The Transmission of the Lamp

Talks given from 26/05/86 pm to 18/06/86 am

English Discourse series

CHAPTER 1

The animals must all be laughing

26 May 1986 pm in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

WITH MY FRIEND, MEDITATION, I CLEAN THE SKELETONS FROM THE CLOSET.

WITH MY FRIEND, TRUST, I ENTER THE DARK BASEMENT AND SWEEP IT CLEAN OF

ANCIENT DUST.

WITH MY FRIEND, THE HEART, I OPEN ALL THE WINDOWS AND ALLOW THE FRESH

BREEZES IN.

WITH MY FRIEND, AWARENESS, I LIGHT CANDLES IN EVERY ROOM. IN THE KITCHEN, MY

FRIEND, PATIENCE, PREPARES THE TEA.

IN THE GARDEN, I SIT WITH MY FRIEND, THE MASTER, AND WAIT SILENTLY, FOR I KNOW

THAT THE GUEST WILL SOON BE HERE.

OSHO, WHEN THE DOORBELL RINGS, WILL I BE THERE TO ANSWER IT?

The guest always comes; its coming is certain. The bell also rings. The door is also always opened, without fail.

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But the moment you open the door, you are not there. Existence is, being is, but you are not. The way you have known yourself up to now is no longer there, and what is there cannot be named, cannot be defined. It is all and everything... it is the very essence of existence.

You will not be there as you think yourself to be.

If you are there, then the guest cannot enter in.

In fact, the guest can come only when it becomes a certainty that you are ready to disappear. Your disappearance is the appearance of that which you have been seeking all along. This is a paradox: when the sought is found, the seeker is lost.

There are these words of Jesus – in some sense significant, but in a very much deeper way, not right. He says, ”Seek, and ye shall find” – just a small sentence, ”Seek, and ye shall find” – and every word is wrong, because if seeking continues, there is desire, there is longing. Seeking must stop, must disappear. ”Seek, and ye shall find it.” You cannot find it; it will be found, but you cannot be the finder.

And it is the same with the other sentences that follow. They are beautiful sentences, very poetic –

”Ask, and it shall be given to you” – but every word is wrong. Unless you stop asking, nothing can be given to you. Ask, and you will go on missing; stop asking, and it is there. It has always been there – you could not see it because your eyes were so full of asking. ”Ask, and it shall be given to you” – again, to YOU? To you, nothing is possible; you are the barrier, you are the hindrance. You have to dissolve into the whole, just like a dewdrop disappears in the ocean.

And the third sentence is also beautiful: ”Knock, and the door shall be opened unto you.” But all the words are wrong. You are not to knock; even that much effort on your part will not allow you to be totally relaxed. And the door is not closed, so there is no need to knock. If you are knocking, it must be before a wall, not before a door. The door of the divine is always open; you just go on knocking here and there.

”Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” Who is there to open it? There is no God; that there is a God is presumably the idea behind Jesus’ sentence. But there is no one to open it – and particularly to you. If you are not, you suddenly find yourself at the door. And the door is open; it has always been open, so that you will not come and find it closed.

Existence is infinitely compassionate. Its doors cannot be closed; you are always welcome. But remember, when you come close to the door, take your shoes off, and with those shoes leave your idea of yourself also. Just enter as an innocent, just-born child, without any name.

These three sentences are beautiful, some of the best in the whole New Testament. But looked at through the experience of enlightenment, poetry is not the thing; it has to be reality.

So everything is right, just you are wrong. And the whole effort is to bring a state of being in you where you can say, ”I am not.” Logically, you cannot use that sentence ”I am not,” because who is denying? But existentially you can understand. There are moments when you are not and still you are. A beautiful sunset, a sky full of stars... for a moment you forget that you are, although you are, but in a totally new way – fresh, new, reborn.

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Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

I AM CONSTANTLY CRITICIZING MYSELF AND JUDGING OTHER PEOPLE. THIS MAKES ME

FEEL DIVIDED AND TENSE, AND I CANNOT ESTABLISH A REAL CONTACT WITH PEOPLE OR

NATURE. I WANT TO OPEN MY HEART AND I DON’T KNOW HOW TO DO IT.

PLEASE, COULD YOU SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THIS?

Our whole education is so ugly, our whole upbringing is so wrong, that it takes away every possibility of your inner growth and gives you stupid ideas which have no relevance as far as your joy, your understanding and your maturity are concerned.

Every child is being told, in thousands of ways, to criticize himself, so this is not only your problem.

He is always told he is wrong in everything. Slowly, slowly he catches the disease of criticizing himself. And a person who criticizes himself cannot forgive others. How can he forgive? – for the same reasons, he criticizes others. His whole life simply becomes a condemnation – condemn yourself, condemn others. Then love becomes impossible, friendship becomes impossible, and he simply suffers. And what he is criticizing is so absurd.

A young boy came running fast into the house, went directly into the kitchen and said to his mother,

”My God! It must be God’s mercy that I am saved. A lion was following me from the school to the house. He is standing outside.”

The mother said, ”How many millions of times have I told you not to exaggerate?” She is saying,

”How many millions of times have I told you not to exaggerate? Where can you find a lion in the city?”

The boy said, ”Perhaps out of fear it looked big. But it is certainly a very dangerous dog.” The mother said, ”Now you are coming to your senses. If it was dangerous you would not have been here.”

