Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

Talks on Pythagoras

Talks given from 31/12/78 am to 10/01/79 am

English Discourse series

CHAPTER 1

The Golden Mean

31 December 1978 am in Buddha Hall

LISTEN, AND IN THINE HEART ENGRAVE MY WORDS, KEEP CLOSED BOTH EYE AND EAR

’GAINST PREJUDICE, OF OTHERS THE EXAMPLE FEAR; THINK FOR THYSELF.

CONSULT, DELIBERATE, AND FREELY CHOOSE.

LET FOOLS ACT AIMLESSLY AND WITHOUT CAUSE, THOU SHOULDST, IN THE PRESENT; CONTEMPLATE THE FUTURE.

THAT WHICH THOU DOST NOT KNOW, PRETEND NOT THAT THOU DOST. INSTRUCT

THYSELF: FOR TIME AND PATIENCE FAVOUR ALL.

NEGLECT NOT THY HEALTH...

... DISPENSE WITH MODERATION FOOD TO THE BODY AND TO THE MIND REPOSE.

TOO MUCH ATTENTION OR TOO LITTLE SHUN; FOR ENVY THUS, TO EITHER EXCESS IS

ALIKE ATTACHED.

LUXURY AND AVARICE HAVE SIMILAR RESULTS. ONE MUST CHOOSE IN ALL THINGS A MEAN JUST AND GOOD.

PYTHAGORAS ALSO INTRODUCED THE WORD ’COSMOS’.

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’Cosmos’ means order, rhythm, harmony. Existence is not a chaos but a cosmos. Pythagoras has contributed much to human thought, to human evolution. His vision of a cosmos became the very foundation of scientific investigation.

Science can exist only if existence is a cosmos. If it is a chaos, there is no possibility of any science.

If laws change every day, every moment – one day the water evaporates at one hundred degrees, another day at five hundred degrees – if water functions in a whimsical way and follows no order, how can there be a science?

Science presupposes that existence functions in a consistent way, in a rational way, that existence is not mad, that if we search deep into existence, we are bound to find laws – and those laws are the keys to all the mysteries.

Just as it is true for science so it is true for religion too – because religion is nothing but the science of the inner. The outer science is called science; the inner science is called religion – but both can exist only in a cosmos.

There are laws of the inner world. Those laws have been discovered just as much as scientific laws have been discovered. Neither have scientific laws been invented, nor have religious laws; been invented. Truth is – you need not invent it And whatsoever you invent will be untrue – all inventions are lies.

Truth has to be discovered, not invented. Einstein discovers a certain law; Patanjali also discovers a certain law; Newton discovers gravitation, Krishna discovers grace – both are laws. One belongs to the earth, the other belongs to the sky; one belongs to the world of necessity, the other belongs to the world of power. One belongs to the visible and the other belongs to the invisible.

It is in the vision of a cosmos that Pythagoras became the originator of a scientific concept of the world. He was the first scientist because he provided the very foundation. His idea of cosmos has to be understood, because without understanding it you will not be able to understand what he is talking about.

The inner world, the world of the spirit, follows certain laws, and those laws are unchangeable, they are perennial. Hence I have called this series PHILOSOPHIA PERENNIS – the perennial philosophy. Those laws are not time-bound, they are beyond time. Time itself functions within those laws. If you want to do something in the outside world, you will need to know how the outer existence functions, because unless you know how it functions you are bound to fail.

Nature has no obligation to adjust to you – you will have to adjust to nature. You can win nature only by adjusting yourself to nature. You can become a conqueror too, but not against nature – with nature, in tune with nature. You can become a master of the inner kingdom too – not against the laws but in tune with those laws.

It is because of this mystic vision – that the world is not accidental, not anarchic, but an absolutely harmonious, cosmic, orderly world – that Pythagoras was able to discover many things for the seekers. One thing that he discovered was that music can become the milieu for meditation. He4

was the first to introduce that idea too to the West. In the East we have known it for centuries, that Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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music is the best aid to meditation. Why? because music creates harmony around you, and the harmony around you can provoke harmony within you. If the outside is harmonious, the inside also starts falling in line with it – and that you have watched many times.

In the marketplace, you feel a great disturbance inside you – with the crowd you never feel at home.

In the market-place the whole atmosphere is anti-music; there is no harmony, it is a chaos. And the outer chaos provokes inside chaos.

Go into a madhouse and be with mad people for a few hours and you will see: you start feeling something going crazy inside you. Go to the hospital and just be with the ill patients there for a few hours, and you start feeling a sickening is entering into you, a kind of sick feeling. You are NOT sick; you were not sick when you entered the hospital. What has happened? The sick vibe all around you starts synchronizing inside you, because the outer and the inner are not divided; they are part of one whole. The inner is the inner of the outer, and the outer is the outer of the inner. They cannot be separated. So each affects the other.

If you know meditation deeply, you can sit in the market-place and nothing will be disturbed because you have a powerful music going on inside you. It is so powerful that the market-place and its noise cannot affect it; on the contrary, people who are around you may start feeling a certain soothing effect, a calmness coming. If a real Buddha sits in the marketplace, he creates there too a Buddhafield, and whosoever enters into the Buddhafield is affected immediately – he starts falling into harmony. Something starts settling inside him; something starts getting together inside him. He becomes more centered, together.

That’s the secret of SATSANG – being with a Buddha. The whole secret is this: to be with the Master means just to allow his vibe to provoke your inner harmony which is fast asleep and you are unaware of it. But ordinarily if you go to the market-place, you come home a little lost, exhausted, tired, something is missing. You need rest; only after a good night’s rest will you be able to go to the marketplace again.

Music is a harmony – it is harmony between sound and silence. Sound belongs to the earth, silence belongs to the beyond. Music is, as Pythagoras believed and called it, numinous. The word

’numinous’ comes from a Latin root NUMEN. It is a tremendously significant word, very pregnant with meaning. NUMEN means a nod from the above, a yes from the beyond.

Music creates such a harmony that even God starts nodding at you, saying yes to you. Music is numinous... suddenly the sky starts touching you; you are overwhelmed by the beyond. And when the beyond is closer to you, when the footsteps of the beyond are heard, something inside you gets the challenge, becomes silent, quieter, calmer, cool, collected.

In the Pythagorean mystery school, music was one of the greatest things – and that’s my effort here too. We have to create great music so that great meditative states become possible. Music is outer meditation: meditation is inner music. They go together, hand in hand, embracing each other. It is one of the greatest experiences of life when music is there surrounding you, overwhelming you, flooding you, and meditation starts growing in you – when meditation and music meet, world and God meet, matter and consciousness meet. That is UNIO MYSTICA – the mystic union.

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In the East we have called it ’yoga’. Yoga simply means union. The best definition of yoga, and the shortest, is by the great seer Vyasa. He says yoga is samadhi, yoga is ENSTASIS. Ordinarily samadhi is translated as ecstasy – that is not right, because ecstasy literally means to stand out.

Samadhi is to stand in! It should be translated as ENSTASIS not as ECSTASIS. Yoga is ENSTASIS

– standing in, doing nothing, just being. That state is meditation.

And anything that can help from the outside will have some music in it, only then can it help. The sound of running water in the hills can help, because it has its own music. The roaring waves of the ocean can help, because they have their own music. The singing of the birds in the morning can help, or the sound of insects in the silent night, or the rain falling on the rooftop – anything that creates music can also create meditation.

The Pythagorean school was a school of music, of song and dance. of great celebration. You are again living in that kind of school.

People have forgotten that music can take you downwards, and can also take you upwards. The modern music takes you downwards; it is concerned with the lowest center of your being, with the sex center. It gives you sexuality; it is pornographic. It has lost all heights. It is ugly – it is really noise and nothing else, noise that drowns you – jazz or other pop music. It is simply a kind of intoxicant. It is so deafening that you feel lost and you think something is happening. All that is happening is that you are pulled more and more towards the earth, more and more towards the animal in you.

The ancient music, the classical music, has a totally different effect: it pulls you upwards, it takes you beyond gravitation. It is part of levitation; you start floating upwards and upwards. It has a more meditative quality in it. It reaches to your higher centers. The real music worth calling music will have something to do with SAHASRAR – your seventh center, but very rarely a genius reaches there to create such music. But if even your heart center is moved, it is more than enough. If your heart center starts dancing and revolving, you are very close to meditation.

JUST AS MUSIC is the meeting of silence and sound, for J Pythagoras philosophy is a meeting of religion and science. His concept of philosophy is that of a great synthesis. He is one of the greatest synthesizers ever – he always brings polar opposites together and makes them complementary.

He is a great artist in destroying opposition. Wherever he finds opposition he starts searching for something which must be bridging the opposition, and that bridge is important.

Religion and science have been in conflict for centuries because they have not listened to Pythagoras. Otherwise, this division would never have happened. And this division has proved one of the most fatal calamities. Religion and science have been fighting as enemies; for centuries the church did not allow science to develop and grow. People like Galileo and Kepler and others were punished.

Religion was afraid of science. This is stupid, because science can only help religion, science can only prepare the ground for the inner science. The church people and the popes who were against science were simply behaving in a very stupid way – without knowing what they were doing.

Truth cannot be crushed; nobody can crucify truth.

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Slowly slowly, science gained ground, became powerful – it was good that it became powerful. But it started behaving in the same stupid way by destroying religion. It became a revenge. For three hundred years, the mainstream of scientific thinkers has been trying to destroy religion as hard as possible. They have declared God is dead. They have declared there is no soul. They have declared there is no afterlife. They have declared there is NO inner being in man. They have reduced man to a machine.

Man has lost all grandeur. Man cannot feel meaningful any more. It is because of this stupid approach of science, this revengeful approach of science, that all meaning has disappeared from the world. People are simply dragging themselves. There is no poetry – there is no possibility of poetry, because without a God the world cannot be a cosmos. Then it is only a mechanical phenomenon; there is no consciousness behind it. Without God, the world cannot be caring; it cannot be your mother – it is bound to be neutral. Whether you live or die, nature is not concerned at all.

Science has created the idea of a nature indifferent to man. This is dangerous, because man is so small and nature is so vast. And if this vast existence is absolutely indifferent towards you, how can you feel significant, meaningful? You will feel a stranger, an outsider, something accidental.

And science became so prominent that even philosophers started following the scientific way of thinking, which is a very lopsided way. Even philosophers lost hold of that great vision of unity, of oneness, of existence being a home.

The modern philosopher has no beauty compared to Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Buddha, Socrates, Lao Tzu, Zarathustra. The modern philosopher is very ordinary; he is nothing but a professor of philosophy. His philosophy is not a delight in his being, it is not a song, it is not a music. All that he goes on doing is linguistic analysis. The modern philosopher is an ugly phenomenon. Modern philosophy has NO philosophy of life in it. At the most, it is a constant effort to go on sharpening logic – but for what? The whole effort seems to be useless.

And modern philosophy has become just a shadow of science. It has lost its glory. It is no more the science of sciences; it is no more the queen.

With Pythagoras, philosophy was the highest peak of understanding, the highest flight towards truth. One wing has to be science, another wing has to be religion. Those were the days of great philosophers; the world came to know REALLY great philosophers.

In China, Confucius, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Mencius, Lieh Tzu – all close contemporaries of Zarathustra.

In India, Gautam Buddha, Mahavira, Prakuddha Katyayana, Sanjay Vilethiputta, Makkhli Goshal, Poorna Kashyapa, and many more. In Greece, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle.... And the chain continues. In kan, the great Zarathustra. Twenty-five centuries ago, the world knew the highest flights of philosophy.

Now, instead of a philosopher, what you find is just a poor specimen: a professor of philosophy.

I have heard a story:

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The King of the Cannibals decided to open his country up to tourism. A world-famous philosopher, who had a special interest in the primitive, was extremely eager to add this backward people to his studies.

On his arrival in Cannibal-land, the philosopher demanded a private tour and a personal audience with the Cannibal King. Not only was this granted, but the Cannibal King himself conducted the visiting dignitary to all points of interest, while the philosopher busily jotted down notes on his yellow pad. Towards the end of the day, the King was moved to suggest a visit to his people’s most special and sacred structure. This, he announced, was the Cannibal Super-Market. There, in a shiny modern building, was housed the most complete and varied selection of human anatomical parts available anywhere in the world.

The philosopher enthusiastically agreed to see it, and they soon arrived at the building and went in. Here, lit by fluorescent lights, were row upon row of gleaming chrome-and-glass display cases.

Inside, packaged neatly in clear plastic, with prices prominently displayed, were hundreds of items: legs, arms, hands, ears, etcetera. The philosopher eagerly scribbled notes while they toured the market.

At last they arrived at what the Cannibal King said was their most prized department human brains.

As they walked slowly down the aisle, the philosopher noted the following signs: ”Explorers’ brains

– ten cents-a-pound”...”missionaries’ brains – twenty cents-a-pound”...”businessmen’s brains – one dollar-a-pound”...”commanding generals’ brains – ten dollars-a-pound”. The very last item had a display case of its own and its sign was especially large: ”philosophers’ brains”, it read, ”fifty dollars-a-pound!”

The philosopher could scarcely contain his delight. Unable to restrain himself, he turned to the Cannibal King and smugly inquired as to how it was, that of all the items in the super-market, philosophers’ brains were by far the most expensive.

”Come, come, my good man,” said the Cannibal King, ”do you know how many philosophers we have to kill just to get one pound of brains?”

Modern philosophy and the modern philosopher is just worthless. It has lost it’s peaks: it no more moves into the beyond. It is neither science nor religion. It is just a very confused affair today.

For Pythagoras, science is a search for truth in the objective world and religion is a search for truth in the subjective world – and philosophy is a search for the truth. So science and religion are like two hands or two wings. They are not opposites but complementaries. And the world would be better if we were reminded of it again.

The church, the temple and the lab need not be enemies. They should exist in a kind of friendship.

Man will be far richer then. Now, if he chooses science he becomes rich outside and goes on becoming poorer and poorer inside. If he chooses religion, he becomes rich inside, but goes on becoming poorer and poorer on the outside. And both are ugly scenes.

The West has chosen science; it has all the riches of the world, but the man is completely lost, feeling meaningless, suicidal. The man, when he looks inside, finds nothing but hollowness, emptiness. The inner world has become very poor in the West.

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In the East, just the opposite has happened: people have chosen religion against science. Their inner world is calmer, quieter, richer; but on the outside they are starving, dying – no food, no medicine, no facilities to live a human life, living almost like animals or even worse.

This is the consequence of not listening to Pythagoras. The whole history of humanity would have been totally different if Pythagoras had been listened to, understood. There is no need for the East to be East and the West to be West. There is no need for anybody to be just a materialist or just a spiritualist. If body and soul can exist together – they ARE existing together in you, in everybody –

then why can’t materialism and spiritualism exist together? They SHOULD!

A man must be materialist and spiritualist. To choose is fatal. There is no need to choose; you can have both the worlds – you SHOULD have both the worlds; that is your birthright.

I teach you this synthesis: you have to be a materialist, as materialistic as any materialist, and a spiritualist, as much a spiritualist as any spiritualist. And remember: both will be angry at you, because the spiritualist will not be able to forgive you for your materialism, and the materialist will not be able to forgive you for your spiritualism.

That’s why people are against me – all kinds of people! The religious people are against me because they cannot accept my materialist approach; and the materialists are against me because they cannot accept my spiritualist approach. I would like to remind you that you have to be both together.

This will bring a new man and a new humanity on the earth – and it is utterly needed, absolutely needed: a new man, a new humanity, a new concept.

There is no need to choose. God has given you a body – that means you have to be a materialist; and God has given you a soul – that means you have to be a spiritualist. You have to be a meeting of the two: you have to be a yogi, a union. And if your body and soul ARE balanced, and your spiritualism and your materialism are balanced, in a rhythm, you will attain to the greatest music possible. And that music is meditation, that music is samadhi.

The sutras... purification continues:

LISTEN, AND IN THINE HEART ENGRAVE MY WORDS, KEEP CLOSED BOTH EYE AND EAR

GAINST PREJUDICE, OF OTHERS THE EXAMPLE FEAR; THINK FOR THYSELF.

LISTEN, SAYS PYTHAGORAS. Down the ages the Masters have always been saying: Listen. But what you do at the most is you hear – you don’t listen. And there is a tremendous difference between these two words.

Hearing is very superficial. You can hear because you have ears, that’s all. Anybody who has ears can hear. It is an ordinary phenomenon. Listening has a different quality to it. When you hear attentively, then it is listening. Hearing is only physical; when your soul also gets involved in it, then it becomes listening.

And to listen is to understand. Truth needs no proof. Truth is self-evident. All that is needed is the capacity to listen.

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The student hears; the disciple listens. The curious hears, because his inquiry is intellectual. But the one who is a seeker, whose inquiry is not only a kind of curiosity, whose inquiry is a question of life and death to him, he listens. Everything is at stake. How can you afford not to listen?

Listening means your body and soul function together in a deep harmony. You become all ears; your whole body functions as an ear – your legs, your hands, every cell of your body and your whole being inside is attentive. Something immensely important is imparted to you. Something is communicated and you would not like to miss it.

If you are a seeker, a disciple, only then do you know what listening is. When you hear with great love, intensity, passion, when you hear aflame, when you hear totally, when you hear in silence, it is listening.

Pythagoras says: LISTEN...!

One of the great contemporaries of Pythagoras, Mahavira, has said that there are two ways to move into the world of truth. One is by RIGHT listening – just by right listening. Those who fail in right listening, for them the other is by right practice. You will be surprised. Right practice is needed for those who have failed in right listening. Otherwise, to listen to a man who has arrived is enough.

To listen to a Buddha is ENOUGH. He IS fire, and in listening you will become afire. Something will jump from the enlightened person to the disciple; something mysterious will be communicated – a transmission beyond scriptures and beyond words. But for that, listening is needed.

I was travelling in this country for many years, almost for fifteen years, talking to millions of people, but they were hearing, not listening. I tried hard to help them to listen, but it was impossible. I had to stop travelling. Now I wait only for those who can listen.

You can see this silence, this presence of yours, this utter attentiveness, this being with me... this very moment a transformation starts happening. Something will be triggered in you. These moments are precious, and these moments are as precious as you are capable of listening.

If your mind is wandering somewhere else, then physically you will be hearing but you will not be able to listen. If many thoughts are moving inside you and there is great traffic, then you will be hearing. Those thoughts won’t allow what I am saying to reach you, AND they won’t allow what I am to reach you. When the mind has no thoughts, when the traffic inside has stopped, when the inner talk is discontinued, in that gap, in that silence, in that state of love and being, listening happens.

And to listen RIGHTLY IS to understand. There is no other effort needed. There is no need to practice truth because truth already is – if you understand, it is there; if you open your eyes, you have found it. Truth is not lost, you have only fallen asleep. If you listen, you will be awakened. Truth is where it has always been.

LISTEN, says Pythagoras, AND IN THINE HEART ENGRAVE MY WORDS...

If you listen, only then can the words reach the heart. If you hear, the words will only reach the head.

The heart is your innermost core. If you are utterly silent, then only will the passage be available for the Master to reach you, to touch your heart, to engrave the message there.

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... AND IN THINE HEART ENGRAVE MY WORDS...

And that’s enough. Once the seed of truth falls into the heart, you WILL become a garden, you WILL

bloom. Then it is only a question of time and patience. The seed that falls into the soil of the heart is bound to grow. It will sprout when the season comes; it will come to grow great foliage. And when the spring is there, it will bloom in thousands of flowers, it will blossom.

That’s why Mahavira says right listening is enough. In right listening, your heart is available to the Master. And once the Master can reach the heart of the disciple, nothing else is needed. Then the flame jumps from one being into the being of the other. Then the lit candle can go on sharing its flame with all those candles which are not yet lit. It is literally a jump of the flame from one being to another.

KEEP CLOSED BOTH EYE AND EAR GAINST PREJUDICE...

Anything that can disturb you, anything that will not allow you to listen, is prejudice. If you come here as a Hindu you will not listen to me, you will hear, because constantly you will be judging, criticizing, evaluating, comparing. If you come here as a Mohammedan, as a Christian, as a communist, as a Catholic, you will not listen. You WILL hear, but you will be constantly engaged in inner work; you will not be available. Prejudice keeps one closed.

And when you are prejudiced, when you have already decided something a priori, then you will listen only in a very choosing way. You will listen only to that which goes to support your prejudice. You will not be able to listen to that which goes against your prejudice.

And that’s how people hear, and that’s how people see. Even seeing is prejudiced. You see only that which you want to see, and you hear only that which you want to hear. And then you go on interpreting according to your prejudice. If you don’t come out of your prejudice, you will never come into the light. Your prejudice is your prison.

And there are prejudices and prejudices... social, political, religious, philosophical, layers and layers of prejudice. And you are surrounded by so many layers that it is almost impossible to reach you.

You will have to drop these prejudices.

And Pythagoras is not saying, ”Whatsoever I say, you have to believe in it.” No. He is simply saying,

”Listen!” There is no question of believing or not believing. And that’s what I am saying to you. It is not a question of believing in whatsoever is said to you – or disbelieving. Truth NEEDS nothing.

Truth needs only to be listened to. Once you have listened to it, it will become your truth. And you will not need to believe in it. You have to believe in things only when you have not known them yourself, when you have not known them on your own, when they are not your own experience –

then you have to believe.

The person who is ready to listen will not need to believe in anything or disbelieve. His clarity will immediately settle things. When you listen with open ears and open eyes, with clarity and transparency, truth is immediately understood as true, and falsehood is immediately understood as false. You need not think about them; you need not ponder what is right and what is wrong.

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In a transparent mind, right is known as right, and wrong is known as wrong. The transparent mind is the decisive factor – it immediately concludes. And the conclusion is not a logical process either.

But we go on carrying prejudices. And small prejudices can prevent. Just a small particle of dust in your eye is enough to prevent you seeing this beautiful world. You will not be able to open your eyes. You may be seeing the Himalayas and a dust particle goes into your eyes – and the Himalayas disappear. Now, the particle of dust is so small, yet it helps the big, immense Himalayas to disappear.

And your eyes are not only full of dust, they are full of mountains of prejudices.

The first thing for a disciple is to be utterly nude as far as prejudices are concerned. Drop them. You have not experienced; you have been told what to believe and what not to believe. Drop everything, become just a pure mirror, and listen.

LISTEN, AND IN THINE HEART ENGRAVE MY WORDS; KEEP CLOSED BOTH EYE AND EAR

GAINST PREJUDICE; OF OTHERS THE EXAMPLE FEAR, THINK FOR THYSELF.

AND LOOK AT OTHERS AND SEE: they are all full of conclusions, prejudices, scriptures, philosophies, dogmas and creeds – and yet where have they arrived? Look at them, and fear, be afraid that if you don’t drop your prejudices you will remain the same.

Go outside and look at people – their lives have no joy. their lives have no authenticity, and they are all great believers. Somebody goes to the mosque, somebody goes to the church, somebody to the temple – and they are all religious people. Somebody reads the Bible and somebody reads DAS KAPITAL and somebody reads the Gita – they are all believers! Somebody believes in Kaaba and somebody in Kashi and somebody in the Kremlin, but they are ALL believers. But what has happened in their lives? God has not nodded yet. Their lives are not numinous – God has not yet said yes to them. They know nothing of God.

You can look into their eyes and you will find only sadness and nothing else – frustration writ large.

Watch their lives and you will see they are dragging; there is no dance to their steps. Look at what they talk about and you will not find any music in it. Watch their lives and you will not find any grace there. Beware! Are you going to be like this crowd that surrounds the world? Are you going to be just part of the herd? Or are you going to become numinous? That has to be decided by you.

OF OTHERS THE EXAMPLE FEAR...

Pythagoras is absolutely right. Watch others and that will help you. Watch your parents – where have they arrived. And they are guiding you, blind people guiding other blind people. Watch your leaders – where have they arrived. Mad people leading other mad people! Watch your priests –

what is their experience?

Look into their eyes, encounter them, and you will find them as afraid as you are, as dark as you are. You will not find even a ray of light in their being. Your rabbis, your pundits, your priests – just go and see.

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Be a little more alert in watching people, and immediately this understanding will happen to you: ”Am I going to be like this? Like these people? Then life has been lost.” And if you can learn anything from the crowd around you – from your parents, from your friends, from your neighbours – one thing is certain: that the way to truth never goes through prejudices, and the way to God is not the way of the scripture and belief. The way of God goes through silence, purity of the mind, clarity of the mind.

And the unprejudiced mind is a pure mind, remember.

By ’purity’ I don’t mean anything moral; by ’purity’ I simply mean something scientific. When you say,

”This water is pure,” do you mean this is moral? this water is moral? When you say, ”This water is pure,” the word ’pure’ is not used in any moralistic sense. It simply says: this water contains nothing foreign in it. It is .simply itself, clear, no dust, no pollution. It is simply itself. natural; as it should be it is.

I call a mind pure if it has no prejudices – then there is clarity and the mind is functioning like a mirror, a pure mirror.

The moralist’s mind is never pure, because he has a prejudice – what is good and what is bad. He is trying to be good and he is trying not to be bad. And he is against the bad, and he does not know what is bad – because he does not know what is good: he has only been told. He is simply following others: he is part of a long chain of slavery.

If you are born in a Jaina family, then to eat potatoes is wrong. Potatoes? Poor potatoes? They are such innocent people – can you find more innocent people than potatoes? But it is wrong. Anything that grows underneath the earth Jainas avoid; that is immoral. You may never have thought about it; but if you had been born a Jaina, then this would have been your prejudice.

Just watch your prejudices. They are ALL alike – unless something is rooted in your own experience it remains a bondage.

KEEP CLOSED BOTH EYE AND EAR AGAINST PREJUDICE; OF OTHERS THE EXAMPLE

FEAR; THINK FOR THYSELF.

Watch, look... never believe in others. Be aware of what is happening around you to people, but always THINK FOR THYSELF.

Socrates says: Know thyself – but you can know yourself only if you start thinking for yourself. But we have all given the right to think – which is a very intrinsic right, a very fundamental right – we have given it to others. Others are thinking for you! Your parents decide what is right and what is wrong, and your teachers and your priests and your politicians – you have given your right to others to think for you, which is the most fundamental right. Nothing can be more basic than that.

Never give your right of thinking to anybody else, whosoever he is. And the real Master never takes your right away from you. In fact, he helps you to regain it, to reclaim it, to rediscover it. He helps you to become a light unto yourself.

Remember the last words of Buddha to his disciples: Be a light unto yourself.

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Pythagoras says: THINK FOR THYSELF... the same thing in other words. Watch, experience, see what is happening, but the ultimate decision has to be yours, totally yours.

Never say, ”I am doing this because my parents have been doing this,” that is stupid. Do it if YOU

feel that it is right to do, if you think it is right you have come upon it through your own meditation.

If it has come as a conclusion of all your own experiences, then do it by all means; whether your parents were doing it or not does not matter.

Never say, ”Because it has always been done, that’s why I am doing it.” Never say, ”Because it is written in the Vedas or in the Koran or in the Bible, that’s why I am doing it.” Everything has changed, times have changed. What was right in the times of the Vedas is not right any longer. And what was right in the times of the Koran is not right any longer, cannot be.

For example, Mohammed said to his disciples: ”Give birth to as many children as possible!” This was perfectly right for the people with whom Mohammed was talking. He was talking to warriors; and in those days, and particularly in the Arabian countries, it was such a bloody struggle to survive that more and more people were needed – and particularly more and more male children were needed to be soldiers. There were many women; almost four times more than men. That’s why Mohammed said, ”You can have four wives.”

It was perfectly moral and perfectly right, because if Mohammed had insisted on one wife, then three women would have remained without husbands, without families, without children – and that would have created great prostitution, that would have created great immorality. So he was perfectly right to say, ”You can marry four wives.” He himself married nine – just to give an example. And of course the Master has to do it more perfectly than the disciple. And I am absolutely in agreement with him; he did well. And whatsoever he was saying was logical, rational, relevant. He was giving a very responsible commandment: Marry four wives.

But Mohammedans are still marrying four wives – that is the trouble. They say, ”It has been said by the prophet!” Now the number of women in the world is equal, in fact, in some countries, less than the men. On the whole it is equal, so one woman to one man seems to be the rational way out. Now, if you marry four women then three men will remain unmarried and they will create trouble – they are bound to create trouble. In fact, they will create more trouble than three unmarried women. Women are passive, patient, accepting. Have you ever heard of a woman raping a man? It doesn’t happen.

But those three men without women will become rapists; they will destroy the whole society, they will destroy all that is beautiful and good and intimate. It will become an ugly sexual, perverted society.

Mohammed was right, but the right can only be relevant to a particular time. And then he said, ”Give birth to as many children as possible.” Mohammedans are still doing the same. Now the world is overcrowded, Mohammed was never aware of it, what was going to happen – nobody can say about the future. Now the world is overcrowded; we don’t need any more people. We need less and less people.

If India has half of the population that it has today, that will be the greatest blessing to it. But Mohammedans say they cannot stop because it is written in their scripture.

Now, because I am saying this, some Mohammedan is going to be against me. They will gather somewhere protesting that I am talking against the prophet. I am not talking against the prophet; Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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I am simply talking against your stupidity. I am simply saying fourteen hundred years have passed since Mohammed, and much water has gone down the Ganges.

Five thousand years have passed since Manu wrote the Hindu code of morality – FIVE thousand years have passed. Everything has changed, but the Hindu mind remains Manu-oriented. Three thousand years have passed since Moses gave you the commandments, but still you go on following them.

Each MOMENT life goes on changing, and the really aware man will respond each moment – to the situation! He will not carry any prejudices? he will not carry any past in his head. He will be a pure mirror of the situation in which he is, and he will act OUT of the situation – he will be responsible.

That is the meaning of the word ’responsible’: a responsible person is a moral person according to me. But your so-called moral people are NOT responsible people.

Responsibility is MORE fundamental than morality. And by ’responsibility’ I mean ability to respond to the present moment – not according to ready-made formulae, not according to already accumulated prejudices, but according to the situation. And when you respond to the moment, it is liberating, and it is always good, and it is always adequate.

... THINK FOR THYSELF

Mohammed cannot think for you, neither can Krishna nor Christ. I cannot think for you. I can help you to become a mirror so that you can think for yourself.

Remember, this is the difference between a real Master and a pseudo Master. The pseudo Master gives you what to think; the real Master gives you HOW to think. The pseudo gives you ready-made formulae; the real Master simply helps you to become a mirror, so whenever, wherever you are, you always respond adequately to the situation, your responses are never inadequate.

The pseudo master gives you a philosophy, a creed, a belief; the real Master gives you wisdom, awareness, understanding. Then each act has to come out of that understanding.

The world can really become a paradise if people are responsible. But it is easier to throw the responsibility of thinking on others. People don’t like to think. They want somebody else to do the chewing for them, then they can simply swallow the food. They don’t want to chew for themselves, and unless you chew for yourself you will not be nourished. Unless you chew for yourself you will never become an integrated individual. You will be only an anonymous number, not a real individual.

And to be an individual is the goal of life – only then are you accepted by God, are you ready to offer yourself to God. You have something to offer only then. Before that you are just hollow, full of straw; you don’t have anything valuable.

CONSULT, DELIBERATE, AND FREELY CHOOSE.

Pythagoras says: CONSULT... he is not saying don’t listen to others. Consult – there are more experienced people than you.

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CONSULT, DELIBERATE...

but don’t accept.

Take the advice, then contemplate, deliberate,

meditate over it... AND FREELY CHOOSE. The ultimate choice has to be yours. Freely choose because if you don’t freely choose, you will never have freedom.

Freedom is the accumulated effect of all the free choices that you have made in your life. If you have never made a free choice, how can you have freedom? Freedom is not a commodity; freedom is a cumulative effect of all the choices that you have made in your life.

You don’t choose your woman – your father chooses the woman for you. You will not have freedom.

You don’t choose your temple: your birth has already decided it, that you will go to the church –

Catholic, Protestant – or you will go to the temple, Hindu, Jaina, Buddhist. Your birth has decided it. Your marriage is decided by your parents, your education is decided by the parents. And then you want freedom?! And then everything is decided by others. And freedom is cumulative. If you go on deciding at each step of your life on your own, slowly slowly, you accumulate freedom. Then freedom becomes a power in you, and freedom is the greatest gift of God. But you have to be worthy of it.

Don’t throw your responsibilities on others. It is easier, because it gives you a chance to say, ”What can I do?” If you have found a wrong wife, what can you do? Your parents are responsible, or the astrologers, palmists – you are not responsible. You have shirked a responsibility, but by that you have shirked something valuable. Choosing your own woman, choosing your own man, you would have become integrated, crystallized. Every choice crystallizes you.

LET FOOLS ACT AIMLESSLY AND WITHOUT CAUSE, THOU SHOULDST, IN THE PRESENT, CONTEMPLATE THE FUTURE.

FOOLS ACT AIMLESSLY, AND SAGES ACT AIMLESSLY. That’s why sometimes the sage looks like a fool and vice versa: the fool sometimes looks like a sage. There is one common thing between the sage and the fool, and that common thing is: both act aimlessly – but for different reasons they act aimlessly.

The fool acts aimlessly because he has no consciousness; he is functioning mechanically, unconsciously. The sage acts aimlessly because he is so fully conscious, he is so totally conscious, there is no need to think about the aim. The very consciousness is enough to take him in the right direction, to the right goal.

But you are between the two: you are neither a fool nor a sage. Sages are rare just as fools are rare. Millions of people are just in between, in limbo. This sutra is for those who are in limbo, and that is the majority; ninety-nine percent of people are in limbo.

LET FOOLS ACT AIMLESSLY AND WITHOUT CAUSE, THOU SHOULDST, IN THE PRESENT, CONTEMPLATE THE FUTURE.

Act consciously, deliberately, choose, think of the consequences. Whatsoever you are going to do, think of the consequences. But remember: Pythagoras is not saying to become too much future-oriented. Hence he says:

... IN THE PRESENT, CONTEMPLATE THE FUTURE.

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Remain in the present, remain present-oriented. Don’t get too much involved into the fantasy of the future. But he is saying you cannot drop the future completely yet. That can be dropped only when you have become totally alert. So right now you have to do one thing: remain in the present – that will help you to become more and more conscious – and think of the consequences – that will make you less and less stupid. And, slowly slowly, great intelligence is released by these two things: being in the present and always moving aimfully, with a target, with a direction.

Ultimately, direction and target, all disappear. That’s why St Francis calls himself a ’fool of God’; Jesus Christ was also known as a fool, Ramakrishna is a fool – but in a totally different sense. They are so innocent, they are again child-like. They act spontaneously, with no aim, with no idea of consequences. But their very awareness is such that they cannot go wrong. They have eyes so they need not think about the door, where the door is. But you are blind. If you don’t think of the door, you may stumble into some furniture, into the wall; you may get hurt, wounded.

THAT WHICH THOU DOST NOT KNOW, PRETEND NOT THAT THOU DOST. INSTRUCT

THYSELF: FOR TIME AND PATIENCE FAVOUR ALL.

THAT WHICH THOU DOST NOT KNOW... that which you don’t know, please don’t pretend that you know. That is the way of the mediocre mind; it goes on pretending. It cannot accept, ”There is something I am not knowledgeable about, I don’t know.” He goes on pretending. He goes on behaving in a way AS IF he knows – and that’s how he becomes more and more foolish. Those pretensions are not going to help you to become wise. Those pretensions will become the barriers to wisdom.

When P. D. Ouspensky reached his Master, Gurdjieff, for the first time, Gurdjieff looked into his eyes and without saying a single word he gave him a piece of paper, empty, and told him to go in the next room and write on one side what he thought he knew and on the other side what he thought he did not know.

Ouspensky was a little puzzled: ”What kind of beginning is this?” He had not even asked his name, no formal introduction. He had not even asked, ”Why have you come?” Simply gave him the piece of paper and told him, ”Go into the next room and write on one side what you know and on the other what you don’t know.”

Ouspensky went into the room. It was a cold night, a cold Russian night, but he started perspiring.

He could not write a single word on the side where he was to write what he knew. For the first time he became aware that he knew nothing. He thought of many things – God, truth, love, life, death

– and it was not that he was not knowledgeable. He was already a very famous author; he had already written his greatest book, TERTIUM ORGANUM.

Just a few days before, I told you that is the third greatest book in the world. First is Aristotle’s ORGANUM, second is Bacon’s NOVUM ORGANUM, third is Ouspensky’s TERTIUM ORGANUM –

the third canon of thought. He had already written it! He was already world famous. Gurdjieff was not known at all; in fact, Gurdjieff became known because of Ouspensky.

A world famous mathematician, a world famous philosopher and thinker, a great author...

he

could have written thousands of things that he knew. He could have presented his great book, Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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TERTIUM ORGANUM, to Gurdjieff: ”These are all the things I know.” And in that book he talks like an Upanishadic seer, like a prophet. If you read the book you will be surprised how a man who has not yet become enlightened can write such things. But they can be written – just a little cleverness is needed.

But that night he could not write a single word. He came back with tears in his eyes, fell at Gurdjieff’s feet, gave him the blank paper, and said, ”I don’t know anything. You start instructing me – from the very beginning. Start from ABC.”

This is the beginning of disciplehood. Only such a person can be a disciple, because he has dropped all prejudices, and it must have been hard for a man who was so famous.

THAT WHICH THOU DOST NOT KNOW, PRETEND NOT THAT THOU DOST. INSTRUCT

THYSELF . .

Learn. If you believe that you already know, how are you going to learn?

... FOR TIME AND PATIENCE FAVOUR ALL.

And if you learn, don’t be worried – TIME AND PATIENCE FAVOUR ALL. Existence always cares about you. If you are authentic, if your search is true and you are not a pretender, time will help you, will cooperate with you. Time from existence’s side, and patience on your side.

The English word ’patient’ is beautiful, but has become very ugly, has gone into wrong hands. Now the patient means somebody who is ill. In fact, in the ancient days the ill person was called ’a patient’ because illness means you have not learnt how to be healthy and whole. Hence, you have to learn. In the ancient world, the patient simply meant the student. The patient had to learn how to be healthy and whole. And because he would need great patience to learn it, that’s why he was called patient. It had nothing to do with illness. And everybody is ill. It happens almost every day.

People come here... one has come for only four weeks, and then it is difficult to go, and they come and ask me, ”Osho, can we write back to our office, to our boss, that we are ill – because only if we are ill can our stay be extended. But will it not be untrue? What do you say?” I say, ”Write! – because it can never be untrue. You are all ill! You don’t need a certificate for it. It is the absolute truth. You can go on writing again and again for years and it will be true.” Not to be ill means to become a Buddha. You can write till you have become a Buddha.

INSTRUCT THYSELF: FOR TIME AND PATIENCE FAVOUR ALL.

NEGLECT NOT THY HEALTH...

HEALTH TO PYTHAGORAS, HAS TWO ASPECTS TO IT. One is the physical, the other is the spiritual. The body is your temple – don’t neglect it. Your foolish, stupid ascetics have been telling you to neglect it – not only to neglect but to destroy your body. Pythagoras is not an asCetic: he is a man of understanding.

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He says: Respect, don’t neglect, your body. If your body is neglected, you will not be able to find the inner harmony – because if the body is harmonious it helps to attain to inner harmony. Take every care of your health, of your body; love it, respect it, it is a great gift. It is a miracle! a mystery.

... DISPENSE WITH MODERATION FOOD TO THE BODY AND TO THE MIND REPOSE.

What food is for the body repose is in exactly the same way for the soul: food nourishes the body and repose nourishes the soul. The materialist forgets about repose; that’s why in the West there is so much restlessness – they have forgotten repose, they don’t know how to relax. They don’t know how to be in a state of unoccupiedness; they don’t know how to sit silently doing nothing. They have completely forgotten! The materialist is bound to forget. He goes on eating too much, and he has forgotten that only his body goes on becoming fatter and fatter, and his soul goes on becoming thinner and thinner.

Sometimes I see people who have only bodies and no soul. Just layers and layers of fat, and nothing behind – vegetables, cabbages. Howsoever sophisticated they may be, educated, full of knowledge, there is not much difference.

They say the difference between a cauliflower and a cabbage is not much: when the cabbage goes through college it becomes a cauliflower.

Repose is far more essential even than food. If sometimes you go on a small fast it is good, but repose should never be forgotten – because basically the body is only a temple: the deity is within.

The body has to be loved only because it is a temple of the deity. The body is only a means; the end is inside.

Repose is food, meditation is food, for the soul. Repose means silence, rest, relaxation, calmness, coolness, collectedness, meditativeness. A state of unoccupied mind, empty, silent, with no idea of any doing, not going anywhere, not rushing anywhere – just being herenow. That is repose. And to be herenow is tremendously nourishing, because then you are deeply in tune with God, then music showers on you.

The past is no more, it is dead; the future is not yet, it is unborn. Only the present is. Only the present is alive. When you are herenow, life flows in you. When you are herenow, you are in God.

And that is nourishment, that is real food.

In that sense the Upanishads have said: ANAM BRAHM – food is God, God is food. In the sense of repose it is REALLY food. As the body will die without food, the soul dies without repose.

The materialist thinks only of the body, and the spiritualist thinks only of repose, and both remain lopsided. One has a very nourished soul but an undernourished body; the temple is in ruins. And one has a beautiful temple, a marble temple, but the deity is dead, or has not come yet. Both are missing something.

We need a music of earth and sky, of body and soul; we need a harmony between the visible and the invisible. The food is visible, repose is invisible. And you need both, and you need a rhythm between the two.

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The person who has not known what repose is starts stuffing too much food in himself. Nothing can help him unless he learns repose – no dieting is going to help, no exercises are going to help, no disciplining is going to help. Sooner or later he will start eating again, because his inner being feels so empty and he knows no other way to fill it – he knows only one way: to go on throwing food inside himself.

When people come to me with the problem of too much obsession with food, my only suggestion is: become more meditative. Don’t be worried about food. Become more loving, become more meditative, and the problem will disappear. When you are full of love and meditativeness, you need not stuff yourself with food. The food is only a substitute – because you are missing the inner food, you are trying to substitute it by outer food.

The man of repose always remains very very alert, aware, of what he is eating, how much he is eating. He cannot eat more than is needed, and he will not eat less than is needed. He is always in the middle, he is a balance.

TOO MUCH ATTENTION OR TOO LITTLE SHUN, FOR ENVY THUS, TO EITHER EXCESS IS

ALIKE ATTACHED.

Pythagoras is always reminding you about the golden mean: be in the middle – as much as Buddha goes on reminding about MAJJHIM NIKAYA, the middle path.

TOO MUCH ATTENTION OR TOO LITTLE SHUN...

Don’t hanker for too much attention from people – that is an ego trip. Don’t try to become very famous, well-known, this and that – that is an ego trip. But that does not mean start trying to become a nonentity – that nobody should know you, that you should remain anonymous – that is again the same trip on the other extreme. Avoid both.

All extremes have to be avoided. Excess is evil according to Pythagoras – and it is. And to be in the middle, to be exactly in the middle, is virtue. Never be an ascetic, and never become indulgent.

Don’t eat too much food and don’t go on long fasts. Don’t become too much obsessed with luxury, and don’t become too much anti-luxury, anti-comfort.

LUXURY AND AVARICE HAVE SIMILAR RESULTS. ONE MUST CHOOSE IN ALL THINGS A MEAN JUST AND GOOD.

Don’t renounce the world, and don’t be worldly either. Rejoice in the balance – dance, because balance is dance. Sing because balance is a song. Become musical because balance creates music.

And remember, in each and everything the golden mean has to be followed. And if you can follow the golden mean, you will become gold, your baser metal will be transformed into the highest metal, gold.

Gold is a symbol of the ultimate peak – that’s why Pythagoras has called these sutras, GOLDEN

VERSES. It is an alchemical expression. Down the ages alchemists have been trying to find ways Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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to transmute baser metals into gold. Remember, they were not concerned with baser metals and gold at all: their whole purpose was how to transform man from a sexual animal into an ecstatic consciousness, how to transform the animal in man into God. That state is represented by gold.

Follow the golden mean and you will become the gold. Follow the path of balance and all the mysteries will be revealed to you. That’s my message to my sannyasins too: Don’t leave the world and yet be not of it.

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CHAPTER 2

Zorba The Buddha

1 January 1979 am in Buddha Hall

The first question

Question 1

OSHO, RIGHT NOW, HERE, I COULD DRINK YOU, SHARE IN YOUR BUDDHAHOOD, BUT I DON’T. DAY AFTER DAY, I DON’T. BELOVED OSHO, IS OUR CONDITIONING THAT DIFFICULT

TO DROP?

Rashid,

THE MOST DIFFICULT THING IN LIFE IS TO DROP THE past – because to drop the past means to drop the whole identity, to drop the whole personality. It is to drop yourself. You are nothing but your past, you are nothing but your conditionings.

It is not like dropping clothes – it is as if one’s skin is being peeled off. Your past is all that you know you are. Dropping is difficult, arduous – the most difficult thing in life. But those who can dare to drop it, only they live. Others simply pretend to live, others simply go on dragging themselves somehow.

They don’t have any vitality – they can’t have. They live at the minimum. And to live at the minimum is to miss the whole thing.

It is only when you live at the optimum of your potential that blossoming happens. It is only at the optimum expression of your being, of your truth, that God arrives – that you start feeling the presence of the divine.

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The more you disappear, the more you feel the presence of the divine. But the presence will be felt only later on. The first condition to be fulfilled is disappearing. It is a kind of death.

Hence, Rashid, it is difficult. And conditioning has gone very deep – because you have been conditioned from the very beginning; from the first moment you were born, conditioning started.

By the time you became alert, a little aware, it had already reached to the deepest core of your being. Unless you penetrate yourself to this deepest core that was not conditioned at all, that was before conditioning started, unless you become that silent and that innocent, you will never know who you are.

You will know you are a Hindu, a Christian, a communist. You will know you are an Indian, a Chinese, a Japanese, and you will know many things – but those things are just con-ditionings imposed upon you. You had come into the world utterly silent, pure, innocent. Your innocence was absolute.

Meditation means to penetrate to that core, to that innermost core. Zen people call it KNOWING

THE ORIGINAL FACE.

This conditioning has to be understood first. Because of this conditioning you have lost something essential, something natural, something spontaneous in you. You are no more a human being, you only appear to be one. You have become a humanoid.

The humanoid is a being who is incapable of knowing himself, who has no idea who he is. A,l his ideas about himself are borrowed; they are given to him by other humanoids. The humanoid is incapable of mobilizing his own intentions; he has no more capacity to will, to be. He is a dependent phenomenon; he has lost his freedom. This in essence is his psychopathology.

And the whole of humanity today is psychopathological. The people who look normal to you are not normal at all. This whole earth has become a great madhouse. But because the whole earth is a madhouse, it is difficult to see. People everywhere are just like you, so you think you are normal and they are normal.

It is very rare that a normal person happens in this world – this world does not allow the normal to happen. Buddha is normal, Jesus is normal, Mohammed is normal. But they look abnormal because they are such a small minority.

The majority is pathological. And this majority is very decisive. It crucifies Jesus, it poisons Socrates, it kills Mansoor.

The humanoid is one who cannot will for himself, who is always looking for authorities, who always needs somebody ELSE to tell him what to do. He is ready to obey: he is never ready to choose.

That’s what Pythagoras wants you to do, and all the great Masters of the world: choose, will, be a light unto yourself.

The humanoid cannot will for himself because he has never learnt to do so. That’s why, Rashid, you say:

RIGHT NOW, HERE, I COULD DRINK YOU, SHARE IN YOUR BUDDHAHOOD. BUT I DON’T.

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Because you cannot will on your own, you cannot choose on your own. You have become utterly dependent. The humanoid cannot will for himself because he has never been taught to do so. The incapacity to will for oneself is not a genetic trait. It is not in the least an inherited inability; rather, it is an achieved inability.

You were born to see the truth, you were capable. Each child is able to see God, to communicate with existence, to will – but we hinder him. Slowly slowly, all the doors are closed. Slowly slowly, he achieves a kind of inability, a kind of impotence. And then even when he sees the doors of the prison are open, he cannot come out. He clings to the bars.

It is like a parrot who has lived so long in the cage that he has forgotten that he has wings. Leave the door open... he will not come out of it. If you try to bring him out he will cling to the bars.

That’s what is happening to you, Rashid. This is your achieved inability. Especially, this inability means that the earlier rearing and education of a human being either discouraged or never gave the chance for this active willing to take place.

Parents don’t allow the children to will. Then there are teachers, and those teachers are employed by the parents and the society. They are in the service of the past. The whole educational system serves the past, it does not serve you – remember it. From the kindergarten to the college, all the teachers and the professors are in the service of the past; they are there to maintain the past. They are not for you, they are not to help you, they are to condition you.

And then the priest and the politicians... they are ALL trying to condition you. Nobody wants you to be a free man, everybody wants you to be a slave – because the more you are a slave, the more easily you can be exploited. The leader will need followers. From where is he going to find followers?

Unless people are slaves and in constant need of somebody to dominate them, from where is he going to find followers?

And stupid politicians dominate millions of people. The only reason is that millions of people have been reduced to such psychological slavery that they cannot move on their own. Even if they have to follow a blind person, it is better to follow him than to be alone. They have become sheep – they are no longer people, they are no longer human beings. A humanoid is a sheep, a humanoid is a herd animal.

Have you seen sheep walking?

Huddling with each other, keeping themselves in the herd?

Everybody is afraid. The humanoid’s BASIC conditioning is that of fear. From the very beginning you have been poisoned through fear – all kinds of fear. The fear of hell, the fear of disrespectability, the fear of being a failure in the world... fears and fears and fears.

And if you follow the leaders and the priests and the pedagogues, then you have been promised all kinds of carrots. You have been promised all kinds of rewards – here and hereafter too.

The humanoid simply shows that during a person’s formative years he became habituated to having someone else frame his projects, directions and purposes. Somebody did his willing for him, and did it so effectively and convincingly that he never learnt to do it for himself. A humanoid is a human being who has been intentionally denied the God-given birthright to his full human possibilities. And Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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now this person will remain a tyrant-needing, tyrant-seeking humanoid for the remainder of his life –

unless he becomes part of a Buddhafield and is awakened from his sleep.

That awakening is satori, that awakening is samadhi, that awakening is enlightenment. The Master cannot give you anything that you don’t already have. The Master simply takes the conditionings away from you and leaves you alone as you were born. He makes you a child again: that is the whole purpose of a Master.

But this cannot be imposed on you, Rashid. You will have to be courageous enough to drop the conditioning. Great guts will be needed. But you have shown courage already by becoming a sannyasin. You have shown courage already by being here in my presence, to be with me.

Just a little more.... And once you start dropping your conditionings you will become aware of your wings. And those wings can take you to the ultimate reality: the flight of the alone to the alone. But there you can go only as an innocent being – unconditioned, utterly disidentified from the past.

I know you CAN drink me right now. Nobody is preventing you. I am inviting you. The whole situation is supportive.

Still you say: I DON’T. DAY AFTER DAY, I DON’T.

Only you can do it. It cannot be done on your behalf – because to do it on your behalf will again help your humanoid to remain. This thing you have to do! You have not done a thing before: this thing you have to do, however long it takes. But I am not going to do it for you. I will make it more and more tempting, seductive, but you will have to act.

That will be the first act of freedom in your life. And the first step is half the journey – the other half is very easy, it comes of its own accord.

Once the devils were having a conference on how to destroy the world fast but easily. They put their heads and tails together to think.

At last there was a stir in the assembly and all eyes were turned to Anger who stood up to speak.

”Let me go and destroy the world,” he said. ”I will set brother against brother. I will make men angry with each other and they will destroy themselves.” But the leader of the devils was not satisfied. Lust stood up to speak next: ’I will defile men’s minds.

I will make love disappear and men will be turned into beasts.” Shaking his head disgustedly at the answer, Greed spoke up: ”Allow me to go and I will instill in men’s hearts the most destructive of all passions. Man’s own uncontrolled desires will destroy him.” The twins, Gluttony and Drunkenness, told how they could make men’s bodies diseased and their minds besotted. Envy, Jealousy and Hate each told how he could destroy man. Idleness claimed he could do the job.

But with none of these was the leader satisfied. Finally, his last assistant spoke up. This one said,

”I shall talk to man persuasively in terms of all that God wants him to be. I shall tell him how fine his plans are to be honest, clean and brave. I shall encourage him in the good purpose of his life.” Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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The leader was aghast at such a talk, but the assistant continued, ”However, I shall tell man there is no hurry, he can do all of these things tomorrow. I shall advise him to wait until conditions become more favourable before he starts.”

The leader of the devils was pleased. He said, ”You are the one who shall go on earth to destroy man.”

Whenever your mind says ”Tomorrow...” remember, the mind is functioning as the devil.

The moment is now and here. Never postpone it – postponement becomes an addiction. And the most destructive thing in life is the idea of tomorrow. Tomorrow never comes. One goes on postponing... and instead of tomorrow, death comes one day. And then it is too late.

Rashid, no more postponing. This is the only moment you have CERTAINLY got – the next moment is not certain. This moment has to be lived in its totality.

The second question

Question 2

OSHO, WHAT MESSAGE DO YOU HAVE FOR THE WORLD SYMPOSIUM ON HUMANITY?

Krishna Prem,

I TEACH A NEW MAN, a new humanity, a new concept of being in the world. I proclaim HOMO

NOVUS. The old man is dying, and there is no need to help it survive any more. The old man is on the deathbed: don’t mourn for it – help it to die. Because only with the death of the old can the new be born. The cessation of the old is the beginning of the new.

My message to humanity is a new man. Less than that won’t do. Not something modified, not something continuous with the past, but utterly discontinuous.

Man has lived up to now not truly, not authentically; man has lived a very pseudo life. Man has lived in great pathology, man has lived in great disease. And there is no need to live in this pathology –

we can come out of the prison, because the prison is made by our own hands. We are in the prison because we have decided to be in the prison – because we have believed that the prison is not a prison but our home.

My message to humanity is: Enough is enough. Awake! See what man has done to man himself. In three thousand years man has fought five thousand wars. You cannot call this humanity healthy. And only once in a while has a Buddha bloomed. If in the garden only once in a while a plant brings a flower, and otherwise the whole garden remains without flowers, will you call it a garden? Something very basic has gone wrong. Each person is born to be a Buddha: less than that is not going to fulfill you.

I declare to you your Buddhahood.

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But what has gone wrong? Why has man lived for thousands of years in a kind of hell? For thousands of years we have lived with an either/or concept of man as a kind of battleground between the lower and the higher, the material and the spiritual, the worldly and the other-worldly, between good and evil, between God and the Devil. The consequences of such have severely limited human potential.

To destroy man, to destroy his power, a great strategy has been used – and that is to divide man in two. Man has lived with the concept of either/or: either be a materialist or be a spiritualist. You have been told you cannot be both. Either be the body or be the soul – you have been taught you cannot be both.

This has been the root cause of man’s misery. A man divided against himself is going to remain in hell. Heaven is born when man is no more divided against himself. Man split means misery and man integrated means bliss.

Up to now, humanity has been schizophrenic – because you have been told to repress, to reject, to deny, many parts of your natural being. And by rejecting them, by denying them, you cannot destroy them – they simply go underground. They go on functioning from your unconsCious; they become really more dangerous.

Man is an organic whole. And all that God has given to man has to be used; nothing has to be denied. Man can become an orchestra; all that is needed is the art of creating a harmony within oneself.

But your so-called religions have been teaching you ways of disharmony, ways of discord, ways of conflict. And when you are fighting with yourself you go on dissipating your energy. You remain dull, unintelligent, stupid – because without great energy nobody is ever intelligent. When energy overflows there is intelligence. Energy overflowing is what causes intelligence to grow. And man has lived in an inward poverty.

My message to humanity is: Create a new man – unsplit, integrated, whole.

Buddha is not whole, neither is Zorba the Greek. Both are half and half. I love Zorba, I love Buddha.

But when I look into the deepest core of Zorba something is missing: he has no soul. When I look into Buddha something again is missing: he has no body.

A great meeting I teach: the meeting of Zorba and Buddha. I teach ZORBA THE BUDDHA – a new synthesis. The meeting of the earth and the sky, the meeting of the visible and the invisible, the meeting of all the polarities – of man and woman, of day and night, of summer and winter, of sex and samadhi. Only in that meeting will a new man arrive on the earth.

My sannyasins, my people, are the first rays of that new man, of that HOMO NOVUS.

The inner division has led humanity into a state of suicide. It has created only slaves – and slaves CAN’T really live, they have nothing to live for. They are living for others. They have been reduced to machines – skillful, efficient, but a machine is a machine. And the machine cannot have the joy of living. It cannot celebrate, it can only suffer.

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The old religions believed in renunciation. Renunciation has been a curse. I bring a blessing to you: I teach rejoicing, not renunciation. The world has not to be renounced, because God has not renounced it – why should you? God IS... why should you be out of it?

Live it in its totality – and living life in totality brings transcendence. Then the meeting of the earth and the sky is tremendously beautiful; there is nothing wrong. Then the polarities disappear into each other and the polar opposites become complementaries.

But the old man was not really human. He was a humanoid, a HOMO MECHANICUS – a man who is not really whole. And the man who is not whole can never be holy.

The new man is coming, arriving, every day. He is in a minority, it is natural – but the new mutants have arrived, the new seeds have arrived. And this century, the end of this century, is going to see either the death of all humanity or the birth of a new human being.

And it all depends on you. If you remain clinging to the old, then the old man has prepared in every way to commit a great suicide, a universal suicide. The old man is ready to die; the old man has lost the zest to live.

That’s why all the countries are preparing for war. And the Third World War will be a total war.

