and nothing is left behind, not even smoke.

How many millions of people have lived on the earth? What have they left behind? They were also people like you. They were doing everything that you are doing, thinking all kinds of thoughts, dreams, ideals. And they made every effort to be creative, to be fulfilled, to be contented. But what is left? Whether they had been or not makes no difference. If there had been not a single human being before us it would not make any difference. What difference are you going to make? And if you cannot make any difference then your life is uncreative.

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Creativity means making a difference by your being here, leaving the earth not exactly the same as you had found it; your imprints will always remain there. You may be gone, but what you have created will go on influencing generations after generations.

Every man who has ever lived has thought about his life: What does it signify? Is it just vegetating?

No animal is bored because no animal is bothered about meaning, no animal is concerned about creativity. A buffalo chewing grass is as contented as any Gautam the Buddha. She is not aware of her contentment – that is the difference. But she is perfectly contented: no tomorrow, no yesterday, no problems. Just watch a buffalo chewing grass and you can see the difference between man and animals....

A man may be sitting on a golden throne – that does not make any difference – or he may be a beggar, but they both are immensely concerned about why they are here, for what? Is it just accidental, or is there some destiny to it? This question remains unanswered, hence the boredom.

You cannot find contentment, blissfulness or meaning in anything. You see every day passing by and you know that death is coming closer, closer, closer, and life is not yielding anything. Your hands are empty.

Strangely, when a child is born he is born with closed hands, as if he is bringing something into life.

When a man dies, he dies with open hands – all is lost. There is nothing to hold in his fist, there is no need for a fist. No man has ever died with fists closed, and no child has ever been born with fists open.

It is significant. Physiologically it has different meanings. The child is not yet capable, not strong enough to open his hands. Physiologically they are not actually fists, it is because the child simply cannot open his hands. Physiologically that is the explanation, that he cannot open his hands yet.

He needs a little strength, then he can open his hands.

And the dying man – his whole body becomes relaxed. Death is the ultimate relaxant. For the whole of his life he was tense; now, life is leaving the body. The body was not tense, it was the life in it

– the intelligence, the mind – that was making it tense. Now, the fist is a tense state of the hands.

When life leaves the body, even if you are making a fist, it is bound to happen that your fist will open up, because now there is no more energy to keep the fist closed. The child had no energy to open it up, the old man has no more energy to keep it closed. It needs strength to keep it closed – that is a physiological explanation. But the metaphor is beautiful, and I am mentioning it as a metaphor.

Every child is born with the idea that there is going to be something great.

Every child comes with hope, ambition, desire, and a confidence that all this is going to materialize; that his dreams are not going to remain dreams, they will become realities. To me, that is the metaphor of his closed fist.

He is coming with a treasure, with a secret.

He is not coming without a message – he is coming with a message to be fulfilled. He is coming with a destiny.

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CHAPTER 23. BORED TO DEATH? – YOU’RE ON THE TRAIL TO TRANSFORMATION

Hence children are not bored. They may cry, they may weep, they may laugh, they may smile, but you cannot find babies bored. They have not yet felt that life is not what it is supposed to be. They have not experienced life as made with the same stuff as dreams It needs a little growth, a little experience. And the more intelligent a child is, the sooner he becomes bored. The stupid ones take a longer time, obviously, because to see the meaninglessness of life you need a very sharp intelligence.

You ask me, do I ever feel bored? Not now, but I don’t think any one of you has felt as much boredom as I felt for the first twenty-one years of my life Perhaps I finished the quota – there is a limit to everything!

My parents were puzzled. I never participated in any games. If I make a joke of football today, it is not new; I have been making jokes of all games as long as I can remember. I have never participated in any game, in any play. My teachers were concerned, my parents were concerned: 4What kind of a child are you? And what do you go on doing? Go out and play.” I said to them, ”Every parent is telling his children to come in and study – and you all go on forcing me to go out and play. Who is strange? Am I strange or are you strange? I don’t see any point in playing, I L don’t see any outcome in it. It is just wasting time. Those who have time, they can waste itI don’t have much time.”

Since the day my maternal grandfather died, death became a constant companion to me. I was only seven years old when he died. He died on my lap. My maternal grandfather and my maternal grandmother used to live in a faraway village and I used to live with them. They had no other child than my mother. My mother was very young when I was born, but she had the whole responsibility of her husband’s family because my father’s mother died when 1 was only two years old. My father’s brothers and sisters were too small, too young; my mother was also very young, but she had to take care of the whole family. So my maternal grandfather and mother decided that it would be better if I lived with them. I could have more freedom and they could take more care of me. My mother would be a little less burdened, so she could take care of her husband’s family now she was the oldest –

although she was just a young girl.

The village was not very far away, only sixteen miles, but there was no road, no train. When my grandfather fell sick, and the only physician in the village said, ”It is beyond me – take him immediately to some hospital,” We took him in a bullock cart, because there was no other way.

Those sixteen miles looked like thousands of miles, because he was dying.

I could see his pulse was slowing down, he was becoming unable to open his eyes; he started breathing in a very strange way, he stopped speaking. I saw death coming closer and closer. He was in my lap because my grandmother was in so much misery and suffering that she was constantly crying.

I told her, ”You should think of me! I am only a child – now I am to take care of the dying man and to take care of you. And you had brought me to take care of! This seems strange. At least don’t cry, because if you cry then how can I stop myself from crying? I am not crying just so you can stop.” But she was not in her senses. I was continuously watching in every possible way to see whether the man was still alive or gone, and I saw him slowly, slowly, slowly drowning. By the time we reached my father’s place he was dead.

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CHAPTER 23. BORED TO DEATH? – YOU’RE ON THE TRAIL TO TRANSFORMATION

After that, death became a constant companion to me. That day I also died, because one thing became certain, that whether you live seven years or seventyyears – he was seventy years – what does it matter, you have to die.

My grandfather was a rare man. I could not conceive him telling a lie, breaking a promise, even judging somebody as bad.

I remember one night.... In the village there was no police station, no police, nothing. My grandfather was the richest man in the village. I used to sleep with him in his bed. One night a thief entered the house. My grandfather saw the thief crossing the fencing and entering; my grandfather started telling me a story. The thief had entered the house and was sitting in the corner – my grandfather started telling me a story, and it seems the thief also became interested in what he was saying.

My grandfather had the habit, just like Taru, of chewing pan, the betel leaf, continually. His bag was always with him, a very beautiful bag, and he was continually making his pan. This night he began to chew the pan and spit on the thief who was sitting in the corner! The thief could not escape either, L because he would be caught, and he could not say, ”You are destroying an my clothes.” Finally it was too much and the thief said, ”Nana – because I used to call my grandfather nana; nana means maternal grandfather, and because of me the old man had become nana to the whole village; everybody started calling him nana. So the thief said, ”Nana, it is too much. I am enjoying your story but I cannot enjoy your pan. Please stop! You will spoil my whole dress!” My grandfather said, ”Tomorrow you can come and take new clothes from me – because I have been deliberately spitting on you. It is not good of me, I should not have done it.”

”But,” the man said, ”I am a thief, and you know I had come to steal.” My grandfather said, ”That is your business, whether you are a thief or not, but tomorrow you come and take new clothes” – because my grandfather had a shop, a multi-purpose shop. In small villages there are only multi-purpose shops; in the one shop you get clothes, sweets, shoes, umbrellas –

everything is available. There was no other shop, he had the only shop for everything the village needed – medicines....

Next day the thief came, and I told him, ”You seem to have some nerve! You have come with your whole shirt and dhoti spoiled by the red of the pan.” He said, ”What else to do? I am a poor man, I cannot afford another dress. Nana has promised me

– and he is a man of his word.”

I said, ”Are you certain? He can collect the neighborhood and have you caught because you entered with the intention of stealing. You have admitted it, otherwise what are you doing here? And he has left all these marks on you as proof”

He said, ”Don’t create doubt in me. I know your nana: even if I had stolen – I have not stolen anything because I had no chance – he would never tell anybody.” And he went in and got a new dress. I told my nana, ”This seems to be going a little too far. Don’t let him be caught, okay, don’t judge him as a thief – but you are rewarding him.” From Personality to Individuality

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He said, ”No, I am not rewarding him. I spoiled his clothes; I am simply replacing what I have spoiled.

And he has not stolen. Intentions are just intentions. And even if he had stolen, what is wrong in it?

In this whole village everybody is poor, only I am rich; so if they take something away, it belongs to them. From where have I got all my riches? – from these poor people. They work for me; they work in my farm, they work in my garden. Everything that I have... I don’t produce anything – I don’t go to work in the field, to cut the crop or anything; all these people do it. So if once in a while somebody steals, they are stealing their own things; I am not concerned in it.

He told me, ”Don’t think about that man as a thief. That is not your business. And we enjoyed it, it was such great entertainment.” I said, ”That is true, that we both enjoyed seeing him.” The thief went on slipping into the corner, but the further into the corner he went, the more he was caught. He wanted to escape from the juice of the betel leaf, but he could not get out because that corner was just close to my grandfather’s bed. It was dark there, so in the beginning he was thinking that it was just accidental; but then he started slipping away and the spit started following him into the corner. Then finally he thought, ”It is not accidental; that old man is spitting like a good shot. And the story he is telling is just to make me aware that he is awake: it will not be easy to steal anything.” So finally he had to declare himself He said, ”I am here, and suffering. Now stop and let me go!” My grandfather was such a good man and always nice and helpful to everybody; whoever came to him, he was helping. He would give money to people. If they had come for a loan, and they wanted to put something down as mortgage, he never accepted it. He said, ”I don’t know – tomorrow I may die, then who will give you this mortgage back? You take the money. If you can manage to give it back, good. If you cannot manage, nothing to be worried about – I have enough.” He never took those people’s signatures as proof that they had taken money. I told him, ”You should have their signatures as proof that they have been lent money.” He said, ”It is not a loan, it is their money. They may be thinking it is a loan, but I am not thinking of it as a loan. So if they return it, good; if they don’t return it, there is no loss because I was never expecting them to. And they are so poor; how are they going to return it?” Such a good man, a beautiful man, simply died. What was the meaning of his life? That became a tortuous question to me – what was the meaning? What had he attained? For seventy years he lived the life of a good man; but what was the point of it all? It simply ended... not even a trace was left behind. His death made me immensely serious.

I was serious even before his death. By the age of four I started thinking of problems that people somehow manage to go on postponing to the very end. I don’t believe in postponing. I started asking questions to my maternal grandfather and he would say, ”These questions! Your whole life is there – there is no hurry – and you are too young.” I said, ”I have seen young boys dying in the village: they had not asked these questions, they have died without finding the answer. Can you guarantee me that I will not die tomorrow or the day after tomorrow? Can you give me a guarantee that I will die only after I have found the answer?” He said, ”I cannot guarantee that, because death is not in my hands, nor is life in my hands.” From Personality to Individuality

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CHAPTER 23. BORED TO DEATH? – YOU’RE ON THE TRAIL TO TRANSFORMATION

”Then,” I said, ”You should not suggest to me any postponement. I want the answer now. If you know, then say that you know and give me the answer. If you don’t know, then don’t feel awkward in accepting your ignorance.”

Soon he realized that with me there was no alter native. Either you had to say yes.... But it was not easy then; then you had to go into deeper details about it – and you could not deceive me. He started accepting his ignorance, that he didn’t know.

I said, ”You are very old, soon you will be dying What have you been doing for your whole life? At the moment of death you will have only ignorance in your hands and nothing else. And these are vital questions – I am not asking you any trivia.

”You go to the temple. I ask you why you go to the temple – have you found anything in the temple?

You have been going your whole life, and you try to persuade me to come along with you to the temple.” The temple was made by him. One day he accepted that the truth is ”Because I have made the temple. If even I don’t go there, then who is going to go there? But before you I accept it, that it is futile. I have been going there my whole life and I have not gained anything.” Then I said, ”Try something else. Don’t die with the question – die with the answer.” But he died with the question.

The last time he spoke to me, almost ten hours before he died, he opened his eyes and he said,

”You were right: postponing is not right. I am dying with all the questions with me. So remember, whatever I was suggesting to you was wrong. You were right, don’t postpone. If a question arises, try to find the answer as quickly as possible.”

There are a thousand and one questions that every child asks you. And just because you are such a coward that you cannot accept your ignorance, you go on giving him bogus answers. He asks you,

”Who created the world?” and you answer him, without knowing anything about God, ”God created the world” – without even feeling ashamed, with no change on your face.

You answer as if you know, but you don’t know; you are deceiving. And you are deceiving not only the child, you are also deceiving yourself It works both ways. If you succeed in deceiving the child, you have succeeded in deceiving yourself into thinking that perhaps you know. And again and again telling people that God created the world, you will start believing in your own lie. Then certainly you will not feel so bored.

Lies are very interesting because they are your inventions. The search for truth goes through much boredom. It is not an entertainment.

Somebody has asked the question: ”Why are people so disinterested in the discovery of truth?” It is not far to go to seek the answer. Even to raise the question about truth means you have to become serious. It means you are leaving the world of entertainment, of circuses, movies, carnivals, football matches, behind. You are leaving all that world which keeps people occupied, and you are moving in the opposite direction to entertainment: that is boredom.

Why are people engaged in all these entertainments? Simply to avoid being bored. Just watch yourself left alone for one day in the house. You start doing bizarre things. You will turn the radio on, From Personality to Individuality

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then put it off, then turn the TV on – not that you are really interested, but what else to do? When you are just left alone, boredom starts descending on you. You will start phoning friends, ”Would you like to come to my place, or I can come to your place, or we can meet in Zorba the Buddha.” He is bored, you are bored. Two bored people – it is interesting – start entertaining each other.

As far as I can see, this is absolutely against arithmetic. I don’t know much arithmetic. From the very beginning in my school I heard about these three R’s. ”The whole of education consists of three R’s,” one of my teachers said: ”reading, writing,’rithmetic.” I said, ”Whom are you trying to befool?...’rithmetic! Just to manage to make it the three R’s you are changing arithmetic into ’rithmetic.” I told him, ”Education consists only of two R’s: reading and writing. Arithmetic I don’t take into account.”

I have never been at ease with that ’rithmetic, but this much I can understand: that two bored persons meeting together will make the boredom double. That’s what happens in marriages all around the world. Everybody knows both were alone and were feeling bored. They started entertaining each other, and immediately they fell into the fallacy that in their being together life would be interesting, there would be some juice in it. But that is possible only when you meet the girl or the boy on the sea beach... waiting twenty-three hours for one hour. Stolen kisses are sweet; otherwise how can kisses be sweet? It is stealing that makes them sweet.

I don’t see that kisses can be sweet, particularly French kisses. If French kisses were sweet, every Frenchman would be suffering from diabetes – so much sugar! But there is no sugar at all so diabetic people can kiss without any fear. But stolen, there is sweetness... that you are creating a small world of your own.

But meeting once in a while, you are both prepared, you are both ready. You have taken a shower, she has taken a shower, and for at least three hours she has been before the mirror and used all kinds of perfumes and deodorants, and lipstuff and whatnot. And then you meet for a few minutes or an hour. Of course you both are far away; only your personalities, the masks.... She has come with painted smiles and you have come with painted smiles.

The strangest thing is that you know that you are not what you are pretending to be, she knows she is not what she is pretending to be – but both believe that the other is exactly what the other is pretending to be. This is something unbelievable. And then naturally they want to live together: if one hour is so sweet, if one hour is so miraculous that all boredom disappears, they start imagining how beautiful it will be to be together twenty-four hours a day.

The fallacy has continued all through history, and I don’t see any possibility that it is going to stop even in the future. If it stops it will be very significant, meaningfuland it will give you a chance to understand boredom.

By understanding boredom, you can go beyond it. By avoiding it, you remain trapped in it.

Marriage is a way to avoid it, just as there are so many other ways. But when you are together twenty-four hours a day, how long can you pretend? Pretending needs tremendous effort and energy. Oneday, two days, three days, and the honeymoon is over: your mask starts slipping.

And you don’t care anymore even if it slips and falls down, because the girl’s mask is also slipping.

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CHAPTER 23. BORED TO DEATH? – YOU’RE ON THE TRAIL TO TRANSFORMATION

I have heard: a man got married to a woman and they went on their honeymoon. The man said,

”Before we go to bed this is my old habit – to put the light.” It is such a deep-rooted habit that I cannot go to bed unless I put the light off.”

The woman said, ”This is strange! You can go to bed; I am coming from the bathroom and I will put the light off.”

He said, ”Then I will wait outside the bed.”

But the woman insisted, ”Unless you go to bed... This is my habit; I will go into the bathroom andcome out only if you have gone to bed.”

The man said, ”This is strange: from the very beginning there is a conflict of habits.” Then he said,

”Now there is no point.... The truth is that I don’t have real legs, so I cannot undress in the light.” The woman said, ”Then it is okay – because I don’t have breasts. You can undress in the light, I can undress in the light. I was afraid that you may discover that I don’t have any breasts.” The man said, ”My God! I was afraid that you would discover that my legs are false.” But the marriage is already on the rocks. The honeymoon has not even started – the light is still on!

Every honeymoon, more or less, in different ways, ends in the same way. Once you have known the woman, her physiology, her topography, once she has known you – your great lovemaking, huffing and puffing and perspiring and stinking – now you know you are going to bore each other as much....

Before, at least you were alone and bored; now you are bored and somebody else is also there to bore you.

Then husband and wife go on living ”happily ever after.” That’s how every story ends, how every film ends: ”after that they lived happily ever after.” After that, they did not live at all! They simply died.

Every day they died more and more.

But man’s stupidity is such that he won’t see the exact problem. You will think, ”This woman failed me,” ”This man failed me.” ”Perhaps we are not meant for each other” – as if there is some woman who is meant for you or some man who is meant for you. Forgive me, there is no woman, just nobody is meant for you.

You are born alone, and you have to accept your aloneness. The sooner you do, the better.

But aloneness is boredom, because there is no entertainment, nothing interesting. Yes, for twenty-one years I was bored to death. Not only was I bored, I was boring everybody whom I could catch hold of. My father would immediately start looking into his books... I would see that he was sitting, not looking into a book; as I entered he would start looking at it. Once I said, ”Why are you trying to look busy without business? I have seen you – you were just sitting. There is no customer, and you were not looking m the books. Why did you start looking in the books?” He said, ”Can’t I even allow myself to be engaged in something to avoid you? Go somewhere else!

You must be bringing some problems. I have my own troubles – you take care of your own problems.” From Personality to Individuality

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CHAPTER 23. BORED TO DEATH? – YOU’RE ON THE TRAIL TO TRANSFORMATION

My teachers would not allow me to raise my hand, because that was.... I don’t know how it happens in other countries, but in India if you want to ask a question you have to raise your hand. My practice was that before the teacher entered the class my hand was up. He would not have even got seated and my hand would be up. He would say, ”This is something! At least let me sit down. Is there some emergency?”

I would say, ”Everything is an emergency. Why should I waste time? And when you start teaching, you force me to keep my hand down because you are teaching and I should not disturb you.” Teachers would immediately start writing on the board so they could keep their back towards me, but I was not so easily put off. Just the other day we were talking about Bible-bashing: I was book-bashing. I would go on hitting the book till they had to turn around.

I would say, ”You cannot escape this way. My hand is up and I have a question” – and I had all kinds of questions. My teacher would say, for example, ”This question does not belong to my subject.” I would say, ”It is not a question of subject. Life cannot be divided into subjects. Your school curriculum may be divided, but life is undivided. When I go in the history class I am the same person, when I go m the geography class I am the same person; with the same problems I go into every class. So I don’t bother about what subject you are teaching, I am concerned with my question. And my question is not only my question, it is yours too – and that’s what is freaking you out.”

And they were simple questions like, ”What is the meaning of your life? Why are you living? Now, those teachers would say, ”What do you want – that we should commit suicide?” I would say, ”I have no objection, but before you commit suicide you will have to tell me: Why are you committing suicide? What are you going to gain out of it? That question you will have to answer.

So suicide is not going to help, the question will remain the same: Why are you living? Why are you dying? And if you can’t answer such a simple question such as why you are living, then what else is there?

”You try to teach me history, about Alexander the Great, and you don’t know anything about yourself even about your life? You want to teach me about religion, about Krishna and Rama – and you don’t know anything about the living principle in you, from where you got it. Are you aware of the source, and where you are going?”

Once you are skeptical then everything can become the object of immensely important questions.

And when you are surrounded by questions and no answer is coming from anywhere, you feel betrayed by existence, betrayed by your parents, betrayed by your teachers, betrayed by your priest

– because there is no answer and yet you go on living: committing suicide is a crime.

It is a strange world. Just the other day, a news cutting was brought to me... a man died near the White House in Washington. Hungry, cold, frozen, he was found just by the wall of the White House.

When they found the dead body in the morning, they searched him and it was found that that man was a second world war veteran. Can you believe this? – they gave him all the respect that is given to a war veteran.

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Alive, he was hungry, with no clothes to cover him from the cold: nobody cared. Dead, with great respect, with all military respect, he was given the salute. What kind of world are we living in? A living person has no means to live, and a dead person is given great honor.

In the same way it is so funny that all over the world suicide is one of the greatest crimes. Strange: you don’t help people to find the meaning of their lives, and you force them to live – because to drop out of living, to just return the ticket and say, ”I want to get out of this train of life, I am no longer interested,” is to commit a crime.

And the thing becomes still funnier. If you are caught committing suicide, then you will be sentenced to death! We are living with such intelligent people all around – the great law-makers, constitution makers.

That’s exactly what this man was going to do – die. Now, what is the need of all this hullabaloo? –

catching hold of him, then for months keeping him in prison... and a court trial with the advocates fighting each other like cats and dogs, the great magistrate sitting seriously deciding. And after that the man is sentenced to death When the man, the poor man, was doing it himself without any expense to the government, to the nation, to anybody, that was crime!

Why is suicide a crime? From a very early age I have been thinking: Why is suicide a crime? It is a crime because it gives the idea to everybody else also, that life is not worth living: that man did well. You are not courageous enough, you are cowardly – you cannot commit suicide. How to hide this cowardliness? Of course! – you can make a law that he has committed a crime. And this kind of crime has to be prevented; otherwise many more people will start committing it.

They are really trying to repress in everybody’s mind the idea of dropping out of life. It is a well-known, well-established fact that anybody with a little intelligence thinks in his life – at least one time certainly, that is the minimum – of committing suicide. Why? Because life seems to be just boredom.

Marriage has failed. Religion has failed. Politics leads nowhere. You can have all the money in the world, still you are as poor as you were before.

Boredom is something very fundamental.

It is part of not accepting your aloneness.

It is part of not being able to enjoy your aloneness.

You have been taught by the society to escape, to go on running, not to look back; but boredom follows you like a shadow.

Boredom is your shadow.

Where are you going to escape?

You can’t escape from it.

Perhaps for a few moments you can drown it in alcohol, but the next morning it will come back, worse than it was before. Then you call it a hangover. You suffer the hangover; still again you are From Personality to Individuality

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going to drink, knowing perfectly well that the hangover is coming. But at least for a few hours you are absent. Drunkards are not bored. You can go into any pub and see the drunkards. They are utterly happy and enjoying, shouting, screaming and beating, doing all kinds of thingsbut they are radiant. You will not see them miserable, sitting in a corner philosophically like Rodin’s statue of THE

THINKER, with the hand supporting the chin, and half-closed eyes.

THE THINKER has a posture – the very posture shows that sadness. Rodin’s statue of THE

THINKER has exactly caught the mood of boredom. He is so bored, he has no energy even to open his eyes and look around. Inside, questions upon questions are standing in a row, an endless row.

One marriage fails; people start getting divorces and then search for another woman. I have heard about one Californiac – yes, I use the word Californiac, because that kind of people you can find only in California. Whoever gave the name California to this part of the world must have in mind the idea of Californiac. One Californiac married eight times – nothing surprising in America.

In India of course wives go on praying to find the same husband in the next life. I have always felt so sorry for the poor husband: if these prayers are heard...! Every year there is a particular day in India: the married woman fasts on the day, and after fasting she prays. That is purification... and then the prayer, that she should get the same husband life after life.

I feel sorry for the poor husband, because if these prayers are heard what is going to happen to him? And I feel very strange about the women: are they aware of what they are asking? You want this dodo life after life? One life is not enough? But it is just tradition. In fact every day the wives are a pain in the neck of the dodos – and the same dodo goes on doing the same to them.

Everybody in this instance follows Jesus Christ: ”Do unto others whatever you want to be done to you by them.” The husband is doing to the wife what he must want done to him; the wife is doing what she must want to be done to her. All are Christians in that way; particularly married couples are all Christians – whatever religion they belong to.

This man married eight times, and each time he found that somehow he ended up with the same type of woman. He must have been a slightly alert man. He watched, and thought that this was strange. But this is not strange, it is simple psychology. You fall in love with a woman. You have certain ideas about beauty, form, aesthetics; and that woman fits into your formula of who is going to be the right wife for you – as if right wives exist or right husbands exist! All are wrong, because the whole institution of marriage is idiotic. So there is no right husband, no right wife – unless somebody like me manages the marriage of two people.

For example, I know one couple who would have been the right couple: Morarji Desai, ex-prime minister of India, and Mother Teresa. I can say with absolute certainty that if they were married they would be the perfect couple of the whole of history. But it is very difficult to find such a couple. It took fifty years for me to discover this one couple.

Because you choose a woman, you forget that you have a certain formula, unconsciously working.

Why do you suddenly choose a particular woman? – there are so many women in the world. It is because this woman fits with your idea of a right wife. Now, you divorce after three months because From Personality to Individuality

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although you found that her nose fits with the formula, her hair color fits with the formula, her body fits with the formula, she is not only a combination of hair, eyes, nose; these are nothing. She is an individual, hidden from you completely. So you have only seen the outer side of the woman, and you don’t know her inner depths, where she really is. And she has only seen your outer form.

It is just like seeing a fence, and deciding this is the right house: you have only seen the fence around the house, not even the walls of the house – what to say about the inner chambers? And what if there are scorpions or snakes, witches and devils? One never knows what is there; just the fence fits. But you can’t live outside the fence. You get married just to go inside the house, and when you enter each other’s house it is terrible – because you have chosen each other out of boredom, not out of joy.

You have chosen, not to share something but to get something. The woman has also chosen to get something because she is empty. Now two beggars are choosing each other thinking that the other is an emperor. Once you come closer, dreams are broken. You can divorce the woman, but how are you going to choose another woman? Again, by the old formula that you know, that is fixed in your unconscious; perhaps you are not aware of it. The old formula will find the same kind of woman again; you cannot find anybody else. It is almost like marrying the same woman. And that’s what happened, that’s why I was going to tell the story.

The Californiac married eight women. When he married the eighth woman he found after two days that once before also he had married her. It took two days for him to discover it. They were all similar types but this one looked like an exact replica. And the woman was not yet aware that it was the same man; only when he told her did she become aware. He said, ”My God! What have we done?

Let’s be together for two or three months and then divorce.” Wherever divorce has come as a fashion you are bound to find that you will always choose the same type. And the woman, on the other side, is going to choose the same type of man.

I have lost psychological track of all memories. Factually I can describe them but I cannot relive them.

My life is absolutely lonely.

This is strange to say because I have lived thirty-five years of my life in crowds. But I am alone in the crowd.

You are there, but I am alone.

Even in the crowd I am not in any way different than when I am sitting in my room alone. My aloneness persists; it is incorruptible. I live in just one room almost the whole day.

My life is as much a routine as possible. Everything that creates boredom I have meticulously arranged around myself I have not allowed anything that may help me to escape from my aloneness.

In the morning exactly at a certain time I get up. And do you know what I do first thing? Even Vivek does not know. The first thing is, I pinch myself to see whether I am still here or it is finished. Only after pinching myself and being certain do I push the button for Vivek to bring my tea. Because what From Personality to Individuality

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is the point of pushing the button if I am not here? She will unnecessarily get up and prepare the tea and bring it – and that is not right.

So first I make certain that I am still here. Then the second thing I do – I push the button for her to bring my tea. And what is my tea? No milk, no sugar, just hot water with tea leaves. But I enjoy it because it is the purest taste of tea. Sugar and milk destroy the purity of tea completely.

Everything is set up exactly the same every day. I have half an hour in my bathroom, then half an hour in my swimming pool. It must be the hottest swimming pool in the world: ninety-nine degrees fahrenheit. It is just cooking yourself completely. Twenty minutes in it and you are cooked well. And I don’t have a small swimming pool, it is olympic size. You know I am a man of very simple tastes –

I am satisfied with the best of anything: satisfied simply, but with the best of anything.

Sheela was asking me, ”What are you going to do with the olympic size?” I said, ”That is not the point, what I am going to

[ do with the olympic size. The size has to be olympic; I cannot step into a smaller size swimming pool.”

Half an hour in that hot water, then back for half an hour under an ice-cold shower. You cannot have that ice-cold shower for more than two minutes. But after ninety-nine degrees of hot water it is a tremendously beautiful experience to be under ice-cold water The change from hot to the opposite, to very cold, is again a deeper pinching. The first was on the body, this is on the soul. Then I am perfectly certain that I am here and going to prevail, at least for today.

Vivek brings my breakfast, which is really a great breakfast – just a glass of juice, the same. It would be the same for everybody else, but not for me because I don’t compare. Yesterday is gone and tomorrow has not come yet – I don’t compare it. Vivek was asking me today, ”Are you really excited with the same food every day?” – because yesterday I said I was excited. She was asking, ”Are you really excited?”

I said, ”I am always excited with the same juice, the same food, because the problem arises only when you start comparing. When you start thinking that for ten years you have been having the same juice, then there arises the fear, ”What are you doing?” But I am not bored. I have dropped comparison. I don’t carry any psychological memory with me. I go on dropping it moment to moment, and then I can enjoy the same thing for the whole of eternity.

She must have been worried because of what I said. She must have talked with my personal physician, Devaraj, and said, ”Should we change Osho’s complete menu?” I said, ”No, I am not going to allow you to change it. I am so settled with it that a change may create some trouble.” And I am not bored with it. It is difficult to believe, but I have learned one thing: If you can enjoy your aloneness then you can enjoy anything.

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And if you cannot enjoy your aloneness, you cannot enjoy anything.

That is an absolutely

fundamental principle.

I had a friend who was a school inspector. One day he came to me very excited and said, ”Just listen. Can you believe this?”

I said, ”Just settle down – don’t be so excited. What has happened? I never see you excited. You are always bored with the same routine: going again and again to the same schools, to the same classes and the same questions. What has happened? Something extraordinary?” He said, ”You will not believe it! I went to a school....” First I have to explain to you the story, otherwise you won’t follow him.

Sita’s father – Sita is Rama’s wife – Sita’s father had declared that ”Whosoever breaks the bow of Shiva” that Shiva himself had given to Sita’s father as a gift ”my daughter will put a garland on his neck.” That was called swayamvara in India: the girl choosing her husband by a certain device. This was the device, and the device was really difficult. Shiva’s bow was so heavy that to break it by hand was almost impossible. It was difficult even to pick it up with your hands from the platform on which it was Lying. Princes after princes, kings after kings came. Finally Rama came: he broke Shiva’s bow and married Sita.

This story was given to the students of a class to prepare for the next day; and that was the day, by accident, that my friend happened to visit the school. When he entered this class, the teacher was just asking the students, ”Tell me, who broke Shiva’s bow?” A boy, very afraid and nervous, raised his hand. The teacher was surprised – this was the last boy he would have imagined would answer.

He had never answered anything, but now he was raising his hand. The principal was there, and the inspector of schools was there, so he said, ”Okay,” but he was afraid that the boy would mess up the whole thing. The boy stood up and said, ”Sir, I have not broken it. And moreover, yesterday I did not even come to school.” Now, he had really messed up the whole thing. The teacher was boiling: what would the inspector think, what would the principal think?

But before he could say anything or do anything, the principal said, ”As far as I’m concerned, this boy seems to be mischievous: I think he has broken it.” The inspector was at a loss. What to do now? This was becoming absolutely mad! He went to the chairman of the school committee to tell him what was going on. And the chairman said, ”Don’t be worried. I will just tell the carpenter and he will fix it. Children are children and furniture gets broken – it is nothing to be worried about.” I said, ”But you should have enjoyed it – it was such a beautiful experience! But you don’t seem to have enjoyed it; you have become worried about it.” He said, ”Worried? It is a great concern. What is going on? Even the headmaster says,’I suspect that this is the culprit – his face shows it.’ And the chairman said, ’Don’t be worried, I will tell the carpenter and he will fix it. This is an everyday affair. These children are children.”’

And my friend said, ”This is not the whole story. When I came home I told my wife, and my wife said,’Will you come to your senses or not? In our house so many things are broken, and nobody bothers. I have been telling you the chair is broken, the lamp is broken – and you are worrying about Shiva’s bow? What business is it of yours?’

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”So I have come to you, to tell you that this is the state of affairs,” my friend said.

I said, ”I think this is a very beautiful state of affairs – just go and enjoy it! Don’t get worried about it. The beauty of the story could not have been as good if the boy simply answered factually, that Rama broke the bow. What would there have been in that? But the boy was original.” He said, ”My God, you say that the boy was original?” I said, ”I think everybody was original because they all managed to find some new idea. They were not repeating old things.”

To repeat old things becomes boring. The ways to get out of it are two: either don’t repeat old thingswhich is impossible, because life consists of small things. You will have to brush your teeth every day. How many original ways can you find? I don’t see that you can find many. As far as my dentist is concerned there is only one right way. Wrong ways you can find, but the right way is only one. If you start getting bored with that then every morning you will start bored.

Enjoy it, don’t compare. What is there is compare? If you don’t compare, it is no longer repetition; if you compare, it is repetition.

You will have to take a shower – and it is going to be the same. You will put on your clothes and you will do your work – it is all going to be the same, more or less. If you try to do everything new in order to be creative you will simply go crazy.

This story of Shiva’s bow reminds me of another, that happened in front of me in my own village.

It was the same story. Rama’s life is played all over India every year, and this part is in it. Ravana was a competitor of Rama, and he was a mighty man. He was also as much a devotee of Shiva as Sita’s father, perhaps a greater devotee. So there was great fear that he might break the bow.

Neither Sita’s father wanted that – because Ravana was a monstrous man with ten heads – nor did Sita. She was afraid that he might succeed – everybody was afraid – so a conspiracy was created.

The moment Ravana was to stand up and go towards the bow, a man would come running in and say, ”Your kingdom is on fire.” Sri Lanka was Ravana’s kingdom, and the story is that his capital in Sri Lanka was all made of gold. Of course if his kingdom was on fire then he would drop the idea of breaking the bow. He already had many wives, and he was not particularly interested in Sita: the only thing was the challenge to break the bow. He was interested in breaking the bow; Sita or no Sita was not the problem, Ravana had many beautiful wives. So he dropped the idea and rushed towards Sri Lanka. Meanwhile Rama broke the bow and got married to Sita. This is the scene and then the story goes on.

What happened in my village when this scene came, and the man came running and said, ”ravana, your kingdom is on fire,” was that the man playing Ravana said, ”Let it be!” Nearabout twenty thousand people, many of whom were asleep, just woke up! The whole crowd was awake: What has happened?

Ravana said, ”let it be – this time I’m going to break Shiva’s bow. Every year the same, the same, the same:’Your kingdom is on fire’ – and nothing is on fire.” And he broke the bow. It was nothing, it From Personality to Individuality

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was just a bamboo bow. He simply broke it in many pieces and threw all the pieces away, and told the father of Sita, ”Where is the girl? Bring her!” It was a great shock, but really original. And he declared to the people, ”now you go home because the story is finished” – because that was the point of the whole story. Rama gets married to Sita, then Ravana finds out that it was a conspiracy, that his kingdom is not on fire – it is just a trick to get him out of the way and to give time to Ramaso Ravana steals Sita just to take revenge. Then the whole story goes on: he steals Sita, then Rama fights and gets Sita back....

But he finished the whole story. He said, ”It is finished. You can go home, and from tomorrow there will be no Ram Leela. For this year I have done it.” Later on it was found that the problem was that he had had a quarrel with the man who was managing the show. After the show they all used to get sweets and fruits, which people were bringing to offer to Rama. All the actors used to get them, and the day before, this man got a little smaller proportion. He was angry and he said, ”Today I want double.”

The manager said, ”No, nothing doing. If I give you double then everybody else will ask for double.” He said, ”Then mind! If something goes wrong I am not responsible.” The manager said, ”What can go wrong?” He had never conceived that this man could do this.

I went backstage, and I really appreciated the man. I said, ”You did something original. Every year somebody needs to do something original.”

The manager said, ”You are supporting him! We are going to give him to the police because he has destroyed the whole thing. Now tomorrow from where are we going to start the story? Tickets have been sold; and people will ask for their money back if the story is finished. It was just the opening day! We are going to give him to the police.”

I said, ”No, that is not right – he is such an original person. Tomorrow find somebody else to play the role – just release him from the role – and start again from the very beginning.” But the manager said, ”How to start? – because he has broken the bow.” I said, ”Simple, just open the show tomorrow. Declare that the show will be on and that it will be the first show. When the curtain opens, Janaka, the father of Sita, will declare, ’Yesterday, through the mistake of my servants, the real bow of Shiva was left In the palace. The bow that got broken was just a bow which children play with. Today, the real bow is here and the show starts.’” The manager said, ”That good – that will do.”

So the show started next day. People were laughing t because again it was a bamboo bow and if somebody wanted to break it, he could. But that Ravana was taken out, there was somebody else playing the role.; The story continued, and the people fell asleep and snored.

But in life you cannot be original every moment. But what can be done... what has happened to me is: since the moment I started enjoying just being myself, all psychological memory started falling From Personality to Individuality

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like dust every day; and anything – because it is not compared with the past – is new, is original. I see you: I never feel that these are the same people, not for a single moment, because twenty-four hours have passed; you have all grown twenty-four hours older. So much water has gone down the Ganges, it is no more the same water. So much life has flowed through you, you are not the same person. Yes, the same face is similar, but not exactly the same.

Gautam Buddha used to say, ”Life is just like a flame. You light a candle in the evening, and the whole night the candle burns. You can see that the flame is almost the same, but it is not the same flame. The flame is becoming smoke continually, and new flame is coming out. The old is disappearing and the new is appearing, but the disappearance of the old and the appearance of the new is so quick that you cannot see the gap between the two. That’s why you think it is the same flame.

”In the morning when you blow out the candle, never think you are blowing out the same candle you had kindled in the evening. It is not. In these twelve hours the flame has been continually changing: it is a flux.”

So is life, so is everything – continuously changing, moving.

Nothing is the same, nothing can remain the same for two consecutive moments.

Once you understand that.... But that under standing has to be first experienced in your own life flame. When you see that your own life flame is a flux, a continuity of movement, a continuum, then everything around it is always new – similar, but new.

The moment you can feel your newness, and everything’s newness around you, boredom disappears.

Animals are not bored, idiots are not bored, because they don’t have the intelligence to see.

Enlightened people are not bored because they can see the totality of their own being – that it is a constant newness, that dust does not gather there, that the mirror remains clean and everything that reflects in your consciousness is always new.

The tree outside the house will not be the same in the morning. Please don’t behave with the tree as if it is just the same. New leaves have come out, old leaves have fallen; new flowers may have blossomed, old flowers may have disappeared.

Change is the only permanent phenomenon in existence.

There is nothing else permanent except change.

So what is there to be bored about?

But it has not to be just an intellectual understanding: It has to arise from your experience of being a flame.

You are actually a flame which goes on changing.

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Every second something new is coming into the flame and something old is becoming smoke.

Once your aloneness becomes a constant newness then whatever you do is creative, is original, is new. And you cannot manage in any way to feel bored.

I have tried to feel bored at least one time more, to see how it was, but I have to confess I could not succeed. I have tried every way, but everything is so new – what can you do? From where to bring in something old? There is nothing old ever – all is new forever.

But let this understanding arise from your innermost experience of aloneness.

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CHAPTER 24

Infallibility: just a popedream

22 January 1985 pm in Lao Tzu Grove

Question 1

OSHO,

WHY ARE YOU AGAINST THE CHRISTIAN POPE? ISN’T THE POPE INFALLIBLE? WHY DO YOU

CALL HIM, AGAIN AND AGAIN, ”POPE THE POLACK”?

I am not against anyone in the whole world, for the simple reason that I have no vested interest in anything at all, not even in my own life.

My purpose is fulfilled.

If I die this very moment, there will be no complaint, because I will not be leaving anything incomplete.

Enmity arises when somebody hinders you in your ambition. But I don’t have any ambition. I don’t want to be the pope.

There will be cardinals all around the earth who are against the pope because they all want to be pope. He himself was a cardinal and must have been ambitious to be the pope. He must have prayed to God, about the pope he hoped to succeed, ”Let this old guy die soon.” And he did die really very soon: he was only pope for ten or twelve months.

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of all these cardinals and bishops and ministers and priests; they are all hoping one day to become the pope, that is their only ambition. They all must be praying, ”God, call this man back home.” And although there is no God, so many prayers cannot go unheard. You will be surprised-without God, how can prayers be heard? There is no need for God. Just so many people desiring your death can create enough energy to kill you.

So even though there is no God – Buddha has no God in his religion, but he says to his sannyasins,

”After each prayer, never forget to distribute your virtue.” It is worth understanding. He says, ”When you pray or meditate you attain to a certain virtue, a purity, a compassion, a certain quality of love, a spiritual fragrance. Don’t hold it, immediately disperse it. Give it back to the universe from where it has come to you.” So the last thing in every meditation, according to Buddha, is: ”Whatsoever my meditation has given to me – the bliss, the joy – I give it back to the whole universe.” There is no God, no distributing agency. But there is no need: your wishing it is enough. Existence is not dead; it is alive, it is overflowing with life. It may not have ears to hear you, it may not have any understanding of your language, but it has life energy to feel you, to absorb your deeply – felt prayer.

I am reminded of one thing.

In India, for thousands of years, the snake has been worshipped. There are snake charmers all over India who play a certain tune on a special kind of flute, and snakes start coming out of their holes almost intoxicated with the tune. They dance in front of the snake charmer who is playing on his flute.

When Britishers came into India for the first time, they could not believe it, because they had come with the idea – scientists had found – that snakes don’t have any ears. But what to make of this?

If they don’t have any ears – and certainly they don’t have any ears, in their physiology ears are missing – but they are hearing music; not only hearing it, they are dancing to the tune of it. And not just one snake, all the snakes are affected by certain tunes, and they all dance according to the tune. And they have no ears!