He said, ”That’s true. In fact, it is a small dog.” But the child made the comment, ”I was exaggerating, and that is wrong. What about you? You said, ‘How many millions of times have you told me....’ ” I was staying in Calcutta in a friend’s house from where I was going to a conference. I was sitting with him in the car and we were waiting for his wife. He was honking the horn. She came very angrily to the window and said, ”I have told you a thousand times that I am coming in a minute!” I said to my friend, ”This is something – a miracle. She has told you a thousand times that she is coming in a minute. In fact, in a minute, one cannot say it a thousand times. And she has again disappeared into the bathroom.”

The man said, ”You don’t know how she exaggerates. And the disease has caught me too. Once in a while, I suddenly become aware that I am exaggerating and it is just my wife....” The Transmission of the Lamp

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Parents are doing everything for which they are criticizing the child. And he is watching – and his watchfulness is far more clear. His intelligence is still growing; he can see that the same thing for which he is wrong, the parents are right. They are watching television late into the night – they are right – and he should go to sleep before nine o’clock. Slowly, slowly he gets accustomed to these things and starts feeling, ”Somehow I am wrong. Everything I do is wrong.” I once asked my father, ”Will you tell me some time, some day, just once, ‘What you are doing is right’? Can’t you see that it is impossible to do everything wrong for twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year... everything wrong? If it is true, I am really accomplishing something miraculous. Just make an exception – just one time say to me, ‘What you are doing is right.’ ”

He was shocked because he understood the meaning of what I was saying, that it is impossible that I could be doing everything wrong.

But parents enjoy the idea because it is very fulfilling: it is the lust for power. Whenever you say to somebody, ”No,” whenever you say to somebody, ”You are wrong,” you feel powerful. It feeds your ego and it feeds the ego of everybody – the teachers, the neighbors. Wherever the child goes, everybody is enjoying the lust for power, and the child is crushed. And when so many people are saying that he is wrong, naturally he has to believe it.

But remember, as a reaction, he starts judging others. When everybody else is judging him, there is no reason why he should not judge others. You are teaching him to judge, to judge everybody –

and as much as possible to judge negatively. So he starts judging that others are wrong.

And this is our world – where everybody is judging himself as wrong and judging everybody else as wrong. How can you be loving, friendly, trusting? How can you open your heart? You will be isolated, you will be completely closed, you will live in a world which you condemn and the world will condemn you.

It is not a beautiful situation, but you have to understand: asking me, ”How to open my heart?” is not the real question. The real question is how you managed to close it.

Stop judging.

Whatever you are doing, if you like doing it, do it. There is no question of judgment; nobody else has the right to say that what you are doing is wrong. If you enjoy it, you are not harming anybody, you are not disturbing anybody... but it is a strange world.

From my childhood I have always loved to just sit in a corner silently. Everybody who would pass by would say, ”What are you doing?”

I would say, ”Nothing.”

And everybody would say, ”This is not good.”

I said, ”This is strange: I am doing nothing, doing no harm to anybody – just sitting silently in this corner – and you say, ‘This is not right.’ It seems it has just become your habit to condemn, to The Transmission of the Lamp

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criticize. But I am enjoying sitting here doing nothing, and I am going to continue it in spite of your judgment. I have not asked for your advice, and to give advice unasked for is unwise.” Slowly, slowly one has to assert oneself, to make one’s point clear. Unless I trespass on somebody else’s rights – if I am doing something which I am enjoying and I don’t see it as harmful in any way –

then I will not allow anybody to judge me, because it is not only a question of this act, it is a question of my whole life. You are teaching me a very subtle disease of judging. And when I condemn myself, how can I leave anybody else uncondemned?

It is said that Mulla Nasruddin used to come to his house, and every day there was trouble. His wife was suspicious – as all wives are – that he was having an affair with some other woman, because going out of the house he looked so happy and went so fast; coming home he looked sad. Certainly there was something outside the house which attracted him. So when he used to put his coat on the hanger, she would look on his coat, on his shirt, to see if she could find any hair or anything else to prove that he had been with some other woman.

One day – for seven days she had been searching and she could not find a single hair – on the seventh day, she burst out crying, screaming, ”This is too much. Now you have started going with bald women!”

Now, it is very difficult to find a bald woman – almost impossible. I have seen only one woman who was semi-bald, not bald. But for seven days, no hair? The conclusion is clear, that he has fallen so low that he is now going with bald women. ”Can’t you find a woman with hair?” If a husband is sitting silently, then the wife is angry. If he is reading the newspaper, the wife is angry; she will snatch the newspaper and say, ”I am here and you are reading the newspaper as if I don’t exist.”

Everybody is so miserable that he wants to find some reason somewhere to explain to himself why he is miserable, why she is miserable. And the society has given you a good strategy: judge.

First, naturally, you judge yourself in every way. No man is perfect, and no man can ever be perfect

– perfection does not exist – so judgment is very easy. You are imperfect, so there are things which show your imperfection. And then you are angry, angry with yourself, angry with the whole world:

”Why am I not perfect?”

Then you look with only one idea – to find imperfection in everybody. And then you want to open your heart – naturally, because unless you open your heart, there is no celebration in your life; your life is almost dead. But you cannot do it directly; you will have to destroy all this upbringing from the very roots.

So the first thing is, stop judging yourself. Instead of judging, start accepting yourself with all your imperfections, all your frailties, all your mistakes, all your failures. Don’t ask yourself to be perfect.