Nobody is going to be a winner, because nobody is going to survive it. Not only is man going to be destroyed but all life on earth.

Beware! Beware of your politicians – they are all suicidal. Beware of the old conditioning which divides you as Indians, as Germans, as Japanese, as Americans. The new man has to be universal.

He will transcend all barriers of race, religion, sex, colour. The new man will not be of the East or of the West; the new man will claim the whole earth as his home.

Only then can humanity survive – and not only survive – with the coming of a new concept of man....

The old is the concept of either/or: the new will be both/and. Man has to live a rich life outwards and a rich life inwards; there is no need to choose. The inner life is not against the outer life; they are part of one rhythm.

YOU need not be poor on the outside just to be rich in the inside. And you need not be rich on the outside and drop being rich in the inside. That’s how it has been up to now – the West has chosen one way: Be rich on the outside! The East has chosen another: Be rich on the inside! Both are lopsided. Both have suffered, both are suffering.

I teach you total richness. Be rich on the outside through science, and be rich in your innermost core through religion. And that’s what will make you one, organic, individuals.

The new man is no battle ground, no split personality, but an image of man unified, unique, fully synergic with life in its totality. The new man embodies a more viable, mutant image of man, a new way of being in the cosmos, a qualitatively different way of perceiving and experiencing reality. So please don’t mourn the passing of the old. Rejoice that the old is dying, the night is dying, and the dawn is on the horizon.

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I am glad, utterly glad, that the traditional man is disappearing – that the old churches are becoming ruins, that the old temples are deserted. I am IMMENSELY glad that the old morality is falling flat on the ground.

This is a very great crisis. If we take the challenge, this is an opportunity to create the new. It has never been so ripe at any time in the past. You are living in one of the MOST beautiful ages –

because the old is disappearing, or has disappeared, and a chaos is created. And it is only out of chaos that great stars are born.

You have the opportunity to create a cosmos again. This is an opportunity that comes only once in a while – very rare. You are fortunate to be alive in these critical times. Use the opportunity to create the new man.

And to create the new man you have to begin with yourself.

The new man will be a mystic, a poet, a scientist, all together. He will not look at life through old rotten divisions. He will be a mystic, because he will feel the presence of God. He will be a poet, because he will celebrate the presence of God. And he will be a scientist, because he will search into this presence through scientific methodology. When a man is all these three together, the man is whole.

That is my concept of a holy man.

The old man was repressive, aggressive. The old man was bound to be aggressive because repression always brings aggression. The new man will be spontaneous, creative.

The old man lived through ideologies. The new man will live not through ideologies, not through moralities, but through consciousness. The new man will live through awareness. The new man will be responsible – responsible to himself and to existence. The new man will not be moral in the old sense; he will be amoral.

The new man brings a new world with him. Right now the new man is bound to be a mutant minority

– but he is the carrier of a new culture, the seed. Help him. Announce his arrival from the housetops: that is my message to you.

The new man is open and honest. He is transparently real, authentic and self-disclosing. He will not be a hypocrite. He will not live through goals: he will live herenow. He will know only one time, now, and only one space, here. And through that presence he will know what God is.

Rejoice! The new man is coming, the old is going. The old is already on the cross, and the new is already on the horizon. Rejoice! I say again and again, Rejoice!

The third question

Question 3

WHY DO YOU TEACH NUDITY TO PEOPLE?

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Sir,

DO YOU SEE ANYBODY NUDE HERE? Are you utterly blind? I teach truth – truth is bound to be nude. Truth cannot hide itself. I don’t teach nudity: I certainly teach nude souls. And your clothes sometimes become a hindrance; they hide, they become defences.

Once in a while, whenever the opportunity is possible and nobody is disturbed by your being nude, be nude. I am not telling you to go nude in the marketplace, but whenever the opportunity arrives and whenever you can be nude in the sun and in the wind and in the rain, be. Just by dropping the clothes you will feel a tremendous liberation – because your clothes are representative of your civilization, of your conditionings.

Your clothes are not just clothes – they are hiding you from everybody else’s eyes. And it is good sometimes to be with the birds and with the animals and with the trees, just as they are, utterly nude.

I am not saying go to your office nude or sit in your shop nude. But I certainly say to you that if once in a while you cannot be nude and natural, you will miss something of immense value.

But why has the question arisen in you? You should ask God why he creates nude people. He does not send you with clothes. He has not learnt yet that man is afraid of being nude.

Miss Winklethrop was a sweet old lady, but marriage had passed her by and she lived alone except for her friends the fishes. All over the house in bowls and tanks, they flipped and swished and glittered in and out of the rocks and weed. Even the bathtub was alive with hundreds of her delicate friends.

One day, the vicar came to call and, upon seeing the exotic bathtub, he exclaimed, ”But, Miss Winklethrop, what do you do when you want a bath?” She coloured slightly and said, ”Oh, Vicar, it is all right. I blindfold them!” I have heard about a nun who used to take her baths with her clothes on. Somebody asked her,

”What is the matter with you?”

She said, ”It is simple. I have heard that God goes on looking at you wherever you go – and I can’t be nude before God.”

If you can’t be nude even before God, then what kind of ugliness are you carrying within yourself?

But please don’t misunderstand me. I am not telling you to be nude twenty-four hours a day; that will be an extreme. Mahavira did that – he lived nude twenty-four hours a day for forty years. I don’t teach that kind of extremism – because when it is cold, don’t be nude. And when you are functioning in the society where clothes are respected, don’t be nude. But I cannot tell you to take your bath with clothes on – that is another extreme.

I teach simplicity and I teach the golden mean. But you must be hearing something else. You must have seen some nude pictures from the ashram. A few people come here and they look all around...

particularly Indians because they are very much interested in nude bodies. They have not seen –

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they are poor people – they have not seen the beauty of a nude body, the beautiful contours of a nude body. They are too much obsessed. They come here, they look all around, and they feel a little frustrated because they don’t see anybody nude.

You must have come with that idea. Yes, nudity sometimes happens in the therapy groups, because therapy groups are meant to destroy all your hypocrisy. And dropping your clothes is a great step in dropping your hypocrisy. Dropping your clothes is a great step in accepting your body as it is.

Why are you so much afraid of dropping your clothes?

Many people have ugly bodies. And the reason why they have ugly bodies is because they have never allowed their bodies natural growth. And clothes are a good strategy to hide your ugly bodies behind. People are afraid of being nude because they know their bodies don’t look good. They don’t accept their bodies.

Dropping your clothes sometimes gives you a great acceptance of your body. And dropping your clothes will help you to have a beautiful body too – because then you will start contemplating about it. You have not even seen your own body in total nudity, so you are not aware of what you are doing with your body – that you are eating too much or that you are not eating enough, that your ways of life are unhealthy.

It is perfectly good to be nude – perfectly good to be nude with friends, perfectly good to be nude in your family with your children, because if small children know the bodies of their parents from the very beginning they will never become obsessed. They will never become obsessed with anybody’s body; they will have a totally different kind of approach. They KNOW what bodies are – they have known their mother, they have known their father, their brothers. But even that is impossible.

In deep love relationships one should be nude! – with friends, with family. Once in a while it is tremendously helpful; it brings you closer to nature.

But when I say these things you are there with your minds to interpret. You don’t listen to what I say – you have your prejudices and you go on listening through your prejudices. You are deaf. Your prejudices and your old ideas are clamouring in your mind.

Three nuns were walking along the street and one was describing with her hands the tremendous grapefruit she’d seen in Florida.

The second one, also with her hands, described the huge bananas she’d seen in Jamaica.

The third nun, a little deaf, asked, ”Father who?” I say one thing, I talk about the grapefruit, and you ask, ”Father who?” Your mind is full of garbage.

Although you call that garbage very sacred, maybe – but cowdung is cow-dung. Whether you call it holy cowdung or not does not matter. Your minds are full of cowdung.

And it is because of these minds that you cannot understand me, what I am saying. What I am saying is very simple! If you drop your prejudices, if you put your ideas a little bit aside and you listen silently, the truth of what I am saying will be self-evident.

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The whole of nature is nude except man. And by your clothes you have become disconnected from nature. It is of tremendous significance sometimes to be nude on the beach and to lie down in the sand under the sun, and feel the sand with your whole body and the sun with your whole body.

Sometimes it is utterly beautiful to dance nude under the stars, so that you can again feel the cosmic rhythm that surrounds you, the cosmic vibe.

But we have made a totally plastic world. We are surrounded not by God’s nature but by man-made clothes. We live not with trees but great huge ugly cement structures. We move not on the naked earth but on coal-tar roads, cement roads.

We have created a world around ourselves and we have cut ourselves off from nature. We have become uprooted – and this uprootedness is one of the basic causes of your misery. Become rooted again into the soil.

The future of humanity will depend on it. We should bring nature BACK into our lives. When you are sitting by the side of a river, it is a totally different phenomenon from when you are sitting by a swimming pool. The swimming pool has no life in it, it has no flow, it is dull, it is dead. When you are in the mountains it is a totally different world.

It will be easier for you to understand Pythagoras and Buddha and Zorba and me if you go to the mountains, to the rivers, to the trees. But the trees won’t understand your clothes – the trees will laugh at you.

I have heard about a great Zen Master.

The emperor of Japan went to see him – he had

heard that the Master lived totally nude. The emperor thought maybe he had no clothes, so he prepared, ordered the best clothes possible. He took beautiful velvet clothes and gowns studded with diamonds as a present to the naked fakir.

The Master started laughing. He said, ”Thank you for your present, but you will have to take it back.” The emperor said, ”Why?”

The Master said, ”You know, I am the only human being here. All my friends are trees and birds and animals – they will laugh at me, they will think I have gone mad. They are all nude, they understand nudity. They won’t understand these beautiful clothes, they won’t understand these diamonds, they won’t understand at all. And if I wear these clothes they will not only laugh at me and they will not only ridicule me – they will start going away from me. We will lose contact. You please take your clothes back.”

If you live in the mountains and if the weather allows you, be nude. And that will give you a tremendously new thrill. A new life will surge up in you.

In a better world, we will learn more and more to be nude. Clothes should be used for comfort, not for any other reason. Clothes should be used for convenience, not for any other reason. Clothes have no morality in them!

The fourth question

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Question 4

OSHO, WILLIAM BLAKE SAID, ’THE WAY OF EXCESS LEADS TO THE PALACE OF WISDOM,’

AND, ’MAN NEVER KNOWS WHAT IS ENOUGH BEFORE HE KNOWS WHAT IS TOO MUCH.’

I BELIEVE THAT THE GOLDEN MEAN IS THE WAY FOR THOSE WHO ARE ALREADY IN

THE TRUTH, BUT FOR A SEEKER IT SEEMS TO BE THE WAY OF CUNNINGNESS AND

COWARDICE. PLEASE COMMENT.

Vivarto,

WILLIAM BLAKE is RIGHT. He is one of the greatest mystic poets of the world – he cannot be wrong. He is right when he says, ”The way of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.” But the name of the palace of wisdom is ’the golden mean’. The way of excess LEADS to the golden mean.

And I am not saying, neither is Pyathagoras saying, to be cunning and cowards. All that is meant is: remember that the goal is the golden mean. In excess you are already living, and this is not your first life either. You have lived long, many many lives, in the ways of excess. You have lived long enough – when are you going to awaken?

Have you not lived in the ways of excess?

Sometimes eating too much, sometimes fasting;

sometimes indulging, sometimes renouncing – everybody has been doing that. If you had stopped doing that, you would have become enlightened already. Why are you still unenlightened? Because of the excess.

You go on moving like a pendulum of an old clock – from right to left, from left to right – and you go on moving. Remember, when you go to one extreme, you are getting momentum, gathering momentum, to go to the other extreme. And this goes on and on... this is a vicious circle.

Pythagoras is talking to the seekers; Pythagoras is talking to the disciples, as I am talking to the disciples. A disciple is one who has become tired of the ways of the world and wants to have a new perspective, wants to have a new insight.

Yes, Blake is right – but Pythagoras is not wrong! You have been living according to Blake up to now.

Now don’t go on moving in the same vicious circle for ever and for ever. ”The way of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.” Where is the palace of wisdom? And you have lived on the way of excess long enough! You must have arrived by now. Maybe your life is of extremes, but it is unaware.

Become aware of your extremes. Bring awareness to your life and your acts, and slowly slowly you will see the extremes are disappearing. The pendulum is not moving so fast, is slowing down. Its swings are not as big as before – smaller swings. And, slowly slowly, one day the pendulum has stopped exactly in the middle. And when the pendulum stops in the middle, you enter into eternity.

When the pendulum stops, the clock stops, time stops: you enter into eternity.

William Blake is right, but Pythagoras is far more right. William Blake talks only about the path: Pythagoras is telling you something about the goal.

And Blake says, ”Man never knows what is enough before he knows what is too much.” But have you not known yet what is too much? Contemplate over it. Don’t make Blake an excuse – otherwise Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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you are being cunning. Have you not lived in the extremes, continuously moving from one polarity to the other? How long do you want to live in it to know? And just by living it, do you think you will know? You will have to introduce something: you will have to introduce contemplation, meditation.

And then only will you be able to know what is too much and what is too little.

Meditation brings balance. And balance is beauty, and balance is music, and balance is God.

In the East, all the great words that we have used for the ultimate are made from a root meaning

’balance’. Samadhi: it comes from SAM – SAM means balance. SANGEET, music – again it comes from sam, balance. SAMBODHI, enlightenment – it comes from SAM. SAM means balance.

Balance is samadhi, balance ’ is enlightenment.

You have lived enough to know what is enough and what is too much. But, Vivarto, you want to find some excuse to continue the way you have been living up to now.

YOU SAY: I BELIEVE THAT THE GOLDEN MEAN IS THE WAY FOR THOSE WHO ARE ALREADY

IN THE TRUTH.

Those who are already in the truth, they don’t need any way. They have arrived. Don’t be clever, don’t be diplomatic with me. Don’t try to find ways to escape from the truth. The way is not for those who have arrived – obviously. They don’t need any way. The way is for those who have not yet arrived.

And you say: BUT FOR A SEEKER IT SEEMS TO BE THE WAY OF CUNNINGNESS AND

COWARDICE.

It is not. It is the way of consciousness, not of cunningness and cowardice – because to be cowardly is again one extreme. The so-called brave and the so-called coward are extremes. And so is cunningness an extreme – the other extreme of simplicity.

The golden mean is neither bravery nor cowardice – it is awareness. It is neither cunningness nor simplicity – it is awareness. It is always awareness: the taste of the golden mean is that of awareness.

Pythagoras is not saying to you, ”Impose some character upon yourself.” He is simply saying, ”Be watchful. See how you go on moving from one extreme to another.” Watch... and watching, you will find the golden mean of your own accord. It has not to be learnt from somebody else. It will arise in your own being, it will be a discovery.

The fifth question

Question 5

I AM VERY MUCH AFRAID OF MY WIFE. WHY? AND NOTHING IS WRONG WITH HER EITHER.

SHE IS ONE OF THE MOST PERFECT WOMEN THAT ONE COULD EVER FIND.

OUR LOVE is ALWAYS CONTAMINATED BY FEAR. The wife is afraid of the husband, the husband is afraid of the wife. The children are afraid of the parents, the parents are afraid of the children. We live in fear. Even in love, fear continues to poison our relationships.

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You ask: I AM VERY MUCH AFRAID OF MY WIFE. WHY?

Who is not? Have you come across a person who is not afraid of his wife? Everybody is – because we don’t know how to love without fear.

Love has to be learnt, it is an art. It needs great intelligence. You don’t love; that’s why there is fear.

If love is there, love dispels all fear. If fear is there, that simply shows your love is bogus – it must be something else pretending to be love. It may be lust pretending to be love. Yes, lust is bound to remain afraid, because lust means you are exploiting the woman, you are using the woman. And the fear is always there: she may leave you. She may deny you, she may say no. And because it is only lust, a sexual lust, you are always afraid that if she says no then your sexual needs will not be fulfilled

And women become very very clever about it. The moment they see that the husband is sexually interested they start withdrawing. Because they don’t want to be used as means; they don’t want to be reduced to commodities! They resist, they fight.

I have heard:

One eighty-year-old man met in a summer resort with a woman of the same age. They fell in love.

It can’t happen in India – it must have happened in America. In India even young people don’t fall in love. In America even eighty-year-olds fall in love. Both situations are ugly. A young man not falling in love is ugly, an eighty-year-old man falling in love is ugly. The young man not falling in love shows that he is not young, and the old man falling in love, an eighty-year-old, simply shows he is not yet a grown-up.

They fell in love, they got married. The first night, the old man took the old woman’s hand, pressed it lovingly; for a few minutes they were holding each other’s hands and pressing, and then they went to sleep. That was their honeymoon.

Next day, the old man pressed, but not so long.

The third day, when he. was just going to press the old woman’s hand, she said, ”But today I have a headache.”

Even pressing hands.... Nobody wants to be used. The greatest humiliation in life is to be used.

And because you are using your women, that’s why you are afraid. And they keep you in fear. If you use them, you will remain in fear. If you use them, they will torture you in every possible way. They will take revenge.

This is how it has been up to now. You will have to understand more about love. Love never uses the other. Love shares – but the other is not used, never. And then fear disappears.

Love is not really a need, but an overflowing. When you need somebody, you cling. When you cling you are afraid. Clinging is always out of fear – and the other knows that you are clinging, and the other starts exploiting the situation. And the other is also clinging. The woman is afraid the husband may leave, the husband is afraid the woman may leave. They are both in constant fear, in jealousy, watching, guarding each other. Husbands and wives turn into enemies rather than friends.

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Mulla Nasruddin was talking to his doctor. The doctor said, ”Nasruddin, you confess that you are bad-tempered. I suppose I need not tell you that science has discovered that your bad temper is caused by an ugly little microbe.”

Mulla Nasruddin said, ”For heaven’s sake, speak quietly. She’s sitting in the next room.” Husbands and wives live in fear, and the whole relationship has gone poisonous. And because this is one of the most fundamental relationships of life, the whole life is poisoned by its poison. Children will come out of your marriage, and your marriage is already bitter, sour. The children will come out of it and from the very beginning they will carry the shadows.

Marriage is the most fundamental institution. Out of it everything grows. It is the centralmost one of the society, the central core. It has to be transformed. It is ugly. It is not yet out of love that people get married, but for other reasons – financial, social, religious – and there are a thousand and one reasons.

If you are in love with somebody then the basic requirement is: make the other as free as possible

– because if you make the other free, only then can you have freedom. And in freedom, fear disappears. Fear is part of bondage.

Desk attendant to man checking into hospital with a black eye and several other minor injuries:

”Married?”

”No, automobile accident.”

The marriage that happens to be here on the earth today is almost an automobile accident. It is not yet a flowering of two beings in togetherness. It is almost a calamity. We have to change the whole foundation. People should not get married too early; they should experience as many love relationships as possible BEFORE they decide to get married.

The first love is really great, because it is the first – otherwise it is very dangerous. It is the first so it is very romantic, but the romance will disappear soon. It is not going to become a stable foundation; it is not going to become your true marriage.

A man, before he decides to get married, should have known many women. And the woman should have known many men. Only then can you choose, only then can you feel with whom you are in tune. Only then can you understand with whom you start soaring high. But, down the ages, we have not allowed this.

A great experience of other people is needed before you can become committed. But now our ideology is still pretechnological. It was dangerous in the past, because the woman may have got pregnant and there would have been trouble for the woman, for the family, for her whole life. That’s why there has never been a question of the man remaining virgin before he gets married. But for the woman it has been an absolute requirement all over the world to be a virgin.

Why this double standard? Why should the woman be a virgin? And why not the man? They say,

”Boys are boys...” And girls are not girls?

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It was simply because there was no technological protection for the woman. Now the protection is there. After the invention of fire, the pill is the greatest invention in the world. And the greatest revolutionaries are nothing compared to the revolution that the pill has brought into the world. You may not be aware but the pill has changed the whole world – because it has changed the whole sexual code.

You are living in a post-technological age. You need not carry pre-technological ideologies; they are all harmful. They were needed once, they are no more needed. They are hampering your progress; they are unnecessary burdens. You are carrying them for NO reason and getting disturbed in your life.

Men and women should meet, know each other, and there should be no hurry to get married. Slowly slowly, you will learn the art of love, and you will learn the ways of being with people, and you will also learn with whom there is a spiritual affinity .

Marriage is a spiritual affair, not a physical phenomenon – no, not at all. It is a spiritual at-one-ment.

When you start feeling with some woman or with some man that a great music is arising something of the beyond penetrates. only then get settled. Otherwise there should be no hurry.

You ask me: AND NOTHING IS WRONG WITH HER.

Nothing is wrong with anybody else in the world. I see a beautiful man and a beautiful woman, and both are beautiful separately. Together, both are ugly. Something goes wrong; they don’t fit. The man is beautiful, the woman is beautiful, but the marriage is ugly. They don’t fit; they are not meant for each other.

And when the marriage goes ugly, they both start becoming ugly, slowly slowly. I have never come across an ugly person – all persons are beautiful. But they need beautiful relationships to go on growing in their beauty, to go on bringing new flowers, new songs.

You say; SHE IS ONE OF THE MOST PERFECT WOMEN THAT ONE COULD EVER FIND.

That may be so – if you say it, I believe you. Otherwise, perfect people are nowhere to be found.

Perfect people don’t exist. Imperfection is part of life, a very essential part of life. The moment somebody becomes perfect, he starts disappearing from life.

That’s why we say Buddhas are never born again – they became perfect, they need not come back.

They have learnt all that was to be learnt here on the earth; they need not become embodied again.

You say your wife is as perfect a woman as one can ever find. She may be a moralist, she may be a perfectionist – but a perfectionist is a totally different thing from one who is perfect. A perfectionist is a neurotic person – and neurosis can hide behind perfectionism very easily. And women tend to become perfectionists, because they are not allowed any other kind of domination.

For centuries, man has dominated in every other way – economically, socially, politically, religiously.

Everywhere he is in domination. He has not left any way for the woman to dominate; she had to invent her own ways.

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Every woman becomes a moralist, a perfectionist. That is her strategy, her politics, to dominate you.

She will not allow you to smoke cigarettes because it is wrong; she will not allow you to drink – it is wrong. She will not allow you to eat this and that – it is wrong. She will not allow you anything! That is her way of dominating you.

If women are allowed all the other possible ways to compete with men in the world, they will not be perfectionists any more. That’s what is happening in the West: the women have started smoking themselves. They had never done it before; they were always against the husband smoking. Now they are smoking themselves. What has happened? That was the only possible way for them to be in control.

And remember, that may be the reason why you are afraid – because she is a perfectionist. She may be creating great guilt in you that you are not worthy of her. That is her strategy: beware of it.

That is a very subtle trick to dominate and possess.

Two young men were discussing the usual subject: girls. ”I’m looking for a girl,” said one, ”who does not drink, smoke or have any bad habits.”

And when you find her,” asked the other guy, ”what in the hell are you going to do with her?” If you can find a perfect woman you will be in trouble. She will not be human; she will be very inhuman in her demands. And you will look like a worm, ugly, compared to her. That is the whole joy of the puritan, the moralist.

Your so-called saints are enjoying ego trips. They are ready to sacrifice everything and go through any asceticism just to torture you, to show you that you are ugly, that you are immoral, that you are sinners. Their whole joy consists in one thing: how to prove that they are saints. And whatsoever you demand, they are ready to do it. Just go on fulfilling one thing: go on believing that they are saints. They are ready to do ANY stupid thing you demand.

There was a Christian saint, and then a great sect arose behind him. The saint use to beat himself every day in the morning for his sins. Of course, he was respected very much, and many followers gathered. And BEATING oneself became the most important thing in that sect. And the greatest person was the one who would beat himself the most, who would make wounds on his body, who would torture himself. He would be the greatest saint. Now, look at the stupidity.

But people are ready to go on a fast, to starve themselves. to be naked in the cold – to do ANYTHING! – if you give them respect, if you fulfill their egos.

This is very cunning politics. And because women have no other way to dominate, they dominate through perfectionism. But the basic thing is that you have not loved the woman yet, and you have not allowed the woman to love you either. The relationship is of fear. And you also must be making her afraid: this is your side of the story. I don’t know the other story – her side. You must be making her afraid, also, in subtle ways threatening her.

Drop all these games. Life is short, and love is valuable. Don’t miss the opportunity of being in deep intimate love – because it is only love that opens the doors to prayer.

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The last question

Question 6

IS IT TRUE THAT THREE CENTURIES AFTER JESUS’ DEATH CELIBACY WAS INTRODUCED

INTO THE CHURCH? IS THIS GOING TO BE THE DESTINY OF EVERY CHURCH AFTER ITS

MASTER’S DEATH?

Geetam,

UP TO NOW THAT HAS BEEN THE CASE. Remember it – it should not happen after me. It has been the case and there is every possibility that it will be the case.

Why does it happen? Why, always, does every life-affirmative religion turn into a life-negative religion? There is a deep cause for it.

When the Master is alive he lives a life of yes – because he is not in any need of dominating you. He is a Master of himself; he needs nobody else as a support for his Mastery. Even if he is alone he is a Master, he is an emperor. He does not need followers. He has the treasure, the kingdom of God.

He lives affirmatively, he rejoices, he celebrates. His life is a dance, a song; his life is poetic. His life has the fragrance of the flowers, and the beauty of the trees, and the silence of the mountains, and the joy of the lovers.

He has accepted himself. He has known his wholeness – and in knowing your wholeness, all that is destructive and negative disappears, is absorbed by the positive. Even noes become yes. The Master is numinous: God has nodded yes to him, God is with him.

Once the Master is gone, the problem will arise. Somebody will become the successor: unless the successor himself is enlightened, which is not always the case.... It happened with Jesus – the successors were not enlightened people. They were great scholars, very erudite ones. They did great work in creating the church. But the church was not created by enlightened people; the church was created after three hundred years had passed.

In these three hundred years the light has disappeared completely. Now the only way to dominate people is to create life-negative religion. The priest can dominate only by creating a life-negative religion. Tell people this is wrong, that is wrong – and the more DON’TS you say, the more you make them afraid, guilty. And whenever somebody is guilty it is easy to dominate him.

Celibacy enters into almost all religions for a single reason: sex is such a tremendous power that nobody can really succeed in repressing it. You can succeed in transcending it. But you cannot succeed in repressing it. So that has been the trick: teach people celibacy, and you know they will never be able to succeed. And when they fail, again and again they will feel guilty. When they fail again and again, they will lose self-confidence; when they fail again and again, they will become hypocrites. And they will know how ugly they are, what great sinners they are. They will know that they are one thing from the outside, and just the opposite from the inside.

And the priest can also be certain that the people who are trying to be celibates must be finding some vicarious way to fulfill their sex desire – if not in actuality then at least in fantasy. The priest Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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can be certain that you cannot raise your eyes in front of him. You will feel ashamed – and your very shame is his power.

Celibacy is life-negative. It is saying NO to life. because sex is the source of life. And when you say no to life it is almost impossible to repress the desire. It goes on coming, and again. again – from this side to that side, it finds its ways. It creates perversions. But a perverted person becomes more and more self-condemnatory.

The parish priest couldn’t resist the pretty young girl. She was reciting her confession, and it was all too much for him. He told her to come with him to his room. There, he placed his arm around her.

”Did the young man do this to you.” he asked. ”Yes. Father, and worse,” the girl replied.

”Hmm,” said the priest. He kissed her. ’ Did he do this?” ”Yes, Father, and worse,” the girl said.

”Did he do this?” the priest passionately hugged the girl.

”Yes, Father, and worse,” said the girl.

By this time, the priest was thoroughly aroused. He pulled the girl down onto the rug and made love.

to her, breathing heavily as he asked, ”Did he manage to do this?”

”Yes, Father, and worse,” said the girl.

When the priest had finished with the girl, he asked, ”He did this too, and worse? My dear daughter, what worse could he have done?”

”Well,” the shy young girl said, ”I think, Father, that he’s given me gonorrhea.” Your so-called celibates and your so-called monks and priests and Fathers, they are bound to find some backdoors to life. And I am not saying that anything is wrong in finding the backdoors. The wrong thing is that they have closed their front door – there is no need. Their hypocrisy is absolutely unnecessary. They should be authentic – and only an authentic person can transcend.

Sex can be transcended. And then there comes a totally different quality in your life. A CELIBACY

ARISES but it is not imposed. It is not your effort, it is God’s gift. It comes out of deep experience of life – you become more and more ripe, and one day suddenly sex looks like a childish phenomenon.

It is. It appears that it is possible only when you are unaware. when you live in the darkness of unconsciousness.

When some light has arisen in you and your heart is enkindled, it starts disappearing just as darkness disappears when you bring light in. But that is a totally different phenomenon.

We have given it a beautiful name in the East, we call it BRAHMACHARYA. BRAHMACHARYA cannot be translated by the world ’celibacy’. Celibacy is repression of sex – sex is there boiling within you. Brahmacharya is transcendence of sex: you have become so mature that the toys that you used to play with are no more relevant to your consciousness – they have dropped of their own accord.

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The word ’BRAHMACHARYA’ means living like God. Literally it means ’behaving like God’, ’living as God’s grace’. It is a totally different phenomenon.

The Master lives in that grace. But when the Master is gone, politicians arrive on the scene –

competitors who want to succeed, who want to dominate the disciples, who want power. And they can have power only if they start destroying your natural flow. Destroy the natural flow of a person and he will always be in your power, under your domination; he will always be a slave to you.

Pervert any person’s natural being, and then he can never assert his freedom. The priest has known it, down the ages, and he has used it. It is a very ugly device.

Geetam, it is true that only after three centuries was celibacy introduced amongst the followers of Jesus. It was not possible for three centuries because people had remembered Jesus – something of his fragrance was still around. He was still alive in a few people’s hearts. But, slowly slowly, the fragrance disappears. It happens after each Master, And a very strange thing happens then. After Christ, a Christianity arises which is absolutely against Christ. After Buddha, a Buddhism is born which is absolutely against Buddha. This is the strangest phenomenon in the world.

You can decide: whatsoever Christianity teaches, you can decide a PRIORI that Jesus must have taught just the opposite of it. The priest is bound to go against the enlightened person, even though he claims that he follows him. The priest is a totally different kind of person – his whole desire is to dominate. He is a politician in disguise.

This can happen here too, Geetam – unless my sannyasins are very alert, very aware. Unless you go on persisting in being life-affirmative. It was more possible with Jesus because whatsoever he said was only aurally remembered – to change it was easy.

Whatsoever I am saying will not be remembered aurally. It will be there. And I am saying it so clearly that to pervert it will be almost impossible. It is not that you can drop one sentence here and there.

You will have to burn all my books – only then will you be able to pervert my life-affirmative teaching.

I affirm life in its totality. The whole of life is good, the whole of life is holy, sacred.

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Don’t Spit on the Ceiling!

2 January 1979 am in Buddha Hall

The first question

Question 1

OSHO, EVERYTHING SEEMS SO UNREAL, LIKE A DREAM. TO ME, YOU SEEM TO BE SO

UNREAL, FLOATING IN AND OUT OF DISCOURSE EACH DAY. I DO FEEL SOMETHING DEEP

INSIDE HAPPENING IN YOUR PRESENCE, AND MORE EACH MOMENT BEING HERE WITH

YOU, BUT I CANNOT SEEM TO FEEL A CLEAR UNDERSTANDING. COULD YOU EXPLAIN

WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME?

Sophia.

THE DESIRE FOR A CLEAR Understanding is a logical desire. It is a desire to demystify things –

and things cannot be demystified. Life IS mysterious, more mysterious than any dream can ever be.

You cannot know it clearly, it cannot be reduced to knowledge – because once something is reduced to clear knowledge it is no more mysterious.

That’s what science has been trying to do for centuries all effort to demystify existence. Wherever science smells any mystery it becomes suspicious – because if the mystery is accepted then the desire for clear understanding will have to be dropped. You cannot fulfill both. If you stick to the desire for clear, logical understanding then the only way is to deny the mystery, to say that it doesn’t exist.

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That’s why God denied existence, the soul is denied existence, love is denied existence. And when God, soul, love, beauty, truth, all disappear, what is left? A very flat, ugly. meaningless clarity –

boring clarity.

Science has made man utterly bored.

Religion is a totally different dimension. It is an effort to re-mystify the universe – to take away your so-called logical clarity, to give you back again the mysterious innocence of a child, to make you aware of the beauty, of the poetry, of the music of love; to make you aware that you are surrounded by immense mystery. And that mystery is so deep that there is no way to fathom it or measure it: it is immeasurable.

And those who have gone to measure it have disappeared into the mystery, have become dissolved into it. That is the difference between a scientist and a mystic. The scientist becomes afraid of the bottomless, becomes afraid of the immeasurable.

Do you know? The word ’matter’ comes from a root which means ’measurable’ – that which can be measured. It comes from the same root as ’meter’. Science believes only in the measurable; it denies the immeasurable, it closes its eves to the immeasurable. But it is the immeasurable that brings splendour in life, it is the immeasurable that brings dance and celebration in life. And it is there! – just by denying it, it is not destroyed. By denying it, only one thing happens: you become closed to it.

Lao Tzu says, ”Except me, everybody seems to have a clear understanding of life. Except me,” he says, ”everybody seems to have a very clear understanding of life. I am muddy-headed.” He is stating a fact of tremendous import. He is saying, ”I am a mystic. I don’t want clarity – what am I going to do with clarity? I don’t want logical explanations. I want to love this mystery that life is.

I want to dance with the trees and bloom with the flowers and sing with the birds.” That is a totally different way. The mystery is not dissolved but lived, not solved – no effort even to

.solve it, but every effort to participate in it.

Sophia, being here with me means dropping the ways of logic and learning the ways of love, dropping the ways of explanations and learning the ways of experiencings. And that’s what is happening to you. Don’t be worried: feel blessed.

You say: EVERYTHING SEEMS SO UNREAL, LIKE A DREAM.

Because you have a certain idea of reality. Reality has to be tangible, and the beauty is not tangible.

If I say, ”Look – the rose is so beautiful!” you can immediately ask me, ”Where is beauty? Can I touch it? Can I hold it in my hand? Can it he measured? Can it be chemically analysed?” And I will have to answer each time with a no.

Then you can simply say, ”Then it doesn’t exist. It is your imagination; you are dreaming. The rose has no beauty – you have projected a dream on it.” Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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If you say, ”I have fallen in love,” somebody can ask you, ”Where is love? What IS love? Is there any scientific proof for it? Can you logically explain it?” You will have to shrug your shoulders. And the person can say, ”If it cannot be proved logically, scientifically, then it is not. You are living in an illusion; it is all dream stuff.”

But if you go on this way, what will be left finally? Just a materialist chaos – matter with no meaning, matter with no destiny, great speed but no destination. Then life will be just an accident, a chance phenomenon. There will be no dignity in life. The dignity comes from those mysterious realms which you are calling unreal.

You will have to change your definition of reality. They are far more real. The higher is far more real than the lower – although the higher becomes more and more invisible than the lower. The mud is more explainable than the lotus; the lotus has something of the quality of a dream. The mud is mud; there is no question of beauty and there is no question of poetry, any love affair with it. There is no question which cannot be answered about the mud; the mud is utterly real. That’s what you call reality – the lowest.

But hidden in the mud is a lotus, and one day that lotus arises. Now, the lotus has something which is dream stuff poetry, music, beauty. Now you are moving higher; now something will start looking unreal. Unless you are ready to allow this mysterious to penetrate your being and to permeate you, you will deny it. Then you are trying to reduce the lotus to the mud again. Then you are saying the lotus is nothing but mud.

That’s how scientists go on answering. If you ask, ”What is man?” they say, ”Man is matter and nothing else – nothing but matter.” If you ask, ”What is this world?’ ”Nothing but matter.” If you say, ”What is love?” ”Nothing but biology. nothing but the chemistry of the hormones.” If you ask ANYTHING, it is reduced immediately to the lowest denominator – because only the lowest is graspable.

The lotus has moved into a dimension which is not available to science but is available only to poetry, is not available to the scientific mind and the scientific approach and the scientific methodology, but is available, immensely available, tremendously available to the poetic vision.

Now the poetic vision is thought to be nothing but a dream. The poet is a dreamer; poets are called

’lotus eaters’. But the poet has moved a little higher. The scientist lives int he mud. The poet IS a lotus eater, he has become a lotus.

But then there are even higher realms. One day the lotus bud has opened, it has blossomed, and great fragrance is released. Now, the lotus was at least visible, touchable; this fragrance is invisible, almost non-existential – but it is there. That is the world of the mystic: the world of fragrance. Even the poet will feel a little suspicious about it, even the poet will hesitate to go with it, even for the poet it will look a little like going too much beyond the human mind.

The poet would like to remain with the lotus, just as the scientist would like to remain with the mud.

But the mystic knows no boundaries, no limits. The mystic moves with the fragrance. That is the highest phenomenon, the peak – but now it is utterly dreamlike. From another standpoint it is the essential core, but those who are too much attached to the mud will deny it. Even the poets will hesitate to accept it.

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My vision of a total man is that of a scientist, plus a poet, plus a mystic. But the mystic remains the Everest, the highest peak of the Himalayas.

Here, please don’t try to reduce everything to so-called clear understanding. We are talking about things which are essentially unclear, we are talking about things which exist twilight. We are talking about things which are not things at all. but essences. And listening to me and being here with me, being a part of this communion, it is natural, Sophia, that life will start looking like a dream.

EVERYTHING SEEMS SO UNREAL, you say, LIKE A DREAM. TO ME YOU SEEM TO BE SO

UNREAL, FLOATING IN AND OUT OF DISCOURSE EACH DAY.

Yes, in a certain sense I am unreal. I am just the fragrance.... And unless you are ready to be full of this unknowable fragrance, I will look unreal, like a dream. But something is happening.

You say: I DO FEEL SOMETHING DEEP INSIDE HAPPENING IN YOUR PRESENCE.

You may not be able to grasp my presence, but you can see something is synchronizing in you, something is triggered in you. The fragrance has reached your nostrils – you may not be able to grasp it in your hands, but it has reached your nostrils. Your heart is already moved. That’s why, Sophia, you have become a sannyasin.

You say: I DO FEEL SOMETHING DEEP INSIDE HAPPENING IN YOUR PRESENCE, AND

MORE EACH MOMENT BEING HERE WITH YOU, BUT I CANNOT SEEM TO FEEL A CLEAR

UNDERSTANDING.

You will never be able to feel a clear understanding. I cannot promise clear understanding. I can promise you only more and more mystery. The farther you go with me, the more and more the mysterious is waiting for you.

But who cares for clear understanding? It is a very very much lower stage of mind where clear understanding is needed. At the highest peaks, where mountains move into the clouds, where mountains whisper with the stars, it is a totally different world. It is not the world of the ordinary, it is the world of the sacred.

You will have to come with me. Your mind will pull you backwards, your mind will tell you, ”Where are you going? Are you going crazy?”

And in fact what I am making available here is only for the crazy – for those who are sane enough to drop the so-called sanity, for those who are courageous enough to move beyond the logical boundaries, for those who are ready to go into a tremendous insecurity, dropping all safety, security, familiarity, knowledge. It is jumping into a totally different dimension: the dimension of the essences.

This is a mystery school. You should not ask about clear understanding. Ask for the experience of the mysterious and the miraculous. And it is happening. If you help it, cooperate with it, Sophia, soon you will be transported into another world.

Look at what has happened in the West, and the same is happening in the East now: the more people are becoming scientific, knowledgeable, educated, the more and more they are feeling a Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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kind of meaninglessness. Their life is becoming more and more insignificant; it is losing all dignity, it is becoming ugly.

Camus says that the only important philosophical problem is suicide. Why? Because the modern man feels the pointlessness of living – what is the point of going on living every day? If there is nothing mysterious, there is no point in living. Then only those who are cowards go on living; because they cannot gather courage to disappear, to commit suicide, they go on living.

But then life cannot have joy. It will be only a long drawn, dragging affair. And deep down you will be waiting for death to come and release you from all this nonsense, from all this meaningless turmoil

– this tale told by an idiot, full of fury and noise, signifying nothing.

If science succeeds in destroying the mysterious totally from the world, man is bound to commit suicide sooner or later. One can only live joyously and with a dance when poetry surrounds you, and one can live with immense rejoicing when God is felt. But these things are not for clear understanding. Those who insist on clear understanding, they are asking for mathematics, not for music, and certainly not for mysticism.

You have to learn how to drop this insane desire to reduce everything to clarity. What are you going to do then with clarity? You will be stuck with it. Ask for those things which are essentially unclear –

essentially, I say. That means they can never be clear. Then you open up to love, then you open up to beauty, then you open up to God.

And life blooms only when it is rooted in the mysterious. I teach you the mystery of life, not a clearcut understanding of it. I lead you deeper and deeper into the world where you can also enjoy being muddy like Lao Tzu.

The second question

Question 2

JESUS SAID, ’WHOEVER IS NOT WITH ME IS AGAINST ME. ’NOW THE QUESTION ARISES: IS

THE SAME STATEMENT TRUE IN CONNECTION WITH YOU? OR COULD THERE BE A THIRD

WAY – NOT BEING AGAINST YOU BUT NOT BEING ABLE TO FOLLOW YOU?

Pit Kortenhorst,

THE STATEMENT MADE BY JESUS apparently look like that of a fanatic. It is not. Just one word you will have to change and it will be immediately understood. Jesus says, ”Whoever is not with me is against me.” Change one word to ’truth’ and things will be very clear – and that is Jesus’ meaning:

”Whoever is not with truth is against truth.” Then there is no possible third way.

Jesus is not speaking as a person, he is speaking as truth. He says, ”I am the way, I am the door, I am the truth.” Jesus is just a revelation of truth. When he says ’me’ he does not mean it in the same way as when you say ’me’. He has no ’me’ – the ’I’ has disappeared long before, and the ’me’ is only a shadow of ’I’. When there is no ’I’, no ego, there is no ’me’. But he has to use the language that you use; there is no other way, it can’t be helped.

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But what he is saying is, ”Whoever is not with truth is against truth.” And you ask me:

NOW THE QUESTION ARISES: IS THE SAME STATEMENT TRUE IN

CONNECTION WITH YOU?

It is always true in connection with all enlightened people, whoever they are, wherever they are. It is true with Krishna, it is true with Lao Tzu, it is true with Pythagoras, it is true with Patanjali, it is true with Buddha, it is true with me. And it will be true with you if you disappear too, if you drop this ugly idea that you are separate from existence.

That’s what the ego is – the idea of separation. It is not true, it is only an idea. Once this idea is dropped and you see the truth that you are part of the whole, that you are not an island – no man is an island, we belong to the continent called God, we are all parts of an infinite island – the moment you are no more there as a separate entity, whatsoever is spoken through you is spoken by God.

That’s why Jesus says, ”I and my Father in heaven are one.” Krishna has said to Arjuna, ”Leave all your religions and come unto my feet.” It looks as if he is the greatest egoist there can ever be.

”Leave all religions and come unto my feet. Surrender to me!” he says again and again.

If you understand it according to your understanding you will miss the whole point. He is not saying surrender to Krishna the person. He is saying, ”Now there is no more Krishna the person. You can surrender and the surrender will reach God. I have disappeared, I am no more in between. Touching my feet will not be touching my feet: you will be touching God’s feet.” How can you be neutral to truth? Either you can be for or you can be against. There is no possibility of a third way.

And it is good, Kortenhorst, that the idea has arisen in you. The very idea shows a longing – maybe yet unconscious in you – to be with me. But some hesitation is there; it is always so – every intelligent person hesitates before taking the jump.

To be with me is a quantum leap. You will have to drop the whole identity that you have carried your whole life. Whatsoever you have been up to now will have to be dropped – that will be the meaning of being with me. That seems too risky, too sudden. And there is no guarantee of what is going to happen next.

I cannot guarantee you anything: truth cannot be guaranteed. Truth cannot be insured. And Kortenhorst is a great banker, so security, insurance, guarantee, must be deep down in his unconscious.

And one thinks before one takes a leap. But this is not a leap which can be thought about – this is a leap of love. You cannot decide beforehand whether it is right to go into it or not right to go into it. You can decide only when you have gone into it, but then there is no point in deciding. It already starts happening. You can be with me, only then will you know what it means to be with me. You have to participate, you have to dissolve, you have to lose the idea of your ego.

The Master is only a device to help you to lose the idea of the ego. Once the ego is gone, you will be surprised that there is no person as the Master. You will not find Jesus, you will not find me either.

When you lose your idea of ego, you will face a deep nothingness in me, a tremendous zero.

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But in that zero you will start seeing that God is overflooding. In that emptiness you will not find emptiness but overflowing divineness. That nothingness is all. But once you drop your idea of being a person, then only will you be able to see that there is no person here.

Abhinandan has got the point in a limerick:

Oh, what a strange Master we’ve got,

He feels neither cold nor the hot.

He sits in his chair

With his little toes bare –

I suppose it’s because he is not.

Come closer and closer to me to find that I am not. But you will be able to find that only when you are not. Only two nothings can meet and see and understand each other. The Master is not, the disciple has to disappear. The Master is only a device for the disciple to disappear.

But Jesus is right: ”Whosoever is not with me is against me.” The statement looks like that of a fanatic – it is not. He is one of the greatest enlightened Masters of the world.

The third question

Question 3

I CERTAINLY HAVE NOT TRANSCENDED SEX. WHY THEN, EACH TIME I GO INTO IT, DOES IT

SOMEHOW NOT FEEL RIGHT?

Sona,

IT DOES NOT FEEL RIGHT because you have not yet gone into it ever, or you have gone only so far but not far enough. You have gone into it only with a conditioned mind. You have not been able to dissolve into it even for a single moment. You have gone into it with all the guilt that the priests have produced in you. You have gone into it not with an innocence; you have not gone into it as virgin.

Now you will be surprised by my use of the word ’virgin’. A virgin is one who can go into sex innocently.

It has nothing to do with physiological virginity; it is something immensely, deeply psychological, almost touching the boundary of the spiritual. Virginity means a person who can go into sex without any ideas that others have imposed upon him.

In that sense, it is very rare to find a virgin person, because the society contaminates everybody.

You have been given ideas against sex – that sex is a sin, that sex is ugly, that sex is animal, that sex is undivine, that sex is the barrier between you and God. With all these ideas you have gone into it, Sona, how can you go with so many things holding you back? A long chain of priests holding you back – how can you go into it? You have gone only partially.

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But even when you have been in it, your priests have been clamouring inside you, shouting against you, condemning you. That’s what conscience is all about. Your so-called conscience is nothing but the voice of the priest that has been implanted in you. It is one of the greatest harms that has been done to humanity down the ages.

Now scientists have discovered a far more efficient method for doing it: they put electrodes in the brain. And if an electrode is put in your head you will never know about it, because inside the head you don’t have any sensitivity. You will be surprised – it has happened many times: in wartime a person gets a bullet in the head and forgets all about it, and after years, accidentally, the bullet is found inside the brain. And he has not been aware of it.

Inside the brain there is no sensitivity. So if a stone is put inside your head you will not be able to know about it. Electrodes can be put in your head.

One of the most famous psychologists of this age, Delgado, has experimented with animals. An electrode is put into the head of a bull; now he can be controlled from the outside. A small box having a few knobs on it and buttons on it, and the bull can be ordered. For example, the bull can be made angry just by pushing a button. He receives the wireless message in his head, and immediately he becomes ferocious, for no reason at all. Nobody has provoked him from the outside; nobody has given him a signal or a red flag – he has not seen a sannyasin. There is no provocation from the outside. But Delgado just pushes a button, it touches some center in his head – a center which functions to create ferociousness, anger, rage – and rage is released. The bull rushes towards Delgado, mad to kill him.

When for the first time the experiment was done, fifty thousand people had come to see it. Their breathing stopped; they had never seen any bull so ferocious. And the experiment was done in Spain – they know about bulls and bullfights. They had never seen such a ferocious phenomenon; it was certain that Delgado was going to be killed. And he had no protection, not at all – only that small box.

And the bull came closer and closer and closer, and just when he was two feet away and people were watching – ”Now it is finished” – he pushed another button, and an immediate stop. The bull stopped THEN and THERE, almost as if he had become frozen.

Now Delgado says the same can be done with man. He has put these electrodes in the brains of rats and given them also a box so they can push the buttons. The electrode is connected to the sex center. You will be surprised – the rats go crazy. They simply go on pushing the button, sixty times a minute! Each second they are having orgasms, their whole bodies shivering with joy, thrilled. They forget about food, they forget about everything. Day and night, they don’t sleep. They just go on pushing, till exhausted they fall in a coma. Now the woman is not needed; nobody else is needed.

In fact, that is what happens when you make love. The woman triggers your sex center in the brain, the man triggers the woman’s sex center in the brain. Delgado says that now these are old, out-of-date methods. You can have a small box, just the size of a matchbox, in your pocket; you can just push the button and immediately there is a great orgasm, a total orgasm.

This is one of the most dangerous discoveries that Delgado has made – because it is going to be used by politicians, it is going to be used by dictators. It is possible that it may have already been Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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used in countries like Russia, China. Each child can be fixed with an electrode; nobody will know.

In the hospital, just when the child is being given birth to, he can be... just a small operation, a very small operation, and a small electronic thing just the size of a button can be forced into the head.

And it can be connected with the center that makes you obey. That’s enough. Then Morarji Desai can push a button in Delhi and the whole country says, ”Morarji Desai, JINDABAD. Long live Morarji Desai!” You just order, ”Right turn!” and the whole country turns right; ”Go and kill the enemy!” and people start killing.

Delgado has released a more dangerous phenomenon than atomic energy. People have not yet understood all the implications of it. It will change the whole future of man – man can disappear because of it, because man can lose all freedom. Man can become just a machine.

But this is exactly what the priests have been doing, down the ages. Their methods were not so sophisticated, but still they have been doing it. They create conscience in you – that is parallel to an electronic device. They create conscience in you; from the very childhood they start saying and repeating a certain thing: sex is sin. In the school, in the church, in the home – everywhere they go on talking against sex. They are creating a mechanism in you. Repeated thousands of times, in thousands of ways, you become hypnotized by the idea. It becomes a part of your inner being. It is nothing different from Delgado.

Delgado has only done things in a more scientific way, precise, sophisticated – but the priests were the real discoverers. For five thousand years they have been doing this to humanity. And once the idea settles in your mind, then the priest is inside you.

You may be making love, Sona, but you are not alone. The priest is pulling your strings from behind; he is saying, ”This is sin. You will suffer in hell.” You are making love and in your mind you are seeing hellfire. How can you go into it?

You say: I CERTAINLY HAVE NOT TRANSCENDED SEX...

Neither can you go into it nor can you transcend it – because transcendence requires first going into it. Only those who go totally into it can attain to transcendence. Knowledge, experience, helps you to transcend. Experience liberates.

Now the trick is that the priest does not allow you to experience it – its beauty, its liberation, its joy, he does not allow you to experience it. And the mind goes on thinking about it again and again. And whenever you go into it you are in a dilemma: you cannot go totally into it, so you go on missing the experience.

When you are not in it the mind fantasizes about it – because the mind needs the experience. It is a natural desire, a natural longing; the mind wants to be fulfilled. And when you go into it the priest pulls you back. So you become pornographic – in your mind you think of sex, in your dreams sex filters in, in your behaviour... everywhere it is so obvious. Negative or positive, but you are full of sex. But whenever you go into it the priest pulls you back. Whenever you go into it, Delgado is there

– he pushes the button and you stop. Just two feet away, the bull stops.

You come out of it frustrated. And because of frustration you desire more. This is a dilemma that the priest has created in humanity. The priest has been the greatest enemy of humanity.

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You will never transcend sex.

You may become perverted, but you cannot transcend sex.

Transcendence is only when you have gone into it totally and seen into it and seen the momentariness of it – and seen that it is not really sex that was your longing but something else.

Sex was just an excuse to experience something else. When you have experienced sex totally, you will become aware of THAT something else.

What is that? In the total orgasmic joy of sex, time disappears, ego disappears – these two things disappear. That is the greatest longing in you. Once you have known that in deep sex two things disappear – ego and time.... You are not aware of time, you move into eternity; and you are not aware of separation, the ego is not functioning at all – that is the joy. Once understood that this is the root cause of joy, you are free of sex. Because now the whole thing is that you can drop ego and time without going into sex. And sex can make it happen only for a moment, then darkness settles again. That light comes only for a moment.

But through meditation, that light becomes a reality in you. You start living out of time and you start living out of ego. What you attain in a sex orgasm for a single moment, Buddha lives in it twenty-four hours a day. That’s why he does not need sex. That is transcendence.

Sona, transcendence is possible only when you have known the whole secret of sex. The secret is it is a biological, natural device to make you aware of meditation. It is through sexual orgasm that meditation was discovered. The first person who discovered meditation is bound to have discovered it through sex; there is no other way – because sex is a natural phenomenon. Meditation is a discovery, it is not a natural phenomenon. It is going beyond nature, it is a transcendence.

You say: I CERTAINLY HAVE NOT TRANSCENDED SEX. WHY THEN, EACH TIME I GO INTO IT, DOES IT SOMEHOW NOT FEEL RIGHT?

THEY ARE BOTH INTERDEPENDENT You have not transcended sex and you will not transcend –

till you start feeling that it is absolutely right. The idea that it is not right is Delgado’s. The idea that it is not right is of the society, of the religion you are accidentally born into. It is given by others to you, and it was given to those others by others.

It has made you split. And you go on doing something for which your total heart cannot say yes.

And you cannot resist either, because your total heart cannot say no either. You are pulled apart in different directions; you start falling into pieces.

And remember, the phenomenon is very complicated. Whenever something is repressed it becomes more and more attractive. Less and less will you be able to experience it, but more and more attractive it becomes. And you will find vicarious ways, cunning ways – or you may simply turn your whole life upside-down.

Rajen has sent me a beautiful limerick:

There was an old man from Darjeeling

Who was travelling from Hyde Park to Ealing.

A sign on the door

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Said ”Don’t spit on the floor,”

So he carefully spat on the ceiling.

What else can you do? The anti-idea will make you stand on your head. If you are not allowed to stand on your feet, what else can you do? SIRSHASANA – you have to stand on your head – the headstand. That seems to be the logical consequence of repression.

Repression cannot help you towards transcendence.

Only expression can take you to

transcendence.

Sona, let the priest disappear. The priest has to be dropped, all guilt feelings have to be dropped.

And I know it is difficult to drop, because that’s your whole mind, and the whole society is in support of it. The whole society believes in it. You will feel very alone in dropping it, you will feel very fearful in dropping it – because in dropping it, you will no more be a part of the crowd. You will no more be a sheep, you will become an individual. And it is frightening to be alone.

Hence people go on following the herd. The herd goes on repeating old stupidities, superstitions, meaningless nonsense. Positively harmful things it goes on repeating, but we go on believing in it –

because if we don’t believe, we are left alone. And people are very much afraid of being left alone.

That is the courage a sannyasin needs. Sona, be courageous enough to be alone. And experiment with your life and your life energy without any hindrance from any source. God has given you this energy: use it to go deep into experiences.

Sex is one of the most profound experiences. And the greatest thing about it is that if you go into it you transcend it. Out of sex, BRAHMACHARYA IS born, true celibacy is born – but only out of sex, only out of true, authentic sex.

Now, this is a problem. I teach you to go deep in love and sex, only because that is the only way to go beyond. My effort is to help you to go beyond – because without going beyond, you will remain tethered to the earth, you will not be able to fly into the sky. Without going beyond, you will remain in the prison of biology. Without going beyond, you will remain part of the animal kingdom. You will not really become human – what to say about being divine?

Going beyond sex, you go beyond the animals. Going beyond sex, you shatter the biological prison cell around you. Going beyond sex, you go beyond the earth. For the first time you start looking at the sky and the stars, and the faraway lights start showering on you. And faraway, distant music is heard. You are moving towards your real destiny, towards your real fulfillment.

Animal, human, divine: these are the three layers in you. The animal layer consists of sex, the human layer consists of love, the divine layer consists of prayer. It is the same energy, being expressed in higher and higher forms: the mud, the lotus, the fragrance.

Please don’t go on spitting on the ceiling. Spit on the floor! Be natural. And remember the paradox: being totally natural is the way of going beyond nature – entering into super-nature.

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Your mind is perverted by the priests. You have to be very alert about it. The conditioning is very long, centuries and centuries old. And we have been taught to respect whatsoever is old – the older it is, the more we are taught to respect it; the more ancient it is, the more respectability and credit it has.

And why did the priest go against sex in the first place? The Buddhas were never against it. They were ALL for transcendence, as I am for transcendence. The Buddhas were for transcendence – but listen: when I say you have to go beyond sex, it can be interpreted as if I am against sex, because I am saying you have to go beyond sex. You can interpret that I am against sex – otherwise why should I say you have to go beyond sex?

Buddhas have always said, ”Transcend sex,” but they were never against it. It has to be used as a stepping-stone.

But the priest cannot understand what the Buddhas are saying. He interprets the Buddhas in his own way. He says, ”Avoid sex, be against sex. Listen to what Buddha has said.” Transcendence of sex becomes antagonism towards sex. That is a natural misunderstanding that always happens. I say one thing, you understand something totally different – even diametrically opposite.

It reminds me of an old opera troupe performing once in a small out-of-the-way town. One old tonsorial veteran wept through shaky but loud strains of Pagliacci.

At the close of the aria, one listener stood up and cheered, ”Bravo! Bravissimo!” A man sitting by his side was stunned that any opera-goer would cheer this shoddy performance.

He turned to him and asked, ”Did you like his performance?”