It was reported back to England: ”How can we say that they don’t have any ears? – because certainly they hear the music. Not only do they hear, they under stand; not only do they understand, they follow it.” It took long research to find out how, because certainly they don’t have any ears.

The scientists were puzzled: without ears you cannot hear. But it was a solid a fact – and it was happening all over India, no just in one place.

Every year in India there is a month when spring comes; in that month there is a day devoted to the snake. It is the most beautiful time: the flowers, the fragrance, and the air – everything is vibrant with youth, beauty, color. One day is devoted to the snake. Nobody kills the snake because the snake is thought to be almost divine, and they are given milk, they are worshipped, and they dance all over the country. Ir each village you will find places with tents, crowd gathered, snakes dancing.

Finally the scientists discovered that the snake has no ears but that its whole skin is sensitive to sound. It has no specific organ for hearing, but the vibrations of music touching its skin give it a certain feel, and it starts moving, dancing, swaying. It is not hearing – or I would like to put it in a different way: it is hearing with its whole body.

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This is a stupid thing to say – that the snake is not hearing because it has no ears like you. The reality is that you have only very small ears, and the snake’s ears are spread all over the body. That would be a more scientific and logical way of saying it: that it hears with its whole body. Naturally it hears far better than you, far deeper than you.

It risks its life, because coming out of the holes is dangerous, but it is not afraid. When the music calls it, then there is no fear in it. Then amidst the crowds it comes, moving; and remember, because it is not afraid, it never attacks. And on this particular day it has never been heard that any snake attacked anybody. Even cobras, the very dangerous snakes, are dancing in the marketplaces. They are wild people; but anger and fear are connected. If they are afraid then immediately they can strike back. But they are not afraid. They have forgotten all fear, anger – everything. They are in a self-forgetfulness, so intoxicated with the music that they risk their life.

In the same way existence hears. It has no ears; it has no personality, no eyes, no hands. That’s why I say there is no God. But I don’t say there is no godliness. In fact I deny God because I want you to understand godliness. Because of God, people have completely forgotten the reality of godliness. It is a quality spread all over existence. Don’t expect God to be in your own image – that He has ears, and eyes, and nose, and mouth. Don’t be stupid.

This whole existence is alive.

And this aliveness I call godliness, divinity:

No person, but only a presence which is overflowing.

Gautam Buddha is right when he says, ”When you attain to some peace, some silence, some joy, distribute it.” There is an arithmetic in it, because the more you distribute it, the more you become capable of getting it. People are very miserly.

It is reported that one man came to Buddha and said, ”I follow all your teachings and I try my best to do everything, but one condition is troublesome. Can I make just a small exception?” Buddha said, ”Tell me what the exception is.”

He said, ”I can distribute my virtue to the whole universe but not to my neighbor. So you have to give me permission to let my joy be distributed to the whole universe except my neighbor. That guy, if I have any chance, I will kill.”

Buddha said, ”How can you distribute to the whole universe if you are excluding your own neighbor?

No, this exception cannot be allowed. You will have to include your neighbor too; otherwise you are not really distributing. You have not understood the fundamentals of it.” It is said about a Buddhist nun who had a golden statue of Buddha – and in Buddhist temples in Japan and in China, there are hundreds of statues.... People loved that man, Gautam Buddha, so immensely, that there is one mountain in China which has a temple with ten thousand Buddha statues. The whole mountain has been carved into statues. The whole mountain has become a temple. Ten thousand Buddhas!

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Now, this nun was traveling as Buddhist monks and nuns travel, from one place to another. She had her golden Buddha, and in the morning she would pray to Buddha and she would burn fragrance in prayer. But she was very miserly so she was very much concerned because the fragrance went with the wind; it reached other Buddhas who were also in the temple. And that was her problem, that these Buddhas.... sometimes her golden Buddha missed completely; the wind took the fragrance to other Buddhas.

The nun was very inventive. She found a bamboo, a hollow bamboo, and she made a certain wooden pot, covered, with a hole for the bamboo. She would burn the fragrance inside the pot, cover it and put the other end of the bamboo to the golden Buddha’s nose. Just a poor human mind!

She was very happy because now the fragrance was going just to her Bud&a; and all those Buddhas

– who knows who has made them? And she thought, ”Anyway they are not mine.” But it created trouble: soon her Buddha’s face became black. She was very puzzled. She asked the chief monk of the monastery where she was staying what to do.

The monk could not believe it. He said, ”What have you done to your golden Buddha? Such a beautiful statue and you have destroyed the face. What have you done?” She said, ”Now I have to tell you the whole thing; this is how it happened. Now that the smoke goes directly to his nose it has made his whole face black.” The master of that monastery must have been a man of understanding. He said, ”This is bound to happen. When you start possessing even a Buddha, what else can you dispossess? A nun is supposed to have no possessions – and you are not even able to let your Buddha be free. You are not even able to understand that all these statues are of the same Buddha, so wherever the fragrance reaches, it is reaching to Buddha.

”And even if it doesn’t reach these statues, even if it reaches outside to the stones, they are hidden Bud&as... because someday some sculptor comes and chops and hammers the rock and just takes out a few unnecessary pieces clinging to it, and the Buddha who was hiding in the stone appears again. So even if your fragrance goes to a stone outside – to the milestone – then too it is reaching a hidden Buddha. So don’t be worried: wherever it goes, it goes to him. Otherwise this is not the blackened face of your Buddha, this is your face blackened.” Buddha has no God, but he wants you to share your joy immediately. Don’t hold onto it even for a single moment. It will reach, it will vibrate into the existence. Hence, each single man becoming enlightened takes the whole universe a little higher than it was before. This is the only contribution that you can make.

All your contributions – good paintings, good statues, poetry – are not real contributions because they don’t help human consciousness to go higher, and that is the only richness in existence. But a single human being becoming enlightened may not do anythinghe may not create a statue, he may not be a painter, he may not be a poet, a singer – it doesn’t matter: he has already contributed. The greatest gift he has given to the world without anybody even knowing about it: he has raised you higher than you were.

The whole evolution of consciousness has depended on only a few people; others are beneficiaries.

They have not done anything to be what they are, where they are.

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What have you done to be a conscious human being? I don’t think that you can remember that you have done anything to be a conscious human being, but you are a conscious human being.

Of course your consciousness is very small, a very momentary phenomenon; you can become unconscious in a second. Somebody hits your face, slaps you, and your consciousness disappears; you become unconscious. Then whatever you do, you are doing it in unconsciousness. Later on, when consciousness comes back and you cool down, you may repent; you may feel this was not right. Who did it?

Many murderers in the courts all over the world have appealed on the grounds that they have not committed the murder. No magistrate, no court or jury has listened to them. But I say to you that almost ninety-nine percent of them are telling the thruth – they have not done it. While they did it they were absolutely unconscious. Now, something a man does in unconsciousness he cannot be held responsible for when he is conscious. If a man, completely drunk, kills somebody, then the court accepts it, that you cannot make him responsible: he was drunk, he was not in his senses.

But what is anger? It is far more intoxicating than any alcohol can be. What is jealousy? What is hatred? They are far more addictive. You can be easily taken out of your drug addiction; any institution like Alcoholics Anonymous can help you. But to make you unaddicted to your jealousy, to your ambition, to your competitiveness, to your anger, rage, your potentiality for violence, no Alcoholics Anonymous can be of any help. But a few, a very few people, enlightened people, have simply pushed you upwards. They have distributed themselves. They are not hoarders – they cannot be.

In the same way the reverse also happens. My feeling about why popes die so quickly is that so many cardinals, so many bishops – and they are in thousands all around the world; I think monks, Catholic priests, bishops, cardinals, in all, number almost one million. Now, one million people continually praying – of course to a God who does not exist.... But this prayer itself, this desire, this ambition to become the pope is enough to kill the poor man. So almost within one year, two years, three years, the pope dies.

I am not in any way concerned with the pope – he is not in my way. I am going nowhere, so nobody can be in my way. I am simply sitting in my room: there is no possibility of the pope crossing my way.

Yes, the American government still categorizes me as a tourist. That is strange. A man who is sitting in his room the whole day for four years is a tourist! Compared to me, all the Yankees are tourists. But I go to the bathroom, I go to the swimming pool, I come to this meeting room – if this is considered tourism, certainly I am a tourist. I am not a resident, it is so obvious, I am touring so much: the whole day touring and touring. I can understand their viewpoint, why they categorize me as a tourist after four years of my sitting in my chair.

The pope – you ask me, why am I against him? I am not against him, but it may have appeared to you that I am against him. The reason is that I simply state whatever is the fact, with no enmity, with no desire to harm anybody. But if the fact is such that somebody is exposed, then the responsibility is the fact’s, not mine. Just not to hurt somebody I cannot lie.

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frauds. They are representing someone who has no existence at all. And they are representing Jesus Christ, who is mentally sick. Now, what can I do about it if somebody is mentally sick?

However politely you say it – you can make it sweet: ”Darling, you are mentally sick” – the fact remains a fact.

It will be a great day in human growth when these people are taken for exactly what they are, and they should be treated accordingly.

You ask me: is the pope not infallible? Just the idea of infallibility is idiotic. Nobody has ever been infallible. Even the enlightened person is not infallible.

Of course if he falls, he falls in an enlightened way – that is a different thing – but he is not infallible.

And if he is enlightened he will accept the fact, because who can know more clearly than he that existence is so mysterious, so vast – no beginning, no end, unbounded. To say that you are infallible

– does it mean that you have understood the whole mystery, you have demystified existence?now there is no question that you cannot answer? – now all your answers are going to be exactly factual, true?

The enlightened person knows that in his own being now there is no darkness.

Hence, he is called enlightened.

He is full of light and he is full of blissfulness.

All anguish has disappeared.

He has found what everybody is looking for, knowingly or unknowingly.

He has arrived.

The feeling of arrival, that now there is nowhere to go, this contentment....

But it has nothing to do with infallibility.

Buddha committed mistakes, Mahavira committed mistakes; and I am sitting before you – in coming to Oregon, do you think I have not committed a mistake? I am proof enough that being enlightened does not mean you are infallible. You can fall into the Big Muddy Ranch. And now it is so difficult to get out of it. The more you try to get out of it, the more you are going into the mud.

This is so clear that there is no need for me to quote what mistakes Buddha committed, what mistakes Mahavira committed: I have committed mistakes, and I go on committing them; but that does not endanger my enlightenment. It has nothing to do with it.

I make the best possible use of my mistakes. That’s what we are doing in the Big Muddy Ranch –

trying! – that’s why I say, trying, in an enlightened way, to make something good out of it. If we have fallen into it, it may be our mistake, but it is fortunate for the Big Muddy Ranch, so let’s make the best of it. And we are trying hard to make the best of it.

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But all these people have been claiming infallibility. I am, in many ways, a crackpot. I should not be saying such things – that I commit mistakes. This is not in tune with my profession; it is against it.

That’s why people of my profession hate me, because they say, ”These things you should not say.

Even if you come to know that you have committed a mistake, try to cover it. Try to make it appear as if it is not a mistake.

That’s what they have been doing for centuries. But I cannot do it. I am simply helpless: I cannot deceive. These people have been doing that. Mahavira was claiming that he was omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent. Now this is sheer nonsense. He had no idea even that when he died his followers would be immediately divided into two sects; otherwise he would have made some arrangement, or at least told them, ”Be aware, this is going to happen. Don’t let it happen.

He had no idea that this was going to happen. And it was so apparent that even an unenlightened person who had a little bit of intelligence could see it already happening when Mahavira was alive. I will have to explain it to you.

Mahavira is the twenty-fourth messiah of the Jainas. Before him, two hundred and fifty years before, was the twenty-third messiah; the gap was only of two hundred and fifty years. The name of the twenty-third messiah was Parshvanath. He used to wear white robes, and his followers used to wear white robes.

When Mahavira declared himself to be the twentyfourth in the line, there were seven other competitors who also declared themselves. Gautam Buddha had also competed in the beginning-because Jainism was an established firm, and if you can get an established firm.... For ten thousand years it had existed, and had gone deep into the soil. It had tremendous power – roots, money, people. Buddha was hesitant to start a new business from the very scratch. First he tried to compete with Mahavira. If he could be accepted as the twenty-fourth tirthankara, then things would be comfortable and more easy.

This is simple, pure economics. Rather than opening a new shop, with no credibility, with no past....

Where are you going to get customers? Customers are already divided; they have their chosen shops. Who is going to come to you? So seven other people of the same caliber tried hard, but Mahavira was really a difficult guy: it was impossible to defeat him in any competition, particularly as far as asceticism was concerned. I don’t think, among his contemporaries, or afterwards or before him, there was anybody who could have competed with him.

He easily used to fast for one month or two months. In his twelve-year period of spiritual sadhana, it is said he ate only for one year: one year out of twelve. Not solidly for one year, then an eleven-year fast, no: a three-month fast, then a few days of eating; a four-month fast, then a few days of eating; a one month fast, then one day of eating. The average in twelve days came to one day of eating and eleven days of not eating. Now, none of the seven competitors were capable of doing this.

And Mahavira was living naked. None of the seven were capable of doing that either. He had really a beautiful body. Only such a beautiful man could afford to be naked. Clothes are helpful to you in many ways. It is not only the climate that they protect you from; they do many more significant things. They keep your whole body covered. They let people know only your face, so your beauty or ugliness is judged only by your face – and your face is just a small part of your whole body. The whole body has its own beauty, its own proportion, its own radiance.

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Mahavira certainly had a body which you could exhibit, which was worth exhibitingso solid, almost as if cut out of marble rock. He defeated all these seven, and the Jaina community accepted him as the twenty-fourth tirthankara. But the twenty-third tirthankara and his disciples and the whole Jaina community were still under his influence although Mahavira was the first tirthankara in twenty-four tirthankaras who was naked....

Now, how people go on distorting history. It is strange: even religious people do the same as did Stalin in Russia. When he came to power he changed the whole history of the revolution. Pictures of Trotsky disappeared from everywhere, and the names of Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinovyev – all the important people who were the leaders of the revolution. Stalin was not an important person in the revolution; he was not a leader or an organizer and he had no qualities of an orator.

Trotsky was one of the greatest orators ever. Lenin was a great organizer, he was not a great orator.

But Lenin and Trotsky compensated for each other: Lenin organized the revolution, and Trotsky went on igniting inspiring, making people afire. He really knew how to put words on fire. So naturally in every picture he is by the side of Lenin; he was the second man in the revolution. After Lenin he was going to be the chief of the country.

Stalin was only party secretary. His work was in the office and in the files. In public, nobody knew him; and he had no qualifications to be known in public. He could not address a public meeting: he could not write any impressive document, pamphlet, book. He was a bureaucrat. Sitting in his office as the general secretary of the communist party, he could issue orders, move files or not move files.

But his work was behind walls – nobody knew him.

After the revolution he changed the whole history. All those names which were important were immediately erased.

Books were burned; new histories were written in which Stalin was the second man to Lenin Photographers were asked to do every possible trick to replace Trotsky’s photo with Stalin’s photo. In group photographs Trotsky disappeared and Stalin appeared – just trick photography.

For forty years Stalin was in power. Of course, whatsoever he wanted to be was the history. One can accept a politician doing such a thing, but that’s exactly what has always happened in religion too.

Mahavira was naked, so Mahavira’s followers finally made the other twenty-three tirthankaras also naked; now, they were not alive to protest, ”What are you doing?” In Jaina temples you will find twenty-four statues all naked. They are all replicas of Mahavira, they look exactly the same as Mahavira. But the people who knew Parshvanath and who had followed him – and he was a man of such charismatic power that after two hundred and fifty years, he was also, in a certain sense, alive.... So immediately, because of Mahavira’s nakedness, Jainism started falling into two parties, when Mahavira was still alive.

The people who were initiated by Mahavira became naked, and the people who had followed Jainism traditionally, yet who had accepted Mahavira as the twenty-fourth tirthankara, remained in the white-robed clothes; their monks remained white-robed. It was so clear that after Mahavira there was going to be trouble between the white-robed followers – they are called shvetambaras: shvetambara means white-robed ones and the naked ones. They are called digambaras – the people for whom From Personality to Individuality

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only the sky is the clothing: no other clothing between the sky and the body. That is the meaning of the word digambara. Dig means the sky; the sky is the only clothing for them, nothing more than that.

It was so clear throughout Mahavira’s whole life that the traditional Jainas were white-robed, that his followers were naked, and that soon there would be a fight. They were still quarreling, Mahavira’s followers saying, ”If you are followers of Mahavira, you should drop clothes.” But the shvetambaras said, ”We are followers of twenty-three tirthankaras who were all white-robed. We have accepted Mahavira in spite of his nakedness, not because of his nakedness – in spite of his nakedness, because he proved far more solid, integrated and centered than all the other competitors. Nobody was even close to him, they were far behind.”

Now, anybody who has a little intelligence can see that after Mahavira, these people were going to cut each other’s necks, and for twenty-five centuries that is what has been happening.

I visited a place near Indore, where I used to go often. I had a great following in Indore. This place, Devas, is small. I used to pass from Bhopal to Indore; Devas is just on the way, and there is a very beautiful Jaina temple. But unfortunately, for twenty years it has been locked with three locks: one from the digambaras, one from the shvetambaras, and one from the government. For twenty years the case has been in the high court – to whom does it belong?

If you look at these small things you can understand what kind of stupid people have been posing as religious. It was the only temple in the town so both the communities used to go there to worship, but they could not worship together. When the shvetambaras worshipped they put clothes on Mahaviras statue. And the digambaras of course cannot worship him with the clothes on; they would immediately throw the clothes away. And nobody asks Mahavira what he wants. Perhaps some negotiation might be possible: they could just give him some underwear – a halfway solution.

Why be in a bother? And he is not going to object – he is just a stone – so put some underwear on him and both can just worship together.

But that is not the only problem. Digambaras worship a statue of Mahavira with closed eyes; that is even more troublesome. The shvetambaras worship a statue of him with open, half-open eyes. Now there is no way to decide whether Mahavira meditated with closed eyes or half-open eyes – because both are right methods – but on the stone Mahavira in the temple the eyes are closed because the temple was made by the digambaras. So what the shvetambaras did is that they had false eyes and they pasted those false eyes, half-open, on the statue. Great idea! And after worship they took off the eyes and the clothes.

But sometimes it used to happen that a digambara would be worshipping and a shvetambara would come in and put the false eyes on the statue. Immediately there would be a fight. Finally the government decided, ”You divide the time of your worship: up to twelve in the morning, the digambaras; after twelve, the shvetambaras – otherwise it is difficult. And what can the court decide?

It is for you people to decide. Otherwise have two statues or make two temples; but continually fighting, quarreling, beating each other – this doesn’t look good.” But even that idea didn’t work.

You know if you check everybody’s watches, you will find that somebody’s is five minutes slow, somebody’s is five minutes fast. And when people want to fight.... The shvetambaras would be From Personality to Individuality

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worshipping and the digambaras would enter: ”Get out – it is twelve!” But on the shvetambaras’

watches, five minutes were still to go. The digambaras would say, ”Not on our watches – it is twelve.” When you are just bent upon fighting, then whose watch is right?

Finally the court decided that the temple should be locked so there would be no more nuisance in the town – so the court locked it. But those followers could not be left behind – who is the court to lock up their temple? So the shvetambaras have their lock, bigger than the court’s; the digambaras have an even bigger lock, bigger than the shvetambaras’. Now there are three locks on that temple, and Mahavira has been imprisoned for twenty years!

And I asked those people – one day when I was passing I stopped near the temple and asked one Jaina whom I knew, ”What are you doing to Mahavira? Is this attitude a religious quality?” But he said, ”Whatsoever happens, we will not allow anybody to spoil the real image of Mahavira; he is naked and has closed eyes.” And when he was talking to me, immediately another man came up and he said, ”What did you say?” He was a shvetambara, and he said, ”Mahavira has white clothes and open eyes.”

Mahavira saw it happening already in front of him, but didn’t do anything – and he thinks, says, that he is omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent: all the qualities of God. Because in Jainism God does not exist, necessarily the whole burden of all those qualities falls upon the next fellow, the tirthankara, because he replaces God. He takes the robe of God and the role of God.

Buddha makes jokes about Mahavira: ”He begs before a house where nobody has lived for years

– and he is omniscient, all-knowing! And when Jainas say all-knowing, it means past, present and future the whole of time. Whatever has happened, is happening and will happen, he knows. But he does not know that the house is empty, nobody is there; and he is standing in front of the house with his hands spread, waiting for somebody to come.

Jaina monks are not allowed to ask; that is below their dignity. Egoism enters in so many ways:

”below their dignity.” They will not ask. You have to ask them, ”Will you be kind enough to accept our food?”

Mahavira is standing before a house where there is nobody, so he cannot know even about the present, the immediate present – what to say about the past and the future. But it was a problem for Buddha’s followers to discuss with Jainas – their Buddha was not omnipresent, not omnipotent, not omniscient; so Jainas would say, ”What kind of Master have you got?” So they invented a new idea Buddha invented a new idea.

But nobody accepts the simple truth. Neither Mahavira had the courage – although they call him the great warrior; Mahavira means the great warrior. Howsoever great a warrior he was, he did not have the guts to simply say, ”I don’t have all these qualities. I am enlightened; that is one thing. I know myself; that is one thing. I am fulfilled; that is one thing. What does that have to do with being omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent?” No, he could not manage to do that because the twenty-three tirthankaras before him had claimed those three qualities. If he disclaimed them, he would not be the twenty-fourth, and immediately he would fall in the eyes of the Jainas.

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Buddha also did not have the courage. He was joking against Mahavira but he invented a new idea.

He said, ”An enlightened person is not necessarily always omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent; but if he wants, then he can move his light into any section: it is just like a torch. If he moves it towards the future then he knows the whole future. He is not omnipotent twenty-four hours a day, but if he wants to know about the future he is capable; if he wants to know about the past, he has to turn his torch.”

Again this is not true. Buddha has committed so many mistakes that I don’t think any such torch was there. About the past of course you cannot argue – there are no records to be compared with whatever he said. But things that he said about the future have not turned out that way.

Buddha thought India would become totally Buddhist. And anybody could see at that time, while Buddha was alive, that his influence was spreading so stronglyHinduism has never been afraid of anybody as they were of Buddha. They were not afraid of Mahavira. Mahavira had defeated Buddha in a certain competition, but that competition was decided on by the Jainas. And Jainas are ascetics, masochistic: the more you torture yourself the more spiritual you are. Other people could not torture themselves as much as Mahavira was capable of torturing himself Mahavira used to meditate standingsitting was too comfortable. If he sees my chair... I am just heading for hell. He would be sitting naked on the bare ground or on a stone, because he could not use any carpet, any mattress, no; even that would be comfortable. So he used to meditate standing, with closed eyes. I feel digambaras are right; about his nakedness, they are right and about his closed eyes they are right, because not a single statue has been found in the whole history of Mahavira with half-open eyes – it is enough proof. And the statues are naked. It is such an historical fact, reported by all the religions of India, that shvetambaras cannot deny it.

So what they say – this is how cunningness, politics, everything is present in the name of religion

– they say that he was given by the gods.... There is no God, remember, but there are gods; that’s a totally different category. There are gods which are close to what, in Christianity, you call angels.

There are many of them, heaven is full of gods, and hell is full of devils. The enlightened man goes to a third place; not to heaven but above heaven, to moksha – from where nobody falls back again.

But the gods will fall back; they are just using their bank account as long as it lasts. They have earned virtue in their life, have done good deeds and good actions, so they are born in heaven as gods.

Heaven is some kind of holiday resort. When you have had enough you can take leave for two months and go to a holiday resort, to Switzerland or somewhere, and enjoy yourself and just relax.

Heaven is a religious holiday resort. The people who are born in heaven are called gods. They are below the tirthankara, they are below the enlightened person. Mahavira and Buddha both accepted gods.

Buddha said, ”The whole of India is going to become part of my dhamma, my religion.” But that has not happened, just the opposite: in India there are no Buddhists at all. The whole of Asia is Buddhist

– which Buddha did not even mention. At least he should have mentioned China, a bigger country than India; and Japan, which has developed Buddhism to its ultimate peak. But he had no idea.

Where was his torch? Once in a while he should have used the torch and looked around: he would have discovered that Tibet was to become a Buddhist country; the whole country would be almost a monastery.

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Now it is a tradition in Tibet that every family has to give at least one son to the monastery.

Most probably it is the eldest son who is given to the monastery as a monk, as an offering to religion.

So every family has a monk in the monastery, and every family desires that some day – when they are old and are of no use in the world – they will move to the monastery. The whole country of Tibet is a big monastery, secluded from the whole world.

Buddha never turned his torch towards Tibet. He never turned his torch towards Japan, where Zen Buddhism has flowered, where Buddhism has come to real maturity, where Buddha’s ideas have been refined and refined for century after century so that now Zen Buddhism is just pure fragrance.

But he had no idea of Japan.

All that Buddha talks about is India, and by India also I suspect that he meant only Bihar, because he had never gone anywhere else. The state from which Maitreya comes is called Bihar; bihar means tour, tourist. Buddha toured only in that area – that’s why its name became Bihar. Bihar means Buddha’s tour area. I don’t think that he had any idea about the rest of India. He must have been thinking only of Bihar; that was the India he knew.

But all that he has said has gone wrong. He thought that he was creating a vegetarian religion but all the Buddhists are non-vegetarian. Strange – all Buddha’s followers are meat-eaters. For his whole life Buddha was teaching people to drop non-vegetarian food because it is insensate, ugly, inhuman, gross, and will pull your consciousness down to lower states; it won’t make you light enough to fly to higher states of consciousness. All the Buddhists are meat-eaters for the simple reason that in India Buddhism was uprooted; Buddhist monks escaped all over Asia – and the whole of Asia was non-vegetarian.

Buddhists were in a difficulty.

They could not convince people to drop their meat-eating and just live on vegetables. They did not have the influence or the charisma of Buddha, so just the reverse happened: rather than converting China into a vegetarian country, the monks became non-vegetarian because they could not get food. Buddha said, ”Never ask for food from a non-vegetarian home,” but there were no vegetarian homes; where were they going to get food? And they were not ready to die. If they were ready to die, why should they have escaped and taken the trouble of crossing the Himalayas?

In those days... even today, crossing the Himalayas by foot is a superhuman task; two thousand years ago it would have been almost an impossibility, but they had to choose between death and life. At least there was a chance they might cross over the Himalayas; and many succeeded. Many died on the way but many succeeded in entering Tibet, many succeeded in entering China; but there they had to compromise. For their life they had escaped; now for their life they had to compromise.

They did not talk about vegetarian food; they simply dropped that idea completely because it would create a trouble. All Buddhists are meat-eaters today. And Buddha could not turn his torch and see?

There is no such torch.

I have told you nobody speaks against his own profession, but I am simply eccentric. I am not against the pope; I am simply for the truth, for the fact. If it goes against anybody I couldn’t care less.

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You ask me: isn’t the pope infallible? One thing is certain: except for this pope, no pope has been infallible; down the centuries all popes were fallible. But perhaps this pope may be infallible, because the idea of infallibility is possible only for an idiotic mind. Only an idiot can claim, ”I am infallible,” so about this pope I cannot say. He may really be thinking that he is infallible – he belongs to that category. Now you will think I am against him. I am not against him, I am really supporting him. I am saying he may be infallible, because idiots are.

And you asked me: why do you go on calling him again and again, pope the polack? What do you want? Should I call him pope the Oregonian? That is too much. I am a generous man but not that generous. He is a polack – what can I do about it? In fact all polacks are infallible, so it is nothing special about him – all polacks. Poland is full of infallible people.

It reminds me about a story... I love it. In a small school, in the Bible class, the teacher, who was also the priest, explained to the children about the great dogma of Christianity, the dogma of the trinity: God the father, the Holy Ghost, and Jesus Christ, the son. And then he told the students,

”You have understood the idea; now you all draw a picture, according to your imagination, of how these three people are, how they look to you.”

So all the students started drawing pictures. All the pictures were strange – they were bound to be strange, because how can the Holy Ghost be drawn? Yes, about God the father they have heard that He has a long beard, so they drew Him as almost just a head with a beard. For the Holy Ghost somebody drew a zigzag line, like a whirlwind. And about Jesus they knew that he was a nice fellow so they tried to make a nice picture.

Just one small boy created a problem. The teacher looked at his picture; he had done a really beautiful picture. He had made an airplane with four windows. From one window God the father was looking out, from another window the Holy Ghost was looking out, from the third window Jesus Christ was looking out. The priest asked, ”This is all okay, but who is this fourth?” – because there was a face at the fourth window.

The small boy said, ”Pontius, the pilot... otherwise the other three would crash.” I like it; rather than Pontius Pilate, Pontius the pilot is far more fitting. And the boy really had great imaginative power.

You don’t have even that much imagination, that when I say pope the polack.... I insist on calling him pope the polack because I want you to continually remember that this is the first time that the right person has become a pope. Up to now only wrong people used to reach that post. For the first time in history the right person has reached the post; that s why he is not going to die so soon. He is not dying – he has already passed the average limit. Let all those idiots around the world pray for his death – he is not going to die – he is a solid polack! He is getting healthier than he was before, and doing great works.

No, I am not against him; I am not against anybody. Even if I want to be against anybody, I cannot be. When I first read Jesus’ statement, ”Love your enemies,” I was shocked, because if Jesus was really enlightened, he could not have enemies in the first place, so whom are you going to love? And to love your enemies the basic requirement is first to create your enemies, then love them. Such unnecessary trouble! Why create enemies?

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First, creating is a terrible effort, and then loving is even more terrible. It is so difficult even to love your friends. Love is such a messy and greasy affair that perhaps only Italians can manage it, nobody else. Love your enemies”.... I wondered. First I would have to create enemies, then I would have to love them.

Then I came upon his statement: ”Love thy neighbor.” That too is very difficult because I don’t have any neighbors. People can sit close to me, even touching my body – still nobody is my neighbor.

Only another enlightened man can be my neighbor, because between him and me there will be no wall, no fence, no division. It is very difficult for me to find a neighbor, and even if I succeed in finding a neighbor there will be no need to love him. He will be overflowing with love itself; he will not be in need of love.

Two enlightened people have very rarely met. Only one instance is reported in the whole of history, and that was a meeting between Kabir and Farid. I have come across no other instance and if I have not come across one, then you can be certain nobody can come across one, because I have searched every nook and corner possible.

Kabir was old and had moved to Magahar from Varanasi. Farid was on a pilgrimage, and just on the way was Kabir’s ashram. Farid’s disciples asked him, ”It would be a great joy for us if you meet, sit together, and talk about something. We would be just overwhelmed listening to you two enlightened people.”

Kabir’s disciples said, ”We have heard that Farid is passing by with his disciples. We should invite him here. This is not good, that he should pass along the road and we don’t invite him in. And it would be a great opportunity for us poor people to see you both together – two flames. And even if you only discuss a little bit, talk a little bit, for us it is going to be an unexpected blessing.” Kabir said, ”If you say so, invite him.”

Farid said, ”If you say so, we will go.”

Farid set out towards the ashram but Kabir was coming; on the way they met. They hugged each other and they laughed loudly. The disciples were a little shocked: they were not expecting that they would laugh so loudly. They had neither heard Kabir laugh before, nor had they heard Farid laugh before like this – almost madly. They looked at each other, the disciples of both: What was going on?

Holding hands, Kabir and Farid went in. They sat together and for two days they remained there.

Not a single word was uttered. Yes, once in a while they giggled. And after two days, Kabir came half the way to give Farid a send-off. They again hugged each other, laughed loudly and departed, not saying a single word, not even ”good-bye.”

For two days the disciples were just boiling, waiting for these two days to be over, because to start quarreling with your own Master, in front of the Master, to ask him, ”What are you doing?” didn’t seem good. So they waited. But as Kabir and Farid departed, the disciples of both took hold of their Masters, and they asked the same question: ”What happened? Why didn’t you speak a single word?” Farid’s disciples said, ”When Kabir was not here you went on pouring strange words, strange From Personality to Individuality

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things, strange ideas, on our heads. We might have understood, we might not have understood, but you didn’t care; you just went on. Most of the time what you say goes above our heads. When there was a man of your quality, caliber, status, why were you silent?” They both said the same thing to their disciples: ”Whosoever spoke would have proved that he is not enlightened yet, because what is there to say? Speech is possible in three conditions. Two ignorant people can have a really great conversation; such a great conversation cannot happen otherwise.

The more ignorant both are, the greater their conversation, the more juicy.

The second possibility is that one is enlightened and the other is unenlightened. Then there can be a certain conversation, but mostly it is a monologue The enlightened person will speak, and the unenlightened, at the most, can ask a question; but it is not conversation in the true sense. What can the unenlightened contribute? All that he can do is raise a question – that is his contribution.

The answer is going to come from the enlightened one.

The third situation is: two enlightened people. They cannot speak. They know, but they know that whatever they know cannot be put into words.

The disciples asked, ”Then why did you laugh?”

Kabir and Farid said, ”We laughed at you” Kabir said, ”I used to think that only I have all these idiots

– I saw that Farid has also. I laughed; and he laughed because he must have thought that not only are these idiots torturing him, they are torturing me too. So we both laughed.” The answer was even more shocking, that this was the reason that they had loudly exploded in laughter Then the disciples asked, ”Why, once in a while, did you giggle?” Farid said, ”I was just looking at your boiling! You were just getting ready to kill me once these two days were finished. That’s why I giggled, and I think that’s why Kabir giggled, because his disciples were also getting hot.”

Those two days looked like two years because those two people were simply sitting silently; and because of them, just out of respect, all the disciples were sitting silently. But they were just keeping silent, they were not really silent. Inside there was a great turmoil: what was the matter? What was going on? Why were their Masters giggling?

Farid and Kabir said, ”Whenever we saw that you were getting to a point where you would explode, we giggled. That helped you to cool down.” Then the disciples remembered that was true: whenever they were really getting too angry, that was the time when their Masters giggled.

Of course a certain type of invisible relationship starts growing between the Master and the disciple.

If the disciple is angry, if the disciple is sad, if the disciple is in a negative mood, it reaches the Master without your saying anything. And the Master responds in whatever way the situation demands.

Perhaps he may not respond at all, if that is what is required; he may simply ignore it. Or he may take much note of it and make much fuss about it. It a]l depends on the situation, and every situation is unique.

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I have no neighbors so I cannot love neighbors. I thank God – who does not exist, but for these purposes His name can be used; there is no harm in it – that I don’t have any neighbors.

Those two days were good, but what about Farid and Kabir being together for two years? Then they would have really got into trouble. Those disciples could manage to control themselves for two days, but do you think for two years they would have been able to manage – listening to this giggle once in a while, or laughter, and then silence? Either they would have escaped from the place, thinking,

”These two people are mad and we are going mad with them,” or they would have started quarreling with their Master.

But it was not that Farid wanted to meet Kabir nor was it that Kabir wanted to meet Farid. It was the disciples who wanted the meeting, and the Masters both thought, ”There is no harm in it. Why unnecessarily say no to them? It will be a good experience for them.” If they had not asked, Kabir would not have asked Farid and Farid would not have gone to Kabir, for the simple reason that there was no point: they were almost the same. You don’t go to meet yourself, or do you? You don’t invite yourself to lunch or dinner, or do you? There is no point at all.

I am not against anybody – there is no reason to be – but I am all for truth. Whether it goes against my profession or not, I don’t care. In fact I am not a professional enlightened man: I am simply enlightened. Those were professional people. I feel ashamed that all these people – Mahavira, Buddha, Sanjay Vilethiputta, Ajit Keshkambal, Makhkhali Gosal – all these people were behaving like politicians, trying to be the tirthankara because the credibility of that religion was ancient. It was an establishment, well organized.

To start something from scratch needs courage.

And I am doing exactly that – starting things from the very first scratch.

I don’t want any borrowed credibility from any religion, from any establishment, from any organisation I want simply to do my thing in my own way with my own people.

It is a hard task, and there are a thousand and one difficulties which could have been avoided if I were part of an establishment; but then I would have been dead, not alive.

To me, the day Mahavira was accepted by the Jainas as their twenty-fourth tirthankara, he died; after that he was not alive, because he was only fulfilling a certain role that is expected of a tirthankara, doing everything exactly as a tirthankara should. This was not real life, it was not authentic. Up to then, before he became a tirthankara, Mahavira was living his own way, he was moving about on his own. But to compete is to go wrong. Then, to be nominated and then to be victorious – as if you can nominate and elect somebody for enlightenment! The unenlightened masses, unenlightened people, are choosing who is the tirthankara – this is simply absurd.

I have told Jainas in India many times when speaking to them: ”If you say to me that you are ready to accept me as your twenty-fifth tirthankara I will simply spit on your face. You and your twenty-fifth tirthankara can both go to hell. Why should I be the twenty-fifth when I can be first?” From Personality to Individuality

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I don’t see the point of Mahavira fighting to be the twenty-fourth, the twenty-fourth in the line! And for that all these people were also candidates.

I am perfectly happy in just being the first and the last.

I am not making a place for a second, because then there will be competition and there will be trouble. And how are you going to decide?

So my shop opens with me and closes with me!

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CHAPTER 25

My day: the juice, the whole juice, and nothing but the juice 23 January 1985 pm in Lao Tzu Grove

Question 1

OSHO,

YOU GOT AS FAR AS BREAKFAST. TO COMPLETE OUR RELIGIOUS HISTORICAL RECORDS, COULD YOU TELL US WHAT GOES BEYOND THE JUICE?

THERE is nothing that goes beyond the juice.

The seers of the UPANISHADS have described the ultimate reality as the ”juice” – raso vai saha.

This is the only definition which comes close to what I call godliness.

Raso vai saha means ”that which is nothing but juice”: No person, no personality, but only a taste, a feel.

So if you ask me for anything that goes beyond the juice, it is very difficult for me to answer because juice is the last, the ultimate, the beyond itself – nothing goes beyond it. And as far as my breakfast juice is concerned I don’t allow anything to go beyond even that.

You will have to understand it. First, for your religious and historical records: after juice – and remember, ”after” does not mean ”beyond”; ”after” simply means chronologically after, timewise, but not beyond. After juice I listen to a few songs, poetry, music, that I have been listening to for almost thirty years. Those who have lived with me have always been puzzled....

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When I was a student my friends were puzzled – they were the same records. I had an old-style gramophone and a collection of records. When I started playing my records they would escape from their rooms, which were on either side, and they couldn’t help but hear.

They complained to the vice-chancellor. I was called and I explained to him, ”Hearing has two dimensions. One is horizontal. You hear a song; if it is new, you are interested because you don’t know what is coming next, what turn it will take. But if you have heard it once, then horizontally it loses meaning. Horizontally there is no excitement: you know perfectly well what is going to come next. And when you know it already, how can you be excited?” The horizontal meaning is finished in just experiencing anything for the first time.

But I have

discovered that there is a vertical meaning too – to everything in life. The songs, the music, that I have heard for thirty years and still listen to, now have no horizontal meaning for me. I know every nook and corner, every nuance – as far as the horizontal lines are concerned they have become almost irrelevant. And when I hear them, a strange thing happens: physically I almost fall asleep, but I continue to hear. And in this state, the words which have been heard thousands of times are no longer significant, but something deeper than the words starts opening up.

The song is not in the words: it is something around the word, between the words, between the lines, but never in the word itself. If it is authentic poetry then there will be a depth where words are lost: you dive into the meaning itself, the pure meaning. It is more sound and silence. The word is left far behind; the word becomes almost transparent.

In the East it was discovered thousands of years ago. In English you have one word for reading,

”study.” For ”reading,” in Sanskrit we have two words – adhyayan, which means study, and path, which is not translatable. Path means reading something again and again, not to understand what it means linguistically – that you can understand by reading one time, or two times; you need not read it thousands of times. And if you cannot understand it reading it five or ten times, then you are not capable of understanding it in reading it a thousand times either. You will still be you.

No, that is not the purpose of reading it a thousand times. The purpose is how to go farther than the word. The only way is to repeat the words so many times that they become absolutely meaningless, irrelevant. And when it becomes irrelevant, only then the vertical dimension opens; you start falling into its depth.

But that is possible only with authentic poetry or authentic music, not with ordinary music or ordinary poetry which is composed by the mind. That is nothing but a play with words; there is nothing to be conveyed. The man has no experience, no juice to pour into those words so those words can become carriers of a message. He knows how to manage a certain rhythm in words, and he composes a song. It is a composition, it is not a creation.

But when a song is created, it means it is not composed by the mind but has arisen out of a certain experience of rhythm, harmony; and you try to express it through the words, because words can reach the other – the pure juice is not transferable. It is as if you write a love letter, and you tie it to a stone and throw the stone through the window of the woman you love.

Your letter cannot be thrown: it won’t reach the window, it is so light; but the stone is heavy. The stone is not the message. The message is on that small piece of paper which is attached, tied with a From Personality to Individuality

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string to the heavy stone. But if you fall in love with an idiotic woman – which is more possible – the woman may throw the letter away. What message can it have – just a piece of paper? And she may think that the stone, the heavier part, must be the message. And that’s what goes on happening with songs and poetry, and music: you go on holding and collecting the stones, and you go on throwing away the letters.

So after my breakfast, for two or three hours I listen to my chosen songs. I know them perhaps more than the people who wrote them and the people who sang them. I am far more acquainted with them because I have heard them thousands of times. Every day I enter a new depth. It is almost a state of deep silence; and because of the silence, my body relaxes and goes to sleep – I am awake.

With the body, the words are connected; with me, the meaning. But this too is another experience of juice.

Sometimes, very rarely, I listen to instrumental music. Many people have asked me, ”If you are not interested in the words, then instrumental music should be more to your liking.” But it is not the case.

Instrumental music is beautiful, but because it has no words it has no dimensionality. The words give the song a horizontal dimension which makes it possible to dive vertically. The instrumental music is simple. It is horizontal, but because there are no words, the moment you drop the horizontal dimension you are in a desert without any oasis. It is beautiful, horizontally.

The songs are beautiful only when you enter the vertical dimension, but that is possible only by creating the polar opposite. The word is the polar opposite of silence. If words are not there, you cannot create silence. The instrumental music is sound, there is no silence. It is sound arranged in a harmonious way but it cannot have that polarity of word and wordlessness.

So after breakfast I enjoy something which is again juice, but not material, immaterial... as if you have a taste without eating anything. There is no physical counterpart to it – just taste without anything tasty on your taste buds.