That is simply asking for something impossible, and then you will feel frustrated. You are a human being after all.

Just look at the animals, at the birds; nobody is worried, nobody is sad, nobody is frustrated. You don’t see a buffalo freaking out. He is perfectly contented chewing the same grass every day. He is The Transmission of the Lamp

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almost enlightened. There is no tension; there is a tremendous harmony with nature, with himself, with everything as it is. Buffaloes don’t make parties to revolutionize the world, to change buffaloes into super buffaloes, to make buffaloes religious, virtuous. No animal is concerned at all with human ideas.

And they all must be laughing: ”What has happened to you? Why can’t you be just yourself as you are? What is the need to be somebody else?”

So the first thing is a deep acceptance of yourself.

I was constantly asked by my teachers, ”Don’t you ever feel that you are mischievous?” I said, ”I am perfectly contented. This is the way I am, and I don’t want to be anybody else.” They said, ”This is strange because things that you do must make you feel guilty.” I said, ”For what?”

One of my teachers was constantly talking about fearlessness – that he was a man of fearlessness, that he could go in the darkest night into the thickest forest. Listening to him again and again I said, ”I am suspicious – because you are talking so much about your fearlessness. And what fearlessness is this, going into the dark night, into the thickest forest? This is not great bravery. My feeling is that you are a perfect coward.”

He was very angry; he said, ”You will have to prove it.” I said, ”I will prove it. When I say it, it means I will prove it.” And I could immediately see that he started perspiring.

That night I proved it. He used to live in a small house with mud tiles on it – I knew where he used to sleep – so I just went on top of the house, removed one tile, and I dropped a fake rubber snake tied to a rope, slowly, slowly, until it touched his face.

Once or twice he threw it off, and again and again the snake came back. Then he opened his eyes, half asleep in the middle of the night... and a long snake and the face just... and he screamed. I have never heard such a scream; that was a real primal scream. I had to take my snake and run away.

Next day he came to class, but his legs were still trembling; the fear of the snake touching his face....

He started teaching and I said, ”First things first.” He said, ”What first things?”

I said, ”What about last night? You wanted something to be proved.” He said, ”So you were behind it?”

I said, ”I was not behind it, I was just watching what the snake was doing to you.” The Transmission of the Lamp

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He said, ”You were there?”

I said, ”I know the whole story; you cannot hide it. I even know about your scream which woke up the whole neighborhood; everybody knows.”

”But,” he said, ”you are saying it so definitely – because they must have heard a scream; but when they all came in, the snake had gone. We saw that one tile was removed, so the snake must have got away.”

I said, ”You are right: that was the place from where it came and through where it got out. And if you really want the proof....” I pulled out the snake from my bag and I showed him that this is the snake.

”You are such a fearless man, and this is only a rubber snake. And it just touched your face – two, three times, not much – and such a scream came out of you. I was not expecting that it would create so much fear in you.”

He was so ashamed that that very evening he resigned and escaped from town, because everybody was asking him, ”What happened with the snake? Was it real? – because somebody said that it was just a rubber snake and that some boy in your class had accepted your challenge.” The whole town was talking, and it became so difficult for him that he escaped.

He met me ten years later on a railway station. He tried not to recognize me. I said, ”Don’t try not to recognize me because I still have the snake in my bag. I have been in search of you for ten years. I have been keeping it with me. Where have you been for ten years?” He said, ”Talk silently. Don’t speak so loudly, because in this small place I have become a teacher and I don’t want the same story to be spread here. And why have you come here?” I said, ”I have not come here, I’m just passing through by train, and the train is waiting for some other train to pass by. Seeing you, I got out. But what about your fearlessness?” He said, ”I have dropped the idea. One good thing you did was to make me free of a false idea that I am fearless. You made it clear to me that it is my fear that I am repressing with the idea of fearlessness. I was angry with you, but now I feel grateful. You did well.” I said, ”I enjoyed it enough. I don’t need any gratitude, any thankfulness from you.” He also asked, ”Don’t you feel sometimes that you are doing things that are not right?” I said, ”I have never felt that. I simply do things which I like. In this short life, who is going to bother and waste time wondering whether it is right or not? I just do not harm anybody. I did not harm you.

That scream that escaped from you was good; it must have cleansed your whole being. It must have taken much of the rubbish from inside you with it.” I have never judged, so I don’t exactly know the experience. When you say that you judge yourself, it is borrowed. People have judged you, and you have accepted their idea without any scrutiny. You are suffering from all kinds of people’s judgments, and you are throwing those judgments on other people. And this game has grown all out of proportion; the whole of humanity is suffering from it.

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If you want to get out of it, the first thing is: don’t judge yourself. Accept humbly your imperfection, your failures, your mistakes, your frailties. There is no need to pretend otherwise. Just be yourself:

”This is how I am, full of fear. I cannot go into the dark night, I cannot go into the thick forest.” What is wrong in it? – it is just human.

Once you accept yourself, you will be able to accept others because you will have a clear insight that they are suffering from the same disease. And your accepting of them will help them to accept themselves.

We can reverse the whole process: accept yourself. That makes you capable of accepting others.

And because somebody accepts them, they learn the beauty of acceptance for the first time – how peaceful it feels – and they start accepting others.