”I am not applauding his voice, but his colossal nerve.” It is easy to misunderstand – words are always capable of being misunderstood. And you live on one plane, in the valley, the dark valley, and the Buddhas move on the sunlit peaks, What they say belongs to the sunlit peak. By the time it reaches you it is no more the same. It is an echo of an echo of an echo.

And the people, the cunning people amongst you, become the interpreters – they become the priests. They say, ”We have understood. Now we will explain it to you – this is the meaning.” Buddhas have always been misunderstood, will always be misunderstood. It is something natural that cannot be avoided, because the language that is spoken on the sunlit peaks is not the language that is spoken in the dark valley of ignorance. The language of the morning is not the language of the night.

But there are cunning people who always become mediators. They say, ”We know what Buddha means; we will interpret him.”

And one more reason: this interpretation, that Buddhas are against sex, gives the priests great power over you. If you transcend sex the priest will not become powerful, but if you repress sex he Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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will become powerful – because by repressing it you will become guilty, unnatural, ugly, in conflict, continuous conflict, dissipating your energy in a civil war. You will become weaker and weaker every day. And the more weak you are, the more easily you can be dominated, possessed.

The priest has been powerful, not because he is powerful but because you are weak. His power is located in your weakness. Once you become powerful, the priest will fade away of his own accord.

In my vision of a future humanity, when the new man has really arrived on the earth – powerful, life-affirmative, tremendously celebrating, joyous, positive, affirming – the priests will disappear. They will wither away. Who will bother about the priests? Life is more than enough to teach all that you need.

And when you learn from life, you will be able to understand Buddhas more easily, with less misunderstanding – because by living your life totally, you will start having a few experiences, a few peak experiences. They will come like lightning and disappear, but you will have a few glimpses of the highest peaks, of the plenitudes of consciousness. And Buddhas will be able to talk to you more conveniently.

Communication will become more easy between you and Buddhas if the priests disappear as mediators. They are not mediators, they are not bridges; they are walls, they are barriers. Hence I am against all kinds of priesthood.

If you can find a Master, be totally with him, but avoid priests. Avoid those people who have not known truth themselves but are simply like parrots repeating others. If somebody has known the truth, if you see that somebody has the presence and the fragrance, if you feel then BE... be totally with the person. Don’t miss the opportunity, because priests are millions, Buddhas are rare.

Once in a while you come across a Buddha, and you may not come across a Buddha again for many lives. So whenever you come across a Buddha, don’t miss the opportunity: risk all! Whenever you come across a person who has truth, authority.... And remember, the man of authority is not authoritative; the man of authority is very humble. The authoritative; man is not the man of authority

– he is not humble, he is arrogant. In fact he pretends to be powerful, he pretends to be authoritative, but his authority rests in the Vedas, in the Koran, in the Bible. His authority has no source in his own being, it is not his own experience.

A Jesus is a man of authority.

Somebody asked Jesus, ”By what authority do you speak?” The questioner was asking, ”Are you speaking on the authority of Moses or Abraham or Ezekiel? On whose authority are you speaking?

The authority of the Talmud? The authority of the ancient seers, the Jewish prophets? On WHOSE

authority?”

And Jesus said, ”I speak on my own authority. Before Abraham was, I am.” Abraham was three thousand years before Jesus, and Jesus says, ”Before Abraham was, I am. I am at the very source, I am at the very beginning. You can get deeper into your being and you can attain to that source.”

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When you come across a person who IS a source, then be with him by all means. And remember, he will never say to you, ”Follow me.” He simply says, ”Be with me” – and that is a totally different matter. He says, ”Imbibe me.” He says, ”Commune with me.” He says, ”Let us be bridged” – and that very bridging is the art of disciplehood.

If you allow the Buddha, he starts pouring his energy into you. It is not a question of verbal communication, but it exists on the energy level. And then you will understand that Buddhas are never against life. They are always for life. Life is God – how can they be against it?

Priests are always against life, because the priests can have power over you only if you are weak.

And to make you against life makes you weak. Then all kinds of perversions settle in.

SONA YOU HAVE NOT KNOWN WHAT SEX IS YET You may have loved, you may have moved into the gestures of love, you may have even made love to people – but it has remained something physiological. You have not been able to move into it spiritually. You have remained an outsider; you were not a participant in the mystery of it.

You don’t know how to participate, hence the problem. You don’t know the language of participation, the art of falling in tune with the energy of the other person, of connecting with the other person on all possible levels of energy – not only of the body but of the mind, of the soul; not only of the lower centers but of the higher centers too.

But nobody has been told. And remember, in animals sex is an instinct; in man it is an art. In man everything is an art, in animals everything is an instinct. For example, if you bring a buffalo into the garden the buffalo will eat only certain grasses and will leave everything else. Her choice is predetermined; she is not conscious. She is not really choosing; the choice is mechanical, she is functioning like a robot. It is instinctive.

With man, nothing is instinctive. Man has become loosened from the grip of instinct – and that is a great phenomenon. It is your glory that you are no longer instinctive. You have a certain freedom.

That’s why man eats all kinds of things. No animal eats like man; every animal has a fixed food.

Only man eats ALL kinds of things – imaginable, unimaginable. You cannot believe it! I have been looking into people’s habits around the earth, and this is my feeling, that there is not a single thing in the world which is not being eaten somewhere or other.

Insects are being eaten, snakes are being eaten. Snakes? But it is a very delicious food in China.

Ants are being eaten in Africa – it is very good for small children, and small children start collecting ants. There is not a single thing that is not eaten.

And there is not a single thing that has not been condemned. Everything has been condemned too.

Man has absolute freedom.

Instinctively, man should be a vegetarian – because his intestines prove absolutely that instinctively he should be a vegetarian, he should not be a meat-eater.

Meat-eating animals have small

intestines. Man has a very long intestine. The long intestine belongs to the vegetarians, because the meat-eating animal can eat once and then it is enough for twenty-four hours.

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The lion eats only once a day, but the monkey eats the whole day, goes on eating – because when you eat vegetables you have to eat in much greater quantity. Much is roughage in a vegetable which will have to be thrown; only a very small part of it will be absorbed. The meat can be absorbed totally; it is already an absorbed thing. Some other animal has done the work of absorbing it; you are eating something ready-made. But if you eat vegetables then it takes a long time to absorb it, and it needs a longer passage so that it can remain in your body for a longer period.

Physiologically man is a vegetarian, but instinct no longer decides. Even sex is no longer just an instinct. That’s why you can find so many variations in man – you will not find them in animals.

Animals are not homosexuals, animals are not bisexuals. And remember, I am not talking about the animals which live in the zoo – because in a zoo they learn from human beings. I am talking about the wild animals. In a zoo you will find animals doing all kinds of things; it is an unnatural state. But in the wild they are always heterosexual.

Why has man so many ways of relating – heterosexual, autosexual, homosexual, bisexual, one-to-one or in a group? Man has freedom to choose. And this choice can make you pathological or this choice can make you a Buddha. Now it depends on you, how you use your freedom.

Freedom is a dangerous phenomenon – immensely important, but dangerous too. You can fall below the animals and you can rise above the gods – that is the whole range of freedom. No animal can fall from the state he is in. Only Adam and Eve fell; other animals are still living in the Garden of Eden. No other animal has yet eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge – not even the snake who persuaded Adam and Eve, he has not eaten it himself. He is still in the Garden of Eden. Have you heard of the fall of the snake? It has not happened yet.

Man has immense freedom, hence he can fall. He is no more grounded in the instincts, he is very loose. He is not like a tree, rooted, fixed; he can move, he is a moving tree. His roots are not fixed but flowing. That is something great – but very few people use it rightly.

You can fall like Adam or you can rise like Jesus.

Sex has to be learnt. And there is nobody to teach it; no schools exist. No schools are ALLOWED

to exist. Everybody is allowed to poison you against sex; nobody is allowed to teach you the right way to sex. Nobody is allowed to make it an exquisite art – it is.

There was this boy who at the age of four was washed ashore on a desert island and lived there for many years, until one day when he was twenty-one, this gorgeous blonde was washed up on the beach.

They met. She said, ”Who are you?” and he said, ”Why, I am the sole inhabitant of this island.” She said, ”What do you do all day?”

He said, ”I hunt and I fish and I climb trees and I sit on top of that rock over there and flip pebbles into the sea.”

She said, ”Well, what do you do about sex?”

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He said, ”Sex? What is sex?”

So right there and then, on the beach, she showed him. When it was all over she said, ”What do you think of that, then?”

He said, ”Well, it is all very nice – but look what you’ve done with my pebble-flipper!” Man has to be taught everything. Man has no instinctive grounds, so everything is possible. And if you are not given right directions you will have to grope in the dark.

Pythagoras’ school was such a school where it was taught how to transcend sex by going deeply into it. That’s why he was tortured, persecuted his whole life, from one city to another. He was running his whole life, from one island to another island. And finally he had to make it an absolutely secret thing. There was no need to make it secret, because he was having some beautiful experiences.

He wanted to relate to the people, but the people were not even ready to listen. Hence, secrecy entered.

Secrecy is just a safety arrangement. Pythagoras had to go secret. Then only those who were part of the innermost core were told the real secrets. And they were kept oral – nobody was allowed to write about them. Even Lysis does not mention them. And whatsoever he says... you will be surprised. It seems nothing is worth keeping a secret. He is saying simple things: ”Take care of your health” – what is the secret in it? Or the golden mean: ”Be always in the middle” – why keep it a secret? You will not come across a single secret in all the sutras, because if the secrets were in the sutras then the sutras would have been burnt long before; you would not have found them at all.

The day Pythagoras died, the whole school was burnt. disciples killed, massacred, and the whole secret tradition that he had made alive in the West for the first time.... He had searched in the East for years – his whole life he had devoted to the search. All those secret teachings were destroyed.

This has always been the attitude of the crowd. This is their attitude towards me, because I am talking openly about some secrets.

Man has to be taught everything – how to eat, how to love, how to be. If he is not taught he remains a shoddy affair, he remains something very lousy, vague, ambiguous – something uncertain, something always hesitant. He goes on doing a few things because he can feel a few stirrings of the instinct in him. But there is no clearcut direction, there is no sense of direction.

Sona, you will have to learn what sex is. And when I say that, people understand that I am saying that you have not known sex. No, you have known – but your knowing is very superficial. Your knowing is not yet an art, it is not yet a philosophy. You may have a few children too, so you can think that you know what sex is, because you have children.

Having children does not mean that you know what sex is. Having children is as easy as putting the light on and off. By putting the light on and off, don’t think that you know what electricity is. Or do you think that you know what electricity is because you can put the light on and off? A few people think that way, that they know what electricity is.

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I have heard the beautiful story about the man who made the first electric bulb – Edison. For three years he tried hard and then he succeeded. It was a miracle – for the first time, electricity was functioning in human hands. That great energy, that tremendous power, was channelized into human service. And he had worked for almost thirty years on and off, and for three years continuously.

And of course when the first electric bulb was on, he was dazed, mystified. He was sitting there looking at it. Half the night passed, and more and more hours started slipping by. And the wife came and she said, ”Have you gone mad or something? What are you doing here looking at that stupid light? Go to sleep!”

She called it ”that stupid light”. And it is said that Edison cried. He said, ”You call it stupid light? Do you know what electricity is?”

And she said ”I know” – because she had always been watching him putting things on and off, this and that. And she said, ”I know – you put that on or off. That is electricity.” Another story I have heard about Edison: He went to a small town, just for a holiday. The school of the town was celebrating its annual function, and the small children of the school had made many things to exhibit. He also went. Nobody knew that he was Edison. They had made a few electric toys, and Edison asked the boy who was showing the toys – who had made them and was very proud – ”What is electricity?”

And the boy said, ”What is electricity? I don’t know. I will ask my teacher – you wait.” He brought his teacher, a postgraduate in science, and Edison asked, ”What is electricity?” And the teacher said, ”But nobody asks such questions – ’What is electricity?’

Electricity is

electricity! But wait, I will call my principal – he is a Ph.D. in science, he may be able to explain it.”

He came, and he tried to explain somehow. But how can you explain to Edison? He was the first man to know anything about electricity, one of the greatest geniuses of the world – the only man who made at least one thousand inventions. But the principal was also unaware of whom he was talking to. And he went on giving him explanations, but Edison would say, ”That doesn’t fit. Just tell me what electricity is, SIMPLY. What you are saying is not answering my question – you are trying to explain it away.”

The principal started perspiring, and a crowd gathered. And then Edison felt great compassion. He said, ”Don’t be worried – I am Edison, and I myself don’t know what electricity is.” Just by giving birth to children you don’t know what sex is. Sex is a far deeper phenomenon than electricity – it is bio-electricity. It is yet to be discovered. It is a totally different phenomenon. The electricity that you know is a material counterpart of sex; sex is the spiritual counterpart of it. The electricity that you know is just a dead phenomenon. Sex is alive: it is electricity plus life. It is a far higher synthesis – it has yet to be discovered.

There have been a few people who have been working, but they have always been tortured by the society. Wilhelm Reich was one of the persons who was working on sex electricity, but he was Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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condemned, forced into a madhouse, declared mad. He was not mad – he was one of the sanest persons alive in this century.

But because he was moving into those secrets of which the priests and the politicians are always afraid, he was going deeper into the mysteries which priests and politicians don’t want to be revealed to the ordinary humanity – because once they are revealed, man will be free – he was persecuted his whole life, and then forced into a madhouse. He died condemned, a criminal, a madman, and he was neither.

This has been the case with Tantra all along. For three thousand years the science has been developed in fragments, but always the society destroys it. It is too afraid of giving men great secrets which will make them independent individuals.

SONA YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT SEX IS You please say goodbye to all the priests. Get rid of all the nonsense that you have been told about sex. Experiment freshly again, innocently. Go into it meditatively – it is prayer. It is one of the most sacred things, the holiest of the holy, because it is through sex that life arrives, and it is through sex that you can penetrate to the very source of life. If you go DEEP into sex you will find God. You will find God’s hands somewhere deep in the world of sexual experience.

Sex has to be a meditation and you have to learn the art of it. Sing, dance, celebrate. Sex should not be a hasty affair, it should not be a hit-and-run affair – as it is. Savour it. It should be a great ritual. That’s how Tantra rituals arose. Prepare for it. Become more sensitive, open, silent. When you are going into lovemaking you are entering into the temple of God. Enter only when you are prayerful, otherwise not.

Don’t enter with lust, enter with prayer – then you will be able to know the secret of sex. Don’t enter to exploit the other, enter to share with the other. Don’t enter as if sex is just a kind of relief – that is the lowest form of sex. The highest form is not relief but ecstasy. Relief is negative.

Yes, sex unburdens you of certain energy, but it simply unburdens – then you have missed the positive part. The positive part is when that energy nourishes you – not only unburdens you but nourishes you, creates something higher in you. When sex is just used as a relief, like a sneeze, it is the lowest form of it.

The highest form is tremendously creative: energy is not thrown out of your being, energy is recirculated on higher planes. Energy takes a flight, it starts rising above gravitation. It starts penetrating your higher chakras. It is not a release only, but a tremendous ecstatic flight. And then only will you know that at the deepest moment of orgasm, ego and time disappear. Once you have known that, you will not need sex any more. Sex has revealed its secrets, it has given you the key, the golden key.

Now you can use that golden key without going into any sexual activity. Now you can sit silently in zazen, vipassana. Now you can sit silently, dropping your ego and forgetting time. And you will reach to the same heights and you will stay on those heights longer and longer.

And a day arrives when you become a permanent resident on those peaks. That day is the day of great rejoicing: one becomes a Buddha.

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3 January 1979 am in Buddha Hall

The first question

Question 1

OSHO, AS WELL AS BEING SOMEONE LIKE YOU,

PYTHAGORAS WAS ALSO A GREAT MATHEMATICIAN.

HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?

Bruno,

MAN IS NOT ONLY THE OUTER, and he is not only the inner either – he is both. And more: he is inner, he is outer, and he is transcendental too. Man is a three dimensional being. Those three dimensions are represented by Christianity as the Trinity, and by Hinduism as TRIMURTI – three faces of God. And the man who lives only in one dimension lives a partial life. He will never know the beauty of the whole and the joy of the whole.

To live a partial life is to live in sickness, because the parts that are not allowed go on fighting with you. They want to express themselves. The denied being will take revenge on you. it will sabotage your life. It will not allow you to live peacefully; you will be in a constant civil war.

If you deny the body, the body will be angry with you. If you deny the soul, the soul will be angry with you. And d house divided against itself cannot be whole, cannot be at peace, cannot be at ease.

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That’s why you see millions of people in such great misery. The misery is caused because they live a fragmentary life. They accept only a part of their being and the major parts are rejected. It is like a tree rejecting its roots because they are invisible – the tree will start dying, the roots will be angry.

Or it is like the tree denying its flowers, foliage, branches, and accepting only the roots, then it will have no meaning.

Man has lived in a partial way, hence the question.

The total man will be rooted in the body like a tree rooted in the soil, and he will be growing into the sky like the branches of a tree – he will be moving into the inner sky. And he will have something more too, something transcendental to this duality, a third dimension.

The first dimension is very visible, it is material. It can be measured: it is the world of mathematics, the world of science. The second, the inner, is not so visible – it is vague, cloudy, mysterious. It is a twilight zone, neither day nor night, just in the middle between both. It exists on the boundaries of the material and the ultimate, of this and that. That is the world of poetry, art.

And the third is absolutely invisible. Nobody has ever seen it, nobody can ever see it, because it is the very being of the seer itself. You cannot reduce it to an object: it is your very subjectivity. It is always the witness and never the witnessed. It is always the observer and never the observed. That is the world of the mystic: the transcendental.

And a whole man will be a scientist, a poet and a mystic. Pythagoras was a whole man, a holy man.

When I say this, that the whole man will be all the three together, please don’t take me literally. One need not be literally a scientist and yet one can be whole – but his approach will be scientific. He may not be an Albert Einstein, or a Newton, or an Edison. Buddha is not an Albert Einstein, but still his scientific approach is there: he is utterly scientific in his approach. He will not allow any superstition. He will not allow any illogical approaches. He will be very logical – although he will lead you beyond logic! but he will lead you very logically, step by step, with a method.

Buddha is as much a scientist as Albert Einstein; you can look into his words. He says, ”Don’t believe what I say unless you have experienced it. Unless it has become your own understanding, don’t believe in me.” This can be said only by an utterly scientific mind. He says, ”Don’t believe anything because it is written in the scriptures. The scriptures may be wrong – who knows? Unless you have become a witness to it there is no guarantee of its truth.” It may be in the Vedas, in the Upanishads – there is no need to believe or disbelieve. Experiment, experience! Become a lab –

your own lab. And unless you have concluded, all beliefs are just prejudices, superstitious, illogical, unfounded. And truth believed is a lie. Truth experienced is a totally different phenomenon. Truth believed is a lie.

This is the approach of a scientific mind.

Buddha is not a poet either in the ordinary sense – he never composed poetry. But he is a poet!

The way he walks is poetry, the way he looks at life is poetry. The way he showers his compassion is poetry. He may not be a poet in the ordinary, literal sense, but he is sheer poetry. His very existence is poetic. The tremendous grace that surrounds him, the infinite beauty that he lives, and Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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the splendour that he has brought to the earth – the earth has never been the same again. It was something else before Buddha, it is totally something else after Buddha.

What difference has Buddha made to the world? He walked on the earth, and he belonged to the beyond. He was embodied just like you and me, but he had come from the ultimate source. He lived here and now, but AS the ultimate source. His fragrance is still there in the winds. Those who are alert will still feel his presence. That preSence is eternal.

So is Jesus, so is Pythagoras... they are all mystics, poets, scientists. The real man is bound to be a total man. And that’s my teaching too: I would not like you to be partial, I would not like you to be lopsided. I would not like you to live only in the body, or only in the soul. People have tried that! And because of those efforts, man has not become what he has the birthright to become. Man has not bloomed, has not flowered. He cannot. Unless all the three dimensions are together, something will be missing. And that missing part will go on haunting you, will go on creating misery for you.

The missing part will not allow you to be really contented. The missing part will not allow you to be grateful to God. The missing part will not allow you to release the fragrance in tremendous gratefulness, thankfulness – to be prayerful. It will not allow you prayer. Only a fulfilled man can pray. Only a contented man can pray: contentment is prayer. Prayer is the perfume of absolute contentment.

Live in the body as Epicurus lived in the body. Live in the soul as all the mystics have always tried to live in the soul, but don’t deny Epicurus. My vision of the whole man implies Epicurus too, as much as Jesus, as much as Zarathustra. And the poet is just between the two, the meeting-point of the mystic and the scientist in you. It is there that the poet exists – on the boundaries, on the frontiers.

Let your poet also have its say. Dance, sing, create music. Live a life which is rooted in scientific outlook, and has the grace and the beauty of poetry, and the depth of mysticism.

Bruno, Pythagoras is a whole man. It should be so with everybody else too.

You ask me: AS WELL AS BEING SOMEONE LIKE YOU, PYTHAGORAS WAS ALSO A GREAT

MATHEMATICIAN. HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?

I am not a mathematician, but whatsoever I am saying to you is utterly mathematical. I am not a logician, but what I am saying to you is absolutely logical. Although my logic will help you to go beyond logic – that’s what I mean when I say ’absolutely logical’. Because the illogical is AS much part of existence as the logical. If somebody is really logical he will accept the illogical too, because it is there and it cannot be rejected.

To be logical means to accept the illogical too, then logic becomes a stepping-stone to the illogical.

Then logic becomes a stepping-stone to love.... And when everything in you has been used and nothing is neglected, you become an orchestra, then you are harmony of tremendous grace. That harmony is the goal of religion.

The second question

Question 2

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BEFORE TAKING SANNYAS, I WOULD HAVE FOUND IT VERY EASY TO RELATE TO

PYTHAGORAS. NOW I WOULD STILL LIKE TO, BUT SOME THINGS SEEM SO MORALISTIC

AND REPRESSIVE, LIKE HIS ADVICE NOT TO BE ANGRY. WHERE AM I MISSING?

Sarlo,

REMEMBER ONE THING ALWAYS: that time changes everything – language, the ways of language... time changes everything! If Pythagoras comes back, you will not be able to relate to him. He will be speaking a language that is no more in use, and you will be speaking a language that he will not be able to understand either – there will be a gap of twenty-five centuries. Twenty-five centuries is a long time. In fact, between two generations the gap arises; between your father and you there is a gap, and such a gap that people feel it is unbridgeable.

Children feel it almost impossible to relate to their own parents. The gap is not much, maybe twenty years. Twenty years’ gap or twenty-five years’ gap and children feel it is impossible to communicate.

And the parents feel it is impossible to communicate. In twenty-five years the world has changed so much – what to say about twenty-five centuries?

That’s why you will need somebody who belongs to you to convey to you what the meaning of Pythagoras is. Why am I talking on Pythagoras? So that the gap of twenty-five centuries can be bridged, so that Pythagoras can again become a living force amongst you. If you try to understand Pythagoras directly you will not be able to understand him at all. He speaks a totally different language that has disappeared from the world. It is the language of Patanjali, it is the language of Mahavira. But Patanjali and Mahavira were pre-Freudians. They used words in a totally different way; they had never heard about Freud. Pythagoras is using language in the same way. You will have to be a little patient.

When he says not to be angry, he does not mean repression in the sense you understand the word repression. When he says don’t be angry, he is not telling you to repress anger: he is telling you to transcend anger. And they are tremendously different – not only different but diametrically opposite.

If you try not to be angry, you will repress anger. If you try to transcend anger, you will not repress anger: on the contrary, you will have to understand anger, you will have to watch anger. In watching is transcendence.

If you repress anger, the anger goes into your unconscious; you become more and more poisoned.

It is not good, it is not healthy; it is going to drive you neurotic sooner or later. And one day or other the accumulated anger will explode, and that will be far more dangerous because then it will be absolutely uncontrollable by you. Then it is better to be finished with it every day in small doses.

Those doses are homeopathic: once in a while you feel angry, be angry. That is far healthier than accumulating anger for a few years then one day exploding. Then it will be too much; you will not be able even to be conscious of what you are doing. It will be absolutely mad. You may do something tremendously harmful to yourself or to somebody else; you may murder or you may commit suicide.

Pythagoras is not saying to repress it – no enlightened person can ever say to repress it. He is saying to transcend it, go beyond it. Transcendence is a totally different process. In transcendence you don’t repress anger and you don’t express it either. You know only two ways to deal with anger: Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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expression, repression. And the real way to deal with it is neither. It is not expression, because if you express anger you create anger in the other; then it becomes a chain... then the other expresses it, then again you are provoked. .. then where is it going to end? And the more you express, the more it becomes a habit, a mechanical habit. And the more you express it, the more you are practising it!

It will be difficult for you to get out of it.

Out of this fear, repression arose: don’t express, because it brings great misery to you, to others –

and to no point. It makes you ugly, it creates ugly situations in life, and then you have to pay for all that. And, slowly slowly, it becomes such a habit that it becomes your second nature.

Out of the fear of expression, repression arose. But if you repress, you are accumulating the poison.

It is bound to explode.

The third approach, the approach of all the enlightened people of the world, is neither to express nor repress, but WATCH. When anger arises, sit silently, let the anger surround you in your inner world, let the cloud surround you, be a silent watcher. SEE... this IS anger.

Buddha has said to his disciples: When anger arises, listen to it, listen to its message. And remember again and again, going on telling yourself: Anger, anger.... Keep alert, don’t fall asleep.

Keep alert that anger is surrounding you. You are not it! You are the watcher of it. And that is where the key is.

Slowly slowly, watching, you become so separate from it that it cannot affect you. And you become so detached from it and so aloof and so cool and so far away, and the distance is such that it doesn’t seem to matter at all. In fact, you will start laughing at all the ridiculous things that you have been doing in the past – because of this anger. It is not you. It is there, outside you. It is surrounding you.

But the moment you are disidentified from it, you will not pour your energy into it.

Remember, we pour our energy into anger, then only does it become vital. It has no energy of its own; it depends on our cooperation. In watching, the cooperation is broken; you are no more supporting it. It will be there, for a few moments, a few minutes, and then it will be gone. Finding no roots in you, finding you unavailable, seeing that you are far away, a watcher on the hills, it will dissipate, it will disappear. And that disappearance is beautiful. That disappearance is a great experience.

Seeing the anger disappear, great serenity arises: the silence that follows the storm. You will be surprised that each time anger arises and if you can watch, you will fall into such tranquillity as you have not known before. You will fall into such deep meditation... when the anger disappears you will see yourself so fresh, so young, so innocent, as you have never known yourself. Then you will be thankful even to anger; you will not be angry at it – because it has given you a new beautiful space to live in, a new utterly fresh experience to go through. You have used it, you have made a stepping-stone out of it.

This is the creative use of the negative emotions. That’s what Pythagoras means.

Remember, language goes on changing.

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Little Red Riding Hood was walking through the woods on her way to visit her grandmother, when suddenly a wolf jumped out from behind a tree.

”Ah-ha!” the wolf said. ”Now I have got you, and I am going to eat you!”

”Eat! Eat! Eat!” Little Red Riding Hood said angrily. ”Damn it! Doesn’t anybody make love any more?”

Language goes on changing... metaphors change, symbols change. The same words that used to mean one thing mean something totally different.

A man and a single woman were attending a large convention. They found themselves, through an accidental oversight of the hotel, assigned to the same room. Since both were mature individuals and knew how difficult it would be to get the matter straightened out in such crowded conditions, it seemed the wiser course to accept the situation.

Each chose a bed and a dresser and proceeded to ignore the other with a kind of tactful politeness.

But on the second night it turned out that the woman didn’t know how cold it was going to get. She was freezing. Hesitantly she called out, ”Would you be so good as to get me one of the blankets from the chest?”

The man, who had been nearly asleep, thought that over and said, ”Listen, if you are going to be this friendly and as long as we are in the same room, how about acting as though we were man and wife?”

The girl thought that over, giggled and said, ”Well, I think – perhaps I might be willing.” The man said, ”Good! In that case, as my wife, get your own darned blanket and leave me alone.” After twenty-five centuries, you will not be able to understand directly what Pythagoras has said.

You will need somebody who is contemporary to you in time, and who is also contemporary to Pythagoras in eternity – only then will those metaphors take new colour, will those metaphors have new meanings.

That has been the basic reason why, in the East particularly, down the ages, enlightened people have been commenting on other enlightened people who have preceded them.

Shankara commented on Krishna, on the Upanishads, on the Brahma Sutras.

Ramanuja

commented on the ancient enlightened people, Vallabha did the same. It has always been so in the East, because much dust gathers as time passes. Now, the Upanishads were written in a totally different world. That man has disappeared, that mind has disappeared, that world no more exists.

If some Upanishadic seer comes to see you, he will be utterly puzzled; if you visit some ancient monastery – Nalanda, Takshashila, or some ancient mystery school like Pythagoras’ – you will not be able to understand what is happening, because we understand through language. Unless you can understand through silence... silence is eternal, it never changes, because it is not part of the Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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human world. If you become deeply silent, then you will be able to understand Pythagoras. In that silence, he will commune with you, you can commune with him. Otherwise, you will feel difficulties.

I can understand your problem, Sarlo. You say:

BEFORE TAKING SANNYAS, I WOULD HAVE FOUND IT VERY EASY TO RELATE TO

PYTHAGORAS.

Because you have been brought up by a repressive society – Christian, Hindu, Jaina, it doesn’t matter. You have been brought up by a repressive society; that’s why you are saying before taking sannyas, before meeting me, you would have understood Pythagoras. But I tell you that would have been misunderstanding, not understanding.

You would have thought that he was teaching repression the way your parents have been teaching you. You would have thought that he was the same kind of person as the priest in the church –

Rome or Canterbury or Mecca. They are ALL repressive.

Priests have always been repressive. It is only the enlightened person who can give you freedom, because he does not need slaves. Priests need slaves; they cannot give you freedom. They have to make you greater and greater prisoners. And this is a psychological device: repress natural instincts and you will remain a prisoner, and you will be so ill always that you will need somebody to lean upon. And you will remain so ignorant that you will need guidance, that you will need leaders.

You say: BEFORE TAKING SANNYAS, I WOULD HAVE FOUND IT VERY EASY TO RELATE TO

PYTHAGORAS.

That would not have been real communion; that would have been false. NOW you can relate!

because now you are again with another Pythagoras. But now you feel difficulties. You say: NOW I WOULD STILL LIKE TO, BUT SOME THINGS SEEM SO MORALISTIC AND REPRESSIVE, LIKE HIS ADVICE NOT TO BE ANGRY. WHERE AM I MISSING?

You are missing because you have completely forgotten that twenty-five centuries’ gap is a big gap.

You need for Pythagoras to be reborn. That’s what I am doing by commenting on him. This is giving him a new meaning, a new body of words – words that you can understand, words that make sense to you, words that can relate to you.

A backwoods inn boasted a modest sign on the porch: ”Rooms to let. Food. Country atmosphere.” The inn was hardly a sophisticated hotel, but one night a shiny black Cadillac pulled up in front of it.

The owners of the car had gotten lost and wanted to spend the night there.

The man and his wife were big-city people in fancy clothes, and they emerged from the Cadillac as if they owned the world. Contemptuous of country life, but desperate for a night’s lodging, the couple did not even pretend to like the idea of staying at the inn. They were above it all.

After registering at the desk, the couple entered the dining room of the inn. Ignoring the simple menu, the man plunked down a dollar and said, ”For this, I want food, drink, and entertainment.” Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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In a few minutes, the innkeeper returned with two slices of watermelon. ”You asked for food, drink, and entertainment?” he said. ”Here it is. Eat the pulp, drink the juice, and play with the seeds.” The third question

Question 3

OSHO, WHAT INSIGHTS ALLOW US TO DROP THE PAST AND NOT REPRESS IT?

Prem Shahido,

NOT INSIGHTS, BUT A SINGLE INSIGHT allows you to drop the past. In fact, to say ’allows you to drop the past’ is not right. The single insight, and the past drops of its own accord. Not that you drop it.

What is that single insight? The single insight is this: that the past is no more... only the present is. To live simply means to be in the present; there is no other way to live, no other way to be. Past is no more, and the future is not yet; both are non-existential. And to cling to something that is non-existential is stupid.

The past is only memory, and the future is only imagination. And that which is is missed between these two monsters, the past and the future. They go on exploiting you; they are parasites, they are ghosts – they don’t exist. But you can go on giving them energies; then they can go on existing. At least, they appear to exist when you are not aware of the present.

You will be surprised to know that in the ancient Greek language the word ’God’ simply meant the present. ’G’ stands for that, ’O’ stands for which, and ’D’ stands for is – that which is. That is the meaning of the ancient word ’God’.

God is not a person but THAT WHICH IS. Herenow, this moment, God is present. God cannot be found in the past. And God cannot be found in the future. God always is. You cannot use with God words like ’was’, ’will be’ – you cannot say ’God was’ – that will be utter nonsense. You cannot say

’God will be’, that will be again utter nonsense. You can only use ’is’. In fact to say ’God is’ is to repeat; it is a tautology. God means isness! You cannot say ’God is’. God is another name for is –

that which is.

A single insight of being in tune with the present. And that’s what meditation is all about: to be in tune with that which is, to be utterly free from thoughts. Because whether it is past or future it is only through thoughts that past and future exist. Call it memory, call it imagination, but they are all thoughts, forms of thought.

To be in a state of thoughtless awareness... and like lightning, a single blow of the sword, the past disappears for ever and the future too. And in that moment is liberation.

Shahido, it is a single insight! It is satori, it is samadhi. Many insights are not needed for it – it is a single blow of the sword. And you can have it right now – unless you decide otherwise. This very moment, God is everywhere, all over the place. Only God is. Feel this silence. Let that silence go Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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deeper into your heart. Let it permeate you. Let it throb in your heartbeats. Let it become your breathing, your very being.... And where is the past? It has disappeared of its own accord.

It has not to be dropped. It disappears just like darkness when you bring light in. Not slowly slowly, not part by part, not gradually. When you light a candle in the dark room, it is not that by and by, slowly slowly, the darkness goes out – reluctant, not willing to go. No. It is simply not found!

The candle is lit and there is no darkness. The candle of meditation, of being herenow. The candle of God meaning that which is... and all past is gone. And it will never arise again, because once you have learnt the beauty, the benediction of the present, it is so tremendous – who cares for all the dust that has been gathering on the mirror of the mind?

You go on thinking of the past because you don’t know how to relate with the present. You go on thinking of the past because one has to do something, one has to keep oneself occupied. Children think of the future, and the old people think of the past; because children have no past so they cannot think of the past; they have to think about the future. And the old people have no future any more: there is death just standing like a China Wall. They know, now there is no more future; the tomorrow may never come. Afraid, they look backwards.

And that happens to individuals, that happens to countries, to societies, to nations too. For example, a young country like America thinks of the future; its golden age is yet to come. A country like India, very ancient, old, thinks of the past; its golden age has passed. In the days of Rama it has been; it is already a gone thing. It is simply an indication that the country is very very old and cannot conceive any future. In the future is death.

But to be a child is to miss; and to be old is to miss. The meditator is exactly in the middle: he has something of eternal youth in him.

You will be surprised to know that in the East we have never depicted any enlightened person old; we have always depicted them young. You have not seen any picture of Buddha as old, or Mahavira, or Rama, or Krishna – they have been painted, depicted, sculpted, always as young. To indicate something: that the meditator is neither a child who thinks of the future, nor an old man who thinks of the past. He is exactly in the middle, so young, so fresh, that he knows nothing of past and future

– he knows only of this moment.

It is not that Krishna never became old; he became old. He was eighty years old when he died. It is not that Buddha never became old; he was eighty-two years old when he died, very old, ill, the body in a very bad shape. Mahavira became very old. But still we have not carried the stories of their old age, because those stories are not true about their beings – they are true only about their outer periphery, not about their centers. And the center is the real thing; the periphery is just a shadow.

The center is substantial.

Shahido, a single insight is needed: that only the present is – nothing else is, nothing else has ever been, nothing else will ever be. Only the present is.

But this has to be your insight. My insight won’t help. I can share my insight with you – that’s what I am doing – but it has to become your insight. And once it happens, and only once, that you have contacted the present, you are a totally different person. It is a rebirth, a resurrection.

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The fourth question

Question 4

YOU SPOKE CONVINCINGLY ABOUT AWARENESS BEING THE ONLY VIRTUE AND

UNAWARENESS THE ONLY SIN. HOW CAN AN ORDINARY UNENLIGHTENED BEING FIND

ENOUGH ENERGY TO STAY IN AWARENESS AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE?

IN FACT, MORE ENERGY IS NEEDED TO BE MISERABLE than to be blissful.

Because

blissfulness is a state of nature. No energy is needed to be blissful! It is natural. Energy is needed to be miserable, because it is unnatural. The more natural you are, the less energy is needed; the more unnatural you want to be, the more energy will be needed.

If you are standing on your feet, it needs less energy; try to stand on your head, it needs more energy. Wherever you see more energy is needed, know well that you are trying to do something unnatural. Meditation needs no energy! because meditation is passive, inaction, silence. You are not doing anything – why should you need any energy?

Anger needs energy, thinking needs energy, violence needs energy – because you are doing something against nature, you are fighting against nature. It is like you are trying to swim upstream.

If you are going with the river, then no energy is needed. You can go and try in the river: if you go with the river, what energy? for what? The river takes you.... But if you are trying to go upstream, then great energy will be needed – because you will be fighting with the stream.

Mulla Nasruddin was sitting in front of his house. It was raining and somebody came running and he said, ”What are you doing here? Your wife has fallen in the river!” Mulla rushed to the river. A great crowd had gathered, but nobody was daring enough to jump into the river – it was so dangerous, it was such a big flood. Mulla immediately jumped – and started swimming upstream.

The crowd laughed and people said, ”Mulla, what are you doing? Why are you trying to swim upstream?”

He said, ”You keep quiet! – I know my wife. If she has fallen in the stream, she must have gone upstream, she cannot go downstream. She can never do anything naturally. I know my wife.” But when you go upstream, you will have to fight. Why do people look so tired? They are all fighting.

Your religion teaches you to fight. Your whole upbringing is based on conflict, because it is only through fight that ego can be created. When you relax, ego disappears. To relax means to become egoless. If you go with the river, you cannot create the ego. The ego is an unnatural phenomenon; it needs great energy to create it. And it needs great energy to go ON creating it; it needs great energy to maintain it then. It is a very expensive phenomenon to have an ego. Your whole life is wasted in it.

So the first thing. Asker, I would like to tell you: awareness does not need energy. You will be surprised: unawareness needs energy. Meditation does not need energy: thinking needs energy.

Relaxation needs NO energy! Tension needs energy; anguish, anxiety needs energy.

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So, let it be clear from the very beginning: the enlightened person lives with no conflict – he need not have any energy. And because he is not in fight and because he is not dissipating his energy, a miracle happens: God’s energy starts flowing through him. When you are not fighting with the river, the river takes you on her shoulders. When you are not fighting with life, God takes you on his shoulders.

Don’t push the river – the river is not your enemy – and great energy will be released in you.

The second thing you say: HOW CAN AN ORDINARY UNENLIGHTENED BEING....?

Nobody is an ordinary being – enlightened or unenlightened, but nobody is an ordinary being.

Nothing can be ordinary, because everything is full of God – how can God be ordinary? God can be asleep, I can understand, but cannot be ordinary. The difference between you and a Buddha is not of ordinariness and extraordinariness, but only of a very simple thing: you are fast asleep snoring, he is awake. HE IS extraordinary, you are extraordinary; or, if you love the word ’ordinary’, then he is ordinary and you are ordinary.

Either the whole existence is extraordinary or it is ordinary – you can choose any word you like. I am not interested in the word ’extraordinary’. But remember, the whole existence has a single taste to it; don’t divide it into ordinary and extraordinary. Why do we go on dividing? That is again the way of the ego. Great things we want to do, so we have to divide into what is great and what is not great.

Just the other night, I was reading a memoir of David Manners. He writes: On one occasion, a friend brought up to my desert hut a ’holy man’, an old Zen monk: Zenzaki San.

The friend put him into a chair in my room and left him there while I was seriously engaged in the little bathroom from which all sounds could be heard in the other room. I had never felt such a deep shame and embarrassment. Such a greeting for a ’holy man’! Finally, I had the nerve to come out and present myself, but the old monk jumped to his feet, whisked off his coat and said, ”Now, I go,” and made a beeline for the bathroom. I had to laugh and that laugh took all my shame. I began to admire this old monk before I had said a word to him.

In fact, the Master must have done it knowingly – just to take the shame away.

Nothing is unholy... even the sounds that are coming from the bathroom are not unholy. Everything is divine, holy. In fact, even your sleep is divine and holy, your unawareness is divine and holy.

These are two ways of being – unaware or aware – but the being is always the sacred, the holy.

Whatsoever name you want to give it you can give, but remember the taste of life, the whole life, is one.

YOU SPOKE CONVINCINGLY ABOUT AWARENESS BEING THE ONLY VIRTUE AND

UNAWARENESS THE ONLY SIN. HOW CAN AN ORDINARY UNENLIGHTENED BEING FIND

ENOUGH ENERGY TO STAY IN AWARENESS AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE?

You have missed the point. It is not a question of making efforts to be aware. If you make efforts to be aware, you will create tensions inside yourself – all efforts bring tensions. If you TRY to be aware, you are fighting with yourself; there is no need to fight. Awareness is not a by-product of effort: awareness is a fragrance of let-go: awareness is a flowering of surrender, of relaxation.

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Just sit silently in a relaxed state, doing nothing... and awareness will start happening. Not that you have to pull it up from somewhere, not that you have to bring it from somewhere. It will shower on you from nowhere. It will well up from within your own sources. You just be silent, sitting.

But I understand, Asker, your problem. It is very difficult to sit silently; thoughts GO on coming. So let them come! Don’t fight with thoughts and you will not need any energy. Just let them come –

what can you do? Clouds come and clouds go; let the thoughts come and let them go whenever they want to go. Don’t be on guard, and don’t be in a certain attitude that thoughts should come or. should not come – don’t be judgemental. Let them come, and let them go whenever they want.

You be utterly empty. Thoughts will pass, they will come and go, and slowly slowly you will see that you remain unaffected by their coming and going. And when you are unaffected by their coming and going, they start disappearing, they evaporate... NOT BY YOUR EFFORT! but by your cool, calm emptiness, your relaxed state.

And don’t say that relaxation will need great energy.

How can relaxation need great energy?

Relaxation simply means you are not doing anything.

SITTING SILENTLY,

DOING NOTHING,

THE SPRING COMES

AND THE GRASS GROWS BY ITSELF.....

Let this mantra sink into your heart. This is the very essence of meditation!... Sitting silently... doing nothing... the spring comes... and the grass grows by itself.... Everything happens! You are not to be a doer.

Don’t make awareness your goal, otherwise you have missed my point. I have simply defined. I have said: awareness is virtue, unawareness is sin. Now what has happened in Asker’s mind – he started thinking, ”If awareness is virtue, then how to attain it? And if unawareness is sin, then how to drop it?” Then the question of energy arises – when you ask how, you have already asked for more energy. And then the problem arises, ”I don’t have enough energy to fight with unawareness. And I don’t have enough energy to grow into awareness.” And then the question: ”I am an ordinary unenlightened person – what can I do? These things can be done by Buddhas....” But do you know? – Buddha was just as ordinary as you are and as unenlightened as you are. He was not always a Buddha.

One day it happened, and it is worth relating AGAIN, that it happened the day he was sitting, utterly relaxed under the tree, not doing a thing. For six years he had been making great efforts to become enlightened, and he was failing again and again. And those six years were nothing but utter frustration, and he had done everything that was possible to do: fasting, yoga postures, breathing... all the kinds of methodologies that were available in India. He had done all! He had almost destroyed himself by long fasts.

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He was so tired and so frustrated that evening, that fateful full-moon night, that he came to a decision: ”It is all futile. The world is futile, I have seen it” – he HAD seen enough of it. He was a son of a king. ”I renounced the world, it was meaningless. And now I renounce all this nonsense of being an ascetic. I renounce this search for truth too; that too is nonsense. There is nothing to gain, this way or that, here or there. There is nothing to gain! It is ALL futile, meaningless.” It must have been a tremendous frustration to have dropped the search for truth.

That night he must have breathed deeply, relaxedly. All is finished – nowhere to go, nothing to be done. And it happened. It happened that night.

Early in the morning when he opened his eyes, the last star was disappearing from the sky, and as the star disappeared, something, the last trace of ego, disappeared in him too. That disappearing star triggered something in him – a synchronicity – and the last trace, the shadow of the ego, disappeared. There was no longer any doer left. And, immensely, the whole existence showered on him.

The story says flowers showered from the sky. Gods danced around him. Celestial musicians played music. It was a great celebration for the whole existence. And Buddha was sitting there for seven days silently, not moving.

Do you think energy was needed for it? How can energy be needed for it? It was not a doing at all.

It was a non-doing. And when the time came, when the spring came, the grass, of its own accord, grew. You need not pull the grass from the earth.

Asker, no energy is needed. You ARE perfectly capable of becoming aware as you are, but you will have to learn the ways of relaxation and let-go, not the ways of conflict, fight, struggle.

The fifth question

Question 5

WHY DO I ALWAYS CREATE MISERY AROUND MYSELF? BEGINNING TO SEE THAT I CONSISTENTLY CHOOSE THIS VICIOUS CIRCLE. IS THE CHOOSING IN ITSELF THE MISERY?

Abhiyana

YES, THE CHOOSING IN ITSELF is the fundamental misery. All other miseries arise out of it. The moment you choose, you are no more whole; something has been rejected, something has been chosen. You have taken a side; you are for something, against something. You are no more whole.

You say, ”I choose meditation, and I am not going to be angry any more.” Misery is bound to happen.

Meditation WILL NOT happen! Only misery will happen. In the name of meditation now you will be miserable – and one can find beautiful names for one’s misery.

Choosing itself is misery. To be choiceless is to be blissful. See it! See to it! See AS deeply as possible into it, that choosing itself is misery. Even if you choose bliss, misery will be created. Don’t choose at all... and then see what happens.

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But it is very difficult not to choose. We have always been choosing; our whole life has been that of a chooser. We have believed that unless WE choose, who is going to choose for us? Unless WE decide, who is going to decide for us? Unless WE fight, who is going to fight for us? We have believed in a very stupid notion: that existence is against us, that we have to fight. that we have to be constantly on guard against existence.

Existence is not against you. You are just a ripple in this ocean – you are not separate from existence. How can the existence be against you? You are PART of it! It is existence who has given birth to you – how can the mother be against the child?

This is what I call the religious consciousness. To understand this point is to become religious. Then you need not be a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian – but you will be religious. In fact, if you are a Hindu or a Christian or a Mohammedan, you cannot be religious; you have not understood at all the depth of the religious consciousness.

What is religious consciousness? Existence is our home; we belong to it, it belongs to us. So there is no need to be worried, and there is no need to fight for private ends and private goals. One can relax with it – in the sun, in the wind, in the rain. One can relax with it. The sun is part of us as we are part of the sun; and the trees are part of us as we are part of trees. Just see that the whole existence is an interdependence, a tremendously complicated network, but everything is joined with everything else. Nothing is separate. Then what is the point of choosing? Then live whatsoever you are in your totality.

And the problem arises because inside you will find polar opposites, and the logical mind says, ”How can you be both?” Somebody else has asked me: ”Whenever I am in love, meditation is disturbed.

Whenever I meditate, I start losing my interest in love. So what to do? What to choose?” The idea of choice arises because there are polarities. Yes, it is true: if you go into love you will tend to forget about meditation; and if you go into meditation, you will lose interest in love. But still there is no need to choose! When you feel like moving into love, move into love – don’t choose! And when you feel like moving into meditation, move into meditation – don’t choose! There is no need to choose.

And the desire for both never arises together. That is something tremendously significant to be understood: the desire for both NEVER arises together. It is impossible – because love means the desire to be with somebody else; love means to be focussed on the other. And meditation means to forget the other and be focussed on oneself. Now both desires cannot arise together.

When you want to be with somebody else, that means you are tired of yourself. And when you want to be with yourself, that means you are tired of the other. It is a beautiful rhythm! Being with the other creates a deep desire in you to be alone. You can ask the lovers – all the lovers feel that desire arising sometimes tremendously. But they are afraid to be alone, because they think it is going against love, and what will the woman say, or what will the man say? The other may feel offended. They pretend, even though they want to be alone, left alone; they want their own space, but they pretend and they go on being together. That pretension is false, it is destructive of love.

And it makes your relationship phony.

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When you feel like being alone, with all respect, with ali love, tell the other, ”A great desire to be alone is arising in me, and I have to go into it – there is no question of choice. Please don’t feel offended. It says nothing about you; it is simply my own inner rhythm.” And this will help the other also to be authentic and true with you. And, slowly slowly, if you really love a person, the rhythms start falling into a togetherness – that is the miracle, the magic of love.

If love has really happened between two persons, this outcome is absolute, this consequence is going to happen. They will start finding at the same times the desire arising to be together and the desire arising to be separate. They will become a rhythm: sometimes coming together and being together and dissolved into each other, forgetting all about themselves; and then sometimes arising out of each other, moving, withdrawing, separate, into their own spaces, becoming their own selves

– becoming meditators.

Between meditation and love, there is no choice. But both have to be lived. And whatsoever is arising in you, whatsoever is the deepest longing in the moment, move with the longing.

Abhiyana, you say: WHY DO I ALWAYS CREATE MISERY AROUND MYSELF?

THERE MUST BE SOME PAY-OFF IN IT YOU must be getting something out of it; otherwise, why should one create misery? But sometimes misery can give you tremendous benefits. You may not be aware of the benefits, you may be unconscious of the benefits, so you go on thinking, ”Why do I go on creating misery?” And you are not aware that your misery is giving you something which you want.

For example, whenever you are miserable, people are sympathetic towards you.

If you are

miserable, your wife comes and puts her hand on your head, massages your body, is very very loving, does not nag you, does not create any trouble for you, does not ask for more diamonds or a new car. When you are in a misery there are many benefits. Maybe it is just because you are afraid your wife is going to ask for a new car – the new year has come and the new models are in the market. Now, to be miserable is simply economical. Now you come home with a stomach-ache and with a head-ache and you come with a long face, and the woman cannot gather courage to talk about a new car. Mm? You are in such misery.

You have to look around. Children in the morning immediately start feeling stomach-aches, when the bus arrives and they have to go to school. And you KNOW it! You know why Johnny is having a stomach-ache. But the same is the case with you. It is not much different; it is the same – maybe a little more sophisticated, more cunning, more rationalized, but it is the same.

When people start failing in their lives, they CREATE heart attacks, blood pressure, and all kinds of things. They are rationalizations – what can you do? Have you watched it? Heart attacks and blood pressure almost always come nearabout the age of forty-two. Why near the age of forty-two?

Suddenly a healthy person becomes a victim of a heart attack.

Forty-two is the age when life comes to a certain conclusion – whether you have failed or succeeded.

Because beyond forty-two there is not much hope: if you have made money, you have made it; by the time forty-two arrives, you have made it – because the greatest days of energy and power are gone. Thirty-five is the peak. You can give seven more years; in fact, already for seven years you Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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have been going downhill. But you have done everything that you could do. And now the age has come, forty-two, and suddenly you see that you have failed.

Now you need some rationalization... immediately a heart attack comes. That’s a great boon, a blessing from God. Now you can fall into the bed and you can say, ”What can I do? The heart attack disturbed everything. When everything was going to be okay, when I was just going to succeed, make a name or money, this heart attack has come.” Now the heart attack is a beautiful camouflage; now nobody can say that you are at fault, that you didn’t work hard, that you are not intelligent enough. Nobody can say anything like that to you. Now people will feel sympathy for you; they will all be good towards you and they will say, ”What can you do? It is fate.” Misery is chosen again and again because it gives something to you, and you have to see what it is giving to you – only then can you drop it. Otherwise you cannot drop it. Unless you are ready to drop the benefits, you cannot drop it.

The warden of the Elite Detention Home was giving a reporter a tour of his new model prison.

”Son,” said the warden, ”this is the latest in prisons. If this is successful, all prisons will model themselves after this one.”

”I notice you have beautiful tennis courts and swimming pools,” commented the reporter.

”And wall-to-wall carpeting in each cell” added the warden. ”But we don’t call them cells any more –

just units.”

”Those are nice colour television sets in each unit.”

”That isn’t all. We have a tremendous auditorium and every week the greatest entertainers perform.”

”I certainly like the mess hall with the scenic murals on the walls.”

”You mean the dining salon. The prisoners order a la carte and the chef’s food is exquisite.”

”The most fascinating thing I noticed,” remarked the re-porter, ”is that there are no bars, fences, and almost no guards.”

”That is because no one wants to escape,” smiled the warden.

”How do I get into this resort?” inquired the reporter.

If prisons are made so beautifully, then who would like to get out of them? And if you are not getting out of your prison, look again... there must be something – wall-to-wall carpets, colour television, air-conditioning, beautiful paintings, no bars, nobody guarding. Giving you an absolute sense of freedom! Then why should you try to escape out of it?

The reporter is right, he says, ”How do I get into this resort?” Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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The question is not how to get out of it; the question is how to get into it. Look again into your misery; don’t condemn it from the very beginning. If you condemn it from the very beginning, you will not be able to watch, you will not be able to observe. In fact, don’t even call it misery, because our words have connotations.

When you call it misery, you have already condemned it; and when you condemn something, you are closed to it, you don’t look at it. Don’t call it misery either. Call it XYZ – it makes much difference.

Call it X, whatsoever the situation is, be a little mathematical – call it X, and then go into it and see what it is, what its benefits are, what the main causes are that you go on creating it, why you cling to it. And you will be surprised: what you have been calling misery has many things in it which you love.

And unless you have seen this and those things that you would like to have, you will not be able to change anything. Then there are two possibilities.

One possibility is: you stop thinking of getting out of this misery – that ,Ss one possibility, because the benefits are so much that you accept it. And accepting misery is a transformation. The second possibility is: seeing that your misery is created by you yourself, by your own unconscious desires, and those unconscious desires are stupid, seeing the WHOLE stupidity of it, you no longer support it. It disappears of its own accord. These are the two possibilities: either your support disappears and the misery is evaporated; or you simply accept it because you like all the things that it brings to you, you welcome it – and in that very welcome, again misery disappears!

These are the two aspects of the same coin. But understanding is needed, TOTAL understanding of your misery, and you are GOING to be transformed. Either you will drop everything out of that understanding, or you will accept everything. These are the two ways, the negative and the positive, for the transformation to happen.

Barney visited his cousin Delbert in Taxonia, a small town in the midwest.

”I hate this town,” Delbert confessed. ”I hate it with a passion.”

”For what reason?” asked Barney.

”The taxes. We pay more taxes than any other town,” complained Delbert. ”And I hate taxes.”

”Taxes are necessary to run the government,” argued Barney.

”There are too many taxes here. Have you noticed mostly one storey buildings in this town? That is because there is a tax on all storeys above one floor.”

”That’s not so terrible.” answered Barney.

”Furthermore, have you seen many houses with front lawns?”

”Very few, I admit.”

”That is because there is a tax on lawns.”

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”What’s that patch of green lawn down the block?”

”That is the town cemetery where they put the people who are taxed to death.”

”If you hate this town so much, why don’t you leave?”

”I don’t want to pay the moving and transportation tax.” Just look into your misery: either you will find it worth keeping – then accept it, then accept it with totality – or you will not find it at all worth keeping – in that very finding it drops.

The last question

Question 6

OSHO, WHY DO WOMEN LIKE TO BE ATTRACTIVE TO MEN WHEN THEY ALSO RESENT

THEIR SEXUAL DESIRES?

Saguna,

THERE is A POLITICAL STRATEGY IN IT The women like to be attractive because that gives power; the more attractive they are, the more powerful they are over men. And who does not want to be powerful? Their whole lives people are struggling to be powerful.

Why do you desire money? – it will bring power. Why do you want to become the prime minister or the president of a country? – it will bring power. Why do you want respectability, prestige? – it brings power. Why do you want to become a saint? – it brings power.

People are searching for power in different ways. You have not left women any other sources to be powerful – only one outlet: their bodies. That’s why they are continuously interested in being more and more attractive. Have you not watched it, that the modern woman does not care so much about being attractive? Why? Because she is entering into other kinds of power politics.

The modern woman is getting out of the old bondage. She will fight the man in the universities for the degrees; she will compete in the marketplace; she will compete in politics. She need not be worried too much about looking very attractive.

Man has never bothered much to look attractive. Why? That has been left completely to women.

For women that was the only source to attain some power. And for men there were so many other sources that to look attractive looked a little bit effeminate, sissy. That is for women.

This has not been always so. There was a time in the past when women were AS free as men. Then men used to be interested in being attractive as much as women were. Look at Krishna, his picture

– with beautiful silk robes, with a flute, with all kinds of ornaments, earrings, with a beautiful crown made of peacock feathers. Look at him! He looks SO beautiful.

Those were the days when men and women were absolutely free to do whatsoever they wanted to do. Then came a long, long, dark age when women were repressed. It happened because of Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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the priests and your so-called saints. Your saints have always been afraid of women, because the woman seems to be so powerful – the woman seems to be so powerful that she can destroy the saint’s sainthood within minutes.

It is said that a mother tries for twenty-five years to make her son wise, and then comes a woman, and within two minutes she makes a fool of him. That’s why mothers can never forgive daughters-in-law. Never! It took twenty-five years for the poor old woman to give some intelligence to this man, and within two minutes all is gone! How can she forgive this woman?

It is because of your saints that women were condemned – they were afraid of women. The women have to be repressed. And because women were repressed, all sources of competing in life, flowing in life, were taken away. Then there was only one thing left: their bodies.