At eleven I take my lunch. Vivek still cannot believe that I am excited, but what to do? Whether you believe it or not I am excited. I myself cannot believe it. So I can understand that nobody will be able to believe it when I myself cannot believe it. I know exactly what she is going to bring, everything is predictable; three small quantities of vegetables, boiled, without salt, without any kind of spices.

They have become experts in making everything tasteless. You cannot defeat them in that. And certainly they must be wondering: they go on giving this tasteless food to me, but I never complain.

I have always appreciated it, because it has given me an opportunity which they don’t know about.

When you are eating delicious food, with spices and all kinds of things, made to be tasty, perfumed, you are losing something that you don’t know. You are destroying your taste buds. They are not meant for such strong things; they are very small, and very delicate.

I discovered the real taste of things only when I started following Devaraj’s recipes. He has changed my dining room into a hospital. But I love it. Now you can put me into any hospital and they will not be able to do any harm to me.

Three vegetables, almost the same; four slices of bread just toasted and without any butter; and a cup of Indian sauce, chutney – that’s all. But in my whole life I have never been so satisfied with my From Personality to Individuality

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food as I am now. In India there are thousands of kinds of food Perhaps there is no other country which has so many different varieties of food: each province has its own varieties. I have moved all over India, and I have eaten all kinds of foods. Every state has its own tremendous findings –

perhaps it has taken thousands of years for them to develop certain delicacies – but all their food, howsoever tasty, is not good, healthwise.

My weight was good so I used to look very healthy. But I discovered it only late, that just to look healthy s not health. Now I am healthy – but my mother comes, and she says every time she comes.... I remind her, ”You have told this to me every time you have come:’What have you done to your health?”’ and she thinks that I am wearing this long and loose robe just to deceive her.

I say, ”I am not trying to deceive.”

She says, ”But I can see your hands on the video. You may be able to deceive others but you cannot deceive me. I have seen you from your very child]hood, and you had such a beautiful body.” And I can see tears coming into her eyes looking at my food. And don’t allow her... because she has been trying persistently for years to bring something, just a little.

I say, ”No, nothing doing. My doctor does not allow it. I can take only what he prescribes, I cannot take anything else.” But again and again – and I know why, because she saw me in 1960 when I was one hundred and ninety pounds, and I had a body.... Just yesterday I was talking of Mahavira; I could have competed with Mahavira without any difficulty. Actually, people used to say that my body... because I used to sit almost half-naked. Just a small wraparound lungi, even in winter, in the coldest places, even in New Delhi. My host in New Delhi used to say, ”You are the only person I have seen in New Delhi who is sitting in just a wraparound lungi, with half the body naked and the fan on full. How do you manage it?”

People used to say that my body looked as if cut out of marble. It used to look like that because I was exercising so much: eight miles in the morning I was going for a walk, eight miles in the evening

– at least for twenty years, sixteen miles per day. If you add it all up I think it will come to nearabout three times around the earth or more.

I have hated milk from my very childhood, but because everybody loved my body, and my family insisted that without milk you cannot remain the way you are, I had been drinking milk against my will. That is the only thing in my life that I have done against my will. And the only way I could manage it was to stop breathing and take the whole glass in a single gulp so that I didn’t smell it, because I can’t stand it. I have tried all kinds of milks, but I can’t stand the smell.

My feeling has been always – and I told my family” – Jainas should stop using all milk products because milk is just like meat. It is not vegetarian, it is animal food; and it has a double violence in it. From where does the milk come? It is the mother’s mechanism, biological mechanism, that transforms her blood into milk. You are really drinking white blood.” My grandmother used to close her ears, ”Don’t say such words because then I will not be able to drink it. I will remember’white blood.’ Never do such things to an old woman like me.” Now, Jainas cannot live without milk because that is their only vital food ingredient; otherwise, everything is just vegetable. So they eat all kinds of milk products – butter, ghee, curd – and all From Personality to Individuality

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kinds of sweets made of milk. But I had a strong feeling from the very beginning that this was just blood. That’s why it increases your blood so quickly, and that’s why the child needs only milk; that’s enough, that is all his food. The mother’s milk provides the child all necessary food; nothing else is needed – and those are the days of its growth. So milk is a whole food.

On the one hand I had a strong hatred for milk because it is non-vegetarian; secondly, you are depriving the child of the cow or the buffalo. That milk is not for you. The cow has her own kids, and the milk has come to her breasts for those kids, not for you.

You will be surprised that in a country like India which pretends to be non-violent, they kill the cow’s kids because the cow will give milk first to the kids; otherwise she will try and kick you and your bucket and.... Naturally the mother wants her child to be taken care of first. Who are you? Sitting on a small stool with a bucket and trying to milk the cow – who are you? And the milk is not meant for you.

The cow has no way to know that you have purchased her. She does not understand money and t purchasing or anything, but she understands one thing, that her own child is standing there deprived.

So what do the Indians do? – they kill the child, stuff it, and keep the dead stuffed child close to the cow’s breasts so she goes on believing that the kid is there. The kid is dead, it is stuffed – all his bones and everything have been taken out – just to deceive the cow.

And these people believe that they are religious people, non-violent, believing in truth. They are even deceiving a poor cow. And the cow they call ”mother cow”; in India the cow is worshipped like a mother. But what strange people: you worship your mother and you kill your brother? And particularly if the child is a male child, then certainly he has to be killed. If it is a female child then she is going to become a cow, so somehow she has to be preserved, but a male child can be killed. But if the cow is your mother, then the bull is bound to be your father, and you are committing patricide!

– killing bulls. And the purpose of this is just to deceive their ”mother,” whom they worship, for whom they create great political movements. They create riots if somebody kills a cow and continually they are asking the government to stop cow slaughter absolutely.

And what they go on doing is so ugly you cannot believe it. When I saw it for the first time in Calcutta, it was the worst thing I had ever seen. Hindus who call the cow the mother, and who are ready to be killed or to kill anybody to save the mother, do something which everybody in the world has to understand to appreciate how people can be hypocrites. They push a bamboo stick into the cow’s vagina when they are milking her. Pushing this bamboo stick in her vagina forces her to give more milk, almost double the quantity. These people call the cow mother and are fighting for her so that cow slaughter should be stopped – and this is what they are doing to their mother: pushing a bamboo in her vagina just to get the double quantity of milk.

When first I saw it with my own eyes, it became even difficult for me to drink milk with open eyes. But Devaraj has been of great help. He has dropped all milk products – milk, butter, ghee, everything –

from my food, and I feel really clean. Of course, I have lost weight, but what purpose is weight? I don’t look cut out of marble but there is no need to look cut out of marble – there are enough marble statues.

For the first time in my life I am feeling at ease with food. In India it was impossible because everybody was harassing me: ”If you drop milk then there is nothing in the food. If you drop curd From Personality to Individuality

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then there is nothing in the food. If you don’t take butter then you will lose weight.” But that weight was causing me all kinds of difficulties. Right now all of my difficulties have disappeared.

My breathing is no longer a trouble, and as my weight has been coming down my back has been getting better. Strangely, since the weight has come below one hundred and thirty pounds, my back is absolutely right. There is no strain at all; otherwise once in a while I used to feel the strain in a certain position. Now in no position am I feeling the strain.

And in my eating the same food every day my taste buds have discovered their sensitivity. I am tasting more than I have ever tasted, although there is nothing much to taste; but whatsoever there is, is immensely gratifying. I would like you to understand it – that all spices are deceivers. They are strong enough to force the buds to feel their presence, but the stronger the spices, the duller become your taste buds. When there are no spices, then your taste buds come to their natural sensitivity.

Now, these are two different things: having something delicious because it is in the food, and enjoying something delicious because your taste buds are more alive and more sensitive. The second should be the case. That is why it is so difficult for anybody to understand what I can be excited about. I am excited about my taste buds, not the food. Food has lost meaning; a new meaning has arisen. And I feel that this should be the approach, the right approach. Then just boiled vegetables are so delicious, just bread without butter is so sweet, that one cannot imagine; one can only experience it.

After my lunch I go to sleep. This is something that I have followed my whole life. Two hours sleep in the middle of the day gives me two days out of one day, two mornings, two evenings; it doubles the joy of life. And sleep, according to Patanjali, is very close to samadhi. The only difference is that in samadhi your body is asleep but your consciousness is awake Now to me, both sleep and samadhi are the same My consciousness is awake twenty-four hours a day Whether my body is awake or asleep makes no difference to my consciousness.

But to give the body a total relaxation – even sitting on a comfortable chair like this is not total relaxation for the body because of the gravitation. If you have a comfortable chair, then your back is being pulled by gravitation separately. It is for this reason that Hindus have been practicing the lotus posture.

The lotus posture was basically invented to reduce the effect of gravitation on your body. That is the minimum gravitation on your body, in a lotus posture. Less than that is not possible because in a lotus posture your spine is erect, your legs are in a line, so you are just like a cross upside down: with the legs in a straight line horizontally and another straight line up the middle of your spine. Now this position has the least possibility for gravitation to pull your body.

A few days ago I was talking to you about J. Krishnamurti – that I saw him on a television interview, and I felt very sorry for him. Vivek thought that perhaps – because he was sitting on a straight –

backed wooden chair with his hands underneath him, she thought perhaps he suffers from a certain disease in which your hands start trembling. So Vivek thought that he was afraid to show his hands, and that was why he was sitting on them.

That is not the case. You should have looked at the chair. You can’t find a more uncomfortable chair than he has found: a straight-backed wooden chair, with no armrests. He was trying the lotus From Personality to Individuality

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posture on the chair, because in England to sit in a lotus posture will not look right – and he is very fussy about being right, mannerly.

When he goes to India he uses Indian dress and in England he uses blue jeans. But to find a solution – he has to sit on the chair – he has arranged the kind of chair which was used for children in old-time schools. Now it has changed: children ask for more comfortable chairs. But the more comfortable chair is more taxing on the body. The comfort is apparent; the taxing on the body is indirect. The best way is to sleep: then you are horizontal, and the gravitation is equal all over your body.

Why does your sleep give you so much rest, relaxation, rejuvenation? – for the simple reason that man has come from the animals, who are horizontal. All the animals are enjoying a relaxed state because of their horizontal backbone: the backbone and the ground are parallel so the gravitation is equal on each part of the backbone. Man, for good or bad, nobody knows – because there is nobody who is omniscient, so nobody knows – decided at some time to stand on two legs. It helped in many ways, but it harmed also in many ways.

It is difficult to know whether it was more harmful or more helpful. It freed the two hands so man could do many more things than animals could do: art, science – everything became possible because two hands became free. Animals cannot do anything – painting, or sculpture or music – because those two hands are not free. Man, standing erect on his two legs, suddenly found his two hands were absolutely free: something had to be done. The question was very urgent: what to do with the hands?

And man started doing all kinds of things with the hands. From the bullock cart to nuclear weapons

– it is nothing but a by-product of man standing erect. If he had remained on all fours there would have been no trouble, no war, no problem; but there would not have been any mind either. The mind developed only because man stood on two feet.

Man standing on two feet created two things: it freed the hands and, because he was standing erect, less blood was reaching the brain. That was the greatest thing that happened, because in animals, blood is flowing equally throughout their body: their tail and their head are on an equal level so the blood is circulating equally. Because the blood is circulating equally, they cannot grow the very delicate tissues in the brain which are needed for thinking.

Man’s brain has ten billion small cells which will be killed if he walks on all fours. That’s why the yogis in India who have been standing on their heads have never created anything. They became just idiots, for the simple reason that if you stand on your head, so much blood is rushing towards the head that it will destroy all your finer tissues.

So if you look at the whole history of the yogis – yes, they will be more quiet because there is no mind to create a disturbance. They will look more calm and cool, obviously, because the disturber is killed. They win not get so easily angry or become violent, for the simple reason that it takes them a longer time to think what is happening: have I been insulted? It is that the brain tissues are gone, and very few tissues here and there are left.

I am against the headstand. Yes, if you stand on your head for not more than three seconds, that’s okay that will be helpful, because three seconds cannot destroy anything but simply gives a quick From Personality to Individuality

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shower to the whole brain. Then jump back on your feet. Not more than three seconds – that’s my calculation, because I have tried it on many people, but not on myself.

In my university there was a department of yoga. Of course the head of the department was an absolute dodo. I used to go there and he used to ask me, ”Why do you come here? You are not enrolled and I never see you doing any exercises.” I said, ”I don’t come here to do yoga or to participate in exercises.”

”Then,” he said, ”what do you come here for?”

I said, ”To me these are all guinea pigs.”

He said, ”What do you mean? – these are yoga students.” Even professors were learning yoga there.

I said, ”Yes, to me these are all guinea pigs. And you are the head of the department.” I watched, and I found a few people ready to answer my questions about what was happening. And I discovered this fact: that people can only stand on their heads for three seconds; more than that is absolutely harmful. But no yoga scripture mentions three seconds. They say, ”The longer you stand, the better.” Of course their purpose is different. The longer you stand on your head, the less you will be disturbed in the world, naturally, because for disturbance – even to be aware that there are so many problems – intelligence is needed.

For a yogi, all problems disappear; not because he has transcended problems, but because he has destroyed the very mechanism through which he was going to become aware of the problems.

I am not for destroying the mind.

I am for transcending the mind.

Mind transcended is always there:

In fact, more clear, dean, more strong, energetic. Because it is not used, it is full of energy.

So whenever a person who has transcended the mind wants to use the mind, naturally he is a genius. In whatsoever dimension he wants to use his mind, he will be a genius. Geniuses will look like pygmies before him because they have tired minds, and he has a mind reserved, rarely used, not tired.

The transcendental consciousness is able to see things, to know things.

It does not need the help of the mind.

The mind is needed only when the transcendental consciousness wants to convey something to you

– a song, a message; only then is the mind used.

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CHAPTER 25. MY DAY: THE JUICE, THE WHOLE JUICE, AND NOTHING BUT THE JUICE

The yogi has fallen into a stupid trap; and this head of the department, this dodo proved really a dodo I was traveling from Bina to Gwalior – I had gone to speak at a college, and while I was speaking in the college, the driver of my car went somewhere and got drunk. And there was only three hours to catch t the train. First it was very difficult to find the driver, and he had taken the key and everything; otherwise I would have driven myself. The owner of the car rushed everywhere; he said, ”He must have got drunk, so we have to look in some drinking place.” So they showed us the place and there he was found completely drunk.

I said, ”But do you think we will ever arrive? This man will take us all to heaven.” He was completely oblivious of anything. I had to find the key in his t pocket. But all this time wasted – although I went at my speed.... But in India there is no trouble because there is nobody to prevent you and give you a ticket. But on Indian roads it is not possible to really go beyond seventy; seventy is the most that you and the car can tolerate.

The owner was jumping up and down behind saying, ”Slow down! I think the driver would have been better. What are you doing? And you are not drunk! Just look at the road. At this speed... it is better to arrive late than never to arrive at all.” That is written on Indian roads by the government: ”Better late than never.” So he was telling me, ”Read it! It is written everywhere: Better late than never.” I said, ”I have to catch the train” – but we missed, only by minutes. As we arrived outside the station, the train moved out of the platform. The next train was a janata train. Janata train means a third-class train: the whole train is third class. You don’t have any airconditioned class, first class, second class; the whole train is third class.

There was no other way, so I climbed in somehow. The owner of the car and a few of his friends who had come forced me in, forced my things in, and what did I see? – that dodo, that head of the department of yoga had just entered before me. And what he did was simply jump on the upper seat and fall asleep in front of me. He just closed his eyes and stretched out his legs to cover the whole seat.

I said, ”This is something! You have just entered in front of me; I am just coming behind you – and you are asleep.” I said, ”Okay, you remain asleep.” His porter was bringing his things. I said, ”Put them outside. He is fast asleep. You can take all his things.

Now he became afraid. The train was going to leave, and I wouldn’t allow the porter in. The porter said, ”But these things are his – the yogi who is sleeping on top.

I said, ”I am giving all these things to you. He is fast asleep. Certainly he must be coming from a great distance. These things can’t be his.”

He said, ”No, he has just entered and I am carrying his things.” I said, ”If he wants to take the things, he will have to get down and take his things from the platform.” He tried his yogic patience to the very last moment, and when the guard gave the whistle, then he jumped down to pick up his things. I went up to the top seat and was fast asleep; although I don’t snore, that day I snored too. It was worth seeing: he came in and he had to travel standing.

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I said, ”Thank you. I was trying my hardest but it was too difficult: I don’t know how to snore. But you proved a perfect dodo. You were trying to take the whole seat, and just in front of me. If you had asked me I would have given you the whole seat, or the best thing would have been to share it – we both could sit. But what you did, only a man who stands on his head for hours could do. So now stand.”

So he had to stand for six hours up to Gwalior. When I got down, I said, ”Now you can sleep, and remember me. This does not look good, at least for a yogi. The way you behaved simply proved what I have been telling you in the university, that you are a dodo.” After that he wouldn’t allow me in his department. He told the peon of the department, ”This student is not to be allowed in.”

But I was not interested; I was interested only in the headstand, and I had worked it out that three seconds is the maximum. The less the better: one second is even better. So just a quick flush of blood makes all your brain cells vibrate, gives them a little more life. But if you are just pouring blood on them for hours, they will die. They are very delicate.

Man, by standing on two legs, allowed his brain to have less blood moving through it. Less movement of blood in the brain gave the space and the possibility for the brain to develop. But in your standing, sitting, your brain is continuously working. When you are sleeping the gravitational pull is similar, the blood movement is similar and quieter, not like standing on your head. Then it is just like a waterfall on your inner brain. When you are sleeping, the movement of blood becomes slowed and the gravitational pull is equal; you are back in the animal world. That’s why in the morning you will feel fresh, younger, sharper, more compassionate.

I have watched it in India: beggars never beg at evening time. I was wondering why. They always come to beg in the morning. I asked a few beggars with whom I had become friendly, ”Why do you always go begging in the morning, why not in the evening?” They said, ”It is clear: in the morning people are kinder, more compassionate. By evening they are tired, irritated, angry; you cannot manage to get anything out of them.” I have wondered... even beggars use psychology. They have been using it for centuries because they have always been begging in the morning. People don’t look into things; otherwise, they would be surprised how many people know how many things. A beggar knows something tremendously important – that in the morning it is possible to exploit you because you are clean, refreshed, not irritated, not angry. It is difficult for you to say no. By the evening it is impossible for you to say yes to a beggar.

So for two hours in the day I enjoy a small night, and I make my room completely dark. Many times I forget: when I get up at quarter to two it takes a little while for me to figure it out, whether it is morning or afternoon, and sometimes Vivek has to come to wake me because I have simply forgotten completely that it is afternoon. So I have told her, ”You can wait up to quarter to two; longer than that you should not wait. That means I am not clear whether it is morning or evening... and people must be waiting for the drive-by, so you wake me.” Then again, a cup of tea – the same, because it is again morning. Then I go to see you all.

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It is enough for me just to see you happy, dancing, singing, enjoying.

That’s what I want the whole world to be:

Just always in a dancing and singing mood.

People who come just as spectators cannot believe it. The journalists cannot believe that people can be so happy, so joyful; they think that you are putting it on. And I cannot say that journalists are misrepresenting it knowingly. They have seen the whole world; there is no joy anywhere. How can they believe that so many people can be joyous, and for nothing, because what have we got?

One journalist, a woman from NEWSWEEK, was here. She told Sheela, ”This is all a put-up business – these people are just pretending.” Sheela told me... so I sent a message to the woman,

”You remain here for seven days. For seven days, twenty-four hours a day, people cannot continue a put-up business. And these people are working twelve hours, fourteen hours a day, seven days a week. You try! – work fourteen hours a day, seven days a week, then pretend.... If you can do that, then you can write about how this is a put-up job.” The woman understood that this was true. Seven days she stayed; of course she did not work, but she said, ”I can understand that working fourteen hours – it is impossible to pretend.” Seven days she stayed, and she apologized; but she said to Sheela, ”Now what I am writing my bosses are not going to accept. They will say,’You are hypnotized.’” She left, and that’s what happened: the bosses said, ”You should not have stayed there that long.

That man played a trick upon you. He challenged you to remain seven days, and hypnotized you.” But she said, ”he has not even seen me, we have not met.” But the boss said, ”Your article is proof enough that you are hypnotized: not a single negative statement in it, no criticism. I cannot publish this article. You will have to change it.” The magazine is owned by a Christian association. The woman had to change it and write things which she knew were wrong.

This is a strange world. People are miserable, misery has become their natural quality. Here, once in a while, somebody becomes miserable; there, once in a while, somebody smiles. But that is a great difference.

And just seeing you happy is all that I am here for.

Nothing else is expected from you.

No Master has ever expected less than I expect from you: Just that you should be joyous, that you should treat miseries and sufferings as being below you.

The whole world is ready to be miserable and suffer without you. Do you think the world is going to miss your misery, suffering? Don’t be worried about that.

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You can enjoy, you can rejoice.

Jesus says to his disciples, again and again, rejoice! But I don’t see his disciples rejoicing. Nor do I see him rejoicing. Have you seen a picture of Jesus smiling? Laughing would be too much, even smiling won t suit. With the cross, how are you going to manage I a smile? And if somebody smiles on the cross, then people will think this is certainly a put-up job! If without crosses they are not allowing people to rejoice, then smiling on the cross – this man is a great actor! No, it won’t fit with the philosophy of Crossianity: sad, long faced, burdened with the whole history of the world, telling his disciples, ”Rejoice!”

I wonder: not a single disciple asked Jesus, ”Master, at least once, you rejoice.” The master is always serious, and of course the disciples do what the master does, not what he says – they are not that stupid. You are serious, and you are telling them to rejoice? You will be sitting by the side of God, His only begotten son, and these fools rejoicing will fall into hell.

I cannot think of anybody in heaven rejoicing; or I do you think that in heaven people are rejoicing?

The way God is being painted by all the religions – serious, deadly serious... it is impossible for God to smile. Have you seen any picture of God smiling? The idea has not happened; I am mentioning it for the first time. Millions of painters – but not a single painter thought, ”Let this poor fellow smile once. What harm is there if in one picture God smiles or bursts out laughing?” No, it is difficult, very difficult.

I have just received the news from England that a rabbi has been expelled by the managing committee of Jews in England because he told a dirty joke in his sermon. He must be reading my books. But I was curious to know what the joke was – it must have been a serious affair: he has been expelled. He is no longer a rabbi, he cannot preach in the synagogue; so what was the dirty joke? And I feel sorry to tell you that r when I heard the joke I could not believe that this was a dirty joke. The joke was not even much of a joke. It is very simple and very short The rabbi was initiating a boy and he told the boy, ”When you grow older, you will be learning a bit of this, a bit of that, and a bit of the other....” That; was the joke! A dirty joke? – ”a bit of the other”?

These are the religious people – will they allow you to laugh? To rejoice? And I wondered then, what are my jokes; this is a dirty joke then certainly my jokes are not dirty. If this is the criterion of a dirty joke, then I have never told a single dirty joke; it is absolutely proved, if this kind of joke is dirty.

And for this joke a rabbi has been expelled! – poor fellow.

And the very idea of telling a joke must have come to him by reading my books, because all the rabbis, all the priests, all the monks are reading my books. They cannot, in any way, remain out of my influence. They will be trying to hide it in the BIBLE, in the GITA, in the TALMUD. They may not be reading it directly, but they are all reading it.

There was some other news today. One man, a very famous tax expert, Nani Palkhiwala – in India he is the topmost tax expert, and he was an ambassador in America. He has always been against me – so much so that he will not take any of the cases concerned with me, or my people or the Foundation. That’s absolutely absurd. You may be against my philosophy, but that does not mean that you cannot fight a case; that is your professional job. It was not only that he was not willing to take any of my cases, he was telling other top legal people not to take any of my cases. Now he From Personality to Individuality

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has been defeated in the election, and he has given a statement which certainly has come from my books, because I am the only person who has been using this word.

I have said many times that I am against democracy because democracy is nothing but a mobocracy.

I am in favor of a higher system, which I call a meritocracy – people of merit. And I call that system, meritocracy.

Now Nani Palkhiwala has been defeated, his statement is: ”I am in favor of a meritocracy – we have been dominated by mediocre people long enough.” Now, he was one of the mediocre people who were in power! He has completely forgotten about whom he is talking. He was in power, and now that he is defeated he is saying, ”So the people who were in power, or who are in power now, are all mediocre. A meritocracy is needed.”

I would like to ask Nani Palkhiwala,

”Doctor Rajendra Prasad,

Doctor Radhakrishnan,

Doctor Zakirhussain, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Lalbahadur Shastri, Jaiprakash Narayan, Doctor Rammanohar Lohia, Acharya J.B. Krishani, and Indira Gandhi – are these people of merit, according to you, or not?” Secondly, does he consider that Mediocraji – bhai Desai must be, according to him, a man of merit? – because as prime minister he chose Nani Palkhiwala to be India’s ambassador to the U.S.A. And I wonder why he remained silent for all these forty years without talking about a meritocracy?

Now that he is nobody, suddenly all politicians have become mediocre. And he was appointed ambassador to America by one of the most mediocre persons in the whole world. What does it prove? He should have refused to be appointed by a mediocre person; but then he was wagging his tail like a dog. One thing is certain, that he is far below even a mediocre person. Perhaps Nani Palkhiwala thinks that he will be chosen because he has some merit. He is just a mediocre person.

To become a tax expert one does not need merit. In fact only mediocre people will be interested in taxes and tax laws. People of merit have much more beautiful things to do.

Another defeated person is the ex-prime minister of India, Charan Singh. After the defeat he said,

”All politicians should be shot, including me, including Charan Singh.” This he should have done when he was the prime minister. Now he cannot do anything, he is defeated. ”All politicians should be shot,” including him – but why suddenly? And just a few days before he was fighting the election to become a politician. If he had been victorious, do you think he would have made this statement or do you think if Nani Palkhiwala had been victorious he would have given his statement?

I quite agree with this great idea of ex-prime minister Charan Singh’s, that all politicians should be shot, including him. But my humble suggestion is, ”Please practice what you preach. Just shoot Morarji Desai and yourself, and you will have made history. You two are the worst politicians in contemporary India. But be quick; otherwise, Morarji Desai will not let you make history. He can shoot you and himself and take this great opportunity from your hands.” This world is full of very strange people and they think everybody is only the way they are. If they see you all dancing and singing, certainly it seems to be a put-up job. And what do they think of themselves? We are putting it on for them? Do they think that when they are not here we become long faced and start crying and weeping to compensate? These idiots should come sometime, suddenly – drop in by parachute.

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The woman from NEWSWEEK was very disturbed because whatsoever she had seen in seven days, she had written. She called from New York, ”When Sheela comes this way, my boss will be in Chicago and I will be in Chicago. If Sheela passes by and can spare one day – because I am in difficulty. My boss simply thinks that I need to be deprogramed. So if Sheela meets him it would be good.”

I said to Sheela, ”It will be good: meet him and try to hypnotize him – see what you can do.” And what actually happened? The boss wouldn’t look at Sheela He didn’t give himself any chance to be hypnotized he would look sideways, here and there, but not towards Sheela.

I see many times people standing in the line, spectators who come for drive-by. They don’t look at me. I feel like stopping my car and opening my window, but I feel if they get hypnotized then I will be found a culprit, so it is better that I pass on and don’t bother about them. They are looking somewhere else... and they have come to see me! What is happening? – I am seeing them, and they are avoiding me.

Coming back from the drive-by, which I enjoy immensely... because my attitude towards life is this: tomorrow perhaps I may not be able to see you dancing again, so every day I see it as if I am seeing it for the first time and the last time. Vivek looks a little puzzled: how can I go on enjoying every day the same people dancing and beating drums out of tune, and doing all kinds of things? How do I go on enjoying it every day? I don’t look at her for the simple reason that she may feel awkward. I don’t look at her, not even a single time: she may feel awkward because she is seeing me enjoying the same scene again every day.

But to me it is a question of tremendous importance. Perhaps tomorrow I may not be able to see you again; then the last time I see you, I should see you as fully as possible, as totally as possible.

And because I never compare, the question does not arise that you are the same people singing the same song, playing on the same drums. And I know, I will make arrangements so that even when I am not there, my car will pass at the exact time for you to dance and sing and play. Wherever I am, I will enjoy it. It is a promise.

So you will not miss my car at least, even if I am not there. Vivek will be there; and people already think perhaps she is driving the car. Sheela had to clear up this rumor in front of the commune –

that it is not so, because the rumor was coming again and again, and when it became too much....

One day a radio reporter was following the car, giving a commentary to his radio station which was released immediately. He was giving the commentary like you listen to the commentary on a football match: ”now Osho has come, people are dancing, singing, jumping. There is all kinds of music, all kinds of tunes are being played... and now Osho has even let go of the steering wheel – that too was in the commentary – ”and He is beating time with the dancers and singers. Now it is a wonder how the car is....” Then Sheela came to me; she said, ”this was the radio commentary. It was relayed all over America.”

And then the rumor started coming to her: ”Is it true that Osho is not driving, Vivek is?” The pedals and gears are on Vivek’s side, and only a pseudo-steering wheel is in front of me so I can let go of it and there is no problem! In fact, it can be arranged that way. My garage director, Avesh, is a great mechanic. He can manage it that way so that Vivek will be sitting still on the passenger’s seat with the gears and the pedals, and a certain small device for steering with the hand. And my steering wheel will remain free the way it is when I’m not holding it.

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But I would like you still to enjoy drive-by the same way, to dance the same way, even more so, because when I am not there you have to ”put it on” – even better!

Life is so simple and so beautiful.

If you can remember that tomorrow is not certain, then it is intense too.

Coming back I again listen to music. Then I again repeat the same routine: going to the bath, going to the swimming pool, going to the chilled shower. Then the supper, the same. Why you call it supper, I don’t know, because it is the same as lunch. At least as far as I am concerned, a different word is not needed; it is just the same as lunch. And as far as dinner is concerned, I don’t know the meaning of it because I have never had any dinner – just the same lunch, exactly the same.

My kitchen people have invented something new, a patty made out of dahl. It is really delicious, and perhaps my kitchen is the only place where it is made because it is not made in India. My kitchen has dozens of recipes for patties but I have chosen only two: one for the morning, and one for the evening. But I end up my lunch with a glass of juice the same as in the morning, because I will not allow anything to go beyond the juice. I end my supper, so-called supper, with a glass of juice and then I am excitedly waiting for Sheela to bring the questions.

You will not be as excited to meet me as I am to meet you. I don’t know what I am going to say.

That’s why many things I go on missing. That’s why I forgot yesterday after breakfast – I must have gone somewhere else, because it is not a prepared speech. I am simply speaking as if to myself

– the way you think. I don’t think, so there is no question of preparing: I simply start speaking.

Speaking without thinking, it is bound to be a little bizarre.

Just yesterday I left Mahavira standing; I just moved on somewhere else. I forgot about it. Just now I remembered, because this is not India; it is freezing cold and the naked Mahavira I left standing yesterday and completely forgot about him. He must be getting angry by now. Howsoever nonviolent he is, he must be getting angry because too long in Oregon, in the freezing cold, below zero centigrade.... But what can I do? I have no fixed track. I don’t move on rails like trains. I move like a river, unpredictable even to myself.

Let me finish poor Mahavira and give him leave; otherwise I am again going off the track. I was telling you that Mahavira was standing with closed eyes. A man came to him with his cows and asked him, ”As you are standing here, please just keep an eye on my cows; they are grazing. And I will be back soon.” He didn’t even bother that this man was standing with closed eyes. He didn’t even bother that he had not said yes or no – he was silent for twelve years.

The man went away; he had some urgent business to do, and when he came back the cows had moved further into the jungle. He found Mahavira still standing there, so he said, ”Mister, where are my cows?” Mahavira didn’t speak, and the man was mad. He said, ”It seems that you are a thief You have stolen my cows, and here you are trying to stand with closed eyes and naked, as if you are some great saint. First tell me, where are my cows?” But Mahavira did not even open his eyes, so the man said, ”Are you deaf or are you pretending that you are deaf? I will show you.” That man was very angry: all his cows were lost and Mahavira was From Personality to Individuality

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doing nothing, just standing there; he could not even keep an eye on them. The man was so angry that it is said that he took two pieces of wood and hammered them into both of Mahavira’s ears:

”Now you will be really deaf!” Still Mahavira remained standing just the same; perhaps he remained deaf his whole life after that.

But there is no need of ears for a Master; all that he needs is a tongue, and that was there. In fact, my experience is that people like me, by and by, become deaf. They don’t have any use of the ears.

That’s why I go on listening to music, because I don’t want to become deaf. Some work for the ears... otherwise your ears are being used but what about my ears?

I go on forgetting like that, in many places, for the simple reason that.... I don’t think anybody has spoken really spontaneously the way I am speaking. And I was not aware that my spontaneity would have such a tremendous effect on people. I am not an orator; I have never been trained for oratory.

I am just talking the way I talk when you see me personally; I don t see any difference.

But one man who was the first to introduce me to the West, Aubrey Menen.... He is an Anglo-lndian journalist, but he lives in England – a very famous journalist, one of the topmost. He was the first man to introduce me to the West. He wrote the first book which mentioned me. The book’s name is THE NEW MYSTICS. Not only did he mention me, he has my picture on the cover.

I could not believe what he had written about me. He wrote that he has heard the greatest orators of this century – Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, Jawaharlal Nehru, President Kennedy – he has listened to all these people, sitting very closely, in the front row, because he was a top journalist. And he says that he was never influenced by anybody the way he was influenced by me. He not only compares me with these people – Adolf Hitler, President Kennedy, Winston Churchill, and Jawaharlal Nehru –

but he believes me to be the best orator that he has come across. It was a surprise because I am not an orator at all.

I could not believe my eyes. I said, ”What is this man talking about? Adolf Hitler was a great orator, Kennedy was a great orator, Jawaharlal was a great orator, Winston Churchill was a great orator; and he is comparing me, who is not an orator at all, with them? What has impressed him?” He says, ”What has impressed me is that I could see simply that this man is absolutely unprepared.

He does not know what he is going to say next, but somehow even, thing falls in line. His sentences are small, conversational, as if he is talking man to man, not to a crowd.” When you are talking to a crowd, you are talking to the walls: you are not human in your talk.

Winston Churchill said that when he started talking and became an orator, he was very nervous.

Later he said, truthfully, he was still nenous when he stood on the podium; he still felt the same first nervousness he had felt sixty years before. But the same trick always helped. And what was his trick? This must be the trick of many great orators. He says, ”the first thing that I repeat in my mind is that all these people are idiots; you need not be afraid of them. And once I settle it in my mind that these are all idiots, then I start speaking. Who is afraid of idiots? And then one word leads to another and then gathers momentum; then one is just going like a computer.” All your great orators are just repeating speeches already written by their secretaries. Jawaharlal’s secretary, told me that all his speeches were written by him. Not only has he told me, he has written From Personality to Individuality

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in his memoirs that all those great speeches that Jawaharlal was famous for were written by him.

And before going, Jawaharlal would have a look at the speech, and figure out how he was going to manage it.

But with me it is a totally different matter. You are not idiots. I am speaking to people who are potentially enlightened beings; I am speaking with immense respect and love. And I have never felt any kind of nervousness because I am not an orator, I am just conversing with you. Hence, many times it is bound to happen: I will tell only half a story, and then, wherever the wind blows, my cloud starts moving. I have never made any effort that things should be otherwise.

I want to remain absolutely spontaneous.

And I want you also to hear me spontaneously.

In the same way I don’t know what I am going to say, you should also be in that emptiness where you don’t know what you are going to hear.

Then there is a possibility of a transmission of something which is not in the words but follows the words like a shadow or an aroma.

Then the word will be there; you will hear the word, but the fragrance, the shadow, will enter your being and will stir your heart.

My whole effort is not to convince your intellect: It is to have a little love affair with your heart.

These are heart-to-heart talks, not oratory:

Not great lectures, but just simple, human talks.

So forgive me, I am going to remain the same way but you can always remind me that I have left something out in the middle. I can always complete it. I would love to complete it but what can I do?

There is so much to say – and nothing to say.

You can understand my problem: so much to say that even if I go on for lives it will still be there –

and nothing to say, because that which I want to give to you is not something which can be said.

I am living in this dilemma but trying for some middle way; and I have the feeling I have found the middle way.

I have heard a story: when God created man of course He was an amateur. He baked the man too much – a negro came out. God said,”Jesus! What happened to this man?

The negro said, ”You cooked me too much.”

So God tried the next man. That’s how mind works, from one extreme to the other: he was afraid to cook him too much. So half-cooked, a European came out. God said, ”What is happening?” From Personality to Individuality

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The man said, ”I was just on the way to being cooked and you pulled me out.” God tried a third time. Of course now He was experienced and trying to find the middle way. And it is said He found the middle way – the Indian.

After the discourse I do some work with Sheela, anything concerned with sannyasins’ spiritual growth. And nearabout ten o’clock I take my last glass of juice and go into sleep or samadhi, which are both the same to me. Now you can see that I don’t have anything beyond the juice.

The juice is the last and ultimate thing: Raso vai saha, that which is nothing but juice. In the Sanskrit sutra they do not use the pronoun ”he”; instead they use ”that.” It is quite clear that they are referring to existence itself and not to a non-existent God.

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Only one sin – to forget your being. Only one virtue – to remember it 24 January 1985 pm in Lao Tzu Grove

Question 1

OSHO,

COULD YOU SAY SOMETHING TO US ABOUT BLISS?

I have been blissed out myself for almost thirty-three years. That is exactly the time Jesus lived on earth. Shankara also lived only thirty-three years, Vivekananda too. For the length of the whole life of Jesus I have been blissed out. And this seems to be the right time to ask me what bliss is. It is almost impossible to answer, but remember I am saying ”almost”.

The ”almost” depends on two things. First: if you are available, open, relaxed, with no idea of what bliss is, just a pure enquiry without any prejudice, without any mind; if your heart is available without any conditions from your side – then perhaps the almost impossible can become possible.

Secondly – and this is an even more difficult thing.... it is as if a person has been dead for thirty-three years. Logically you can ask him, ”What is death? – because you have been experiencing death for thirty-three years – how long will you take to define it?” The dead man cannot answer; he is not there.

I am also not here – I am a dead man.

This is the nature of bliss.

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As it enters in you, you are no more there.

Both cannot exist together. The coexistence of the ego and bliss is absolutely impossible; only one can exist. It is like darkness and light. You cannot manage some kind of coexistence between darkness and light.

In the East we have the story that darkness appeared before God with tears in her eyes and complained against the sun: ”I have not done anything against your sun. I am not even acquainted with him, we have never met; still he goes on harassing me. Wherever I go he reaches me sooner or later, and I am constantly on the run. Now I am really tired, and I want you to do something about it. Why is he after me?”

God called the sun and asked him, ”Why are you after darkness? What wrong has she done to you?”

The sun said, ”Who is darkness? I have never met her. I would like to be introduced.” God looked around to where darkness had been standing but nobody was there. Since then God has been trying to arrange some kind of meeting, a roundtable conference, some kind of mediation, negotiation. But although all the religions say that God is allpowerful, in this case He has failed. He has not been able to bring the light, the sun, in front of darkness; only one appears at a time.

The reason is very simple: darkness has no existence of its own. It is only the absence of light. When the light is present, how can its absence also be there? That absence is possible only when light is absent. This case is going to remain eternally on file, undecided. This story is really significant. It says something about you and bliss.

The ego is nothing but the absence of blissfulness.

The more egoistic a person is, the more in anguish, in suffering, in misery, in darkness he is. His life is nothing but hell.

There is no other hell than to live in the ego.

There is no other heaven than to come out of the ego.

In coming out of the ego you come out of suffering, misery, anguish – that whole company. And when there is no ego, what remains is blissfulness.

I close my eyes – it is there.

I open my eyes – it is there.

I walk – it walks with me.

I sleep – it sleeps with me:

I am no longer separate from it.

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There is a beautiful statement of one of the great Masters, Kabir. He says, ”O my beloved, seeking and searching, seeking and searching, I have lost myself The drop has dropped into the ocean; now where am I going to find myself? I was just a drop.” After he had written this in the early morning, his disciples, who used to gather then, asked him what he had been writing. Kabir said, ”I have written something, but I am not quite satisfied.”

Let me repeat his words, they have a beauty of their own: HERAT HERAT HE SAKHI RAHYA KABIR HERAI

BUND SAMANI SAMUND MEN SO KAT HERI JAI.

”O my beloved friend, a great difficulty has arisen. I was searching, searching, seeking and seeking, and in all this search I forgot to take care of myself. I am lost, lost just as when a dewdrop falls into the ocean. The dewdrop finds the ocean, but at the cost of losing itself”

”But I’m not satisfied,” Kabir said. ”So just wait. Something is still not right.” And he changed it – just a little change, a little difference, but what a difference it makes!

HERAT HERAT HE SAKHI RAHYA KABIR HERAI.

”O my beloved, seeking and searching, Kabir is lost. The ocean has fallen into the dewdrop, now where am I going to find my dewdrop?”

Both ways are true, but the second way is truer than true. It has come very close to the ultimate expression of bliss. It is a finding, but very risky – on the condition of losing your self Ordinarily, in the dictionaries you will find bliss defined as happiness, pleasure, joy. Linguistically they all appear to have a similar meaning; existentially it is not so. And you will have to understand the subtle nuances and differences; only then you may be able to catch some hold of the phenomenon called bliss.

Remember, you cannot hold bliss in your fist.

You can hold bliss only in your open hand.

Bliss is just like a breeze:

Your fist will miss it.

Your open hand may have a little dance with it, a little love affair with it.

Let us start from the lowest because that will be easier to understand, that’s where man biologically is born. Pleasure is physical.

A great Sufi poet, Omar Khayyam, has the right definition of pleasure. He was not defining pleasure, he was writing a beautiful poem but, unknowingly, he has come very close to defining pleasure. He From Personality to Individuality

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says: a cold winter night, having a good dinner... sitting by the fireside on your coziest chair, with a book of poetry in your lap, and a beautiful woman dancing and singing with a musical instrument....

The warmth, the beauty, the good, delicious food, and a great book of poetry in your lap; the music....

You are alone together in the cold night and the warmth of the fire.... This is pleasure.

Physically you are healthy. You enjoy your food. You enjoy your lover, your beloved. You enjoy friends, or music, or painting – all this is physical. Nothing is wrong with it; as far as my religion is concerned I am all for pleasure. Of course, I don’t stop there, I only start from there.