If the whole humanity comes to a point where everybody is accepted as he is, almost ninety percent of misery will simply disappear – it has no foundation – and your hearts will open of their own accord and your love will be flowing.

Right now, how can you love? When you see so many wrongs, so many weaknesses, how can you love? You want somebody perfect. Nobody is perfect, so you have to accept a state of no-love, or accept that it doesn’t matter whether somebody is imperfect. Love can be shared, shared with all kinds of people. Don’t make demands.

Judgment is ugly; it hurts people. On the one hand, you go on hurting, wounding them, and on the other hand, you want their love, their respect. It is impossible.

Love them, respect them, and perhaps your love and respect may help them to change many of their weaknesses, many of their failures – because love will give them a new energy, a new meaning, a new strength. Love will give them new roots to stand against strong winds, a hot sun, heavy rains.

If just a single person loves you, it makes you so strong that you cannot imagine it. But if nobody loves you in this vast world, you are just isolated; then you think you are free, but you are living in an isolation cell in a jail. It is just that the isolation cell is invisible; you carry it with you.

The heart will open by itself. Don’t be worried about the heart. Just do the primary spade work.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

TO ME, YOU HOUSE A PARADOX. YOU EMBODY THE ESSENCE BOTH OF ETERNITY AND OF

THE HERE AND NOW.

AROUND YOU I FEEL A SENSE OF SOMETHING THAT HAS ALWAYS BEEN AND WILL ALWAYS

BE, SOMETHING THAT I HAVE ALWAYS KNOWN – ALTHOUGH I AM NOT AWARE OF WHAT IT

IS EXACTLY. AT THE SAME TIME, WHENEVER I SEE YOU, IT IS SO DELIGHTFULLY NEW AND

FRESH... AS THOUGH IT WERE THE FIRST TIME I HAD SEEN YOU. BUT THE FIRST TIME I ACTUALLY EVER DID SEE YOU IN POONA, I FELT AS THOUGH I HAD ALWAYS KNOWN YOU.

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CHAPTER 1. THE ANIMALS MUST ALL BE LAUGHING

OSHO, AM I ALSO GOING CRAZY?

You are not going crazy, Maneesha – because you are already crazy. But to be crazy here with me is to taste sanity for the first time.

It is true that there is a paradox. You can feel at the same time in my presence, the intensity, the depth of the present moment, of the herenow, and – very illogically – the essential, the eternal, which has always been and always will be. But the paradox is only apparent – all paradoxes are only apparent – because to be here and now is the door to eternity.

To experience this moment is to experience, at the same time, all that has been and all that will be, because this moment contains both. It contains the whole past, because where will the past go? –

it goes on and on entering into the present moment. And it contains the whole future, because from where will the future come? – it will grow from this moment, from the next moment and the next moment and from the whole eternity.

The present moment is a seed which has all the trees of the past... generations and generations of trees. This seed has not come from nowhere, it has come from a tree. That tree had come from another seed, that seed had come from another tree. If you go backwards, the seed will take you to the very beginnings – if there were any beginnings.

It has been forever here.

And this seed also contains the future trees. From this seed will grow a new tree, and from that tree will grow thousands of seeds and thousands of trees. A single seed can make the whole earth green... or, it can even be said that it can make the whole universe green. So much is contained in a small seed.

This present moment is a seed of time.

It is invisible. That’s why we don’t know what it contains.

It contains the whole past; it contains the whole future. That’s why I insist: Don’t think of the past, don’t think of the future. Just remain in the present moment, and the whole past is yours and the whole future is yours.

Because of this paradox you feel in my presence as if you are seeing me for the first time; and when you saw me for the first time, years before, you had the feeling as if you had always known me. But it is an extension of the same paradox; it is not different.

We are always seeing each other for the first time, and we have known each other forever – because change is the only unchanging reality in existence... and particularly with a man like me, who does not live logically, who has no respect for any logic, who never bothers about whether this statement will contradict some other statement. In fact, I don’t remember which statements I have made before, so it is very easy for me: each statement is fresh, and I don’t compare it.

So you may have listened to me for years, but still you will find me fresh, for the simple reason that I don’t have any remembrance of what I have said in all the yesterdays that have passed. I don’t exactly know what is going to be my next sentence.

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These are not prepared lectures of a professor in a university or prepared sermons of a priest in a church. I am simply responding to your silence, to your questions, to the implications of your questions. You may have asked the same question thousands of times, but my answer is not going to be the same – because everything goes on changing. You have changed a lot, I have changed a lot. The question may seem to be the same, but it is not the same, because it is coming from a different person who has changed.

Ten years have passed; in ten years one cannot remain the same. And certainly the answer cannot be the same, because I go on moving each moment with life; I don’t lag behind. I have no investment in any system, I have no desire to be respected as a consistent thinker. I am simply playing with words. But my work is somewhere else; it is with your heart, and it is, every day, fresh.

So both are possible: from one angle you can see me as new; from another angle, as very ancient

– you have always known me.

One more reason: whatever I am saying is phrased in a totally spontaneous way, but it contains the ancientmost truths ever uttered by any human being on the earth. So those who can understand can see that what I am saying has always been said by the mystics, and yet, every day I am saying something in such a way as it has never been said before. So there is a newness and freshness –

and there is a deep, long ancientness in it.