You ask me, Saguna: WHY DO WOMEN LIKE TO BE ATTRACTIVE TO MEN?

That’s why – that is their only power. And who does not want to be powerful? Unless you understand that power only brings misery, power is destructive, violent; unless through understanding your desire for power disappears – who does not like to be powerful?

And you ask:... BUT WHEN THEY WANT TO BE ATTRACTIVE TO MEN, WHY DO THEY ALSO

RESENT THEIR SEXUAL DESIRES?

For the same reason. The woman remains powerful only when she goes on hanging in front of yoU

like a carrot – never available and always available, so close and so far away. Then only is she powerful. If she immediately falls into your lap, then the power is gone. And once you have exploited her sexuality, once you have used her, she is finished, she has no more power over you. So she attracts you and yet keeps aloof. She attracts you, she provokes you, she seduces you, and when you come close to her, she simply says NO.!

Now that is simple logic. If she says yes, you reduce her to a mechanism; you use her. And nobody wants to be used. It is the other side of the same power politics. Power means the capacity to use the other, and when somebody uses you your power is gone, you are reduced to powerlessness.

So no woman wants to be used. And you have been doing that down the ages. Love has become an ugly thing. It should be the greatest glory, but it is not – because man has been using woman and the woman resents it, resists it, naturally. She does not want to be reduced to a commodity.

That’s why you will see husbands just wagging their tails around their wives and their wives in such an attitude that they are above all this nonsense – holier-than-thou. The wives go on pretending that they are not interested in sex, ugly sex. They are as much interested as you are interested, but the problem is: they cannot show their interest, otherwise you immediately reduce them to powerlessness, you start using them.

So they are interested in everything else, in being very attractive to you and then denying you. That is the joy of power. Pulling you – and you are pulled almost as if pulled by strings – and then saying no to you. reducing you to absolute powerlessness. And you are wagging your tail like a dog – then the woman enjoys.

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This is an ugly state. This should not be so. This is an ugly state because love has been reduced to power politics. This has to be changed. We have to create a new humanity, and a new world, in which love will not be a question of power at all. At least take love out of power politics; leave money, leave politics there – leave everything there, but take love out of it.

Love is something immensely valuable; don’t make it a thing of the marketplace. But that’s what has happened.

The recruit had just arrived at a Foreign Legion post in the desert. He asked his corporal what the men did for recreation.

The corporal smiled wisely and said, ”You will see.” The young man was puzzled. ”Well, you’ve got more than a hundred men on this base and I don’t see a single woman.”

”You will see,” the corporal repeated.

That afternoon, three hundred camels were herded into the corral. At a signal, the men seemed to go wild. They leaped into the corral and began to make love to the camels.

The recruit saw the corporal hurrying past him and grabbed his arm. ”I see what you mean, but I don’t understand,” he said. ”There must be three hundred of those camels and only about a hundred of us. Why is everybody rushing? Can’t a man take his time?”

”What?” exclaimed the corporal, startled. ”And get stuck with an ugly one?” Nobody wants to get stuck with an ugly one – even though it is a camel. So who wants to get stuck with an ugly woman? The woman tries in every way to be beautiful – at least to LOOK beautiful.

And once you are trapped into her allurements, she starts escaping from you, because that is the whole game. If you start escaping from her, she will come close to you, she will start following you.

The moment you start following her, she will start escaping. This is the game! This is not love: this is inhuman. But this is what is happening and has been happening down the ages.

Beware of it!

At least in my commune this has to disappear. Each person has tremendous dignity, and no person can ever be reduced to a commodity, to a thing. Respect men, respect women – they are all divine.

And forget the old idea that it is man who makes love to the woman – that is so stupid. It makes it feel as if man is the doer and the woman is just there as something to be done to. Even in the language it is man who makes love, it is man who is the acting partner; it is the woman who is just there, a passive receptivity. This is not true. Both are making love to each other, both are doers, both are participants – the woman in her OWN way. Receptivity is her WAY of participating, but it is participation as much as the man’s.

And don’t think that only you are doing something to the woman: she is also doing something to you.

You are both doing something tremendously valuable to each other. You are offering yourselves to Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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each other; you are sharing your energies with each other. You are BOTH offering yourselves in the temple of love, in the temple of the god of love. It is the god of love who has possessed both of you.

It is a very sacred moment. You are walking on holy ground. And then there will be a totally different quality to people’s behaviour.

It is good to be beautiful. It is ugly to appear to be beautiful. It is good to be attractive, but it is ugly to manage to be attractive. That management is cunningness. And people are naturally beautiful!

That is no need for any make-up. All make-up is ugly. It makes you more and more ugly. The beauty is in simplicity, in innocence, in being natural, in being spontaneous. And when you are beautiful, don’t use that beauty as power politics – that is profaning it, that is sacrilegious.

Beauty is a gift of God. Share, but don’t use it in any way for domination, for possessing the other.

And your love will become a prayer, and your beauty will become an offering to God.

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CHAPTER 5

Love is Always Virgin

4 January 1979 am in Buddha Hall

The first question

Question 1

OSHO, YOU SAY THAT YOUR MAIN CONCERN IS OUR SPIRITUAL NOT OUR PSYCHOLOGICAL

GROWTH. WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THEM?

Deva Yachana,

MAN IS A THREE-STOREYED BUILDING: one body, the mind and the soul. The body contains only the body. The mind contains body and mind both. And the soul contains all the three. The higher implies the lower, but not vice versa: the lower does not imply the higher.

This is one of the fundamental laws to be remembered. If you work on the higher, the lower will be automatically solved. If you work on the lower, the higher will not be automatically solved.

Spirit contains all the three dimensions of your being. That’s why I say my concern is your spiritual growth – because it contains your totality. To be concerned with your psychological growth will leave the most essential and the highest part of you outside. And then there are many more problems.

Mind is a multiplicity; mind means the many. Millions of problems are there. If you start solving each single problem it will take millions of lives – even then you cannot be certain that you have solved the mind problems.

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Greed is there, anger is there, lust is there, jealousy is there... and so on and so forth. If you solve one it will take years and years; and even then nothing is solved. If you try to solve your anger, if you want to grow beyond your anger, at the psychological stage what can you do? At the most you can repress it – because awareness belongs to the spiritual realm. At the psychological level you can only fight. You can choose: you can repress one part against the other, but the repressed part is not dying. In fact, the more it is repressed, the more alive it will become – because it will be going closer and closer to the source of your energies and it will be getting more nourishment. And you can repress anger, but it will find some outlet from the backdoor. You cannot transform this way.

That’s where Western psychology is lost – lost in a chaos. Small problems are not being solved, very small problems. It takes years and years of psychoanalysis... then too nothing is solved. At the most you can do only a kind of window-dressing, a whitewashing. You give the patient a better mask to wear, but his original face remains the same.

Western psychology has failed.

The Eastern approach goes far deeper. It does not try to cut the foliage of a tree: it cuts the very roots. And to cut the very roots is to destroy the tree. If you go on pruning the leaves – that’s what psychological work means: pruning the leaves – you are not going to destroy the tree at all. On the contrary, the more you prune it, the thicker the foliage will become. You cut one branch and three branches will come – because the tree will take the challenge that you are going to destroy it. Each and everything tries to survive. And when there is danger, the tree will make every effort to survive.

That’s what happens.

If you want to drop your anger, you become angrier than before. If you want to drop your sexuality, you become more and more sexual than before. That’s what has happened to millions of people.

They want to get out of the prison of sex; they make all kinds of efforts. Their desire is good; they are sincere people, but misguided. They start fighting with sex, and sexuality retaliates with a vengeance. These people become more sexual than ordinary people, their whole mind becomes full of sex. They think of sex, they dream of sex, and they are continuously fighting. The more they fight, the more they give energy to the enemy – because the more and more they become focussed on the enemy. They cannot be off-guard.

This has happened down the centuries. You can see the monks, your so-called mahatmas, your so-called saints – their minds are ugly. And the reason is not that they are not sincere people; the reason is that they have started from a wrong end.

”I think we should treat not the symptoms but the real problem.” This was the approach of the Southern planter just after the Civil War. This gentleman of the old school found his wife in the arms of her lover and, mad with rage, killed her with his revolver.

A jury of his Southern peers had brought in a verdict of justifiable homicide, and he was about to leave the courtroom a free man when the judge stopped him. ”Just a point of personal curiosity, sir, if you are willing to clear it up.”

In reply, the gentleman bowed.

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”Sir,” he replied, ”I decided it was better to shoot a woman once than a different man each week.” If you try to change your mind, you will have to shoot a different man each week. It is better to shoot the woman and be finished with it.

That’s why I say my concern is not your psychological growth but your spiritual growth. Spiritual growth means growth of awareness; it means nothing else.

Becoming more and more alert.

Becoming a light unto yourself. And when you are a light unto yourself, darkness starts disappearing of its own accord.

The man of awareness cannot be angry – that is impossible, because to be angry the basic requirement is to be unaware. Try it, and you will be very much surprised. Try to be angry AND

aware – you will not be able to manage; nobody has ever been able to manage it. It is impossible. It is not in the very nature of things.

When you are aware, anger will disappear. If you lose awareness, anger will appear. Both are not possible – just as light and darkness cannot exist together; they cannot have a co-existence. Why can light and darkness not exist together? Because darkness has no substance in it; darkness has no existence in it. It is nothing but the absence of light, so how can absence and presence exist together? If light is there then absence cannot exist. If absence exists, light cannot be present there.

Awareness is a single solution to all the problems.

Greed cannot exist when you are aware – why? Because when you are aware, you are aware that you are the ultimate bliss, that you have the whole kingdom of God within you. What more can you desire, what greed? It will be utterly stupid. Greed exists in the person when he is not aware of his own kingdom. when he is not aware that he is a born emperor, and lives like a beggar.

The moment that you become aware that you have all the treasures of the world in you, that nothing is missing, how can greed exist? Greed means you know your inner poverty and you go on accumulating. Greed means you know that you are poor and you have to be rich.

The man of awareness becomes alert that he is rich already! and there is no possibility of becoming richer. He is divine! Greed cannot exist when you know that you are divine.

How can anger exist with a man who is aware? From where does anger come? Anger is a wound in the ego. When your ego is hurt, you become angry. But the man of awareness knows there is no ego at all – now, how can wounds happen to something which is found no more?

You escape from a rope in the night thinking it is a snake; you run, you are frightened to death. And then somebody laughs, takes hold of you – tells you, ”It is not a snake, it is a rope! Come with me and we will take a lamp and we will see.” You go with the person, still afraid, still ready to escape in case it is not a rope but a snake. But the closer you come, the better you see... yoU start laughing.

Now, can you be afraid when you have seen that it is a rope?

And it is not that when you had thought it was a snake your fear was unreal – it was absolutely real.

It was almost like a heart attack. You were trembling, suffocating, out of breath. You might have died of fear, it was so real. But there was no real snake!

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An unreal snake can create real fear. And that’s how it is happening: an unreal ego can create real anger. You feel offended and anger arises. When the light of awareness is inside you, you know there is no ego – there is no snake. Simply anger disappears. And how can you be afraid when you are aware? In awareness it is known that you will never die because you were never born, that birth and death are just on the surface, at the deepest core of your being you are deathless. Then fear disappears.

Yachana, you became worried when I said that I am not concerned with your psychological growth –

because what is psychological growth? Helping you not to be angry, helping you not to be an egoist, helping you not to be afraid – that is psychological growth.

Spiritual growth means: helping you to be aware. And a single medicine cures all the illnesses.

And if we go on working on the surface, it may appear that you are changing, but deep down you remain unchanging. It may appear that you are attaining to some psychological maturity, but it will be only skin-deep. Scratch a little and you will find the same old man there.

Once a patient was treated by a psychoanalyst because he thought he was a popcorn. Finally, after years of intensive analytic work, success was there. In the final session, the psychoanalyst asked him once who he was and he replied, ”A man, of course!” Five minutes after he had left the office, the patient came rushing in, terrified. ”Doctor, doctor, you should have told me that there are chickens outside. I barely escaped them!

”But you know you are not a popcorn, don’t you?”

”Sure I do – but what about the chickens?”

All your psychological work will be just on the surface. You will appear as if you have changed. but that will be only an appearance. Any real situation will bring your real face Lack again. This is not transformation: this is just consolation. And I am not concerned with consoling you.

My effort here is to transmute you to let you become some thing utterly new that you have never dreamt about yourself. Something immensely valuable is hidden in you – that has to be discovered.

That is your soul.

And unless you discover that hidden source of all life, you will only be playing games – psychological games. physiological games. Yoga got lost in physiological games. Your so-called yogis are only doing physiological exercises. They have their own benefits, I cannot deny it. They will make you healthier, but that health remains of the body. And the body will be gone when death comes, and with the body all your yoga postures too! And the whole effort that you had made will be lost.

Psychology and psychoanalysis have become too much focussed on the mind of man. Mind is not your real core. It is just a bridge between the body and the soul, and a very fragile bridge it is. It is a very non-substantial phenomenon, because it consists only of thoughts. Behind the mind there is your reality – you can call it soul spirit, God or whatsoever you will.

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My concern here is to help you to penetrate to that core. Once you have known that everything will settle in your life – because with that awareness you will be watchful of the body and you will be watchful of the mind, and all that is ugly will simply disappear.

That is the miracle of spiritual experiences: all that is ugly simply disappears, and all that is beautiful is enhanced. The evil disappears and the good is enhanced. The world and the worldly desires are no more relevant to you – a totally new dimension opens up.

The second question

Question 2

WHAT IS MEDITATION?

Shivanand,

MEDITATION is A STATE OF NO-MIND Meditation is a state of pure consciousness with no content.

Ordinarily, your consciousness is too much full of rubbish, just like a mirror covered with dust.

The mind is a constant traffic: thoughts are moving, desires are moving, memories are moving, ambitions are moving – it is a constant traffic! day in, day out. Even when you are asleep the mind is functioning, it is dreaming. It is still thinking; it is still in worries and anxieties. It is preparing for the next day; an underground preparation is going on.

This is the state of no meditation – just the opposite is meditation. When there is no traffic and thinking has ceased, no thought moves, no desire stirs, you are utterly silent – that silence is meditation. And in that silence truth is known, and never otherwise. Meditation is a state of no-mind.

And you cannot find meditation through the mind because mind will perpetuate itself. You can find meditation only by putting the mind aside, by being cool, indifferent, unidentified with the mind; by seeing the mind pass, but not getting identified with it, not thinking that ”I am it.” Meditation is the awareness that ”I am not the mind.” When the awareness goes deeper and deeper in you, slowly slowly, a few moments arrive – moments of silence, moments of pure space, moments of transparency, moments when nothing stirs in you and everything is still. In those still moments you will know who you are, and you will know what the mystery of this existence is.

And once you have tasted those few dewdrops of nectar, great longing will arise in you to go deeper and deeper into it. Irresistible longing will arise in you, a great thirst. You will become afire!

That’s what sannyas is all about. When you have tasted a few moments of silence, of joy, of meditativeness, you will like this state to become your CONSTANT state, a continuum. The desire to make meditation your whole lifestyle is what sannyas is all about.

And if a few moments are possible, then there is no problem. Slowly slowly, more and more moments will be coming. As you become skillful, as you learn the knack of not getting involved in the mind, as you learn the art of remaining aloof, away from the mind, as you learn the science of creating a Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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distance between you and your own thoughts, more and more meditation will be showering on you.

And the more it showers, the more it transforms you.

A day comes, a day of great blessings, when meditation becomes your natural state.

Mind is something unnatural; it never becomes your natural state. But meditation is a natural state

– which we have lost. It is a paradise lost, but the paradise can be regained. Look into the child’s eyes, look and you will see tremendous silence, innocence. Each child comes with a meditative state, but he has to be initiated into the ways of the society – he has to be taught how to think, how to calculate, how to reason. how to argue; he has to be taught words, language, concepts. And, slowly slowly, he loses contact with his own innocence. He becomes contaminated, polluted by the society. He becomes an efficient mechanism; he is no more a man.

All that is needed is to regain that space once more. You had known it before, so when for the first time you know meditation, you will be surprised – because a great feeling will arise in you as if you have known it before. And that feeling is true: YOU HAVE known it before. You have forgotten. The diamond is lost in piles of rubbish. But if you can uncover it, you will find the diamond again – it is yours.

It cannot really be lost: it can only be forgotten. We are born as meditators, then we learn the ways of the mind. But our real nature remains hidden somewhere deep down like an undercurrent. Any day, a little digging, and you will find the source still flowing, the source of fresh waters. And the greatest joy in life is to find it.

”Buried in the deepest stratum of his unconscious, at the wellspring of man’s existence, lies an immense psychological force. In pure form, it is experienced as a longing, the object of which is constantly receding from him as the horizons of his world widen throughout his growth. It begins perhaps with the infant’s amazing discovery that the breast which brings it comfort is not part of himself. From that moment, longing drives the human organism to relate himself to, to comprehend, in the deepest sense to love, that which lies beyond him. This longing can become attached to many kinds of objects and pursuits. But to know it in its purity, without any object, is to know life itself. This longing is God, and to be this longing, pure and simple, without any content, is meditation.” A child is born; the child comes ready with great energy. The child is nothing but pure energy embodied. And the first thing the child has to seek and search for is the mother’s breast obviously.

The child is hungry. For nine months in the mother’s womb the child was fed automatically; the child lived as part of the mother. Now he is cut from the mother; he has become a separate entity in himself – and the first thing, the first necessity, is to search for food. And that’s how the outward journey begins.

The energy is there; the energy starts reaching outwards. And the first thing that the child wants to find is some source of food. He finds the mother’s breast. It is not an accident that the woman’s breast has become one of the greatest symbols to humanity. In art you will find it, in sculpture you will find it, in poetry you will find it – everywhere you will find it!

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in it; women are interested in it – why so much obsession with the breast? The reason is simple: that was the first contact of the child with the world, the first experience, the most fundamental experience. Everything else is secondary.

The first experience was that of the breast. That’s why it has dominated the world of art, poetry, sculpture. Man has become obsessed with it. And so have women! They may be hiding their breasts, or they may be showing their breasts – and in fact both the processes are not very different.

Hiding is a way of showing; hiding is a way of making it more interesting, more intriguing. Hiding the breast provokes the desire in the man to know how it is, what it is. The hidden breast becomes more beautiful than the naked breast. The naked breast is just a part of the body. But why has so much obsession existed about the breast? The reason is simple: it is the most fundamental experience, the first experience.

The entry into the world is through the breast. And the breast did two things: it nourished the child –

and the first thing was to survive, and the breast was the food, the breast was life. And the second thing: the breast gave warmth to the child, shelter to the child, love to the child. That’s why food and love have become so much associated.

Whenever a woman loves you, she prepares beautiful food for you. That is a symbolic invitation.

Whenever somebody loves you, he invites you for food. Why? The food, in a subtle way, represents the breast. Food and love became associated because both were flowing for the child from the breast.

And there are very few people who are really grown-ups. Childishness remains there. That’s why the bigger the breast, the more you are interested in it. Why? A simple biological reason: because the bigger breast is a bigger source of food for the child. If the breast is very small, that simply shows the child will not survive. That’s why the flat-breasted woman is unattractive – not that there is really any aesthetic reason for her unattractiveness, but there is some biological reason. She cannot be a mother to your children; that is the reason. The bigger the breast, the more motherlike she seems, the more motherly she will be. She seems to be able to give birth to children and will be able to help them to survive, and in a healthy way.

That’s why whenever you are not feeling loved, you start eating too much. The people who become addicted to food are the people who are missing love. They start substituting with food. If you are really loved, you cannot eat too much. You will be surprised by this psychological discovery: that the people who are loved and are in love eat less. they eat al ways in a proportionate way. People who are not loved or are not in love eat too much, because food can do two things.

It can fill them, can give them a feeling of being full, and they are feeling very empty because love is missed. Have you not watched it? Girls when they are unmarried are not fat; once they get married, they start getting fatter and fatter, and uglier and uglier. Why? Now there is no problem – they have attained. And once they are married, the desire for love disappears. They become settled in the routine of life, they start taking everything for granted. And familiarity breeds contempt. Husbands and wives hate each other; although they go on saying, ”We love each other,” they hate each other.

Deep down they feel imprisoned by each other. Love disappears and people start eating too much.

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first experience and he was getting both the things from the same source. They became associated: a simple case of conditioned reflex.

And once the child starts groping for the mother’s breast, now the journey outwards begins. He has come to know one thing: that the source of his life is outside him. That is the original fall. Now he will always think of having more money, of having more power, of having more prestige... of getting more and more people’s attention, because the source of life is outside. And in fact the source of life is inside.

MEDITATION MEANS BECOMING AWARE that the source of life is inside. The body depends on the outside, true – but you are not the body alone. You don’t depend on the outside. You depend on the inner world. These are the two directions: to move outwards or to move inwards. Mind is a process of moving outwards, and mind starts the day the child finds the mother’s breast. That is the beginning of the mind. And mind takes you farther and farther away from yourself.

Meditation is the recognition that ”There is an inner world too, and I have to search for it.” Mind is focussed on some goal, some object. Meditation is the search to know the pure longing –

not the object, but the longing for the object. ”What is this longing in me that wants to have much money, that wants to have great power, that wants to become famous... what is this longing in me?

Who is this longing in me? What is its nature?”

To know this longing is meditation. And to know it in its purity is to know God. Longing without any content, pure longing, just the flame without any smoke, is God. Meditation brings you to God, because it brings you to your innermost core. And when you start moving inwards, the circle is complete.

You become mature only when meditation has started; otherwise you remain childish. Your toys may go on changing – small children are playing with small toys, and big children, aged children, elderly children, are playing with big toys – but there is no qualitative difference.

You can see... sometimes your child will do it. He will stand on the table when you are sitting at the side on the chair, and he will say, ”Look, Daddy, I am bigger than you.” He is standing higher, on the table, and he says, ”Look, I am bigger than you,” and you laugh at him. But what are you doing?

When you have more money, just watch how you walk. You are saying to all the neighbours, ”Look!

I am bigger than you.” Or when you become a president of a country, or a prime minister, look how you walk, with what haughtiness, with what ego. You are telling everybody, ”I have defeated you all.

I am sitting on the biggest chair.” These are the same games! From your childhood to your old age, you go on playing the same games. You can play the game of Monopoly, or you can go and play the real game of monopoly in the sharemarket – it makes no difference, it is the same game just played on a bigger scale.

Once you understand it, that this is the root of your childishness, the outgoing mind.... Small children start reaching for the moon, and even the biggest scientists are trying to reach the moon – they have reached. There is not much difference.

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with all the holy cow dung that you go on carrying in your heart, you will be standing on the moon.

There will be no difference at all! You can be a poor man, you can be very rich; you can be absolutely anonymous, you can be world-famous – it makes no difference at all. Unless the mind takes a turn and starts moving inwards, unless mind takes a totally new dimension and becomes meditation....

Meditation is mind turning towards its own source.

Meditation makes you mature; meditation makes you really a grown-up. Growing in age is not really becoming a grown-up, because I see people eighty years old and still playing games, ugly games of power politics – even at the age of eighty-two, eighty-three, eighty-four! The sleep seems to be so deep. When are they going to awaken? When will they think of the inner world?

And death will take all that you have accumulated – your power, your money, your prestige. Nothing will be left. not even a trace. Your whole life will be nullified. Death will come and destroy all that you have made; death will come and prove that all your palaces were nothing but palaces made of playing cards.

Maturity is to know something in you which is deathless, to know something in you which will transcend death – that is meditation. Mind knows the world: meditation knows God. Mind is a way to understand the object: meditation is a way to understand the subject. Mind is a concern with the contents, and meditation is a concern with the container – the consciousness. Mind becomes obsessed with the clouds, and meditation searches for the sky. Clouds come and go: sky remains, abides.

Search for the inner sky. And if you have found it, then you will never die. The body will die, the mind will die, but you will never die. And to know it is to know life. What you call life is not real life because it is going to die. Only a meditator knows what life is because he has reached the very source of eternity.

The third question

Question 3

WAS JESUS REALLY BORN OF A VIRGIN MOTHER?

ONE THING HAS TO BE UNDERSTOOD: the ancients used to talk in metaphors, the ancients used to talk in poetic ways – and that has been misunderstood very much. We talk in scientific ways; our language has gone totally different from the ancients. The difference is as much as when you think you think in concepts, but when you dream you cannot dream in concepts – you dream in pictures.

And if you are a poet, a painter, you dream not in black and white but in colour.

Ordinary people dream in black and white – poets, painters, those who know what colour is, those who are really in tune with the world of colour, are very sensitive, they dream in colour.

But in dreams you don’t use logical concepts:

you use pictures.

That’s why you need a

psychoanalyst to interpret your dream, because you have completely forgotten the language of metaphor.

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For example: a man dreams continuously that in the night he becomes a bird and starts flying into the sky. And he is puzzled – why? What does this dream mean? When he is awake he cannot make any sense of it. He will have to go to the psychoanalyst. In fact, there is no need to go anywhere –

it is so simple.

Becoming a bird in the dream is nothing but a translation of your ambitious desires into the language of pictures. You want to rise high – simple! And you can rise high only when you have wings. There is a great desire to rise high in the world. In the dream you become a bird; the dream is simply using a poetic language.

The dream is more ancient, more primitive. The ancients have used not logical concepts but pictorial concepts. And because of this, great misunderstanding is happening. We are trained to think scientifically, mathematically, historically. The ancients were not concerned at all about these things.

Their thinking was not historical: their thinking was mythological.

For example, in the East we don’t know when Rama was born; whether he was really born or not –

even that is not certain. We have written such beautiful stories about Rama; if we could write such beautiful stories, could we not simply note his birth-date? Was it so impossible to note his birthdate?

We don’t know when Krishna was really born. And there are many many others who look almost non-historical. Why did this happen? The people who could write the Vedas and the tremendously splendrous Upanishads, the people who could compose diamonds like the Bhagavad Gita, the Koran, the Bible, why could they not write historically?

They were not concerned. They had a totally different approach towards life. History is mundane, history is very ordinary – it is the concern of the newspapers. Mythology is sacred; it is not the concern of the newspapers. It is not really something that belongs to time but something that penetrates from the beyond into time. It is something miraculous.

Go into a Jaina temple and you will be surprised: the twenty-four teerthankaras, their twenty-four great Masters, great enlightened people, you will see – they all look alike! Now, not even two persons in the world are alike, so how can twenty-four persons be so alike, exactly alike? Even Jainas cannot make any distinction, unless they look at the symbol at the bottom. The symbols were made so that you can know who is Mahavira and who is Neminath and who is Parshwanath –

just to know, symbols were made. Otherwise, the statues are exactly the same.

You will see their ears are very long, touching their shoulders – ALL twenty-four teerthankaras. What happened? It is possible, once in a while, a man may have such long ears – but twenty-four persons all having long ears? same kind of nose, same kind of eyes, same kind of body?

We are not concerned with the historical persons. We are concerned with the essential; we are concerned with the inner. These twenty-four teerthankaras were certainly different in their body forms – somebody may have been tall and somebody may have been short, and somebody may have been white and somebody may have been dark – they must have all been different, that is absolutely certain, but we are not concerned about their differences. We are concerned about something which is essential, similar in all of them – their meditativeness .

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Why the long ears? It is a symbol – a symbol of the man who has the art of listening, a symbol of the art of listening – as if the man is all ears. He is capable of listening so silently that he has heard truth, he has heard the voice of God, the still small voice within. This is my interpretation. Jainas have their own stupid explanations.

They say a teerthankara is always born with a long ear – as if a teerthankara is a donkey or something. That is just a stupid explanation. My explanation is this: that a teerthankara is one who has heard the truth; a teerthankara is one who is so silent that he has become all ears. For example, for a moment... and you can hear all – this crow crowing, the train passing by. When all is silent, you become all ears.

How to say it? And how to say it through marble? They did well: they have made very very long ears. It is very symbolic, but it is not historical.

You will see their eyes are half closed, half open. That is symbolic: they are neither out nor in; or, the outer and the inner, the difference between the outer and the inner, has disappeared; they have transcended both. These are the three possibilities: to be out – that means mind; to be in – that means meditation, DHYANA, and to be beyond both – that means samadhi, ecstasy. That is the ultimate.

Patanjali has three words for it: DHARANA, that means to be out; DHYANA, that means to be in; and samadhi, that means to be beyond both, to be transcendental. You will find those teerthankaras with half closed eyes. Not that they were always sitting like that with half closed eyes. Walking on the road, they must have opened their eyes. Sometimes sitting silently, they must have closed their eyes. That’s why there is a great conflict between the two sects of the Jainas.

DIGAMBARAS think that their eyes were closed. SWETAMBARAS think their eyes were open.

And both may be right! because sometimes they must have seen Mahavira with closed eyes and sometimes with open eyes. But the artist is far truer, who has sculpted Mahavira with half open, half closed eyes – just to give an indication that now the outer and the inner have disappeared, they have transcended.

REMEMBER THIS is THE CASE with all the religions. Now, ’virgin birth’ has nothing to do with biological virginity; that is utter nonsense. Jesus is not born of a biological virgin mother, but then what is meant by saying that Mary was virgin? ’Virgin’ simply means utterly pure, so pure that there is no sexuality in the mind. It is not a question of the body but a question of the mind – so pure that there is no idea of sexuality.

And at the deepest core everybody is a virgin. Virginity means purity of love. Jesus must have been born out of great love. Love is always virgin. Love transcends sex – that is the meaning of virginity.

But there are foolish people everywhere; they go on insisting that ”No, he WAS born of a virgin mother.” They make him a laughing-stock. And because of THEIR foolishness, a great parable, a great metaphor, loses all meaning.

A mother and her daughter came to the doctor’s office. The mother asked the doctor to examine her daughter. ”She has been having some strange symptoms and I am worried about her,” the mother said.

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The doctor examined the daughter carefully, then he announced, ”Madam, I believe your daughter is pregnant.”

The mother gasped. ”That’s nonsense!” she said. ”Why, my little girl has nothing whatsoever to do with men.” She turned to the girl, ”You don’t, do you, dear?”

”No, Mumsy,” said the girl. ”Why, you know that I have never so much as kissed a man.” The doctor looked from mother to daughter and back again, then silently he stood up and walked to the window. He started out; he continued staring until the mother felt compelled to ask, ”Doctor, is there something wrong out there?”

”No, madam,” said the doctor. ”It is just that the last time anything like this happened, a star appeared in the East – and I was looking to see if another one was going to show up.” Mary must have been in tremendous love; that’s why she is virgin. Mary must have been so deep in love that sex was not the point at all.

Remember, you can make love to a woman without any love in your heart – then it is pure sexuality, animality; it is prostitution. You can make love to a woman with no idea of sex, then love is just a pure communication of two energies, a sharing, a dance, a celebration. No idea of sex in the mind and you can make love to a woman, and the woman can make love to you not thinking of sex at all. The whole point is where your mind is. If you are thinking of sex, if your mind is obsessed with sex, you simply want to use the woman, the woman simply wants to use you, it is ugly. It has no aesthetics in it, no poetry in it. There is nothing of the beyond in it – it is very muddy.

But the same act.... Remember, the act will be the same: when two lovers make love and when a man goes to a prostitute biologically the act is the same, but spiritually there is a tremendous difference. The man who goes to the prostitute is thinking only of sex, and the lover when he makes love to the woman has no idea of sex. It is simply a communion, coming closer and closer. Then sex happens only as a gesture of communion. It is virgin.

That’s my idea of virginity. The lover always remains virgin; the lover cannot lose his virginity.

And Jesus, a man like Jesus, can only come out of great love. But please try to understand the language of the ancients. It is very simple to misunderstand, because centuries have passed, words have changed their meanings. And we have forgotten that the old days were not days of scientific language but of poetic language.

For example, in the Vedas it is said that the sun comes every morning riding on his chariot, a golden chariot – of course, it is a golden chariot. Where can you find more pure gold? Early morning, and the sun rising – it is a gold chariot! the light is golden. And the Vedas say the chariot has seven horses. Now, in Sanskrit, ASHVA, the word for ’horse’ has two meanings. One meaning is the horse, the other meaning is the ray.

Sanskrit is a poetic language; each word has many meanings. In a scientific language, each word has to have only one meaning. The scientific language has to be exact. A poetic language has to be ambiguous, vague, so that one can play with words, because poetry is a play with words. If everything is fixed, then poetry will never be born. Everything has to be liquid.

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So words in Sanskrit, or old languages – Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Arabic – all have many meanings.

In fact, the word AHSVA has eleven meanings: one is the horse, another is the ray. The sun has seven rays – it is said in a poetic way that the chariot has seven horses. Now we know, each ray has seven colours; each ray has seven rays in it. This will be a scientific explanation, but the Vedas were not written by scientists but visionaries, poets.

Poets also stumble upon the same truths, but when they express them they are expressed in a different way. In fact, poets always arrive before the scientists ever arrive, because scientists move very cautiously and poets move in a drunken way. Poets don’t care about logic; poets don’t move in a logical, syllogistic way – they simply jump from one point to another. And they are not afraid to be laughed at, and they are not afraid even if people think they are mad. So they always discover things before scientists discover them – almost thousands of years before. Because the scientist moves so cautiously, so slowly, step by step... he has to look into details; he has to prove something. The poet has to prove nothing: he simply asserts. Nobody asks any proof. Whatsoever happens in his intuition, he simply goes on singing it. Nobody wants any consistency, nobody wants any objective proof, nobody wants him to go and prove it in a lab. Naturally, he goes on saying things long before the scientist comes to know about it.

These are poetic expressions. You will have to understand the language of the poets.

A newly-married couple decided to spend their honeymoon as guests in a farmhouse. When they arrived, they instructed the farmer and his wife not to disturb them, and went straight to their room.

Two days passed and they had not yet emerged, even though the farmer’s wife had repeatedly offered them their meals. After one week, the amazed and exasperated farmer demanded that they should open the door and take their meal.

At this the husband replied that food would not be necessary as they were living from the fruits of love.

”Fruits of love?! ” exclaimed the farmer. ”That is the problem: you had better stop throwing the skins out of the window – my chickens are eating them and two have died already! ” Remember always to whom you are talking, from whom the words are reaching you. The people who wrote the gospels about Jesus were more poets than scientists; they were not logicians, they were lovers. And if you try to prove everything scientifically, all that will result will be: Christ will become an unhistorical figure. Because the story says a star arose in the East, and three wise men from the East followed the star, and the star guided them to the place where Jesus was born. Now, stars don’t move that way. Stars go round and round; stars cannot go in a line. If you try to prove it, scientists will laugh at you. And stars are not born that way either.

The birth of a star takes millions and millions of years. The stars that look so small to you are not so small . They are huge, very huge; you cannot even imagine their hugeness. The earth is nothing, just a dust particle compared to the stars. Our sun is sixty thousand times bigger than the earth, and our sun is a very mediocre star. There are stars which are a million times bigger than the sun; they look small because they are very very far away, so far away that the distance cannot be measured in miles.

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Scientists had to discover a new way of measuring the distance – they call it ’light year’. In one second, light travels one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles – in ONE second. So, if you want to know what a light year is, you will have to figure it out: one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles multiplied by sixty, then it will be one minute; multiplied again by sixty, then it will be one hour; multiplied by twenty-four, then it will be one day; multiplied by three hundred and sixty-five days, then it will be one year. One light year means that is the distance that light travels at such tremendous speed. The closest star is four light years away from us – the closest! Then there are farther and farther stars.

Up to now, millions of stars have been discovered, and that is not the end of the story but only the beginning. Scientists say that there seems to be no possibility that we will ever be able to know the exact number – because the better instruments we evolve, more and more stars go on.... And this is going on and on and on. There is no end to it.

Stars are not born like that – just to show the three wise men the way. And who are these three wise men from the East? These are just symbols. And why from the East? Again a symbol.

One day somebody asked me, ”Why was Jesus not born in America today?” I said, ”For two reasons: one, you cannot find a virgin in America; second, where will you find three wise men there?”

It will be very difficult – he had chosen a right time; there were still virgins and still wise people.

Three wise people from the East means that the East has always been the source of all wisdom, as far as the inner world is concerned. Why three? To represent man’s three dimensionality – a trinity, trimurti, three faces of God. That’s why the number three.

And why did a star show them the way? Only something mysterious, intuitive... the star is not born there in the sky; the star is born in their being. They have felt a great attraction. How have you come here? – from thousands of miles away. A star is born in you; you have felt a stirring somewhere deep down in your unconscious, of which you yourself may not be aware. A star is born! And that has guided you and has brought you here. It is not a logical process; it is a very intuitive process. The star was not born in the outer sky but the inner sky. They intuitively felt that something of tremendous importance had happened. And whenever there is born a man like Jesus, seekers from everywhere start moving.

WHEN BUDDHA WAS BORN it is said a great sage, very old, one hundred and twenty years old, immediately rushed from the Himalayas. His disciples asked, ”Where are you going?” He ran! They had not even seen him WALK, because he was very old. And he didn’t answer them because there was no time; he said, ”No time to answer.”

And the disciples followed, and he went down onto the plains. Buddha was born just very close to the Himalayas, on the border of Nepal and India. He immediately reached the king’s palace. The king could not believe his eyes, because this man was not known to go anywhere. For at least fifty years he had lived in one single cave. He must have been a man like me! I have made a cave of my own – of course, it is a twentieth century cave, air-conditioned – but I go on living there, year in, year out.

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Buddha’s father could not believe it. He touched his feet and he said, ”Why have you come? What has happened?”

And he said, ”I don’t have much time, because my death is approaching. That’s why I had to run.

Where is your child? I have come to see him.”

And Buddha was just ONE day old. The moment Buddha was born, this old man started running; it took twenty-four hours for him to reach the plains. The king could not believe it, because this old man was very famous, a Master of Masters – why should he become interested in his child?

The child was brought immediately, one-day-old Buddha was brought immediately. And that old man, one hundred and twenty years old, touched Buddha’s feet and started crying. The father was puzzled, the mother was shocked – ”Why is he crying? Is there something wrong?” They asked him,

”Why are you crying? Isn’t the child going to survive? Or is there some calamity? Say it clearly –

why are you crying?”

He said, ”No, I am not crying because of any calamity. I am crying out of joy because I have seen; and I am crying also because I will not be able to live to see the full flowering of this man. I have seen him only in the bud – but that too is too much, to see a Buddha in the bud. I am crying out of joy, because God is born to you! And I am also crying in misery because I will not be able to see him; my days are numbered. Soon I will be leaving my body. I will not be able to see what flowering he brings to the world, what fragrance he brings to the world. And I will not be able to see that he will turn the wheel of DHAMMA – the wheel of the ultimate law. And millions and millions of people will become enlightened because of him. He has brought a light; he has brought a revolution into world. That’s also why I am crying.

”But don’t you be worried – be happy, rejoice!”

Now, these are parables. It may not have happened historically, but history is not our concern at all. Our concern is something MORE important, something MORE essential, something MORE

eternal. History is just a procession of events in time; even if it did not happen historically, that doesn’t matter. The parable is beautiful: a one-hundred-and-twenty-year-old saint bowing down to one-day-old Buddha. Age does not matter. Awareness has no age. Ordinary formalities have to be dropped. The old man touching the feet of a child, a one-day-old child; crying out of joy – those who understand will always cry out of joy whenever they see something of immense value happening in the world. But very few will be able to see – even the father had not seen, the mother had not seen.

Only those who have eyes will be able to see.

The three wise men from the East had to travel thousands of miles to see, but the people of Jesus’

own country could not see. Jesus’ parents had to escape from Jerusalem; they had to escape to Egypt. And Jesus could not appear back in Jerusalem. After thirty years we hear of him again, and then too he could survive only three years. The people of his own country killed him; blind people killed the man who had eyes; mad people killed one of the sanest men.

Even parents... Jesus’ parents were not aware of what had happened. Three men from the East were needed to recognize him. Only those who have learnt something of meditation will be able to recognize a Buddha. When you come across a Buddha it is not easy to recognize him. It is very Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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easy to be antagonized, it is very easy to be angered; it is very easy to be offended by his presence, because his presence makes you feel so small that it offends. His presence makes you feel so empty that it humiliates – not that he means any humiliation, but it is because of your ego that you start feeling humiliated. Your mind wants to take revenge! That’s why Socrates is poisoned, Mansoor is killed, Jesus is crucified – and it has always been so. Whenever there has been a Buddha, the society has been very very inimical towards him. Even in India, even in the East, the same thing happened.

Buddha lived here, preached here, transformed thousands of people into the world of light, but Buddhism disappeared from India; it was destroyed. After Buddha died, within five hundred years, the religion was uprooted from here. The brahmins did not like the idea; the pundits, the scholars, did not like the idea – it was dangerous to their profession. If Buddha is right, then all the priests are wrong.

If I am right, then all the priests are wrong. If I am right, then millions will be offended, because my being in the right puts them into being in a wrong space. Naturally, they cannot forgive me.

But, remember, these beautiful metaphors have to be understood with great sympathy, with great intuitiveness, with love, poetry, not with logic; otherwise, you will destroy them, you will kill them.

Sometimes beautiful metaphors have been used and the religions, the so-called religions, the followers, have killed them themselves.

It is said that whenever Mohammed moved in the desert, a cloud would move just over his head to shelter him. Now, to be in the Arabian deserts is to be in fire. It is not a historical fact. No cloud will move... even men don’t understand Mohammed – how will the cloud, poor cloud, understand Mohammed? Men were after Mohammed; his whole life he was escaping from one town to another town; his whole life he was always in danger, his survival was always in danger. When men were not able to understand him, how could a poor cloud understand him? So it can’t be historical. But still I love it – the metaphor is beautiful.

The metaphor simply says that clouds are far more intelligent than men; it simply says even clouds understood the beauty of the man and protected him, even against the law of nature. Wherever Mohammed was going they would go – even if the wind was not going there, the cloud would go on sheltering him. It simply shows the stupidity of man is so great that even a cloud is far more intelligent.

It is said whenever Buddha came and he moved, trees would bloom out of season, trees which had been dead for long would again start sprouting green leaves. Beautiful poetry, significant poetry, lovely poetry, to be meditated upon. I don’t think it is historical, but it is still significant. It may not be a fact, but it is a truth.

Facts belong to the ordinary events. The fact is that Buddha’s own cousin-brother, Devadatta, tried to kill him in many ways. Once when Buddha was meditating, he threw a rock at him from the top of a hill; a great rock started rolling downwards. This is a fact, that Devadatta tried to kill Buddha, because he could not believe it: ”How can Buddha become enlightened? We have played together; we have always been together in our childhood; we were educated together. If I am not enlightened how is he enlightened?”

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And he declared himself enlightened, although he was not. And he would have been accepted as enlightened – if Buddha had not been there. But the presence of Buddha... how can you declare your unenlightened being in the presence of a Buddha? It was impossible. The only problem was: how to destroy Buddha?

He released a rock. But the story is: the rock came very close to Buddha, and then changed its course. That cannot be a fact – but it is a truth. Truth is a very much higher phenomenon.

Devadatta released a mad elephant to kill Buddha. The mad elephant came ferociously, but when he reached Buddha, he looked at the Buddha, he bowed down, touched his feet.... Now, that Devadatta released a mad elephant is a fact; the other thing is not a fact. The other thing is poetry, sheer poetry but of immense truth.

Remember: scriptures talk about truth; they are not history books. History books talk about facts.

That’s why in history books you will find Alexander the Great, and Ivan the Terrible and Adolf Hitler, and all kinds of neurotics. But Buddha, Mahavira, Jesus, they are not part of the history books. For them we need a totally different approach. And it is good they are not part of history books – they are NOT part of history; they come from the beyond, they belong to the beyond. They are only for those who are ready to rise and soar to the beyond.

Meditate over this beautiful truth that Jesus is born of a virgin mother – but it is not a fact. It is certainly a truth: he is born of a mother who is utterly innocent. He is born of a mother who is in tremendous love – and love is virgin, and love is always virgin.

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Enlightenment is Your Birthright

5 January 1979 am in Buddha Hall

LET NO SLEEP E’ER CLOSE THY TIRED EYES, WITHOUT THOU ASK THYSELF: WHAT HAVE

I OMITTED, AND WHAT DONE?

ABSTAIN THOU IF ’TIS EVIL; PERSEVERE IF GOOD.

MEDITATE UPON MY COUNSELS; LOVE THEM, FOLLOW THEM: TO THE DIVINE VIRTUES

WILL THEY KNOW HOW TO LEAD THEE.

I SWEAR IT BY THE ONE WHO IN OUR HEARTS ENGRAVED THE SACRED TETRAD, SYMBOL

IMMENSE AND PURE, SOURCE OF NATURE AND MODEL OF THE GODS.

BUT BEFORE ALL, THY SOUL TO ITS FAITHFUL DUTY, INVOKE THESE GODS WITH

FERVOUR; THEY WHOSE AID, THY WORK BEGUN, ALONE CAN TERMINATE.

INSTRUCTED BY THEM, NAUGHT SHALL THEN DECEIVE THEE; OF DIVERSE BEINGS THOU

SHALT SOUND THE ESSENCE; AND THOU SHALT KNOW THE PRINCIPLE AND END OF ALL.

IF HEAVEN WILLS IT, THOU SHALT KNOW THAT NATURE, ALIKE IN EVERYTHING, IS THE

SAME IN EVERY PLACE.

SO THAT, AS TO THY TRUE RIGHTS ENLIGHTENED, THINE HEART SHALL NO MORE FEED

ON VAIN DESIRES.

THOU SHALT SEE THAT THE EVILS WHICH DEVOUR MEN ARE OF THEIR CHOICE THE

FRUIT...

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PYTHAGORAS’ CONTRIBUTION TO WESTERN PHILOSOPHY IS IMMENSE. It is incalculable.

For the first time he introduced vegetarianism to the West. The idea of vegetarianism is of immense value; it is based on great reverence for life.

The modern mind can understand it far better now we know that all forms of life are interrelated, interdependent. Man is not an island: man exists in an infinite web of millions of forms of life and existence. We exist in a chain, we are not separate. And to destroy other animals is not only ugly, unaesthetic, inhuman – it is also unscientific. We are destroying our own foundation.

Life exists as one organic unity. Man can exist only as part of this orchestra. Just think of man without birds and without animals and without fish – that life will be very very boring; it will lose all complexity, variety, richness, colour. The forests will be utterly empty, the cuckoo will not call, and the birds will not fly, and the water will look very sad without the fish.

Life in its infinite forms exists as one organic unity. We are part of it: the part should feel reverence for the whole. That is the idea of vegetarianism. It simply means: don’t destroy life. It simply means: life is God – avoid destroying it, otherwise you will be destroying the very ecology.

And it has something very scientific behind it. It was not an accident that all the religions that were born in India are basically vegetarian, and all the religions that were born outside India are non-vegetarian. But the highest peaks of religious consciousness were known in India and nowhere else.

Vegetarianism functioned as a purification. When you eat animals you are more under the law of necessity. You are heavy, you gravitate more towards the earth. When you are a vegetarian you are light and you are more under the law of grace, under the law of power, and you start gravitating towards the sky.

Your food is not just food: it is you. What you eat, you become. If you eat something which is fundamentally based on murder, on violence, you cannot rise above the law of necessity. You will remain more or less an animal. The human is born when you start moving above the animals, when you start doing something to yourself which no animal can do.

Vegetarianism is a conscious effort, a deliberate effort, to get out of the heaviness that keeps you tethered to the earth so that you can fly – so that the flight from the alone to the alone becomes possible.

The lighter the food, the deeper goes the meditation. The grosser the food. then meditation becomes more and more difficult. I am not saying that meditation is impossible for a non-vegetarian – it is not impossible, but it is unnecessarily difficult.

It is like a man who is going to climb a mountain, and he goes on carrying many rocks. It is possible that even when you are carrying rocks you may reach to the mountain peak, but it creates unnecessary trouble. You could have thrown those rocks, you could have unburdened yourself, and the climb would have been easier, far more pleasant.

The intelligent person will not carry rocks when he is going to the mountain, will not carry anything unnecessary. And the higher he moves, the lighter and lighter he will become. Even if he is carrying something, he will drop it.

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When Edmund Hillary and Tenzing reached Everest for the first time, they had to drop everything on the way – because the higher they moved, the more difficult it was to carry anything. Even very essential things were dropped. Just to carry yourself is more than enough.

Vegetarianism is of immense help. It changes your chemistry. When you eat and live on animals....

The first thing: whenever an animal is killed the animal is angry, afraid – naturally. When you kill an animal... just think of yourself being killed. What will be the state of your consciousness? What will be your psychology? All kinds of poisons will be released in your body, because when you are angry a certain kind of poison is released into your blood. When you are afraid, again a certain other kind of poison is released into your blood. And when you are being killed, that is the utmost in fear, anger. All the glands in your body release all their poison.

And man goes on living on that poisoned meat. If it keeps you angry, violent, aggressive, it is not strange; it is natural. Whenever you live on killing, you don’t have any respect for life; you are inimical to life. And the person who is inimical to life cannot move into prayer – because prayer means reverence for life.

And one who is inimical to God’s creatures cannot be very friendly towards God either. If you destroy Picasso’s paintings, you cannot be very respectful towards Picasso – it is impossible. All the creatures belong to God. God lives in them, God breathes in them, they are HIS manifestation, just as you are. They are brothers and sisters.

When you see an animal if the idea of brotherhood does not arise in you, you don’t know what prayer is, you will never know what prayer is. And the very idea that just for food, just for taste, you can destroy life, is so ugly. It is impossible to believe that man goes on doing it.

Pythagoras was the first to introduce vegetarianism to the West. It is of profound depth for man to learn how to live in friendship with nature, in friendship with creatures. That becomes the foundation.

And only on that foundation can you base your prayer, your meditativeness. You can watch it in yourself: when you eat meat, meditation will be found to be more and more difficult.

Buddha was born in a non-vegetarian family. He was a KSHATRIYA – belonged to the warrior race

– but the experience of meditation slowly slowly transformed him into a vegetarian. It was his inner understanding: whenever he ate meat, meditation was more difficult; whenever he avoided meat, meditation was easier. It was just a simple observation.

You will be surprised to know that the greatest vegetarians in the world have been Jainas – but all their twenty-four Masters were born into families of non-vegetarians. They were all warriors; they were brought up as fighters. All the twenty-four Masters of the Jainas were KSHATRIYAS.

What happened? Why did these people who were brought up, conditioned from their very beginning to eat meat, create one day the greatest movement in the world for vegetarianism? Just because of their experiments with meditation.

It is an unavoidable fact that if you want to meditate, if you want to become thoughtless, if you want to become light – so light that the earth cannot pull you downwards, so light that you start levitating, so light that the sky becomes available to you – then you have to move from non-vegetarian conditioning to the freedom of vegetarianism.

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Vegetarianism has nothing to do with religion: it is something basically scientific. It has nothing to do with morality, but it has much to do with aesthetics. It is unbelievable that a man of sensitivity, awareness, understanding, love, can eat meat. And if he can eat meat then something is missing he is still unconscious somewhere of what he is doing, unconscious of the implications of his acts.

But Pythagoras was not heard, not believed – on the contrary, he was ridiculed, persecuted. And he had brought one of the greatest treasures from the East to the West. He had brought a great experiment – if he had been heard, the West would have been a totally different world.

The problem that has arisen today, that we have destroyed nature, would never have arisen. If Pythagoras had become the foundation for the Western consciousness, there would not have been these great World Wars. He would have changed the whole course of history. He tried hard, he did whatsoever HE could – it is not his fault. But people are blind, people are deaf; they can’t hear a thing, they can’t understand a thing. And they are not ready to change their habits.

People live in their habits, mechanically they live. And he had brought a message of becoming aware. Great meditative energy would have been released in the West. It would have become impossible to produce Adolf Hitlers and Mussolinis and Stalins. It would have been a totally different world. But still the same old habit persists.

We cannot change human consciousness unless we start by changing the human body. When you eat meat you are absorbing the animal in you – and the animal has to be transcended. Avoid! If you really want to go higher and higher, if you really want to go to the sunlit peaks of your consciousness, if you really want to know God, then you will have to change in every possible way.

You will have to look all around your life. you will have to observe each small habit in detail – because sometimes a VERY small thing can change your whole life. Sometimes it may be a very SIMPLE

thing, and it can change your life SO totally that it looks almost unbelievable.

Try vegetarianism and you will be surprised: meditation becomes far easier. Love becomes more subtle, loses its grossness – becomes more sensitive but less sensuous, becomes more prayerful and less sexual. And your body also starts taking on a different vibe. You become more graceful, softer, more feminine, less aggressive, more receptive.

Vegetarianism is an alchemical change in you. It creates the space in which the baser metal can be transformed into gold.

THE SECOND THING that Pythagoras also introduced into Western consciousness was the idea of reincarnation. That too is somehow related with vegetarianism. You will be surprised again: all the vegetarian religions believe in reincarnation, and all the non-vegetarian religions believe only in one life. This can’t be just a coincidence.

In India, Brahminism, Jainism, Buddhism are the three great religions. They differ in every possible way – their ideologies are so different that you cannot find more different ideologies anywhere.

Hindus believe in God, they believe in the soul. Jainas don’t believe in God – a tremendously fundamental thing – a religion without God. Buddhists don’t even believe in the soul – no God, no soul. You cannot imagine a religion without God and without the soul. Such are their differences.

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But about one thing they are all agreed, and that one thing is the idea of reincarnation, rebirth. Even Buddha, who does not believe in the soul, agrees with it. It looks very absurd – how can there be rebirth if there is no soul? He does not believe in a soul but he believes in a continuum. He says: Just as you light a candle in the evening in the morning when you are blowing it out can you say it is the same flame that you had started in the evening? It is not the same – and YET somehow it is connected. The flame has been changing the whole night. the flame was disappearing the whole night – it was disappearing into smoke and a new flame was replacing it each moment. In fact the movement was so quick, that’s why you couldn’t see the gaps. There has been a continuum – a constant change, but very quick and fast – one flame being replaced by another, the whole night.

So when in the morning you are putting the candle out, it is not the same flame that you had started

– although it looks almost the same. The first flame and the last ARE connected – they are part of one chain, one process – but you cannot say that there has been one flame, one soul.

That is the Buddhist idea of reincarnation: the continuity continues but individuals disappear – there is no individual soul. But still Buddha believed in reincarnation. Jainas believe in reincarnation, Brahmins believe in reincarnation.

But Jews, Christians and Mohammedans don’t believe. Those are the three great religions which were born outside India. How did it happen that all three Indian religions stumbled upon the fact of reincarnation? – although they don’t agree in ANY other matter. Why do they agree about one thing? They COULD not disagree. From where did this experience come to them?

And you will be surprised – the answer is vegetarianism.

When a person is utterly vegetarian he can easily remember his past lives. His clarity is such that he can look into his past lives. He is not gross, his energy is not blocked, his energy moves easily.

His river of consciousness can penetrate to the ancientmost times; he can go backwards as much as he wants.

The consciousness of a non-vegetarian is blocked – in many ways. He has been accumulating gross matter in himself. That gross matter functions as a barrier. That’s why all the three religions that were born outside India, and have remained non-vegetarian, could not come to the idea of reincarnation.

They could not experience it.

Pythagoras lived in India, lived the life of a vegetarian, meditated deeply, became aware of the past lives, could see himself moving backwards. He could understand what Buddha means when he says, ”Once I was an elephant, once I was a fish, once I was a tree.” The idea of evolution has been here in the East for ever – and in a far more subtle way than it has been given to Western science by Darwin. Darwin’s idea is very raw: he says monkeys have become man – although Darwinians have not yet been able to prove it, because they are still searching for the link between the monkey and the man. And the problem arises: why did only a few monkeys become men? What happened to other monkeys? And monkeys are basically imitators – if a few monkeys had become men then all the monkeys would have imitated. What happened to the other monkeys? Great imitators they are – why only a few men?

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And the monkeys are still there! Thousands and thousands of years have passed and monkeys are still monkeys. And you don’t come across a monkey suddenly becoming a man... one fine morning he wakes up and he is a man. Nobody has ever seen this miracle happen.

The question is: where are the links between monkey and man? – and the difference is great, it is not small.

Just the other day somebody asked, John Lilly has said that man is not the only being on the earth who has consciousness; there are other beings too who have more consciousness than man.” The questioner has asked, ”Is it true? Is John Lilly right?” But those other animals have not discovered man yet – it is John Lilly who discovers those other animals. It is man who goes on discovering. Certainly the discoverer has more consciousness than the discovered. Even if we find some day that some animal has a great, evolved brain, WE are the discoverers. That great brain has not discovered us just.

There are animals who are very evolved, but nobody is as evolved as man. And the difference is big! John Lilly has been working on dolphins, and he thinks that dolphins have a far better evolved consciousness. If you just meet John Lilly some time, tell him that dolphins have not discovered him

– he has discovered dolphins. And the discoverer has more consciousness, obviously.

Dolphins are not saying anything about themselves – it is a man who is saying something about dolphins. They cannot even prove something about themselves. Dolphins are beautiful people, and Lilly is on the right track, but dolphins don’t have a higher consciousness than man. They have not produced Buddhas, Patanjalis, Pythagorases – not even a John Lilly.

The Western concept of evolution, the Darwinian concept of evolution, is very gross. The Eastern idea of evolution is very subtle. It is not a question of the body of a monkey becoming the body of man – it has never happened; of the body of a fish becoming the body of man – it has never happened. But the inside of the fish goes on growing; it goes on changing from one body to another.