All the other, old religions are against pleasure; and that’s where they have missed, because if you miss the first step, please don’t hope that you will be able to reach the highest step. The first rung of the ladder is as essential as the last: they are both part of the same ladder. I have no condemnation of the first rung on the ladder, because without it the whole ladder will disappear.

I am all for pleasure, but I would like you to be reminded that there are higher things than pleasure.

Happiness is higher than pleasure.

It is not physical, it is more psychological. You may be hungry, you may be cold, freezing, and suddenly a friend knocks on your door. You forget your hunger and your cold, you simply give him a hug. It is something higher than the body can give to you; it is in your psychology. A friend whom you have not seen for a long time.... You forget your body – a tremendous happiness arises in you.

Animals have only pleasure, and most human beings are still animals. Most of them don’t know of happiness. There are people who have never loved. Remember, sex is pleasure, love is happiness.

Don’t get confused between the two. Love can exist without sex; sex can exist without love. They can exist together too but there is no necessity for them to exist together.

Sex is given by nature; it is an inbuilt program in your biology. Love is not an inbuilt program; that’s why so many people go on missing it. It has to be evolved. You have to learn it, it is an art. You have to understand one thing, that nature and biology have no need of love; sex is enough for life to continue. Reproduction is the end of sex, and biology is interested only in reproducing.

Love is a luxury.

It has no biological function.

Unless you start learning something that goes beyond your body, which is not a need of the body –

the body can exist without it – you will never be able to know what love is. Experiencing poetry, the depth of music or the beauty of a sunrise or a sunset.... No animal bothers about sunset or sunrise.

You should not be deceived by the birds in the morning chattering all around. It is not a song of happiness to welcome the sun, no. It is just the overflowing energy after the whole night’s peaceful, relaxed state.

You don’t get up so rejuvenated because you don’t sleep well. Your mind goes on thinking and dreaming and projecting; your mind goes on keeping your body tense. Just watch somebody’s face while he is sleeping, and you will be wondering what he is doing. Sometimes his face becomes From Personality to Individuality

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very tense, sometimes tension lines appear on his forehead, sometimes he is gnashing his teeth, sometimes he starts making some sounds. Perhaps he is saying something but in sleep it becomes gibberish; you cannot figure out what he is saying. But so much is going on.

Just the other morning Vivek showed me one of the white peacocks which always comes near my sitting room and sleeps on a treetop. That is his religious practice every night; it may be raining, it may be snowing – it doesn’t matter. And the place where he sits seems to be so risky that he could fall any moment, but he is so relaxed, almost one with the tree. Now, after these ten hours, twelve hours of almost going to the very source of his life in sleep, if he starts dancing by the morning it is no wonder.

It has nothing to do with the sun or the flowers, it has something to do with his inner energy which is overflowing. The birds are chirping, chitchatting – it is simply aliveness. But remember, animals or birds cannot have a taste of happiness; that is man’s prerogative.

One thing to be remembered: pleasure has its counterpart – pain; happiness has its counterpart –

unhappiness. And you cannot have only one without having the other too; they are inseparable. If you have pleasure, in the same amount be ready for pain. It is not possible to have ninety percent pleasure and ten percent pain. Nature does not function that way. It is very fair; it is always fifty-fifty, equally balanced.

That’s why many people, particularly the religious people, monks, saints, sages.... Have you ever thought about it, why they start renouncing pleasure? You may not have wondered.... They are not renouncing pleasure, they are renouncing pain. But without renouncing pleasure there is no way to renounce pain – that is the difficulty. If it were possible to save pleasure and renounce pain, I don’t think any saint would be so idiotic as to renounce pleasure.

They have to renounce pleasure because they have known that if you welcome pleasure, just behind the pleasure there is pain. It is almost like on a door: on one side is written ”push,” on the other side is written ”pull.” It is the same door. Of course, if on one side it says ”push,” then on the other side it has to say ”pull.” It is the same phenomenon: on one side it is pleasure – pull – and you want to pull it as much as possible; on the other side is pain, and you want to push it as far away as possible.

But once you have chosen pleasure – and of course nobody chooses pain, except a few masochists.

But even a masochist, by choosing pain, has to choose pleasure. A masochist is one who tortures himself and enjoys it: he has chosen pain. He is torturing himself, I but you can see in his eyes he is enjoying it. You cant not divide the two – they are not two, just two sides of the same energy.

In the same way happiness is joined with unhappiness. Everybody wants to be happy, and you will find everybody unhappy. The more you want happiness, the more you are inviting unhappiness.

The American constitution has a very stupid idea in it. It says that the pursuit of happiness is man’s birthright. The people who were writing this constitution had no idea what they were writing. If the pursuit of happiness is the birthright of mankind, then what about unhappiness? Whose birthright is unhappiness? These people were not at all aware that if you ask for happiness, you have asked for unhappiness at the same time; whether you know it or not does not matter.

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If a certain painting makes you happy, the meeting of a friend makes you happy, a certain song makes you feel happy.... But how long can you remain with the friend? In the meeting there is the departure; in life there is death. How long can you be happy with a song? Soon you will start getting bored by it, you will become fed up with it.

You can see it happening in every synagogue, in every church, in every temple, in every mosque: people are almost asleep. A few old fellows are even snoring, because they have heard the sermon so many times; just the very repetition of it brings boredom, and boredom brings sleep. This is a psychological mechanism. That’s why all the methods that are suggested to people who are suffering from sleeplessness are really nothing but methods to get bored.

They are told, ”Count from one to a hundred, and then count backwards: one hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven; count backwards; then from one to a hundred, and then count back again.” Naturally you will get bored within five minutes. And a few con people have sold this method as if they are giving you something of religious value – for example, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. What he calls transcendental meditation is nothing but transcendental boredom.

If you repeat any name continually for ten or twenty minutes you are bound to fall asleep. Of course it is a little different from your ordinary sleep: it is hypnos. Hypnos is deliberate sleep, not natural but created by a certain strategy, a certain mechanism – repeating Ave Maria, Ave Maria, Ave Maria, and fast. You have to repeat it fast so there is no gap between two Ave Marias; otherwise, some thought may enter and disturb your whole procedure, so you have to go really fast.

That’s why Maharishi Mahesh Yogi does not give his mantra, the secret, openly to everybody. No, it has to be given in private. The reason is that for a Christian it has to be Ave Maria, for a Hindu it has to be Rama or Krishna, for a Mohammedan it has to be something else, for a Jew something else.

Publicly you cannot declare the mantra because Ave Maria will not appeal to a Hindu; he will not be ready to waste ten minutes on Ave Maria.

To a Christian, Rama, Rama does not make much sense – except for a few hippies. Everything makes sense for a few days and then it turns out to be nonsense. Hippies are constantly on the move. They are permanent seekers. They are not interested in finding, just moving, being on the move. Krishna is not meaningful to a Jew. A certain meaning, a certain conditioning from your childhood is needed to help you; otherwise the word which you are repeating will remain only on the surface of your mind. It won’t get to your unconscious, and it is the unconscious which brings hypnos. So repeating a certain word....

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was visiting Jabalpur when I was a professor there. I sent one of my students to take initiation from him, and I said, ”Tell him that you are an atheist, that you don’t believe in God, because I want to see what mantra he gives to you.” Generally no atheist will go: in his whole life Mahesh Yogi would not have come across an atheist asking for a mantra. This boy was a very serious type, and I told him, ”Remain very serious and follow the whole procedure. Whatsoever money is demanded, give it. You have to take flowers and a piece of Silk cloth to offer.” So he went prepared. He touched Maharishi’s feet – inside of course saying, ”Go to hell, you son-of-a-bitch,” but on the surface staying very serious. And when he touched Mahesh Yogi’s feet, and put down the flowers and the silken piece of cloth, with folded hands he asked, ”Please initiate me.” From Personality to Individuality

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Mahesh Yogi said, ”Okay. You seem to be really a seeker. What is your religion?” The student said, ”That is the difficulty. I am an atheist, I don’t believe in God.” Maharishi Mahesh Yogi said, ”This is the first time I have come across an atheist. I am at a loss as to what mantra to give you, because for an atheist all mantras are useless.” You cannot give him the name of Jesus: he does not believe in God, how can he believe in God’s son? You cannot give him the name of Krishna: he does not believe in God, how can he believe in the incarnation of God?

Mahesh Yogi said to him, ”Please come back tomorrow.” The boy came to me and he said that this had happened: ”Mahesh Yogi thought for a few minutes and he said to come tomorrow.”

I said, ”He deceived you. You rush right now, ask for your money back, your flowers, your everything, because tonight he is leaving.” So he rushed back. The people outside Mahesh Yogi’s camp tried to prevent him, saying, ”This is not the time for initiation.

He said, ”l don’t care. I have not come for initiation; I have come to take back my things that I left here this morning”and he was a strong young man, so he forced his way in and entered Mahesh Yogi’s room.

Mahesh Yogi looked at him and said, aBut I told you to come tomorrow.” The student said, ”And tonight you are leaving. Your luggage is packed. Whom am I going to see tomorrow? Now please give me my money back. Where is my handkerchief and where are my flowers?” And Mahesh Yogi had to find the student’s money and things, and he gave them back to him.

These people are exploiting the whole world. What they are giving is just a simple method of hypnosis, autohypnosis. Anything will do; it has nothing to do with God’s name. And nonsense –

sound will do. You just repeat it fast and get bored, and a certain sleep – for which a different name has been used, hypnos, because there are no dreams in it – will descend on you. That’s why after you wake up from transcendental boredom you will feel very fresh. But that’s how everybody feels after hypnosis, exactly the same, because there are no dreams, no disturbance: you have tired the mind so much.

In India it is a known fact that if you say to a child, ”Sit down in the corner and don’t disturb me, we are doing something important,” he is not going to sit down. In India the usual method is to tell the child, Go and do twelve rounds of the house.” After the twelfth round he is bound to sit down at least for half an hour and not bother anybody.

The same is the case with the mind. If you just sit and try to be silent you will find more thoughts are coming to you than ever because usually they never find you so available. They are always standing in a queue waiting for their number to come up, and you are so late with your appointments From Personality to Individuality

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that a few thoughts may be left standing there for years. But thoughts are stubborn, they can wait.

For years they can wait; someday they will sneak in. So when you are sitting in meditation, prayer, contemplation, you are giving an opportunity to all the thoughts, desires, dreams which had not been able to attract your attention before.

Now you are available, so immediately there is a rush hour in the mind. Suddenly so many things out of nowhere start appearing. But if you are repeating a certain word, a certain name, then you don’t give thoughts any chance. And if you are repeating words so fast that between two words there is no gap, then you give a chance for the mind to be bored with the same thing. And this boredom brings a different quality of sleep – hypnos, which is very refreshing, healthy. Nothing is wrong with it; all that is wrong is using it to cheat people and exploit people by giving them hypnos as something spiritual. It is nothing spiritual.

Mind is capable of experiencing happiness, but the more dimensions of happiness are open to you, the more dimensions of unhappiness are also open to you. It is not something to be surprised about that people like Jean-Paul Sartre feel more anguish than so-called ordinary human beings. Sartre certainly is a genius. His mind had more dimensions open to happiness; obviously he has opened the door to unhappiness too.

And one thing to remember about the relationship between happiness and time: Happiness is so beautiful, so juicy, so groovy, that you feel time is passing very fast. The watch, the clock, have no idea that you are happy or unhappy – they are moving at the usual speed; but when you are happy you feel time flying by because you would like to have as much of it as possible. You would like it to remain forever. You are clinging to it. You fear that it is going to slip out of your hands. In all this, the time has passed and suddenly you see that that great moment is no longer there.

So when happiness is there, it is momentary; when unhappiness is there you don’t want it, it is an uninvited guest. You want to throw it back, but you are incapable of throwing it away. Time will seem to be moving slower, as if all the watches are conspiring against you. When you are happy they move fast; when you are unhappy they suddenly become lazy, lousy. No, they are not doing anything to you.

Albert Einstein was asked again and again, ”What is your theory of relativity?” Now, his theory of relativity is a very complex phenomenon. He cannot just answer. You will have to go through a long process of education in higher mathematics and neo-physics, then you may be able to understand it a little bit. It is said that there were only twelve persons alive in Albert Einstein’s time who understood his theory of relativity.

But he was bound to be asked. People had heard of the theory of relativity, and if Einstein happened to be somewhere, everybody would ask about it – so he had found an answer. The answer was that if you are sitting with your belovedone situationor you are sitting on a hotplate, burning hot, red-hot –

another situation – will you feel time passing with the same speed? Obviously to the man sitting on a red-hot plate, one minute will look like one century; and being with his beloved, even one century will look like one moment. Einstein said, ”This is what my theory of relativity is. More than that you will not be able to understand, but this is enough to get the idea.” Time is relative to your mind, so much so that it can be said that time and mind are almost one phenomenon.

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Now I can talk about bliss. Bliss has no counterpart to it. That is the first thing to understand.

Pleasure has pain, happiness has unhappiness, but bliss has nothing as a counterpart; it is an organic whole. Gautam the Buddha used to say, ”If you taste the ocean from anywhere, it is salty.” So is the case with the bliss: you can taste it from any corner, from any space, from any direction –

-it is just blissfulness. There is nothing opposite to it.

Bliss is the only experience in life which has no polar opposite to it. That’s why, once you are blissful, you cannot fall back. There is no way to be unblissful again. I have tried but nothing succeeds.

In Japan they have the statue of Bodhidharma – in Japanese his name has changed to Daruma.

There is a doll called a Daruma doll, which was made according to a statement of Bodhidharma’s.

He said, ”What ever you do, you cannot put me upside down; I will always be upside up, downside down.”

This statement gave an idea to a toymaker to make a doll. It is heavy at the bottom, so you throw the doll any way and it always returns to sit in the lotus posture. You push it, throw it, hit it, do whatever you can do, but it represents Bodhidharma – it always settles in a lotus posture.

So is the case with bliss: whatever you do to it, whatever happens around you, it is absolutely the same, unchanging.

Bliss has some quality of pleasure in it, it has some quality of happiness in it; but it is much more.

And the plus is that you feel absolutely fulfilled, contented, with no desire, no expectation. This very moment you are where everybody wants to be, and there is a tremendous feeling that more than this is not possible; there is no way. It is just as there can be nothing bigger than the sky; it is unbounded.

It is inconceivable to the mind, because the mind can only conceive limited things. Here you can feel how limited the mind is. It cannot even conceive something unlimited.

The sky is there, without boundaries. You cannot come to a point where you can say, ”Here is the boundary.” Just think about it. How can you say, ”Here is the boundary?” – because a boundary means that something must be beyond the boundary. Two things are needed, absolutely needed, to make a boundary. If there is nothing beyond, then nothing is making a boundary; then there is no boundary, you will have to go into nothing. But you can never come to a point where you will find a board: ”Here ends the universe.” It ends nowhere, it begins nowhere. The same is the experience of bliss.

Bliss is within you, without you.

Bliss is in life, it is in death.

It is when you are healthy, it is when you are sick.

It is when you are young, it is when you are old.

Nothing makes any difference to bliss.

Bliss is simply transcendental to all that exists in the universe.

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And because it is universal, everywhere – within you, within mehowsoever difficult it may be to explain it, to experience it is not so difficult. Let me repeat my statement because that may look a little crazy:

To explain bliss is more difficult than to experience it.

How can you explain what beauty is? What do you think, in these thousands of years, hundreds of poets, philosophers, thinkers, and painters have been trying to do? They have been trying to find the definition of beauty. They have created many beautiful things, but beauty remains undefined.

One man in this century did a really arduous job. His name is G.E. Moore – one of the great philosophers of this century. He devoted his whole life to a single question: What is good? He was a moral thinker, and morality is impossible if you cannot even define what is good. Then how can you say what is bad? How can you say what is right and what is wrong, and how can you say what is sin and what is virtue? The basic thing has to be first tackled, and this is: What is good?

His whole life’s experience G.E. Moore has written in a big volume. The name of the book is PRINCIPIA ETHICA. He had chosen the name before he started the book; otherwise, I don’t think he would have given it that name, PRINCIPIA ETHICA. He was thinking he was going to find the basic principle of ethics, but after his whole life’s research work, where he ends is really sad. He ends the book with the statement: ”Good is indefinable.” You go through his book, which is very arduous, complicated, with arguments for and against –

he has covered the whole history of moral philosophy, but finally he says, ”Excuse me, good is indefinable, because good is a simple quality like yellow. If somebody asks you to define yellow, what can you do? I was simply stupid to have wasted my time.” What is yellow? You will say yellow is yellow, but that is not a definition, yet you know what yellow is, don’t you? I know what bliss is, but please don’t ask me what it is. If you cannot answer what yellow is – such a mundane and third-rate question – then it is difficult to define what beauty is, what good is. But perhaps a man like Michelangelo may create a statue, and tell you, ”See, feel, touch it – this is beauty.” Although you may not necessarily be satisfied, Michelangelo at least can create something objective.

A Picasso may create a painting; a Rabindranath Tagore may write a poem and say, ”Somewhere here in this poem, between the words, between the lines, there is beauty. Just try to find it – just dive into it.” They can at least give you something objective. It may not be sufficient to define it – it is not, and they know it – but at least working in their dimension gives them an opportunity to create something.

But my world is subjective. I cannot paint, I cannot write poetry, I cannot make a song, I cannot create or compose music about bliss. There is no way to express bliss through something objective, because bliss is a subjective experience, it is not a thing. You cannot observe it; it cannot be placed in front of you as an object. But there has been only one way, and that is to be in close proximity to a person who has experienced it.

That’s what the meaning of the whole phenomenon of Master and disciplehood is. The Master has bliss, the disciple has bliss.

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But the Master knows that he has bliss, and the disciple does not know that he has it.

As far as having bliss is concerned, there is no difference. The difference is only that the Master’s eyes are open and the disciple’s eyes are closed.

Being in close proximity to the Master, in some unexpected movement you may have a taste of it, just like a breeze passing through you and the feel of the coolness; or just suddenly a fragrance passing by you which you cannot catch hold of. By the time you try to catch hold of it, it is already gone; and fragrances are not to be caught in your fist.

This is the whole function of my commune, to answer this question: What is bliss?

I am inviting you to be here, to be with me, because there is only one possibility: that just by your being here, a synchronicity may happen. It has happened before, it can happen again. And you have to remember, there is no other way for it to happen. It happens only in this way.

Let me try to explain to you something about synchronicity, because that is the fundamental law about bliss.

Have you ever experienced that you are sad, miserable; then a few friends come, and they are gossiping, talking – and you remember only later on, ”My God, what happened to my misery and my suffering?” You got completely lost in gossiping and forgot about your misery. Those people were laughing and enjoying and joking, and something of their energy started to trigger something in you.

In Indian classical music this is an ancient, established fact, that you can place a sitar – an Indian musical instrument – in an empty room, in one corner, and on the other side, just facing that sitar, let a master sitarist play. And you will be surprised: if the master is really a maestro, the other sitar sitting there in the corner starts vibrating with the same tune. This is synchronicity. An invisible vibe of the music that is being played by the master slowly starts moving in the room. It is just like when you throw a stone in a silent lake, and ripples arise and go on spreading to the farther and farther shores.

In the same way every note of the master is creating a ripple in the air around him, and those ripples are going farther away. While passing the other sitar they will strike its wires. But the master has to be a very refined sitarist, because those wires on the other sitar need a very delicate touch – then they start slowly vibrating. Great masters have played it, showed it, exhibited it.

The Moghul Emperor of India, Akbar, was very interested when he heard about this, and he had one of the greatest musicians, Tansen, in his court, so he asked Tansen about it. Tansen said, ”I am a great musician, but this is beyond me. My master can do it.” Akbar said, ”Is there somebody who can play better than you?” – because so many musicians had come to try to defeat Tansen. This was a constant thing, to want to become a member of the group Akbar had created, called ”The Nine Jewels”: nine master minds, one for each dimension of life.

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Akbar said, ”I would like to invite him. We will give him the greatest welcome ever given to anybody, but I would like to listen to him.”

Tansen said, ”That’s why I have never mentioned his name to you. I sing, I play the music, because I am full of desires, expectations. You have given me so much, but the desires are unending: I still go on playing because I want to get something. My master has got it. He plays because he has got something that he has to play and spread. I play because I want to get something. I am a beggar –

he is a master. He will not come to the court; only beggars like me can come to court.

”For what will he come? You will have to go to him – the thirsty go to the well – if you are interested.

That’s why I have never mentioned his name, because mentioning his name will mean you will ask me to call him; and then it will look uncourteous, unmannerly, to refuse you. But I am helpless.

”He is an old beggar in the eyes of the world. He lives just near your palace, not far away, by the side of the Yamuna river. He has a small hut there – you will have to go to him. And you cannot just demand of him, ’Play!’ When he is playing you can listen – hiding, because seeing us he may stop just to welcome us, to receive us. But every day at three o’clock in the morning he plays, so we have to go and hide out side the hut. And you can take my sitar there, out side the hut, and watch.” Tansen and Akbar both went, took the sitar there, sat outside and waited for the time. Exactly at three o’clock Tansen’s master started playing. His name was Haridas. Perhaps India has never produced any other musician of his quality. The moment he started playing, the sitar outside started vibrating with exactly the same tune.

In Indian classical music there are ragas – particular music to be played at particular times of the day, throughout twenty-four hours. For the morning there is one raga, for the evening there is another.

They have worked for thousands of years to find for each period of time what tune will be fitting for it, so that the raga can be absorbed by it. Indian classical music is not like jazz music. No Eastern musician will accept jazz as music at all: ”This is simply a crazy crowd jumping about.” Of course they are making sound, but just to make sounds is not to make music. They have found that each period of time is vulnerable to a certain music.

At three o’clock, early in the morning, Akbar saw with his own eyes the other sitar vibrating, replying, as if the master were playing on both – as if some invisible fingers had reached out to the sitar waiting outside. For the first time Akbar started weeping. Tears came into his eyes, just out of joy.

They went home slowly. They remained silent all the way, but when Akbar was entering his palace, and Tansen was taking leave to go to his house, Akbar said, ”Tansen, I used to think that nobody could play better than you, but I am sorry to say that you are nowhere near your master. Why are you wasting your time in my court? – you should be with your master. If even a dead musical instrument is receptive to that man’s music, what is impossible between you and him? – miracles are possible.

Just forget this court, forget me. And he is an old man – you be with him; just sit by his side and let his energy flow in you, let his music make you afire.” This is the law of synchronicity.

With the Master, the disciple is joined by the law synchronicity.

Every disciple is not a disciple unless the law of synchronicity starts functioning, unless something invisible transpires between you and the Master.

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The Master is full of bliss, he is showering all that L he has – because in the world of bliss the more you give, the more you have.

Ordinary economics is not applicable there. In ordinary economics, the more you give, the less you have. Something of a higher economics, totally different and opposite, functions: the more you give, the more you have.

The Master is showering.

Whether you get drenched with it or not is up to you, because you may be holding an umbrella. Your umbrella may get drenched, but umbrellas don’t feel bliss. You will remain dry, and you will go on asking, ”What is the definition of bliss? What is bliss?” Just close your umbrellas, put them aside. Better be utterly nude so nothing prevents – I mean spiritually be nude – so there is no barrier. When there is no barrier you will discover there has always been a bridge underneath the barrier.

I can help you to experience bliss.

And when I can help you to experience it, why bother about the definition?

And even if I define bliss, it won’t make any sense to you. I can define it, but the definition will be simply words: ”Bliss is ecstasy.” But then you will ask, ”What is ecstasy?” – and that will lead to an infinite regression. I will go on saying A is B, B is C, C is D, and the whole round: Z is A, and A is B.... No, a definition is not going to help at all.

The world of religion is not the world of definitions.

The world of religion is the world of experiences.

That’s the difference between a teacher and a Master.

A teacher gives you definitions, explains the scriptures to you.

The Master allows you to go with him into the unknown.

He does not give you definitions, scriptures:

He gives you a push.

He throws you into the bottomless abyss of existence.

All my words are just ”pushes.”

They have nothing to do with answering your questions.

I want you to experience.

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And bliss is such an experience that it makes you dumb.

You know it, you feel it, you are it. But you cannot say what it is.

It is indefinable verbally, but existentially it is transferable.

Yes, I can give it to you.

My hands are not empty, they are full of it.

But you have to be empty to receive it.

I remember the famous story about Nan In. One university professor of philosophy went to see Nan In, a great Master. The professor was full of questions all the way from his university to the hill where Nan In used to live in a temple. He was just brooding and brooding. There were so many questions, what to ask? The professor had heard so much about Nan In, and one rarely meets such a man.

He went in.

The first thing Nan In said to him was, ”please come in, but leave the crowd outside.” The professor looked all around; there was nobody. Crowd? – he was alone. Nan In said, ”Don’t look here and there, look within: the crowd is there. It has been there all the way.” The professor was almost shocked. But a professor, after all, is a professor. He said, ”You are right.

It is a crowd, but I am a professor; I deal with this crowd. This iS my profession, so excuse me, I cannot leave the crowd outside. It is going to be with me, but it will sit here silently. Don’t take any notice of it.

Nan In said, ”But you are tired and you are perspiring. Sit, cool down, and meanwhile I will prepare a cup of tea for you.” Nan In prepared a cup of tea, brought it in, gave the empty cup and saucer to the professor, and poured the tea from his kettle into the cup. The professor was watching: the cup was getting fuller and fuller and fuller. It was absolutely full and Nan In was still pouring tea.

The tea started running out of the cup into the saucer. The professor tried hard to be patient because he had said the crowd would sit silently, but the crowd was there and it was saying, ”This man is just nuts! Is this the way?” And the Japanese are very particular about tea; it is part of their culture and etiquette – this is never done. But Nan In went on pouring. When the saucer was also full and the tea was just going to spill over the professor’s clothes, the professor said, ”Wait! What are you doing? The cup is full. it cannot hold a single drop more.” Nan In said, ”You have understood rightly. Can you give me a little space in you? Can you have just a drop of me in you? You are overfull, just like this cup and saucer. But you are a sensible man; you understand that by pouring more tea in, it will be simply spilled. But have you observed how much tea is spilling from your skull? My whole hut is becoming wet. When you come here next time, bring an empty cup; then I am willing to share whatsoever I have. But you are so full that it is useless: I cannot get into you from anywhere. I am looking from all sides – you are overcrowded. There is no space, not a single inch.”

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This is what the art of being a disciple is:

Becoming an empty cup and allowing the Master, so that he can pour all that is within him.

The Master is not going to become poorer because he shared his bliss with you. It is a treasure that goes on growing. But it is one of the most difficult things in the world to allow and welcome bliss within you, because before that, you have to be ready. You have to clean yourself; and nothing less than emptiness will be accepted as cleanliness.

In the West they say, ”Cleanliness is next to godliness.” There is no God so there is no question about that.

But I say, ”Cleanliness is just next to emptiness.” In fact, cleanliness is another name for inner emptiness.

Throw out all the rotten furniture and rags.

And what kind of things you have collected!

I used to live with a man... he was very rich, but very miserly also, so miserly. He was alone – no children, no wife. He never married for the simple reason that it was too expensive. He said, ”I have seen all my friends: once they got married they lost all that they had. A woman is too expensive, I cannot afford one. And one thing follows another: a woman comes, then children come, and they will destroy everything that I have been collecting.” And he really was a collector. One day I was going for a morning walk and he said, ”Can I also come with you?”

I said, ”You can come with me but what will you do? – because there is no earning in the morning walk.” He always did only those things which were economically useful. I said, ”There is no economic use of a morning walk. You will be wasting your time – do something else.” He said, ”No. It’s just that you go every day and you look so happy, and when you come back you look so happy. I thought perhaps there is something in it, so for just one day....” I said, ”Okay, you can come. Perhaps you can find something.” And he found something. What did he find? – the handle of a bicycle! Somebody had thrown it on the side of the road. He immediately picked it up. I said, ”What are you doing?”

He said, ”You don’t know: I have two wheels which I collected this way. You will see with your own eyes, one day, the whole bicycle.” And actually he managed it one day. It took years for him, but one day he showed me; he said, ”Come on, I have to show you something.” Yes, there was a bicycle – with no tires, no tube, just two wheels, crooked; no chain, no mudguards and no seat. The handlebars were there, and he had found one carrier.

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He said, ”Nothing much is missing, the cycle is almost complete. I just have to get a seat, tire and tube, and a chain, and I will have a brand-new cycle.” I said, ”This is better than brand-new, this is unique!” In his house such things were all over the place. It was difficult to walk into his house without stumbling into something unique, antique, which he had not purchased but simply collected. He had at least ten houses, and he was collecting so much rent, but he was living the life of the poorest man. He used to walk everywhere – he was waiting for the cycle to be ready.

I said, ”In this life, perhaps in the next life.... And I hope you manage to be born again in the same house, because you are leaving so many things here. According to Hinduism, when you are attached to so many things your soul is pulled back to the place you are attached to.” He said, ”No, in this life. I am not a pessimist. You seem to be a pessimist – I am optimistic, hopeful.” In 1969 I visited his house for the last time. He had added a few more things to the bicycle. I said,

”How much is missing?”

He said, ”Very little, just a tire and a tube; but it is very difficult to find a tire and tube.” I said, ”You do one thing: at least purchase a tire and a tube. You have managed to find everything else.”

He said, ”That is too expensive, particularly nowadays; prices have gone up so. I will find them; if I could find the rest... I am an optimist.”

I said, ”Good, you be an optimist and collect them.” He wouldn’t even allow me to throw out anything. I had to throw things out when he was not in the house; otherwise he would immediately grab them and say, ”Don’t throw that – one never knows what use it may have. Right now I am not clear what it will do, but it may fit somewhere in something.” You can laugh about this man, you can feel sad for him, but this is the situation of every man as far as the mind is concerned. What have you collected? It is all garbage, simply crap. And when I say throw it, empty your mind, I am not telling you to throw your diamonds and your rubies and your emeralds, no. You don’t have any of those precious stones. You have only rotten rubbish: words, all borrowed, and not a single word representing your authentic experience about anything.

What do you know about love?

What do you know about beauty?

What do you know about goodness?

What do you know about grace, gratitude?

What do you know about yourself, who you are?

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Nothing!

And you know everything about the whole world, the whole geography of the world, the whole history of the world. All kinds of idiots in history – Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Nadirshah, Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte, Ivan the Terrible – are all there.

My professor of history.... I was not a student of history. That was my practice in the university, that I never attended my own subject, because that I knew far better than the people who were teaching, and the library was available. So I used to attend other people’s classes. History was not my subject. This professor was so much involved in history that you could ask him any absurd question and there was immediately an answer.

You could ask, ”How old was Socrates when he got married?” Now is that a question that somebody can answer immediately? But he was that type of man. You could ask such a question as, ”At what place, by whom, on what date, was the first bullet shot? – and immediately, the answer! He was a computer.

When I entered his class one day, he said, ”I have told you again and again that this is not your subject, but you go on insisting on coming.”

I said, ”This is not your subject either.”

He said, ”What do you mean? I am head of the department of history, and this is not my subject?” I said, ”No, this is not your subject. Answer a single question: Who are you? What does it matter when Socrates got married? Monday, Sunday, Tuesday – any day will do. In seven days, some day he must have got married. And what did he get out of that marriage? A woman called Xanthippe who was just like her name – really difficult.” I don’t know how to pronounce it. It does not look Greek

– ”Xanthippe” – it looks like something from far away, some eastern Fiji island... Xanthippe? And she tortured him his whole life.

I said, ”And you are worrying about when he got married. I am worried why he got married at all!

This is not my subject, this is not your subject either. My subject is your subject.” He said, ”What is your subject?”

I said, ”My own subjectivity is my subject. History can be an object but it can never be a subject.

There is only one subject, your subjectivity. And unless you know it, all your knowing is bullshit.” Don’t ask me, ”What is bliss?”

Ask me, ”How can I be a participant in it?”

Ask the right question.

I have given you the right answer. I don’t care whether your question is right or wrong – I always give the right answer.

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You were asking about a definition. That is verbal.

Bliss is existential.

Bliss is a taste, a feel, and so overwhelming and so intense, that once you have got it you cannot believe how you have been missing it all along: ”i cannot figure it out because it is simply there.

It was always there; how did I manage to miss it for so many lives?” Once you get it, that is the problem that arises: how have you been missing it?

Bliss is just sitting at the very center of your being, ready to be remembered.

Bliss has not to be found, but only to be remembered.

This word ”remember” is quite significant. Remember simply means: make it a part of your being again. Remember does not mean recall; no, it simply means making something a part of your being again. It is there, it is just that you have completely forgotten it. Remember: where have you forgotten it? – where have you put it?

So in the sense of remembering, the word is beautiful. In the sense of re-membering – making it again an essential part of you – it is again significant.

In the same reference I would like you to understand the original word for sin. The root from where it comes means forgetfulness. This is just strange: sin means forgetfulness.

Then the whole of religion has only one meaning:

Remembering.

There is only one sin – to forget your being.

And there is only one virtue – to remember it.

And the moment you know who you are, instantly, immediately, all the bliss of the whole existence is yours. You are so full of bliss that you can bless everybody, the whole existence, without exhausting it ever.

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Seek and ye shall miss; relax and ye shall find

25 January 1985 pm in Lao Tzu Grove

Question 1

OSHO,

IT SEEMS THAT YOU WERE GOING TO TALK ABOUT THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION’S IDEA OF THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS AS A BIRTHRIGHT, BUT YOU FORGOT ABOUT IT. PLEASE

CAN YOU TAKE IT UP AGAIN?

IT reminds me of a story. Three old men were sitting in a park. One was seventy-five, the second was eighty, and the third was eighty-five. The first one said, ”It seems I am getting old, because now to me the greatest pleasure is a good motion in the morning.” He said, ”I can say it is better than sexual orgasm.”

The other two old fellows laughed. The oldest one said, ”Your idea of orgasm will shock and surprise even people like Wilhelm Reich, Sigmund Freud and Havelock Ellis. My son, you are not getting old, you are simply getting original.”

But the second man was silent and serious, think ing about something. He said, ”Perhaps he is right. I also feel as if I’m getting older. For three nights continually I have not made love to my wife.” The youngest of the three was really shocked. He said ”What! For three days you have not made love to your wife?”

But the oldest still laughed loudly and he said, ”Don’t take him seriously – you don’t know what he means by love. It is just like your orgasm. Before he goes to sleep he presses his wife’s hand; that 469

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is his love-making. I have told him, ’Don’t make much ado about nothing; it is not love. Even if you have not made it for three days there is no harm.’” And he said, ”But you both talking about getting old makes me think that I am getting older; and certainly I am eighty-five. This morning when I was just starting to make love to my wife, she said

’What! What are you going to do?’

”And I said, ’Is it something that has to be explained to you? I was just going to make love.’

”And my wife said, ’You have made that nasty thing twice in the night.’

”But I had completely forgotten! It seems I am getting older.” Your question reminded me of that story, and the story reminds me about the poor rabbi in England.

I feel sorry for him but I also feel jealous: I would have loved to be in his place and expelled. That expulsion from being a rabbi is such an excitement. But nobody can expel me – I don’t belong to any establishment.

I don’t belong to my own religion, so nobody can expel me. That’s one joy I am going to miss.

But I should not forget the question. In fact it is not forgetfulness; I simply drift away. I am not getting older, I will never get older. Yes, I will go on growing up, but growing up is not being old. To the very last breath I will remain as fresh and young as I have always been. But drifting is a totally different phenomenon.

With each statement I am standing at a crossroads.

I can move into any direction from that statement. don’t have any idea to which road I am going to be attracted. I leave it completely to existence to take me wherever it wants. And again on each step is a crossroad. The people who are orators and speakers have decided their route. They know what they are going to talk about, where they are going to begin, at is going to be the middle, where they are going to end, and what is their purpose.

In the first place I have no purpose.

I am not utilitarian.

I simply enjoy sharing myself and my experiences with you, without any purpose.

You will not find another man on the earth so busy without business as I am. There is no business, but have been busy my whole life. I enjoy it; hence, I have no particular direction predetermined, mentally decided.

So the question of forgetting does not arise at all. Yes, you are not aware of those crossroads that I am continuously coming upon. If I have to choose, then you will not see that anything is missed, but it will be something artificial.

I don’t decide.

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I simply go on with the current, wherever it leads.

To move into the unknown is a tremendous joy.

Here I go again! – I have to come back to the question. Let us first finish it. Yes, I was going to talk about his stupid idea in the American constitution that man as a birthright for the pursuit of happiness. I call it stupid because nobody can be in pursuit of happiness. And if you are in pursuit of happiness one thing is certain: you are not going to get it.

Happiness is always a by-product.

It is not the result of a direct pursuit.

It happens when you are not even thinking of it – what to say of pursuit? It happens suddenly, out of nowhere. You were doing something totally different.

You may be chopping wood. Certainly it is not the pursuit of happiness – chopping wood – but in the early morning sun, when it is still cool, the noise of your axe falling on the wood... pieces of wood being thrown all around, making a noise and then leaving a silence behind.... You start perspiring, and the cool breeze makes you feel even cooler than before. Suddenly there is happiness, a joy uncontainable. But you were simply chopping wood; and chopping wood has not to be mentioned as a birthright in the constitution, because then, how many things are you going to include?

I cannot forget one day.... There are a few things which make no logical sense and have no relevance but somehow remain hanging in your memory. You cannot understand for what reason they are there because millions of things have happened far more irnportant, far more significant, and they have all disappeared. But a few insignificant things – you cannot find any reason why, but they have remained; they have left a trace behind.

One such thing I remember. I was coming home from school – my school was almost one mile away from home. Just half way there was a huge bo tree. I had passed that bo tree every day at least four times: going to school, then in the middle of the day coming home for lunch, then going to school again, then coming back home. So many thousands of times I had passed that tree, but that day something happened.

It was a hot day, and as I came close to the tree, I was perspiring. I passed under the tree; and it was so cool that without having any deliberate thought I stopped for a while, not knowing why. I simply went close to the tree trunk, sat there and felt the tree trunk. I cannot explain what happened but I felt so immensely happy, as if something was transpiring between me and the tree. Just the coolness could not be the cause, because many times when I had been perspiring, I had passed through the coolness of the tree. I had also stopped before, but never before had I gone and touched the tree and sat there as if meeting an old friend.

That moment has remained shining like a star. So much has happened in my life, but I don’t see that moment diminishing in any way: it is still there. Whenever I look back it is still there. Neither that day was I clearly aware what had happened nor can I say today – but something had happened. And from that day there was a certain relatedness with the tree which I had not felt before, even with any From Personality to Individuality

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human being. I became more intimate with that tree than with any body else in the whole world. It became a routine thing to me: whenever I passed the tree, I would sit for a few seconds or a few minutes and just feel the tree. I can still see – something went on growing between us.

The day I left school and moved to another city to join the university, I took leave of my father, of my mother, of my uncles and my whole family. I was not the type who easily cries or weeps. Even when I was punished badly, the blood might be oozing from my hands, but tears would not come to my eyes.

My father used to say, ”Do you have tears in your eyes or not?” I said, ”You can make my hands bleed but you cannot force me to cry and weep. And why should I?

– because whatsoever you are doing is absolutely right. I have done something, knowing well that this is going to be the consequence. I never lie, so there is no way to escape from the punishment.

What is the point of tears?”

But when I went to the tree to say goodbye, I started crying. That is the only time that I remember in my whole life; otherwise tears were absolutely unknown to me. In my childhood one of my sisters, whom I had loved more than any other of my brothers and sisters, died. And in India you have brothers and sisters by the dozen. I used to tease my father, ”How did you miss making the dozen whole? – because you have only eleven children. You should be a little mathematical, just one child more.”

And he said, ”You are my son but you even try to joke with me.” I said, ”I am not joking; I am simply saying that it is so easy to tell somebody ”one dozen” – and exactly that is what I have been doing. If anybody asks me how many children you have, I say, ”one dozen.” It is simpler. You have made it unnecessarily complicated: eleven! Either you should have stopped at ten – that seems to be complete – or twelve; that too is complete. But eleven? – what kind of number is that?”

Out of these ten sisters and brothers, I loved most one of my sisters who died when I was very young. I must have been five years old and she must have been three years old. But even then I had not cried. I was surprised and shocked. Everybody was crying and they all thought that I was in shock because I loved my sister the most. In my whole family everybody knew it, that I loved her the most, and she loved me the most. They thought perhaps it was just because of the shock that tears were not coming, but that was not the case.

When my maternal grandfather died I did not weep – and he had brought me up. He was almost closer to me than my father because during the early seven years of my lifeand those are the very vulnerable timeshe was close to me. He died in my lap. My grandmother was just losing all control

– weeping, uttering words and sentences unrelated to each other. They had lived their whole life together, and they had only one child, my mother. Once she was married they had lived alone and shared each other’s aloneness. My grandmother must have been feeling really lost: her whole world was my grandfather. And to me he was not just a maternal grandfather.

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bring an elephant from a nearby town.... Elephants in India, in those days, were kept either by kings

– because it is very costly, the maintenance, the food and the service that the elephant requires –

or by saints.

Two types of people used to have them. The saints could have elephants because they had so many followers. Just as the followers looked after the saint, they looked after the elephant. Nearby there was a saint who had an elephant, so for my birthday my maternal grandfather used to bring the elephant. He would put me on the elephant with two bags, one on either side, full of silver coins.

At that time the rupee was pure silver; notes had not arrived in India. Notes are not something new; in China they have existed for three thousand years. China in many ways has been far ahead of the rest of the world. Marco Polo, when he came back from China, brought printed notes, printed currency. Still he was not believed. He was called to the pope and told, ”Don’t try to create fictions and stupid stories. Who can believe that a piece of paper can be used as money?

The pope tossed a gold coin; it fell on the floor with a great sound, and he said, ”This is money.” He burned the note saying, ”It is all your fiction.” In my childhood, in India, notes had not appeared; pure silver was still used for the rupee. My grandfather would fill two bags, big bags, hanging on either side, with silver coins, and I would go around the village throwing the silver coins. That’s how he used to celebrate my birthday. Once I started, he would come in his bullock cart behind me with more rupees, and he would go on telling me, ”Don’t be miserly – I am keeping enough. You cannot throw more than I have. Go on throwing!” Naturally, the whole village followed the elephant. It was not a big village either, not more than two or three hundred people in the whole village, so I would go around the village, the only street in the village. He managed in every possible way to give me the idea that I belonged to some royal family.