But there is no paradox. All paradoxes are only apparent. At least with me, there cannot be anything paradoxical because there is nothing paradoxical in my being. My being is so harmonious that contradictory statements cannot arise out of it. So I don’t bother about statements. I know my being, I know its harmony.

And to be crazy in this mystery school is the only way now to be sane in this mad world. So the day I give you the certificate that you are crazy means you have passed the examination.

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CHAPTER 2

A whole glass of water

27 May 1986 am in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

IN THE OLDEN DAYS IT WAS CALLED MELANCHOLIA; TODAY IT IS CALLED DEPRESSION, AND IT COUNTS AS ONE OF THE MAJOR PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF DEVELOPED

COUNTRIES. IT IS DESCRIBED AS A SENSE OF DESPAIR OR HOPELESSNESS, A LACK

OF SELF-ESTEEM WITH NO ENTHUSIASM OR INTEREST IN THE SURROUNDINGS. IN

ADDITION, THERE ARE PHYSICAL SYMPTOMS OF POOR APPETITE, SLEEPLESSNESS

AND A LOSS OF SEXUAL ENERGY. ELECTROSHOCK TREATMENT HAS LARGELY BEEN

ABANDONED TODAY, AND DRUGS OR TALK THERAPY SEEM EQUALLY EFFECTIVE – OR

INEFFECTIVE. EXPLANATIONS FOR DEPRESSION HAVE VARIED FROM THE CHEMICAL TO

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL.

OSHO, WHAT IS THIS DEPRESSION? IS IT A REACTION TO A DEPRESSING WORLD, A KIND

OF HIBERNATION DURING ”THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT”? IS DEPRESSION JUST

A REACTION TO REPRESSION – OR OPPRESSION – OR IS IT JUST A FORM OF SELF-REPRESSION?

Man has always lived with hope, a future, a paradise somewhere far away.He has never lived in the present... his golden age is still to come. It kept him enthusiastic because greater things were going to happen; all his longings were going to be fulfilled. There was great joy in anticipation.

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He suffered in the present; he was miserable in the present. But all that was completely forgotten in the dreams that were going to be fulfilled tomorrow. Tomorrow has always been life-giving.

But the situation has changed. The old situation was not good because the tomorrow – the fulfillment of his dreams – never became true. He died hoping. Even in his death he was hoping for a future life – but he never actually experienced any rejoicing, any meaning. But it was tolerable. It was only a question of today: it will pass, and tomorrow is bound to come.

The religious prophets, messiahs, saviors were promising him all pleasures – which are condemned here – in paradise. The political leaders, the social ideologists, the utopians were promising him the same thing – not in paradise but here on earth, somewhere far away in the future when the society goes through a total revolution and there is no poverty, no classes, no government and man is absolutely free and has everything that he needs.

Both are basically fulfilling the same psychological need. To those who were materialistic, the ideological, political, sociological utopians were appealing; to those who were not so materialistic, the religious leaders appealed. But the object of appeal was exactly the same: all that you can imagine, can dream of, can long for, will be absolutely fulfilled. With those dreams, the present miseries seemed to be very small.

There was enthusiasm in the world; people were not depressed. Depression is a contemporary phenomenon and it has come into being because now there is no tomorrow.

All political ideologies have failed. There is no possibility that man will ever be equal, no possibility that there will be a time when there will be no government, no possibility that all your dreams will be fulfilled.

This has come as a great shock. Simultaneously man has become more mature. He may go to the church, to the mosque, to the synagogue, to the temple – but they are only social conformities, because he does not want, in such a dark and depressed state, to be left alone; he wants to be with the crowd. But basically he knows there is no paradise; he knows that no savior is going to come.

Hindus have waited five thousand years for Krishna. He promised not only that he would come once, he promised that whenever there would be misery, suffering, whenever vice would be on top of virtue, whenever nice and simple and innocent people would be exploited by the cunning and the hypocritical, he would come. sambhavami yugai yugai: ”I will make myself a reality in every age to come.” But for five thousand years no sign has been seen of him.

Jesus has promised he will come, and when asked when, he said, ”Very soon.” I can stretch ”very soon,” but not for two thousand years; that is too much.

The idea that our misery, our pain, our anguish will be taken away is no more appealing. The idea that there is a God who cares for us seems to be simply a joke. Looking at the world, it doesn’t seem as if there is anybody who cares.

In fact, in England there are almost thirty thousand people who are devil worshippers – just in England, a small part of the world. And their ideology is worth looking at in reference to your The Transmission of the Lamp

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question. They say that the devil is not against God, the devil is God’s son. God has abandoned the world, and now the only hope is to persuade the devil to take care as God is not taking care. And thirty thousand people are worshipping the devil as a son of God... and the reason is they feel that God has abandoned the world – he no more cares about it. Naturally, the only way is to appeal to his son; if somehow he can be persuaded by rituals, by prayer, by worship, perhaps the misery, the darkness, the sickness can be removed.

This is a desperate effort.

The reality is that man has always lived in poverty. Poverty has one thing beautiful about it: it never destroys your hope, it never goes against your dreams, it always brings enthusiasm for tomorrow.

One is hopeful, believing that things will be better: this dark period is already passing; soon there will be light.

But that situation has changed.

In the developed countries...

and remember, the problem of

depression is not in undeveloped countries – in the poor countries, people are still hopeful – it is only in the developed countries, where they have everything that they had always longed for. Now paradise will not do anymore; nor can a classless society help anymore. No utopia is going to be better. They have achieved the goal – and this achievement of the goal is the cause of depression.