The growth, the evolution, has not happened from body to body: the growth has been happening in consciousness. When a monkey attains to a certain consciousness, the next birth will be that of man not of a monkey. He will die as a monkey and will be born as a man. The evolution is not going to happen in the body of the monkey itself. That body has been used by the soul – or whatever you call it, the continuum – the body of the monkey has been used, now the soul is ready to take a better body, a body where more possibilities of growth will become available.

The soul moves from one animal to another animal. The bodies are not evolving, but souls are evolving. The candles are not evolving, but the flames go on jumping from one candle to another.

The flame goes on rising higher and higher. The evolution is of consciousness, not of the material, physiological body. That is where Darwin missed the whole point.

But in the East for at least ten thousand years we have been aware of it. The awareness came through meditation and the awareness was based in vegetarianism – because people started remembering their past lives.

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It was a basic technique with both Buddha and Mahavira: whenever a disciple was to be initiated, the first thing that both Buddha and Mahavira required was that he had to go into his past lives.

Great methods were developed so that one could move into past lives.

And once you start moving into past lives, this life will be utterly transformed. Why? Because once you see that all the stupid things that you are doing now, or wanting to do, you have been doing for many many lives... you have done those same things many times, and each time nothing was attained.

For example, if you are mad after money and then you remember that in the past life also you were mad after money and then you had succeeded, and you had become a rich man, a very rich man, and then you died... and all that richness and all that wealth was of no use. It was taken away by death, and you died as empty as ever, as poor as ever. And you remember even before that: you were a king and you had a great kingdom. And still you were frustrated, and still you lived in misery, and you died in misery. And again you are doing the same and hankering for more money? It will become impossible. The longing will simply fall flat on the ground. How can you go on repeating the same stupid thing again and again if YOU CAN REMEMBER? YOU can go on repeating the same stupidity again and again if you CANNOT remember.

The idea of reincarnation is not a philosophical idea: it is an experience, it is utterly scientific. People have remembered their lives.

When you have grown a little deeper into meditation... we are going to do all those techniques here too. But those techniques will require that you be absolutely vegetarian, otherwise you will not be able to go beyond THIS life. Your mind cannot move – it has to be so light, featherlight, that it can simply pass from one existence into another. And the lighter it is, the deeper it goes.

It can not only remember that you were a man in the past life – slowly slowly, you will remember that you have been animals. AND, sometimes, when the depth gross, you will remember that you have been trees, rocks. You have lived for millennia in many forms. And if you remember that once you were a fish, it will become difficult for you to eat fish.

Vegetarianism leads you into remembering your past lives. And KNOWING your past lives, you become more and more a vegetarian – because seeing that all are brothers and sisters, the whole existence, you cannot kill animals. It becomes simply impossible! Not that you have to prevent yourself: it simply becomes impossible.

Pythagoras was a REAL adventurer.

Alexander the Great also came to India, he also took away many things from India, but they were useless things – diamonds and emeralds and gold.

That’s what Alexander the Great took away from India – useless things. Pythagoras was a real seeker.

He gathered real diamonds, real emeralds: diamonds of consciousness, emeralds of consciousness. And these were two tremendously significant, tremendously pregnant approaches

– that of vegetarianism and the idea of reincarnation.

Once it happened: Pythagoras saw somebody hitting a dog. He said, ”Do not hit him!” to the man who was beating the dog. ”It is the soul of a friend of mine. I recognized it when I heard it cry out.” Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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Now this looks utterly ridiculous to a Western mind, to the Western scientific attitude. Even in those old days, people must have laughed: ”What nonsense he is talking about! – ’Don’t beat the dog because I have recognized a friend.’” He was simply trying to teach the idea of reincarnation in every way possible.

And the third thing: he was, again, the first to introduce the concept that life is a wheel – a wheel of birth and death. The wheel goes on moving and we go on clinging to the wheel. And the wheel is repetitive; again and again it will move on the same track. Nothing new will ever happen. Birth will come, you will become young, you will be full of sex and great desires, and then you will be spent and you will be old, diseased, ill sick, frustrated, tired. And then death... and again birth... and so on and so forth.

Each birth brings a death, each death brings a birth. It is a vicious circle, and the wheel goes on moving. In India the word for the world is SAMSARA. SAMSARA means ’the wheel’. Youth or childhood or old age are just spokes of the wheel. and we go on clinging to the wheel and the wheel goes on moving – as everything else moves in the world. The earth moves around the sun, and the sun also moves around some unknown sun. And the moon moves around the earth, and earth and moon both move around the sun, and the sun around some other sun, and so on and so forth. And all the stars are moving.... And EVERYTHING IS moving in a circle! Seasons move in a circle.

Life is a wheel and the wheel is repetitive. You will never reach anywhere if you go on clinging to the wheel. In the East it has been a known fact that we have to jump out of the wheel – only then are we free. To be free from this wheel of birth and death is to have freedom. Then you simply ARE. Then you are not moving.Then there is no past and no future but only the present. Then NOW IS the only time and here the only space.

That is the state of nirvana, MOKSHA – freedom. That is the real kingdom of God. One simply is...

all turmoil gone, all storms finished, and there is absolute silence. In that silence there is a song, in that silence there is music – unheard music, unstruck music. In that silence is joy, in that silence is bliss. And that bliss is eternal, it never changes.

All change is if you are clinging to the wheel. If you drop out of the wheel, all change disappears.

Then you are here and always here.

That state is the real search of all true seekers: how to get out of this wheel of birth and death, how to enter into life eternal where no birth ever happens and no death either, where nothing begins and nothing ends, where all simply is – how to enter into this God. Just the other day, I was saying God means ’that which is’... how to enter into that which is? These are the sutras by which to enter into that which is.

The third part: perfection.

LET NOT SLEEP EVER CLOSE THY TIRED EYES WITHOUT THOU ASK THYSELF. WHAT HAVE

I OMITTED AND WHAT DONE?

ON THE SURFACE it will appear a very simple, moralistic sutra.

It is not.

It has something

tremendously meaningful – it has the whole idea of depth psychology in it. But the language is Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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twenty-five centuries old. Now modern therapies say that if any experience remains incomplete then it becomes a hangover. This is a new insight in modern psychology, but it is nothing new as far as Eastern psychology is concerned.

If you live some experience totally, you are finished with it – it never accumulates in you. If you live it only half then the unlived part goes on hankering to be lived. The whole of psychoanalysis, psychodrama, primal therapy, is based on this idea.

What is psychotherapy? Basically, helping you so that you can live unlived experiences of the past, or half-lived experiences of the past, again. Creating a context in which you can again live those moments which have remained incomplete. Once they are complete, once you can put a full point to them, they are finished, you are free of them.

Remember, this as a VERY fundamental law: any experience that is complete, you are finished with it. It leaves no karma, it creates no karma. It creates no trace, it leaves no trace in you – not even footprints. Nothing is left of it. It simply disappears, evaporates.

If you have loved a woman totally, wholly, and the woman dies, you will be surprised – yes, it feels a little sad, but you are not going crazy or anything. You are not beating your chest and crying and shouting, ”I will kill myself. I cannot live any more.” If you have loved the woman totally and she dies, yes, a sadness... but that sadness is beautiful – it is just a silent goodbye. But you will not commit suicide, and you will not cry and weep for months and years. Maybe a few tears, but those tears will not be of misery and suffering – on the contrary, they will be of gratefulness, of thankfulness.

You are thankful to the woman – she had given you much. She had made you a grown-up person; she had showered much love on you. And you are not feeling guilty, because you have given all that you could.

If you have not loved the woman totally, then you will feel guilty. And out of guilt, suffering. And then you will move to the other extreme: you will cry and weep and you will not eat any food and you will be miserable for months, for years, even for your whole life – because deep down, now you are repenting. The woman is gone, and you never loved her. And now there is no possibility of ever seeing her again. You cannot have any opportunity even to apologize. You cannot say to her,

”Forgive me. I have not loved you as I should have loved you.” Now that incomplete experience will hover around you like a dark cloud.

In psychodrama you will live that experience again, you will create the fantasy again. And once you can create that fantasy again – even if in your imagination – or you can act the same thing again believing some other woman to be that woman, if you can enact the whole act again, if you can go through the drama of it, you will be relieved. There will come a full point. You will be released from the cage.

That’s what happens in primal therapy. You have to live the birth trauma again. And once you have lived the birth trauma again, something, a heavy weight from your chest, disappears.

And that’s what happens in psychoanalysis.

You have to say to the psychoanalyst all that is

clamouring inside you – sense, nonsense, relevant, irrelevant, consistent, inconsistent – all the Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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crazy things that are clamouring there asking for your attention. But you don’t have any time, and nobody else has time enough to hear you, to listen to you.

Psychoanalysis is a simple thing; it is more a trick than a treatment. The psychoanalyst does nothing; he simply sits behind the couch. He may not even be listening to you – how can one go on listening to every kind of madness every day? One has to protect one’s own sanity too. He may be having his own fantasies – because he has as much nonsense in him as you do. He has to live his own nonsense.

But you feel that he is listening to you, so you can pour your heart out. And just by pouring your heart out, something is released – it is a catharsis.

Pythagoras is using a very ancient dictum, simple. Why wait for the psychoanalyst and why wait for something like psychodrama or primal therapy? Why not go on finishing every experience every day?

In the night, before going to sleep, just look back. Those twelve hours that you have lived, finish everything. It is easier – rather than accumulating for years and then going to a therapist, why not be a therapist to your own self? And it is so easy to do it every day. It is not a big problem, only a small accumulation – it can be finished.

LET NOT SLEEP EVER CLOSE THY TIRED EYES WITHOUT THOU ASK THYSELF. WHAT HAVE

I OMITTED AND WHAT DONE?

”What have I done and what have I not done?” Just go through it: let there be a deep meditation of all that you have done today. Slowly slowly, live again from the morning; just start from the morning again, the first moment when you had opened your eyes, remember those moments – not only remember: RELIVE.’ those first moments when you had opened your eyes. The birds were singing outside, the sun had risen – listen to those birds again. And the rays of the early morning sun were coming through the curtain, and the curtain was looking so golden... just relive it. And your wife was preparing tea in the kitchen, and the children were getting ready to go to school – just remember, relive, from the moment.

And then go on slowly, very meditatively, seeing what you have done in the whole day, and what you have not done. What has remained undone? What has remained incomplete? At least in your imagination, complete it! If you have done something wrong, at least in your imagination put it right.

If you have missed and omitted something, at least in your imagination complete it. And you will be surprised – you will never need any therapy, because every day you will be finished with all the dust.

Things will be put right.

ACCORDING TO PORPHYRY, two lines are missing in THE GOLDEN VERSES here, which ought to be placed preceding this sutra. My feeling also is that those two lines ARE missing. Those two lines are:

ON THE MOMENT OF AWAKENING, CONSIDER CALMLY WHAT ARE THY DUTIES, AND WHAT

THOU SHOULDST ACCOMPLISH.

[Here is printed the Greek text]

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It seems those two lines MUST have been there – somewhere they must be lost – because if it is good to contemplate in the night, just to look backwards at what you have done and what you have not done, then the other part is also significant. It is the other aspect of the same coin.

Early in the morning, when everything is fresh, and the whole night’s sleep has rejuvenated you, when the mind has not entered yet... have you watched? It takes a few seconds for the mind to start functioning. Immediately you become aware that you are awake, just look in: everything is silent.

Within seconds, two or three seconds, the mind will be awake and will start working. Before that happens, in that moment of silence, in that meditative moment, it is good to have a vision of the day that you are going to live.

ON THE MOMENT OF AWAKENING...

It has to be done IMMEDIATELY! If you lose a few moments it is gone. In the very moment of awakening you are a mirror. Just let the mirror see the whole day that is ahead.

... CONSIDER CALMLY WHAT ARE THY DUTIES, AND WHAT THOU SHOULDST ACCOMPLISH.

Just let a simple seed fall into your heart. It is not planning, remember – don’t misunderstand Pythagoras. It is not planning: it is just a simple seed falling into the heart that ”This is my vision for today.” And that seed will affect your whole day’s activities, your quality.

And in the night again remember the vision, and remember what has been accomplished, what has not been accomplished – relive it. The circle is complete. And every day, living this way, you will not need any therapy ever.

ABSTAIN THOU IF IT IS EVIL; PERSEVERE IF GOOD.

If in the night meditating, reliving the whole day, you find something is evil, abstain from it, don’t go on repeating it. And if something is good, persevere. And what is evil according to Pythagoras and according to me and according to all the Buddhas? Anything that needs unconsciousness for it to be done is evil; anything that cannot be done without unconsciousness is evil. And anything that needs consciousness for it to be done is good; anything which cannot be done without consciousness is good. So, looking back, see what you have done the whole day: when you were aware and when you were unaware; when you functioned like a machine, like a robot, and when you functioned as a consciousness. And whenever you functioned as a consciousness, you were doing something good.

You will be surprised to know that whenever you function as consciousness, good happens of its own accord. And whenever you function as unconsciousness, something goes wrong. Unconsciousness is evil: consciousness is virtue.

MEDITATE UPON MY COUNSELS, LOVE THEM, FOLLOW THEM, TO THE DIVINE VIRTUES

WILL THEY KNOW HOW TO LEAD THEE.

MEDITATE UPON MY COUNSELS...

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HE IS NOT SAYING BELIEVE – he says meditate. He says: Become a mirror to whatsoever I am saying. And he does not say that these are commandments but only counsels. He is not saying that you HAVE to do it: these are not orders – these are simple counsels, a helping hand from a friend who wishes only blessings for you.

MEDITATE UPON MY COUNSELS...

... just listen silently, without prejudice. Don’t be in a hurry to decide what is right and what is wrong.

Just let it sink deep in you; watchful witnessing, let it penetrate your heart. That is meditation.

Listen meditatively to MY COUNSELS, LOVE THEM...

Love arises spontaneously if you can meditate.

If you cannot meditate, then logic arises

spontaneously. These are the two outcomes. How you listen, everything depends on that.

For example, you are listening to me. Those who have fallen en rapport with me, they are listening in a totally different way – they are meditating, they are utterly silent. They are simply drinking whatsoever I am saying to them. They know I am their friend; they know that whatsoever I am saying is not a commandment but only a counsel, only advice.

If you meditate on what I am saying then love will arise in you. And if you argue with me, don’t meditate with me – you listen there with all your prejudices, with your ideology, with your scriptures, with your whole past shouting inside you – if you are comparing, judging, criticizing, arguing, then logic will arise in you.

Logic arises only when you listen with prejudice, when you are not really listening but arguing, when you are really defending, afraid, fighting . So what arises in you will decide whether it was meditatively listened to or not. Let this be the criterion: if love arises that means you have listened rightly; if logic arises that means you missed the point – you listened to the words but you missed the silence. You understood only intellectually, but your heart remained unmoved; you didn’t allow your heart to move.

MEDITATE UPON MY COUNSELS, LOVE THEM...

Meditation is the base, then love comes on its own. And if love comes, follow them. It will not be a question of imitation, it will not be a question of believing. Your very love will make you capable of acting accordingly. A commandment has to be followed forcibly; you have to enforce it upon yourself.

A counsel is not to be enforced: you heard it, you loved it; now, on your own, you start acting, you start functioning. The act grows out of love just as love grows out of meditation. Meditation is the root, love is the tree, and following is the flowering.

TO THE DIVINE VIRTUES WILL THEY KNOW HOW TO LEAD THEE.

And then you need not be worried: divine virtues will arise in you as a gift from God. One virtue is human, one is divine. The human virtue is that which you have to force upon yourself; it is man-made. The divine virtue is that which is a gift from the unknown, a gift from the beyond, a nod, a yes, from the beyond.

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If you do these three things with a Master – meditating, loving, following – that’s enough. These will take you to the very source of divine virtues. Then a person becomes virtuous but never becomes righteous.Then a person becomes a sage but never becomes a saint. Then a person becomes so religious that he is neither Mohammedan nor Hindu nor Christian – he is simply religious. Then a person lives in God and God lives through him: he becomes a vehicle, he becomes a hollow bamboo, and God starts singing through him.

I SWEAR IT BY THE ONE WHO IN OUR HEARTS ENGRAVED THE SACRED TETRAD, SYMBOL

IMMENSE AND PURE, SOURCE OF NATURE AND MODEL OF THE GODS.

THE SACRED TETRAD HAS TO BE UNDERSTOOD. It means number four. Three dimensions are of God AS manifestation, and there is a fourth dimension – God as unmanifest. Three dimensions are visible, the fourth dimension is invisible. All these four dimensions make the sacred Tetrad. If you have read P. D. Ouspensky’s great book, THE FOURTH WAY, you will understand what the Tetrad is.

Gurdjieff used to say that his way is the fourth way. There are four possibilities because there are four dimensions. The first is the physical possibility, hatha yoga, the way of the fakir – yoga postures, standing on your head, distorting, contorting your body – that is the lowest and the ugliest, the most gross and materialistic way. It leads up to a certain extent.

The second way is that of the mind, the way that is followed by all psychotherapies. Better than the first, but still something of the manifest, still gross – subtler than the first, but still gross.

The third is the way of the soul – followed by religions, philosophies. That seems to be the highest possibility ordinarily. But there is one more, the fourth way.

The third way seems to be the highest as far as manifestation is concerned, but there is a fourth –

which contains all and yet is beyond. Gurdjieff says: ”My way is the fourth way.” Patanjali says also that there are four states of consciousness: the waking, JAGRAT; the dreaming, SWAPNA; the sleeping, SUSHUPTI; AND the fourth... for the fourth he gives no name – he simply calls it TURIYA; TURIYA means the fourth. TURIYA is exactly the meaning of Tetrad – the fourth.

And the fourth means absolute awakening, pure awakening.

What we know as awakening is not much of an awakening. In the morning you wake up, but you simply wake up from one dream into another dream; you wake up from the private dream into the collective dream, that’s all. You get out from a small prison into a bigger prison, that’s all. It is not much of an awakening – because the same desires persist and the same illusions persist and the same state of mind remains.

Your awakening is not real awakening; it is pseudo. The real awakening happens only in the fourth

– where all dreams have disappeared, the whole world that you had known in your waking has disappeared, is no more known, that which you had known in your dreams is no more known. That which you had known even in your deep sleep, that joy of deep sleep, that silence, that rejuvenating energy of deep sleep, even that is gone. Now you have arrived at the very source, but that source is unmanifest, it is invisible. That invisible source is God.

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Pythagoras says:

I SWEAR IT BY THE ONE WHO IN OUR HEARTS ENGRAVED THE SACRED TETRAD, SYMBOL

IMMENSE AND PURE, SOURCE OF NATURE AND MODEL OF THE GODS.

If you can know the fourth, you will have known the very model of God, you will have known the very source of nature, you will have known TAO, DHAMMA, LOGOS. You will have known from where everything comes and to where everything goes – the source and the goal, the alpha and the omega.

BUT BEFORE ALL, THY SOUL TO ITS FAITHFUL DUTY, INVOKE THESE GODS WITH

FERVOUR, THEY WHOSE AID, THY WORK BEGUN, ALONE CAN TERMINATE.

Pythagoras says: Before you enter into the world of the fourth, the invisible, and before you start moving on this inner pilgrimage of perfection, the first thing is: ask the hell of the Gods. It is just all expression for asking the existence to help you, asking the whole to be friendly to your efforts. In essence, it means prayer.

Have you heard it or not? that many experiments have been done around the world in which a religious person prays, and with prayerful hands, when he is vibrating with the prayer, he touches water – that water is showered on a particular plant. The same water untouched by the prayerful hands, is showered on another plant – both of the same age, but the one which receives the water touched by prayerful hands grows faster. Within weeks it is double the size of the other one which has received simple water exactly the same, only one thing missing – the vibe of the prayerful hands.And the plant that has been blessed by prayerful hands brings bigger fruits, bigger flowers, and sooner than the other. The flowers have more fragrance than the other, and the fruits are more juicy than the other.

This has been repeated now, and now it is almost a scientific thing; it cannot be denied any more. Of course, how it works nobody knows. Why does prayer help so much? For example, if somebody has a headache and you are giving a massage, it is better first to pray and let your hands vibrate with prayer, and then massage. And you will see a tremendous change – your hands will be so powerful.

Existence can help you if you ask – it only helps you if you ask. If you don’t ask, it remains aloof, it does not interfere. But if you ask, if you open up, existence starts pouring into you. And then the part has as much energy as the whole. It depends on how much you open up: if you open up totally, then the part is the whole, then a man is as magical as the whole.

That is the whole secret of prayer: asking help from existence. And you are going on a really dangerous journey, hazardous; there are many pitfalls.

And the higher you move, the more

hazardous the journey becomes, because if you fall... you will be lost for ever.

BUT BEFORE ALL, THY SOUL TO ITS FAITHFUL DUTY, INVOKE THESE GODS WITH

FERVOUR, THEY WHOSE AID, THY WORK BEGUN, ALONE CAN TERMINATE.

You cannot reach the goal alone. You can reach the goal only with the help of the whole. That is the scientific meaning of prayer: invoking the whole, asking the whole that ”I am going on a long Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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journey – please be with me.” And slowly slowly you will see that a great energy follows you. And slowly slowly you will become aware that you need not do much: all that you need to do is to relax and absorb the energy that follows you.

Prayer is the greatest power there is, because prayer makes the part function as a whole.

INSTRUCTED BY THEM, NAUGHT SHALL THEN DECEIVE THEE: OF DIVERSE BEINGS THOU

SHALT SOUND THE ESSENCE, AND THOU SHALT KNOW THE PRINCIPLE AND END OF ALL.

INSTRUCTED BY THEM...

And if you become available in prayer to the whole, you will start hearing the still small voice within you – that is instruction from God.

First meditate upon the counsels of your Master, love them, follow them, then you have become capable of taking a plunge into prayer. The Master is visible, God is invisible. You have learnt how to participate in the being of the Master, now learn how to participate in the invisible being of God who is the source of all and the end of all. That is prayer. And in prayer you will start hearing a still small voice within you.

Once that voice is clearly heard and understood, you need not depend on the outer Master, you have found the inner Master. And you will be surprised to see that the counsels from the outer Master and the instructions from the inner voice are exactly the same. Your inner voice is only represented by the outer Master. The outer Master has nothing to say of his own accord: he simply looks into you, he simply finds your own heart, and speaks for your inner heart.

That’s why you will find so many inconsistencies in a Master’s statements – because to one disciple he will say one thing, to another disciple he will say something else. Because he is not there just dishing out ready-made formulas – he is there to listen to your inner voice. He has just to reflect you; he has to make your inner Master available to you. You cannot yet directly contact the inner Master, hence the outer Master is needed. But he is not to interfere. If he interferes, he is not a Master at all. He simply interprets, he simply communicates, your own inner voice to you because you yourself are not yet capable of taking that plunge. Once you have started listening to the inner instruction, nothing can ever deceive you. Then the whole life is reflected so clearly that nothing can ever deceive you.

OF DIVERSE BEINGS THOU SHALT SOUND THE ESSENCE...

And whosoever comes in front of you, you will sound his essence, you will know who he is, for what he is there, what his designs are, what his strategies are, what games he wants to play. Before he appears you will know... NAUGHT CAN DECEIVE THEE.

AND THOU SHALT KNOW THE PRINCIPLE AND END OF ALL.

IF HEAVEN WILLS IT, THOU SHALT KNOW THAT NATURE, ALIKE IN EVERYTHING, IS THE

SAME IN EVERY PLACE:

Listen carefully:

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IF HEAVEN WILLS IT...

NOW YOU HAVE COME TO A POINT where ego has to be utterly dropped. Preparing, the ego was there. Purifying, the ego was there. But now when you are moving into the dimension of perfection, ego has to be utterly dropped – no effort is even to be thought of of your own accord.

IF HEAVEN WILLS IT...

Now everything is God’s will: Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. Now you have to relax totally into the whole.

IF HEAVEN WILLS IT THOU SHALT KNOW THAT NATURE.. .

You will come to know truth only if God wills it. You relax, you wait in deep relaxation, you be patient.

And once heaven wills it... and it is BOUND to happen, the grace is bound to happen, only you have to disappear. And in relaxing totally you disappear, you become just an empty waiting, an empty vessel, a womb. And, IMMEDIATELY, whenever your inner emptiness is absolute, God descends in you, and the whole mystery is revealed to you. Then you will see all: ALIKE IN EVERYTHING...

God is in everything.

... IS THE SAME IN EVERY PLACE:

Only God is, and nothing else. Only God exists. God is synonymous with existence.

SO THAT, AS TO THY TRUE RIGHTS ENLIGHTENED, THINE HEART SHALL NO MORE FEED

ON VAIN DESIRES.

Now, when grace has arrived, only then will you know you were unnecessarily begging, desiring. All the treasures are yours, the whole kingdom is yours, the whole universe belongs to you. All the joys and all the blessings are yours.

SO THAT, AS TO THY TRUE RIGHTS ENLIGHTENED...

But this will happen only when you have become utterly enlightened. And what is enlightenment?

The ego gone and God has appeared in you – that is enlightenment. The ego is darkness, God is light.

... TO THY TRUE RIGHTS ENLIGHTENED...

And this is your right! your birthright – to become enlightened. Never be contented with less than that. It HAS to be achieved because you are MEANT to achieve it. You have to become it! because in the first place you ARE it...

THOU SHALT SEE THAT THE EVILS WHICH DEVOUR MEN.

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ARE OF THEIR CHOICE THE FRUIT...

And now you will see two things. One: desiring is meaningless because all is given without even asking for it. All is being given as a gift! You need not be a beggar: you are all emperors! The kingdom of God is your own kingdom. It is all already given – you just don’t have the courage and the consciousness to enjoy it.

One thing will become clear: that desiring was futile. It was not needed at all. You were desiring something that is already given to you, that is already the case. And the second thing you will see: that the people who are suffering, who are in misery, are being devoured by evils, that is their own choice. Suffering is our own choice. Grace, blessing, is a gift: suffering is a choice. Blessing is our nature – to be blissful, to be blessed, is natural.

To be miserable, to be in suffering, is our own effort, it is our own creation. Suffering has the signature of man, blessing has the signature of God. Suffering has to be earned – when you are able to see you will be surprised: suffering needs much more work, much more effort, because to suffer is almost making the impossible possible. It is not your nature to suffer, and still you create it.

It needs arduous effort. Going against nature needs much work – and people are working day in, day out, year in, year out, life in, life out, people are working hard to create more and more suffering for themselves.

If you are suffering, remember, you must be creating it. There is no other way to suffer.

But if you feel blessed, then it is not your doing: it is a showering from the beyond. Suffering is man-made, bliss is god-made – bliss is your nature, your very nature, your very ground of being.

When this has been seen, you have come home.

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6 January 1979 am in Buddha Hall

The first question

Question 1

WHAT IS FAITH? ALSO, HERMAN HESSE HAS SAID, ’FAITH AND DOUBT BELONG TOGETHER

AND GOVERN EACH OTHER LIKE INHALING AND EXHALING.’ CAN YOU PLEASE COMMENT?

Deva Vinaya,

FAITH CAN HAVE THREE MEANINGS. First is belief – belief is a lie, it is insincere, dishonest. To believe something means you don’t know it and yet you believe. It is hypocrisy. Belief is out of fear or out of greed. Belief is a conditioning by others imposed upon you; it is a slavery.

The true religious man cannot be a believer and he cannot be a disbeliever either – because disbelief is nothing but belief in a negative form. The catholic and the communist are not very different; the atheist and the theist are not very different – in fact not at all. They are aspects of the same coin.

One believes in God, one believes in no-God. One loves God – the love is based on conditioning; it is not true – one hates God – that hate is also based on conditioning; that is not true either.

Those who start by belief never arrive, they cannot arrive. They will go round and round, but they will never penetrate the truth of existence. The beginning has to be open – neither of belief nor of disbelief. The beginning has to be innocent. And if the beginning is innocent, THEN it is faith.

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Faith is not belief: faith is faith in truth. ”If there is truth, then we will know it, there is no need to believe. There is no need to believe in the Bible or the Vedas or the Koran. If truth was revealed to Mohammed and Christ and to Krishna, why not to me?” This is faith.

Faith means faith in oneself. Faith means a confidence, a respect for oneself. Belief is other-oriented: faith is self-oriented. Faith is a totally different world! It has nothing to do with belief. Belief divides people into Christians, Mohammedans, Hindus, Buddhists.

The man of faith knows no religion – except the religion of inquiry. He believes not in beliefs but in inquiry. And his faith is so much in his own being that he goes unguarded into the unknown, that he moves into the uncharted without any fear. His faith in existence is such that he needs no other support. Faith is self-oriented; faith has a beauty. Belief is ugly. Avoid believing, because believing is lying. Faith is a search, an inquiry.

The scientist has faith, and your so-called religious person has belief. What is the faith of a scientist?

The faith that existence is a cosmos, not a chaos, that existence is based on some fundamental law.

The faith that that law is discoverable. The faith that man’s consciousness is capable of knowing that fundamental law, the order of life and existence. The scientist has faith. Your so-called religious person has no faith. Because he has no faith he substitutes it by a plastic, synthetic thing called belief. Avoid belief.

Faith will make you more integrated than you are: belief will make you more disintegrated than you are. Belief will keep you a slave: faith will give you a mastery. Belief will help you, certainly, to become part of a herd, of a crowd. It will be a kind of security; it is comfortable, convenient. Faith is dangerous: it will take you into the realms of the unknown. It will make you alone; you will not be with the crowd and the crowd will not be with you either. But to be alone is of tremendous import, because to be alone is purity, and to be alone one has to be alert, one has to be aware.

The believer falls asleep. The man of faith keeps wakeful – he HAS to keep wakeful because there is nobody else to support him. He is not part of the crowd psychology; he has to stand on his own.

But he believes in the cosmos. He does not believe in any doctrine, creed, but there is a tacit belief that existence is not disorderly, that existence is based on a certain order, and that order can be discovered.

Herman Hesse’s statement that FAITH AND DOUBT BELONG TOGETHER AND GOVERN EACH

OTHER LIKE INHALING AND EXHALING IS true about belief but not about faith as I am defining it.

Just change the word ’faith’ and the statement is true. Read: Belief and doubt belong together and govern each other like inhaling and exhaling.

Belief always represses doubt; belief is a strategy to repress doubt. That’s why believers say, ”I believe strongly.” Why strongly? There must be a strong doubt deep down; it needs a strong belief to force it, to repress it into the unconscious. Whenever somebody says ’strong belief’ that simply means the doubt is big and has to be fought, and you will need a very strong belief to fight with it.

That’s why believers become fanatics. What is a fanatic? A man who has such strong doubt inside himself that unless he is a fanatic he will not be able to repress it. He is afraid of his doubt; he is so much afraid of his doubt that he never looks within. He has to create such fanaticism around himself, such smoke of fanaticism, that the doubt gets completely lost.

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And the fanatic cannot communicate; he is afraid – you may say something to him that will bring his doubt again to the surface. He cannot listen to the other side. His argument is his sword – he cannot argue, he can only kill. By killing he proves that his belief is right. That’s why Christians and Mohammedans and others have been killing each other – these are all fanatics. They have made the earth very ugly. They have destroyed much that is beautiful and should be preserved. They have reduced humanity to a very unconscious phenomenon. They have not allowed human beings to flower and bloom; they have been very destructive. They have not been blessings: they have been curses.

The man who has faith is never a fanatic, cannot be. He is open, he is available, he is reachable, he is vulnerable. He is ready to listen; he is in every way ready to understand the opposite viewpoint.

Who knows? The opposite viewpoint may be right. The man of faith has no prejudice to protect; he has no a priori idea; he is not rooted in any ideology at all. He is simply open, inquiring, searching, seeking. He is Ready to listen to everything; all his doors and windows are open. He is not a Leibnitzian monad – he is not a windowless phenomenon. He is available to the sun and the rain and the wind; he is available to God in whatsoever form it comes. He is ready to search for truth. He has no prejudice that the truth should be like ’this’. He does not start with an idea; he starts with a great longing to know, but with no idea to impose on reality.

The man of faith is never a fanatic. A Buddha is never a fanatic. The man of faith is very rational: the man of belief is utterly irrational. He cannot allow reason because he is afraid – reason may disturb his belief . Somehow he has managed to live in a cozy belief, and the reason may come like a storm and disturb everything. He cannot open his doors and windows; he has to remain closed in his own darkness – only then can he go on believing. He functions like an ostrich. He closes his eyes so that he has never to change what he believes. The man of faith lives with open eyes, alert, watchful.

Herman Hesse is right about belief but not right about faith. But there is a third meaning also: that is trust. First meaning is belief – belief is ugly, avoid it. Second meaning is faith – faith is beautiful, imbibe it. And the third meaning is trust – trust means faith has arrived at the goal. Faith is fulfilled, one has come to know, then trust arises.

Trust means ”I know,” not ”I believe.” And the person who knows, he need not believe at all – for what?

He knows! so there is no question of belief. Only those who don’t know believe. Believers never reach the ultimate meaning, trust – only those who have faith reach trust. Faith is the pilgrimage and trust is the destiny. Begin in faith, end in trust.

These are the three meanings of ’faith’. The word is very vague; you will have to understand all the three meanings, because sometimes it is used in the first meaning, sometimes in the second, sometimes in the third.

The second question

Question 2

IS THERE REALLY A HELL?

YOU ARE LIVING IN IT. Hell is a certain psychology; hell is a certain way of looking at things. If you are in misery, that means you are living in hell. Hell is not a geographical place; it is not somewhere Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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underneath the earth: it is in your way of looking at things. It is living in an unconscious way that one creates hell around oneself.

And so is heaven: that too is again a psychology, not something geographical. It is not somewhere above the clouds – it is not anywhere except in you. These are the two alternatives to live in: to live in hell or to live in heaven. And it is up to you what you choose.

If you live consciously, if you try to bring consciousness to every act that you go through, you will be living in a silent, blissful state, in serenity, in joy, in love. Your life will have the flavour of a festival.

That is the meaning of heaven: your life will have many flowers in it, much fragrance will be released through you. You will have an aura of delight. Your life will be a song of life-affirmation, it will be a sacred yes to all that existence is. You will be in communion with existence – in communion with stars, with the trees, with the rivers, with the mountains, with people, with animals. This whole life and this whole existence will have a totally different meaning for you. From every nook and corner, rivers of bliss will be flowing towards you.

Heaven is just a name for that state of mind.

Hell means you are living so unconsciously, so absurdly, in such contradiction, that you go on creating more and more misery for yourself. And still you ask: IS THERE REALLY A HELL?

You should not ask it – you know. You are living in it.

A bedraggled, worried Jew, surrounded by crying children of all sizes, sat in the chaircar of a transcontinental express nursing a baby of about one and a half years. He was spanking the baby, mumbling to himself as he did so:

”Smack, you do it again. Smack, you do it again. Smack, you do it again.” Such seeming cruelty aroused the ire of a motherly woman who sat in the next seat, and she rose, shook her finger in his face and said, ”If you strike that baby one more time I will give you so much trouble that you will never forget it!”

The harassed little man paused with uplifted arm and slowly raised his patient eyes to hers. ”Lady,” he said. ”Why lady, my wife is in the baggage coach ahead, she’s dead, and I ain’t got no place to bury her. And my daughter Rifka is in the Pullman, and she is going to have a baby, and she ain’t got no husband. And that kid has just thrown my hat out of the window. And I am on the wrong train and I don’t know where I am going. And this baby has ruined my clothes and my baggage is lost.

Trouble! Lady, you give me trouble? ME?”

What more proofs do you need that you are in hell? Just watch your life. Just look at your own face in the mirror. What have you done to yourself? It is already hell!

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idea of hell being somewhere else is a strategy created by the priests to deceive you, to make you feel that you are not in it, and to keep you afraid. And they have also created the idea of heaven –

that too is somewhere else, so that it goes on hanging in front of you like a carrot. And you can be pulled, pushed, manipulated, by the priests through greed and fear.

You have been made afraid of hell, you have been made very much greedy for heaven. And because you always think they are somewhere else, you remain deceived.

ALL IS HERE! AND ALL IS NOW! There is no other time than now and no other place than here.

Hell is here if you live with a wrong psychology, and heaven is here if you live with a right psychology.

But I would like you to know about one thing more....

Heaven and hell are only two sides of your mind.

The religions that were born outside India

have remained with these two ideas, heaven and hell.

They could not rise above them.

Judaism, Christianity, Islam – all the three religions born outside India, have no idea of something transcendental. In India we have a third word MOKSHA, NIRVANA.

Hell is a wrong psychology, ill, abnormal, neurotic, pathological; heaven is a right psychology, normal, healthy. But there is a beyond where you are no more a mind, when both sides of the mind have been dropped, where you are a no-mind, where you are neither negative nor positive, where you are neither dark nor light, where you are neither this nor that – where you are just a witness to all, to misery and bliss, to all, just a witness, where you are not identified with either misery OR bliss, where hell is a functioning of the mind, and heaven too, and you are beyond both, a watcher on the hills. That state of witnessing, that state of transcendence is called MOKSHA –

freedom, absolute freedom. Freedom from mind is absolute freedom.

I don’t teach you heaven, because heaven will always remain with hell; the other side cannot be dropped. If you want to keep one side of the coin, you will have to keep the other side too. If you want to keep the mind, you may be for a few moments in great joy, but again and again moments of sadness will erupt. The other side will have to be recognized.

That’s why those who live in the mind go on moving from one polarity to the other. Sometimes they are happy, immensely happy, in heaven, and sometimes they are immensely miserable, in hell.

Sometimes great joy and sometimes great sadness; sometimes love and sometimes hate. And they are pulled constantly into these opposite directions.

This is the state. You have also known a few moments of joy and love and happiness, but they come and go; you cannot abide in them, they can’t be made eternal. They are only moments. And when they go, you fall back into the deep dark valleys of depression, despair, anguish.

One goes on moving between heaven and hell continuously! Seeing this, watching this deeply, Buddhas have discovered a third standpoint which is beyond mind, which is no-mind, which is freedom from duality. Pythagoras calls it the golden mean. By ’golden mean’ he means if you stop exactly in the middle between happiness and unhappiness, between sadness and joy, if you can stop EXACTLY in the middle, then there will be neither joy nor sadness, there will be neither happiness nor unhappiness, neither pain nor pleasure. And in the EXACT middle, the transcendence happens: you are just a watcher, a witness.

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That witnessing is the goal here. I would like all of my sannyasins to become witnesses. Witness everything, and don’t get identified with anything – even beautiful things, tremendously joyous things.

Keep aloof, keep a distance; don’t lose yourself in them. Let them come and go. Everything that comes goes, everything that is born dies, but you remain – you as a witness always remain.

Once you have found that eternal witness in vou. you have found God. God is not an object, but your pure subjectivity.

The third question

Question 3

OSHO, HOW WOULD YOU LIKE YOUR BOLD EXPERIMENT TO BE UNDER SCIENTIFIC

SCRUTINY? ALSO, IS THERE ANY PARTICULAR METHOD OF MEDITATION USEFUL FOR

TREATMENT OF A PARTICULAR TYPE OF MENTAL ILLNESS?

Doctor Malik,

Science HAS ITS OWN LIMITATIONS. I am ready, I can invite scientists to come here to watch what is happening. They are welcome. But they will not be able to know the real thing that is happening here. They will only be able to know the body of it, they will miss the soul – their very methodology prevents it.

Just like if you ask the scientist, ”Please watch this roseflower, it is so beautiful” – he can analyse the roseflower, he can reduce it to its constituents. He can tell you how much water is in it, and how much colour and how much perfume, and how much earth and how much air. He can tell you everything that comes within HIS vision, that which he can catch hold of by his methodology. But his methodology is limited. He will not be able to catch hold of the beauty of the flower – that is certain.

He will not be able to find any beauty in the flower scientifically. As a man, as a man of heart, he MAY say that the rose is beautiful – but not as a scientist.

If he really goes scientifically into the existence of the rose, he will find everything except beauty.

About beauty there are only two possibilities that he will tell. One: that there is no beauty, that it is your projection; that it is in your eyes, not in the flower; that it is your dream, your idea, that you have imposed upon it. Or the other, which will be far more scientific: he will simply say beauty is non-existential.

Beauty cannot be found by the scientist. If you give him anything he will reduce it to matter. And all that is great in it, all that is invisible in it, all that belongs to the beyond, will automatically disappear.

I am absolutely ready. Scientists can come, they can watch whatsoever is happening here through meditations, through music, through therapeutic situations – they can watch. But they will know only the periphery of it. If they really want to know the very soul of it then they will have to become participants, not watchers, not spectators. They will have to fall en rapport with me.

They will not be able to know what is happening only by watching OTHER meditators: they will have to become meditators themselves. And that is the problem – the scientific methodology is Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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against it. The scientific methodology is based on this idea that the scientist has to remain only a spectator, uninvolved. He is not to become a participant; he has to be there, aloof, detached, just as an observer.

But there are things which can be known only by participation. For example, love cannot be known only by observation. If you see two lovers kissing each other, what are you going to know about it scientifically? Just a transfer of a few germs from the lips of one to the other – what else? The kiss will be reduced to a transfer of germs. The beauty, the soul of the kiss, has disappeared. It has become really ugly; it is no more beautiful.

Love becomes chemistry in the hands of the scientist. It becomes a hormonal attraction. It has something to do with sexual glands and nothing to do with the individual as a whole. It is only a question of male hormones or female hormones; it is a biological attraction. But then love loses all poetry, love simply becomes a very ordinary phenomenon. It becomes very mundane, it loses all sacredness.

So, Doctor Malik, you are welcome, your friends are welcome.

Malik is a psychiatrist in the Delhi University. You can come here – he IS here – you can bring your friends, and you can do what you call scientific work, scientific scrutiny. But I will have to tell you beforehand that whatsoever you come to know will be only the circumference of it. If you really want to know it, you will have to come here not as scientists but as poets, lovers, meditators, participants.

Only then the core of it will be revealed to you.

That has become one of the most fundamental problems humanity is facing today, that wherever science moves, it reduces everything to the LOWEST denominator. It uglifies things. If you ask about the lotus, the scientist only finds mud and nothing else. The lotus comes out of the mud, that’s true – but it is not just mud and nothing else.

If you ask a Buddha, then you will have a totally different perspective. If you ask the Buddha, then even mud is nothing but a hidden lotus.

That is what true religion is, the true vision of religion is: it beautifies things. It takes everything to its highest peak. In religion, the religious approach believes in the highest and the lowest is only a container. The scientific approach believes in the lowest, and the highest is just a by-product.

Karl Marx has said that man’s consciousness is nothing but a by-product – a by-product of his physiology. Just a by-product, an epi-phenomenon, a shadow. It can be ignored, it need not be taken into account.

It is because of people like Karl Marx that Joseph Stalin could kill millions of people in Russia. If consciousness is just a shadow then there is no problem, you can kill as many shadows as you want. You are not killing anything at all! If they are only shadows, epi-phenomena, by-products, then why be worried? Man is nothing but the body.

You have reduced all divinity into dust.

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Science has to learn something from religion, only then can there be a future for science. Otherwise science is doomed, and with science, man’s future is doomed. Adolf Hitler’s approach is very scientific, just as Joseph Stalin’s is. Man disappears in the scientific approach – there is no soul in him, just a mechanism. And you can destroy machines, there is no problem in it. And you will not feel any guilt, any prick in your conscience.

Meditation is an inner phenomenon. It is serenity at the deepest core of your being. It is bliss. And ultimately it is a transcendence of all situations. It is utter silence. You will not be able to detect it by scientific scrutiny.

If you go and watch a Buddha, what are you going to find? You will not be able to penetrate into his deepest core – that will remain unavailable. Yes, you can watch his behaviour, but the behaviour is not the man. And modern psychiatry is basically behaviouristic – it believes only in the behaviour, because behaviour is observable. It does not believe in the soul, because the soul is not observable.

In fact, psychiatry, psychology, psychotherapy: these words should not be used – because the word

’psyche’ means soul, and the soul is completely denied. Not that psychologists have come to know that there is no soul; it is denied because the methods that they use are very gross.

For example, if you want to hear music through the eyes you will not be able to hear the music. And then you can say, ”There is no music, because I cannot see it.” If you make it a point that music can be accepted only when seen, then your very approach has made it absolutely certain that there is no music.

Music can be heard but not seen. Beauty can be seen but not heard. Each method has its own limitation. The scientific method is very gross. That’s why it has become very very penetrating in the world of matter, but it has become absolutely oblivious of the world of the spirit. The spiritual world is non-existential for the scientist AS a scientist. Love, poetry, music, beauty, bliss – all are non-existential. This is a very lopsided vision.

Pythagoras wanted a science which was able to be mathematical and musical both – he wanted it to be a synthesis. And that’s my longing too: a real science will have two aspects to it. One will be the objective aspect, the objective science, and the other will be the subjective aspect, the subjective science. And that will be the point of meeting of religion and science.

Science is objective science, and religion is subjective science. And man is both: the meeting of the inner and the

You ask me, Doctor Malik: HOW WOULD YOU LIKE YOUR BOLD EXPERIMENT TO BE UNDER

SCIENTIFIC SCRUTINY?

I am perfectly happy – you can come. But you will know only about the body and you will miss the soul – UNLESS you are also courageous enough to become participants here, crazy enough to dance with my people and sing with mv people and celebrate with my people, not keeping aloof, but dissolving yourself into the commune. Then you will know both the sides, the outer and the inner.

But the inner you will know as an individual, not as a scientist. The outer you can know as a scientist.

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And the second thing you ask: ALSO, IS THERE ANY PARTICULAR METHOD OF MEDITATION

USEFUL FOR TREATMENT OF A PARTICULAR TYPE OF MENTAL ILLNESS?

ONE VERY FUNDAMENTAL THING has to be understood. Modern psychiatry is rooted and based in illness – it knows nothing about wellness. Modern psychology and all its branches are basically following the medical model. And that is utterly wrong, because just to look into man’s pathology is not right.

That’s where Sigmund Freud missed. He contributed something immensely valuable, but still he missed the whole point. He was too much interested in the abnormal, in the ill. And slowly slowly, because all that he studied was nothing but illness, he started feeling that there is no hope for man.

To study illness is needed, because ill people have to be helped. But they cannot be really helped unless you know what wellness is. At the most, you can make them adjusted to the society, but the society ITSELF IS ill.

That’s what modern psychiatry, psychoanalysis, psychotherapies, go on doing.

Whenever

somebody becomes a little unadjusted, the work of the psychiatrist is to pull him back to adjustment.

Adjustment is thought to be normal. But that is not necessarily the case – because if the society itself is abnormal then to get adjusted to it will be abnormality, not normality.

In fact, great suspicion has arisen in modern days. R. D. Laing and other people have become suspicious of the whole project. The society is abnormal, and you help people to be adjusted to it!

You serve the society, you don’t serve those people. You are agents of the society, of the status quo, of the establishment. And the person whom you are forcing – through drugs, through electro-shocks, through psychoanalysis and a thousand and one other methods – may be really a normal person.

And because he is normal he cannot adjust to the abnormal society.

Just think of a Buddha. The Buddha cannot adjust to the society. The Buddhas have always been rebellious. They cannot bow down to the society, they cannot surrender to the society – the society is ill! The society has been living under a great curse, the curse that has been created by the priests and the politicians. It has been living under a great conspiracy.

People have not been allowed to be healthy, because healthy people are dangerous. People are not allowed to be intelligent, because intelligent people are dangerous. Your educational system exists not to help people to become intelligent, but to hinder people from becoming intelligent. It exists there so that everybody can be reduced to a mediocre being, so that everybody is reduced to a stupid scholar.

And twenty-five years of conditioning from kindergarten to the university can reduce anybody to a stupid scholar, can make anybody mediocre – because your education requires that people should be able to reproduce whatsoever has been taught to them. That is the criterion of their intelligence.

That may be the criterion of their parrotlike memory, but it is not the criterion of their intelligence.

Intelligence is a totally different phenomenon. Intelligence has nothing to do with repetition; in fact intelligence will abhor repetition. Intelligence will always try to live life in its own way. Intelligence will like to do its own thing. Intelligence will like to enter into life’s mysteries, not according to set formulas, prescribed strategies. Intelligence is always original.

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And the universities don’t allow original people to exist. They weed out original people; their whole effort is to destroy originality – because original people will always create trouble in the society.

They will not be so easily manipulatable, and they cannot be so easily reduced to clerks and deputy collectors and station masters and school teachers – they cannot be so easily reduced to efficient machines. They will assert themselves. They will try to live life not according to a pattern but according to their own insight.

If a person loves music he would rather remain a beggar but still he will persist in living the life of a musician. Even if he has the choice of becoming the prime minister he would rather live like a beggar and insist on going on playing his music. That will be intelligence, because only when you live your life according to your own lights, according to your own insights, according to your own inner voice, do you attain to bliss, to fulfillment.

And to become a prime minister you don’t need intelligence. In fact if you have intelligence you cannot become a prime minister, because who would like to go into politics if he has intelligence?

Who would like to go into that ugly game? One would like to become a poet or a painter or a dancer

– but WHO would like to become a politician? Not the intelligent person but only those who are still barbarians, only those who still enjoy violence, domination over other people.

Universities destroy intelligence. Your education is very destructive to intelligence – it serves the society, and the society is abnormal, very abnormal. In three thousand years, five thousand wars have been fought: can you say this society is healthy? this society is sane?

Man is always ready to kill, murder, or commit suicide. What kind of society is this? And psychiatry and psychoanalysis try to adjust people. They call unadjusted people ’abnormal’. That’s why psychologists go on saying that Jesus was abnormal. In fact, they say he was neurotic. Jesus neurotic! And the rabbis who managed to murder this man, they were healthy. Jesus is neurotic: Pontius Pilate is healthy, normal.

If Jesus is neurotic, then Buddha is neurotic, Mahavira is neurotic, Pythagoras, Patanjali, Lao Tzu, Zarathustra, all are neurotics. Socrates is neurotic – and the judges, those stupid judges who decided that he should be poisoned and killed, they are normal.

The whole earth is a madhouse, Doctor Malik. And Doctor Malik lives in Delhi – he should know well that Delhi attracts all kinds of neurotic people.

Who is ill? And how can you decide and define illness unless you know what wellness is?

Sigmund Freud missed, because he only studied the ill people. But ill people can be studied, because illness always happens on the periphery. And the well people cannot be studied, because wellness happens at the center. It wells up in your being. Illness is superficial, wellness is intrinsic.

Sigmund Freud cannot study a Buddha, because he will not be able to find any symptoms.

You can go to a doctor and you can ask, ”What is the definition of health?” and you will be surprised that no doctor can answer it. At the most he can say, ”When a person is not ill, he is healthy.” But what kind of definition is this? – ”When a person has no illnesses he is healthy.” Health is a positive phenomenon and you are defining it negatively. Illness they can define. They can define what is Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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cancer and what is tuberculosis and they can define all kinds of illnesses – millions of illnesses they can define. But a single phenomenon, health, remains indefinable – it has not been studied at all.

Unless psychology becomes rooted in the people who are whole and holy – who are enlightened, alert, aware, who have transcended all kinds of identifications, who have become pure consciousness – unless psychology studies these people.... But then psychology will have to change its methods. Then it cannot go on imitating physiology, physics, chemistry and the natural sciences.

Then it will have to learn much from literature, from poetry, from music. Then it will have to move more and more close to the arts rather than going and following science.

That has been the misfortune, that Sigmund Freud was basically a physician, a medical doctor. And his idea of making a science of psychology was the idea of medical science. He started studying ill people, and he based his whole understanding in the illnesses. And because when you treat ill people only ill people come to you, slowly slowly, all that you know about man is that which you have known through ill people. Then that becomes your understanding about man.

That’s why whatsoever Freud says about man is basically wrong. It is about the ILL man – it is not about the human man, it is not about humanity. It is not about a real man, it is something about the ill person.

For example, if you study only blind people, and you decide that no man has eyes, what kind of understanding will that be? It will not be true about man, it will be only true about blind people.

Psychiatrists only come across ill people, and then they start deciding about man, they start defining man. That is going beyond their limits. First you will have to understand the whole – the ill man and the well man, both. And in fact the man who is perfectly well should be the criterion; he should be the decisive factor. Psychology has to become the psychology of the Buddhas. Only then will it be true, authentic.

My effort here is not that of a psychiatrist or a psychotherapist. I am not treating ill people here. My effort here is to release the sources of well-being in you. I am not interested in treating you, I am interested in freeing you.

You ask me: ALSO, IS THERE ANY PARTICULAR METHOD OF MEDITATION USEFUL FOR

TREATMENT OF A PARTICULAR TYPE OF MENTAL ILLNESS?

NO. THAT DOES NOT MEAN that meditation cannot help – it helps, but that is coincidental. It helps, but that is only a by-product.

My basic effort here is to create Buddhas – people who are whole. I am not treating ill people here

– although a few ill people come, and they ARE helped, but that is not my purpose here. It is not a therapeutic community: it is a spiritual commune. Therapies are happening here, but they are not basically meant for ill people – because in my vision the whole of humanity is ill, it is abnormal.

The therapies that happen here are not particularly interested in any particular kind of disease. We are simply helping so-called normal people to become REALLY normal.

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As I see it, every human being is brought up by ill people, abnormal people – the parents, the teachers – and naturally they go on giving their illnesses to the child. Unless one becomes alert about what has been done to oneself, unless one dares, is courageous, has guts, to drop all conditioning, one never becomes normal.

Sixty therapeutic groups are run here, just to help common people, the so-called normal people, to be aware that they are not normal – that is the first step towards becoming normal. And once you have understood that you are not normal, things start changing. A great awareness starts arising in you: something has to be done, something becomes urgent.

And we help people to drop their conditionings – Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan, communist. We help people to drop all their conditionings, because only an unconditioned being is really normal and natural. Conditionings are perversions. So we are not really interested in helping so-called ill people. Our work is to help the so-called normal people. But sometimes ill people come and they ARE benefitted. That is just a fringe phenomenon, on the margin.

So I cannot say which meditation is going to help which particular disease. In fact, EACH meditation will help in some way or other, because all meditation techniques are basically moving to the same point of inner silence. The method may be active or the method may be passive, it doesn’t matter, the goal is the same. It may be a Sufi method, it may be a Zen method – the goal is the same. The goal is: how to make you so silent that all thinking disappears and you are just a mirror, reflecting that which is.

My definition of God is: that which is. And once you start seeing that which is, and you start falling in tune with it, well-being arises. You become part of this tremendously beautiful universe.

But, Doctor Malik, if you come here and your friends come here, they can look into this matter –

which meditation will help which kind of disease. And that will be immensely beneficial.

Psychoanalysis and psychiatry help ill people. Religion helps people who are already well but would like to know the peaks of wellness – would like to go to the Everest of wellness, what Abraham Maslow calls ’peak experiences’. Those peak experiences are everybody’s birthright. And if you don’t have peak experiences you are missing something immensely valuable.

But religion goes even one step further ahead than Abraham Maslow and humanistic psychologies.

It is not only a question of attaining peak experiences – because peak experiences will come and go. You cannot remain on the peak for ever. You can have a deep sexual orgasmic experience, you can attain to a peak – but the moment you have attained, already you have started going downhill.

You cannot stay on the peak; there is no space to stay.

All peaks are the repetition of the ancient myth of Sisyphus. Sisyphus carries the rock to the peak of the hill, but the peak is small and the rock is big. Sisyphus has been punished by the gods, because he rebelled against the gods, to take the rock to the peak. But the moment the rock reaches the peak it starts falling back, slipping back, downhill.

That is the story of every man. You cannot stay on the peak. You will make the journey, the long journey, to reach the peak – and once you have attained, it is finished. The moment you become aware of the peak, it is no more; you have started going downhill. There is no space to abide.

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Religion helps you not only for peak experiences – that is only for the beginners – religion does not help you only to have beautiful experiences, but to have a total orgasmic consciousness. Not the peak experience, not the orgasmic experience, but an orgasmic consciousness – so that you are twenty-four hours in an orgasmic ecstasy. So that your whole life, moment-to-moment, is a celebration.

My effort here is that of religion. I help people first to know peak experiences so that a great longing can arise in them to abide on those peaks. But one cannot abide on those peaks. Then another effort starts in your life: how to create orgasmic CONSCIOUSNESS. Peaks are experiences, they come and go. Orgasmic consciousness is a transformation of your being. It is a new birth, a resurrection.

But attaining to peak experiences helps many ill people. I am not concerned with it, but it helps.

So it is perfectly good, Doctor Malik, you, your friends, are welcome.

Come, study, study

scientifically, AND study as participants. Find out what meditations can be helpful to what kind of diseases.

But that is not my work. It is happening here. My goal is totally different – but many other things happen always on the fringe, on the margin. And if you are interested in those marginal things, it is perfectly good. If somebody can be helped in any way by this experiment that is going on here, I will be happy.

The last question

Question 4

OSHO, WHY IS LIFE SO BORING?

LIFE AND BORING? Man, what are you talking about? You must be living in a kind of death. It is not life that is boring – you must be dead! That’s why you are feeling bored. Rather than taking responsibility on your own shoulders, you are throwing it on life. But that’s how the human mind continuously goes on playing games.

It always throws the responsibility on somebody else; it always finds a scapegoat.

It is very

irresponsible. And those who are irresponsible will never change. Don’t say life is boring – see that you don’t know how to live. You must be living in a wrong way; you must be living in a negative way. You must be living at the minimum; your life must be a lukewarm life – that’s why it is boring.

Life is incredibly ecstatic, but then it has to be lived at the optimum. Then you have to live in a maximum way – not lukewarm. You have to be hot, passionately alive. Your life must be missing passion. Then it is boring. But it is you who are responsible, it is not life which is responsible for it.

No animal is bored, no bird is bored, no tree is bored, no river, no mountain, no star – only man....