He loved me so much that it was impossible for me to fall sick. Now, you have no power over sickness but you can manage not to say anything about it. He would get in such a panic: if I had just a slight headache, he would get in such a panic that he would take his horse and ride to the closest doctor and bring the doctor back. It was so much trouble, more than the headache was, so I would simply remain silent, not saying anything about it. Even when he died in my lap there were no tears.

Even I suspected that perhaps I didn’t have tear glands.

But on that day, taking leave of the bo tree, I wept for the first and the last time. It remains a very lighted spot. And when I was crying I had an absolute certainty that there were tears in the eyes of the tree too, although I could not see the eyes, and I could not see the tears. But I could feel –

when I touched the tree I could feel the sadness, and I could feel a blessing, a goodbye. And it was certainly my last meeting, because when I came back after one year, for some stupid reason the tree had been cut down and removed.

The stupid reason was that they were making a small memorial pillar, and that was the most beautiful spot in the middle of the city. It was for an idiot who was rich enough to win all the elections and become the president of the municipal committee. He had been president for at least thirty-five years – the longest time anybody had been president in the town. Everybody was happy with his presidency because he was such an idiot; you could do anything and he was not going to create any interference.

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You could make your house just in the middle of the street; he would not bother, you just had to vote for him. So the whole town was happy with him because everybody had such freedom.

The municipal committee, the members, the clerks and the head clerks – all were happy with him.

Everybody wanted him to remain eternally the president; but even idiots have to die, fortunately. But his death was unfortunate because they looked for a place to make a memorial for him, and they destroyed the bo tree. Now his marble stone stands there instead of a living bo tree.

I do not forget things, but there are so many things to be said; and language is one-dimensional. It is linear – you can go only in one line – and experience is multidimensional, it moves in thousands of lines. The problem with so-called orators is what to say. My problem is what not to say, because there is so much waiting to be said, knocking from all sides and asking, ”Let me in.” So I drift away...

but don’t be shy in reminding me.

The pursuit of happiness is an impossible thing.

If you look at your own experience and find moments when you were happy – which are bound to be very rare: perhaps in a life of seventy years you may have seven moments which you can claim as moments of happiness. But if you had even a single moment of happiness, one thing is certain without any exception – it had happened when you were not looking for it.

Try to look for happiness, and be certain you will miss it.

I disagree with Jesus Christ on many points, even on points which look very innocent, and it looks as if I am very unkind. Jesus says: ”Seek, and ye shall find. Ask, and it shall be given to you. Knock, and the doors shall be opened unto you.” I cannot agree.

The fools who wrote the American constitution were certainly influenced by Jesus Christof course, they were all Christians. When they said ”the pursuit of happiness,” they must have consciously or unconsciously had in mind the statement of Jesus: ”Seek and ye shall find.” But I say to you:

Seek, and be certain you shall never find it.

Seek not, and it is there.

Just stop seeking, and you have found it – because seeking means an effort of the mind, and non-seeking means a state of relaxation. And happiness is possible only when you are relaxed.

A seeker is not relaxed. How can he be relaxed? He cannot afford relaxation. You will be surprised if you look around the world: you will find people in very poor countries more contented. Yes, even in Ethiopia where they are dying of starvation, you will find people who are dying but there is no suffering or anguish. The greatest number of unhappy people you will find in America. This is strange. Here, the pursuit of happiness is your birthright. It is not mentioned in any other constitution of the world....

Here I go again... because just now I remembered that the other day I was talking to you about my professor of history. Ask any question and he would answer. But I started looking.... Certainly he From Personality to Individuality

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was a bookworm. I had known the word but I met the person for the first time. I told him, ”I was wondering what kind of a person a bookworm is, but you solved my problem: you are a bookworm.

But I don’t like to be defeated in anything.”

He said, ”What do you mean?”

I said, ”I will find out from where you are gathering all this knowledge.” He laughed because he thought it was impossible. But I started looking in their history department library, at every book. I looked in the townhall library, which was a very old library and the biggest in the whole state. Finally I found a small book, LITTLE-KNOWN FACTS ABOUT WELL-KNOWN

PEOPLE. That was the book that had all the information, such as ”What age was Socrates when he got married?” It was a collection of little-known facts about well-known people. So I said ”Okay”.

I went next day to his class and I just gave him the book. He looked at me; he called me close to him and he said, ”Meet me after the class, and keep this book in your bag. Don’t wave it about and don’t let anybody see it. First meet me, then whatever you want to do, you do.” After the class he said, ”You are a strange fellow!. This is the book on which I have been managing my whole scholarship. Where did you get it? I stole it from the department of history so nobody could find it, and it is no longer available in the market – it is an old book. Where did you find it?” I said, ”That’s not the problem. I was going to find it even if it took my whole life. If you are a bookworm, I am a bigger bookworm. Now, remember never to answer anything from this book; otherwise I am going to open the secret to the whole university.” He said, ”I will not do anything – just keep this secret to yourself. And whatever favor you want from me I am willing to do. You are welcome to my class, I will never prevent you. Or if there is anything else you want.... But just don’t bring this book with you.” I said, ”I will not bring it; but this is a very poor kind of scholarship. You have been living on this small book, this is your whole wisdom. And as you have stolen the book from your own department” –

which was not difficult, it was his own department and was his own library” – there was no problem for you to take it away.

”But do you think there are not libraries in the world somewhere or other which have this book? –

because I could not believe that you had any way to &d all these meaningless details; there must be some collection. I didn’t think that they had been collected from thousands of books, because even in the biggest history books you cannot find at what age Socrates was married, because it is not a historical thing; in no way does it have any historical importance. I saw that book because I borrowed it from the townhall library.”

I told him, ”The townhall library continues to write me letters, saying, ’Please return the book.’ I go on telling them whatever its price, I am ready to give it to them. They say, ’It is a rare book – there is no question of price.’”

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of the book and any fine for losing it. What else can I do?’” Finally I had to pay the price of the book and the fine.

But because Rajneeshpuram is a unique city, an illegal city, a library cannot be made here. The per mission... the city does not exist at all, so from whom to get the permission in a city which does not exist?

There are one hundred and fifty thousand books lying in the warehouses here, rare books. But strange are the ways of politicians. Just a few days ago I heard the federal government of America wrote a letter saying that the city had been given federal funds, but now it has been informed by the state of Oregon that the city does not exist, ”so you please return the federal funds.” I enquired how much federal funds they had given Two hundred and fifty dollars! Great America!

If the city does not exist, who is going to return the funds? And to whom are you addressing the letter? And in the first place who informed you that it is a city? The state must have informed you that this city. is incorporated; that is why you started giving the funds. Now the same state informs you that the city does not exist.

You ask for the money from the state, and great federal funds, two hundred and fifty dollars, have disappeared!

And this is just the opinion of the attorney general of Oregon, that the city is illegal – just the opinion of a single individual which is under consideration in the court. Until the court decides whether his opinion is right or wrong, everything should remain as it was till the litigation is over. And it is not going to be over.

My sannyasins will fight it till the very end of civilization. Only twenty years are left. It is not a problem to fight a case for twenty years, it is so easy. And until it is decided and there is no further way to appeal, it is a city. And no single individual has the right, just by his opinion, to make it illegal, or to make it disappear.

But the attorney general is spreading his opinion that the city does not exist to other agencies, federal and state. He was pressuring the police department, saying, ”Cut Rajneeshpuram’s police from the state police. The city does not exist, so what is the need for a police force there?” It is only his opinion. Unless the court decides that it is not constituted, not incorporated legally.... It has been incorporated legally by the court; it has remained for two years a legal city. The government has been giving it funds for two years, and the same attorney general was there for two years. It took him two years to decide whether the city is legal or illegal? And he allowed his own government to give funds; he allowed the federal government to give funds. He allowed the police force to make the Rajneeshpuram police force part of it.

Now, just because he wants to become the next governor, he wants all the Oregonian voters in his favor – my sannyasins are doing a great deal of good to many people.... Now this is the only fact about Oregon which is decisive: if anybody is in favor of us, he is going to lose the election.

Anybody who is against this commune and doing anything legal, illegal, moral, immoral, to harm us

– the whole of Oregon is for him.

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Now this man has nothing against sannyasins. He has not even the guts to come here and see whether the city exists or not. He should come and see with his own eyes. He has not the guts. He has not even the guts to appear on the same television program with Sheela. Such cowards!

But that’s how the political mind works. The attorney general is making arrangements for the election for governor that is coming in one and a half years. At least for one and a half years he is going to be continuously harassing the city, saying that ”You are not legal” – although it does not make any difference. Who wants to be legal? Only illegal people want to be legal, constitutional. When you are not a criminal you don’t think of the law at all; only criminals think of law.

I have never thought in my whole life what it is to be legal because I was never doing any illegal thing.

The attorney general knows perfectly well that he will be defeated, but all he wants is the case to be postponed, prolonged till the governorship happens; then he knows he will withdraw the case. He should not be allowed to withdraw so easily. But that’s the politician’s mind: just to go on prolonging, postponing; and that’s what he is doing. The date goes on being postponed; he has to go on postponing it.

It makes no difference; in fact it is perfectly good if it is postponed for twenty years. When everything is finished, we will be the only people left around. Then we can make for the first time a sane constitution.

This American constitution is absolutely insane: ”pursuit of happiness”?

– nobody has ever

succeeded in it, and those who have tried have become very unhappy and miserable in their life.

When I was a student at my university, I used to go on a particular street which was very silent, with no traffic, because it was used as a dead end after just one and a half miles. There were several beautiful bungalows for professors but they were few and far between. It was a silent place with huge trees on both sides.

I used to go down that street only when it was raining because even when the rain stopped, on both sides it continued to rain because of those huge trees: water went on dripping from their leaves.

So one could be certain that if it were raining it was not going to stop just because it stopped in the middle; you could always depend on the trees. I loved very much to go there while it was raining.

The last bungalow was the bungalow of the professor of physics. His wife, his daughter, and his son had

dals, so that we can hear from half a mirains this strange fellow comes without an umbrella – and for no reason, because there was a dead end, and from there I had to go back. So whenever it was raining they were all waiting on their verandah thinking that I was bound to appear; and infallibly I used to appear.

They were saying to the professor of physics, ”A strange student with long hair, a beard and wooden sandals, so that we can hear from half a mile away that he is coming – he comes for no reason at all, and only when it rains; otherwise he never comes down this road. He comes to the very end and stands there – we don’t know what he does there – and then he goes back.” From Personality to Individuality

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The professor said, ”Are you certain he uses wooden sandals?” They said yes.

Then he said, ”I know him, because there is only one student who uses wooden sandals, so I will find him.”

He enquired of my professor, the head of my department, ”What type of person is this young man?” My professor said, ”Certainly he is a type, a strange type. We have not been able yet to categorize him – but he is not normal.”

The professor of physics, Professor Shrivastava, was a professor here, in America. When I was in Poona somebody coming from America had brought the news that he met Professor Shrivastava in Hanard where he was teaching. He said he sent his regards to me and that he remembered me, and remembered me coming to his house when it was raining. The whole story he told to the person who became a sannyasin – an American.

Hearing that I am abnormal, Professor Shrivastava said, ”Abnormal?” My professor said, ”Not below normal, above normal. That is his definition: he counts all these people as abnormal – Buddha, Jesus, Lao Tzu, Confucius, all are abnormal – and we cannot argue with him. But he belongs to the same type of people.” Professor Shrivastava became even more interested. He wanted me to be introduced to him. My professor, Professor Saxena, said, ”Why are you getting into unnecessary trouble? Everybody here is trying somehow to have him pass the university courses so that he goes somewhere else.” But Shrivastava said, ”I am interested, my wife is interested, my children are interested. They all want to see him and meet him.”

So I was introduced to him and we became very friendly. He was an old man, but he loved the idea when I explained to him: ”It is such a joy to be just under the sky when the whole sky becomes a shower on you. I feel so happy that it is indescribable.” He became so influenced that he said, ”Then one day I am also going to come with you. Are you really sure that you feel happiness?”

I said, ”I am absolutely sure, there is no question about it; otherwise, why should I bother, every time it rains, to come down your street?”

He said very confidentially, leaning close to my ear, ”In happiness I am also interested.” I said, ”Then it is a little difficult. You can come with me but I cannot assure you or guarantee you anything. Happiness happens to me but I am not in search of it: that is such a great difference. You will be continually looking around thinking, ’It has not come yet. Where is it? When is it going to come?’ You have to forget the whole idea of happiness,” I told him.

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Professor Shrivastava said, ”This is a strange condition. I am coming only to have some experience of happiness, and you make a strange condition from the very beginning. This is tricky – that I have to forget the whole idea of happiness.”

”But,” I said, ”that’s how it works.”

He said, ”Okay, I will try.

I said, ”No, trying is not the thing; you have simply to forget about it.” He said, ”Okay, I will forget about it.”

He came with me. I looked again and again at his face. He was feeling really miserable; and more miserable than ever, because all the professors, their wives, and their children, were looking from the windows: ”This young man has got hold of that old fool also. Why is he walking in the rain? He may get sick – pneumonia, double pneumonia, or something. That young man is healthy enough, he can manage, but why this old fool?”

When we reached the end, hearing my sandals, his family came running out to see. And when they saw, when his wife saw that her husband was also standing with me at the end of the road, which faces a very deep abyss, they could not believe their eyes. What had happened? Had I convinced him to look for something there in the valley, or what? They all came out. Of course they had their umbrellas and raincoats; they all came over, and they said, ”Daddy, what are you looking for?” Professor Shrivastava said, ”Don’t say anything. It has not happened up to now, and if you mention it, he will say, ’The condition is broken.’”

I said, ”It is already broken. I have been watching you all the way: you were miserable, more than you have ever been, and you are a miserable person – I have seen you.” Professors are miserable types. That suits their profession. It makes them look serious, sober, very deep in their thinking. Professionally, it is helpful I said, ”I watched the whole way: you were so miserable.” He said, ”I was trying hard not to remember happiness, but what to do? – the idea went on coming.

That made me more miserable, the thought that I was going to lose it because the condition was not fulfilled.”

I said, ”Not only have you lost it, you disturbed my happiness, because even to keep company with the wrong person is not good. The proverb is right: You are known by your company. For the first time happiness has not descended on me – because of you.

He said to his wife, ”Listen! Instead of me complaining to him, he is complaining to me that his happiness has been missed.” His wife said, ”Whatsoever it is, you both come inside and have a cup of tea. He has come for the first time and we always wanted to invite him, but we thought we didn’t know who he was, what type of man – mad or sane. But he is not mad, that is certain.” From Personality to Individuality

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Professor Shrivastava said, ”He is mad, and he made a fool of me because tomorrow the whole university will be asking,’What were you doing walking in the rain? – you had your car.’” I had told him, ”Leave your car at the department so when we come back we can take your car home. By sitting inside the car, happiness is not going to happen – it only comes with the rain.” The next day the whole university was talking about Professor Shrivastava I told him, ”The best thing is to say that it worked, you became happy; other wise they will think you are a fool.” He said, ”That’s a good idea – and he spread the idea, ”What he says is absolutely right – it works.” He told me, ”A few other professors are getting ready, so what to do now? You are creating trouble for me. Your professor was right, that it would have been better not to be introduced to you. First you made a fool of me, then you told me to say that it happened. And I saw the logic of it, that if I say it didn’t happen others would say,’You are a fool. Happiness happens with the rainanybody can get it.’

So I thought it is better to say,’Yes, it happened, and if you want to check, you can come.’ Many are ready.”

I said, ”Let them be ready. It is going to work in the same way. Let all of them come!” He said, ”They will kill me.”

I said, ”Don’t be worried: the whole responsibility is on me. I will convince them also that it happens.” And that’s what happened.

Six professors stood before the abyss, and they told Professor Shrivastava, ”To us it has not happened.”

And Professor Shrivastava said, ”To me also it has not happened. It happens only to him, because the first condition is unfulfillable: don’t ask for it, don’t seek it. But you don’t ask, if you don’t seek, why in the first place should you bother to walk in the mud and the rain and get sick? For what? But just as I told you that it happened, you also have to say it happened; otherwise, you will be thought a fool.”

Those six looked at each other and they said, ”We; are caught in this mess. This is going to be trouble some because if we say that it happened then other people.... Your master teaching you the art of happiness is going to turn the whole university to walking in the rain!” This is the trouble. Happiness happens. Perhaps that’s why you call it happiness because it happens. You cannot manage it, you cannot manufacture it, you cannot arrange it.

Happiness is something which is beyond your effort, beyond you.

But in just digging a hole in your garden, if you are totally absorbed in it – if the whole world is forgotten, including you – it is there.

Happiness is always with you.

It has nothing to do with rain, it has nothing to do with chopping wood, it has nothing to do with digging a hole in the garden:

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Happiness has nothing to do with anything.

It is just the unexpectant, relaxed, at ease state of your being with existence. And it is there; it does not come and go. It is always there, just like your breathing, your heartbeat, the blood circulating in your body.

Happiness is always there, but if you seek it you will find unhappiness, because by seeking you will miss happiness. That’s what unhappiness is: missing happiness. So with pursuit, unhappiness has a certain relationship, a partnership. If you pursue you will find unhappiness. And the American constitution has given the idea to the whole American people: Pursue.

And they are pursuing desperately – in money, in power, in religion – and they are running all over the world looking for somebody to teach them how to find happiness. And the real thing is to just come back home; forget all about it. Do something else which has nothing to do with happiness.

Paint. You need not learn painting. Can’t you throw color on a canvas? Any child can do it. Just throw colors on a canvas and you may be surprised: you are not a painter, but something beautiful....

Just the colors themselves have become mixed in a certain way and have created something. You cannot name it.

Modern paintings are without titles, and the ultra modern paintings are without frames because existence has no frame. You look from your window, you see the sky, framed, but the frame is in your window, not in the sky; the sky has no frame. So there are ultra modern painters who don’t paint on a canvas; they paint on the walls of the houses, on the floors, on the ceiling. Strange places

– people have never done that before, but I can see their insight.

They are not interested in making a painting; they are more interested in getting involved in the very act of painting. It is not for sale. How can you sell your ceiling? And who is going to buy it? But while they are so absorbed, from some unknown corner something starts slipping into their being.

They start feeling joyous for no reason at all.

That’s why I condemn the word pursuit. About anybody – and these people who made the American constitution are big shots; perhaps it was Jefferson – but about anybody who wrote this word pursuit, I can say without knowing his name, without knowing anything about him, that he must have been an utterly miserable man. He had not known happiness ever. He had been pursuing it; hence, he tried to give to every American the same birthright that he has claimed. And nobody has criticized it in three hundred years; nobody criticized a simple thing.

A poet, a painter, a singer, a dancer, yes, once in a while attain to happiness. But one thing is always there: whenever happiness comes they are not there. The pursuer is not there, the pursuit is not there.

Nijinsky, one of the most significant dancers of our world, of the whole of history.... As far as I am concerned, I consider him the best dancer that humanity has produced. He was a miracle when he used to dance. Once in a while he would take such a big leap that it was against gravitation; it was not possible, scientifically it was impossible. That huge, high leap was absolutely impossible: gravitation wouldn’t allow it. Even the people who compete in Olympic long jumps are nothing compared to Nijinsky when he used to jump.

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Even more miraculous was his coming back: he came back like a feather – slowly. That was even more against gravitation, because gravitation would pull the weight of a human body suddenly, quickly. You would fall with a thump, you might get a few fractures.

But he used to come down just the way a dead leaf falls from the tree: coming slowly, lazily, in no hurry, because there is nowhere to reach. Or even better, featherlike, because a leaf comes a little faster The feather of a bird is light-weight, very light-weight, it comes dancing. In the same way Nijinsky used to come back down. And there was not even a sound when he would come back to the platform on which he was dancing.

He was asked again and again, ”How do you do it?” He said, ”I don’t do it. I have tried to do it, but whenever I have tried, it has not happened. The more I have tried, the more it was clear to me that it is not something which I can manage. Slowly, slowly I became aware that it happens when I don’t try, when I am not even thinking of it. When I am not even there, suddenly I find it is there, it is happening. And by the time I am back to figure out how it happened, it is no more there, already gone, and I am back on the floor.” Now, this man knows happiness cannot be pursued. If Nijinsky was also on the board making the constitution of America, he would have objected and said that pursuit is absolutely the wrong word.

Simply happiness is everybody’s birthright, not its pursuit. It is not like a hunter pursuing game: then you would run for your whole life, chasing shadows, never arriving anywhere. Your whole life would go in sheer wastage.

But the American mind has got the idea, so in every sphere – politics, business, religion – they are pursuing. The Americans are always on the go, and going fast, because when you are going then why not go fast? And don’t ask where you are going – because nobody knows. One thing is certain, they are going with full speed, with all the speed that they can maintain, all that they can manage.

What more is needed? You are going, you are going with full speed: you are fulfilling your birthright.

So Americans are passing from one woman to another woman, to another woman, to another woman; from one man, to another man, to another man; from one business to another business, from one job to another job – in the pursuit of happiness. And strangely, it always looks as if it is there and somebody else is enjoying it, so you start pursuing it. When you reach there it is not there.

The grass beyond your fence is always greener, but don’t jump the fence to see actually whether it is so. Enjoy it! If it is greener on the other side of the fence, enjoy it. Why destroy things by jumping the fence and finding out that it is worse than your own grass?

It happened that a man was trying to sell his house for many years. He had made it really beautiful.

He had put a lot of money into it, had hired the best architects; everything was the best that he could find. He was in pursuit of happiness. The house was built, a beautiful mansion, all marble. For a few days he looked in the house for happiness to come, but the marble was cold; the house was dead.

It was a beautiful house but dead, with no warmth.

Then he started thinking of selling it: it had been an absolute loss. He contacted an agent, a real estate agent. The agent said, ”We will sell it, but first we have to place a good advertisement in the topmost newspapers and magazines, with a picture, because it is such a beautiful house.” From Personality to Individuality

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The man said, ”That’s good, do it, but I want to get rid of it. The next day he read in the newspaper that there was a very beautiful house for sale. It looked just as if poetry had been written in marble or a song had become frozen in marble, with big lawns and beautiful trees – old, ancient trees, which you cannot grow in a day. The description was so beautiful!

Of course only the phone number of the agent was given, so the man immediately phoned him:

”Whatsoever the price, settle it for me. I have been in search of such a house my whole life.” The agent said, ”I will settle it; there is no problem. I am coming right now to you. Negotiations can easily be done.”

And when the agent came the man could not believe it, because he was the same agent. The man said, ”Where is this house?”

And the agent said, ”You phoned me?”

The man said, ”It was your phone number?”

The agent said, ”Of course! I described your house. So many phone calls were coming but you disturbed them. Couldn’t you figure out that it was your house?.” He said, ”My God! This house?”

You can fall in love with your own wife if somebody else describes her. It depends on the description.

But people are running after everything: perhaps this will give them what they have been missing.

Nothing can help. You can live in a palace but you will be as miserable, perhaps more than you were in an old hut. In the old hut at least there was a consolation that you were miserable because you were in an old, rotten hut. There was an excuse; you could have explained away your miserliness, your misery, your suffering. And there was also a hope that someday you would be able to manage a better house – if not a palace, then at least a good, beautiful, small house of your own.

It is hope that is keeping people alive, and it is their excuses and explanations which keep them trying again and again. It has become the philosophy of America to try again and again and again.

But there are a few things which are not within the area of trying, which happen only when you are completely finished with trying. You simply sit down and you say, ”Enough is enough – I am not going to try.” That’s how enlightenment happened to Gautam Buddha.

He must have been the first American, because he was in pursuit of happiness. Because of the pursuit, he dropped his kingdom. He is a pioneer in many things; he is the first dropout. Your hippies have not dropped much. To drop something, first you have to have it. He had it, and he had it more than any man ever had it. When he was born the astrologers said, ”He should be kept absolutely unaware of misery, pain, old age, sickness, death and sannyasins.” He was the child of an old, aged kingan only child, born when his father was very old. The king asked, ”Why does he have to be kept unaware of all these things?” From Personality to Individuality

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The astrologers said, ”This man is going to either be a Buddha, an awakened one, an enlightened one.... But for his enlightenment he will renounce the kingdom, the palace, the familyeverything.

He will go in pursuit of truth, of bliss. Or he can become a chakavartin, a world emperor.” That is a special category that only exists in India: chakravartin. Chakravartin means one who rules over the whole world without any competitor. Alexander the Great was trying to become a chakravartin but could not.

Up to now only mythologically in ancient Indian literature are there chakravartins; they are not historical figures. Many have tried to become chakravartins – one wonders for what. Even if you have the whole world you will be the same – perhaps in a worse condition because you will be worried about all the problems of the world, and you will be responsible for all the problems of the world. At least right now you are only responsible for your own misery; it is a very tiny thing. Just multiply it by billions! What are you going to gain?

But the astrologers said, ”Either he is going to become a chakravartin, a world emperor – he will rule over the world.... But it all depends on you. If you can protect him from knowing that life consists of misery, suffering, pain, sickness, old age, death; and also from knowing that there are people who are searching for something higher than life – the sannyasins... you have to protect him.” The king said, ”It will not be difficult” – and he arranged it. He made three palaces for three different seasons. In India, seasons used to be very clear-cut. Every year, on the same day, at the same time, summer would begin; on the same day, at the same time, the summer would end. The rainy season, the winter – everything was clear-cut. Even in my childhood it was clear-cut. It was only after the atomic explosions around the world that the Indian climate became uncertain. The whole atmosphere is shaken.

So the king made three beautiful palaces in three different places: for summer, a place on a high hill, on a beautiful lake; in the rains, in a place where it did not rain too much, just enough to enjoy

– not to create a Big Muddy Ranch, just showers; and one for winter, a place where it was always warm and cozy. And Buddha was surrounded by all the beautiful women from the kingdom. So no desire remained unfulfilled: he had the best of food, hundreds of servants, huge gardens.

The king was so particular that his son should not even see any dry leaf, any pale leaf, any flower which was withering away, that he had them removed in the night. The gardeners worked the whole night to make the garden absolutely young and fresh. Otherwise the idea that things get old, that flowers die, might provoke, might trigger some anxiety in Buddha: then what about man?

Nobody who was sick was allowed to be seen by him. He had not seen anybody dead or sick or old, up to the age of twenty-nine. He was kept in such seclusion and in such luxury – music, women, wine – he was drowned in them. And the king was satisfied that now Buddha was married – he had found one of the most beautiful women, he had fallen in love – now there was no fear.

They used to have a youth festival every year, and it was the custom that the prince who was going to succeed the king should inaugurate the youth festival. The roads were cleared; old and sick people were removed from where Buddha’s chariot was going to pass.

The story is beautiful. From here it becomes mythological, but still it is significant.

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The story is that Indira, who was the chief of all the gods, became worried that a man who was capable of becoming an enlightened one was being distracted completely. Something had to be done; existence should not be allowed to miss an enlightened being. So it is said that Indira took a few gods with him to earth. The street was cleared, it was impossible for any man to enter there; only gods could enter. That’s why they had to create the mythology – because gods are invisible and they can become visible any moment.

First, a god, sick and feverish, passed by the chariot. If the street had been full of traffic perhaps Buddha would have missed seeing him. But the street was empty, the houses were empty; there were no other vehicles, only his golden chariot.

Buddha saw this man trembling, and he asked his charioteer, ”What has happened to this man?” Now, the man who was driving the chariot was in a dilemma because the orders of the king were that Buddha should not know that anybody is sick. This man was so sick that it seemed as if he was going to fall down there and die. But Indira was helpful. He forced the charioteer to tell the truth

– ”because ultimately your commitment is not towards that old idiot, your commitment is towards truth. Don’t miss this point, because this man is going to become an enlightened one, and you will be immensely blessed because you are becoming the cause of triggering the process. Don’t miss it

– you may not find it again in millions of lives.” Of course it was clear. The charioteer said to Buddha, ”I am not supposed to say this, but how can I lie to you? The truth is that all sick people have been removed. I wonder from where this sick man has entered, because everywhere there are guards and the army. Nobody is allowed to enter the path where the chariot is moving. This man is sick.” Bud&a said, ”What is sickness?”

The charioteer explained that sickness is something we are born with, that we are carrying all kinds of sickness in the body. If sometimes, in a certain situation, a weakness, a sickness, which you are carrying within you gets support from outside, you get an infection: you are sick.

Then an old man appeared, another god, almost a hunchback, so old that Buddha could not believe his eyes: ”What has happened to this man?”

The charioteer said, ”This is what happens after many sicknesses: this man has become old.” And then, a dead body – another god posing as a dead body – came by with four gods carrying him.

Buddha asked, ”What is happening?”

The charioteer said, ”This man is at the last stage. After that old man, this is what happens.” Buddha said, ”Stop the chariot here and answer me truthfully. Is all this going to happen to me too?” And at that moment he saw a sannyasin, another god, just pretending, like you – wearing orange robes and everything – a neo-sannyasin. Buddha said, ”And what kind of a stage is this? – a shaven head, a staff in his hand, a begging bowl.”

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The charioteer said, ”This is not a stage after the other; this is a type of man who has become aware of life’s misery, suffering, anguish, sickness, old age, death. He has dropped out of life and is in search of truth, in search of finding something which is immortal: the deathless, the truth.” Buddha said, ”Return to the house. I have become sick, sick unto death. I have become old, old even though to all appearances I am young. But what does it matter if old age is only a few years ahead of me? – soon it is going to be walking by my side. And I don’t want to be like that dead man.

Although I am alive for all ordinary purposes, I died with that dead man. Death is going to come; it is only a question of time, of sooner or later. It can come tomorrow; anyway, someday it is going to happen.

”Tonight keep the chariot ready. I am going to be the last type of man: I am renouncing. I have not found happiness here. I will seek it, I will pursue it I will do everything that is needed to find happiness.”

And for six years Buddha did everything that anybody can do. He went to all kinds of teachers, masters, scholars, wise men, sages, saints. And India is so full of these people that you need not seek and search; you simply move anywhere and you meet them. They are all over the place. If you don’t seek them, they will seek you. And particularly in Buddha’s time it was really at a peak. The whole country was agog with only one thing: how to find something which transcends death.

But after six years’ tremendous effort – austerities, fasting and yoga postures – nothing happened.

And one day.... I have been to that place and to that river; Niranjana is the name of the river, a small river near Bodh Gaya, where Buddha became enlightened. That’s why the name of the city has become Bodh Gaya: the place where awakening happened.

Niranjana is a small river, not very deep. Buddha was fasting and doing austerities and torturing himself in every way, and he had become so weak that when he went for a bath in the Niranjana he could not cross the river. The river was small, but he was so weak that only somehow could he manage, by holding a root of a tree which was hanging by the side of the bank, to keep himself there; otherwise the river would take him away. While he was hanging onto the root, the idea happened to him that these sages say, Existence is like an ocean. That’s what in India is called bhavasagar –

ocean of existence.

Buddha thought, ”If existence is an ocean, then whatever I am doing is not right, because if I can’t cross this poor river, Niranjana, how am I going tc cross the ocean of existence? Whatever I have been doing I have simply wasted my time, my life, my energy, my body....” Somehow he managed to come out of the river, sat under the tree and dropped all effort.

That evening – it was a full moon night – for the first time in six years he slept well, because there was nothing to do the next day, nowhere to go: no practice no exercise. The next day there was no need even to get up in brahmamuhurt, in the early morning before sunrise. The next day he could have as much sleep as he wanted. For the first time he felt a total freedom from all effort, seeking, search, pursuit.

Of course he slept in a tremendously relaxed way, and in the morning, as he opened his eyes, the last star was disappearing. It is said, with the last star disappearing, Buddha disappeared too. The From Personality to Individuality

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whole night’s rest, peace, no future, no goal, nothing to be done.... For the first time he was not an American. Lying down, in no hurry even to get up, he simply saw that all those six years looked like a nightmare. But it was past. The star disappeared, and here Buddha disappeared.

This was the experience of bliss, or truth; of transcendence, of all that you have been seeking but you have been missing because you have been seeking. Even Buddhists have not been able to understand the significance of this story. This is the most important story in Gautam Buddha’s life.

Nothing else is comparable to it.

But you will be surprised.... I am not a Buddhist – I don’t agree with Buddha on a thousand and one thingsbut I am the first man in twenty-five centuries who has put emphasis on this story and made it the central focus, because this is where Buddha’s awakening happened. But Buddhist priests and monks cannot even relate this story, because if they relate this story, what is their purpose? What are they doing? What are they teaching? – what exercises? what prayers?

Naturally, if you tell this story, that it happened when Buddha stopped doing all kinds of religious nonsense, then people will say, ”Then why are you teaching us to do religious nonsense – just to drop it someday? So if we have to drop it finally, why begin in the first place?” It will be difficult to convince the priests; their whole business and their whole profession will be destroyed.

One Buddhist monk, the most famous in India, Bhadant Anand Koshalayan, lives in Nagpur. I was in Nagpur and he came to see me. He said, ”I have come to see you only to say one thing: I have been reading your books, and you are not a Buddhist, but you bring out things from Buddha’s life which for twenty-five centuries no Buddhist scholar, no Buddhist priest, no Buddhist commentator, has ever bothered about. How do you manage it?” He repeated a story which he had read in one of my books. He said, ”In my whole life I have never heard this story; nobody tells it. And I myself have been an ordained monk for almost thirty years. I read it for the first time – in your book.” I said, ”Don’t be worried. Does it appeal to you?” He said, ”But the thing is whether it is historical or not.” I said, ”Even if it is not historical, does it appeal to you?” He said, ”You are changing the subject.”

I said, ”I am not changing the subject. If you start on about history then you will be in great trouble: you will have to prove everything historically, and in Buddha’s life there are thousands of things which you cannot prove historically. Can you prove historically that Indira came down and arranged the whole thing, the whole scene, and befooled Buddha? Is that historical?” He said, ”No, that is difficult to prove.”

I said, ”Then don’t bother about history – take it on my authority. If you meet Buddha you can ask him; only he can say because it is not reported. The reporters were priests, and this story they have not reported at all.”

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I told him, ”Just forget whether it is historical, reported or not reported; just look at the fact and whether it makes any sense to you.”

He said, ”It makes great sense, but do you mean to say I have to drop all my practices?” I said, ”Of course, if you have found truth by your practices, continue. If you have not found it, then try what I am saying.”

He was at least a man sincere and honest. He said, ”I have not found anything by my practice – in fact, that’s why I came to ask you.”

I said, ”When I say that this is what happened, write it down in any book, and read it; then it is written. If you believe in the written word it is written in my book. But that is not the problem. The problem is: are you courageous enough to drop that which has not given you anything? And thirty years are enough. Buddha dropped everything after six years; you have gone five times longer. Do you think you are being more intelligent than Buddha?” He said, ”I was told by my friends that it would be better not to meet you, and perhaps they were right, because now I will live in a dilemma: to drop it or not to drop it? Because after thirty years’

practice, it becomes so close; you become addicted to it.

I said, ”Think it over. Be in a dilemma. Perhaps some day the understanding will dawn on you.” But I could see that although he was a sincere man, honest, he was not courageous. Whenever I went to Nagpur I enquired, ”What is Bhadant Anand Koshalayan doing?” I had told my host to keep an eye on the Buddhist monk, so he would say, ”He is doing the same, continuing the same.” The last time I saw Bhadant Anand Koshalayan was in’65. Just by chance we met on the plane going from Bombay to Delhi. He was trying to avoid me trying to look as if he had not seen me. But I wen up and just sat by his side. It was not my seat, it was somebody else’s seat. When they came up I said ”Forgive me – just take my seat. I need only five o seven minutes, then I will go.” I went on nudging Bhadant Anand Koshalayan with my elbow, and he went on moving away. But I went on again and again

Finally he said, ”What are you doing?”

I said, ”What are you doing? Do you think you can escape in this way? And from whom are you escaping? From me or from yourself? You have see the truth of what I have said in the storynow accept that you are not courageous enough to follow it.

He said, ”Yes, I am not courageous enough. Bu the story is right, whether it is written in any scripture or not.”

Buddhists have dropped it; they have not co]lected it for the simple reason that the priesthood need some form of livelihood. They are parasites, and the can live only as parasites if they can show you how to do it – how to pursue, how to find, how to seek the ”how” is important. But I am telling you it is not at all important; it is the only hindrance.

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Drop the ”how” and just be.

Just be, for no reason.

And happiness starts showering on you like flower showering.

Here there are not such trees, but in India there are trees called madhukamini. If you sit under the tree flowers shower like rain. In the morning you find under the tree a whole carpet, a complete carpet of the flowers. The whole night the madhukamir showers: it blossoms in the night, showers in the night and by the morning all the flowers are on the ground. And it is so fragrant that from half a mile you can become aware that somewhere the madhukamini is flowering.

In my house, when I was in school.... Of course I had made my house a jungle. That’s what I have been doing all my life. I had planted a madhukamini just in the middle compound, in the inner courtyard of the house. When I went to the university, I knew it.... My father was just like Mukta.

And it is strange, they were friends too. He could not understand Mukta’s language, Mukta could not understand his language, but they were great friends. Even going to school I had to ten my mother, my aunts and everybody, ”Watch my father and see that he does not start pruning my tree.” Sometimes I had to take his scissors with me to school. My master said, ”What? Now you are bringing such instruments... are you going to kill somebody? – because with garden scissors you could cut somebody’s neck. For what have you brought this? What is the purpose? Just keep it outside, and you remain outside.”

I said, ”I have not brought it for any purpose; it is just to protect my poor tree, because when I am in school my father goes on pruning. He seems to be a born Englishman.” When I went to the university they removed all the trees, but even my father did not dare to touch the madhukamini, because when I left, I told all of them, ”You can cut the whole garden if you want, and I know you will, because every day you are harassing me:’Here we need one bathroom more

– remove your trees. Here we need to extend the kitchen: there are more children in the house, people are getting married, their wives are coming, and more rooms are needed. You have made it a jungle.’”

But I was adamant and said, ”No. Once I am gone, it is okay: you can do whatsoever you want.” The day I left I told them, ”Remember, everybody, that whatsoever you want to do, do with all the trees, but my madhukamini – nobody touches it. If I come back and find that my madhukamini is missing I will not enter the house again for the rest of my life.” Only with this threat could I save my madhukamini.

But in 1970, when I said, ”I will not be coming again,” they cut it down because now there was no point in keeping it; the threat was no longer relevant.

The madhukamini is such a beautiful tree. To sit underneath it and just to feel its flowers falling all over you... and they continue the whole night. When it flowers, it flowers in thousands of flowers.

Bliss also showers exactly like that.

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Truth also showers exactly like that.

You just have to be sitting, doing nothing, waiting – not waiting for Godot, just waiting; not for anything in particular but simply waiting, in a state of awaiting, and it happens.

And because it happens, it is perfectly right to call it happiness.

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CHAPTER 28

Knowledge is information; knowing is transformation 26 January 1985 pm in Lao Tzu Grove

Question 1

OSHO,

YOU SAID THAT YOU DON’T KNOW WHO YOU ARE. DON’T YOU REALLY? DO WE NEVER

KNOW WHO WE ARE?

I know that I do not know who I am.

My knowing is not knowledge and my knowing is not ignorance. It is a little bit complex, but not difficult to understand.

Knowledge is always borrowed.

It is not your own; you are simply repeating like a parrot. You don’t know what it means, you don’t know all its implications; you don’t know from where it arises, you don’t know whether it is true or just fictitious.

I have heard that the wife of Mulla Nasruddin purchased a parrot. She was very interested in finding a really good parrot, and when she found one she was immensely delighted. But for some strange reason the pet shopkeeper was reluctant to sell the parrot to her. She was surprised. She said, ”You have it for sale and whatsoever the price is I am ready to pay. Why are you reluctant?” He said, ”There are so many other beautiful parrots, even more knowledgeable than this. Why are you so particular about this parrot?”

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She said, ”That I don’t know, but somehow, to me, he looks the most cute. He is beautiful, healthy, colorful – and the way he speaks! It is difficult to figure out whether it is a human voice or a parrot speaking.”

Although the shopkeeper was reluctant, the woman was persistent, and finally she purchased the parrot. As she was departing he told her, ”I should make you alert of the fact that the reason I was reluctant to sell him is that the parrot comes from a very bad place; he was owned by a prostitute.

He speaks vulgar language and he uses expressions which you may feel offended by.” She said, ”Don’t be worried. I need such a parrot for my husband. My husband uses such vulgar language, such bad expressions, that this is good: the parrot will be really the answer to him.” The shopkeeper could not say anything more. Nasruddin’s wife went home and she covered the parrot with a cloth so that when Nasruddin came she could give him a surprise and a shock.

Nasruddin came home by evening; and it was really a surprise and a shock – not for Nasruddin but for Nasruddin’s wife, because even from behind the cloth the parrot recognized Nasruddin immediately. He said, ”Hello, Mulla Nasruddin. You are really great: every day new girls, new women!”

Now the parrot could not think of the implications, but the wife was immensely shocked that the parrot knew Nasruddin: that meant Nasruddin was going to the prostitute. The parrot was saying,

”You are great! Every day new women, new girls. You know how to enjoy life!” Knowledge is exactly like that. The Christian priest repeating the BIBLE has no understanding of what he is repeating.

Just the other day some information came to me: the attorney general of Oregon has declared Rajneeshpuram illegal. The reason that he has given is that here in Rajneeshpuram, religion and state are mixed.

Now, in the first place, our religion has nothing to do with any religion that has ever existed on the earth. It is just a legal necessity that we have to declare that we are a religion; otherwise, you cannot find such an irreligious commune in the whole world. What religion is there? – no God, no Holy Ghost, no Jesus Christ, no pope, no prayer, nobody concerned at all about death. Everybody is so much involved with life, who has time?

In fact, even if death comes to my people, she will have to wait. My people are so involved in living that even death will have to consider.... She can take people easily who have been dead for thirty, forty or fifty years. It is not a problem for death, there is no need to be concerned; they just have to be carried away. They have lived posthumous lives long enough. Perhaps death is too busy –

must be. This planet and fifty thousand other planets have life; and no religion has said that there are even associates, deputies, of death. Death is alone. Poor death needs a great bureaucracy, and she is doing the whole job all alone. So of course many people die when they are nearabout thirty years of age, and then they have to wait for forty, fifty years or sixty years, when their number comes up.

What can death do? She has not yet cleaned out the old pending files, and you go on dying.

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But with my people death will be surprised.

These are living people:

So involved in life that they have not even bothered about death. She will have second thoughts before she can take you. She may think, ”It is better to let me first finish the pending job, which is unending. These people can be taken later on; let them live a little more.” What kind of religion is this?