Now there is no hope: tomorrow is dark, and the day after tomorrow will be even darker.

And all these things that they have dreamed of were very beautiful. They had never looked at the implications of them. Now that they have got them, they have got them with the implications. A man is poor, but he has an appetite. A man is rich, but he has no appetite. And it is better to be poor and have an appetite than to be rich and have no appetite. What are you going to do with all your gold, all your silver, all your dollars? You cannot eat them.

You have everything, but the appetite has disappeared for which you have been struggling all along.

You succeeded – and I have said again and again that nothing fails like success. You have reached a place that you wanted to reach, but you were not aware of the by-products. You have millions of dollars, but you cannot sleep.

When Alexander was in India he met a naked saint in the desert.

He declared: ”I am Alexander the Great!”

The saint said, ”You cannot be.”

He said, ”What nonsense! I am saying it myself, and you can see my armies all over the place.” He said, ”I see your armies, but one who calls himself ‘The Great’ has not yet reached to greatness, because greatness makes people humble, as it is such a failure, an utter failure.” Alexander was a disciple of Aristotle and he was trained by him in fine logic. He could not listen to all this mystic garbage. He said, ”I don’t believe all these things. I have conquered the whole world.” The naked man said, ”If in this desert you are thirsty, and I offer you a glass of water, how much would you be able to give me for it? – and for miles there is no water.” The Transmission of the Lamp

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Alexander said, ”I would give you half of my kingdom.” The saint said, ”No, I will not sell it for half of the kingdom. Either you can have the kingdom or you can have the glass of water. And you are thirsty and you are dying and there are no possibilities of finding water anywhere – what will you do?”

He said, ”Then naturally, I will give you the whole kingdom.” The saint laughed; he said, ”So that is the price of your whole kingdom – just a glass of water! And you think you have conquered the whole world? From today start saying you have conquered a whole glass of water.”

When man reaches to the cherished goals, then he becomes aware that there are many things around them. For example, for your whole life you try to earn money, thinking that one day when you have it, you will live a relaxed life. But you have been tense your whole life – tension has become your discipline – and at the end of life, when you have achieved all the money you wanted, you cannot relax. The whole life disciplined in tension and anguish and worry won’t let you relax.

So you are not a winner, you are a loser. You lose your appetite, you destroy your health, you destroy your sensibility, your sensitiveness. You destroy your aesthetic sense – because there is no time for all these things which do not produce dollars.

You are running after dollars – who has time to look at the roses? and who has time to look at the birds on the wing? and who has time to look at the beauty of human beings?

You postpone all these things so that one day, when you have everything, you will relax and enjoy.

But by the time you have everything, you have become a certain kind of disciplined person – who is blind to roses, who is blind to beauty, who cannot enjoy music, who cannot understand dance, who cannot understand poetry, who can only understand dollars. But those dollars give no satisfaction.

This is the cause of depression. That’s why it is only in the developed countries and only in the richer class of the developed countries – in the developed countries, there are poor people also, but they don’t suffer from depression – and now you cannot give a man any more hope to remove his depression because he has all, more than you can promise.

His condition is really pitiable. He never thought of implications, he never thought of by-products, he never thought of what he would lose by gaining money. He never thought that he would lose everything that could make him happy just because he has always pushed all those things aside.

He had no time and the competition was tough and he had to be tough. At the end he finds his heart is dead, his life is meaningless. He doesn’t see that there is any possibility in the future of any change, because ”What more is there...?”

I used to stay in Sagar in a very rich man’s house. The old man was very beautiful. He was the greatest bidi manufacturer in the whole of India. He had everything that you can imagine, but he was absolutely unable to enjoy anything.

Enjoyment is something that has to be nourished. It is a certain discipline, a certain art – how to enjoy – and it takes time to get in contact with the great things in life.

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But the man who is running after money bypasses everything that is a door to the divine, and he ends up at the end of the road and there is nothing ahead of him except death.

His whole life he was miserable. He tolerated it, ignored it in the hope that things were going to change. Now he cannot ignore it and cannot tolerate it because tomorrow there is only death and nothing else. And the whole life’s accumulated misery that he has ignored, the suffering that he has ignored, explodes in his being.

The richest man, in a way, is the poorest man in the world.

To be rich and not to be poor is a great art.

To be poor and to be rich is the other side of the art.

There are poor people whom you will find immensely rich. They don’t have anything, but they are rich. Their richness is not in things but in their being, in their multidimensional experiences.

And there are rich people who have everything but are absolutely poor and hollow and empty. Deep inside there is just a graveyard.

It is not a depression of the society because then it would affect the poor too; it is simply natural law, and man now will have to learn it. Up to now there was no need, because nobody had reached to a point where he had everything, while inside there was complete darkness and ignorance.

The first thing in life is to find meaning in the present moment.

The basic flavor of your being should be of love, of rejoicing, of celebration. Then you can do anything; dollars will not destroy it. But you put everything aside and simply run after dollars thinking that dollars can purchase everything. And then one day you find they cannot purchase anything –

and you have devoted your whole life to dollars.

This is the cause of depression.

And particularly in the West, the depression is going to be very deep. In the East, there have been rich people, but there was a certain dimension available. When the road to richness came to an end, they did not remain stuck there; they moved into a new direction. That new direction was in the air, available for centuries.