This capacity to be bored is not necessarily a curse: it is a blessing in disguise. It simply says man is free to choose between boredom and ecstasy – nobody else is free to choose. Except for man, the whole existence is ecstatic, but there is no choice. The ecstasy is in-built. The birds are chirping, singing, the trees are blooming, the stars are shining... but it is all in-built.

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Man has the choice. That is a great gift of God. Man is free to choose – and then if you choose a life that is boring, remember, it is your own responsibility. You can choose a life that is ecstatic.

I have lived both the ways! – that’s why I can say it so authoritatively. I have lived the way you are living, for many many lives. I was also bored. Now, I am as ecstatic as the birds, as the trees – with only one difference: this is my choice, this is my freedom. And when you are blissful with freedom, your bliss has a depth. a tremendous grandeur which the bliss of the birds and the animals cannot have. Their bliss is almost imposed upon them.

And remember. even if freedom is imposed upon them, because it is imposed it will lose all meaning.

If you are forced to live in paradise, and you are not allowed to get out of it, and naked swords are watching the gates, you will feel bored.

That’s what happened to Adam and Eve: they started feeling bored in paradise. They wanted to do something new, something novel. It was out of boredom that they ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge. They must have started feeling bored. Everything was good, everything was beautiful!

But it was imposed: it was not chosen by themselves.

When a man chooses by himself, even if he chooses the prison, he will be happy there – if it is HIS

choice.

Freedom is a great gift. And it is only man who is free – it is man’s glory. But we have turned it into agony, because we always choose the boring life. Why do we choose the boring life always?

Because the boring life is more secure, convenient, safe. If you really want to live passionately, then you will have to live in insecurity and you will have to live in danger, and always in danger. And you will have to live through many inconveniences. You cannot live so comfortably, you cannot live in such coziness; you will always be open to all kinds of dangers.

That’s why people choose a boring life. Rather than living passionately, they live at the minimum –

because if you live at the minimum you live with minimum risk. Otherwise, life is tremendous surprise

– and EACH moment. If you live with open eyes and passionately, intelligently, dangerously... that’s what Friedrich Nietzsche says: Live dangerously!

That’s what I say, that’s what sannyas is all about – living dangerously. Living moment-to-moment alert to what is happening. Not living in the past, but living in the present. Ready to risk.... And then you will see a totally different quality happening around you: life becomes psychedelic, it starts gaining depth, meaning. It becomes something fantastic, something intoxicating.

And when you live moment-to-moment, you cannot live a knowledgeable life, because knowledge comes from the past. If you live moment-to-moment, dropping the past, dying to the past every moment, you will live a life of innocence, like a child. That is the life of a sage: to live like a child.

Jesus says: ”Unless you are like little children you will not enter into my kingdom of God.” You will have to live without knowledgeability, you will have to live innocently, you will have to live with wonder, with wondering eyes, always ready to be surprised.

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are happening. Life is miraculous. How can you be bored? Life is such a miracle, with so many surprises, so unpredictable, so ridiculous, so absurd!...

It is said:

When Bodhidharma became enlightened, he could not stop laughing for days, he could not sleep either, because the laughter wouldn’t stop. Everybody became worried – the disciples and the friends, and they all inquired, ”What has happened? And why don’t you stop? Are you going mad?

or have you gone mad?”

And when people said such things, Bodhidharma would laugh even more; he would roll on the ground. Slowly slowly, it cooled down, but the quality remained forever with him. Laughter became his flavour.

When he cooled down a little bit, when the shock of enlightenment was absorbed, when that lightning experience was digested, then he said, ”I started laughing because it is so ridiculous. I was trying to get that which I have already got. I was trying to get that which is already in me, which I have never lost. I was trying to find bliss and bliss is my nature. I was trying to find truth, and I am truth.” Just as Jesus says, ”I am the way, I am the door, I am the truth...” He is not saying it only about himself: he is saying it about every ’I’; whosoever can say ’I’ is the way, is the gate, is the truth.

The statement is not about Jesus as a person; the statement is about everybody who is capable of saying ’I’.

And, really, when you find that all that you have been searching for down the ages was already the case, you HAD it within you, how can you stop laughing then? But you may not become a Bodhidharma so soon – still life need not be boring. I will tell you a few stories.

The first:

A man who was very depressed met his friend, Jerry J., who was a very sharp thinker.

”What is the matter?” Jerry J. asked.

”I’m despondent. I can’t adjust to the fact that I’ve got three balls.”

”Three balls?” said sharp Jerry. ”Kid, we can make a fortune together! ”

”How?” asked the other fellow, brightening up.

”We will go to bar after bar and bet everybody around that between you and the bartender you’ve got five balls! It can’t miss!”

”Let’s go,” said the man.

So they went into the first bar, and Jerry J. made friends with the strangers at the bar. Then he made the announcement: ”I will bet anybody in the place that between my friend here and the bartender there they’ve got five balls.”

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Nearly everyone rushed forward to cover the bet. Jerry looked at the bartender who was shaking his head.

”You don’t mind being part of the wager, do you?” Jerry asked.

”Not at all,” the bartender said. ”I am very impressed.”

”How do you mean?” Jerry asked.

”Well, up to now I’ve never met a man with four balls – I’ve got only one.” The second:

It happened in Paris in the spring. On a sunny day in May a Chinaman picked up a whore on the Champs Elysees and took her to the Meurice Hotel. They opened the windows and the breeze blew in and everything seemed beautiful. The Chinaman got into the bed with the whore. He made love to her for a while and then said, ”Pardonnez-moi, Mademoiselle, je suis fatigue.” So saying, he went to the window and took a deep breath. Then he went under the bed, came out the other side, and jumped into bed to make love again.

After a while he got up saying, ”Pardonnez-moi, Mademoiselle, je suis fatigue.” Again he went to the window, took a deep breath, rolled under the bed and came out the other side.

The sixth time this happened, the whore had become very tired too. Getting out of bed, she said,

”Pardonnez-moi, Monsieur, je suis fatigue.”

She went to the open window, took a deep breath, and looked under the bed. She found four other Chinamen there.

And the third:

So this old man went into Ma Agnew’s whorehouse and said, ”Listen, Ma, I want a girl with gonorrhea.”

The madam nodded and sent him upstairs to a room. Then she called one of her favourites for him.

The girl came into the room and started to undress when he asked, ”Do you have gonorrhea?”

”Gonorrhea? I should say not!” she said.

The old man sent her back. The madam summoned another girl and said. ”Shirley, you go upstairs, and tell this old codger that you have the clap. Okay? Let’s do what we have to to make him happy.” The girl agreed and went upstairs, and when the old man asked, ”Do you have gonorrhea?” she smiled and said, ”Of course I do!”

”Good!” he said. ”Let’s get it on.”

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They got into bed together and made love for about ten minutes. When it was over and they lay side by side, the girl named Shirley said, ”Listen, grandpa, I’ve got a confession to make – I don’t really have gonorrhea.”

The old man smiled. ”Now you do,” he said.

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CHAPTER 8

Escape to Reality

7 January 1979 am in Buddha Hall

The first question

Question 1

WHAT DOES YOUR MOVEMENT SIGNIFY ABOUT THE CONDITION OF SOCIETY? IS IT AN

ESCAPIST AND SELF-REGARDING CULT? OR DO VOU PROPOSE THROUGH CHANGING

HUMAN NATURE TO CHANGE SOCIETY AND THE wORLD?

Peter Jenkins,

WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE IS NOT A movement: it is a mutation. It has no concern with the society: its whole concern is with the individual. It is a revolution in the true sense of the word.

There is no idea of changing the society or the world, because there is no society at all. Only individuals exist – society is an illusion. And because we believe in society, all the revolutions have failed. The belief that the society exists has sabotaged all efforts to change man – because the belief is rooted in illusion.

Ask the scientist: he says there is no matter but only electrons. Matter is an illusion. In exactly the same way, those who understand human consciousness will say that society is an illusion like matter. Electrons are true, so are individuals.

The individual needs a mutation. And what we are doing here is utterly individualistic; it is not socialistic at all. It may look as if it is an escape – but the word ’escape’ in itself has nothing wrong 131

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in it. If the house is on fire and you escape from it, nobody calls you an escapist. You are simply intelligent, that’s all.

We are not escaping, we are simply trying to understand what the case is. We are not avoiding problems – in fact, just the contrary. We are facing all the problems that the society has avoided. We are trying to encounter all the problems that the so-called society has been teaching you to repress.

Man need not have ANY unconscious. It is because of repression that man has become divided between conscious and unconscious. It is the great work of your so-called society. It is a conspiracy against man. Once man is divided he starts becoming a weakling, because he starts fighting within himself. He is split, he becomes schizophrenic. And the man who is split can never be a master of himself.

And that’s what your so-called society wants everybody to be: never to be a master but always to be a slave. The society needs slaves. And by ’the society’ I mean the conspiracy of the priests, the politicians, the power-hungry people. Society is a conspiracy of the power-obsessed people, and their basic strategy is to divide man from the very beginning.

And how have they divided man? They have told you not to accept yourself in your totality. They have told you that much is wrong in you – in fact the major part of your being, of your wholeness, is wrong. That wrong part has to be denied expression, that wrong part has to be repressed. And once you start repressing anything in yourself, a rift is created. Then you go on repressing all the problems and you go on sitting on the volcano – thinking everything is okay, believing everything is okay, and knowing all the time that nothing is okay. Deep down, there is fire and it is going to erupt any moment.

Then people become neurotic, psychotic. Then people suffer millions of diseases – unnecessarily.

But it serves the vested interests. It serves the capitalist society, it serves the communist society; it serves the Catholic church, it serves the Hindu, the Mohammedan priesthood. It serves all those who are in power.

Man remains shaky, trembling, weak, divided. And man cannot assert himself, cannot stand on his own. He needs somebody to depend upon. He seeks and searches for tyrants – without tyrants he cannot live. He cannot live without governments and he cannot live without the leaders.

And look what your leaders and your governments, your churches and your priests have done. Just look at history and you will see that the whole history of man up to now has been utterly ugly. It has not been human at all.

My effort here is not to change the society but to transform the individual – to help the individual to become whole, to help the individual to drop this rift between the conscious and the unconscious; to help the individual not to repress any more but to accept himself, not to condemn but to love himself.

You can call it a ’self-regarding cult’ – because I teach self-love. And you have been told that there is something wrong with self-love. You have been told, ”Love others, but never love yourself.” But how can you love others if you cannot even love yourself?

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Meditate on the great statement of Jesus: ”Love thy neighbour as thou lovest thyself.” But the fundamental is loving thyself.

You cannot love anybody else – because love has to well up within you first. And you are the closest to yourself: if you hate yourself, you will hate your neighbour. Whatsoever the priests and the leaders go on saying, it will not make any difference. You will hate your neighbour, you will hate humanity, you will hate the earth – because you will hate yourself.

Love yourself, and out of that love grows love for others.

I teach you to be selfish, because only out of true selfishness is altruism born. A really selfish person cannot be against anybody, a really selfish person cannot hurt anybody – because hurting somebody you have to hurt yourself first. You cannot create suffering for others without creating suffering for yourself. Before you are angry with someone, you have to be angry within yourself.

Before you are violent with somebody, you have to go through many nightmares.

The person who really loves himself, who is in tremendous love with himself, cannot do any harm to anybody – because he cannot do any harm to himself.

So in a way we are escapists, because whatsoever you call real life is not real – it is a distortion of life; it is something else in the name of life. And we are certainly self-regarding, because out of that regard, regard for the other is born.

If the individual can be helped, if the individual can be enlightened, if the individual can be persuaded to celebrate life, to enjoy life, only then will we be able to change the climate around the earth. But that is not our purpose, that is not our goal – that is going to be just a consequence.

You ask me: WHAT DOES YOUR MOVEMENT SIGNIFY ABOUT THE CONDITION OF SOCIETY?

It simply signifies that the society is rotten, that the society is ill, that there is no possibility of reforming the society. Because if this society is reformed it will be simply a modified form of the same rottenness – maybe a little bit better decorated, better painted, but it will be the same disease.

In five thousand years’ history, many times society has been reformed. And nothing basically ever changes; it remains the same in every form. It is the same illness, the same ugliness, the same sickness that continues.

Enough is enough!

Those who are intelligent have become aware that all revolutions have failed – all social revolutions have failed. And we have not listened yet to Buddhas who have been telling of a totally different revolution: the revolution in the heart of the individual – because the individual is substantial, real.

Society is only a relationship.

For example, we are sitting here, two thousand people. You can think of it as a society, as a community. But what is society? What is community? There are two thousand individuals sitting here. You will never come across society anywhere; you will never meet the community. Whenever you come across anything, you will come across the real individual.

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Society is only a word – and a very dangerous word. And man is very very efficient at inventing dangerous words. For example, ’humanity’. Now, I have never seen humanity; I have only seen human beings. Humanity is just an abstraction. But there are people who love humanity. You cannot hug humanity, you cannot kiss humanity. But that becomes a very very subtle camouflage. In the name of humanity you can go on hating human beings – because you love humanity; there is no need to love human beings because you love humanity.

And if the need arises, you can sacrifice all human beings for your love of humanity. That has been done again and again: people love nations, and people kill people in the name of ’the nation’. In the name of ’motherland’, ’fatherland’ – stupid words – but in the name of ’motherland’ thousands of people can be killed very easily.

The real is sacrificed on the altar of the abstract. This is your whole history. In the name of God, in the name of religion, in the name of love, in the name of peace, in the name of democracy, in the name of communism – ALL abstractions – we go on butchering real human beings.

These words are dangerous words. Drop these words; love human beings. If you have to sacrifice the motherland, sacrifice it – it is nothing. If you have to sacrifice religion, sacrifice it – it is nothing.

If you have to sacrifice humanity, kill it without a single thought – because there is no humanity and you will not be killing anything. But love the real: avoid the abstract. It is the abstract that has been the greatest calamity.

I assert the real against the abstract. And this has been the way of all the Buddhas, but they have never been tried. Politicians have been tried and all the political experiments have failed, but Buddhas have never been tried. We have listened to them, we have worshipped them, but we have never tried them. We have never given a chance to them.

Now the time has come that if Buddhas are not tried, then there is no future. Man is doomed

– because man has invented, slowly slowly, so many violent forces, man has discovered such dangerous weapons, the next war will not be the third, it will be the last. The next war will be the total war. It will destroy all life – not only human life but all life, life as such.

Before it happens, please give one opportunity to those who have been saying again and again –

Krishna, Christ, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Zarathustra – that the individual has to be transformed. And once the individual is transformed, society automatically changes; that is a consequence.

So we are not proposing here any social revolution. I am not at all concerned with the society: my whole concern is the real individual.

You ask me, Peter Jenkins: IS IT AN ESCAPIST AND SELF-REGARDING CULT?

IN A SENSE IT IS ESCAPIST because we are escaping from all illusions. In a sense it is not escapist, because we are escaping into reality. Escaping from illusions and escaping into reality: hence it is not escapist.

And it is not self-regarding in the sense that we are against others, that we don’t teach any altruism, that we don’t care for morality, that we don’t care at all for others. No. We know how to care for others. But to care for others, the basic fundamental, the basic requirement is to care for yourself.

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A Christian mother was telling her child, ”Serve others: service is religion. God has made you to serve others.”

The little boy asked the mother, ”I can understand it, that God created me to serve others, but a question arises: why did God create others? To serve me?” That looks very unscientific: ”I am here to serve others and others are here to serve me. Why can’t I serve myself and you serve yourself? Because I will be able to take care of myself in a better way than anybody else can take care of me, and you will be able to take care of yourself better than I can ever take care of you.”

I teach self-service. And then, as a consequence, a totally different vision arises. The person who serves himself, enjoys himself, loves himself, respects himself, is BOUND to respect others.

Because, slowly slowly, he becomes aware that the same life exists in others – the same life. The more you love yourself, the more you become aware that you are not separate.

Only in love is union felt. The more you love yourself the more you merge and melt into your own being, the more you become orgasmic in your inner world, the more you see that all definitions are false, all demarcations are arbitrary, that you are not separate, that the universe is one.

That’s why we call it ’universe’ – ’uni’ means one. We don’t call it ’multiverse’. It is one, it is one whole. We are part of each other – no man is an island. We belong to an invisible but infinite continent. Boundless is our existence.

But those experiences happen only to people who are self-actualizing, who are in such tremendous love with themselves that they can close their eyes and be alone and be utterly blissful. That’s what meditation is all about.

Meditation means being ecstatic in your aloneness.

But when you become ecstatic in your

aloneness, soon the ecstasy is so much that you cannot contain it. It starts overflowing you. And when it starts overflowing you it becomes love. Meditation allows love to happen. And the people who have not known meditation will never know love. They may pretend that they love but they cannot. They will only pretend – because they don’t have anything to give, they are not overflowing.

Love is a sharing. But before you can share, you have to have it! Meditation should be the first thing.

Meditation is the center, love is the circumference of it. Meditation is the flame, love is the radiation of it. Meditation is the flower, love is the fragrance of it.

I teach meditation, because that is the only way to allow love to happen in your being. And when you start overflowing, you start relating with others, caring for others – service comes in your life as a shadow of meditation. It is not to be imposed upon you, it has not to be a duty.

’Duty’ is a four-letter, dirty word. Whenever you do something AS a duty, it is imposed, cultivated, phony. It is pseudo, it makes you a hypocrite.

A totally different quality arises in your being when you are overflowing and you cannot contain yourself. You HAVE to love, you have to share. And the beauty of sharing is that the more you give, the more you get. The more you empty yourself into love, the more you feel full.

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You ask me:

DO YOU PROPOSE THROUGH CHANGING HUMAN NATURE TO CHANGE

SOCIETY AND THE WORLD?

I don’t propose it. That’s how it can happen – the ONLY way it can happen. But that is not our goal.

When you kindle a light, darkness disappears of its own accord. You need not look for darkness with the light – to find out where it is and to force it to go out of the room – you need not do anything like that. If the light is there, darkness is not there.

If man is transformed, he becomes a light – unto himself first, and then for others too. That’s a natural consequence.

We live in the present, we live in meditation, we allow ourselves to be full of love so that it starts overflowing. But this whole thing is non-utopian. We are not searching for a utopia, we are not searching for a golden age to come in the world. Although the golden age can come only this way –

there is no other way. All other ways have failed.

Either meditation or suicide: these are the only alternatives left for human beings. Within these next twenty-five years, the last part of this century, either man has to become meditative, and out of meditation loving, or man has to commit universal suicide.

The second question

Question 2

I AM A PSYCHOANALYST, BUT LISTENING TO THE PATIENTS DAY IN, DAY OUT, IS DRIVING

ME CRAZY. WHAT SHOULD I DO?

IT’S NATURAL. Psychoanalysts commit suicide more than any other profession. The proportion is almost double. And psychoanalysts go mad more than any other profession – again the proportion is double. And the reason is that the psychoanalyst is not trained in meditation at all.

He is a so-called normal human being, as others are. And when he starts psychoanalyzing people he has to encounter not only the craziness of the other, the nonsense of the other, but the same nonsense in himself. The other provokes it, the presence of the other. And the rubbish that he pours out, the psychoanalyst has to listen to it. That whole nonsense goes into him, provokes his own nonsense, creates much fear in him, starts driving him crazy.

There is an ancient story:

A great king in Egypt went mad. All kinds of treatment were done, but everything failed. Physicians came from faraway places, but the king was slipping downhill more and more. Then somebody suggested, ”Forget about physicians and doctors – we should ask the advice of some sage.” So they went in search, found an ancient sage in a cave and asked him what to do.

The sage said, ”Just tell me a few things about the king – about his hobbies, the way he lives, the things that he eats....” And they told him. The sage said, ”Now it is enough. This will do.” Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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They had told him that the king was a great lover of chess, so the sage said, ”You find the greatest chess-player in the country and pay him whatsoever he asks, but he has to play chess with the mad king. And come after one year.”

The greatest chess-player was found. He was not very willing to play chess with a madman – chess in itself is very madden-ing, and then to play with a madman.... He asked too much money – he was hoping that that much money would not be given – but the people from the king immediately agreed, so there was no way to escape. The chess-player HAD to play chess with the mad king.

After one year, the same people went back to the cave. The sage asked, ”How are things?” They said, ”You did a miracle! The king is perfectly sane now. ” The sage said, ”That’s okay. Anything else?”

They said, ”Yes, there is one thing more: the chess-player has gone mad!” It is bound to happen – unless the psychoanalyst is rooted in deep meditation. That’s where psychoanalysis is missing something very important, absolutely important.

Psychoanalysis should be based in deep meditation. Every psychoanalyst, before he is certified, should go through long meditations, because the meditation will make you able to listen rightly. The meditation will help you to be so silent and quiet and cool and collected that you can listen to the madman and you can be helpful to him, yet he will not be able to disturb you. Otherwise, this is bound to happen. And the only way, experience, psychoanalysts know is...

I have heard:

A young man, a young psychoanalyst, asked one old colleague, ”You always look so happy, so cheerful. The whole day’s work, and such ugly work... I start getting tired with the second patient, and by the evening I am dead tired. But you never look tired. It is a nightmare to listen to others’

nightmares continuously.”

The old man laughed and he said, ”Who listens?”

This seems to be the only protection if you don’t know how to meditate. Then the psychoanalyst only pretends that he is listening.

Freud was very diplomatic about it. He managed the whole thing in such a way that the patient used to lie on the couch, and Freud would sit at the back so the patient could not see him – whether he was listening or not, had fallen asleep, or was dreaming or doing something else. The patient was Lying down and going through gibberish called ’free association’.

In fact, Freud was very much afraid of looking into people’s eyes; he was very phobic about it. He himself was a very ill person. He himself was not aware of anything like meditation or prayer; he had known nothing of deep communion with existence. He was constantly afraid – he was afraid to come close to the patient. He didn’t allow any intimacy between the therapist and the patient, no intimacy. Everything had to be just a professional relationship – which is not a relationship at all.

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But now Freudian barriers are slowly slowly breaking. Psychoanalysts are becoming more and more courageous; they are facing the patient, encountering the patient, looking into his eyes... and that is dangerous. Unless you start getting a deep-rootedness, a deep centering in your being, this is going to be dangerous. Looking into the eyes of a madman may be together but they cannot become one.

But if you pour water into water, it becomes one.

At this highest peak where all the seven centers meet, persons disappear, only energies remain, a play of energy, a play of consciousness. And the joy is constant, it is orgasmic. It is a spiritual communion. No meditation is needed for such a couple – because for such a couple love is meditation enough. It is a mystic phenomenon, it is transcendental. But it is very rare. Amongst millions and millions of people, once it will happen. It will be almost a chance meeting.

Below it, there is another meeting: six centers meeting. That too is rare. If the first is one percent, the second is only two percent. It is union, not unity. It is not a cosmic, mystical union, but still something very close to it – an aesthetic union, an artistic phenomenon, a poetic experience.

The first can be understood only by those who have known samadhi, satori. The second can be understood by poets, painters, dancers, musicians.

The third, lower than that, is the meeting of five centers. It is three percent possible. It is not even a union; it is duality. Two persons remain two, but still there is great harmony. The two function in harmony – as if two musical instruments are playing in harmony. The two remain two. There is no union, there is no unity. They are separate.

This is what Kahlil Gibran has described: ”Lovers should be like two pillars of a temple supporting the same roof, yet apart and separate.” This is a little lower than the aesthetic, artistic, musical experience. It is a moral experience – chaste, still beautiful.

The fourth is four centers meeting.

It has a four percent possibility.

Duality.

Harmony has

disappeared but there is great understanding still – great understanding about each... for example, Carl Gustav Jung, was so much afraid of death that if you talked about death, just talked about death, he would almost go into a tantrum. He wanted to see the mummies of old Egyptian kings and queens. Remember always: whenever you are afraid of something, you are also attracted towards it. Fear and attraction are two aspects of the same coin. But whenever he arranged, he planned, to go for a visit to Egypt, he would fall ill.

It happened SO many times that he simply became aware that he must be creating the illness. And the moment he cancelled the trip, the illness would disappear. The last time, he even WENT to the airport, but just at the airport he started vomiting, had to cancel the trip. And then he had to drop the whole idea forever.

Freud was very much afraid – he was even afraid of psychoanalysis. It is said that once he was travelling together with Carl Gustav Jung. Having nothing to do, Jung started psychoanalyzing Freud. Then there came a point when Jung was very close to touching the root neurosis of Freud, and Freud said, ”Just stop – no more talking about it!” He became so frightened; Jung said, ”What is the matter with you? Can’t you expose yourself?” And Freud said, ”No, I cannot expose more than this. If I expose more, I will lose all of my authority.” Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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For a moment Jung was silent, and then he said, ”You have lost it already. If you are so much afraid of being psychoanalyzed yourself, what kind of psychoanalyst are you?” And he was the father of psychoanalysis. He himself was never psychoanalyzed; he never allowed anybody to come that close. He was afraid really that if he came to know about his own unconscious he might never be the same man again.

That’s why we go on avoiding. But a psychoanalyst cannot avoid; hence your problem. You will have to learn to be so silent that rather than the neurotic assertions of the patient affecting you, your silence starts affecting the patient. You have to be more potential, you have to be more full of love and grace. And in fact, if you are full of love, that is therapy. that is healing. Love is a healing force.

The psychotherapist, the psychoanalyst, or other kinds of therapists of other persuasions –

existential therapists, or the people who follow Assagioli, psychosynthesis, or the people who follow group therapies – all the people who are involved in some way or other with the patient have to learn many things. Psychoanalysis is still in its very early childhood; it has to learn many things.

And the East can supply many things to the West, because the East has pondered over the mysteries of the mind for thousands of years. What Freud started in the West is a very ancient understanding in the East. From the very very ancient days of the Vedas we have been encountering the inner reality, we have been exploring the interiority of man, and some basic truths we have learnt.

One: that if you want to help the other you have to be in a higher state of consciousness, otherwise you will not be able to help the other. People who belong to the same level of consciousness cannot be of much help. And the danger is that rather than helping the other, the other may affect you so much, may disturb you so much, that you will lose your own balance. That is the difference between a guru and a psychotherapist.

A psychotherapist exists on the same level of consciousness as the patient; the guru, the Master, exists on a higher plane. He can pull you up from the mess you are drowning in. But he HAS to be on a higher plane, otherwise there is every possibility you may pull him into the same mess you are drowning in.

Once it happened:

I was sitting by the side of a river; a man started drowning. The moment I saw, I ran, but before I could reach and before I could jump into the river, another man jumped. And the man who jumped had forgotten completely that he knew nothing of swimming. Just seeing some man drowning, he forgot completely that he was not a swimmer. So I had to save two persons!

I told the man, ”You created more trouble rather than being a help. I had to save you first!” He said, ”I completely forgot.”

You ask me: I AM A PSYCHOANALYST, BUT LISTENING TO THE PATIENTS DAY IN, DAY OUT, IS DRIVING ME CRAZY.

DO YOU KNOW HOW TO SWIM? Otherwise, instead of one man being in trouble, there will be two men in trouble. You will have to learn to be so utterly quiet, so still, that your silence creates a milieu around you. That the moment the patient enters your silence, HE starts falling into a silence himself.

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That is real therapy – and that is the meaning of the Eastern word ’satsang’: communion with the Master. Just sitting by the side of the Master, things start happening. Nothing has to be said; just being in touch with a higher consciousness, your consciousness starts taking the challenge, starts rising to the occasion. Something is triggered in you.

The modern psychotherapist himself is ill. He is a professional; he knows all about illnesses, all about cures, but his consciousness belongs to the same realm as the patient’s consciousness. He is not a Master. In fact, the ancient meaning of the word ’patient’ is not really an ill person but a student. It comes from ’patience’.

Patience is required to learn. The patient, particularly the mental patient, has really to be a student.

He has to learn the ways of being whole. He does not know how to live a whole life – that is his illness. But how can you teach him if you are not living a whole life yourself? You have to be a Master, ONLY then will the patient be transformed into a student.

And then there are three stages of studentship. The first is the student, the second is the disciple, the third is the devotee.

The student learns only intellectually, he relates only on the plane of intellect – but that is the beginning. If he can relate with you intellectually, he will start feeling a trust in you. Then he can relate emotionally; that will make him a disciple. And when he can relate emotionally, then only will communion start happening.

The first is communication. When he is a student, he thinks of you as a teacher. When he becomes a disciple, he thinks of you as a Master. Now communion has started happening; now on the emotional level a relationship arises, a kind of love.

And Freud was very much afraid of this kind of love arising between the therapist and the patient.

He was so much afraid of it that he would not allow any intimacy; the relationship had to be utterly formal. The therapist had to keep himself very aloof, detached, far away. He had NOT to function as a human being; he had to function only as an expert. He had not to expose himself.

Then you will not be able to help much – only on the intellectual plane you may settle a few things; a few misunderstandings may be removed. But the real problem is emotional – information is not needed – the real problem is somewhere in the feelings. The patient needs a new way to feel, a new way to see, a new way to perceive. And that can happen only when the therapist allows himself to relate emotionally.

That is possible only if you are on such a high plane that you can relate emotionally and yet not get disturbed; otherwise your disturbance will disturb the patients rather than helping.

And the third and the highest state is that of a devotee. In that state the Master and the disciple are no more separate: union happens – not only communion but union, a kind of unity. That has been our way in the East. The seeker comes as a student, falls in love with the Master, becomes a disciple; and one day the love has matured, the Master and the disciple have met, really met. In that meeting, the devotee is born.

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Then the Master is no more a human being: the Master is thought to be a God. That’s why we have called Buddha ’Bhagwan’. It is not in the Christian sense of the word ’God’. It is in the sense that the devotee has come to a point where he can see that his Master only lives in the body but is not the body. Now he can see the transcendental energy of the Master. The Master represents God on the earth. The Master is a penetration of the beyond, of the unknown, into the known.

Psychotherapy will have to move on these lines. Unless psychotherapy becomes religion, this problem will remain.

Dick felt that he needed help with his problems and decided to go to a psychoanalyst. On the first appointment, the analyst told him to lie down on the couch and talk about whatever was bothering him. After a short while, the analyst told him he should go on talking and the tape-recorder would take it all down.

The analyst returned towards the end of the session and another appointment was made upon which the same scene was repeated. On the third session when the analyst departed, Dick, out of curiosity, looked out of the window and saw the analyst walking into the bar across the road.

At the next session, Dick appeared with a cassette and handed it to the analyst and said, ”I recorded my session at home, and now we can both go and have a drink.” The psychoanalyst has not only to be a professional person: he has to learn psychoanalysis not as a profession but as a vocation. It has to be his love, his creativity, his prayer. It has to be his offering to God, only then will he not be driven crazy by his patients. Otherwise, it is bound to happen, it is natural.

But remember one fundamental law: just as illnesses are infectious, so is health. If you live with ill people too long, you will become ill. Unless you have such health, such wholeness such integrity, that it is beyond all infections, that you are immune to infections, then only will you be able to help, and you will be able not to be disturbed by the patients.

This is possible. This is what we are trying to do here. My effort here is to transform therapists into Masters. Less than that won’t do.

The third question

Question 3

OSHO, THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE ENTER INTO YOUR THERAPY GROUPS TO TRANSCEND

THEIR LIMITATIONS AND BREAK THROUGH EMOTIONAL BARRIERS. WHAT GUARANTEE IS

THERE THAT THEY WILL NOT SUFFER PSYCHOLOGICAL DAMAGE?

Subhuti,

WHAT MORE PSYCHOLOGICAL DAMAGE CAN YOU SUFFER? You have suffered it already. That work has already been done. You cannot be more ill than you are; you cannot fall more than you have fallen – the society has done it already. We cannot damage you; it is impossible now.

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The damage has been done.

What we are trying to do here is to undo it. You have been conditioned – as a Hindu, as a Mohammedan, as a Jaina, as a Buddhist – this is the damage. You have been conditioned as an Indian, as a German, as an Italian – this is the damage. You have been forced to believe in things; you have been given all kinds of prejudices, superstitions. You have already been made schizophrenic; you have been cut into fragments. You have already been given the fever of ambition.

You have been told that life is competition, conflict, violence, that the only joy in life is success, that the only bliss in life is to have as much money as you can have, that you will be fulfilled only if you become a president of a country or a prime minister. What more damage...? All this is bullshit. And you are full of it – just look into yourself and you will see.

Each child is born as a pure mirror, with no conditionings, TABULA RASA, clean, like a sky without clouds, a mirror without dust. But we jump upon him – all the vested interests jump upon him. The priest immediately comes in to baptize the child. We cannot allow the child to grow as he is; we cannot give him freedom. We start manipulating him, distorting him. We start giving him ideas –

which are UTTERLY neurotic. And he is so helpless that he accepts them, he has to accept them.

By the time he becomes a little aware, the damage will have been done so totally that he will not even be able to imagine how he can get out of it. By that time he will have become so identified with it that he will think, ”This is what I am.” If somebody asks you, ”Who are you?” what is the answer? Ask yourself ”Who am I?” and what is the answer? And whatsoever answer comes will be the damage:

”I am a Hindu, I am a Mohammedan, I am an Indian, I am a brahmin, I am a communist, I am this, I am that....” You have been told all those things!

You are nothing of all those things. You are simply a pure witness, a consciousness, and nothing else. You come into the world as pure consciousness, but people start throwing rubbish, much rubbish, in you, and soon consciousness is lost and you become the content. That is the fall, the original sin: the change of the gestalt from consciousness to content.

What we are doing here is reversing the process:

changing the gestalt from content to

consciousness. That’s my whole work. That’s what sannyas is all about. How can this damage?

Snow White went to the doctor. ”Doctor,” she said, ”could you examine me and tell me if I am still a virgin?”

So she lay on the couch and the good doctor examined her. When he had finished, she said again,

”Well, doctor, am I still a virgin?”

”Well,” replied the doctor, ”it is very strange: you are technically still VIRGO INTACTO, but I can just detect seven small dents in it.”

Only technically are you human beings – only technically – otherwise there are seven million dents.

Your parents, your so-called society, your politicians, your priests, they have done a great job of messing you up.

Here, Subhuti, no psychological damage is possible, because we are not conditioning people – we are simply unconditioning them. We are not even reconditioning them; we are simply unconditioning Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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them. We are trying to help them to be utterly nude, psychologically nude. We are not giving them any ideology; we are taking away all the ideologies. We are trying to help them to be without any ideology – to live without any idea of how to live. To live! totally, but with no idea of how life should be lived.

I am not giving you a philosophy of life – I am taking all philosophies of life from you. And then pure life asserts itself. I am not giving you a goal that you have to achieve; I am taking away all the goals so that you need not think of the future, so that you can live in the present. I am NOT giving you any concept of perfection; I am not telling you that you have to be perfect – I am declaring that you ARE

perfect. Everybody is born perfect. Imperfection is a learned thing.

God is perfect, and out of God imperfection is not possible. We come perfect, we come with the signature of God. Out of perfection perfection comes. And then we are manipulated, pushed, pulled by human beings who have been pushed, pulled, manipulated by other human beings. And immediately our open sky starts closing, our windows, our doors are closed – we are no more available to existence. We become windowless.

And that is our misery.

The perfectionist is a neurotic. Anybody who wants to be perfect in any way will become neurotic.

Neurosis is based in the idea of perfection – because you can never be perfect. Why can you never be perfect? Because you already are it, so how can you ever be? If you start searching for something that you already have, you will never find it. If you are looking for your specs and the specs are on your nose, and you are looking through those same specs and searching, you will never find them, there is no possibility.

Perfection is our nature. That is my fundamental declaration to you: perfect we are. So we need not be in search of perfection. What I teach is: live your perfection as you are. How can I damage you?

Ideals damage. Goals damage. The very philosophy of perfection damages. I am taking away ALL

those things from you.

I am teaching you to live simply. To live with an idea is a very complicated living, it is cunning. To live simply, just like trees and birds....

Somebody asked Jesus, ”How should we live?”

And he looked in the eyes of the man and said, ”Don’t ask me – go and ask the trees, flowers, fish, fowl.”

What does he mean by this? He is saying: Look around! The rose is a rose, and the lotus is a lotus, and the peacock is a peacock, and the dove is a dove. The peacock is not trying to become the lion, and the lion is not trying to become an elephant, and the rose is not trying to become a lotus, and the lotus is not trying to become a rose... otherwise all would have been on the psychoanalyst’s couch. Nobody is trying to become anybody else – and that’s where our misery lies. You are trying to become somebody else.

Somebody is trying to become a Buddha, somebody is trying to become a Christ... now you will never be yourself. You will always remain in misery, in hell.

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Be just yourself, in your pure ordinariness. Don’t try to become extraordinary. Just be a radiant ordinariness, and you will find extraordinary happenings happening. You will find your ordinariness transforming itself into such euphoria, into such ecstasy.

You are not to become extraordinary – you are! You are not to become worthy – you are! You are not to become a saint... the whole existence is full of God. It is ALL godliness!

You have just to live naturally, spontaneously, consciously, moment-to-moment, without sacrificing the present for the future, without sacrificing today for tomorrow – because the tomorrow never comes.

And that is what has been damaging you – the tomorrow, the future, the idea that you have to be like Jesus or like Buddha. You cannot be! because God never repeats. He creates only unique individuals. He does not produce carbon copies; he produces only originals.

Thousands of years have passed, we have not seen another Krishna, another Buddha, another Christ – why? God never repeats. He is a REAL creator, he is creativity. It will be ugly to repeat.

That will mean he has become exhausted. God is inexhaustible creativity. And he has created you –

he has shown such respect towards you, he has loved you. In creating you he has already loved you.

Love yourself! The idea of becoming somebody else is based in self-hatred, in self-condemnation.

Subhuti, this may be the only place on the earth where you cannot suffer any psychological damage.

The fourth question

Question 4

OSHO, I HAVE BEEN HERE FOR A MONTH AND NOW I HAVE COME TO THE END OF MY

STAY HERE. I FEEL I HAVE MUCH TO THANK YOU FOR AND I DON’T WANT TO SLINK AWAY

WITHOUT SAYING GOODBYE AND WITHOUT ASKING AT LEAST FOR YOUR BLESSING.

MY EXPERIENCE OF YOU AND YOUR TEACHINGS SEEMS TO HAVE CRYSTALLIZED FOR ME

INTO A BASIC PARADOX: WHEN YOU TALK ABOUT LOVE AND PASSION AND INTENSITY OF

LIVING AND AUTHENTICITY, I FEEL A WARM GLOW OF RECOGNITION INSIDE – I FEEL THAT

IS TRUTH AS I HAVE SOMETIMES GLIMPSED IT AT MY PEAKS.

BUT WHEN YOU TALK OF DETACHMENT, ALOOFNESS, WATCHING, I FEEL COLD FEAR AND

DEADNESS INSIDE. I CANNOT GRASP THIS PARADOX. HOW CAN I FALL IN LOVE AND

REMAIN ALOOF? HOW CAN I LOSE MYSELF IN A BEAUTIFUL VIEW AND REMAIN DETACHED?

IF IT COMES TO THAT, HOW COULD I LOVE YOU AND REMAIN ALOOF?

I RECOGNIZE THAT WHAT YOU SAY ABOUT OSCILLATING HELPLESSLY BETWEEN HEAVEN

AND HELL, ECSTASY AND DESPAIR, IS TRUE OF MY LIFE. I SEE THAT THIS HELPLESSNESS

IS UNSATISFACTORY AND PAINFUL. BUT IF THE ALTERNATIVE IS A COLD, DETACHED

ALOOFNESS, THEN I FEEL I WOULD RATHER KEEP MY HEAVEN AND HELL, MY JOY AND

MY SORROW, AND FORGET ALL ABOUT ENLIGHTENMENT.

Richard Mitchley,

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THE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO UNDERSTAND IN LIFE IS that life IS a paradox; life exists through being paradoxical. Life is NOT logical: it is paradoxical. It exists between birth and death, it exists between night and day, it exists between hate and love, it exists between man and woman.

It exists between the positive electricity and the negative electricity, it exists between yin and yang, between Shiva and Shakti.

Just look around, look in, look out, and you will find the paradox everywhere.

If life was logical, then there would have been no paradox. But life is not logical and cannot be logical. Just think of a world where only love exists and no hate – then love will not be possible; it will disappear with hate. Think of a world where only darkness exists and no light, or light exists and no darkness... it is impossible. Where only birth exists and no death – it would have been very logical, but it would have been very boring too.

Life is dialectical, not logical. It is a movement between polarities. Those polarities are not really opposite, although they look opposite – they are complementaries also. Hate and love are not two things; in fact it is one thing: lovehate; it is one thing: birthdeath; it is one thing: daynight; it is one thing: manwoman. It is like the peaks of the Himalayas and the valleys: the peaks cannot exist without the valleys, and the valleys cannot exist without the peaks – they are both together.

And this paradox will be found on every plane, everywhere.

Now, you say: I WOULD RATHER KEEP MY HEAVEN AND HELL, MY JOY AND MY SORROW, AND FORGET ALL ABOUT ENLIGHTENMENT, IF THE ALTERNATIVE IS A COLD, DETACHED

ALOOFNESS.

I am not telling you that you have to choose a cold, detached life. I am telling you: passionate love and cool aloofness is the paradox. The same paradox that exists between birth and death, love and hate – it is the same paradox. Only the passionately involved man knows what cool aloofness is.

You will be surprised, because you have been told just the opposite up to now.

You have been told that Buddha is cool, detached, far away, that the worldly man is passionate and the saintly is dispassionate, that the worldly man lives a hot life and the monk moves into a monastery and lives a cold life. That has been so up to now – but both have remained lopsided.

The worldly man knows only one part of the polarity. That is HIS misery. He knows only heat; he does not know the soothing coolness of being a Buddha. And the monk knows only coldness and he does not know the euphoria, the ecstasy, the excitement, the tremendous celebration, of being in hot passion.

There is Zorba the Greek who knows what hot passion is, and there is our idea of the Buddha – I call it ’OUR idea of the Buddha’ – who knows only cool silence. We have divided the polarity, and because of this division the worldly man is not rich – because he is only half. And because of this, the religious man is not whole either, and without being whole he can never be holy, he knows only the other polarity. Both are miserable.

Go into the marketplace and see, and go into a monastery and see. You will find in the monastery immense misery, dullness, deadness, and you will see in the eyes of your monks stupidity and Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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nothing else, because when you live on one pole you lose sharpness, you lose variety, you lose richness.

My way of looking at things is: there is no need to choose. Remain choiceless and you will see the play of polarities. Both are your poles, both have to be lived. Yes, you have to be as deeply, intensely, authentically passionate as you have to become cool, silent, quiet. You have to love and you have to meditate. Meditation and love should not be divided; they should be like the valley and the peak – together.

The peak has beauties, the sunlit peak and the virgin snow, and in the morning it is all gold, and in the full moon it is all silver, and the purity of the air, and the closeness of the stars – you can almost whisper to them. But the valley is also beautiful – the darkness and its velvety texture, darkness and its infinity, darkness and its mystery, and the shade of the trees, and the sound of running water.

Both are beautiful.

I teach you not to choose but to accept both, and both will help each other to become more and more sharp. On one side is Zorba the Greek, on the other side is Gautam the Buddha – I teach you Zorba the Buddha. That’s why Zorbas are against me, because they cannot think of the Buddha.

Communists, materialists, are against me because they ask why I bring God in. And the so-called religious shankaracharyas and the popes, they are against me because they ask how I manage to bring love into the life of a religious man, how I dare to bring the body and its joys. Both are angry with me, because I say the path is from sex to superconsciousness. One would like that I should stop at sex; the other would like that I should not talk about sex – only about superconsciousness.

But I accept life in its whole spectrum. I accept life in its totality. You can accept only when you accept in totality; if you reject something that means you are trying to be wiser than God himself. He has not rejected it. Your mahatmas are trying to be wiser than God himself.

Life exists in polar opposites and exists beautifully.

If you love, you will be surprised that soon a great desire to be alone arises – out of love. Each lover feels it. And if you have not felt it then you have not loved, then your love is very lukewarm; it has not been really passionate. If it has been passionate, a great desire will arise to be alone to have one’s own space, to move inwards, to fall in, to disappear in – because love, when too passionate, tires, exhausts, empties you. And it is beautiful to empty yourself, but then you start feeling that you need nourishment. And from where will you get nourishment? You simply move inwards, you escape in, you close your eyes to the world, you simply forget all about others.... In those moments of inwardness energies accumulate, you are again feeling full and then too full, and out of that too-fullness, overflowing arises and you have to seek and search for somebody who is ready to share your energy, who is ready to share your song, who is ready to dance with you.

Out of aloneness, a great desire arises to be together. This is the rhythm.

I am not telling you to become cold, I am not telling you to choose aloofness and a detached life. I am telling you these are two parts. If you want to live your life in its multi-dimensionality – as matter, as spirit, as body, as soul, as love, as meditation, as outward exploration and inward journey – if you want to live life in its totality – the ingoing breath and the outgoing breath – you need not choose. If you choose you will die.

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That’s why in the marketplace you will find people who are dead, and in the monasteries people who are dead. Because a few have chosen only to exhale, and a few have chosen only to inhale.

The breath needs both; the breath becomes a perfect circle when you exhale deeply and out of that exhalation comes a deep inhalation; and when you inhale deeply, out of that inhalation comes a deep exhalation.

And remember: if your exhalation is not deep, your inhalation cannot be deep. If your inhalation is poor, your exhalation will be poor. They keep balancing each other. The deeper you go out, the deeper you will go in – and vice versa. I teach this unity.

Mitchley, you need not be worried. But you became worried because you thought that sometimes I am teaching love, and that feels good to you.... But let me tell you, let me be frank with you: you have not really known love yet. If you had known love, you would have understood the other pole also. By your own experience you would have understood that love creates a great need to be alone, and aloneness creates a great need to be together.

This is a truth which has to be taught to everybody. Lovers don’t know it so they feel guilty if they want to be alone. And if one wants to be alone, the other feels rejected. This is an utter misunderstanding.

If the husband says, ”Leave me alone tonight,” the wife feels rejected, she feels angry. It seems as if she is no more needed. That is not the case – they are misunderstanding the whole thing. And if one day the wife says, ”Leave me alone,” the husband is hurt very much; his male ego is hurt very much.

The moment you say to your lover or beloved, ”I want to be alone for a few days, I would like to go to the mountains for a a few weeks, alone,” the other cannot understand, because they have never been told the fundamental fact that love creates the desire to be alone. And if you don’t go into aloneness, your love will become flat; slowly slowly, it will be only a phony thing, it will lose all authenticity.

Accept life in its totality. To be in hot passion is good, and to be in cool compassion is also good.

And let them both be your wings; don’t cut one wing, otherwise you will never be able to go on that eternal flight – the flight from the alone to the alone. That’s what Plotinus has called it – the flight of the individual to the universal soul. You will need both the wings.

I teach you love, I teach you meditation – and I teach you a tremendous synthesis of both. And it is not that you HAVE to create the synthesis: the synthesis is natural; you have only not to disrupt it. Watch your own experiences, and whatsoever I am saying will be proved valid, because I am not talking ideology here, I am simply talking about facts.

A much-decorated Russian hero returned from duty on the Finnish front where he had performed valorous service. He had been up in the mountains for months on end in the dead of winter. This was his first furlough in a full year.

A reporter came to see him. With a twinkle in his eye, the reporter asked, ”Tell me, Captain Ivan Petrovich, what was the SECOND thing you did after being away from your wife for a full year?” Ivan answered without hesitation, ”The SECOND thing? Why, the second thing I did was take off my skis.”

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If you have been too long in the mountains, how can you take your skis off first?

A ship was coming into harbour after six months at sea. The women of the town had all come down to the quayside to welcome their returning husbands. One woman was waving to her husband perched forward in the bows of the ship and shouting to him, ”E.F! E.F!” He was shouting, ”F.F! F.F!”

”E.F! E.F!”

”F.F! F.F!”

A bystander turned to the woman and asked, ”What is all this E.F. F.F. business?” She replied, ”I am saying we should eat first.”

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8 January 1979 am in Buddha Hall

The first question

Question 1

OSHO, IS NO-MIND THE ULTIMATE PRAYER?

Prabuddha,

PRAYER IS NOT SOMETHING THAT CAN BE DONE. Prayer is not something that can be thought either. Prayer is a state of silent being, of utter silence. One simply is... then one is in prayer. If you do prayer, you miss the whole point. Doing remains on the circumference; doing cannot enter to the center of your being.

If you are saying your prayer, you again miss – because in saying it you are thinking of yourself as separate from God, you are relating to God as if he is separate from you. And that is the basic illusion: God is not separate from you.

Hence, prayer cannot be a dialogue between I and thou. I is thou – there is no possibility of any dialogue. The moment you say your prayer, you have accepted a hypothesis which is basically wrong – that God is there, far away from you, separate. You have reduced God to an object. And God is your very subjectivity, he is your very center.

The Upanishads say, ”TAT-TVAM-ASI: thou art that.” 149

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The only way to be in prayer is to be in utter silence. In that silence there is an overflowing of gratitude, but it is not verbalized. There is a tremendous thankfulness, but it is not said, it is not spoken. There is great love, but it is a pure presence.

Yes, Prabuddha, no-mind is the ultimate prayer. And it is the state of no-mind where prayer and meditation meet. Meditation takes you to the no-mind, prayer takes you to the no-mind. No-mind is the peak where the path of the mind and the path of the heart meet, where Zen and Sufism are one.

The path of Zen starts by dropping thoughts, becoming more and more alert to the thought process

– becoming so aware that in that awareness, in that heat of awareness, thoughts start evaporating and you are left in your total nudity and aloneness. That is the path of meditation; it works through the mind. It is against mind, it transcends mind, but the path goes through the mind.

The path of the lover, the devotee, the Sufi, goes directly through the heart. It simply leaves the mind aside; it doesn’t work on the mind at all, it works on the feelings. Feelings are silent, non-verbal –

you cannot communicate, you can only commune.

In Zen, thoughts are reduced. And as thoughts are reduced, your energy is released to become no-mind. In Sufism, feelings are strengthened, you pour your energy into feelings. As feelings gain more and more strength, thoughts disappear of their own accord.

But from both the ways you reach the shrine of no-mind. It is the ultimate in prayer and it is the ultimate in meditation. That is where the Sufi is a Zenist, and a Zen follower is a Sufi where Buddha and Bahauddin meet, where all the religions enter into the ocean of oneness.

Religions are like rivers: no-mind is the ocean. Come from anywhere, come from any direction, follow any path – but the day you come to the state of no-mind is the day of rejoicing. You have arrived home.

The second question

Question 2

OSHO, SINCE I HAVE BEEN HERE I COULD NOT STOP THINKING THAT ALL THESE

SANNYASINS ARE WITH YOU BECAUSE THEY CANNOT STAND ON THEIR OWN FEET. THEY

NEED AN OMNIPOTENT FATHER WHO MAKES ALL THE DECISIONS FOR THEM. THEN TODAY

I FELT A VERY STRONG SADNESS AND JOY WHEN I LISTENED TO YOU. WHAT IS GOING TO

HAPPEN? I AM AFRAID TO BECOME DEPENDENT ON YOU.

Margret,

THE IDEA OF BECOMING DEPENDENT, the desire to become dependent, AND the idea and the fear of becoming dependent, are the same; they are not different. If you are afraid of becoming dependent, that simply shows you are not yet independent.

The fear is a negative state. And the desire to become dependent, to find an omnipotent father, somebody to lean upon, is a positive desire. Both are the same; the positive and the negative make the whole.

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There are people who cannot stand on their own. They are not strong people, they have not yet attained their individuality. And there are people who are always afraid they may become dependent; they are not strong people either – they are also weak. Their fear shows their weakness.

The really independent person is capable of surrendering.

The REALLY strong person is capable of falling in love – because he knows that his individuality is intact, that there is no way he can ever lose it.

Margret, your fear shows that you don’t have your individuality yet – hence the fear. Otherwise, why should one be afraid? Remember, the individuality is your inner core: it cannot be taken away, nobody can take it away – not even God. It is your essential being: it cannot be taken away from you. And whatsoever can be taken away from you is not your essential being. One is very willing to give it, because it is burdensome; he wants to give that burden to somebody so that he can be relieved of responsibility. The other is very much afraid to give it.

Why is the other very much afraid to give it? The other is also feeling it as a burden, would like to give it – but there is great fear because of the idea that ”This is me. If it is gone, I am gone.” To be with a Master is to learn the secret that surrender brings you individuality. That is the paradox to be learnt, and that is a great liberation once you have learnt it.

Margret, have you ever been in love or not? If you have loved a person you will know: love will make you more alone than anything else in the world. Love will make you so utterly alone that you will be surprised – because you think in love you dissolve yourself. Certainly, all that is non-essential dissolves. But because the non-essential dissolves, the essential comes very clear and loud. And your aloneness is your essential being.

Lovers become individuals – only lovers become individuals. And to fall in love with a Master is the ultimate in love. The relationship between a disciple and a Master is a love relationship. It is eros at the very peak. It is the highest form of love, the purest form of love. All other loves have certain other motives in them; they are motivated. And because they have certain motives in them, they are not pure. They are impure, polluted. There is some desire lurking, hence they remain crawling on the earth.

To fall in love with a Buddha, with a Christ, is to start flying into the sky. The disciples soar upwards, they enter into the world of the second law, the law of power, the law of grace. They are freed from the law of necessity, cause and effect. They are freed from gravitation; they start levitating in a metaphoric way, in a symbolic way. Their life enters into a totally new territory.

But if the fear is there, that simply means you have never tasted love yet. And because you are afraid, whatsoever you think about others is going to be wrong. Out of fear you cannot see; fear clouds the eyes, perception, clarity.

And there are only two ways: life can either be lived as eros, love, or as phobos, fear. And those who live life as phobos are unfortunate, because they will never know what life is. Only those who live life as eros will be able to know the innermost mysteries of existence. But eros demands surrender.

In phobos no surrender is demanded.

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Margret, you are not yet an individual – otherwise you would have seen a totally different quality in my sannyasins. My sannyasins are not dependent on me, not at all. Certainly they are learning, certainly they are imbibing me, but they are not dependent at all. In fact, they love me because I am making them more and more independent. Their love goes on growing as they become independent, as they are freed from all kinds of conditioning. As I go on throwing them upon themselves, their love becomes deeper and deeper, their gratitude becomes deeper and deeper.

You can never be grateful to a person who makes you dependent – you will hate the person. That’s why children hate their parents. I am not a father figure. At the most I am just a friend. From your side, in the beginning, you may be in search of a father figure. And if you fall into my trap, sooner or later you will recognize that you have misunderstood the whole thing – but now it is too late.

I am not a father figure at all! I am here to destroy all kinds of slavery. And it is true that nobody likes slavery – even if you are forced into paradise, you will hate it. Just the idea of being forced is enough to create hatred.

It is not accidental that Friedrich Nietzsche declared that ”God is dead and man is free.” It was bound to happen – if Nietzsche had not declared it, somebody else would have declared it. After all, enough is enough. Twenty centuries of Christian conditioning created Friedrich Nietzsche; he is the outcome of Christianity. Twenty centuries of dependence on God and humanity accumulated so much hatred for God – it was bound to happen, it is very logical. It could have been predicted that man could not tolerate God any more. One has to be free.

Nietzsche simply declared what was in the unconscious of millions of people. He became the voice of this century. Nobody else represents this century as truly as Friedrich Nietzsche. He declared.

”God is dead.” And immediately the second declaration is, ”Now man is free.” That means God was a slavery, was a burden. God was crushing humanity, God was not allowing man to be himself. He had to die.

There is a beautiful parable in Nietzsche’s great work, THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA: A madman comes into the marketplace, starts looking here and there and searching with a lamp in the full light of the day. And people start laughing and they ask, ”What are you searching for? Are you mad or something? Why are you carrying a lit lamp in the daylight?” And he said, ”I am searching for God. Have you seen him? Has anybody seen him anywhere?” And people started laughing more. And the crowd started ridiculing the madman, and somebody asked, ”Is he a small child who has got lost? Who is this God? What do you mean by God?” And the crowd was laughing hilariously.

And the madman then threw the lamp on the ground. For a moment there was silence, and then he said, ”It seems you have not yet heard the news. God is dead! And one more thing: it is we who have murdered him. But it seems the news has not yet reached you – it takes time.” It is a tremendously significant, meaningful parable. Man has murdered God in the unconscious, and the news has not yet reached the conscious. Maybe the conscious is repressing the news, maybe the conscious is feeling guilty.

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Even when you rebel against your parents, you go far away from your parents, a deep guilt goes on lurking in your heart. And through that guilt your parents go on remaining great influences on you –

maybe in a negative way. Maybe your mother used to say, ”Cleanliness is next to God” – and now you are living AS dirtily as possible, and you have to live this way because you are rebelling against your mother. But this is not rebellion, this is simply reaction. Your mother is still immensely powerful over you; she is still deciding your lifestyle. Your dirtiness, your lousiness... she is still in control.

If you remain clean and you believe in your mother’s idea then she dominates you positively. If you go against her and start remaining unclean, again your mother is dominating you, in a negative way.

And you can find a thousand and one reasons for it, but those will not be really reasons – they will only be rationalizations.

You can say, ”Using soap hurts the skin. Using soap is unnatural – no animal uses it, and I am a natural being. Cleaning your teeth is not right because no animal does it. Too much cleaning of the teeth, and the toothpaste and the toothbrush, destroy the teeth.” You can find rationalizations – but if you look deep down in the unconscious, you will simply see it is your mother still telling you, ”Clean your teeth! And unless you clean your teeth you will not be given your breakfast.” And you are crying and cleaning your teeth.

That scene is still there somewhere in your unconscious. You may have become very educated, sophisticated, and you may talk great philosophy – but that is all rubbish. If you look deep down, it is only a reaction. Your mother remains immensely powerful over you, so does your father.