I have called it a religionless religion.

I have called it religiousness.

But they don’t have any category for religiousness; they don’t have any category for a religionless religion because nothing like this has ever happened. But all governments and all bureaucracies go on clinging to old-fashioned ideas. It takes a long time for them to absorb anything new, and by the time they absorb it it is already out-of-date.

For my immigration there is only one category that can be applicable to me, and that is religion. I tried to explain that my religion is not a noun, it is a verb, but the officer was looking at me with vacant eyes. What was I saying? – that my religion is not a noun but a verb? Who has ever heard of that?

But I said, ”You need not be puzzled or worried Just so as not to disturb you I will fit into the category But in fact if governments and bureaucracies were sensitive enough, aware enough of the latest developments, then you would have made a different category for me, for a man who is simply religious – neither Christian, nor Hindu, nor Mohammedan. And to be religious you need not believe in God, in afterlife; you need not believe at all. To be religious all that you need is to live life so abundantly that you can taste existence itself.”

When I say ”knowing,” I mean tasting, smelling, hearing, feeling, living – but not knowledgeability.

Knowledgeability to me is a sin.

Knowing is the greatest ecstasy you can attain

But the ultimate surprise of knowing comes when you turn in upon yourself.

You can be in a state of knowing with the sunrise, with the sunset, with stars, flowers, birds, animals, people. You can be in a state of knowing, and it is tremendously beautiful, immensely fulfilling.

But the ultimate point, the omega point arrives when you turn your knowing upon yourself.

Then you are moving in a direction you have never moved, you are traveling on a path you have never traveled.

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Knowledge is divided into three parts: the knower, the known, and that which relates them –

knowledge. Knowing also consists of three parts, but there is a difference: the knower, the known

– but now the relationship is not of knowledge, it is of knowing. Knowledge was borrowed. The knower was a fact, the known was a fact, but knowledge was borrowed. Knowing is your own. So knowledge only gives you a feeling of relatedness.

It is like marriage – and marriage is a mirage.

Marriage simply gives you the illusory feeling that you are related. In fact, you are two intimate enemies living together – or better to say, fighting together, harassing each other, nagging, doing all kinds of things which are not friendly. It is a strange relationship. There is no love flowing. Who has ever heard of a husband loving his wife or a wife loving her husband? Yes, pretending, but loving?

It seems to be impossible between husband and wife.

Marriage is the death of love.

Knowledge is like marriage. You are not really related to the known, but only in a delusion.

It happened once that there was a certain painting hanging in the house of an old lady. She was very old, and when she died the house was sold. The new owners looked at the painting and could not figure out what it was: it looked almost stupid. It was a Picasso. If you don’t have that intelligence then the painting will look stupid, as if made by some madman. So they took out the painting and threw it in the basement.

One day a friend came and he asked what happened to the Picasso. ”I was in this house when the old lady was here. I was just passing, and I remembered the painting. The house is sold, but the painting was far costlier than the house. What happened to the painting?” The owner did not answer. He rushed into the basement, brought the painting back, cleaned it, and said, ”I am happy that you came. We thought this was something stupid. This is a Picasso?” The man said, ”This is more costly than the house that you have purchased.” Again the painting was put back on the wall. In fact, the man threw a big party for his friends to see the painting of Picasso. But one of his friends turned out to be an expert critic of paintings. He said, ”This is not an original; you have been befooled. Yes, it is a copy of Picasso’s painting, but it is not an original. The people who sold you the house were not fools: if it were authentic it would mean millions of dollars, and the painting would have been removed before the house was sold.

This painting is bogus.”

The man threw the painting back in the basement. Now what kind of relationship was happening between this man and the painting? This I call knowledge. He has no relationship. Somebody says,

”It is a Picasso”: the painting is put up on the wall and a party is thrown. Somebody says, ”It is a fake”: the painting is thrown back into the basement. If some day Picasso comes and says, ”It is not a fake” – and Picasso was capable of saying this – then the painting would be back again in its old, respectable place.

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It is a known fact that once Picasso said of one of his own paintings, ”It is a fake.” It was sold for millions of dollars; and when the man who purchased it heard from Picasso that it was a fake....

Picasso’s girlfriend – he never had any wife, he always had girlfriends, changing as life changes, as everything changes – the girlfriend said, aBut I have seen you painting this with my own eyes; I was present.”

Picasso said, ”That is right. You were present, I painted it in front of you, but it is a fake.” The owner said, ”Are you mad or something? If you painted it, then how can it be fake?” Picasso said, ”Because I painted the same painting before. So what does it matter who painted it the second time? It is secondhand, it is not a true Picasso. I painted it before and it is already in the art gallery. This was just because somebody wanted to purchase something and I had no other painting and no other idea at that time. So I simply painted an old idea. I had the sketch. What does it matter whether I copy it or somebody else copies it?” Vice versa has never happened, but I can guarantee – understanding Picasso the way I understand him – he may have said a fake painting was authentic if it was really great art. What does it matter who painted it? If a painting painted by Picasso himself can be fake, then why can’t a painting painted by somebody else and signed ”Picasso” be authentic, if it is really an original piece of work?

But what about this man? He was going crazy: somebody says the painting is authentic, somebody says it is fake; and each time his relationship with the painting changes.

What is your relationship with God?

It is knowledge.

An atheist comes and proves there is no God, and the relationship disappears. A theist comes with better logic – because it is not a question of whether God exists or not, the question is whose logic is better, who is more logical, more argumentative, more authoritative – and convinces you there is a God. Again there is a relationship. Are you going to depend on such a relationship?

Knowledge can be changed any moment by anybody:

lt has no roots in you.

Knowing, nobody can change, not even God.

In India there is a story about a very unique man, Eknath. He was a worshipper and devotee of Krishna. For twenty-four hours a day he had only one thing in his mind, and that was Krishna. He was a Maharashtrian. His name for Krishna is Vithoba; in Maharashtra the name for Krishna is Vithoba. It was not far away from our commune place in Poona, where Eknath lived – just a nearby village.

His mother was sick, old, almost on the verge of death, and he was massaging her feet. The story is.... It is a story, remember, I’m not talking about history; I am simply telling you a beautiful story.

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Vithoba, that is, Krishna, was very concerned because his devotee was really in deep pain. He had lost his father, he had lost his brother, he had lost his sister. The only person left was his mother, and now her time had come. Vithoba thought, ”Now I am his only relative; twenty-four hours a day he is thinking of me. It is time to go and console him and tell him, ’Don’t be worried – I have come.

Your mother is going but your Vithoba is here.’”

So Vithoba came. The door was open because Eknath’s house was so poor that there was no need to lock the doors, there was nothing that could be stolen. Vithoba entered, stood behind Eknath and said, ”Eknath, won’t you look at me? I am Vithoba. You have been continually praying and chanting and calling me. But now the time has come – I had to come.” There was not even a small mattress or a rug or a carpet or a chair to be given to Vithoba. Eknath had only one earthen brick, the type houses are made of in India; he used to keep his lamp on it.

He used that brick to keep the lamp a little higher so he could see his mother better. He was so absorbed in massaging his mother’s feet that he took the lamp off the brick, pushed the brick towards Vithoba without turning back, and said to him, ”Stand on the brick till I am finished with massaging my mother.”

The story is really beautiful. The whole night passed: Vithoba turned into a stone – because he had been standing the whole night on a brick. A temple exists now in the place of Eknath’s house.

The statue of Vithoba is still standing on a brick. That is the most important temple in the whole of Maharashtra. Every year thousands of pilgrims from all over Maharashtra travel to the temple of Vithoba.

But it has been a great problem for the scholars: ”Why did Eknath treat his own god in this way?” They don’t have any answer. At least he could have looked at him, at least he could have said,

”Please sit down on the brick.” I have talked with many Maharashtrian scholars who are followers of Eknath; they don’t have any answer. I said, ”It is so simple. The story may be bogus, and I know that it is bogus. There is no Vithoba; nobody ever comes, whether you keep your door open or locked.

But one thing is certain: Eknath was really an authentic man. When he was doing one thing, he was doing it totally. When God comes he says, ”Stand there, don’t bother me till I am finished with my work.”

To me this is the implication in my saying that if death comes to my sannyasins she will have to wait.

My sannyasins can say to her, ”Wait, I am too busy living.” Your relationship with life or with anything should be of knowing, it should not be of knowledge –

borrowed.

So when I say, ”I know,” my word ”know” indicates knowing, not knowledge. And in the same statement I am contradicting it; I am saying, I know that I know not who I am.” When knowing turns towards oneself the greatest problem arises, because now the knower and the known and the knowing all become one. You are the knower, you are the known, and you are the knowing.

If you say, ”I know myself” it will not be right, because then you will be dividing the knower, the knowledge and the known; and it is an indivisible, organic phenomenon. So you cannot say, ”I know myself” That’s why I said, ”When I say,’I do not know myself’ I don’t mean ignorance.” It is not knowledge; is not ordinary knowing.

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You know the beauty of a sunset, you know the beauty of a face, you know the beauty of music. Even though it is knowing, still those three are there; very deeply related, almost one, but only almost –

not organically one.

When your awareness turns upon itself it is not knowledge, certainly.

It is not the ordinary knowing either.

It is not ignorance, certainly, because you know.

But it is such a unique knowing that in this knowing you become innocent: Innocent of all idea of knowing, knowledge, ignorance.

All those words disappear.

You are simply there.

It is an experience, and such an experience that cannot be described by any word which has its opposite.

”Ignorance” cannot describe it, because knowledge its opposite. ”Knowledge” cannot describe it, because ignorance is its opposite. ”Knowing” cannot describe because unknowing is its opposite.

Then what can scribe it? Only a contradiction – I repeat, only a contradiction – can indicate it. You will have to use contradiction for the simple reason that the contradiction kills itself and leaves no trace behind. And hat’s what I mean by innocence.

When I say I know that I know not, I am trying through language to help you have a little glimpse of what happens when contradictions meet. I am saying both I know and I know not. They will cross each other, kill each other, destroy each other. And what will remain? Just an innocent awareness.

Ignorance is not innocent. Ignorance feels inferiority; the ego hurts. Knowing is not innocent.

Knowing buttresses the ego; it gives you a feeling of superiority. I am putting superiority and inferiority together. They cancel each other, and the very cancelation of each other leaves you alone and innocent.

It is just like the child when he opens his eyes for the first time. He sees everything that is there: the painting on the wall, the clock on the wall, different colors around him. But do you think he knows that this is a painting, that this color is red; that this is a clock, that it shows time? He is seeing, but his seeing is absolutely innocent. He is seeing better than you, remember, because his eyes are so fresh.

The impact of colors on your eyes is not the same. For the child it is his original experience. If he sees your color of red.... He has never seen it before. He has no idea how to judge what it is – good, bad, beautiful, ugly. He cannot judge, he simply sees it. His eyes are unclouded by any prejudice.

His eyes have no dust, no layers of dust.

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As you grow old your eyes start gathering dust, your mind starts gathering layers of dust. Everything becomes hidden behind so many layers of dust that you lose your original seeing, your original listening, your original taste, your original smell, your original touch. All are covered.

But the child, as he opens his eyes, knows – but he does not know that he knows. The same state happens again when your awareness turns upon yourself. You know, but now no word is enough to justify any expression about this knowing.

Socrates is right. I agree with that old man or many points. I also disagree with him, but on this point I agree one hundred percent. He says, ”There is’ knowledge which knows nothing, and there is an ignorance which knows all.” I would not like to use the word ignorance because that has an association in our mind. The association is that ignorance means you do not know. If you can change the association the I can use the word ignorance. If you can understand by ignorance a new kind of knowing where the trinity disappears and there is one organic whole.... The knower, the known, the knowledge, all are one; hence there is nobody to declare anything.

Those who have known have always said that the know not.

It is only the idiots who say they know.

The really wise is innocent of all knowledge.

He has come to a point where knowledge is left far behind; and of course the ignorance which was the polar opposite of knowledge is also left far behind Now, what word to use? I could use the word innocence – ”I am innocent of myself” – but it would be linguistically wrong. But I don’t care about language anyway. I go on using language in my own way.

I am innocent of myself.

That means: I know that I do not know myself.

But don’t ask the pandits of language. In a way this is bound to happen when you are describing experiences which are not usual. You have to us unusual ways. Silence would be the right answer it, but will you be able to understand silence? Hence, I have chosen something very close to silence and yet expressible – innocence.

Innocence transcends both knowledge and ignorance.

To make way for innocence I use knowledge and ignorance together in the same sentence so they can destroy each other and can leave you unscratched unburdened by any of them.

You ask me, will it ever be possible for you to know yourself? Only in the same way as it has been possible for me; in no other way. If you are ready to become innocent, if you are ready to drop your knowledge and your ignorance.... You will be surprised to know that to drop knowledge is very difficult, but to drop ignorance is even more difficult.

You may never have thought about it. Of course, to drop knowledge is difficult because that’s all you have, that’s all you can brag about; and I am saying to drop it, to erase all that you have accumulated.

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You have been accumulating it as if it is a great treasure. And you have been told continually by everyone that the more you know, the more powerful you will be What is the secret of the priest?

Why is he powerful? – because he knows, or at least pretends to know, things which you are not courageous enough to pretend to know. He knows God, he knows all about heaven.

In Indian temples I have seen maps of heaven and hell, and where God lives – an aerial view! –

and where tirthankaras live. These maps are hundreds of years old: the older they are, the more valuable. I have asked the Jaina monks, ”Do you know where Timbuktu is?”

”Timbuktu? We have never heard of Timbuktu.”

I have asked them, ”Do you know Kustuntuniar?”that is Hindi for Constantinople.

”Kustuntunia? A very strange name. We have never heard of it.” I said, ”You don’t even know the geography of this small planet but you know where heaven is and you know where hell is and the exact location of God’s house? – even the architecture of God’s house. And the houses surrounding Him are all tirthankaras’ houses. Where is Jesus Christ?

Hazrat Mohammed? Moses? Zarathustra?”

And they will say, ”You ask strange questions! These people are not in heaven, they cannot be.” And they have a map of hell. I have asked, from my very childhood, ”Where is this hell?” and they all say

– Hindus, Jainas, Buddhists – ”Just under the earth.” That’s where we are sitting right now: in hell.

According to them, America is exactly the place where hell is. According to them the earth is not round, it is a flat thing like a chapati. On top is the earth and below the chapati is hell. But below the chapati is America, and at the very center, Oregon.

When Sheela started looking for a place to have this commune happen, and she phoned from Oregon, I really giggled. If my Jaina saints knew where I was going to end up! According to them, still, hell is under the earth. But it is a very strange world because it is round; so right now they are under us. It is very difficult to decide who is in hell. Now Sheela is in New Delhi. It is very difficult to decide whether her Master is in hell or the secretary is in hell, at this very moment.

These idiots have made maps; and of course for centuries it has been believed that they know about these things. They even know the details of the map: they know the roads, they know how many gates you have to pass.... This is exploiting your innocence, making you feel guilty of ignorance:

”You don’t know – we are the knowers. You have to listen to us and follow us. We know the right path, the right god, the right heaven.”

And all the religions are doing the same thing. I have looked into all these people’s scriptures. They are all pretending absolute knowledge, and they are simply talking absolute lies, because they all cannot be right. Their descriptions are absolutely different. The heaven of the Christians is totally different from the heaven of the Hindus, so either there are many heavens, many hells, for different religious people different strategies of torturing and different ways of entertainment.... Because in heaven what will you do for eternity? Have you ever thought about it?

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Just think: in the Christian heaven, what are the angels doing for eternity? Just playing on their guitars – ”alleluia, alleluia, alleluia” – for eternity? Yes, in the afternoon for the drive – by it is okay, but for eternity! This is too much. And it is not entertainment, it is torture. I think people in hell may be enjoying more variety of things because really juicy people are all in hell. Only dry bones are in heaven.

Since I have experienced that there is no heaven and hell, I am freed from a nightmare. In my childhood I was more afraid of heaven than of hell. And my father used to say to me, ”You are simply nuts! We are afraid of hell; you are afraid of heaven. And all the great sages have been fools, you think.”

I said, ”I don’t know whether they were fools or not. One thing I know is that all juicy people are in hell; that you have to concede. The gamblers, the drunkards, the playboys, the call girls, all the circuses and carnivals – everything seems to be there in hell. Please just tell me what is in your heaven? Only those long faces, saints, completely dry of humor. Not even a newspaper is published because there is nothing happening – what to publish in the newspaper? There is no gossip, no restaurant....”

My father said, ”Please keep these ideas to yourself because you are corrupting me.” And finally I did corrupt him: I made him a sannyasin. But from the very childhood he was afraid that I would corrupt him, because he had no answers. He would go to the sages and the saints; they also didn’t have any answer. They said, ”This is a strange boy. These questions are never asked.” I said, ”Whether they are asked or not, I am asking them. Please answer me. What entertainments are available? A football match, the Olympics? What is available there in heaven? And if nothing is available then what are your saints doing? And for eternity? They must be dying to be born again, but they cannot be: once you are enlightened, no entertainment again!” I used to come to Bombay, before I settled in Bombay, almost two or three times per month because the headquarters were in Bombay, the whole work was there. There I had the greatest following; and the most intelligent people in India of course are in Bombay. Slowly thousands of people started knowing me. One day one of my sannyasins – at that time I had not started sannyas but now he is a sannyasin.... He used to drive me about, and just jokingly – he did not mean it, but he was not fully aware of me – just before a bistro he stopped the car and said, ”Osho, would you like to come in and have an ice cream?”

Ice cream I used to love. To tell you the truth I still love it, although there is no way to find it anywhere.

I said, ”That’s a great idea!” Then he became afraid. He had been joking. He had said it thinking that a religious man would say no to going into a bistro, where an almost naked woman was doing a striptease dance. He said, ”Are you sure?”

I said, ”Absolutely! Just open the door – because this is my last life. After this life there is no bistro for me and no ice cream: I don’t want to miss the last chance.” He waited for a few seconds. I said,

”For what are you waiting?”

He said, ”But if somebody sees you there, and recognizes you there....” I said, ”That is my problem.”

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He said, ”No, it is not your problem – they will kill me, they will say ’It is you who took him; otherwise how could he find that bistro? You were supposed to take him home from the meeting place, not to a bistro.’”

I said, ”Don’t be worried. I will protect you and say that I insisted, that seeing the signboard, ’Bistro,’

I said, ’What is this? – I want to know.’”

He said, ”Then it is okay. But, Osho, you are creating a very troubled state for me.” I said, ”Don’t be worried – just come on.”

I had to enter first, then he followed me; he had to follow. It was an air-conditioned place, but he was perspiring.

I said, ”Harshad” – Harshad was his name – ”your name means rejoice. What a fool – rejoice!” And what he was afraid of happened. The manager of the bistro had heard me: he came and fell at my feet. Harshad was just going into a nervous breakdown. Everything stopped; even the striptease dancer stopped – everything was frozen. When the manager fell at my feet, other customers who had no idea who I was started coming to touch my feet and the striptease girl came down from the stage. I said, ”Harshad, it seems even in this life it is not going to be possible.” I told the manager,

”At least bring my ice cream.”

He said, ”Will you accept one?”

I said, ”Accept? I am ordering one: I like tutti-frutti.” I was eating my ice cream and the whole crowd was standing around me. I said, ”What are you doing? Do your business!” And Harshad was hiding behind the crowd because if the manager saw him....

As I finished my ice cream he came and just grabbed me. He told me, ”Osho, out! I will never drive you again if you do such a thing.”

I said, ”But what have I done? I have not created any problem for anyone. You had asked me,’Would you like some ice cream?’ so I ordered one. And in all this hullaballoo they have not asked for the bill. Go and pay it.

He said, ”I am not going inside again. I cannot go alone; if you come ahead of me....” I said, ”Then don’t bother, because nobody is thinking of the bill right now. We enjoyed them, they enjoyed us, and it is balanced. There is nothing much to be worried about. But where have you been hiding? I had to eat two long glasses full of ice cream because the manager had brought the best, the biggest glasses. Where were you? I had to eat two glasses, and two glasses that size are a little too much.”

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People came to know somehow and he had a good beating from everybody. In Bombay, in those days there were many old people who were followers of mine, very respected people: somebody was an ex-mayor, somebody was ex-sheriff, somebody was a minister. I told everybody, ”Nobody is to harass Harshad; he has been punished enough.” He had perspired and begun trembling, but I simply enjoyed it; the whole scene was so fabulous. And for the striptease girl this was an absolutely new act. She may never have done it before and will never have to do it again.

In heaven there seems to be something worthwhile. But for centuries these people have been claiming knowledge about heaven and hell; and once you get trapped in their net of knowledge, you are finished. Then you are no more alive. Then their knowledge makes you feel ignorant, inferior, guilty, a sinner. Even eating ice cream you feel you are committing a sin. It is strange, because in no religious scripture is it written that ice cream is sin.

But the religions are against enjoying anything. So whether it is written or not.... Many things will be coming in the future which are not yet available. Of course these so-called omniscient saints and messiahs, they had no idea of even ice cream – what to say about atom bombs and nuclear weapons? But they have given a basic criterion: anything that can be enjoyed is sin, it is against God. To be happy is to be against God; to be blissful is really to be His arch-enemy.

I am a blissful man.

If there is a God – and I know there is nobody anywhere. If I have not found Him in meand I have looked into every nook and corner of my consciousness – then He is not anywhere else. He cannot be. He cannot be in any consciousness, because the nature of consciousness is the same. And consciousness is the highest flowering in existence; if He is not even in this highest flowering, where can He be? And there is nothing beyond consciousness.

The moment you know the unknowable, the mysterious, the innocent consciousness pure of all thought, ideas, scriptures, religions, you know nothing and you know all.

You know nothing because knowing is left far behind, it was a burden. You are unburdened – it was just dust gathered on the mirror of your being. The mirror is clean now, so clean and so alone that it does not mirror anything. It is simply there, not mirroring anything because there is nothing else.

Just think of a mirror in absolute aloneness. What will be the situation of the mirror? It will still be a mirror, but not reflecting anything. That’s what happens when you turn upon yourself Consciousness is there, awareness is there; in fact for the first time it is there in its totality. And there is nothing to think, nothing to reflect, nothing to know. In this sense you have become innocent. But in another sense – because now nothing is left for you to know – you know all. The taste of your own consciousness is the taste of all consciousness, it is not different.

But the priesthood cannot live on my attitudes and approaches. The priesthood will die out. It needs to die out, it is absolutely unnecessary. They have filled you with knowledge, and with it has come the idea of ignorance. They have filled you with such strange ideals that if you follow them you are finished, if you don’t follow them you are finished. The ideals that they have given you are unnatural.

If you try to follow them you have to go against your nature; you have to cripple yourself destroy yourself And if you follow your nature, you feel guilty, a sinner. And then great fear arises – hell is waiting for you. Don’t be worried: there is no heaven, no hell.

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All that is significant is your pure awareness.

Then wherever you are is paradise.

I can challenge God to throw me into hell, with no problem, with no fear, because I will manage to have a commune there. And it would be really a great’ commune because such colorful people would be there.

But I have drifted far away....

I was telling you about this attorney general who says that we have mixed state and religion here. Just the other day I got the information that from the federal government of America two sermons, ready-made sermons, have been sent to thousands of Christian churches, institutions, schools, hospitals, orphanages – but only to Catholic Christians.

Those two sermons have been prepared by the federal government to indoctrinate people, particularly orphans. And in that they have even improved upon Jesus.

When I heard that, I felt a little sorry for Jesus, because what will his situation be? There are many statements in those sermons; one statement is really striking. It is for orphans, that they should pray to God: ”We are blessed that you made us helpless orphans so that you are our only help and only hope.” The whole message is: ”Blessed are the orphans for they shall inherit the kingdom of God.” I was puzzled. Jesus had said, ”Blessed are the poor for they shall inherit the kingdom of God.” Now there is going to be great trouble. Who is going to inherit the kingdom of God, the orphans or the poor? The American government has found even the poorest of the poor: the orphans. Now the poor people will look almost super-rich. They cannot pass through the needle’s eye any longer. No, only orphans can enter.

Now what is Jesus going to do, because these people, in following Jesus’ idea, have created trouble for him, competition. There are not a few orphans in the world; in a way, one day or other, everybody becomes an orphan. One day your father dies, one day your mother dies – you are an orphan. What else is an orphan? And there may be orphans who are billionaires.

I was really troubled about what poor Jesus is going to do, because anybody who has lost his parents is an orphan, and everybody is going to lose his parents sooner or later. It is only a question of when you are going to become an orphan; you are potentially an orphan, the whole world is an orphan. Then I started thinking, My God! If the whole world is going to inherit the kingdom of God, what about the poor? Who will listen to those poor? When the orphans are just marching ahead –

”Blessed are the orphans” – the poor no longer have any chance.

Isn’t this the state interfering in religion? If the attorney general has any of the dignity of a human being he should declare the whole of America illegal! What business is it of the government to write sermons for the priests to use to indoctrinate the minds of orphans? And it is very partial: it is sent only to the Catholic institutions. Jews are also living here, people of other religions are also living here – and most of all, the greatest majority, Rajneeshees, are living here. We have not been sent those sermons. This government, and the people who run such governments – are they in their right senses?

There was other news. A poisonous gas which was being prepared and preserved in millions of barrels for the third world war is out-of-date. Now a better killer, another poisonous gas, has been found, so all those millions of barrels have to be disposed of. Where to dispose of them?

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Now they are being disposed of in America in deserted places, underground. But how long do you think you can go on doing that? Soon many of your atom bombs will be out-of-date; they are already out-of-date. Soon, many of your nuclear weapons will be out-of-date. Where are you going to dispose of all this that you have created? – either in the ocean or in the earth, but in both ways it is going to backfire. Perhaps there will be no need for a third world war: Russia will be in the same position; they will have to dispose of out-of-date weapons.

You cannot go on accumulating garbage which is of no use now because you have better things.

Russia has better, so you have to create better; then you create better and Russia has to dispose of its old stock. These governments are interfering in people’s lives, in the whole of humanity’s life –

and yet they are legal.

Here there is no sermon. Certainly my talks cannot be called sermons. You can call them anti-sermons – no, ant-eye-sermons. What religion do they think is here which is interfering with the state? And what state is there? In the first place we are not a religion defined by any dictionary in the whole world. We will have to create our own dictionary, our own definitions.

And what state is there? Just a city council, which has to take care of the roads, of cleanliness, of the houses, of the hospital. How is religion going to interfere with the roads? I have tried hard but cannot figure it out: how to mix religion with roads? How to mix religion with houses? How to mix religion with hospitals, with medicines, with injections? They should give us some clue as to how they do it. No religious priest goes to the hospital to bore the patients there.

There is nobody orphaned here because we don’t believe in the family. My people are the only people who are immune to orphanhood; they cannot become orphans. We don’t believe in the family, we believe in the commune – and the commune never dies; you will always have your uncles and your aunts. People will be coming and going, but the commune.... And the commune is our family.

When the father dies, the Indian custom is that the eldest son should put fire to the body when it is placed on the funeral pyre. When my father died, I was asked – Laxmi asked me – ”What to do? –

because Indian sannyasins are saying that Osho has to put fire to the body.” I said, ”But he was my disciple. A long time ago he used to be my father, I used to be his son; but that has changed. And in this commune nobody is father, nobody is mother; here are only uncles and aunts. We have dropped the idea, the whole idea of daddy and mummy!” I proceed logically. I may look mad to you, but I have my methods. I dropped God because that is the great daddy. Now I will knock off the smaller daddies. I have to knock off somebody or other.

The great daddy is no longer there, the great mom is no longer there; now, finish with the smaller ones also.

The Jewish God says, ”I am not nice, I am not your uncle. I am a very jealous and angry God.” I have kept this sentence very close to my heart for the simple reason that it says, ”I am not your uncle.” I want to create a commune – and I am creating it – where only uncles and aunts exist. That finishes the very root of all religious nonsense. God is nothing but your dad magnified a millionfold.

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There are religions who believe in the mother goddess: they have magnified the mother. But these are just enlargement photographs. You can burn them very easily; and when you burn them then you will have to come to your real dad, your real mom. I am not saying to burn them alive. I am saying that as far as your psychology is concerned, there should be no place for your dad or for your mom.

It is not being disrespectful towards them. Basically you hate them. There is no boy who has not hated his father, and if you dig deep you will find that hatred still. There is no girl who has not hated her mother.

Every boy has been in a love affair with his mother – of course, it was not actually possible. But every boy loves his mother and hates his father because he is the competitor. Every girl loves her father and hates her mother because she is a competitor and more powerful. The girl wants to monopolize the father, the boy wants to monopolize the mother.

One of my young sannyasins, who is just two-and-a-half years old, has been hearing my tapes, and his father and mother talking about them. He seems to be a really intelligent person. He is Dutch. He went to Sheela because he wanted an appointment with me; in Dutch he asked for an appointment and somebody translated it. Sheela said, ”It is difficult.” He took up the phone angrily, not knowing how to phone, or whether I have a phone or not, or what my number is. He just said, ”Osho!” and in Dutch he started to make an appointment. His mother wrote me a letter a few days ago: ”What to do with your young sannyasin, because he says, ’I want to make love to you just as my father makes love to you.”’ They must be making love in front of him

– and that’s perfectly right, that’s how it should be. That’s how the child should learn one of the most significant things in life. He will not ever feel guilty, and he will not hide it as if he is doing something wrong. So they must be making love in front of the child.

And the child must have heard this idea so he said to his mother, ”Osho says that every boy loves the mother. I love you, and I want to make love exactly as my father does.” His mother sent me a letter: ”What to do now? You are creating such troubles. First you suggested the idea that children should be allowed to be there when the parents are making love, so we allowed him. Now he wants to make love to me; and he is very persistent, and very stubborn!” But whether any child says it or not, it is there in every child’s mind. If the child is a boy, the mother is the object of love; if the child is a girl, the father is the object of love. And while this remains inside you, you will never be able to love somebody. No woman can be a replica of your mother. Existence does not create the same carbon copies again and again. Any woman that you meet is going to be different from your mother, and that is the trouble. Because she is different and you don’t find your mother in her, trouble arises.

And from her side the woman finds you are not the person she really wants; you are not her father.

Something may have been similar to her father in you and something similar to your mother in her which attracted you, so you got together. But that something – very small – which was similar will soon be shattered with your whole personalities coming together.

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to the mother, that he has to remain in the womb for his whole life: he would kill the mother. Coming out of the womb does not mean disrespect. One day he stops drinking milk from her breast. That does not mean that he is turning his back on her, that he no longer cares about her. He is becoming independent. No, that’s how it should be: these are outer bondages that he is breaking.

But inner bondages continue to the very last. Inner bondages have also to be broken. And the strangest experience is: the moment you are finished with your inner world, with mom and dad, for the first time you can respect them and love them as human beings. You can feel sad and sorry for them because they have missed everything. What have they got?

They came into life but they have not experienced life; and death is approaching or has already taken them. They died before they were born. They are dying before their birth seems to be possible. You may feel compassionate, you may feel loving, you may feel sad for them; you may do something to help them, but this is possible only when you are completely free.

I don’t have any sermons to be sent to the orphans because I don’t have orphans here. The word is ugly. When there are so many people to be loving to you, why should you be an orphan? The whole commune can father you and mother you – why should you be orphans?

A society which creates orphans is basically wrong because it is based on a very small unit, the family. The unit is so small that sooner or later everybody is going to become an orphan. The unit should be so big that whatsoever happens, nobody ever becomes an orphan.

I am taking your God away from you. I am taking your mothers and fathers away from you.

How can I mix religion?

I am taking all religion out of you – the religion that you have been acquainted with.

In courts you have to take the oath in the name of God, or by putting your hand on the BIBLE. And these courts are not mixing religion with law? Even courts – which are supposed to be protecting legality and law – are doing such illegal things, and the governments go on using every possible way to exploit religion.

This polack pope has been in office for just two years, but in two years he has had two dozen round-the-world tours. There is a joke now in the Vatican: ”We have heard God is everywhere, but our pope has already been there before.” One journalist, who has been accompanying him on all these tours, became so fed up with the whole strategy and exploitation in the name of religion that he has written an article against the pope going around the world so much. In two years the pope has been around the world twenty-four times; he is taking almost one round trip every month. He was just getting ready to go when the article appeared.

In his article the journalist says, ”Jesus never went anywhere. The poor fellow simply went to Jerusalem and was crucified! That’s how he was received by the powerful. And his representative, the pope, goes around the world and is received by the powerful everywhere, with red carpets and roses. There seems to be something strange: Jesus was received with crucifixion, and his salesman, the salesman’s salesman, is being received with so much glamor. All these redcarpet welcomes! It is not in tune with Jesus.” That’s what the journalist wrote.

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Because he wrote this article he has been dropped from the coming world tour of the pope; that journalist cannot go with the pope. On these twenty-four tours he was there, but now, because he has spoken the truth for the first time....

You speak the truth and you are in trouble.

Our whole trouble, our whole commune’s trouble, is simple. Those people write on their dollar: We trust in God. On the dollar! Who is mixing religion with state? You are mixing religion even with the dirty dollar! In front of the Supreme Court it is written: We trust in God. If someday I happen to be in the Supreme Court – it is very possible, I may manage it – then I am going to ask them, ”Where is God? And on what authority have you written this? And if at the very gate there is a lie, you cannot ask me to take the oath for truth. Rather, ask me to take the oath to only speak lies and not truth”

– because the greatest lie is there, just at the gate of the Supreme Court. On every dollar bill is the great lie: We trust in God.

These people go on mixing religion in every way; but they are legal, right. I don’t have any way to mix my religion with anything, it is so unmixable. This is the only legal city in the whole world. If mixing religion makes a city illegal then all the cities of the world are illegal because everywhere religion is mixed. This is the only place where religion is not mixed at all.

Religion, in fact, does not exist here at all.

What exists is a totally different thing:

Religiousness.

And that is a fragrance.

You cannot name it.

You cannot make a holy scripture out of it.

I know that I do not know myself but this is what is meant by ”knowing thyself” This experience of coming to utter innocence is what Socrates means by ”knowing thyself.” But all words are dangerous. You have to be very alert and careful when you are using words; hence, I used the words:

I am innocent of myself.

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CHAPTER 29

Belief – just a blind man’s bluff

27 January 1985 pm in Lao Tzu Grove

Question 1

OSHO,

IS THE THEORY OF REINCARNATION NOT TRUE?

I do not deal in theories. I am a simple man, not a theoretician.

A theoretician is a great thinker. He knows nothing about reality, but he goes on creating theories about it. His whole life he goes around and around. That’s the actual meaning of the word about. A theory is always about and about; and the truth, the reality, is just at the center, it is never around.

But the theoretician is skilled in beating around the bush.

The moment you ask me, ”Is the theory of reincarnation not true?” your question says many things to me. First: you want my support for your belief.

Belief is always in need of support.

Truth is never in need of any support:

It is enough unto itself.

Truth needs no evidence, no witnesses.

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Even if the whole world is against the man of truth, he will not care at all – because truth is not something that depends on the number of people who support it. A single man may be right, and the whole world may be wrong. Truth is not something political, that you have to vote for it.

Your question is indicative that you believe in the theory of reincarnation. Belief is always shaky, afraid, because deep down you are aware that you don’t know: it may be right, it may not be. You would like somebody in whom you have some kind of trust to support your theory, your belief. From that space comes your question.

You love me, you trust me. If I can say to you, yes, it is true, then it is as if a blood transfusion is given to somebody who has lost too much blood: your theory, your belief starts appearing stronger, more stable. You don’t know but at least somebody who knows is supporting it, and you trust that somebody; he cannot lie.

I don’t want you to trust me in that way.

Give your love to me but don’t trust me.

The moment you start trusting somebody else, you stop enquiring on your own. And I would not like you to stop your own individual enquiry. Loving is perfectly good because you are sharing something, but in the name of trust you are really deceiving yourself.

For thousands of years this is how man has been deceived and exploited. I want to destroy that whole strategy at its very roots.

Trust only your own experience.

It does not matter whether I say yes or no.

What matters is whether you have experienced it or not.

That is going to be decisive, that is going to transform your life.

There are three religions – Judaism, Christianity, Mohammedanism – which have taken a negative stand on the theory of reincarnation. They say it is not true. This is a negative belief Remember that belief can be either negative or positive, but it does not change its nature. This is a negative belief.

These three religions are under the influence of a negative belief that there is no reincarnation.

Parallel to these three there are three religions – Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism – which have taken a positive attitude. They say yes, reincarnation is a reality. But that is also a belief a positive belief.

My approach is a third one which has not been tried up to now, and which I say is the right approach.

I say to you: accept the theory as hypothetical, neither saying yes nor saying no. Accepting it as hypothetical means, ”I am ready to enquire into it with no prejudice, positive or negative. I am ready to go into it without any preconceived idea, to see what is the truth.” Religions have not used the word hypothesis at all. Either you are a believer or you are a non-believer. The non-believer is also a believer, only negatively. They are not qualitatively different, From Personality to Individuality

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they are the same type of people. And what happens when you take a negative belief or a positive belief is that your mind has already decided; before knowing, before experiencing, you have already decided what the truth is. This I call insincere, dishonest. And once you accept something negatively or positively, it is a capacity of the mind to create the hallucination of your belief.

You can see it. In Mohammedans, in Christians, in Jews, you will not find children born who remember their past lives. But in Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism you will always find, almost every day, somewhere, some child who remembers his past lives. People have tried to see whether his remembrance has any facts behind it or if it is just imagination. And so many cases have been found in which the facts were clearly in support of it.

For example, I myself was deeply involved with such a case. A girl born in Katni – a small city eighty miles away from Jabalpur – remembered that she had been the wife of a certain man who lived in Jabalpur who owned a garage: his name, his age, where his house was, and where his garage was.

Now this man, Ramakant Parakh was his name, lived just four or five houses away from me. That’s how I became involved in the whole thing.

One day he came running to me. He said, ”A phone call has come from Katni that a girl remembers that she was my wife. My wife has certainly died, and the dates coincide exactly with the date the girl was born. In the evening she was born, and in the morning my wife had died. She remembers my name, she remembers my job, my house, my work. What do you think? What should I do?” I said, ”Just come along with me. We will go to Katni. It is not far away, it is just a two-hour drive, and it is better to go without announcing ourselves. You are not to say that you are Ramakant Parakh; I will say I am Ramakant Parakh, and that I own the garage.” I said to them, ”I am Ramakant Parakh,” and immediately the girl recognized me as her husband.

Then I told the parents, ”Don’t try to take advantage of a belief in Hinduism. I am not Ramakant Parakh; I don’t own any garage. I don’t have any wife, so the question of her death does not arise.

This man is Ramakant Parakh. His wife has died, and you must have known when. Please tell me exactly the truth; otherwise I am going to the police. And you will be in trouble because your daughter has recognized me. She knows nothing about who Ramakant Parakh is. It is not even certain that this is Ramakant Parakh; only I am saying so. So don’t think that you can change your mind in the police station and say that this man is Ramakant Parakh. You tell me exactly what you were trying to do.”

Her father became very much afraid and told the whole story of how he had prepared the girl. One of his friends had suggested this name, and the date, because he knew Ramakant Parakh. He was going to bring the photo of Ramakant Parakh, and then we were going to Jabalpur with the girl, with the media people, so she could recognize the house. My friend was going to give us all information because he knows everything about Ramakant Parakh – his wife, his house, his garage. Then the girl was to go inside the house and find things that she used to keep. Then she was going to go and find the garage, and show the car that she used to love.

”Please forgive me,” he said. ”We were just creating a business.” In India, once a reincarnation is established, then the girl becomes almost a goddess, and people start worshipping her, bringing money, and bringing sweets and fruits: it is a great business. And he was a brahmin, and the thing would be managed perfectly well.

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If this man, Ramakant, had not come to a wrong man like me, he would have been befooled perfectly.

Once the girl had seen the picture, then she would have found the man in a crowd of hundreds of people. And behind the whole thing was a friend of Rarnakant’s himself I said, ”What was he going to gain?”

The man said, ”Half-half, fifty-fifty.”

In India it happens almost every day, in one place, in another place, that there is a child who remembers; and immediately you have a business without any investment or publicity. And no Hindu, no Buddhist, no Jaina is going to enquire into it really because they are afraid their theory may prove wrong. They are ready to support it.

You will be surprised that when I exposed it and gave a statement to the newspapers that this was all a bogus thing, the brahmins and the Jainas approached me, their leaders approached me; they knew me perfectly well. They said, ”You should not have done that. What does it matter if that poor brahmin gets a little money out of this? That is not important. The important thing is our theory, our philosophy. Just to expose a single case of fraud does not mean that the theory is wrong.” I said, ”Yes, it does not mean that, so why are you worried? You can still believe in your theory, and if I find anybody else, I am going to expose him too. That too does not mean... hundreds of people can be exposed and still it does not destroy the theory. Perhaps all these people are frauds; that does not mean that reincarnation is wrong. But why have you come to me if it does not mean that reincarnation is wrong? I am not saying it is wrong; all that I have said was that this man was trying to exploit the superstition, the belief of the whole country.” Now you cannot do that in a Mohammedan country. You cannot even think of it.

One young boy – perhaps Vivek was there – was brought to Woodlands where I used to live in Bombay. He was not more than nine years old, and he was giving sermons on the SHRIMAD

BHAGAVADGITA, the UPANISHADS. I was giving talks on Mahavira in Patkar hall in Bombay. There the father of the boy and the boy himself had come to listen to me. Listening to me, the father thought that if he brought the boy to me, and if I gave him some support, then in Bombay also his boy could be a celebrity.

And the boy was an instant success everywhere, naturally, because you cannot expect that a nine-year old boy can even understand the GITA, or the UPANISHADS; and he was quoting from them in pure Sanskrit, commenting on them. So he was introduced to me there, after the meeting, and I told them to come to my place.

I told the father, ”In a way you have come to the wrong person. I can see you have destroyed this small boy’s whole mind. This is nothing but a deep experiment in hypnotism. You have been hypnotizing the boy and repeating the shlokas. And in a hypnotic state the age does not matter: whatsoever is repeated by the hypnotist is simply recorded; it is not a question of memorizing it.

So you have been repeating to this boy, when he is under hypnosis, all these sutras, all these commentaries; nothing is new in them” – because when they came I told the boy to sit on the sofa and start one of his sermons.

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I said, ”The ten-minute one.”