In the East the poor have been in a very good condition, and the rich have been in a tremendously good condition. The poor have learned contentment so they do not bother about running after ambition. And the rich have understood that one day you have to renounce it all and go in search of truth, in search of meaning.

In the West, at the end, the road simply ends. You can go back, but going back will not help your depression. You need a new direction.

Gautam Buddha, Mahavira, or Parshvanath – these people were at the peak of richness, and then they saw that it is almost a burden. Something else has to be found before death takes you over –

and they were courageous enough to renounce all.

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Their renunciation has been misunderstood. They renounced it all because they did not want to bother a single second more for money, for power – because they have seen the top, and there is nothing there. They went to the very highest rung of the ladder and found that it leads nowhere; it is just a ladder leading nowhere.

While you are somewhere in the middle, or lower than the middle, you have a hope because there are other rungs higher than you. There comes a point when you are on the highest rung and there is only suicide or madness – or hypocrisy: you go on smiling till death finishes you, but deep down you know that you have wasted your life.

In the East depression has never been a problem. The poor learned to enjoy whatsoever little they had, and the rich learned that having the whole world at your feet means nothing – you have to go in a search for meaning, not for money.

And they had precedents: for thousands of years people have gone in search of truth and have found it. There is no need to be in despair, in depression – you just have to move into an unknown dimension. They have never explored it – but as they start exploring the new dimension, it means a journey inwards, a journey to their own self. All that they have lost starts returning.

The West needs very urgently a great movement of meditation; otherwise, this depression is going to kill people. And these people will be the talented ones – because they achieved power, they achieved money, they achieved whatsoever they wanted... the highest degrees in education. These are the talented people – and they are all feeling despair.

This is going to be dangerous because the most talented people are no more enthusiastic about life, and the untalented are enthusiastic about life but they don’t even have the talents to get power, money, education, respectability. They don’t have the talents, so they are suffering, feeling handicapped. They are turning into terrorists, they are turning towards unnecessary violence just out of revenge – because they cannot do anything else. But they can destroy.

And the rich are almost ready to hang themselves from any tree because there is no reason for them to live. Their hearts have stopped beating long before. They are just corpses – well decorated, well honored, but utterly empty and futile.

The West is really in a far worse condition than the East – although to those who don’t understand, it seems that the West is in a better condition than the East because the East is poor. But poverty is not as big of a problem as is the failure of richness; then a man is really poor. An ordinary poor man at least has dreams, hopes, but the rich man has nothing.

What is needed is a great meditation movement reaching to every person.

And in the West these people who are depressed are going to psychoanalysts, therapists and all kinds of charlatans who are themselves depressed, more depressed than their patients – naturally, because the whole day they are hearing about depression, despair, meaninglessness. And seeing so many talented people in such a bad state, they themselves start losing their spirit. They cannot help; they themselves need help.

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The function of my school is going to be to prepare people with meditative energy and send them into the world just as examples for those who are depressed. If they can see that there are people who are not depressed – but on the contrary, who are immensely joyous – perhaps a hope may be born into them. Now they can have everything and there is no need to worry.

They can meditate.

I don’t teach renunciation of your wealth or of anything. Let everything be as it is. Just add one thing more to your life. Up to now you have been adding only things to your life. Now add something to your being – and that will do the music, that will do the miracle, that will do the magic, that will create a new thrill, a new youth, a new freshness.

It is not unsolvable. The problem is big, but the solution is very simple.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

SOMETIMES PEOPLE HAVE SAID THAT THEY SEE IN MY FACE THAT OF A VERY OLD, HARD WITCH. AND I HAVE FELT INSIDE ME A DEEPLY BURIED, REVENGEFUL, COLD

RAGE AGAINST ALL MEN WHO HAVE EVER FORCED, RAPED, KILLED OR HURT WOMEN.

THIS FEELS LIKE SOMETHING I HAVE BEEN CARRYING WITHIN FOR LIVES, AND THE

REALIZATION OF IT IS VERY PAINFUL. IS THIS SOME UNKNOWN PART OF MYSELF, A MEAN

PERSONALITY IN THE CLOSET? IF SO, PLEASE HELP ME UNCOVER AND BEFRIEND THIS

OLD WITCH.

The first thing to be clear about is that it was Christianity who condemned the word ‘witch’; otherwise, it was one of the most respected words, as respected as ‘mystic’ – a wise man. It simply meant a wise woman, the parallel to a wise man.

But in the Middle Ages, Christianity came to face a danger. There were thousands of women who were far wiser than the bishops and the cardinals and the pope. They knew the art of transforming people’s lives.

Their whole philosophy was based on love and transformation of sexual energy – and a woman can do that more easily than a man. After all, she is a mother and she is always a mother. Even a small baby girl has the quality of motherliness.

The quality of motherliness is not something connected with age, it is part of womanhood. And the transformation needs a very loving atmosphere, a very motherly transfer of energies. To Christianity, it was a competitor. Christianity has nothing to offer in comparison to it – but Christianity was in power.

It was a man’s world up to then; and they decided to destroy all witches. But how to destroy them?

It was not a question of killing one woman but thousands of women. So a special court was created for enquiry, to find out who was a witch.