Now, Margret, you must have been very much dependent on your parents. This is a reaction: now you are afraid of falling in love, you are afraid of communing. You are constantly afraid that if you come very close to somebody you may disappear. You are not certain about yourself, you don’t trust yourself. You don’t know that your innermost core is always independent, that there is no way to take it.

But you are not aware of your inner core, you are aware only of your personality. And your personality is created by your parents, and it is rooted in phobia – in fear. And, certainly, out of fear a man can only die but cannot live.

Hence millions of people’s lives are nothing but slow suicide. They slowly slowly die. They never live

– because wherever life comes on their way they are afraid to lose themselves. They are not yet in such trust about their being that they can take the jump, that they can plunge into life and yet be able to come back – they are not certain about it. They cannot dive deep into any experience because –

who knows? – they may not be able to come back.

This is living your life out of fear. And when you live out of fear, you start thinking that everybody else is living out of fear – you project it on others too.

That’s why these beautiful people who are around me, yoU misunderstood them. They are not dependent on me. Sannyas is rebellion – it is not reaction, it is rebellion. It is living with a new understanding; it is living with your inner light.

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I am just a mirror to help you so that you can see your face in me, so that you can see your future in me, so that you can see your inner core reflected in me. I am just a mirror. Looking into the mirror, you don’t become dependent on the mirror – or do you? The mirror simply reflects you.

I have no idea to impose on you, I have no morality to teach you, I am not here to help you to create a character. Those are ALL ugly words: character, morality, ideology. Character means you live surrounded by an armour; character means you live out of the past, you don’t live in the present.

And the present is the only existence there is.

I teach you to live characterlessly – without any armour, without any past dominating you, without any ready-made answers. To live moment-to-moment – not out of character but out of consciousness, not out of a moral sense but out of awareness. And that is true morality and that is true character.

And you will be surprised – because I am calling characterlessness true character; amorality, true morality. But if you understand what I mean by awareness then there will be no trouble; it will be very simple. One lives spontaneously each moment fully aware of what one is doing. There is never any repentance for the past, there is never any guilt. I teach you a guiltless life – how can you become dependent on me? You may be grateful, but you are not dependent. You may be in love, but you are not dependent.

And remember, I don’t force you, even for your own good – because that is an old strategy, the old politics to dominate people. ”Force them, destroy them – for their own sake, for their own good.” But this is my fundamental understanding, that if you choose hell you will be happy there; and if you are forced into heaven, against your choice, you will be unhappy there.

It is always freedom that brings joy. Joy is the fragrance of freedom.

The Reverend Optimus Poke was an awful golfer. One day he shot a powerful drive from the green which disappeared into a large tree. The ball dropped down, then bounced and rolled towards the green; as if drawn by a magnet, it continued rolling two hundred yards towards the flag, and finally dropped right into the hole.

”Hole in one!” cried all the other golfers.

The Reverend Poke lifted his eyes towards heaven. ”Please, Father,” he whispered, ”I would rather do it myself.”

Nobody who has any sense, any intelligence, would like to be forced – even if that forcing brings great blessings.

I am not here to force you in any way, Margret.

You say: SINCE I HAVE BEEN HERE, I COULD NOT STOP THINKING THAT ALL THESE

SANNYASINS ARE WITH YOU BECAUSE THEY CANNOT STAND ON THEIR OWN FEET.

THEY ARE STANDING ON THEIR OWN FEET Just look again, watch my people again, not with a prejudiced mind. They listen to my advice, but they are not obliged to follow it. They listen silently Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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to whatsoever I am saying and whatsoever I am – but it is not a commandment, it is not an order. It is just simple advice; they are free to take it or not to take it. If they take it, they are responsible for taking it; if they don’t take it, they are responsible for not taking it.

I never ask anybody whether they are following what I am saying or not. I don’t give any details to you. You would like to be given a detailed program: when to get up, what to eat, what not to eat, when to go to sleep. You would like everything decided by me for you. In fact, that is the most baffling thing that my sannyasins have to encounter, that I don’t decide any details. I simply give a general vision. I share my vision with you, then you have to find out your own way. I don’t give you a map to follow. I simply share my light and then you are free with that light to move on any path.

This is a totally strange phenomenon, Margret. That’s why many people misunderstand – it is not you alone. Down the ages, the religious people have been giving detailed instructions to be followed absolutely. If you don’t follow, it is a sin and you will suffer in hell. If you follow, it is virtue and you will be rewarded in heaven.

To imitate, to follow, has been a virtue for centuries. And to be on your own has been a sin for centuries. This is a totally new phenomenon, this is something very new. I am not giving you any commandments, there are no ’shoulds’, no ’oughts’. I simply share my experience, then you are left alone. Then you have to choose – but it has always to be your own choice.

I teach my people to live out of eros, love, and not to live out of phobos. And it is good that your prejudice is dropping.

You say: THEN TODAY I FELT A VERY STRONG SADNESS AND JOY WHEN I LISTENED TO

YOU. WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN? I AM AFRAID TO BECOME DEPENDENT ON YOU.

You need not be afraid – even if you want to become dependent on me, I am not going to accept it. Because I know one thing: that you cannot make anybody dependent on you unless you also become dependent on him or on her. Dependence is not one-way traffic. The person you become dependent upon becomes dependent on you. Slavery is always mutual. And I don’t want to be a slave, I don’t want to be dependent on anybody. Hence I cannot in any way support you if you want to become dependent on me. It is not possible with me, it is impossible – because this truth is so fundamental that there are no exceptions to it.

You can watch your own life. If you become dependent on your wife, see, the wife has become dependent on you. If you become dependent on a friend, the friend has become dependent on you.

It is a double-edged sword.

If you want to be independent, you will need to help everybody else who is around you to be independent. That’s the only way to be independent. If the husband wants. to be independent, he has to help the wife to be independent. If the wife wants to be independent she has to help the husband to be independent.

That’s why I say the women’s liberation movement is a great boon to men. If the women REALLY

become independent, that will be the greatest thing that has EVER HAPPENED TO MEN – because the liberation of the woman will be the liberation of man.

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Those who are alert, they will help it to happen. The woman has to be freed, utterly freed, only then can man be free. This fundamental law has not been understood up to now. Man has tried to make the woman a slave, and he himself has become a slave in the process – in fact, more so.

It is very difficult to find a husband who is not henpecked – almost impossible. Why has this happened? Because you have reduced the woman to such slavery that she HAS to do the same to you. It is always the same that will happen to you. Life bounces back upon you; life echoes whatsoever you do, goes on falling on you.

If you love, love will flow from everywhere towards you. If you hate, hate will flow from everywhere towards you. If you create slavery around you – the wife is a slave and the children are slaves – then you will be a slave your whole life. You alone cannot be free. Freedom happens only in a certain milieu of freedom; it needs a certain atmosphere of freedom.

I am creating here an atmosphere of freedom. You cannot be dependent on me, even if you want to.

And deep down, Margret, there seems to be a desire in you to be dependent – hence the fear. You are afraid of your own unconscious.

You say: WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN? I AM AFRAID TO BECOME DEPENDENT ON YOU.

If you really want to become independent, really want to taste what independence is, then take a plunge into this commune – and experience how surrender can help you to become yourself.

Experience the greatest paradox of life – because that which can be surrendered is not you. And whatsoever you can surrender is not you, is a non-essential part of your being.

And when all non-essential parts have been dropped – and they are like mountains crushing you, and in those mountains the small diamond of your being is utterly lost – when all those mountains have disappeared you will see the crystal-clear light of your own inner diamond. For the first time you will see: in surrender you are born.

Surrender is a death, death of all that is non-essential, and a resurrection, a resurrection of all that is essential, authentic, true.

The third question

Question 3

I HAVE SPENT ALL MY LIFE TRYING TO MEET SOMEBODY WHO WILL REALLY LOVE ME AND

WHO WILL ACCEPT TO BE REALLY LOVED BY ME. ALL MY ATTEMPTS HAVE BEEN PAINFUL

FAILURES AND I FEEL UTTERLY DESPERATE AND REJECTED. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?

HOW CAN I FEEL THE LOVE INSIDE OF ME? HOW CAN I REALLY MEET AND LOVE MYSELF?

Ferrero,

THE FIRST STEP WENT WRONG And once the first step goes wrong, your whole journey goes wrong. You started searching for somebody who will really love you – that’s where you went wrong.

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The basic thing is to love yourself. If you love yourself you will find many many people who love you

– because a person who loves himself becomes lovely, lovable; he attains to a grace and dignity.

The person who does not love himself remains ugly – because if you DON’T love yourself, you hate.

There is no other choice; you can’t be just neutral.

Neutrality does not exist in life – either you are this or you are that. If you don’t love yourself, you hate yourself. And in that very hate you cripple yourself, you poison yourself – how can you expect somebody to love you? If even you are not willing to love yourself, who is going to love you?

Remember the famous statement of the Jewish mystic, Hillel: ”If you are NOT for yourself, then who is going to be for you?” And the other part of the statement is also beautiful: ”If you are ONLY for yourself, then what is the meaning of your life?” This is the polarity. You have to love yourself, that is your first obligation towards yourself. And the second thing is not to get lost in that self-love, otherwise your life will not have significance, it will not have meaning. When you are able to love yourself, then seek the other, then search for the other. And you will find! The whole earth is full of loving people, beautiful people. Just you were not beautiful, you were not flowing with love, you were not full of love; that’s why you could not find anybody to love you.

And that happens to many people – it is not only the case with you. Almost the majority suffers from the same problem. Everybody wants to be loved and nobody knows what love is, and nobody knows how to love himself.

Love is a great art! People learn how to paint, people learn how to play music; for years people practise playing music. Then slowly slowly they become capable of creating something beautiful.

Love is the GREATEST beauty and the greatest phenomenon, and you never learn it. Everybody thinks that by just being born, you are capable of love. That is nonsense. Life is an opportunity to learn what love is. The potential is there, but the potential has to be transmuted into the actual.

It is like everybody is potentially capable of swimming, but that does not mean that you know what swimming is – you will have to learn.

It may look paradoxical, but it is not. Meditate on this statement: One has to learn to be that which one is. Love is there! – unrefined, like a diamond just found from the mines.

The greatest diamond in the world is the Kohinoor. When it was found, for months the person who had found it was not aware that he had become the richest man on the earth. He gave the diamond to the children to play with, because he thought it only a beautiful stone, not even semi-precious.

The children played with it; for months it remained with the children. And then only was it discovered: it was discovered by someone who knew what diamonds are – a jeweller. Could not believe his eyes!

He had never seen such a big stone, such a big diamond – it is the biggest.

And then for centuries it has been refined and refined. Now it is only one third of the original weight.

But the more it has been refined and polished, cut and polished, the more and more valuable it has become. Now the weight is one third, but the value is millions of times more.

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That’s what happens to love too: love is a diamond – uncut, unpolished. You have to learn, and it is a great art. It is like playing music on your own heart. It is like learning a dance in your innermost soul – a dance of energy. And only when you are dancing with great energy, and your heart is full of songs, and your soul is a symphony, will you be able to find somebody to love you.

When you are capable of sharing your energy, you will find somebody to love you.

You say: I HAVE SPENT ALL MY LIFE TRYING TO MEET SOMEBODY WHO WILL REALLY LOVE

ME...

And what do you mean by ’really love me’? You must have an idea – that is the second thing that went wrong. You have some idea of what real love is. You must be a perfectionist, and in life nothing is perfect. That’s why things are beautiful! If in life things were perfect, life would have been utter boredom.

Bertrand Russell seems to be right when he says, ”I would not like to go to heaven if there is any heaven, because there you will find only perfect people, and life will be utterly boring.” Just think of living with perfect people... everybody is perfect. That means there will be no growth any more, no evolution; nothing new will ever happen now. The people who live in heaven, if there is any heaven, must be STUCK with each other, bored, utterly bored, and there is no way to go anywhere else. Once you enter into heaven, you cannot escape; there is no exit.

Perfection creates a neurotic mind; the very idea of perfection is neurosis-creating.

Now, you must have some idea of real love. What do you mean by ’real love’? Love is love! There is no unreal love and there is no real love – love is SIMPLY love. And love is enough unto itself; it need not be real, it need not be unreal. But people have ideas...

For example, somebody has the idea: if love is eternal then it is real – that means you are in search of a roseflower which will never fade, will never wither. You will not find it. Or, if you ever find it, it will be a plastic rose. It cannot be alive.

The alive flower is there in the morning, dancing with the wind, whispering with the sun, playing with the butterflies... all joy! By the evening it is gone. The petals have fallen.... And tomorrow you will not find even a trace of where it came from and where it has gone. It came from nowhere, and into nowhere it has disappeared. And it was an alive flower.

Now people have very stupid ideas about love. One is that it has to be eternal; that prevents them.

First they want to make everything sure – whether this love is going to stay? Now how can you be sure? Nobody can guarantee it; there is no insurance for it. Today it may be there, and tomorrow it may be gone. And when tomorrow it is gone, DON’T say it was unreal, otherwise you have misunderstood the whole point.

The real is CONSTANTLY changing. Only the unreal stays; the real goes on changing. Reality is growth, continuous growth, non-ending growth. If there is anything permanent in life and existence, it is change. Except change, everything changes.

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So don’t say when your love disappears that it was unreal. You have a criterion, a very nonsense criterion, that things have to be permanent to be real.

This idea has tortured millions of people down the ages. And millions of people could not love because of this foolish idea. And I am not saying that love HAS to disappear tomorrow – I am not saying that. It may disappear, it may not disappear. You have to be open about tomorrow.

There are roseflowers which may stay a little longer, and there are roseflowers which go very fast.

And then it depends on the gardeners, it depends tremendously on the gardeners – how you take care of it. It may stay a little while more. You need to have a green thumb, like Mukta. Mukta has a green thumb.

You have to be very alert; NOT serious – very playful but yet alert. Love is a delicate phenomenon, very delicate. It is difficult to create it; it is very easy to destroy it. It is a VERY delicate note – only a few guitar players can create it. It is a really delicate note. It is more silence than sound.

And if there is any sound in it, it is only to function as a backdrop for the silence, just to function as a contact.

You never learnt what love is – you never learnt how to love yourself. And you started expecting somebody who will REALLY love you, and will accept you. Have you accepted yourself? It is very rare to come across a person who really accepts himself. People go on improving upon themselves, doing this and that; they are never satisfied with themselves.

And that’s what you are being taught every day, from all the preachers of the world: Improve!

Improve! But the idea of improvement means: never accept yourself, never feel contented with yourself, never enjoy yourself – go on improving. So people become ladder-climbers. They know only one thing: how to go on climbing the ladder, and then when they reach the end of the ladder, they look very foolish and silly, because now the only art they know is how to go on climbing – and the ladder is finished. They don’t know anything else; they know only how to climb ladders. So they feel very stuck.

It always happens to people. Somebody has learnt how to accumulate wealth, and he goes on and on... and finally he has more than he had ever dreamt, and now he does not know what to do. He knows only one thing: how to accumulate.

Somebody goes on a power trip, becomes the prime minister of a country, and then he is stuck and looks very silly. Just look into the eyes of the successful politicians: they look very silly, stuck. The ladder is finished! They have become the prime minister or the president of the country; now there are no more rungs to the ladder. They know only one thing: how to go on climbing. They have climbed the whole ladder... now what to do? They are like dogs who run after every car, and when they overtake they look very foolish; then they don’t know what to do....

Then suddenly they have arrived! and their whole life they have been thinking of arriving. Now they have arrived; they look very puzzled. They can’t think a thing; their whole mind simply goes fuzzy, cloudy. Now the only thing that they do is to try to remain on this highest ladder – because there are other climbers who are coming and pulling their legs and doing all kinds of things. So they cling to their chairs.

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This happens to lovers too. You are in search of a beautiful woman or a beautiful man, and then one day you have found... and suddenly you are at a loss. You know only one art: how to search for a beautiful woman. You have searched... now there seems to be nothing else left.

Unless you know how to play on the inner heart the music whose name is love, the melody which is love, even if you find a beautiful person, nothing is going to happen. Immediately relationships turn sour; before the honeymoon ends, they are finished.

You say: I HAVE SPENT ALL MY LIFE TRYING TO MEET SOMEBODY WHO WILL REALLY LOVE

ME, AND WHO WILL ACCEPT TO BE REALLY LOVED BY ME.

FIRST ONE HAS TO LEARN TO ACCEPT ONESELF And don’t demand perfection in the other. Be human! Don’t ask for inhuman perfections. You have been given very romantic ideas about love, and that has been the calamity. You are looking for romantic, poetic ideas. People are not ideas of some dreamer, poet; people are REAL people. And you are living on poetry! You think of the other in such ways that nobody can fulfill; everybody will fall short.

And just think: you wanted somebody to accept your love – but did you accept somebody’s love?

No, you were looking for a perfect lover. But when you are looking for the perfect lover, remember the other is also looking for the perfect lover. You both have been conditioned by the same society.

I have heard, Ferrero, somebody just like you went to a Master and said, ”I have been looking for a perfect woman – my whole life.”

And the Master said, ”And did you find her or not?” The man looked very sad; he said, ”Yes, I did.”

”Then what happened?” the Master asked. ”Then why are you looking so sad?” And the man said, ”But she was looking for a perfect man.” You are conditioned by the same society, by the same romantic ideas. You have been fed on foolish poetry which has no relationship with reality. In fact, my own experience is this: that poets are the last people from whom you can learn about love – the last persons. Your so-called poets have nothing to do with love. They have not known love themselves; their poetry is simply a substitute for the love that has been missed by them; their poetry is their dreams, their poetry is NOT based on their experience.

And we have been fed continuously on this poetry.

My own experience of the poets is that they have become poets because they could not be lovers.

So whatsoever they could not do, they write about. Their poetry is really nothing but the dreams of people who are hungry. Just as if you go on a fast, in the night you will dream about delicious foods. Their poetry is nothing but the dreams of people who have never tasted love. And, naturally, to compensate they go on creating better and better dreams.

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Their poetry is sick, it is pornographic. It triggers your imagination, it gives you fantasies. And real people are real people! – nobody is here to fulfill your fantasies. Drop your fantasies, and you will see the world is FULL of beautiful people.

And if you want to be accepted, first accept yourself, and then accept somebody’s love. Fulfill these conditions – and you will be accepted. And don’t ask for the impossible.

You must have lived in a very negative mind; this is the mind of negativity. Be a little more positive.

A New England village once boasted of two characters – an official mean man who never did a good deed if it was possible to do a mean one, and an official optimist who never had been heard to speak evil of any human.

In the fullness of time the bad man died. On the day of his funeral the usual crowd gathered at the post office to await the distribution of the mail. Naturally, the life and works of the late lamented came under discussion.

The deceased was painted as a miser, a liar, a thief, a scandal-monger, and a backbiter. The optimist, who was present, listened in silence. At length one of the group turned to him.

”Say, Gid,” demanded the other man, ”ain’t everything we’ve said about that old scoundrel the truth?

Can you name one deserving trait he ever showed?”

”Well,” said the optimist, ”you boys will have to admit that he certainly could play a harmonica.” Be a little more positive and you will find something beautiful even in the meanest person. Be negative, and you will find something ugly even in the most beautiful person. Now, if you want to live in a world of ugly people, be negative, and you will make the whole world ugly. It is your mind that will create ugliness all around, because you will be looking only for the ugly, only for the negative, only for the wrong. You will live in hell – this is what hell is. The negative mind creates hell: the positive mind creates heaven. With the positive mind... THIS VERY EARTH THE PARADISE, THIS

VERY BODY THE BUDDHA.

It ALL depends on you, how you look, with what eyes you look.

The Yankee farmer was being examined by the doctors preparatory to taking out an insurance policy.

”Ever had a serious illness?” asked the examiner.

”No,” was the reply.

”Ever had an accident?”

”No.”

”Never had a single accident in your life?”

”Well, no, I ain’t . But last spring when I was out in the meadow, a bull tossed me over a fence.” Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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”Well, don’t you call that an accident?”

”No, I don’t. That damn bull did it on purpose.”

It depends on you how you look at life; it totally depends on you. You are the creator of your life. It can have tremendous meaning, beauty, joy – but you will have to create it in your heart, and you will have to spread it all over the place. You will have to create something in yourself, only then will you find it in existence.

Existence echoes you....

The fifth question

Question 4

OSHO, CAN I TRULY SURRENDER AND STILL BE A LIGHT UNTO MYSELF?

Deva Suli,

THAT is THE ONLY WAY TO BE A LIGHT UNTO YOURSELF to surrender. Life is paradoxical: day/night, birth/death, summer/winter, love/hate, and so on ad infinitum.

If a person thoroughly understands this, he will agree and not worry. In other words, he knows when he loves that soon he will hate; therefore, he will laugh when he is going uphill, and weep when he is going downhill. He will realize the paradox of life, that he cannot be perfect and he cannot be consistent either. Our idea is to be consistent and to have absolutely clear situations, but it is impossible – it is too one-sided, and we are not one-sided. We are infinite; we contain both the poles in our being, and both the poles have to be lived.

Hence, if you surrender you become a light unto yourself. If you become a light unto yourself, you become capable of surrendering.

It was constantly a question before Buddha – constantly, because he used to say to his people: Be a light unto yourself. That is his statement: APPO DIPO BHAVA – be a light unto yourself. That was his constant teaching, the undercurrent of all his teachings. And still he was teaching people surrender.

When people came to be initiated they would have to declare a triple surrender: BUDDHAM

SHARNAM GACHCHHAMI – I come, I surrender myself to Buddha’s feet; SANGHAM SHARNAM

GACHCHHAMI – I surrender to the commune of the sannyasins; DHAMMAM SHARNAM

GACHCHHAMI – I surrender to the fundamental law of life, LOGOS, TAO, DHAMMA.

These three surrenders would make a person a disciple – and Buddha’s whole teaching was: Be a light unto yourself. So he was asked again and again, ”There is a contradiction! On the one hand people surrender to you, on the other hand you go on saying to them: Be a light unto yourself.” And yet there is no contradiction – they are complementaries.

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This is how life works. Life is so vast that it CONTAINS contradictions, and yet those contradictions are not enemies, not opposites. They are complementaries and they help each other. In fact, without the one the other will not be possible.

Suli, surrender will help freedom, and freedom will make you capable of surrender. Don’t choose one, otherwise you will remain half. Never choose one pole, otherwise you will always remain half –

and to remain half is to remain split.

You have to be a whole, you have to be one piece. Always remember to choose the whole paradox, and then you will be at ease. Then great silence and great bliss will arise out of your totality. The total is musical, it is a symphony.

The sixth question

Question 5

OSHO, I HAVE HEARD SUFIS SAY THAT THERE IS NO GOD UNTIL YOU HAVE MET HIM. I FIND

IT A DRAMATIC AND APPEALING STATEMENT. IS THIS CONCEPT CONNECTED WITH THE

KIND OF AWARENESS WE ARE SEEKING? WILL YOU PLEASE ENLARGE ON IT?

Veerendra,

THE STATEMENT is DRAMATIC AND APPEALING but true too – not only dramatic and appealing.

It is utterly true, tremendously true: There is NO God until you have met him. How can there be a God? How can you believe if you have not known? All your beliefs will be false, they will be borrowed. And whenever something is borrowed, it is ugly – it falsifies you; it does not help, it hinders. It is not a help to your growth: it is a block.

Belief is a burden, it does not liberate. Truth liberates, but truth is not a belief – it is an experience.

How can you say God is if you have not known him?

Just because of this statement, Gurdjieff used to say another thing which is also true, and also VERY dramatic, even MORE dramatic than this statement. He used to say that you don’t have any soul – unless you have created it. This is even more dramatic, because all the religions have always believed that you have a soul, whether you know it or not. The soul is there in you – you have to discover it.

Gurdjieff said: ”There is no soul unless you have created it.” How can there be a soul unless you have known it? How can you say that you have a soul? You have to KNOW yourself first: only then you are. To be, you have to know first.

Hence the Socratic dictum: Know thyself – because only by knowing can you be yourself. There is no other way. It is just to deny belief that these statements have been made, so that you don’t start being contented with believing. You have to search on your own. Buddha may have found!

Mohammed may have found, Pythagoras may have found. But what does that have to do with you?

His vision, anybody’s vision, cannot be your vision.

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There are millions of people with eyes, and they all know light and all know colours, and they all know form and beauty – but even millions of people with eyes cannot help a blind man to know light. And in the world of truth it is just the opposite: one man has eyes and millions are blind. If millions of people who have eyes cannot help a single person who is blind to know about light, what to say when the situation is just the opposite? Once in a while a man becomes a Buddha or a Pythagoras, and millions and millions are blind about light, about God, about truth – how can one man’s experience become your experience?

You can believe! Belief is a way to avoid search. Belief is a way of escape. Belief is a way which helps the coward to remain always cowardly. Belief is really shrinking from going on the pilgrimage, from going into the exploration, of truth. The exploration is arduous, hazardous, dangerous. The journey may be long. And who knows? You are going into the unknown.... It is safer to believe.

That’s why people believe and nobody searches.

People go to the temples, to the priest, to the scriptures, they carry their Bibles – but nobody looks where God is. And God is all around, but your eyes are full of belief, hence you cannot see him. Your eyes are full of prejudice, hence you cannot see him. Only empty eyes can see him, can discover him – only the eyes of a child.

And remember, that at the deepest core of your being you still have those eyes of a child –

wondering, inquiring, full of the mystery of life, surprised at each and everything, surprised at ordinary things... pebbles on the shore, seashells on the shore. And the child starts collecting as if they are diamonds. For the child there is nothing ordinary; everything is extraordinary. That child has not died in you! It never dies. It has been only covered with knowledge, belief; it has been lost in words. Just search and you will find your childhood again in you.

And this will be far more important than it was when you were really a child, because now you have known the ways of the world and the ways of the mind and you are frustrated. You have seen a thousand and one things and nothing satisfies. You have known many things and yet you don’t know a thing. Now going back to your childhood, to the source of wonder, joy, mystery, and awe, you will again be able to look around... and then trees will be more green, and the songs of the birds will be more poetic, and the people around you will have auras – they have! just you cannot see. You yourself will become radiant in your own vision.

God is not a person: it is a vision of life in its utter radiance. God is not a person: it is an experience, a psychedelic experience of the beauty, of the tremendous, incredible beauty, of life.

Sufis are right when they say: There is no God until you have met him. So, please, don’t hide yourself behind a curtain of belief. Don’t hide yourself behind your so-called, borrowed knowledge.

Drop all beliefs, all knowledge, and start searching. Immediately, when you are empty, you will start being filled by something unknown... a light from the beyond. That is God. A love that goes on growing and starts overflowing – that is God. A great music is born in you, and a sharing with it. And it goes on growing and there is no end to it... that is God.

God is not a person but the experience of ultimate ecstasy, the orgasmic experience of dissolving oneself into the whole.

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We are living in a kind of unconsciousness. That’s why we cannot see. Our eyes are open and yet closed. We look awake, yet we are somnambulists.

A Scottish minister, taking his walk early in the morning, found one of his parishioners recumbent in a ditch.

”Where have ye been the night, Andrew?” asked the minister.

”Well, I dinna rightly ken,” answered the prostrate one, ”whether it was a funeral or a wedding – but whichever it was was a most extraordinary success.” Just watch yourself, and you will find yourself moving in a kind of drunkenness, unconscious. You don’t know what life is. You don’t know who you are. You don’t know from where, to where... and still you go on in a drunken state, just like a driftwood, accidental.

You will not find God this way. You will have to become alert, you will have to bring the quality of awareness to your whole life. Each moment has to be of tremendous attentiveness – only then will you be able to know what is. God means THAT WHICH IS.

But we go on moving, doing things...

A well-known physician, particularly expeditious in examining and prescribing for his patients, was sought out by an army man whom he ’polished off’ in almost less than no time. As the patient was leaving, he shook hands heartily with the doctor and said, ”I am especially glad to have you prescribe for me, because I have often heard my father, Colonel Blank, speak of you.

”What!” exclaimed the physician, ”are you old Torn’s son?”

”Certainly.”

”My dear fellow,” cried the doctor, ”throw that infernal prescription in the fire and sit down and tell me what is the matter with you.”

So the first time he had not heard, and he had prescribed. He had not listened. Now the prescription is infernal, and he says, ”Throw that infernal prescription in the fire and sit down and tell me what is the matter with you.”

But this how we go on acting. This is our life... Lived in a kind of sleep, with many many dreams in the eyes, lethargy all around, dullness, unintelligent. This is not the way to know God.

God is available only when you are at the peak of your intelligence, when you are as sharp as you can be. God is not for the stupid: God is only for the intelligent, because life becomes available only through intelligence. And remember, by ’intelligence’ I don’t mean intellectuality. Intellectuality is a camouflaged stupidity; intellectuality is just a deception of intelligence, it is phony. Your so-called intelligentsia has nothing to do with intelligence. Maybe they are people who are very clever, but not intelligent; cunning, but not intelligent.

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Intelligence means awareness, alertness. When you have cleaned all the dust from your mind, the dust of knowledge and belief, and your mind is just a pure mirror, that is intelligence. Meditation is intelligence.

The last question

Question 6

IS IT REALLY TRUE THAT SITTING SILENTLY, DOING NOTHING, THE SPRING COMES, AND

THE GRASS GROWS BY ITSELF?

IT IS REALLY TRUE It is my own experience. I say it as an eye-witness to it. I say it with absolute authority. I am not saying it because Lao Tzu has said it – I am saying it because I have known it, this way, to happen to me. Truth is something that happens of its own accord. All that is needed from your side, from your end, is receptivity, a relaxed receptivity.

There are things which happen through effort, and there are things which happen only through effortlessness. There are things which will never happen through effort, and there are things which will never happen through effortlessness. All that is mundane happens through effort; all that is worldly happens through effort. And all that is sacred, other-worldly, happens through effortlessness.

That which is outside you has to be reached through action, and that which is inside you has to be reached through inaction. And this statement is about the inner. I am not saying sit silently, doing nothing, the spring comes – and you become the richest man in the world. I am not saying that.

You will NOT become. You may become the poorest, but you cannot become the richest man in the world. I am not saying the spring comes and you become the President of America – that I am not saying. But God comes only when you are sitting silently, doing nothing.

I have heard a beautiful story:

Benson had been with prostitutes everywhere in the world, but in Hong Kong he met his undoing. He made love to a very sick Chinese whore and picked up so many venereal diseases that the doctors had difficulty separating and identifying them all.

He went to a prominent gynaecologist in the American quarter who examined him and shook his head. ”Bad news, Benson. You must have immediate surgery and we have got to cut your cock off.” Benson went into traumatic shock at the prognosis. Gathering himself together, he went across the street to another American doctor. There he was told the same thing.

He went out into the street in a daze. Stumbling along, he found himself in the Chinese quarter, where he saw a sign identifying the office of a Taoist Chinese surgeon.

Deciding to have one more medical opinion, Benson went in. He told the Chinese doctor that he had been to two American doctors and both of them wanted to perform immediate surgery to cut off his cock.

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The Chinese surgeon examined Benson. He consulted large medical books. Then he examined him again.

”Is there any hope, doc?” Benson asked plaintively.

”Sure is hope!” the doctor said. ”I make complete examination. I know just what is wrong. You play with Chinese girl, but she very sick. You make mistake and go to American doctor. Trouble with American doctors, they always think money, money, money.” Benson brightened up. ”You mean I don’t need surgery? My cock does not have to be cut off?”

”Forget what they say. Go home,” the Chinese doctor repeated. ”No surgery. Go home. Wait two, maybe three weeks. Pecker fall off all by himself.” There ARE things which happen of their own accord!

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CHAPTER 10

Known, Unknown, Unknowable

9 January 1979 am in Buddha Hall

The first question

Question 1

OSHO, WHICH IS THE REAL QUESTION?

Sudhir,

SCIENTIFIC QUESTIONS ARE ALL REAL, because they are answerable. Religious questions are all unreal because they are unanswerable.

Religion is the concern with the unanswerable. To ask a religious question is basically wrong – it is wrong because religion is the search for the mystery, not the search for the answer. Religion is diving deep into that which is basically unknowable – not only unknown but unknowable.

These three words have to be understood: the known, the unknown and the unknowable. The known is that which we have accumulated in the past – through experience, through experimentation.

Whatsoever answers we have forced nature to give to us, that has become the known. That’s what science is all about. And the remaining, for science, is only the unknown.

The basic hypothesis is this: that life is divided into only two categories – the known and the unknown. Sooner or later the category of the known will become bigger and bigger, more and more things will be known. And it is assumed by sCience that one day there will be only one category –

the known. The unknown will disappear because we would have discovered all the answers.

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It is here where religion differs. Religion says: There is a third category still – the unknowable, which will always remain there, the mysterious. Love cannot be reduced to knowledge, neither can beauty nor joy – what to say about God? Consciousness can never be reduced to the known. The ultimate will remain hovering beyond the known and the unknown. And it will go on calling forth those who have courage to go into the mysterious, into the uncharted.

Religion is the concern with the ultimate – the ultimate concern. Concern with the unanswerable, concern with the unknowable. So all questions, Sudhir, about religion are wrong. No religious question is authentic, cannot be.

And the function of the Master is not to answer you: his function is to destroy your questioning, slowly slowly, to help you to come to a state of non-questioning. That’s what trust is: the state of non-questioning, where no question exists at all. You are so silent that no questioning arises. You are deep in tune with reality then... and only then. When there is no question mark in your heart, the heart melts into the whole. The ego disappears with the question mark.

Do you know how the question mark arrived on the scene? It symbolizes the snake who seduced Eve to eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge. The question mark is just a symbolic snake. The moment Eve asked a question, she fell from grace. And she provoked the same questioning in Adam.

Man has fallen by questioning: man can rise back by non-questioning. Adam and Eve are expelled because they questioned. Christ enters back into the Garden because he surrenders, trusts. At the last moment on the cross he did hesitate a little bit; it is very human. I love Christ for that – it shows his humanity. For a moment, the questioning has come back – with great force, with great vengeance. Maybe the last layer of questioning was there hiding somewhere in his unconscious.

He asked God, ”Have you forsaken me?” This is a question. ”What are you doing to me?” This is a question. And the question essentially means doubt – a doubt has arisen in his mind. He is being crucified – it is very natural to feel that God has forsaken him: ”God has stopped his grace coming to me, God is no more with me. I am alone, left all alone.” But immediately he understood that this is the last question, the last doubt.

Seeing it, the last question disappeared, and immediately he said, ”Thy will be done, thy kingdom come.” This is trust. ”Thy will, not mine.” Now there can be no questioning. There is a tremendous surrender. Jesus transcended humanity in that moment. In that moment, Adam disappeared. In that moment, Jesus became a Buddha. And when there is no doubt and no question, and you are utterly silent, just a transparent silent lake, you start reflecting that which is. And God simply represents that which is.

I would like to remind you again: the ancient Hebrew word for God stands symbolically for that which is. ’G’ means that, ’O’ means which, ’D’ means is – that which is.

When the lake is silent, no waves, no ripples, the full moon reflects in all its beauty, in all its splendour. That is the religious consciousness. It is not after answers: it is after the experience of the mysterious. It is a totally different dimension from scientific questioning.

Science is a questioning, science is rooted in doubt. Religion is non-questioning, it is rooted in trust.

And to change the gestalt from doubting to trust is conversion. Not that when a Hindu becomes a Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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Christian it is conversion, no. Or when a Christian becomes a Hindu, no. This is not conversion. You are simply changing from one prison to another prison. When doubt disappears and trust arises, that is conversion, that is transformation.

The second question

Question 2

OSHO, WHAT IS YOUR IDEA OF TRUE EDUCTION?

THE EDUCATION THAT HAS EXISTED up to now has not been true. It has not served humanity; on the contrary, it has served the vested interests. It has served the past. The teacher has been an agent of the past. He functions as a mediator to give past beliefs, orientations, assumptions to the coming generation – to contaminate, to pollute the new consciousness that is arising on the horizon.

That’s why the teacher has been respected by all the societies. It serves the establishment. It reduces people to skillful robots, it reduces people to efficient machines. That’s what education has been up to now.

And because of education, man’s evolution has been very haphazard, zig-zag. But up to now there was no other way, because there was one thing in the past: knowledge grew SO slowly that it was almost the same for centuries. So the teacher was very very efficient in doing his job. Whatsoever was known was almost static; it was not growing.

But now there is a knowledge explosion. Things are changing so fast that the whole education system has become outdated, outmoded. It has to be dropped, and a totally new education system has to come into existence. Only now is it possible – up to now it was not possible.

You will have to understand what I mean by ’the knowledge explosion’. Imagine a clock face with sixty minutes on it. These sixty minutes represent three thousand years of human history; or each minute, fifty years; or each second, approximately one year. On this scale there were no significant media changes until about nine minutes ago. At that time the printing press came in. About three minutes ago, the telegraph, photograph, and the locomotive. Two minutes ago, the telephone, rotary press, motion pictures, automobile, airplane and radio. One minute ago, the talking picture.

Television has appeared in the last ten seconds, the computer in the last five, and the communication satellites in the last second. The laser beam appeared only a fraction of a second ago.

This is what some people call ’the knowledge explosion’. Change is not new; what is new is the DEGREE of change. And that makes all the difference, because at a certain point quantitative changes become qualitative changes.

If you heat water, up to ninety-nine point nine degrees it is still water – maybe hot, but still water. Just point one degree more is needed and the water starts evaporating, and there happens a qualitative change. Just a few seconds before, the water was visible, now it is invisible. Just a few seconds before, the water was flowing downwards, now it is rising upwards. It has transcended the pull of gravitation, it is no more under the law of gravitation.

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Remember, at a certain point the quantitative change becomes qualitative. And that’s what has happened. Change is not new, it is not news; change has always been happening. But the RATE of change is immensely new; it has not happened like this before.

The difference between a fatal and a therapeutic dose of strychnine is only a matter of degree –

that’s what Norbert Wiener says. The poison can function as a medicine in a smaller dose, but the same medicine will become fatal if you give a bigger dose. At a certain point it is no more medicine, it is poison.

Change is so tremendous now that the teacher cannot serve any more in the past style, education cannot serve any more in the past way. The past way was to help people to memorize. Education up to now has not been education in intelligence but only in memory, in remembrance. The past generation transferred all its knowledge to the new generation, and the new generation was to remember it. So people who had good memories were thought to be intelligent.

That is not necessarily so. There have been geniuses whose memory was almost nil. Albert Einstein didn’t have a good memory. There have been people whose memory was miraculous, but they had no intelligence at all.

Memory is a mechanical thing in your mind. Intelligence is the consciousness. Intelligence is part of your spirit, memory is part of your brain. Memory belongs to the body, intelligence belongs to you.

Intelligence has to be taught now, because change is so fast that memory won’t do. By the time you have memorized something it is already out of date. And that is what is happening: the education is failing, universities are failing, because they still go on persisting in the old way. They have learnt a trick; for three thousand years they have been doing this, and now they have learnt it so deeply that they don’t know what else they can do.

Now, just giving old information to the children, which will not make them capable of living in the future but will hamper their growth, is dangerous. Now they need intelligence to live with the fast change that is happening.

Just one hundred years ago, there were millions of people who had never gone outside of their town, or never went more than fifty miles away from their town. Millions lived in the same place for ever, from birth to death. Now everything is changing. In America the average person lives only three years in one place, and that is exactly the time limit for marriage too – three years. Then one starts changing one’s town, one’s job, one’s wife, one’s husband.

This is a totally new world that you are living in. And your education simply makes you walking encyclopaedias, but outdated. The difference is not new – what is new is the degree of change.

On our clock face about three minutes ago there developed a qualitative difference in the character of change: change changed.

We have to teach intelligence now, so that we can make the children capable of living with the new things which will be happening every day. Don’t burden them with that which is not going to be of any use in the future. The old generation has not to teach what it has learnt; the old generation has Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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to help the child to be more intelligent so that he can be capable of spontaneously responding to the new realities which will be coming. The old generation cannot even dream about them, what those realities will be.

Your children may be living on the moon; they will have a totally different atmosphere to live in. Your children may be living in the sky, because the earth is becoming too populated. Your children may have to live underground or under the sea. Nobody knows how your children will have to live. They may live only on tablets, vitamin pills... they will be living in a totally different world. So it is of no use just to go on giving them encyclopaedic knowledge from the past. We have to prepare them to face new realities.

We have to prepare them in awareness, in meditativeness. Then education will be true. Then it will not serve the past and the dead; it will serve the future. It will serve the living.

In my vision, to be true the education has to be subversive, rebellious. Up to now it has been orthodox, up to now it has been part of the establishment. True education has to teach things which NO other institution does. It has to become the anti-entropy business.

The state, the establishment and all the institutions of the society, all prevent growth – remember it. Why do they prevent growth? Because every growth brings challenge, and they are settled.

And who wants to be unsettled? Those who are in power would not like anything new to happen, because that will change the power balance. Those who are in power would not like any new thing to be released, because the new thing will make new people powerful. Each new knowledge brings new power into the world. And the older generation would not like to lose its grip, its domination.

Education has to serve revolution. But ordinarily it serves the government and the priest and the church. In a very subtle way, it prepares slaves – slaves for the state, slaves for the church. The real purpose of education should be to subvert outmoded attitudes, beliefs and assumptions which no more serve growth and man, and are positively harmful and suicidal.

An interviewer once asked Ernest Hemingway, ”Isn’t there any one essential ingredient you can identify which makes a great writer?”

Hemingway replied, ”Yes, there is. In order to be a great writer a person must have a built-in shockproof, crap detector.”

And that’s what my idea of true education is. The children should be trained, disciplined, so that they can detect crap. A really intelligent person is a crap detector. He immediately knows, the moment he says something, whether it is significant or just holy cowdung.

The evolution of human consciousness is nothing but a long history of struggle against the veneration of crap. People go on worshipping, venerating crap. Ninety-nine percent of their beliefs are just lies. Ninety-nine percent of their beliefs are anti-human, anti-life. Ninety-nine percent of their beliefs are so primitive, so barbarous, so utterly ignorant, that it is unbelievable how people go on believing in them.

The true education will help you to drop all nonsense – howsoever ancient, respectable, revered.

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teach you life-affirmation. It will teach you reverence for life and for nothing else. It will teach you how to be deeply in love with existence. It will not be only of the mind, it will be also of the heart.

It will also help you to become a no-mind. That is the dimension that is missing from education. It simply teaches you to become more and more entangled in mental concepts, lost in mind. M;nd is good, useful, but it is not your wholeness. There is heart too, which is in fact far more important than the mind – because the mind can create better technology, can give you better machines, better roads, better houses, but cannot make you a better man. It cannot make you more loving, more poetic, more graceful. It cannot give you the joy of life, the celebration. It cannot help you to become a song and a dance.

The true education has to teach you the ways of the heart too. And the true education has also to teach you the transcendental. Mind is for science, heart for art, poetry, music, and the transcendental for religion. Unless an education serves all these things, it is not true. And no educational system has yet done it.

It is not surprising that many young people are dropping out of your colleges, your universities –

because they can see it is all crap, they can see it is all stupid.

No other institution can do it, only education can do it: universities should sow the seeds of revolution. They should sow the seeds of mutation – because a NEW man has to arrive on the earth.

The first rays have already reached. The new man is arriving every day and we have to prepare the earth to receive him – and with the new man, a new humanity and a new world. And there is no other possibility except education to receive the new man, to prepare the ground for him. And if we cannot prepare the ground for him, we are doomed.

The experiments we are doing here are really an effort to create the new kind of university. The government is against it, the society is against it, the churches – Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian –

all are against it. The priests, the politicians, all are against it. The herd, the crowd mind is against it.

But this is natural; one should not be surprised about it. We are doing something subversive, we are doing something very rebellious. But this has to be done, and this has to be done all over the earth in many places. This experiment has to be done in every country. And only a few will take the challenge, but those few will be the heralds. Those few will declare the new age, the new man, the new humanity, the new earth: brave new world.

Walt Whitman has written:

When I heard the learn’d astronomer;

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me; When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide and measure them; When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick; Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself, In the mystical moist night air, and from time to time Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

The new education, the true education, has not only to teach you mathematics, history, geography, science; it also has to teach you the real morality: aesthetics. I call aesthetics the real morality: sensitivity to feel the beautiful, because God comes as beauty. In a roseflower or in a lotus, in the sunrise or in the sunset, in the stars, the birds singing in the early morning, or the dewdrops, a bird on the wing.... True education has to bring you closer and closer to nature because only by coming closer and closer to nature will you be coming closer and closer to God.

God is not separate from this world: God has become the world. You have heard it said again and again that God created the world. I say to you: God became the world. Now there is no other God except the world. The creator is in his creativity. God is just a creative force; he is creativity. Drop the idea that he is a creator. Think of him, contemplate on him, as creativity itself. He is spread all over:

Where two lovers meet, he is. And where your eyes see beauty, he is. And when you are simply overwhelmed by the starry night, he is. When you look deep into the eyes of a woman or a man, he is.

The true education will also be true religion.

Science is the lowest form of consciousness; art, higher than science; religion, the highest peak.

Religion is the philosophia PERENNIS – the perennial philosophy.

The third question

Question 3

OSHO, WHY IS GOD CALLED ’HE ’AND NOT SHE ’?

IT IS BECAUSE OF the whole stupid past of humanity – the whole chauvinistic past. Man has dominated, man has crushed the woman. And by crushing the woman, by destroying the woman, man has destroyed all grace from the earth.

It is not only the woman that has been destroyed – man has destroyed nature, because nature is woman. Man has destroyed the earth because the earth is woman. Man has destroyed ALL that is feminine! But beauty is feminine and love is feminine and celebration is feminine, music is feminine...

wherever you will find any grace it is bound to be feminine. Even when you look at the Buddha, he will look more feminine than masculine. Wherever truth arrives, it comes with great grace, with great beauty.

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But that’s how man has lived, and it is man who has created the religious books, it is man who has created the churches, and the ideologies and the theologies. Of course, he calls God ’he’. Of course he says, ”God created man in his own image” – not woman, but man. Woman is just a rib taken out of the man, a supplement, an appendant, just a later thought – because man was feeling so alone. He needed a woman to give him comfort, warmth, coziness. So woman was created only as a device to be exploited by man, but God created man in his own image and woman is just an afterthought. He had never planned woman in the beginning – an afterthought. Seeing man lonely, sad, he created woman to be exploited, to be used. It is a device.

Man has given these ugly ideas to the world. Up to now man has dominated the world, hence he calls God ’he’ – otherwise ’she’ would be far better because ’she’ contains ’he’, but ’he’ does not contain ’she’. ’She’ would be far better. But those who have known, they have neither used ’he’ nor have they used ’she’ – they have used ’it’, and that is the best.

In the East particularly, God is neither ’he’ nor ’she’ – he is Ardhanarishwar, half man, half woman.

And that’s why in the Indian scriptures he is called ’it’. He contains both and yet he is transcendental to both.

I also call God ’he’, but remember I am simply using a word that has become current. I can call him ’she’ but that will only create a little trouble. Or I can call him again and again ’he and she’, but that will make it look a little ugly. I go on calling him ’he’ because I have to use the language that is available. But remember, I have no respect for the male chauvinistic ideologies.

All the bishops and the cardinals were standing in a sacred silence around the dead Pope’s bed, when suddenly he tossed, stretched and opened his eyes.

Praising the Lord for the miracle, they eagerly questioned the Pope, ”So tell us, how is the Lord?”

”Well,” said the Pope, ”first of all she was black....” Not only she, but black too!

The fourth question

Question 4

OSHO, WHAT IS SURRENDER AND HOW TO DO IT TO GOD? PLEASE ELUCIDATE.

B. R. Agnihotri,

SURRENDER IS NOT SOMETHING THAT YOU CAN DO. If you do, it will be false and pseudo

– because the DOER will be there. And the doer has to be surrendered. What else is there to surrender? The idea of the doer and the idea of doing. The EGO has to be surrendered.

So this is the fundamental thing to be understood: you cannot do it, because if you do it you will remain behind it, and whatsoever you have done you can undo – because you are still there. One day you can surrender; another day you can say, ”No, I am not ready to surrender. I take it back. I resign. I withdraw.” And what can God do? He cannot go to any court.

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Surrender is not something that you can do – it happens. That is the first thing to be understood –

it is a happening not a doing. How does it happen? When you are silent it happens, because when you are silent you are not. You are nothing but the continuous procession of thoughts in you.

It is like if you take a burning torch in your hand and you move it fast in a circle you will see a fire circle. The fire circle is false, it doesn’t exist – there is only the torch. Stop moving it and there is only the torch. But it moves so fast that it creates an illusion of a circle. Exactly like that: your thoughts are moving so fast that they are creating the illusion of an ego. Let the thoughts slow down a little and you will be surprised: there is nobody inside you. And let the thoughts disappear and you have disappeared with them.

In that silence is surrender. THAT SILENCE IS SURRENDER! Not that you DO it, but that suddenly you are not. When you are not, surrender is.

You ask me, Agnihotri: WHAT IS SURRENDER AND HOW TO DO IT TO GOD?

YOU CANNOT do it, first. Second, surrender is disillusionment with the ego. It has nothing to do with God; it has something to do with the ego. If you start looking towards God you have taken a wrong step from the very beginning. What God will you look at? You don’t know any God. You cannot know God before you have become a surrender. Only in surrender is God known, so what God will you surrender to? It will be a Hindu God, or a Mohammedan God, or a Christian God – it will be just a belief, a hypothesis. And God is not hypothetical. God is a tremendous experience, not an impotent belief.

No idea of yours represents God, because no idea can represent the infinite, the eternal. All ideas are inadequate. Your God may have four heads, three heads, four hands, one thousand hands, but those are all just man’s imaginations – poetic, beautiful, but nothing to do with truth. God is not a person at all! Those who have known have known that he is not a person at all.

When you are in surrender, you will not know God – you will know godliness. The whole existence will be full of godliness, overflowing with godliness. But remember the word ’godliness’ – a quality, like fragrance surrounding the flower, but not something objective you can hold, cling to. Not anything objective that you can see.

God is not known as a person or as an object: God is known as an overflowing of joy, an overflowing of energy, and not objective energy but subjectivity. God is known as the innermost core of your nothingness, the very hub of the wheel of your nothingness.

When you disappear, God is – not as a person, not as an object, but as a totality. You are not separate from it: you are one with it.

You cannot surrender to God. If you surrender to God, what God? that must be borrowed. Your parents must have told you what temple to go to, how to pray, what words to use – Sanskrit, Hebrew, Arabic – what mantras – from the Veda, the Koran, the Talmud. Your parents must have told you!

And their parents told them, and so on and so forth.

You are just living with rumours, and those rumours have passed through so many ignorant people that those rumours have become utter lies. Even if you hear it from a Buddha, the moment he has Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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said anything and you have heard it, it is no more the same thing. He was saying something else, and you are BOUND TO hear something else. Even a Buddha, who knows the truth, cannot transfer it to you; it is untransferable. No verbal communication is possible.

So what about your parents and the priests? Those who have not even known, they are teaching you what God is. And you go on carrying those stupid ideas about God. And you go on trying to surrender. In the first place, those Gods are false; in the second place, surrender is not something to be done. And this is where millions of people are caught: a false God, and the idea that you have to surrender, that it is something you can do. Both are wrong. The God is false, and the doer is false.

Forget all about the Gods that you have heard of and look within, be more and more silent and quiet, cool and calm. And let thoughts be watched, become a witness to your thoughts. Slowly slowly, the more you become a witness, the more they slow down. This is a simple process. The more you are unconscious, the greater is the speed of thoughts; the more you are conscious, the more everything slows down.

And when everything slows down, you can start seeing the truth – that there is no ego, that it was a fire circle created by the fast moving torch. Now the torch is moving slowly you can see there is no circle, there is nobody inside. And to feel it, that there is nobody inside, a silent space....

You are the center of the cyclone. The cyclone is the mind. When you have seen the center, suddenly SURRENDER HAS HAPPENED. without any effort on your part. Because the ego is not found – that is surrender.

You ask me: WHAT IS SURRENDER?

To find in oneself that there is nobody is surrender. And in surrender, one finds God. Here the ego disappears, and immediately godliness appears all over. Then everything is divine, everything vibrates with godliness. Then life is utter benediction.

The fifth question

Question 5

WHY ARE YOU AGAINST CULTIVATING A MORAL CHARACTER?

FIRST TO CULTIVATE ANYTHING is to become pseudo. Cultivation means you will be creating something around yourself WHICH YOU ARE NOT. Cultivation means you will create a split, cultivation means you will create a facade. Cultivation means you will live in a camouflage: you will be one thing and you will pretend to be something else; you will do one thing and you will say another thing.

Cultivation means you will repress – that’s why I am against cultivation. Cultivation does not create true morality; it creates only ugly puritans. It creates only the so-called righteous; it creates people who are pretenders. It creates the attitude of holier-than-thou, that’s all. It gives a great ego satisfaction.

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And it also creates a prison. When you cultivate something, you are imprisoned in it, because deep down you are just the contrary. For example, you are violent – you can cultivate non-violence. What will be the result? On the surface there will be a thin layer of non-violence, only on the surface; it will not even be skin-deep. Scratch any non-violent man just a little bit and you will find violence arising.

Beware of non-violent people; they are the most dangerous people if you scratch them.

If you scratch a violent person he may not be so violent, because he does not carry a long long repressed violence in him; he does not accumulate. He explodes once in a while so there is no accumulation. But the non-violent person, the Gandhian, the so-called religious person, beware of him; he is a dangerous person. He is carrying great explosive forces in himself. Just a little scratch will prove to be a spark and he will explode; he can prove murderous, he can be very dangerous.

And when you create non-violence around yourself and inside you are boiling with violence, you live in a prison.

A newspaper was running a competition to discover the most high-principled, sober, well-behaved local inhabitant. Among the entries came one which read: ”I don’t smoke, touch intoxicants, or gamble. I am faithful to my wife and never look at other women. I am hard-working, quiet and obedient. I never go to the theater or the cinema. I go to bed early every night and rise at dawn. I attend chapel regularly every Sunday without fail. I have been like this for three years... but just wait till next spring when they let me out of here!”

Just look at your so-called moral people – they are living in a prison. And they all have to become diplomatic. They all have to have backdoors to their lives, otherwise they will go crazy. Cultivated morality arouses only two alternatives: one is to go mad – if the person is sincere he will go mad

– the other alternative is that he will be a hypocrite. And naturally people choose to be hypocrites rather than going mad, and I cannot condemn them either. That is more intelligent.

That’s why you see such hypocrites all over the place around the world. They are everywhere –

pretenders. You know them. They live a totally different life behind the walls. They have two lives: their real life is underground. They are living in such inner conflict that they cannot be happy. And the person who is not happy will not allow anybody else to be happy either. These people are sad, they have long faces; they are tense, they live in constant conflict and anguish, and they would like everybody to live like that. Naturally, they will condemn all joy, they will condemn all laughter. They will condemn EVERYTHING that is playful, that is fun. They will reduce you to utter seriousness, and seriousness is illness, it is pathological.

Life is available only to those who are playful. Life is not for the serious; for the serious is the grave.

Life is for those who are festive, who know how to celebrate.

I am against cultivating a moral character, because cultivating a moral character does not give you real morality. That’s why I am against it. The real morality has not to be cultivated: it comes as a shadow of being more aware. It is a consequence of consciousness.

If your conscience is not a consequence of your consciousness, then your conscience is ugly, dangerous, poisonous. Then your conscience is nothing but the policeman that the society has implanted in you. Then your conscience is nothing but your parental voice, the priests shouting inside you, ”Don’t do this – do that!” You are not free, you are not a free man: you are controlled from within – a very subtle strategy to control humanity. That’s what your so-called conscience is.

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The real conscience does not come from the outside: it wells up within you; it is part of your consciousness. I don’t say cultivate morality: I say become more conscious – and you will be moral. But that morality will have a totally different flavour to it. It will be spontaneous; it will not be ready-made. It will be moment-to-moment alive, flowing, changing. It will reflect all the colours of life. It will be appropriate to the moment; it will be responsible. You will respond to the situation with full awareness – not because Moses has said to do it, not because Jesus has said to follow it, but because your own God inside feels this is the way to respond. Then you are functioning from the very source of consciousness, and that is true morality. It has not to be cultivated. The cultivated means the false.

That’s why I say the real man of character has no character.

The real man of character is

characterless. The real man of character cannot afford to have a character, because the character means that which you have learnt in the past; character means the past. And you have to respond to the present moment. Your character will come between you and the present. It will force you to behave according to the past pattern, and when you behave according to the past pattern you are never appropriate.

So your so-called moral people are never appropriate, they cannot be. They miss the moment. They function out of the past so they cannot relate to the present. And there is only one life, ONLY one life: to relate to the present.

I think that what we are observing is a very subtle phenomenon, a subtle approach. It may be as successful as a college friend I once knew. He met a girl at a football game, and they hit it off so well that he took her to a show. That went fine, so he asked her to dinner. They enjoyed a leisurely dinner at a good hotel and followed that with a night club and dancing.

Along toward midnight, they were having a snack at a table for two and he said to her, ”You know, I have had a wonderful time ever since I met you this afternoon. I think we have hit it off swell together, don’t you?”

”Sure,” she agreed. ”I have enjoyed it too.”

”I would like to have breakfast with you in the morning.” And he looked at her eagerly, ”May I?”

”Yes,” she answered, ”I would like that very much.”

”All right, what will I do: call you or nudge you?” These are the roundabout ways, diplomatic ways. The so-called moral people cannot go direct in anything; they always go roundabout. They always have to be cautious, because they have to keep their masks; they cannot drop their masks. And one lie leads into another ad infinitum, and slowly slowly a person becomes just a bundle of lies.