He immediately sat in a lotus posture – he looked beautiful, a very nice child – and he started a ten-minute sermon. I listened to him, and I told his father, ”Not a single word is original. It has all been written before. You have been repeating it to the boy while he has been in hypnotic sleep, and you have prepared him.” The boy was after all a boy, so when I asked him to start, he asked ”Which one?” His father had prepared him because sometimes there was time only for ten minutes in a big conference, so he used the ten-minute sermon; the thirty-minute if they had more time, and if they had the full time, then the sixty-minute.

I said to the boy, ”Can you give me a sermon of only three minutes?” He said, ”Three minutes? But I don’t know a three-minute sermon. I know only three sermons: ten minutes, thirty minutes, and sixty minutes. I don’t know any other.” He repeated, in a beautiful way – and it looked great coming from a nine-year-old child – Upanishadic sutras, their meaning, commentaries.

But I told the father, ”What you have done is good business; you are doing good business, but you are destroying this child’s intelligence. His whole life he will be a zombie. Withdraw all that you have forced into his mind. Hypnotize him and tell him to forget all that you have taught him.” The father was in shock. He said, ”It is strange: how could you discover it so quickly? I have been traveling around the whole world; I earned thousands of rupees, and respect, and publicity everywhere. He has even been invited by the president of India so the president could listen to the boy’s sermon in the president’s house. And when the president was listening then all the M.P.’s and the ministers and others were bound to be present. The president himself garlanded him and gave him a gold medal. And you are shattering the whole thing.

”I said, ”I am shattering the whole thing because I am not concerned with your business, I am concerned with this child’s whole life. He is an intelligent child, more intelligent than average. He has a great future, a destiny of his own. Do you want him just to go on doing ten-minute, thirty-minute and sixty-minute sermons? And do you remember what happens to such children?” In India so many girls and boys, when they are small, are worshipped. Naturally, hearing from a nine-year-old child such beautiful discourses impresses people. But these children are not going to remain nine years old always. The same sermon when the child is thirty will look idiotic. Who is going to listen?

”Can you tell me where all these children disappear to? Every year you will hear somewhere some child expounding great theories. Then what happens when they grow up? Then nobody bothers about them because what they are saying is not a miracle for a thirty-year-old man to say. It may be a mirade for a six-year-old child, a five-year-old child. Your child will also go the same way.

”But for thirty years, remaining in a kind of zombie state, repeating something which has been taught under hypnosis, is dangerous. It is keeping him addicted to a certain drug. And if for thirty years he has been in that drugged state, he will come out mediocre, stupid. And what do you want to prove through it? Reincarnation? – that this is a proof of reincarnation?” From Personality to Individuality

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A nine-year-old child is not capable of understanding or memorizing such long passages. So they say it is from his past life when he was a scholar, a great scholar, and still that memory persists, that memory is revived. This proves reincarnation, they say. So it is a double business: for his sermons he is earning money and for his reincarnation he is earning.

I said, ”Go back home” – he was from Ujjain” – and get this child back to normal. Don’t exploit your own child.”

I knew he was not going to do it, although he said, ”I will try.” I said, ”I don’t believe that you will try – you have so much invested in the whole thing.” And he did not stop it. I went on enquiring from my friends in Ujjain: the show is going on. To every fair and every religious conference the child is brought. It continues, and he is earning a lot of money.

But you cannot do that in a Christian country, in ”Jewish community, in a Mohammedan land, because they have accepted that this kind of thing is absolutely unreal.

As far as I am concerned, reincarnation is a reality It is my own experience.

But what is truth to me becomes theory to you.

That is the difficulty.

And I don’t want my truth to be your theory.

I want it to be a truth for you also.

That’s why I said:

I don’t deal in theories, in beliefs.

My profession is truth.

That reminds me of Socrates, who used for the first time ”profession” for truth; otherwise you don’t use the word profession for truth. When he was sentenced to death by the court they gave him a few alternatives because he was a man of such superior intelligence; even those who were against him were not happy that he should be killed. He was the pride of Athens. Without Socrates what would Athens be? They gave him some alternatives. They said, ”If you stop speaking the truth, if you completely stop teach ing people, you can be saved.” Socrates said, ”That is impossible. It is my profession to speak the truth and to teach the truth. This is not an alternative. I would rather be dead than drop my profession. At least nobody will be able to say that Socrates was a coward: just to save his life he sold his truth.” They said, ”Then the second alternative is that you leave Athens.” Greece, in those days, was divided into city democracies; each city was an independent democracy. ”So if you go beyond the From Personality to Individuality

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boundaries of Athens, we have no problem. You can have your school anywhere. Your students can go there, and you can continue your profession.”

Socrates said, ”Do you want me to face another trial somewhere else? One is enough. And if Athens, which is the pinnacle of Greek civilization, is not able to understand me and absorb me, who is going to understand me and absorb me? And what will Athens be without me? I will miss Athens, Athens will miss me. No, that is not going to be my way. I have made Athens what Athens is.”

And he was really right. He had not made the buildings and the roads, but if Athens still lives in the memory of man, it is because of Socrates and his disciples. Plato was his disciple, Aristotle was Plato’s disciple; and these three men are the very cream of the Athenian culture, civilization, genius.

Plato and Aristotle don’t come anywhere near Socrates; the Master is really incomparable. Plato is a great philosopher, and in the history of philosophy Plato is more important, because Socrates never wrote anything.

This is something to be understood: the people who have known truth have chosen to speak rather than to write. All over the world – it cannot be just coincidence – in all the centuries, all over the world, they have chosen to speak. There is some fundamental significance in it. They all know the word cannot convey the truth, but the spoken word at least can have something alive in it.

The gesture of the Master, the eyes of the Master – something of the Master is bound to be moving with the word, like an aroma, a fragrance which you cannot catch hold of, you cannot pinpoint. But the spoken word has a totally different dimension than the written word. The same word written is just a corpse of the same man who was alive.

The written word is like a corpse, and the spoken word is throbbing with life – at least for the moment when somebody is there to listen to it. Between the listener and the speaker, for a moment, there is an alive vibration. The word is not alone: the gesture, the eyes, the voice, the depth from where it is coming.... On a flat piece of paper where will you find the depth? In ink where will you find the eyes, the gestures, the sound? It will be just dead. It will be the same word but the fire will not be in it. It will be a candle without flame. But the candle is not important; what is important is the alive flame.

But historians have missed, for the simple reason that Plato’s books are available, the evidence is there; Aristotle’s books are there, the evidence is there. The spoken word was alive, lived and danced, and disappeared. Socrates is remembered only because Plato mentions him and records his dialogues. How much is Socrates in it and how much is Plato is difficult to say because there is no way to judge; there is nothing which Socrates has left. But I know perfectly well because there have been other disciples of Socrates who also wrote notes, and all those notes are different.

Plato’s are the most famous because he was really a great writer. The other disciples were simply taking notes, class notes. But I have looked into those class notes, and I can say with certainty that ninety percent in Plato is his imagination. He is imaginative and creative. Something of Socrates is there but it is very difficult to find where: it is mixed too much with Plato. But Plato is important.

Socrates is almost mythological. There are many people who think that Socrates never existed, that he was just a character in Plato’s dialogues. In the same way Gurdjieff used to say that Jesus never existed; he was only part of a drama which was played every year in Jerusalem.

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It is difficult to prove that Jesus was really a historical person because except for those four gospels

– which were written by his own disciples – there is no reference to Jesus in any Jewish literature, no reference in any contemporary scripture, on any stones, on buildings, nowhere at all in any Roman records. If a man is crucified, at least there must be a record that a man is crucified. And if you are going to crucify a man like Jesus, at least you owe him a record. But no record is there. And the poor four disciples – none of them is of the quality of Plato. Nor is Jesus of the quality of Socrates.

Socrates is a giant, a Himalayan giant. His every word is immensely meaningful. He said, ”I am not going to leave Athens. Without me, what will Athens be? You kill me – that will make Athens immortal.” And those idiots could not understand what he was saying. He was speaking the truth: it is because Socrates was poisoned in Athens by Athenian people that Athens has become immortal.

But I remembered him because he was the first man who used the word profession for truth: ”I am not going to leave my profession.” In fact, even if he had wanted to he could not have left it.

It is not within the capacity of a man who has arrived to stop the process of spreading what he has attained.

I say: to me, reincarnation is a truth. But I am not telling you to believe in my experience, because by believing it is not going to become your experience, nor is it going to help you in any way to experience it; on the contrary it will be a hindrance for you to experience it. If you believe in what I say then there is no need to enquire.

Religious truth, subjective truth, is different from obJective truth, scientific truth.

Albert Einstein finds out a certain truth about physics. Now, everybody need not go through the whole enquiry again – that would be stupid. What Albert Einstein had to work on for years, you can do in hours. It depends on your intelligence; you may even get hold of it within minutes. There is no need for you to search.

Edison worked for three years to make the first electric bulb. Now, if everyone is going to work for three years to produce one electric bulb, it would be stupid. Bulbs are available in the market.

Nobody ever thinks that there was a concentrated enquiry for three years.... And Edison was working sixteen hours a day, eighteen hours a day, late in the night. I am reminded of the last night when he discovered it.

You can understand his ecstasy: three years of arduous work and finally the bulb is there. The light has come on. He was sitting there, dazed; he could not believe it. Although he had been working for three years, hoping that someday he was going to find the right clue.... If this due failed, he would try another: he went on trying, went on trying. His disciples got fed up and left him; only his wife remained with him. She loved the poor man and she felt sorry for him. She used to suggest to him,

”Stop this nonsense. You are so capable of making so many things.” Edison has discovered the greatest number of things in the whole history of man – he has one thousand discoveries to his name. His wife was saying, ”Wasting your whole life doesn’t seem rational. In three years you could have worked on many more things. Three years are just gone and you are becoming old: in three years you look as if you have aged thirty years.” But she remained with him.

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That last night, the night when he discovered it – he discovered it nearabout twelve – Edison was so dazed with his own discovery, in such ecstasy, that it was three o’clock in the morning when his wife shouted, ”Will you put that light out” – she had no idea what light was there – ”and come to bed, or...!”

Then he realized it was three o’ clock. He rushed to his wife and said, ”First, come and see the light.” She said, ”Put the light out!”she was thinking of the lamp that he used to work by.

Edison said, ”It is not the lamp that I used to turn on and off; it is the light that I have been working on for three years – and you say to me,’Put the light out’! Just for a moment come and see that it has happened.”

You don’t have to work for three years just to make a light bulb. You don’t have to work for years to make a radio. No, in science it is objective truth. Once the principles of something are known, then anybody can make it in a very short period. In fact there is no need to make it, it is being manufactured.

But the subjective truth cannot be manufactured – although the priests have tried exactly that. What are their holy scriptures? – they have tried to manufacture truth. They have tried to put truth into words. They have tried to sell the holy books: ”You have the BIBLE and what more did Jesus have?

Just keep those four gospels close to your heart, and that’s enough.” Jesus of course had them a little closer to his heart, behind his ribs; your BIBLE will be just in front of the ribs – but a difference of a few inches does not make much difference. Or if you are really a Jesus freak, you can have an operation and have the BIBLE sewed to your heart, your lungs, and declare yourself Jesus Christ – because these are the words he had in his heart; you have them now. That’s what thousands of Christian priests are doing around the world, these Bible-bashing Christians. One feels a little sorry for poor Jesus. And what are they doing to his BIBLE? Bashing!

And why they are bashing it?

One of my vice-chancellors was a great law expert – Doctor Harisingh Gaud. He was a world authority. I don’t think there has been another man again of his caliber and fame in the world of law. He had one office in Peking, another in New Delhi, and another in London, and he was just continually moving from this office to that office. He was fighting cases in China, in India, in England, and in other countries. Wherever there was some case that was impossible to deal with, he was the man.

He used to say in his law classes, which I used to attend.... I was not a law student, but he loved me, and he even waited for me. If sometimes I was late he would say to his students, ”Just wait: one of my students is on the way. He will be coming because I can hear his wooden sandals. He is coming in just a few minutes.”

And his students were really angry; they said, ”He is not even enrolled in the law department and you pay him more respect than you even bother to pay us.” He said, ”You will not understand it – you just try to understand law. But that young man is trying something totally different, that you cannot understand. He is continually trying to find out if law is nothing but an extension of logic. And I am interested in his enquiry; I want to wait for him.” From Personality to Individuality

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He used to say to his students, ”When you have a case which is absolutely favorable – the facts are with you, the case is going to be won by you absolutely – then be very humble before the court, very polite, just suggestive. Bring out all the facts, but don’t be aggressive; there is no need, the facts are enough.

”But when you don’t have a case which you are sure to win and you are hesitant – it is a fifty-fifty chance – then don’t be humble, don’t be meek. Bring as many law books as you can bring into the court, with quotations from laws and from other cases and other precedents. Facts you don’t have, so you have to create a great smoke of words, and laws, and precedents, and clauses, and amendments. You have to create so much legal jargon that the facts are completely hidden behind the cloud.

”But if you are one hundred percent certain that you are going to lose the case, because all the facts are against you, all the witnesses are against you – your client has been caught red-handed – then be aggressive, violent. Throw the law books, bash the books and beat the table. Be a nuisance –

less than that won’t do. You don’t have any chance unless you are so violent and so aggressive, throwing the books and laws around and bashing them, that you create a confusion. Perhaps that may help.

”Just confuse the court, and let the court know.... If a man is so assertive and so violent and so certain, then there must be something in it, that he is so bravely facing them; otherwise.... So create the suspicion, the doubt, and take advantage of the doubt.” These Bible-bashing people are simply trying to be assertive, aggressive. Facts are not in their favor; facts are never in your favor when you believe in something. Only when you experience something is there no need to be so aggressive. Then you can talk with a sense of humor.

Then you need not throw out a rabbi because of a very healthy and hygienic clean joke. And it is more puzzling that the council of the rabbis.... I could have understood it if the Catholics had expelled some bishop or cardinal or even the pope, but I don’t understand the rabbis because they have the most beautiful jokes in the world. There is no comparison; they have the best sense of humor. But England is such a dump! – even Jewish rabbis have lost their sense of humor Just a few days ago a bishop was expelled. Perhaps the Jews are trying to compete – now a rabbi has to be expelled. Nobody wants to be behind anybody else: If you can do that, we can also do it.

But that bishop was certainly responsible for saying something which is destructive to Christianity. I am not saying that he should be expelled, but what he said was certainly dangerous to Christianity.

I would have supported him if I were the archbishop, and I would have told all other bishops to follow him.

He should not be expelled; he should be exalted, praised, because at least once in two thousand years, one bishop has spoken the truth – half the truth, not the full truth. But even to speak half the truth needs courage. But this poor rabbi has done nothing at all! And this is really a shame, that a rabbi should be expelled for telling a joke. Jews have survived just because of their sense of humor. There was nothing else to support them. They lost their country, they lost everything; in every country they were persecuted, killed, murdered. But they have certainly proved that they have some mettle, that you cannot destroy them.

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And what has been their power? As far as I can see their power has been their sense of humor.

Even in the greatest misery they could joke and laugh. I can see, even in gas chambers, before the switch was turned on the Jews must have been joking. And it was a beautiful scene, worth joking about. This Adolf Hitler was mad, but he did some really humorous things.

Before sending anybody to the gas chamber he used to shave them completely. Most of the rabbis had beards; they were shaved of all their hair. Strange; why was he against hair? They were forced to be naked, and then they were told that they were going to have a shower. The gas chamber was known as ”the great shower.” Of course, nobody returned from the great shower, so nobody could say what happened inside. But every day the people who went were told, ”Now you take a shower.” So, naked and completely shaved, thousands of Jews, including hundreds of rabbis, went inside.

What do you think they would have been doing there? Before the switch was turned on and they all evaporated, they must have been joking and laughing. They could survive in a very antagonistic world for the simple reason that they never lost their sense of humor. Howsoever great the misery and the anguish, they were able to laugh.

This is the first case in the whole history of Judaism where a rabbi has been expelled for telling a joke which is not dirty at all. In fact no joke is dirty. The jokes which are called dirty are called dirty because first you think sex is dirty. It is a corollary: because sex is dirty, any joke that has something to do with sex becomes dirty. Now, it is very strange: you are born out of sex, and you are not dirty.

According to Christians, you are. You are born out of original sin; that is their way of saying utterly dirty, ultimately dirty. There is no way to clean you – even dry cleaning won’t help.

Dry cleaning reminds me that one man was washing his cat with soap. The cat was trying to run away, and he was forcing her to keep still. Somebody passing by looked in and said, ”What are you doing? Such an old-fashioned fellow! This way the cat will make the whole house and all your clothes wet. These days you can get a dry cleaner.” He said, ”That’s a good idea. I’ll use a dry cleaner.” Next day the passerby met him and said, ”How are things going?” He said, ”Things are really bad – the cat died.”

The man said, ”The cat died? What happened?”

He said, ”She was fine after the dry cleaning, but the tumble-dryer finished her.” He had gone ultramodern: he bought a dry-cleaner and a drying machine!

Once you have accepted that sex is dirty then there is no way to have anything clean in the world, because everything arises out of the same sexual energy. Then the birds calling their mates are dirty – expel them from existence. The peacocks dancing to attract the female – expel them, they are being really dirty fellows. And what a dirty trick to spread your tail so colorfully. The poor female is bound to be attracted to these really dirty fellows doing their tricks. If you expel sex from the world, life is expelled.

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No joke is dirty. By expelling that rabbi, the council of the rabbis in England has proved only one thing: that they are dirty old fellows. It shows their mind.

A psychoanalyst was checking a patient. He drew a line on the paper and asked, ”Just look, concentrate on the line. What does it remind you of?” He said, ”Of a beautiful woman.”

The psychiatrist said, ”We are on the right track.” He drew a triangle and again he asked, ”Now concentrate.”

The patient said, ”There is no need to concentrate – it reminds me of a very beautiful woman.” The psychiatrist said, ”Strange.” He drew a round circle, and he said, ”Now...?” The psychiatrist was shocked because the patient said, ”Your mind is full of sex and nothing else –

continually drawing naked women, this way, that way, this way. Can’t you draw anything else?” That fellow thinks that the psychiatrist’s mind is so full of sex!

These rabbis and their council – they must have been really sex-obsessed.

All these people have been telling you what is right, what is wrong, what is true, what is untrue; and you have been believing them. This believing has brought the whole of humanity to this mess. My effort is to completely stop the process of believing. You are not to believe in me. If I say that this is the truth that I have experienced, all that you have to do is to take it as a hypothesis and try it.

There are ways to remember your past lives, simple methods to remember your past lives. There is no need to believe. We have the rebirthing process – just go a little deeper. When you have reached to the point of birth, the same process has to be followed You will come to the point of impregnation.

Continue the same process and you will come to your death in the past life. Go on, and you will be surprised that all that has happened to you in millions of lives is still contained in the deep reservoirs of your memory. In your collective unconscious nothing has ever been missed out.

Even when you are not paying attention to some thing, your collective unconscious is collecting it.

Now they call it subliminal memory, and they are using it in a few countries. In some countries it has been banned, but nobody knows... because even if you ban it, it can be used: you go to see a movie, and in the movie they can use subliminal advertisements. Just in between two frames, a dozen times during the film, the word ”Coca-Cola” appears, but it comes and goes so fast that you can’t see it with your eyes; you don’t see it.

If you have seen a movie you will know how the movie film functions. All the pictures are still. For example, I raise my hand: in the film there will be hundreds of pictures – one position, another position, another position.

Just raising this hand means hundreds of still pictures of different positions, and they are moving so fast that you don’t see them as separate, static pictures. The pictures move so fast that you can see the hand moving, but not the still pictures of different postures of the hand.

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If you wind the film slowly you will be able to see. Just in the gap in between two pictures of the hands moving – and they are moving so fast that you cannot see the gap – is put ”Coca-Cola,” perhaps twelve times in the whole film. You will not be able to remember that you have seen it, but that day outside the movie house sales of Coca-Cola will be doubled, trebled.

There is an average for how much is sold every day, but on that day treble the number is sold. What happened? Your unconscious mind goes on collecting even those things which your eyes are not seeing, your ears are not hearing, your body is not feeling.

You will be surprised. If you are hypnotized and you are asked what happened on the first of January 1971, from the very early morning when you got up, to the end when you went to bed again, consciously you will say, ”The first of January’71? – I don’t remember.” Who remembers the first of January’71, unless something very important happened: your mother died, your father died, you got divorced from your wife or something. Ordinarily, if it was a usual day you cannot remember it, but if you are put into hypnosis – and it is a very simple affair to put you into hypnosis.

You just have to be told to look at any shining thing, hanging above your head, to relax your body, and go on looking at it without blinking your eyes. And the person who is hypnotizing you will go on saying, ”You are falling asleep. Your eyes are becoming heavy, heavy, heavy, heavier, heavier.” And you will start feeling your lids becoming heavier, but you have to keep them open as long as you can. You are not to close them, he is not telling you to close them. You have been instructed to keep them open to the very last. So you are trying hard, and the eyes go on becoming heavier and heavier, and you start feeling that the body is becoming numb.

The hypnotist goes on saying, ”Your whole body is numb. You cannot even move your hand if you want, you cannot move your leg if you want: your body has become almost a stone,” and your eyes are just about to close. You make a last effort, just as a drowning man makes his last effort for help, and then drowns and is gone. You can see that now you cannot keep your eyes open, they are really heavy; stones are hanging from your eyelids.

This takes not more than three minutes; you fall asleep. But the difference between ordinary sleep and hypnosis is that in ordinary sleep you are oblivious of everything around you. In hypnosis, you are available to the hypnotist and oblivious of everything else. If somebody else says something, you won’t listen; even if he calls your name, you won’t answer. But if the hypnotist even whispers something, you will hear it.

The hypnotist can tell you, ”Please go back to 1971, the first of January. What happened in the morning, from when you got up?” And you will start relating everything. It can be recorded: ”When I got up, the first thing was that I was missing my shoes for the bathroom. In the bathroom I was holding the brush and it fell on the floor” – such things which have no significance. What you ate for breakfast, what you did after that – you will go into absolute detail, up to the time when you went to bed again.

You can be awakened by just the reverse process: ”Now the time is over, and your body is becoming lighter, and your eyes are becoming less heavy, less heavy, less heavy, and now you can open your eyes.” And you will not remember that you have related all the incidents of the first of January 1971.

But if they are shown to you, you will recognize them: ”Yes, this did happen, but how did you get to know about it?” You will not be aware that you yourself have given the whole thing.

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CHAPTER 29. BELIEF – JUST A BLIND MAN’S BLUFF

Hypnosis is one of the great dimensions which has not yet been explored. And there is nothing wrong in it, but all the religions have been against it. Religions are strange: they are against everything that can lead you to some truth. They have created this atmosphere all around the earth that hypnosis is something wrong. It is a condemnation if somebody says, ”You are hypnotized.” It is a humiliation: hypnotized? – me?

But you will be surprised that only very intelligent people can be hypnotized. Mediocre people are very difficult to hypnotize, and idiots, impossible. That is a simple criterion; if you try it on three people you can find who the idiot is. Now this is a scientifically established fact, that idiots cannot be hypnotized, for the simple reason – first, you tell them to look at the shiny object and they will look somewhere else. You tell them to keep their eyes open; they will keep them closed. For an idiot everything is possible. You tell them to lie down; they will stand up. Hypnosis is impossible because they don’t have any intelligence to grasp the idea, and it all depends on them.

A wrong notion is rumored around the world, that it is the power of the hypnotist. Absolutely wrong: the hypnotist has no power. There is nothing like hypnotic power – that it is the hypnotist’s power that makes you hypnotized. That is not true, not at all, scientifically. It is your intelligence cooperating with the directions given by the hypnotist, which can be given by a tape recorder. The hypnotist is not needed at all. You can’t say, ”This tape recorder has hypnotic power.” The hypnotist is simply repeating certain suggestions. If you are cooperating with him intelligently the sleep will come to you.

I used to live with one of my cousin-brothers. He had one strange habit: it was difficult for him to leave anything. I had found him a beautiful job, and he was working in a third-rate place; the salary was not good and the work was too much. But that was his habit, that he could not leave anything that he was doing. I tried to tell him, ”You are just foolish. Here you will be a boss. You will have three times the salary, a good office. You will be a boss: only your signature will be needed a few times in the day, and that’s all. And here you are just a third-rate clerk: the whole day writing, copying, and doing overtime every day.”

But he said, ”I like the people here. My friends are here, and everybody knows me. In a new place”

– he was very nervous – ”in a new place, new people....” I said, ”I will come with you. I will introduce you to everybody.” No way. Then I said, ”I’d better try hypnosis on you,” because I had tried hypnosis on him before. And he was a very intelligent person who always came first in all his examinations – he is now a professor.

I was continually experimenting on him – he was a good medium for hypnosis – and everything that I suggested, he did. Even post-hypnotic suggestions, minute to minute, he had followed. For example, one time I had told him in hypnosis, ”Tomorrow at exactly twelve o’ clock when the tower”

– the tower was very near to us – ”when the tower clock strikes twelve, you will kiss your pillow.” And I took him out of his hypnosis.

The next day, from eleven forty-five I was standing near his bed so he could not go to it. He had no idea what was going on, but he wanted to go there. I was standing there so he couldn’t. Then I took his pillow and went out into the garden. He came following me, not knowing what was happening, and exactly when the clock struck twelve, he jumped, took the pillow, kissed it and became so ashamed that he ran away.

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I said, ”What are you doing?”

He said, ”I myself don’t know. I have never kissed my pillow – I tell you truly! Why should I kiss the pillow? But for a few moments I was not thinking of anything else but the pillow; I was worried. And why are you carrying my pillow in the garden? I have never seen you carrying my pillow. And I feel so ashamed; I am sorry that I had to pull the pillow from you, and did such a stupid act, kissing the pillow.”

I said, ”It’s nothing to be worried about. This was a post-hypnotic suggestion. You were simply following instructions. You were unable to prevent it, it was unconscious.” You will be puzzled that when I tried hypnosis to persuade him to change his job – he was afraid, because I had been trying for two, three days to persuade him without hypnosis and he was reluctant. So he went into hypnosis, but the moment I said to him, ”You change your job from the old office which is rotten,” he just sat up immediately.

He said, ”No!”

I said, ”But you were in hypnosis.”

He said, ”I was, but this one thing kept coming to me, that you are going to say something to me about my job.” That much he remembered even in his hypnosis, that if his job was mentioned he would come out immediately.

So it is not the power of the hypnotist, it is the intelligence and the cooperation – because he was uncooperative on one point, but ninety-nine percent he listened to me, did whatever I said.

You can say, ”Just sit down. A cow is standing there; milk the cow,” and the person will sit there and start milking the cow which is not there. You can say anything and the person will do it – but against his will there is no way. So people who think you can be hypnotized against your will are absolutely wrong. It is not a power in the hands of the hypnotist, it is your power. If you allow the hypnotist to suggest to you and you cooperate.... If you resist, you cannot be hypnotized. So very great intelligence is needed, trust is needed. Only intelligent and trusting people can be hypnotized.

Hypnosis is one of the ignored, rejected dimensions of life. This can help you reveal all your past lives so quickly that there is no problem in it – you need not believe in them; first go into hypnosis.

And in hypnosis you can be given a post-hypnotic suggestion that now the hypnotist will not be needed. Instead, you count from one to one hundred, and by the time you reach one hundred you will fall into hypnosis on your own.

And whatsoever you want to happen in your hypnosis you have to remind yourself of before you start counting from one to a hundred. You just say, ”I want to go into my past life,” and start counting from one to a hundred, and you will fall asleep. And the second thing that you have to say is, ”After ten minutes or fifteen minutes I will come out again on my own.” Because there is no hypnotist, you are doing it on your own. But a hypnotist is very helpful; he can easily break the ice, make the road, and give you the key. Anything will work: ”Repeat your own name three times and you will be hypnotized.”

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CHAPTER 29. BELIEF – JUST A BLIND MAN’S BLUFF

So my suggestion is, don’t ask me whether the theory of reincarnation is true or not. To me it is true, to you it is not – not yet. Don’t take any position, negative or positive. Just remain open to the hypothesis. Explore. If you can go into your own past lives, that’s enough proof that everybody has a long, long past. And that gives another insight: if there are past lives, that means there are going to be future lives; this life is only just in the middle. Of course, to enter future lives is not possible because the future has not happened yet. But to enter the past is absolutely easy because it has already happened; the memory is there and the record is there. It is just that you have forgotten the way to the record room where it is recorded.

Take it as a hypothesis.

With me everything is a hypothesis.

If you can trust me only this much, that you are ready to explore, enquire, that will do.

I have no doctrines to teach you, but only methods for you to find out the truth by yourself.

Any truth that is not found by you is not truth.

Truth is truth only when you have found it.

That is an essential quality of the truth, that it has been found by you, that it is authentically yours, that you can say on your own authority that it is so.

But don’t become authoritative.

Do you see the difference between the two words? I say on my own authority that reincarnation is true, but I am not authoritative. If I say that you have to believe it, that it is true, then I am authoritative. The authority is simply my experience. To be authoritative means I want to enforce it on you and make it a belief for you.

My religion has no doctrines, no tenets, no theories. It is a strange religion. No such thing has happened before, but that’s the beauty of it. It leaves you totally free.

If I can give you only freedom I have given you everything.

If I can help you to be free from all the nonsense that others have tied around you, that is more than can be expected.

Once you are free, then all dimensions are there, open; you can travel on your own. And to travel on your own is so beautiful.

Have you watched little children? When they start walking, if you want to hold their hand they are not willing. You are trying to be helpful, you are afraid the child may fall, but you don’t understand the child’s ecstasy. You are destroying his ecstasy by holding his hand. He would rather fall but be on his own. And what is the harm if he falls once, twice, thrice? – he will learn how not to fall. Simply watch so that he does not move into some danger. Otherwise, if he is falling just on the plain ground From Personality to Individuality

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and not into an abyss, there is no need to be worried. Let him learn, because it is better he falls and learns how not to fall. Then your watching will not be needed; then he can be left alone even by the side of an abyss.

In my childhood I used to have one strange game, invented by myself – very dangerous. I would challenge the neighborhood children to walk on a plank of wood that was just lying there. Our new house was being built, and there were many planks of wood; this was a long, flat plank. I would tell the children to walk on it, and they would; there was no problem. I would say, ”You can walk on it?

Then I will put it across two balconies.” Then I would say, ”Now walk on it. It is the same plank: you walked on it when it was on the floor. There is no difference, except that now it is high above.” And they would say, ”We cannot walk on it.”

But I said, ”What is the difference? It is the same plank which you have walked along many times, and you did not fall.” I would show them, I would walk on it. And my mother used to run out when she saw me on the plank again. I would tell her with my finger, ”Keep quiet, because if you say anything I may fall,” so she would stand there not even breathing.

I would walk the plank and she would go crazy and scream and say, ”What is this?” I told my mother, ”This is a game that I have invented, and this is the game I am going to play my whole life.”

She said, ”What! Your whole life, this game?”

I said, ”This is the game. Later on I may call it a different name, but this is the game.” And I am still playing the same game. Awareness – that’s all you need. On the ground you can walk very easily because you know there is no fear of falling. It is the same plank, the same size, the same breadth, but the fear has arisen that you can fall. But if you are alert you can walk on it; there is no problem.

Just be alert, then you can walk on any hypothesis and there is no danger of falling into belief.

Remain alert. Use any hypothesis. You are bound to find some truth, and any truth is good because it is an aspect of the whole truth; from that you can move and find the whole truth.

Just catch the tail of the elephant, that is enough: you have found the elephant. It may take a little time to discover the rest – the elephant is big – but the whole problem is to catch hold of the right tail. Belief is not the right thing.

And I will not support any kind of belief, positive or negative.

I support only hypotheses.

The second question?

Question 2

OSHO,

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YOU HAVE SAID THAT ONE CANNOT PULL THE LEG’S OF A MAN OF AWARENESS. WERE

YOU JUST PULLING OUR LEG?

YES, that is true: one cannot pull the leg of a man of awareness. But the second part is a little complex, because the man of awareness will not want to pull your leg. He pulls your head up. That expression – pulling somebody’s head up – is not in any language, but that is the work of the man of awareness.

In this life everybody is pulling everybody’s legs to pull you down so they go up. The man of awareness is far above you. It is very difficult for him to reach your leg – and particularly in the Big Muddy Ranch. He will have to dive deep into the mud to find your leg. No man of awareness is going to do that.

But he will pull something, he will not leave you alone. He will pull your head up, and that’s the only way when somebody is deep in the mud. This big, muddy ranch is really very representative of the whole world, because everybody is in mud, deep in the mud, going down and down. Even to find your head is so difficult, what to say about your leg – unless you are standing on your head! Then perhaps you will have to be pulled by your leg, but that is very rare. People don’t do headstands in mud.

That kind of practice happens – I am reminded of a story. It is sometime in the future when Morarji Desai dies. He was hoping to go to heaven of course, but the devil welcomed him into hell. Morarji Desai said, ”What! I am the ex-prime minister, Morarji Desai, don’t you know?” The devil said, ”We know you well. We have been waiting for you a long time, but you went on drinking your urine, and you stink so much that death went many times to take you away, but went away – just the stink was too much. But finally we had to force death, telling him,’Now something has to be done. This man has lived too long.’ And you can choose... you are a very great politician, leader, celebrity, so this much of a favor I can do. We have three sections in hell, you can choose.” In the first one Morarji Desai looked: people were being thrown into fire. And although they were being thrown into fire, they were burning but they were not dying; it was tremendously painful. They were being pulled out again and thrown back again. He said, ”No, this is not the place.” The second one he saw was a little better than the first, but not for him. Strange, so many insects he had never seen before were passing through people’s bodies, making holes, going in and coming out from another hole. Each man’s body was nothing but holes because those insects went on coming in, going out, coming in, going out. Morarji Desai said, ”No, this is not the place for me. I would like to see the third.”

The third one he saw he felt at ease with, because it was not much trouble compared to those other two. And he was also a little bit accustomed to this place: it was full of shit and urine. Fifty percent he was acquainted with, fifty percent he would learn, what else to do? – these were the three places.

One thing was good, it was only up to the knees, and people were standing in it and drinking coffee.

Morarji Desai said, ”This is perfectly good – this will do.” As he entered the devil shouted, ”Now the coffee break is over.” So everybody finished his coffee.

”Now be in the headstand.” Then Morarji Desai understood that this was not at all so easy.

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So only in that third kind of hell are people standing on their heads. In the world people are deep in mud but still standing on their feet. The enlightened person pulls you by your head, up. There is no expression like that because languages are not made by men of enlightenment; they are made by unconscious people, for unconscious people, for unconscious purposes.

For the enlightened... no language exists in the world which is made by enlightened people, for enlightened people, for the purpose of enlightenment That’s the difficulty; that’s why they all feel that truth cannot be expressed. There is no language which has been made by people who know the truth. In fact, there have never been so many people knowing truth that there was any need to create a language. It happens rarely, once in a while, that somebody is enlightened; of what use is language? To whom is he going to talk the enlightened language?

But my problem is that I am trying to pull your head up, so on the way I go on making up my own phrases, creating my own language, my own words. Somehow, if the message reaches you, even a little bit of it, that will be enough. Because even a little bit of fire is enough to put the whole jungle on fire. Your whole life can be aflame by just a little flame jumping into you.

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CHAPTER 30

The only authentic democracy: the dictatorship of the enlightened ones

28 January 1985 pm in Lao Tzu Grove

Question 1

OSHO,

WHY ARE YOU AGAINST COMMUNISM?

I am against communism, but for a very strange reason. The strange reason is that it is not communism at all.

The word communism is derived from ”commune”; but communism is not commune-ism. It has no base in the idea of the commune – on the contrary, it is simply anti-capitalism. Its name gives you the false notion of something positive, but in fact it is only a negative approach: it is anti-capitalism. And my understanding is that anything that is basically negative cannot help man’s evolution in any way.

It is because of this fact that atheism has not been of any help to man’s evolution, his consciousness, his growth. It is just pure negativity. Just saying that there is no God, and basing your whole philosophy on the belief in no – God, is sheer stupidity. Life needs something positive. In fact it needs something so positive that it can absorb its negative also, so powerfully positive that the negative need not remain out of it or against it; it can be absorbed.

Jesus says, ”Man cannot live by bread alone.” I cannot agree with him, because mostly man lives by bread alone; most human beings have lived by bread alone. I know what his implication was. I am not against his implication, I am against his statement. The implication is that man needs something 527

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more than the physical, something more than the bodily, something higher, transcendental, without which man can vegetate but cannot live. I support the implication, but Jesus’ statement is very poor.

Why did I mention the statement? I wanted to make a similar statement but one with tremendous meaning.

I say unto you:

Man cannot live by the negative alone.

And communism is only a negative philosophy, like atheism.

Just think:

How can you grow with noes surrounding you?

Growth needs the staircase of yes.

No is dead; it is equivalent to death.

Death is the ultimate no.

Life is the ultimate yes. Life needs the base of some yes-philosophy.

Communism has nothing to offer. It is very strange, but worth understanding, that all kinds of perverse ideas are by-products of Judaism – for example Christianity, which is a negative philosophy.

The cross is a symbol of its negativity. You can make it of gold, but a cross is a cross. Just by making it of gold you cannot make it a yes; it remains a no.

Christianity has said no to everything in life that is joyful, that you can rejoice in. It is anti-life. It is rooted in death, and its whole world starts after your death. Your life is worthless unless it is sacrificed for the life that is going to come after death.

You see the perversion? Is real life after death or before death? And if life continues after death, then why should you be against life now? – because the same life will continue, perhaps on a wider scale, a bigger scale, a higher scale, but the same life will be there. And if you are against this life, how can you be for that life? It is going to be a continuity, an enlargement.

Christianity is the first perversion that came out of Judaism. The second perversion that came out of Judaism is Freudian psychoanalysis. Freud was a Jew just as Jesus was a Jew, but there is a difference between the two. Jesus was trying to prove himself the messiah of the Jews. He was a little gullible and innocent, perhaps unaware of the fact that messiahs are only in the future or in the past, but never in the present. You can accept them when they are dead, you can accept them when they are not born, but you cannot accept them when they are your contemporaries. For your contemporaries you have nothing but contempt; perhaps that is the root of the word contemporary.

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– he knew what had happened to Jesus – he tried just the opposite. It is a logical understanding: Jesus failed by trying something, now try just the opposite.

Judaism is very much against sex. All the religions are against sex, so it is nothing unique to Judaism. But other religions are against sex just in their theories; practically, they understand the nature of man and the weakness of man. For example, Hinduism teaches you to go beyond sex but does not condemn sex itself. On the contrary, it gives you methods and techniques so you can use the sex energy itself to go into a nonsexual dimension. Hinduism is not against sex but you should not be left in the imprisonment of sex. There is no need to be against it; it is better to use it as a stepping-stone. Why hit your head against the stone? That is not going to destroy the stone, it will only break your skull. But Jews have been doing exactly that.

The Old Testament says that God was so angry with two beautiful cities, Gomorrah and Sodom, that He destroyed them completely. What were they doing? They were enjoying sex in all its possible dimensions – that was their crime. Only Hassids have a beautiful story about the destruction of Gomorrah and Sodom, but that story is not acceptable to orthodox Judaism, it is not part of orthodox Judaism.

Judaism has given only one beautiful thing to the world, and that is Hassidism. But Jews are against the Hassids. They think of them as not equal to themselves, they are fallen Jews. But I have looked into the orthodox mind of Jews and into the Hassidic mind: if I am to decide who has fallen then I will say the orthodox Jews have fallen so far that there is no further to fall. They have reached the very bottom.

Hassidism is a beautiful flowering – the only thing that has come out of Judaism which can be preserved in an authentic religion. But they are a rejected people.

Hassids have a beautiful story about Gomorrah and Sodom which neither the Old Testament nor any other orthodox source reports, so certainly it is a Hassidic creation, an invention, imagination.

But I love the story and I would like you to remember it.

The story is that God decides, in Jewish anger, to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. A Hassid saint reaches God and asks Him, ”If in Sodom there are one hundred good people and one hundred thousand bad people, and you are going to destroy the whole city, have you considered the fact that one hundred good people will also be destroyed?”

God has second thoughts. He says, ”That I have not thought about – but you will have to prove that there are one hundred good people.”

The Hassid said, ”Wait. I may not be able to find one hundred people, but think: if there are only ten good people in the whole city, is it right and godly to destroy the whole city? Won’t you be supportive of those ten people who are good, even in that terrible place which you are going to destroy completely?”

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The Hassid said, ”Wait a little – just one question more. If there is only one person who is good, what do you think: isn’t one good person’s goodness far more valuable than one hundred thousand people’s badness? Badness is a negative quality; it has no value. You should not pay that much attention to it; otherwise it makes it valuable. That one good person is more weighty.” God said, ”Your logic is right. Whether there are one hundred good people, ten good people or one good person, I will stand up for the good. But you will have to prove that there is one good person.” The Hassid said, ”I am here, present. There is no need for me to go anywhere. That’s why I was reducing the number – because I may not be able to find a hundred people, I may not be able to find ten people. And how to judge? From the moment I became good I forgot the idea of judgment. To me everybody is good. I cannot see badness in someone, because badness is just a shadow; it is not a person’s true self He may have acted badly but that does not make his being bad. One action can be bad, two actions can be bad, three actions can be bad, one hundred actions can be bad; but still, the being is as pure as ever.

”The being can come out of its actions. It can drop its actions, it can drop its past, and from this very moment the man can become a saint. Nobody can prevent him. How can you judge? There is no way to judge. That’s why I was reducing the number. It is not that there are not good people; in fact, I have lived in both cities and I have found only good people.” The moment you are good, your judgment drops and you stop judging people – because judgment depends on actions, and action is a very superficial thing It is as if you are judging the ocean by the ripples This will be absolutely absurd – to judge the ocean just by the ripples on the surface. Actions are just drawings on water: you have not yet finished them and they have disappeared. And being is beyond your actions; it is always transcendental to what you do. The question is, what are you?

The Hassid said, ”And now I see only what people are. Sometimes a person who is immensely beautiful, good, saintly, may have to act in a way that looks bad, that may go against convention.

You cannot judge him by the act itself That’s why I was reducing the number.

Now I am here. I live in both these towns: half the year in Sodom and half the year in Gomorrah.

Are you ready to destroy me?”

And the Hassidic story is that God decided not to destroy the cities. But this is a Hassidic story, and the Hassids are the only good people to have come out of Judaism. Naturally they are rejected because they reject all your nonsense. They will not accept the Old Testament story that God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. They say, ”Our saint was there and he saved it. He saved both the cities; and he saved, in fact, the whole of humanity, because if Gomorrah and Sodom are worth saving then there is not a single human being who is worth destroying.