The true man of character is authentic, is whatsoever he is. He is utterly nude, naked; he is not hiding. I would like the new humanity to be of those who are brave. Long we have lived like cowards; long long, we have suffered like cowards. It is time now to come into the open, under the sun – to be sincere, to be authentic, to be whatsoever you are. There is NO need to hide, because every other human being is just like you. There are neither saints nor sinners but only human beings.

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The whole dichotomy of the saints and the sinners is the by-product of the cultivated character. And you will be surprised that sinners are more innocent than your so-called saints. You will see in the eyes of sinners more the quality of childlikeness, more sincerity, more innocence, more truth, than you will ever find in the eyes of your so-called saints. Their eyes will be cunning – they have to be because cultivation brings cunningness.

I would like a totally different humanity in the world, where saints and sinners have disappeared, where there are only authentic people, open to the wind, open to the rain, open to the sun... open!

This will be hated by the society very much. This will be a great problem for the society, because the open person immediately makes you uneasy if you are closed, because the open person immediately hits at the very root of your being. The open person immediately makes you feel inferior, ugly, false. The open person immediately makes you feel unintelligent, stupid.

That’s why Socrates is poisoned – an open person. Not a saint, but a man of tremendous awareness.

A sage not a saint. Jesus is crucified – a sage not a saint – because he was not fulfilling the expectations of the society. He was moving with thieves – now saints don’t move with thieves. He was moving with socially condemned people: gamblers, drunkards, prostitutes. He was at ease with humanity at large, with everybody. This was not tolerable. The rabbis, the saints of those days, the moralistic people, the puritans, could not tolerate it. He HAD to be crucified.

This has been happening down the ages. Now this has to be stopped! You have crucified enough.

And now we have to explode in such a tidal wave on the earth that even if they crucify, they cannot find so many crosses. One Jesus can be crucified, one Socrates can be poisoned....

My effort is to create so many open people that it becomes almost impossible to crucify and to poison them. To give the quality of openness, simpleness, innocence, to SO many people – only then can the quality of this rotten society be changed, can it be made alive. It is dull, dead. Life no more circulates in its veins.

I am against the cultivated moral character because it is neither moral nor healthy. I am against character because character creates only an armour around you; it is a defence measure, it does not allow you to be open. And a person who is not open lives in a grave.

And NATURALLY he becomes cunning.

A man walks into a bar in New York City with a parrot on his shoulder and says, ”Anyone who can guess the weight of this bird gets a blow job.”

One very large, rough looking customer, sitting with a group of friends, decides to toy with this man and proceeds to yell, ”That bird weighs two hundred and fifty pounds.” First man: ”Oh, we have a winner already!”

People become cunning. They can’t say what they want. They can’t be true; they are always hiding, playing games, deceiving others and deceiving themselves. This is not the true way to live this tremendously beautiful life. This is not the way to appreciate this gift from God. One should live Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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authentically. Authenticity is morality – and by ’authenticity’ I don’t mean following somebody else’s commandments but living according to your own light.

Be a light unto yourself, that’s all. That is my only message, and it will bring character and a character which will not be a prison. It will bring morality, and a morality which will not be hypocrisy. And it will bring a totally new kind of life to you: responsible, alive, innocent, playful... it will open the doors of the mysterious to you.

And if you ARE authentic, available, then God showers on you from all directions. It will bring great benediction to you – not the cultivated character but the uncultivated, spontaneous consciousness.

The sixth question

Question 6

WHY DO YOU THINK THAT THE POLITICIANS ARE STUPID?

DON’T THINK: THEY ARE You can look at the world, you can look at the history, and you will find proofs in abundance. What they have done to man, just watch it, what they continuously go on doing. Just LOOK at their games.

Scientifically, the earth has to be one now – scientifically it is one. Nations should not exist any more.

It is because of the existence of nations that seventy percent of man’s energy, seventy percent of man’s creativity, goes into war and becomes destructive.

Just think of a world where no war exists. It will be utterly affluent. If that seventy percent energy is released in creativity nobody will be poor, nobody will be in a state of starvation, nobody need be ill. It is because of your politicians that nations go on existing. And because of nations, the world remains helpless.

There are countries, when they grow too much wheat they have to drown it in the ocean. And on the other hand, people are starving, dying. What kind of world is this? There are countries which have been using wheat as coal in the railway trains. And people are dying! What kind of world is this?

What kind of people are managing this world?

In three thousand years, five thousand wars – it seems as if we are here only to fight, only to destroy each other. And so much energy is put into war efforts; if that energy is allowed to be creative we can make a paradise now.

Now science has made it feasible, practical – it is no more a utopia. Paradise CAN happen on the earth; people can live in absolute affluence. And when a society lives in affluence it naturally becomes religious – because whenever you have seen all that the outer can give, a natural desire, a longing arises to explore the inner.

People continuously ask me why Indians don’t come here. The reason is simple: they are not interested in the inner. They cannot yet AFFORD to be interested in the inner, they are so poor. Their whole life consists in searching for food, employment – how can they be interested in meditation?

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Meditation is the ultimate in luxury, remember it. It is the last luxury. When all else is fulfilled, one starts thinking of meditation. When the outer is explored and known and finished, a chapter closes.

Then you turn in. If the outer is still there, unknown, you cannot turn in.

You cannot become a Buddha, because you are not yet finished with, tired of the outer. You are tremendously interested in it. Just think of a hungry man: if you talk about meditation to him, it will be just insulting him. It will be humiliating him. He is hungry, he needs bread – and you say to him,

”Man cannot live by bread alone”? He will kill you! He needs bread, and you talk about God?

The East is turning communist every day for a simple reason: because unless the East becomes rich there is no other way – it has to become communist.

Marx was absolutely wrong in prophesying that the richest country would become communist first.

The poorest country can become communist first. Russia was one of the poorest countries, China is again one of the poorest countries. Now the third number is India. Marx’s whole logic failed. He was thinking the richer a country is, the more possibility there is of conflict between the poor and the rich.

But he was not aware that when the whole society becomes richer, the poor is no longer poor either.

He goes on becoming richer and richer. In fact the poor man of America is far richer than the rich man of India. He has better medical care, better housing, better cars, radio, television. Even the richest is poor compared to him – the richest in India is poorer. He is still hankering.

People ask me why Indians are not here. They cannot be here because we are REALLY interested in meditation. They go to Satya Sai Baba because meditation is not the question there – miracles are happening. They can hope. They are ill: maybe Satya Sai Baba, by his miracle, can take their illness away. Maybe they are unemployed: by his blessing they will be employed. They are poor: by his blessing they will become rich. They go to Satya Sai Baba – he deals in things which they need.

And they are really surprised when Swiss-made watches appear out of nowhere. That is their real object – they want Swiss-made watches.

Stupid people, and stupid are their saints. Now a saint playing games, magic games, ordinary magic games! We have sannyasins – Avinash can do it, Sarvesh can do it – just small games, of no value at all, of no religious value at all. Maybe entertaining.

But here we are interested in meditation, in the inner journey. Hence people are coming from the faraway corners of the world – but not the Indian masses. Yes, a few chosen Indians come – those who are interested in exploring the inner – but only a chosen few. Those who are really intelligent and want to get rid of all kinds of stupidities, they come. But the masses cannot be interested; they will not understand what is happening here.

So in the masses, thousands of rumours about me go on spreading. And the yellow newspapers, they go on circulating all kinds of lies. Or even sometimes when they print the truth, they give it such a colour and such an interpretation that it becomes a lie.

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CAN be fulfilled, but nations have to disappear, boundaries have to disappear. Now politicians won’t allow that – because with the boundaries, they will disappear. They can exist only with nations. They can exist only if the people are kept in terribly bad conditions.

You will be surprised... you can see it happening in Iran. In fact the emperor of Iran has worked hard to make the country rich, educated, cultured. And because he has succeeded, he is in trouble. Now people are rich, now people are educated, now people have ambitions. Now the politicians want to capture the country. The emperor cannot exist for long. He must be crying and weeping, because what is happening is his own doing.

It happened once, the king of Ethiopia was told by a group of scientists visiting his country, ”We can improve the health of your people. The basic problem with your people is that they are drinking dirty water. That’s why they are ill, lethargic, no energy. This can be changed very easily – just purer water has to be made available.”

And do you know what the king of Ethiopia said? He said, ”Then after that, revolution. I don’t want anything to do with it. Let them be as they are.” And in a way he is telling a truth. If people remain poor and starved, they cannot be revolutionaries.

They cannot hope for better things, they cannot be ambitious for better things. The politician exists there only because people are in such a terrible state that they cannot do anything to fight with the politician; otherwise they will throw him away.

Once a country starts becoming a little richer, then people start becoming aware of many things they have never been aware of. When people are poor they think of fate, past karma. When they start becoming richer they forget all about fate and past karma – they know that they are being exploited, they know that they are being KEPT poor. They become angry, they become rebellious.

No politician wants the country to be really rich – although they say that the country should be rich, but that is only talk. They don’t want the country to be rich, they don’t want the country to be educated, they don’t want people to think on their own. They don’t want people to be REALLY

religious; they want them to be Hindus and Christians and Mohammedans, but not really religious –

because to be really religious means to be revolutionary. They don’t want people to think at all, so they can go on and on living in slavery, not able to think of better things, of better possibilities.

You ask me: WHY DO YOU THINK THAT THE POLITICIANS ARE STUPID?

They are – because they are keeping the whole world in stupidity. They are not only stupid, they are stupidly cunning. And remember, only stupid people are cunning. You may not have thought of it that way. An intelligent person is never cunning; intelligence is enough, he need not have any cunningness. The stupid person has to substitute for his intelligence; he has to become cunning.

And the politicians are hungry, hungry for power – power-mad. Their only joy is to dominate. They talk about service only to dominate people.

You will have to see deeply into all these things. If man is made aware of all these things, within these coming twenty-five years the earth can be a totally new phenomenon.

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e. e. cummings has said: ”A politician is an arse upon which everyone has sat except a man.” And that is true: the politician is not yet man – barbarous. The desire to dominate others is ugly; it is violence, pure violence and nothing else. To reduce people to slaves is the greatest violence possible. And that is the desire of every politician: to dominate, to dominate absolutely.

Once a politician is in power, he becomes a totalitarian, he becomes dictatorial. He talks about democracy, but behind the democracy is dictatorship. It is always so. When the politician is not in power he is democratic; when he is in power all democracy disappears. It remains a mask, and all kinds of ugly desires start coming to the surface.

Politicians are stupid, and people allow them because PEOPLE are stupid. Spread intelligence into people, spread thinking into people. Make people more aware of what is happening to their life – it is THEIR life, and they have to do something about A politician had to stop his car right in front of a mental institution, because it broke down . For a very long time he fiddled around with it, trying this and that, but he couldn’t get his car to work. When he was ready to give up, a man came out from the hospital, took a look at what he was doing, and then just moved one screw, and the car started.

The politician was quite surprised. ”I thought you were mad,” he said.

”Yes, of course I am mad,” answered the other. ”But I am not stupid!” Politician: Tell me, how do you know when a person is insane? Psychiatrist: Well, firstly I ask them questions that an average person can answer easily. For example: If Captain Cook made five trips around the world and was killed on one of them, which one was it?

Politician: Er... well.... Couldn’t you ask me a question on another subject? I’m not very good at history.

I’m not saying they are stupid – they ARE. I’m simply stating a fact. And my fact is so simple, you can find millions of proofs for it on your own. I need not give you proofs, the whole history is a proof.

Every day newspapers bring thousands of proofs. The state of the world, this hell that we are living in, is the proof.

The last question

Question 7

OSHO, IS IT ALWAYS WRONG TO THINK LOGICALLY?

NOT ALWAYS If you are a scientist you have to think Logically; there is no other way to think. You have to move logically, step by step. That is the only way to deal with the objective world. I am not against logic.

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all the processes – then to be illogical is the way, to be non-questioning is the method. Trust is the whole process, the whole procedure.

These are two dimensions of your being: outgoing, ingoing. When you are going outwards, it is one kind of movement; when you are going inwards, the road is the same but it is a totally different kind of movement – your direction is opposite. When you are going closer to the object you have to be logical; when you are coming closer to yourself, you have to transcend logic.

And reality is both: objective and subjective. So the whole man will be logical when he is dealing with objects, when he is working in the lab, when he is a mathematician or a biologist or a chemist or a physicist or a physician – he will be utterly logical. But logic will not be his only way of life. When he comes out of the lab, with his children, with his wife, with the friends, he will not be logical – he will be loving. Logic knows no love. And when he is sitting in prayer or meditating, he will forget all about questioning. He will fall into a deep trust with existence.

The real man is capable of both. Up to now there have existed only half men. One who is logical becomes incapable of going into the direction which is not logical; he is obsessed with logic. Then he is not using logic, he is obsessed with logic; then he is not the master, logic has become the master. He is encaged. He will remain half. He will miss the other half which is very valuable, immensely valuable – more valuable than the logical because it is inner. He will not know anything of his subjectivity: he will not know who he is.

And not knowing yourself, whatsoever you know is not much use. Self-knowledge is the foundation of all true wisdom.

And there have been people who have gone into their own being; they become illogical, and they become incapable of logic. That’s what happened in the East: people became incapable of logic.

They can sing a beautiful song in the temple, and they can dance to abandon. But logical procedure has completely disappeared from the Eastern hemisphere.

That’s why science could not grow here. In the West, logic has become the only way of life, so love has disappeared, prayer has disappeared, meditation has disappeared. Now there is no need for the East to be East or the West to be West. Now we can say to Rudyard Kipling that the meeting is happening.

East and West have to dissolve into each other so that we can create a whole man. The whole man will be logical AND illogical; he will use both as two wings.

You ask me: IS IT ALWAYS WRONG TO THINK LOGICALLY?

No, not always wrong. Sometimes that is the only thing; in some dimensions that is the only way to think.

A couple of newly-weds were on their wedding night at the motel, and prepared for bed for the first time. The bride was waiting expectantly in bed while the groom undressed. As he removed his shoes, she was shocked to notice that he had no toes. She looked at him inquiringly and he said not to worry, ”I had tolio when I was a child.”

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Tolio? The woman had never heard such a word.

As he removed his pants and was standing in his undershorts, she saw he had no knees. Again shocked, she looked at him. ”Don’t worry,” he said, ”when I was a teenager, I had kneesles.” Kneesles? Again, the woman had not heard that word.

As he removed his undershorts, the bride snapped, ”Don’t tell me you had smallcox.” It is perfectly right to be logical sometimes – it is absolutely right. But one should be available to the world of the illogical too; one should remain available to both dimensions. Then life is rich. Then you are capable of inhaling and exhaling, both. Then you are capable of meditating and concentrating, both. Then you are capable of mathematics and music, both. Then you are capable of love and of aloneness, both.

This is my idea of a whole man.

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Only God Is

10 January 1979 am in Buddha Hall

... THAT THESE UNFORTUNATES SEEK AFAR THE GOODNESS WHOSE SOURCE WITHIN

THEY BEAR.

FOR FEW KNOW HAPPINESS: PLAYTHINGS OF THE PASSIONS, HITHER; HITHER TOSSED

BY ADVERSE WAVES, UPON A SHORELESS SEA, THEY BLINDED ROLL, UNABLE TO RESIST

OR TO THE TEMPEST YIELD.

GOD! THOU COULDST SAVE THEM BY OPENING THEIR EYES.

BUT NO: ’TIS FOR THE HUMANS OF A RACE DIVINE TO DISCERN ERROR, AND TO SEE THE

TRUTH.

NATURE SERVES THEM....

... THOU WHO FATHOMED IT. O WISE AND HAPPY MAN, REST IN ITS HAVEN. BUT OBSERVE

MY LAWS, ABSTAINING FROM THE THINGS WHICH THY SOUL MUST FEAR, DISTINGUISHING

THEM WELL; LETTING INTELLIGENCE O’ER THY BODY REIGN.

SO THAT, ASCENDING INTO RADIANT ETHER, MIDST THE IMMORTALS, THOU SHALT BE

THYSELF A GOD.

THE LAST SUTRAS OF PYTHAGORAS ON PERFECTION.... The first thing to be remembered: that perfection is not a goal. No enlightened person has ever been goal-oriented; he cannot be.

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Goal-orientation is the way of the mind. Mind exists through goals, mind exists in the future, mind exists in ambition. Mind is always an achieving mind.

The enlightened person lives in no-mind. No-mind is enlightenment. Hence, the enlightened one cannot be goal-oriented; he has no future, for him all is present. And that’s why he’s continuously misunderstood.

He talks of the present but people hear him through their minds, and minds immediately distort. Minds immediately change it into a goal, into some idea that has to be achieved in the future.

Perfection is not a goal but a reality. It has not to be achieved but only recognized. All that is needed is a recognition of something which is already present. You ARE perfect – it is not that you have to become perfect. There is no should implied in it; you are already it. It has only to be recognized, you have to become alert to it, you have to be aware of it – what you are. Perfection is already the case.

But people go on making it a goal.

They say, ”We have to be perfect.

We have to become

enlightened. We have to attain nirvana. We have to enter into paradise.” They make a faraway beautiful goal and then the mind can continue.

Mind needs future – any kind of future will do. You have to become rich, you have to become powerful, you have to become beautiful, you have to become wise, you have to become enlightened

– it doesn’t matter. If BECOMING IS there, mind will persist. And the persistence of mind is your whole misery. It keeps you tense. It keeps you in anxiety, anguish, a continuous fear of missing the goal. It keeps you greedy – a continuous lust to attain the goal. And whatever the goal is, it does not matter – money or God, success or samadhi – it doesn’t matter at all.

Let it sink deep in your heart: wherever the goal is, the mind is; wherever the future is, the mind is.

Tomorrow is another name for the mind. Tomorrow exists nowhere else except in the mind; they are dependent on each other. If you drop tomorrows, mind will simply evaporate; it cannot exist.

Mind has no present tense; it cannot be herenow, so it goes on giving you new ideas. If you are tired of the world it says there is another world. If you are tired of this life it says, ”Don’t be worried, there is an after-life – but go on running.”

Stephen Crane has written these beautiful lines:

I saw a man pursuing the horizon;

Round and round they sped.

I was disturbed at this;

I accosted the man.

”It is futile,” I said.

”You can never...”

”You lie!” he cried,

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And ran on.

This running, this continuous running after the horizon which exists nowhere, which is an illusion...

but it appears to be there. And so close and so alluring, so tempting, so magnetic, and SO close, that it seems just a little effort, just a little effort more.... It is just a few miles ahead. And it is so clearly there, so radiantly there – how can you remain untempted? It appears within reach, but you can go on running and running... you will never arrive. The distance between you and the horizon will always remain the same, because the horizon exists nowhere except in your mind. It is an appearance, it is an illusion. All goals are illusory – worldly, other-worldly. To be herenow is the way of being in truth, in reality.

So this is the first thing to be remembered, otherwise Pythagoras will be misunderstood by you, Pythagoras will be distorted by your mind. You will start thinking, ”How to become perfect?” It is not a question of becoming – you are already perfect. Perfection is your being. Becoming is running after a goal; being is relaxing into your nature, relaxing herenow, resting in the moment... and suddenly that which was not available becomes available. You were not aware of it; suddenly you are awakened to it. Perfection is an awakening.

... THAT THESE UNFORTUNATES SEEK AFAR THE GOODNESS WHOSE SOURCE WITHIN

THEY BEAR.

Pythagoras calls those people unfortunates who live in the mind, in the becoming, in the tomorrows.

And when you live in the tomorrows you automatically also live in the yesterdays. They go together, they are not separate – the yesterday and the tomorrow. And you are sandwiched between these two falsities. The yesterday is no more and the tomorrow is not yet. The yesterday is gone forever and tomorrow never comes. Between the two is the present moment.

Jesus says: Look at the lilies in the field – how beautiful they are! They think not of the morrow; they live in the here-now. And even Solomon, attired in all his grandeur, was not so beautiful.

To be herenow is to be attired in divine glory. To be herenow is to attain the splendour of existence.

To be herenow is to be in bliss, is to be in paradise.

... THAT THESE UNFORTUNATES

SEEK AFAR THE GOODNESS WHOSE SOURCE WITHIN THEY BEAR.

Pythagoras says: Those people who go on seeking and searching for something far away are unfortunates, cursed. And nobody has cursed them; they have cursed themselves. Nobody has planned their unfortunate life; they are solely responsible for it. That is their whole invention, their own invention.

Your misery is your invention: your bliss is your nature. Misery needs much effort, it has to be planned, it has to be earned. It is going against nature, hence it is very arduous. It is going upstream.

It is a continuous conflict with nature.

Nature knows no future, nature is always here. Nature is always THIS moment and nothing else.

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this moment, except your mind. Even your body is growing this moment. Your blood is circulating this moment, your heart is beating this moment. Except your mind everything is herenow. Mind is far away.

And this mind is the root cause of your misery. It is not because of past karmas that you are suffering, no. It is not that God has destined you to suffer, no. It is not because Adam and Eve committed sin that you are suffering, no. These are tricks to avoid the responsibility – then anything will do: Adam and Eve. Poor Adam and Eve, and they become scapegoats. Or if that parable loses vitality, as every parable, every metaphor does as time passes by, as it becomes a cliche, it loses potential, power, then you create new ideas.

Then the theory of karma – that in the past lives you have done so many wrong things, that’s why you are suffering. Don’t blame your past lives. You were the same in your past lives; you were suffering then too. Your suffering has a cause herenow; it is not in the past lives. This is just unburdening yourself, and very dangerous is this unburdening because then you will never change, you will remain the same. What can you do about the past lives? They are gone, nothing can be done. You have to suffer.

Or kismet – fate.... Nobody is doing you any harm, God is not evil; God has not preordained you to suffer. If this was so, then God would have been a sadist, pathological, far worse than any devil –

preordaining innocent people to suffer for no reason at all? Then existence would have been very unjust, unfair, not worth living. And religion would have been a mockery. God has not preordained, predestined you to suffer. But that, too, by and by lost its potential over people’s minds. It was repeated too often. Then the theory of karma was dropped. Then the idea of predestiny was dropped.

Now we have invented new ideas. Karl Marx is against religion but basically he is not different.

He says it is historical necessity. Again, in other words, the same idea of fate. Your suffering is predetermined by history – you are suffering because of an economic fate, because of class struggle. And unless classes disappear, suffering cannot disappear. Again you are unburdened –

what can you do? When the utopia comes, when communism comes on the earth, then suffering will disappear. Suffering is caused by the rich people, suffering is caused by the capitalist. But the capitalist himself is suffering. In fact, the rich people are suffering more than the poor. Why? –

because the rich people have all that one needs not to suffer and yet they see the futility of it, the utter futility of it. Their suffering is tremendous.

The poor person suffers because he is hungry. The rich person suffers, not because he is hungry, but because now he knows that you may have a good house, good food, a good wife, a cozy family, a warm atmosphere, and still inside you ARE hungry – a spiritual hunger. Life is meaningless, pointless, accidental, empty. A great suffering arises. The poor suffers physiologically; the rich suffers psychologically.

Why are the rich suffering? If it is only a question of richness, then the rich should not suffer. But it is again an alibi, a rationalization, so that you can continue in your old ways and your old patterns.

That too proved to be another fallacy; now it too has become a cliche.

Then Sigmund Freud invented something else. He said, ”It is because of your unconscious instincts, Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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passions that you have carried from your animalhood – it is because of those wounds in the unconscious that man is suffering.” Now what can you do about the unconscious?

These are just different names for the same trick, the same strategy, ”I am not responsible.

Something else.... The unconscious, history, economics, God, fate, karma, anything will do – XYZ –

anything will do. But one thing is certain, that I am not the cause of my suffering.” And that is where your whole misery lies, in that trick.

UNDERSTAND WELL: you are the cause of your suffering, nobody else. To recognize this is the first step into being a religious person. You don’t throw your responsibility onto others, you simply recognize the fact that ”I am the cause of my suffering.” And with that, of course, you will feel a little sad, you will look a little stupid. If you are the cause, then why do you go on creating suffering for yourself? – because you don’t LIKE to suffer.

In the beginning you will feel a little sad, stupid, puzzled, confused. But soon you will feel a great freedom. If you are the cause of your misery, then you can be the cause of your blessing, of your bliss; then great freedom is attained. When one takes responsibility on oneself, one becomes free. You become free from past karma, you become free from fate, kismet, you become free from history, you become free from psychology. You become free from ALL excuses. And once you have pinpointed the real cause, things start changing.

... THAT THESE UNFORTUNATES SEEK AFAR THE GOODNESS WHOSE SOURCE WITHIN

THEY BEAR.

We are searching for bliss, we are searching for happiness, but very far away, in faraway lands, in utopias, in fantasy, we are dreaming. And life remains a suffering, and we go on dreaming about better lands, better states of the society, better states after life – paradise, moksha. These are all fantasies! They are created by us so we can bear our suffering, so hope remains. But this is very unfortunate. It is because of this hope that you remain in a hopeless state. It is because of this seeking that you go on missing. Lao Tzu says: ”Seek and you will miss.” Why? – ”Seek and you will miss.” Because it is INSIDE you. It can be found only when all seeking ceases.

Seeking means you are running after something, some shadow, some illusion, some dream, some desire. And when you are occupied with some dream you cannot look within. You cannot look into the seeker when you are running after the sought, you cannot turn in. Your eyes are focussed on the horizon. You remain an extrovert – you cannot look within because you have become obsessed with the without.

The without becomes your whole life from birth to death – not even a single empty moment when you can rest and relax to feel who this seeker in you is.

A Zen Master was talking to his disciples and somebody, a stranger who was not aware of the Master’s way, had also come to listen. And the Master said, ”You need not go anywhere, you need not seek, you need not even inquire.”

The stranger who was in the audience could not understand, because he had always understood religion as a seeking, as a search, as an inquiry, a search for truth, seeking God, an inquiry into Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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reality. ”And what is this man saying? – no inquiry, no search, no seeking?” He stood up and he said, ”What are you talking about? What are you teaching to these people? Without seeking, how am I ever going to find myself?

The Master stepped down from the podium, went into the audience, took hold of the stranger by his collar, and shook him hard. The stranger was even more puzzled. ”What kind of man is this?” For a moment his thinking stopped because he was not expecting such an act on the Master’s side – he was looking like a ferocious lion, dangerous. His thinking stopped for a moment. In such moments it happens.

And the Master said, ”This is it! Without seeking, without inquiry – you ARE it! ” This is it! And whenever your mind stops, you will find it. It is not a question of searching and seeking. It is a question of relaxing into your own self. Search means going out – of necessity, search means going out. And the Lord of Lords abides within. You are Gods, just unaware, fallen asleep in your seeking. Your seeking is your sleep.

... THAT THESE UNFORTUNATES SEEK AFAR THE GOODNESS WHOSE SOURCE WITHIN

THEY BEAR.

Jesus goes on saying again and again: ”The kingdom of God is within you.” But Christians go on seeking God outside. Jesus has repeated this statement so many times, but it still seems that nobody has heard it. If the kingdom of God is within you then you need not go anywhere, a single step outside and you will be going away from the kingdom. You will not be coming closer to the kingdom. Seeking means going away. Lao Tzu is right: ”Seek and you will miss. Do not seek and find immediately,” he says.

Just think of those beautiful moments when you are not doing anything. Yes, everybody has tasted it a little bit. They come in spite of you, they come as gifts from God. You may not have recognized them. Some day, just taking a sunbath on the seashore, doing nothing, just being... and suddenly existence changes its quality. There is joy, for no reason at all! It starts welling up within you. There is no cause for it, no outside cause; something is happening inside you. Resting in the sun, in the wind, suddenly you are transported to another world, to another realm, to another dimension of your being.

Man can be in two states: becoming and being. Becoming is misery, being is bliss. Becoming is going out, being is coming back home. Becoming is seeking, being is non-seeking. Becoming makes you miserable, makes you unfortunate. Learn the ways of being. Some day, looking at the sunset, you have felt it – for a moment, just for a moment, like lightning a flash comes and goes.

Holding the hand of your beloved, your friend, sometimes that taste has come to you, the taste of bliss. Sometimes just looking at a flower and something has opened up within you; the flower triggered a flowering in you. And sometimes looking at the stars something started shining within you – those stars started reflecting in your consciousness, you became a starry night. And there was joy, and there was immense celebration, and there was a song born in your heart.

It comes and goes, because you don’t know the art of remaining in that moment forever. It comes in spite of you. But you can invite it, you can invite it consciously. And then, slowly slowly, you can Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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learn the knack of being in that moment, or entering into that moment whenever you want. Then even in the marketplace you can enter into that space any time you want; any time you relax it is there. Then even when you are in the turmoil of the world you can go into your deepest core and be rejuvenated.

You are the center of the cyclone and you. are living as the cyclone and you have forgotten the center completely. Becoming is the cyclone, being is the center. And we all live on the circumference, hence we are miserable, sad, serious, joyless, juiceless. Come back home.

FOR FEW KNOW HAPPINESS...

WHY? IT IS EVERYBODY’S BIRTHRIGHT! To be happy is a natural phenomenon. Look at the trees, look at nature – everything is happy. Happiness is simply the case. Only man has fallen apart, only man has taken a new route – the mind. Only man has developed dreaming and has gone further and further away from his being.

FOR FEW KNOW HAPPINESS...

It is everybody’s birthright but only a few know it. Once in a while a Buddha, a Jesus, a Mohammed, a Pythagoras, a Patanjali – only once in a while. It should not be so! This is a very pathological state. Just think: you have millions of plants in your garden and only once in a while one plant brings one flower. What kind of a gardener are you? And what kind of garden is this?

If we understand a little bit, if we look inside a little bit, just the reverse will be the case: only once in a while will you find a man who has missed bliss – only once in a while. The world should be full of Buddhas! Only once in a while will you find a man who has not known it, who has not lived it. That can be understood, that once in a while a man has missed. But this is completely non-understandable: that EVERYBODY IS missing.

And the people who don’t miss are misunderstood – not only misunderstood but destroyed. The people who have eyes are destroyed by the blind. The people who are healthy and whole are destroyed by the ill and the pathological, because the pathological is in the majority. Of course democratically he is decisive.

Before Jesus was crucified, Pontius Pilate asked the people... because it was the tradition in those days that on certain holidays one person could be forgiven. There were four persons on that day to be crucified. It was a holiday: three thieves and one Jesus – four persons were to be killed. Pontius Pilate was hoping that people would ask for Jesus to be forgiven, because he had looked into Jesus’

eyes and found simple innocence and nothing else.

When he had asked Jesus, ”What is truth?” Jesus had not answered, he had not uttered a single word. He remained simply quiet, silent, just a pool of restfulness, just serenity he was. That was his answer. And Pontius Pilate COULD understand it – truth cannot be said but only shown. He could feel the presence of the man. He was innocent, childlike; he was tremendously beautiful. And Pontius Pilate was feeling a little guilty to crucify this beautiful man. But the crowd was asking to kill him; the crowd was very thirsty for his blood. He was hoping that finally he would be able to persuade people to forgive this man. He asked, but they all shouted, ”Forgive any one of the three thieves, but not Jesus. He has to be crucified! ” Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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What had he done? What wrong had he done?

And one thief was released, but Jesus was killed. What was the crime of this man? His crime was this: that he was blissful amongst people who didn’t know what bliss is. His crime was that he was truthful amongst people who lived in lies. His crime was this: that he was innocent amongst people who were cunning. His crime was this: that he had eyes amongst people who were blind. And the blind were offended, and they have ALWAYS been offended.

They were offended by Pythagoras. They are offended by me! They have always been offended.

And the simple reason is that whenever a man like Jesus or Pythagoras walks amongst people, his height makes them feel like pigmies; his depth makes them feel so shallow that they cannot forgive him. They have to destroy this man. It feels as if this man is offending, hurting them, because ”If he can attain such bliss then why can’t I? If he can live in the kingdom of God then why can’t I?” Great jealousy is aroused.

This is strange. People should learn the art when there is a man who is blissful – but, on the contrary, they become jealous. They become so jealous that a great murderous thirst arises in them.

FOR FEW KNOW HAPPINESS: PLAYTHINGS OF THE PASSIONS, HITHER, THITHER TOSSED

BY ADVERSE WAVES, UPON A SHORELESS SEA, THEY BLINDED ROLL, UNABLE TO RESIST

OR TO THE TEMPEST YIELD.

This is the situation of the so-called normal man – he is not normal at all. Buddha is normal, Pythagoras is normal, because they are natural, hence they are normal. But the word ’normal’ has another meaning too: it comes from ’norm’ – average. Normal in ordinary language means the average. Then Buddha is abnormal; then he’s not normal, he is not the norm. Then Pythagoras is abnormal. And the millions who are known as normal are not normal at all, because they are not natural. They are in the majority, true, but truth needs no votes; it does not depend on votes.

Galileo was alone when he said that the earth moves around the sun, not vice versa. The whole world had believed for millennia that the sun moves around the earth. Still in language the old habit persists: we say ’sunset’, ’sunrise’ – still. And I think this is going to persist. The sun never rises and never sets, it is simply there; only we go on round and round around it. When Galileo said it for the first time, of course, the church and the state were offended. He was forced to go into court and he was asked by the priests to apologize, because ”How can you dare? Millions of people forever and ever have believed. How can so many people be wrong and you alone right? Have you gone mad?

What kind of egoist are you?”

Galileo must have been a tremendously beautiful man, not at all pathological. He said, ”Okay, then I apologize. But my apology won’t make much difference – the earth will still go on round and round the sun. My apology will not make ANY difference. I can apologize. I can say, ’Yes, the sun goes round the earth,’ but let me remind you, this won’t make any difference at all. Things will remain as they are.”

He was told, ”How can so many people be wrong?”

But truth is not decided by voting. It is not a question of how many people believe in it. It has always been an individual experience. Pythagoras knows it – he has experienced it. The knowing depends Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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on his experiencing, not on your votes. Truth cannot be decided democratically. Truth still remains aristocratic, because it is based, rooted in individual experience; it is not of the mob and the herd.

FOR FEW KNOW HAPPINESS: PLAYTHINGS OF THE PASSIONS...

And what is the situation of the ordinary person in the world?

HITHER, THITHER TOSSED BY ADVERSE WAVES...

YOU CAN WATCH YOUR OWN MIND, what kind of state you live in. You don’t have one mind –

the first thing to be understood – you have many minds. You don’t have a single self, you have many many small selves. You are a crowd inside. Outside there is a crowd, and inside there is a crowd. You are really crowded! You are poly-psychic; many minds exist in you. And you can see it: one moment you are so loving and another moment you are so full of hatred. You don’t have any individuality, you don’t have any integrity. One moment you can be trusted, another moment you cannot be trusted at all – because one moment one mind functions in you, another moment another mind has come on top in you. You are like a wheel moving: one moment one spoke is on the top, another moment it has gone down, another spoke has come on the top. And this goes on, this wheel goes on moving.

Before going to sleep you decide, ”Tomorrow morning I am going to get up at five o’clock.” At five o’clock you say, ”All nonsense – who cares?” You take another turn, you tuck yourself up well, back into the blanket, and fall asleep. In the morning again you repent. You say, ”What happened?” And you have been doing this your whole life: deciding and cancelling. In fact, the reality is: the mind that had decided in the evening was not there at five o’clock. It was another mind who said, ”All nonsense. Who cares?”

And then again when you were taking your breakfast and feeling very bad... mm? because you have again cheated yourself, deceived yourself. You have again failed; in your own eyes you look unworthy. You could not manage to do a small thing of getting up at five o’clock. You feel very very bad because you don’t have any will, not even such a small will. You feel impotent, hence great repentance arises in you. But this is again another mind – it may be the third mind – and this way round and round you go.

You love the person and you hate the same person. In the morning you are a lover, by the evening you are the enemy. One moment you would like to DIE for the other person if it is needed. And after just a few moments you may even be ready to kill the person. Both are your possibilities.

You are not one, you are not crystallized, you are not centered, you are not an individual. You are not yet one mind, one self. And that is how you are living: tossed hither and thither by adverse waves.

You are just a plaything of passions. You don’t know what you are doing and why you are doing it.

You simply go on doing things like a robot, as if somebody else goes on pulling your strings. You are not a master of your own self – you are a driftwood...

UPON A SHORELESS SEA, THEY BLINDED ROLL, UNABLE TO RESIST OR TO THE TEMPEST

YIELD.

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Neither can you resist the temptation nor can you yield to it. You are always half-half, you are never total in anything. If you are total in anything, immediately you will become an individual. Totality brings individuality. But you are partial in everything. Only a part goes into it, only to a certain extent do you go, and then you stop yourself – only so far. You live a lukewarm life; you are neither cold nor hot.

Coldness has its own beauty and heat has its own beauty, but you are neither: you are just lukewarm.

And to live a lukewarm life is to live a very lousy life. You don’t know what intensity is, what totality is. You don’t know any moment in which you were drowned totally, utterly lost. If you had known that moment you would have known prayer. Drowned, drunk, lost, totally, one hundred percent – you would have known prayer, your life would have changed. You would have become a new man, you would have been reborn.

Or, if you had known TOTAL aloneness, remembrance – full remembrance, just awareness and nothing else, one hundred percent awareness, not lost at all – then you would have known what meditation is and that would have changed you.

Prayer means: lost totally, drowned totally, surrendered totally, nothing is being held back, you have gone one hundred percent into it – ANYTHING, and it becomes prayer. If in your dance you can go one hundred percent into it, it becomes prayer. Making love, if you can go one hundred percent into it, it becomes prayer. Anything! It doesn’t matter what it is.... The quality of prayer comes by being one hundred percent into it; you have forgotten yourself utterly, you are a drunkard.

Prayer is the way of the drunkard, the way of the lover – one who can abandon himself, one who can cease to be, one who is ready to evaporate. It is the way of trust. But ninety-nine percent won’t do, not even ninety-nine-point-nine percent, no. It has to be one hundred percent.

And the other pole is meditation: one hundred percent remembrance, mindfulness, awareness; you are just pure light. It is the way of being alert, aware, watchful, of being a witness. It is the path of the alone.

In prayer two are implied – the lover and the beloved. That’s why Sufis call God the Beloved. Zen has no idea of God at all. Buddha says there is no God, there is no need. On the path of meditation God is not needed, because meditation is not a relationship – prayer is. Prayer is relating. Meditation is total freedom, aloneness, the flight of the alone to the alone. There is no other, so there is no question of drowning yourself, but one hundred percent mindfulness will be needed – less than that won’t do. And you become transformed. Whenever you are one hundred percent alive, at the optimum, the revolution happens.

But as people are ordinarily, they are never one hundred percent in anything. They are hotchpotch, they are always mixed. And the mixture keeps them in a contradiction: one part going to the south, another part going to the north, and they are constantly in strain and stress. Neither can they resist nor can they yield, and these are the two ways to attain perfection: either resist totally – that is the way of meditation – or yield totally – that is the way of love. But people remain half-half, divided.

And a house divided against itself is bound to fall sooner or later.

GOD! THOU COULDST SAVE THEM BY OPENING THEIR EYES.

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IT IS A TREMENDOUSLY SIGNIFICANT STATEMENT. It is significant because Pythagoras does not stop at it. Sufism ends on this, the path of love ends on this. Pythagoras still goes on. He mentions it, but he is not the man of prayer – he is the man of meditation. He is a Buddha, not a Bahauddin. He is a Mahavira, not a Meera. But he mentions it, he mentions: GOD! THOU COULDST SAVE THEM BY OPENING THEIR EYES.

The man of prayer will stop here. There is no need for him to go any further. If this treatise had been written by the man of prayer, this would have been the last sutra – then there is no other possibility of going anywhere. Prayer is the end. Prayer is the full point. This is prayer: GOD! THOU COULDST SAVE THEM BY OPENING THEIR EYES.

What else can be done? One can pray to God: ”Open our eyes. Open the eyes of all these people

– who are not born blind but are behaving as if they were blind, because they go on keeping their eyes closed.”

The path of love is a prayer to the whole: ”Only you can do something. We are small, tiny parts, nothing is possible on our own.” But then one has to depend totally... and it happens. Then one has not to make any effort of any sort, then one has to simply surrender. And in that very surrendering

– the happening. In that very surrendering – the transcendence. It is not that when you surrender, surrender will function as a cause and transcendence will come as an effect, no! The moment you surrender, the happening is simultaneous. Surrender AND transcendence happen together, INSTANTLY in the same moment. There is no gap between them.

But Pythagoras is not a man of prayer. He has to go on. He says: BUT NO: ’TIS FOR THE HUMANS OF A RACE DIVINE TO DISCERN ERROR AND TO SEE THE

TRUTH.

It seems as if off-guard he uttered this sentence: GOD! THOU COULDST SAVE THEM BY OPENING THEIR EYES.

... as if off-guard he uttered this sentence. This is alien to his spirit. Or maybe he mentioned it just as a reminder that that too is a way. But that is not HIS way, so he immediately denies it. He says: BUT NO: ’TIS FOR THE HUMANS OF A RACE DIVINE TO DISCERN ERROR, AND TO SEE THE

TRUTH.

”No, we don’t ask you, we cannot ask you. Even if I have asked, please don’t do it. We have to do it on our own. We have to make all kinds of efforts to purify ourselves. We have to dig deep wells into our beings to discover the source of life. Please, don’t you come in. Don’t do it.” Buddha never prayed. Mahavira never prayed. Prayer does not cross their ways. They made every effort that is humanly possible, every possible effort – one hundred percent. They risked ALL in the effort, and in that risking they became aware. They were cleansed, purified. Their unconscious Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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disappeared, they became only consciousness. In that consciousness is the transcendence. They remembered themselves.

Pythagoras belongs to the same path as Mahavira, Buddha, Patanjali, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu. He does not belong to the other path: Krishna, Zarathustra, Jesus, Mohammed, Meera. But both paths are valid, and each one has to choose his own path, each one has to decide what his type is. Each one has to look into himself for his own leanings.

There are people for whom love is so natural that meditation will be very difficult. They will be going upstream, against their nature. There is no need! For lovers it is enough to be in love with existence, to be in a prayerful state with existence, to be in deep thankfulness, gratitude, and leave everything to God – to be in a let-go and allow him to do. And it happens: if the part allows, the whole immediately takes over. But it happens the other way too: if the part tries totally, then too it happens.

But remember, that does not mean that God’s help does not come to the meditator, no. The help comes unasked for. The help ALWAYS comes. And it comes to the lover, but it comes through asking. That’s why Jesus says: ”Ask and it shall be given unto you. Knock and the door shall be opened unto you.” It comes through asking, the lover invites, the lover calls, prays, weeps, cries. The lover is like a small child crying for the mother. It comes to the meditator also, but unasked it comes.

BUT NO: ’TIS FOR THE HUMANS OF A RACE DIVINE TO DISCERN ERROR, AND TO SEE THE

TRUTH.

”No need,” Pythagoras says, ”for you to come in. We will do it on our own. You have given us enough energy for it. You have given us the dignity to attain it. You have given us enough power to discover ourselves. To ask your help is not right – you have already given it; we have only to discover it. You have already arranged it in such a way that if we make a little effort we will know. So no more can we ask. That is not right, that is not fair.” Although: NATURE SERVES THEM....

He says, ”We are not asking, although nature goes on serving those who are making efforts on their own without asking for any help. God helps those who help themselves.” It is not a question of asking or not asking. Let me tell you: Buddha was helped by God as much as Jesus was, not a bit less. Mahavira was helped by God as much as Meera was, not a bit less.

Meera asked for it, Mahavira never asked for it. The way of Mahavira is that of the masculine mind, the way of Meera is that of the feminine mind. Meera asks and is receptive. Mahavira never asks, that is against his dignity, that is against his type of mind. He will try on his own.

But the help comes all the same. It comes to those who ask, it comes to those who never ask. In fact, when you work one hundred percent on yourself, that is a way of asking without asking. When the whole sees you working so hard, so arduously, so totally, you are rewarded.

NATURE SERVES THEM....

... THOU WHO FATHOMED IT.

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IT DOESN’T MATTER HOW, whether through love or through meditation.... Pythagoras says:

... THOU WHO FATHOMED IT. O WISE AND HAPPY MAN, REST IN ITS HAVEN. BUT OBSERVE

MY LAWS, ABSTAINING FROM THE THINGS WHICH THY SOUL MUST FEAR, DISTINGUISHING

THEM WELL, LETTING INTELLIGENCE O’ER THY BODY REIGN.

He says, ”Whatsoever has been your way...” The last two sutras are for those who are coming very close... close to themselves. This sutra:

... THOU WHO FATHOMED IT.

You have perceived it, you have recognized it. It has become transparent to you.

O WISE AND HAPPY MAN...

Wisdom and happiness come together. The stupid cannot be happy. And remember by ’stupid’ I don’t mean only the unintellectual. The intellectual is also involved, implied. The intellectual and the non-intellectual, both go on avoiding their intelligence.

Intelligence happens only either through love or through meditation. Through love intelligence happens in the heart, and through meditation it happens in the head – but it is the same intelligence.

Its location is certainly different. That’s why lovers, people of prayer, will always say that God is felt in the heart. And they are true, because that is where they first felt the arising of intelligence. It is a loving intelligence, it has the colour of love in it, because it has been reached through love.

But Patanjali says that the SAHASRAR, the ultimate, opens up in the head, the one-thousand-petalled lotus opens in the head. This creates great confusion in people: ”Where does it really happen? – in the heart or in the head?” If you listen to Patanjali it happens in the head, at the top of your head. If you listen to Bahauddin, to Jalaluddin Rumi, to A, Hillaj Mansoor, to Meera, to Chaitanya, to Saint Francis, to Teresa, then it happens in the heart – the lotus opens there.

Now it is very confusing to people, but there is no need to be confused. There are two possibilities in you: if you follow the path of meditation, the first flare of intelligence will happen in the head, and then it spreads all over the body. But the first flame happens in the head. Then it makes you afire.

But the first experience is of tremendous value, that’s why one remembers it. And on the path of love, the first thing happens in the heart, the first flame. It is the SAME flame! And then the whole body becomes aflame. But the first experience of that tremendous beauty, the first taste of nectar, will always be remembered.

That’s why these two centers have been talked about down the centuries. And those who don’t practise either, they become confused because they cannot believe: ”It must happen in one place.

What is the true center? – the heart or the head?” It is not a question of what the true center is; the question is of what path you have followed. If you have followed meditation, your intelligence will flare up in the head. Or, following love, the first fire will be enkindled in your heart. But then it spreads all over, you become it.

O WISE AND HAPPY MAN...

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But whatsoever has been your way....

... THOU WHO FATHOMED IT.

O WISE AND HAPPY MAN, REST IN ITS HAVEN.

You have become wise, you have become happy, the moment to rest has come. But this is not yet the ultimate, because you are still there. Happy and wise – but you are still there. The LAST, the very last, the subtlest of the subtle ego has remained. Now you are happy. Still you can say, ’I am happy.” Now you can say. ”I am wise.” But ’I’ is still there, VERY thin, very transparent like pure glass, nobody can see it, but it is still there.

And even the transparent glass, the MOST transparent glass, is a barrier. You can look through it, you can see the garden, you can see the flowers and the birds, you can see the sun and the clouds, everything is available AS IF there is no barrier. But if you try to reach you will suddenly see that there is still a barrier – you are still separate. First you were a fool and you were separate. Now you are wise but still separate, because ’I’ exists. First you are miserable, now you are happy, but the ’I’

exists. Hence, Pythagoras says:

BUT OBSERVE MY LAWS...

Don’t drop the laws yet. You have not yet transcended the ego completely.

... ABSTAINING FROM THE THINGS WHICH THY SOUL MUST FEAR, DISTINGUISHING THEM

WELL; LETTING INTELLIGENCE O’ER THY BODY REIGN.

Still remember, still remain alert, still go on helping intelligence, because the last step has still to be taken. Be alert, be watchful, because you can still lose the track, you can still fall – because you ARE! so still you can fall. You will go beyond fall only when you are not. And that is the last sutra.

SO THAT, ASCENDING INTO RADIANT ETHER, MIDST THE IMMORTALS, THOU SHALT BE

THYSELF A GOD.

Wise you are, happy you are – one step more so you become God himself, one step more so you disappear and only God is left in you.

SO THAT, ASCENDING INTO RADIANT ETHER...

This LAST fragment of the ego will still keep you tethered to the earth. It is no more an iron chain, it is a gold chain – but chains are chains. First you were tethered to the earth by your foolishness, mediocrity, stupidity; first you were tethered to the earth by ugly chains of misery, pain. Now you are tethered to the earth by beautiful chains of happiness – golden chains, studded with diamonds.

They look no more like chains but ornaments, hence you have to be more aware because you can become too much attached to your wisdom, to your happiness. And then it can become even more fatal: the higher you come, the more dangerous becomes the fall, remember! The closer you come to the peak, just a single wrong step and you will go back down into the valley.

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You know the game of Ludo – the snakes and the ladders? In fact, that was invented by Christian mystics. It is symbolic, it is a metaphor: you rise on ladders and then some snake takes hold of you and you fall back. Only at the last stop-page is there no snake – the last but one and the snake is still there. Unless you reach the ultimate you can still fall. From the point ninety-nine you can come to zero.

The higher you move, the more careful you have to become, because the higher pleasures are more binding, naturally. They have no poison in them; they are so purified that you will not even suspect that there can be any poison in them – they are so delicious, so nourishing. It is very simple to become attached and remain stuck at some stage of your growth. That’s what happens.

People can leave money easily; money is very gross. But if you attain to some psychic powers – for example: you can read somebody’s thoughts – it will be very difficult to drop. It will make your ego so satisfied, so contented: you are so extraordinary that you can read thoughts.

It happened:

A disciple of a certain Master came to see another Zen Master. The disciple said to the Zen Master,

”My Master can do miracles. Can you also perform miracles? My Master can do great things. Once he told me to stand on one side of the bank of a river and he went to the other side. He told me to hold a piece of paper, and I was holding a piece of paper. Far away from the other side, he started writing on it with his pen. The distance was so great, but still the writing appeared. Can you do something like this?”

The Master laughed and he said, ”If your Master can only do miracles, and is not yet able NOT to do miracles, then he is not enlightened. Because to be capable of not doing miracles is the ultimate in miracles.

It is very difficult to resist the temptation when you can do something so special that nobody else can do. If you can materialize things, or if you can fly, or if you can read others’ thoughts, or if you can heal people just by touching them, it will be impossible for you to resist.

It happens almost every day here: people meditating attain to many things – for example, healing powers come very easily – and then they immediately come to me because they become aware.

somebody was suffering from a headache, they touched them and the headache disappeared immediately as if it had never been there. And once they become aware, they start coming to me saying, ”Osho, great healing energy is arising in me. What should I do? Should I use it? Should I become a healer?”

It is so tempting, but it is dangerous. One has to be aware not to use these things, otherwise you will be stuck there and you will never move upwards. And as you move upwards more and more subtle phenomena will happen, very subtle phenomena, which will make you immensely powerful.

You would like to use them, but that will be a sheer wastage of your energy; and you will fall, and you will fall very badly.

That’s why Patanjali in his Yoga Sutras makes all the yogis aware of it: beware of all kinds of siddhis, powers, because each power is tempting. And the higher it is, the more tempting it is. And the Philosophia Perennis, Vol 2

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higher it is, the more ego-satisfying it is. And once the ego starts being satisfied with something, you will never attain the ultimate, you will never become a God.

SO THAT, ASCENDING INTO RADIANT ETHER, MIDST THE IMMORTALS, THOU SHALT BE

THYSELF A GOD.

BEWARE, EVEN IF YOU HAVE BECOME WISE. Even wisdom is folly if you look from the ultimate peak; better than folly, but still folly because you are still there, and that is the greatest folly.

A disciple came to a Master and said, ”Master, what you have been waiting for for years, now it is fulfilled: I have attained nothingness.”

The Master hit him hard. The disciple was hoping this time he would not be hit, because the Master was again and again saying, ”Until you bring nothingness, I am going to hit you.” And he was true

– he HAD experienced nothingness – so he was happy, he came running and dancing. For years he had been waiting to see the Master smile, to bless him. But the Master hit him hard, harder than ever.

He said, ”But this puzzles me. I tell you that I have experienced nothingness!” The Master said, ”I know! You need not tell me! Now throw this nothingness too, then you will be truly in nothingness. Now this has become an experience – the experience of nothingness is again something, it is no more nothing. Again you are holding onto some experience. God is not an experience: God is the absence of ALL experiences! God is such a pure state that there is no experience happening, neither of wisdom nor of bliss. All has disappeared. Not only is misery gone, bliss is also gone. Not only is folly gone, wisdom is also gone. You are left utterly alone, no experience clinging to you, no content in the mind – not even the idea, ’I have attained.’ ” It happened:

A great king came to Buddha. When he was coming to see Buddha for his darshan, he was worried.

He wanted to take something to offer to Buddha. He asked his wife, because he was going for the first time. He should go with some offering, some present for the Buddha – but what would be appropriate? He had one of the most beautiful diamonds available in the whole world. So he said,

”I will take this diamond. This will be unique. Even Buddha may not have seen something like this because there is nothing to compare with THIS diamond; this is incomparable. Many kings go to him and they must have offered many things to him – I want to offer him something special so he remembers me.”

The wife started laughing because she used to go to Buddha, she WAS a disciple. She said, ”You are going for the first time so you don’t know about Buddha. Take your diamond, but to a Buddha a diamond is just a pebble. But take it so you feel good; you will feel happy, take it. But take my advice also: Buddha would be more happy if you took a lotus flower, and in our pond there are beautiful lotus flowers. I will bring one.”

The king asked, ”Why a lotus flower?”

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And the wife said, ”It is very symbolic. It represents the whole evolution of man. Man is mud, but out of mud one day a lotus rises. Man is just mud, but carries in him the seed of being a lotus, so the lotus is a very pregnant metaphor. He will appreciate the lotus more because it represents man from sex to samadhi, it represents man from the lowest to the highest, from the earthly to the divine.” So he took both the things. He was not convinced about the lotus because ”It is an ordinary flower; you can find it in all kinds of ponds. And thousands of people must have offered Buddha lotuses, so what is special about it? But if the wife says, then okay.” Just to make her happy, he took both.

When he reached, he bowed down to Buddha, offered first the diamond. Obviously, because that was HIS idea. He was thinking, ”If he doesn’t accept the diamond, then I will offer the lotus.” So with one hand he offered the diamond.

Buddha looked at him and said, ”Drop it.” It was hard for him to drop it. He wanted it to be accepted, received, appreciated. Drop it? But when Buddha is saying, ”Drop it,” and ten thousand of Buddha’s sannyasins are watching, he could not say no. It was hard. He had been hiding and protecting this diamond his whole life. It was so unique, nobody had anything like this. This was his glory. He was known all over the country for his diamond. And now this man says, ”Drop it!” Ten thousand sannyasins silently looking... it was difficult to say no. So he dropped it, unwillingly, with great reluctance, resistance, but still in spite of himself he had to do it. He dropped it. He didn’t feel good about it. This is not the way to receive a gift of such quality.

Then he thought, ”Maybe my wife was right,” and he presented the flower – not so happy, because that was not HIS idea.

Buddha looked at the flower and again said, ”Drop it.” Now this was too much. But when you are confronting a Buddha you cannot fight. But it was not so difficult to drop the flower. There was no problem in it, he simply dropped it. In fact, he felt a little good, ”So here goes the wife! and all that great metaphor and the poetry of the lotus flower – so here it goes! Not only my diamond is refused but the lotus also.” Then both hands were empty and he was feeling a little silly. Now what to do?

Looking at him, Buddha again said, ”Drop it!” Now there was nothing to drop.

It was

incomprehensible. This man looked mad – that was the suspicion when he had said drop the diamond – that idea had arisen then, ”This man seems to be mad.” Now it was absolutely certain that this man WAS mad. Now there was nothing to drop!

The chief disciple of Buddha, Ananda, started laughing. The king was looking silly. He asked, ”What is the matter with you? Why are you laughing? And what am I supposed to do?” Ananda said, ”Buddha never meant that you have to drop the diamond. Buddha never meant that you have to drop the lotus. He was telling you: Drop the idea that you ARE – that you have come, that you are a great king, that you have bought a great gift, that nobody has such a diamond. Drop that ego – because that is the only offering we can bring to a Buddha. Nothing else is accepted, nothing else is acceptable, nothing else is worthwhile.” In that moment a great understanding arose in the king. He fell at the feet of Buddha, and, it is said, instantly he became enlightened. In that very falling, the ego disappeared, there was nobody inside.

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And when there is nobody inside, God is. God has always been there, hiding behind you. When you disappear, he appears.

This is the discovery: this is not an achievement.

SO THAT, ASCENDING INTO RADIANT ETHER, MIDST THE IMMORTALS, THOU SHALT BE

THYSELF A GOD.

To be a God is your destiny. But remember, it is not a goal, it is already the case. You are Gods because there is nothing else but God. The whole existence is overflowing with godliness. God is green in the trees and red and gold, God is in the winds and the song that happens when the winds pass through the pine trees. God is in the roaring waves of the ocean, and in the clouds and in the lightning. God is, only God is! God is in you, in the neighbour, in your child.

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Document Outline

- 1 The Golden Mean

- 2 Zorba The Buddha

- 3 Don't Spit on the Ceiling!

- 4 The Perfume of Absolute Contentment

- 5 Love is Always Virgin

- 6 Enlightenment is Your Birthright

- 7 A Bold Experiment

- 8 Escape to Reality

- 9 There's No God Till You've Met Him

- 10 Known, Unknown, Unknowable

- 11 Only God Is