Freud had the same tendency as Jesus had – to be a prophet – which is extremely Jewish; it is some kind of racial disease. This fellow Moses is responsible. He created the whole game of prophets and messiahs, and created the idea in poor people’s minds – which are feeble anyway; they get some idea and they start thinking that it is so. Freud was very much a messiah, but he knew that if he declared that he was a messiah – he was a coward also. He was not as fanatically courageous as Jesus. So what he did, rather than proposing himself for crucifixion, he tried to create something absolutely new and become the originator of a new religion.

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Psychoanalysis, to Freud, was a religion, and he was the founder-prophet, the father-figure. Through psychoanalysis what he did was just go against the whole Jewish antagonism to sex. That was his way of saying to the Jews, ”I have nothing to do with you – no need to prepare a cross for me. I am doing something absolutely different, in fact just the opposite to what you have been doing for four thousand years.”

But in his unconscious Freud carried the idea of being the prophet. And he was very much afraid, his whole life, that somebody was going to become a Judas. Only prophets are afraid of Judases, otherwise there is no need.... For example, I am not afraid: if you all turn into Judases, so far so good; there is no harm in it. Because I am not posing as a messiah, how can you betray me?

Judas could betray because it seems he must have got fed up with this man continually pretending to be the only son of God, the ultimate word, the messiah for whom you have been waiting and who is going to redeem the whole world. Anybody would get bored with such a fellow. My feeling is that out of boredom he simply accepted thirty silver coins from the high priest and sold Jesus. He didn’t even consider him more valuable than thirty silver coins. He really wanted to get rid of all this nightmare that he had to suffer with this man.

You don’t know, because you have not lived with a prophet: he is always right, you are always wrong.

Whatsoever he says is the very word of God. There is no question of why. He is not here to give you any reason, he simply dictates commandments to you. Do or die, but don’t ask why.

Judas was the only educated person in the company Jesus kept – more educated than Jesus.

Jesus was uneducated, absolutely. Judas was the only person who could be thought to have some intelligence. He must have got fed up; there is a limit to how much one can bear, tolerate. Finally he delivered the prophet to the Jews.

But I am not a prophet.

You cannot sell me.

I have never dictated to you to do anything.

I have never commanded you to follow me.

I have never pretended that I am somebody specially sent from above to deliver a message to you.

I am nobody’s postman:

I am simply doing my own thing.

Right or wrong, I am simply doing my own thing. If you feel that it is enjoyable, you are welcome. If you feel it is not worth your while, you are welcome to drop it again. There is no problem in it. It is not enforced on you.

Freud wanted to be a prophet.

His whole life is proof of it.

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suspect has to be immediately expelled. What was the suspicion? Freud was suspicious that he would be betrayed. But what can be betrayed if you have not brought the ultimate truth? Someone can, at the most, do his own thing. You are doing your own thing; he is free to do his own thing. But Freud went on expelling people and just keeping the very few who were absolutely devoted. A total surrender was needed.

That is the approach of a prophet. Either you are for him or you are his enemy. He does not accept any third category of”l am not interested.” He does not accept any third category. There were only two types of people: those who were for Freud and those who were against Freud. Those who were not for were included in the second category; there is no third category at all.

Freud did exactly the opposite to what Jesus was doing for exactly the same purpose for which Jesus was doing it. He created psychoanalysis. It was not possible for anybody else in the whole world to create psychoanalysis. Whenever it was to be created it was going to be created by a Jew.

These things are not accidental.

There was so much of an ”anti” attitude about sex, and Christianity carried it to its logical end because they wanted to prove that they are far superior to the Jews. Jews themselves rejected their ultimate flowering, the messiah, and Christians accepted the messiah as the founder of a new religion. Naturally, there was great competition. Christianity went even more against sex and life than Judaism.

Sigmund Freud took revenge on both, because Christianity is nothing but a Jewish branch. It has all the stupidities of Judaism in it and has added a few more of its own. Freud declared that all the problems of man can be solved by psychoanalysis. Now, this is one of the tendencies of prophets.

They always have the panacea – one single remedy for all kinds of sicknesses. This is not a scientific attitude.

Each sickness needs individual attention, it needs its own remedy. There is not a single cause that is creating all the troubles of the world, there are millions of causes. Yes, there are a few causes which are very central, and if they can be destroyed those millions of others may disappear, but there is not a single cause. All the religions have been doing that, saying that there is a single cause.

Christianity says that the cause is the original sin: it is just that man has to undo what Adam and Eve did and everything will be absolutely as it should be. Jainism thinks that violence is the only cause.

If everybody becomes non-violent there will be no problem. In the same way all the other religions propose a remedy, a prophet, a holy book, a God.

Sigmund Freud’s religion is psychoanalysis. It is against Judaism and Christianity. Christianity should not be thought separate from Judaism. It was created by a Jew, it is a Jewish firm; and in fact the Jews should claim that the Vatican belongs to them and throw out this pope and all these bishops. Jesus was of their blood, and all these people – Catholics and Protestants and so many kinds of Christians, all offshoots of a single illiterate Jewish mind – are exploiting their invention.

Freud simply went against them, thinking that this would not be thought something Jewish – but it was Jewish. He was brought up in the climate of anti-life, anti-sex, anti-enjoyment. That’s why Hassids are not appreciated by the Jews, because they are life-affirmative; that is the trouble. They From Personality to Individuality

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enjoy life, they dance, they sing; and that seems to be just not religion at all – dancing and singing.

Even old Hassids dance so beautifully, and they love life tremendously. But this is not acceptable.

Freud found that all problems have arisen out of the repression of sex. So anything you brought to Freud, hc would reduce it to some sexual problem. Sexual problems were the origin of every sickness – mental, physical, social, economic – it made no difference. One sometimes wonders: when a person starts thinking of himself as a prophet, does he lose all reason, rationality and intelligence?

For example, if a man who is mad after money goes to Sigmund Freud, Freud will say that this man is obsessed with money. What is the remedy, and what, do you think, can be the cause? Repression of sex! On the surface you cannot see the connection: he is after money and you are talking about sex? He never cared about sex – but that only proves that what Sigmund Freud is saying is right.

Because his sexual energy has been repressed, now it is coming up in the ambition for money: money can purchase sex, as much as you want.

The rich people will go to the synagogue, to the church, to the temple, will listen to all kinds of sermons against sex; and these are the very people who are creating prostitution around the world In India it used to be a tradition that the most beautiful girl in any town or city had no chance of marriage. To be beautiful was dangerous; and to be the most beautiful meant to be a prostitute. This was a tradition. Of course they made it as beautiful as they could. They used to have competitions

– just as you have competitions for Miss America, for Miss Universe, perhaps even for Miss Oregon.

No, I don’t think there is any Miss Oregon, or can be – impossible. They used to have that kind of competition in India in the past, and the most beautiful girl chosen was declared nagarvadhu.

Nagarvadhu means wife of the whole city. She was respected like a goddess, but in fact she was only a prostitute; everybody could behave with her as with his wife. Of course she was beyond the reach of the poor, beyond the reach of the middle class, even beyond the reach of the higher middle class. She was only within the reach of the super-rich – the king, the princes, the lords – because her price was so much just for a single night that although she was called the wife of the city, she was really the wife of a dozen chosen people.

These people were all great donators to Gautam Buddha and Vardhamana Mahavira. They were making temples, on the one hand – statues, caravanserais for people to stay in, and putting trees by the side of streets for thousands of miles so that travelers could have shadow in the hot sun. They were doing all kinds of virtuous acts and yet they were creating nagarvadhus, wives of the whole city. Prostitution they turned into a beautiful affair – the woman was proud.

They did another thing: they created another institution for those who could not afford the highest sex symbol of their society. They should not be left completely out of it, otherwise they could be dangerous. So they created another institution. The parents of beautiful girls were given the idea that if you give your beautiful daughter to the temple, you will earn great virtue, you will be born in heaven. These girls donated to the temple were called devabalas, divine girls.

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money should go to the temple. The girl was only a prostitute, and even, temple had hundreds of prostitutes. All the money was coming to the temple so the priests were happy. The poor people were happy because for a small donation they could manage to get beautiful women. And the women were not feeling in any way insulted: they were divine girls; they were not ordinary women, they were special.

And a third institution was created for the priests. Of course they deserved something special because they had been helping the rich, the king, the queen, the poor – everybody. They deserved some reward – and you will be surprised what their reward was. Their reward was that any newly-married bride had to spend her first night with the priest, because first she had to be purified by the priest and the god; only then was she pure.

And because it was traditional and conventional, there was no problem in it; everybody was happy.

The husband was also happy that his wife had first been offered to God. Of course God Himself is not there – there is always some representative, the priest, the pope or anybody – but a representative is as good as God. The woman was happy that she had been accepted by God, by His representative.

So on the surface Hinduism continued to talk against sex; but it was more human in a way: underground it allowed even, kind of sex possible, in many ways.

But Judaism has been sincerely against it, against enjoying life in any way. Freud simply started knocking the whole anti-sexual, anti-life attitude. But again, his is a ”no” philosophy. Jesus gives a

”no” philosophy: that you have to be redeemed from life. An absolute no has to be said to this life.

Sigmund Freud also bases his philosophy on a negative attitude: just drop your sexual repression and all problems are solved. I don’t see it, because there are tribes in the world who have no sexual repression and have the most complex problems: poverty, sickness, no scientific development, no intellectual growth no evolution of consciousness. You will be surprised that the societies that have not repressed sex in some way, have remained backward.

The societies that have suppressed sex have evolved; they are the most civilized and cultured societies. Strange? If Freud is accepted then the whole culture, the whole civilization will revert to being aboriginals. But they have all the problems – more than you have. They have very fundamental problems: no food, no clothes, and no intelligence either to produce food and clothes and mechanisms or anything.

What Freud is propounding is not transcendence of sex; he is throwing you back into the undeveloped, barbaric condition where sex will be freely available. But without bread what are you going to do with sex? Without clothes, without medicines, without any kind of human culture, what are you going to do with sex? Yes, you can go on reproducing children, but you won’t have enough to feed them: you don’t have enough to feed yourself.

If Freud is accepted totally, the whole civilization will die. His attitude is just against the Jewish idea of repressing sex and against Christianity, but it is not going to help humanity. He is a reactionary.

He has not thought about the whole implication of it. Why have people who have not repressed sex not progressed? That should have been one of the most significant questions to be asked.

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The people who have repressed sex half the way have only progressed half the way. It is very strange, the proportion is exactly the same: the more sex is repressed, the more society develops.

It becomes more intelligent, more inventive and more scientific.

Do you think any aboriginal tribe can produce a Sigmund Freud, that Red Indians can produce a Sigmund Freud? It is impossible even to conceive. Sigmund Freud can be only produced in a Christian-Jewish context, in that reference, because there he has hit upon a master key, that is, your repression of sex. But it is not giving you any positive foundation. It may remove repression but it is not giving you any idea of transcendence. But he proved one thing, that he was a prophet, that his idea was very original.

He created a great movement around the world. That is the second destructive by-product of Judaism.

First is Jesus, second is Freud, and third is Karl Marx.

Why is Karl Marx against

capitalism? It is not that he is against capitalism; he is a poor Jew and is full of jealousy against those who are rich. That is a Jewish trend, very characteristic.

In India I was surprised – because I was looking for a parallel. Jainas are the Jews in India as far as riches are concerned. You cannot find a single Jaina beggar. The Jainas are super-rich, or upper middle class; at the worst, middle class. Once in a while you will find a poor Jaina – not a beggar, but poor. These poor Jainas were the first to be attracted to communism. I was surprised to find this fact.

One of my faraway relatives is a very famous communist leader, Comrade Bhagchand. I asked him,

”Have you considered the fact that it is not that you want to destroy capitalism, it is simply that you are a poor Jaina and you have so much jealousy in you against the rich Jainas?” But man is so clever in making philosophies of things.

Three generations in Marx’s family had been poor. He himself remained unemployed and poor his whole life. It is very strange: he was dependent on a rich friend, but writing against capitalism. The rich friend, Friedrich Engels, was a capitalist who owned factories. He had been feeding Karl Marx and his family his whole life, and Marx never worked for a single day; he earned not a single cent.

Engels must have been a man of great compassion. He could see the man had genius and needed support.

Although he was writing against capitalism, Marx was a great logician: he convinced Engels also that capitalism is the whole cause of all the problems in the world: ”If we can destroy capitalism and distribute the wealth equally to people, all problems will disappear.” Karl Marx is basically a jealous Jew rationalizing his jealousy into beautiful jargon. The remedy that he proposes is fallacious. Firstly, if you distribute the wealth of those who are rich to the poor, what will be the result? The poor will not become rich, the rich will only become poor: you will be distributing poverty. Yes, people will not feel jealous any more because they will all be equally poor.

I am against poverty, hence I am against communism.

I want people to be equally rich, not equally poor.

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But for that a totally different approach is needed. It is not a question of distribution of wealth –

because there is not much wealth to distribute. How many people are there who are rich? – two percent in India.

Now, the wealth of two percent distributed to ninety-eight percent poor people is just like a spoonful of sugar thrown into the ocean to make it sweet. You are simply losing one spoonful of sugar unnecessarily. At least it could have given one man one cup of tea – even that is gone. Not that others are gaining anything, but they will all enjoy the idea: ”Now nobody is drinking tea, we are all equal.” Otherwise this man was drinking tea and everybody was jealous.

The people who have created wealth have a certain talent for creating it. You should use their talent; you should make it an art to be taught to everybody. They are not to be punished because they have created wealth.

In an aboriginal society, a primitive society, of which a few fragments are still alive here and there on the earth, nobody is poor and nobody is rich; of course there is no jealousy. Everybody owns nothing, everybody equally owns nothing; but nobody is producing wealth.

In fact the people who are producing wealth are creating an urge in others also to create wealth.

Don’t destroy these people – use these people as symbols. They have a certain art of creating wealth – make that art available to everybody, educate everybody. You teach economics in the universities; it would be far better if you taught the art of becoming rich – because by teaching economics you don’t help them to know the art of becoming rich. They win gold medals in the universities and then they disappear.

When I was a professor I asked one of my vice-chancellors, ”Have you ever thought about what happens to your gold medallists? They should shine in the society everywhere. What is the purpose of your gold medal? A man who stood first in the whole university disappears and is never heard about again. What happens to him? That shows simply the poverty of your gold medal and the poverty of all your education. Even if he topped your whole educational system, what has he gained?”

I have asked professors of economics, ”You have been teaching economics for twenty or thirty years

– how rich have you become?”

They said, ”But what has that to do with teaching economics?” I said, ”Economics should be the science of becoming rich. You are just a poor professor, and if in thirty years of teaching you have not been able to find some secret of creating riches, what about your students? Have any of them become rich?” No, economics is not concerned about that; it is concerned about absolutely theoretical questions which have nothing to do with practical life.

Marx’s idea is the distribution of wealth. Why? The reason he proposes is psychologically wrong, absolutely wrong. His reason is that every man is equal. That is psychologically absurd. What to say about all men, the whole humanity – not even two individuals are equal. Each individual is so unique, he cannot be equal to any other individual.

By saying that all human beings are equal Karl Marx is destroying the uniqueness of the individual.

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That’s why I am against him and his whole philosophy – because I stand for the uniqueness of the individual.

I am not saying that somebody is superior to you and somebody is inferior to you. Remember it! I am simply saying that you are not comparable to anybody: You are you and the other is the other.

You don’t compare a rose with a lotus, you simply say that they are two different things. Two different individuals, although they are both human beings, are unique individuals – incomparable.

Marx gives this idiotic idea – and it has been purchased by everybody all over the world: communists, anti-communists, everybody has purchased it; even the capitalists have purchased the idea that all men are equal. Why has nobody criticized it and fought it?for the simple reason that it looks very humanitarian. My God! Has something to be true or untrue – does its validity have to be judged by logic or by humanitarianism? Then any lie which appears to be humanistic has to be accepted. And upon that lie – that all men are equal – the whole structure of communism has been raised.

Now, you know, it is such a simple thing to understand – that every individual has different degrees of intelligence and different dimensions of creativity. Everybody cannot be a poet, everybody cannot be a scientist, everybody cannot be a painter; and it is good that everybody cannot be, otherwise life would lose all joy. The joy is in the uniqueness of the individual – that he is so unique, unrepeatable, irreplaceable, that once he is gone his place is going to remain empty forever. Nobody can fulfill his place; the way he was fulfilling it, only he could do it.

Marx takes away, in a very cunning way, the whole dignity of the individual. And I call it really cunning because he gives the idea of equality of all human beings. In such a beautiful idea of equality you will not be able to detect what he has taken away from you. He has made you just a cog in the wheel, replaceable. He has put you on the assembly line in a factory which produces cars: just the same car goes on being assembled on an automatic assembly line.

Ford produces one car every minute. Every minute, for twenty-four hours, a similar car goes on coming out of the assembly line. But man is not an assembled mechanism; you cannot take him apart and assemble him again. It would have been very helpful in a way if we could take a man apart – clean his insides and everything, replace a few bulbs here and there, a few fuses which have gone out, a few nuts and bolts which have got loose or too tight – and then assemble him again with a new battery.

It would have been really good; but it would also be the greatest calamity that can happen. Then man disappears; then he is only a robot running on a battery. It is simple: if he breaks his hand there is no trouble, spare parts are always available. He just goes to any workshop, and his hand is changed; he gets a brand-new hand – no problem. Only once in a while he may have a problem when he is telling some woman, ”I love you,” and then he goes ”Grrrr, grrr, grrrr... my battery is running out... just call the mechanic....” Only once in a while will he go ”Grrrr, grrrr” – he won’t be able to speak, the battery is running out.

Or you may be supplied with a small meter which goes on showing you on your wrist what is going down, what is going up, what is needed now: if you need a little more petrol, or water, or the oil has to be changed. It will be simpler – but you will not be human, you will be robots.

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Marx, by making you equal, is proposing a philosophy which ultimately is bound to make you robots

– that is the Marxist philosophy’s logical conclusion.

Only robots can be equal.

Man’s dignity is in his uniqueness.

But let me repeat – because there is every possibility that I will be misunderstood – I am not saying that somebody is superior to you and somebody is inferior to you. I am simply saying that the very idea of comparison is invalid; you are just yourself. I cannot call you unequal, I cannot call you equal.

Do you follow me? I cannot call you unequal.

That is the criticism communists have been throwing upon me – that I am telling people that people are unequal. That is absolutely unjust to me. I am not saying people are unequal, I am saying they are not equal; that implies they are not unequal either. The very idea of comparison is invalid. Man is unique. Man is not just a member of the society, a part of the society. He is an individual, an independent whole in himself and it is not right....

Just think of it in this way and you will see it completely clearly: if somebody says that everybody has to be writing poetry, then even if some people are writing better poetry than you, their poetry has to be distributed on an equal basis with yours. Everybody has to be equally a poet, equally a musician.

You can see the absurdity, that if Yehudi Menuhin has to be made equal to you, you won’t gain anything, and that poor fellow will lose everything. You cannot be Yehudi Menuhin. He has a certain genius that is born with him, that is in his very chemistry, in his very physiology, in his very being.

You don’t have that chemistry, that physiology, that being. His parents were different, his parents’

parents were different.

You cannot have his quality distributed, that is impossible. And that will destroy all the beautiful flowers in human life. But you don’t think that way. You think Yehudi Menuhin is just himself; there is no question of somebody else taking his qualities, dividing and distributing them. But you don’t understand that in exactly the same way there are people who have a certain talent to be rich.

Everybody is not Henry Ford, cannot be; and there is no need. One Henry Ford has created enough traffic No need for more! If there are many Henry Fords then do you know what will be the result?

The result will be that walking will be faster than driving. It is already becoming so. In cities like New York, Bombay, Tokyo and Calcutta, a distance you can cover by walking within ten minutes to fifteen minutes will take you one and a half hours in a car.

I used to stay in Calcutta with one of the most significant, talented, rich men – Sahu Shantiprasad.

Now he is dead. The auditorium where I used to give my talks and his house were only a ten-minute walk apart, but in his limousine it was unpredictable. If my lecture was going to be from seven-thirty, he would start panicking from five, telling me to get ready.

I said, ”You are just mad! The lecture will start at seven-thirty and it is only a ten-minute walk. If we walk it will take ten minutes.”

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But he said, ”We are not going to walk. And traffic in Calcutta is so chaotic that you never know....

We have to leave here at least one and a half hours before.” And sometimes it used to happen that we were still late, but sometimes we were too early and then we would just sit in the car. I said, ”This is so stupid, Sahu Shantiprasad.” But he said, ”I cannot allow you to walk – you are my guest.” I said, ”That’s true, I am your guest, but I have to sit in your car for four hours coming and going. This is strange, because in four hours I can reach Bombay or Delhi, but I only reach this poor auditorium!” If there are many Henry Fords it will become a more difficult world than it is right now. No, nature produces enough people for any particular purpose. Nature has a very deep balancing power.

For example, when children are born, if a hundred girls are born today, then one hundred and ten boys will be born. About that data I was simply surprised. Why one hundred girls and one hundred and ten boys? Is nature also male chauvinistic? No, it is not that: nature is simply a balancing power. Ten boys die before a marriageable age. Girls are more resistant to diseases; boys are weaker as far as resistance to sickness is concerned. They may have muscular power – that is a different power – but as far as resistance to disease, sickness and death is concerned, they are less powerful than women.

So one hundred girls will suffice for one hundred and ten boys, because ten boys will be missing by the time they reach the marriageable age, something which nature is balancing from the very beginning. Otherwise there will be ninety boys and one hundred girls. Those ten girls will be in difficulty, and will create so much difficulty for the ninety boys that you cannot conceive.... It will be a chaos.

Those ten girls without husbands, without boyfriends – do you think they are just going to sit and meditate? They will start grabbing hold of somebody else’s husband, and then it is going to be a chaos. To avoid that chaos nature has to be alert from the very beginning to supply ten boys more, because they will be missing at the right time.

If nature is as balancing as that, it was balancing other things also, till man started to interfere with it. For centuries the population of the world had remained the same. It was only man who started interfering with nature – through medicine, through new inventions to increase man’s life.

Now you have created a trouble in the world. Nature was keeping the balance: people were born but enough people were dying. It was almost always equal. What you have done is that you have prevented death, but you are not allowed to prevent birth. Now the pope goes on issuing sermons that abortions should be made illegal.

Just the other day I heard there was a demonstration of seventy thousand people in the capital demanding that abortion should not be legal, it should be declared illegal. And when President Reagan – just look at these politicians!

– was governor of California he had signed the bill for legalization of abortion, because in California there was a great movement, an upsurge for legalization of abortion. Then he signed the bill. And now he inaugurates this procession that wants the constitution amended, and abortion declared illegal again because it is against religion and against life.

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Reagan inaugurated that protest because now all the orthodox people in the country, particularly the orthodox Christians, Catholics and Jews – all orthodox people – are with this movement. When declaring that procession inaugurated, Reagan said, ”In my whole life I have committed only one mistake, and that was when I was governor of California and I signed that bill. That was the only mistake that I have committed.”

Politicians can change their face very easily. Wherever the crowd is going, they jump ahead of it.

They cannot lose, so they have to be very alert. I have said many times that the political leaders are followers of their followers. The great politician is one who knows where the followers are going and keeps himself ahead of them. Wherever they are going does not matter; he should just remain ahead of them so they always know that he is the leader. He should keep his every sense alert, otherwise someday he will look back – and all the followers will have moved somewhere else; he will be standing alone.

Now, he will run and find the followers, and immediately be ahead of them. Here he was ahead of them because they were for legalization of abortion; now he is against it because they are against it. What can he do? – he has to be the leader in every case. His business is to be the leader – it does not matter what the cause is. And what do you want? That doesn’t matter; all that matters is that he is ahead of you.

Now, all these people – Catholics, Hindus, Mohammedans, Jews – all are against abortion. If they are against abortion then they should be a little logical about it, then they should be against saving people’s lives too; then there will be a balance. But nobody protests.

There are people in the hospitals unnecessarily harassing the doctors and the nurses. Their legs are hanging up in one direction and their hands are hanging up in some other direction. Another person needs the continual attendance of a doctor and a nurse and so many medicines. And he is on oxygen: if you just turn his oxygen off he will be gone. Why are you keeping him alive? What is the purpose of his being alive? Why are you torturing him? But the doctors have been taught that

”Your purpose is to save life.” That was taught by Hippocrates two thousand years ago when death was rampant.

Now these fools go on taking the oath of Hippocrates; every medical student takes the oath of Hippocrates: ”My whole life I will try to save life.” But things have changed. When Hippocrates said that, out of ten children, nine children were dying before they became two years of age; out of ten children only one was surviving. Of course the man was saying something meaningful when he told them to try to save life, but now the state is just the reverse. Even in countries like India, out of ten children only one is dying. At that time nine were dying and one remained alive; now nine are remaining alive and only one dies – and every effort is being made to save that one too.

One can understand trying to save a child; but why are you saving old people who have lived, lived enough, suffered, enjoyed, did all kinds of things, good and bad? Now it is time; let them go. But the doctors cannot let them go because it is illegal. They cannot put them off oxygen, so you go on saving the dying or almost-dead people.

No pope issues a commandment that these people should be allowed freedom from their bodies.

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somebody’s heart is not working so a battery is working instead of the heart; somebody’s lungs are not working; somebody’s kidneys are not working, so mechanical kidneys are doing the work of the kidneys. But what is the purpose of these people? What will they do even if you continue to keep them going this way?

Yes, at the most they keep a few people employed, that’s all. But what kind of a creative life are they going to have? And what joy can they have in all that is being done to them? Continual injections are being given to them. They cannot sleep, then sleeping pills are given to them. They cannot wake up, then activators are forced into their blood so they have to wake up. But for what reason? –

the Hippocratic oath? Let Hippocrates go to hell! He had no idea what his oath was going to bring about.

There should be some movement so that when people have lived enough and they desire to be freed from their bodies, then hospitals should provide a convenient, pleasant death. It is absolutely sane that every hospital should have a special ward with all facilities so that death becomes a pleasant experience, enjoyable.

Instead of medicines a meditator should be there to teach the dying man how to meditate, because now medicine is not needed, meditation is needed – how to relax and peacefully disappear from this body. Every hospital needs meditators – they are essential – just as it needs doctors. Up to now meditators were not needed because there was only one function: to save life. Now the function is doubled: to help people die. Every university should have a department where meditation is taught so that people themselves are ready. When the time comes to die, they are fully ready to die with joy, with celebration.

But suicide is a crime. This will be considered suicide and I will be considered to be teaching people illegal things. But in an illegal city what else can I do? I can say only what is absolutely right; whether it is legal or illegal I don’t care a bit. My concern is with truth, not with law. The truth is that you have unbalanced life, nature. Please give back its balance. Either you have to stop saving children, and abortions should remain legal, birth control methods should be used widely – in fact it should be a crime not to use them. If somebody is caught not using them he should be jailed.

But it is a strange world: produce more children and you will have less income tax. A great world!

The government is supporting you to have more children. What kind of logic is there? If I am to make the law, I will say the more children you have, the more income tax; with each child it is doubled.

Have as many as you want but the income tax goes on being doubled each time, so even the rich cannot afford them, what to say about the poor and the middle class. Then only will they think of birth control; otherwise they are not going to.

Look at the Red Indians. Why should they use birth control? – because each child born brings more money from the government. Just to keep them silent.... It is their country and everybody else is a foreigner here except the Red Indians. Not only am I a tourist here, everybody is except the Red Indians. Ronald Reagan included, all are tourists. They may have been touring for three hundred years, I have been touring only for three years – that does not matter, that does not change anything: tourists are tourists. How long you have been touring....

In fact old tourists should be deported, they have toured enough! New tourists should be welcomed.

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more are you doing here? Tour somewhere else. And we are going to bring new tourists here –

vacate!

They want to bring a bill in the parliament against me because they cannot find any other way to deport me. They have been trying for three years. A whole department, a whole floor in the INS

building in Portland, is just working on my case; nobody else is allowed there. And I tell them: even if you work three hundred years you cannot find anything to deport me for. And I have been only touring for three years, and only in my home. Deport old tourists!

But what is being done to the Red Indians just to prevent them from starting to claim their rights is inhuman. On the surface it looks humanitarian – that each Red Indian is given a certain amount of money every month. Naturally they produce as many children as possible, because each child is an economic benefit, each child brings more money. And why are they being given money without any work? A very criminal idea is behind it.

If a person has no work and enough money, what is he going to do then? He will drink; he will take marijuana, hashish, opium. What else does he have to do? He has enough money and no work, no education; he has to pass his time somehow, so he hallucinates. All the Red Indians have become drug addicts; the money is really given for them to become drug addicts. Of course it is not said so

– it is a ”humanitarian” job.

They are poor people, but there are other poor people also; you don’t give them anything. They are asking for employment; you don’t even give them employment. They want work; you don’t have work for them. They want bread; you produce bullets. Why Red Indians? Just to keep them drugged so they don’t start making a chaos and start saying that this land belongs to them: ”Everybody out!” Strange, the host has been kept in reservations – those reservations are just prisons without walls

– and the guests have become the owners of the country. Now they decide who should enter the country and who should not enter the country. Great idea!

I am reminded of a story. A Sufi fakir was in his hut with his wife, just getting ready to go to sleep.

The hut was very small. Somebody knocked on the door – it was raining, and the Sufi said to his wife, ”Open the door. Somebody is outside and it is raining.” The wife said, ”But there is no space – only enough for us two to sleep. There is not enough space here.”

The Sufi said, ”There is always space, just the heart is needed. Open the door, I say to you, open the door.”

When the husband said that, the wife reluctantly opened the door. A man came in. The wife then asked the husband, ”What shall we do?”

He said, ”Nothing is a problem. Two can sleep, three can sit. For sitting there is enough space, so we will sit and gossip. That traveler may have something to say to us, many stories to tell – we will enjoy the night!”

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The guest said, ”But there is not enough space; it is already crowded. Let him go.” The fakir said, ”No. That was the argument of my wife about you too:’Let him go.’ If we had not opened the door you would have had to travel in the rain through the forest. It is a dangerous night

– I don’t think you would have survived or reached to town alive. Open the door!” The guest opened the door, but very reluctantly.

This is how the human mind functions. He could not even think that he was just a guest, he was not the owner. The man, the second man, came in, and the guest said to the fakir, ”Now what are you going to do?”

He said, ”We three were sitting comfortably, we four will sit a little uncomfortably. Just come closer –

make space for the fourth one.” They sat closely together; now it was completely packed. And then there was a strange knock on the door; it didn’t seem to be coming from a human hand. The fakir said, ”I know who is there – just open the door.” The new guest was now seated close to the door. He said, ”No, I am not going to open the door.

There is no space, we are overcrowded. I am the person closest to the door and I will not allow anybody to open it. Where is the space?”

The fakir said, ”You should understand one thing clearly: I am the owner; I allowed you in but I can throw you out. We were sitting comfortably at ease; because of you we are sitting uncomfortably.

Now we will be standing. Let him come in – nobody can be turned out while there is any space. I am saying we can stand; we will not sit, and so space will be created.” What could the guest do? – he had to open the door. And they were all surprised: a donkey entered.... The guests said to the fakir, ”Is this donkey also going to be here?” He said, ”If you can be here.... Who are you? He is my old friend, we are old acquaintances; he often comes when it rains. You have never come before – I can throw you out, but not him. And he is a poor animal. You may find some way to save yourself, but where can he go? Let him stand just in the middle of all of us. We will stand around the donkey and he can stand in the middle. We can enjoy ourselves talking, and once in a while he will join in also.” He said, ”Remember one thing: this is a poor man’s hut, not a king’s palace. In a king’s palace there is no space. Although the palace is big there is no space because the heart is not there. Here space is very limited, but the heart is unlimited.”

The Red Indians are the owners of this land, but they have been put into reservations and forests.

Those are prisons without walls – and very subtle prisons because the prisoners are paid money.

They gamble, they fight, they drink, and they kill each other. They are very rowdy people because what else can they do? And money goes on being poured on them: more children, more money. So they go on producing more children and getting more money and getting more drunk. It is really a crime. It has nothing to do with humanity or humanitarian ideals.

And these people who have simply taken over their land, they are deciding whether new guests should enter or not. It is strange. Who are they to decide? Who has given them the authority to From Personality to Individuality

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decide? This land is not theirs. Somebody is Italian, somebody is French, somebody is English, somebody is Greek, somebody is German, somebody is Spanish – they should all go back to their lands.

We are the only people who are landless, because we don’t belong to any country. We don’t call any country our motherland or our fatherland – we don’t believe in dads and mums. The whole world is ours – we don’t claim small things. And movement is man’s birthright: he can move anywhere he wants, he is not doing any crime by moving. But if anybody has to go, then it should be the old tourists.

Now the old tourists are trying to bring a bill against me in parliament. I am going to speak to parliament, they should remember, and just alone I am going to tell them, ”You are all deported, because you have toured enough – simple logic! New people should come in. And we promise that when more new people come we will deport ourselves, there is no problem. But let us at least tour enough.”

The mind that Karl Marx had was certainly very talented. He created a worldwide movement –

certainly he outdid Jesus. This is just Jewish competition. It is nobody’s business really, just Jews competing. Freud created a worldwide movement for psychoanalysis, but Marx is on the top. Almost half the world is communist now – but not rich, very poor.

You can see it in Germany. Just beyond the wall is the communist world. Of the same Berlin which was destroyed in the second world war, half has remained free and democratic, and half has been taken over by the communists. The half that has remained independent, free and capitalist, is rich: skyscrapers, beautiful roads, everything. It is as if the second world war has never happened. In the free West Berlin, the second world war has not left even a trace; in fact the war has done something really good because all the old, dilapidated, rotten things finished and everything is fresh and new.

West Berlin is now the most modern, youngest and freshest city in the whole world.

And on the other side it is dark and dismal, as if the second world war just ended yesterday; people are living in dilapidated barracks. It is a beautiful contrast to see what communism can do and what capitalism can do. Not a single skyscraper has arisen on the communist part, not a single new building, not a single new road, no new factory – no creativity. Yes, they have distributed the wealth

– they have made the rich poor. And now the poor are not in a position to create wealth again.

The whole of Russia is poor, the whole of China is poor. Yes, one thing is missing; there are no rich people. Communism is based on a fallacious idea: the equality of man. Man is not equal.

The second idea is significant; but my interpretation of it is right, not what Marx said. The second idea says, ”Equal opportunity for all.” That’s how it should be – equal opportunity for all, but remembering that everybody is unique, so everybody is going to use the equal opportunity to be very different from each other. The ultimate result is going to be individuals so different from each other that you cannot conceive.

According to Marx equal opportunity means they will be all equal: equally wealthy, equally intelligent, equally healthy. That is sheer nonsense, because your parents were not my parents; you have different genes and different programs in your body. Now, there is no way to change the genes, the program – and small things make a difference.

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So equal opportunity is a good idea and we should try it as far as humanly practical. But you should not be fanatic about it, because if you want perfect equality of opportunity then you are an idiot; that is not possible.

Just let me give you simple examples: if you are the eldest son in the family, then the youngest son in the family cannot have the same opportunity as the eldest, there is no way. Because you were the first to come, of course you received your mother and your father’s love more because you were a novelty; then other children started coming and it was not anything new. The second boy was born, but he is going to be second. The eldest son in all the cultures is going to inherit the father’s money.

Why? It is not accidental: he got more love than anybody else, and he was the first to come.

Then the last son will also have a different status because he will be the smallest, favored by all, protected by all, all the brothers, the whole family. But the middle ones, they are nowhere: neither on this pole nor on that pole. They will not get the same attention as the first and the last. The last will become the favorite child of the family because now no more are coming; the last guest has come.

How can you give all equal opportunities? Either you will have to arrange births simultaneously so that a mother gives birth to twelve children simultaneously – equal opportunity.

But from the very beginning there is no equal opportunity. When a woman gets pregnant, neither she nor her husband are aware that there has been a car race; nobody is aware. When the sperms travel towards the egg it is just as in any race: they all stand in one line waiting for the third whistle, and then they run.

The mother’s cell, the egg in the mother’s womb, is waiting and the cells from the father’s body, as they explode into the mother’s body, start a great race – millions of sperms trying to reach the egg first. Whosoever reaches is the winner; all others will die. It is a question of life and death. It is no ordinary race in which you are only defeated and next time.... There is no next time – only a single opportunity for millions of alive cells. Only one makes it, because this is how it works. The mother’s egg has a natural capacity so that once one male sperm has entered it, it closes. The others go on knocking around but within two hours they will all be dead.

There are losses all the way. And the way is not so small as you think, because for those small cells it is close to two miles, proportionately. If they were of your proportions then the passage would be two miles. And a great job they do, a marathon race! Of course, the strongest reaches.

Sometimes it happens that two reach at the same time – that’s why twins are born – or three reach.

Even nine children have been known to be born, because nine may have reached simultaneously; then they all enter the door because they are all entering at the same time. After they enter the doors close. But it rarely happens that nine reach. One guy is clever enough that somehow he manages to reach first.

They all start almost at the same time, but from there, from the very impregnation, opportunities are different. Nobody knows those who have died, what kind of people they were. Somebody may have been an Albert Einstein, somebody a Ravi Shankar, somebody a Michelangelo. Nobody knows about those poor people who simply died in the first race and were not given any other chance.

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And then small things in the life of the child.... You cannot make them equal. For example, when Napoleon Bonaparte was six months old, his nurse, who was taking care of him, had just left him for a moment and a wild cat jumped onto Napoleon, put both his paws on his chest, and looked into his eyes. Immediately the nurse came back and chased the cat away, but Napoleon, for his whole life, remained afraid of cats. He was not afraid of lions, he could have wrestled bare-handed with a lion

– there was no problem about it – but before a cat he simply became a nervous wreck.

Napoleon was defeated only once – his whole life was a life of victory. Just once he was defeated, by a British general who knew about his weakness. The general had gone with seventy cats ahead of him; seeing seventy cats, Napoleon lost all nerve, he forgot all about what to do and what not to do. It was not a victory by the general, it was a victory by the cats.

How can you manage to give equal opportunities to all? Now, if such a small incident can prove so fatal.... Napoleon was a brave warrior before anybody, but nothing before a cat. The English general does not count at all, but he became victorious just by using a little psychology, just knowing about Napoleon s weakness – that when he saw a cat he could not think, he simply became frozen. And when Napoleon was in that nervous state, of course his whole army was at a loss; they had lost the man who was their life, their light and their guide.

Now, how can you manage equal opportunity for all children of the world?

That’s absolutely

impossible. So don’t try to take the communist idea to its logical end – then it becomes absurd.

Yes, with my interpretation – and my interpretation is that everybody should be given opportunities to be educated, opportunities to get food, opportunities to get clothes, opportunities to do anything that a person wants to do. There should be no discrimination about it: opportunity should be given to everybody according to his talent and everybody according to his potentiality.

But that is not happening in communism. In the name of equal opportunities everybody is forced to remain at the lowest denominator, because only there can you keep them equal. If you want them to be equal on a higher level, then you need more riches, more wealth – and that is missing.

In the sixty years since the Russian Revolution, the Russians have not been able to produce any wealth to make Russia rich. Equal opportunity is available, but what do you do with equal opportunity?

You need people who can use these opportunities; and they don’t need similar opportunities, they need different opportunities, equally different opportunities.

I am against communism because it is only a negative philosophy. I am all for commune-ism.

That should be the right word: commune-ism.

A commune is respectful of every individual’s uniqueness, repectful of every individual’s talent, and tries to help his talent grow, help him grow towards his potential.

I want communes all over the world, so that slowly nations can disappear, and there are only communes:

Living, small units of humanity, totally, joyously helping everybody to be himself.

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Marx proposes the dictatorship of the proletariat, the dictatorship of the poor. That is stupid. They are poor, and if they are in power they will make everybody poor. What else can they do?

I propose the dictatorship of the enlightened ones.

Nobody has proposed it up to now.

And

sometimes out of my crazy mind.... This idea I have carried my whole life – dictatorship of the enlightened ones, because if it is of enlightened ones it cannot be dictatorship. It is a contradiction in terms. The enlightened person cannot be a dictator like Joseph Stalin or Adolf Hitler.

Yes, the enlightened person can dictate to you, but out of his love, not out of his power – he has no power – out of his insight, because he has eyes to see and to feel the potential of people.

His dictates can only be thought of as suggestions, advice, guidelines.

Only in the dictatorship of the enlightened ones is there a possibility of a real, authentic democracy and also the real flowering of commune-ism:

Equality by distributing riches, not poverty; destroying poverty from the very roots, and raising everybody upwards to be rich.

My commune-ism is a higher state of capitalism.

Marx’s communism is against capitalism:

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Document Outline

- 1 Man is born with a question mark in his heart

- 2 To define is to confine -- existence has no boundaries

- 3 Beware! I am here to destroy your dreams

- 4 Jealousy: society's device to divide and rule

- 5 Sannyas: the odyssey of aloneness -- a journey to the center of your being

- 6 Anxiety: Who are you? Anguish: Who am I?

- 7 Conditioning: socially-sanctioned child abuse

- 8 Rajneeshism: womb for transformation

- 9 The law of karma: A conspiracy of the priests to manipulate your mind

- 10 Christianity: just a nice Jewish boy's hang-up

- 11 God -- the phantom fuehrer

- 12 Death: The ultimate orgasm

- 13 The new man: intellect in harmony with the heart

- 14 The only hope: the enlightenment of humanity

- 15 Truth said, truth dead

- 16 Superman: the fantasy for the inferior

- 17 Holy Scriptures: wholly Bullshit

- 18 The good shepherd -- the butcher's friend

- 19 Hell hath no fury like a Christian scorned

- 20 Fear of hell, greed for heaven, the saviors soft sell

- 21 Priest and politicians: from genesis to genocide

- 22 Countdown to catastrophe: global suicide, or sannyas

- 23 Bored to death? -- you're on the trail to transformation

- 24 Infallibility: just a popedream

- 25 My day: the juice, the whole juice, and nothing but the juice

- 26 Only one sin -- to forget your being. Only one virtue -- to remember it

- 27 Seek and ye shall miss; relax and ye shall find

- 28 Knowledge is information; knowing is transformation

- 29 Belief -- just a blind man's bluff

- 30 The only authentic democracy: the dictatorship of the enlightened ones