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Any woman said by Christians to have had an influence on people and who people respected was caught and tortured – so much so, that she had to confess. They wouldn’t stop torturing her until she confessed that she was a witch. And according to the Christian mind, to Christian theology, the meaning of witch was changed: a witch is one who is having a sexual relationship with the devil.

You don’t hear any more of any devil having a relationship with any woman. Either the devil has become a Christian monk, a celibate, or... what has happened to the devil? Who was it that was having sexual relationships with thousands of women? And these women were mostly old women.

It doesn’t seem to be rational. When young and beautiful women were available, why should the devil go to the old, the very old women?

But to become a witch, it was a long training, a long discipline, a long experience. So by the time a woman was a witch – a wise woman – she was old; she had sacrificed everything to attain that wisdom, that alchemy.

They forced these poor old women into saying that they were having sexual intercourse with the devil. Many of them tried hard... but the torture was too much.

When my back had gone bad, Devaraj and other sannyasins trained in bodywork started traction on me. And I enquired, ”What is traction? How was it invented?” They had no idea.

It was invented in the Middle Ages by Christians to torture the witches – to pull their bodies from both ends and to go on pulling to a point where it became unbearable. Many became unconscious; many died on their traction machine. But, by the way, it was found that many old women who were put into traction had had a back problem; when they got out of it, the back problem had disappeared.

So now Christians don’t use it, but doctors do. Now it is part of the medical world.

They tortured these women in many ugly ways, just for one thing: they should confess. The women continued to try to say that they had nothing to do with the devil, that there was nothing to confess.

But nobody listened to them; they went on torturing them.

You can make anybody confess anything if you go on torturing him. A point comes when he feels it is better to confess rather than to unnecessarily suffer the same torture every day. And it would have continued for his whole life. Once a woman confessed that she was a witch and was having a sexual relationship with the devil, her torture was stopped and then she was presented before a court – a special court made by the pope – and before the court she was to now confess. And once she confessed before the court, the court was able to punish her – because it is the greatest crime in the eyes of Christianity.

In fact, even if the woman was having a sexual relationship with the devil, it is none of the business of anybody else – and it is not a crime, because she is not harming anybody. And the devil has never complained to any police station, ”That woman is dangerous.” On what authority was Christianity burning these women?

The only punishment was to be burned alive so that no other woman dared to be a witch again. They destroyed thousands of women and completely removed a very significant part of humanity. And the wisdom that those women contained – their books, their methods, their techniques of transforming man, transforming man’s energy....

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So the first thing to be understood is: don’t think that witch is a bad word. It is more respectable than ‘pope’ – because I don’t think a pope is a man who can be called wise; they are just parrots and nothing else. It is possible that it may be connected with your past life, and the wound has been so deep that still some remembrance in your unconscious goes on reminding you. And that creates the hate for men, because what was done to you was done by men.

So it is a simple association, but that association has to be dropped. It was not done by men, it was done by Christians. And the Christians have done so many crimes, and they go on doing them. It is unbelievable.

Just now in the United States, there is a case in the court against the Catholic church, because they cannot have a tax-exempt status if, in any way, they try to participate in politics. And they are participating in politics in every way. They have their lobbyists in the Senate, in the congress; even the president, Ronald Reagan, is a fundamentalist Christian, so they must be influencing him, because that is a fanatic section of Christianity.

The magistrate was convinced by all the evidence that was produced by a small group of liberated people – liberated from the slavery of Christianity – that these people are lobbying and influencing the law, influencing the government, and their tax-exempt status should be taken away.

The magistrate told them that they will be fined one hundred thousand dollars per day, for as long as they don’t answer. But this is how the world is: after seven days the magistrate changed his statement – ”They will not be fined, they can simply answer.” Now, that is again a proof that a pressure from higher sources is forcing him... that this is too much in a Christian country. That’s what Ronald Reagan thinks – that America is a Christian country and should respect Christian values, and this would be a condemnation of the whole Christian church.

So no fine; they can simply answer whether it is true or not. But the thing is out; it cannot remain that way for long. They will have to accept the fact.

Our commune was destroyed by Christians hiding behind the politicians. They have money, they have votes, so any politician is vulnerable to their influence.

And all over the world they are doing ugly things. Ronald Reagan was going to give a large amount of war material to Saudi Arabia, which the congress rejected because it was strange – on one hand you go on giving war material to Israel, and on the other hand you give war material to the Mohammedan countries. On both sides your war material is being used, so you have found a good market. People will be killed, and your old-fashioned war material – which is of no use anymore

– you can sell. Otherwise, what is one to do with that war material? Every day new things are happening, and the old becomes out-of-date.

But to sell to both parties is simply so absurd. If you want Israel to be saved, then you should not sell war material to Mohammedan countries. But that is not the question. Who cares about Israel and who cares about the Mohammedan countries? The real care is how many things you can sell.

President Ronald Reagan vetoed it; he’s still going to sell.

The United States has a treaty with the European countries, NATO. Ronald Reagan has proposed to produce chemical war material, which is the ugliest. Only five countries out of sixteen have voted The Transmission of the Lamp

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against it, but that does not matter because the majority is in favor. And all the great countries –

England, France, Germany – are in favor.

When chemicals are used in war, it is more dangerous and more ugly – more inhuman. For example, a bomb will not be dropped here, but chemical gas will be released into the city and whoever breathes that gas will die immediately.

There are gases which will melt only your bones; you will live, but all your bones will be melted. So you will become just a bag without any bones. What kind of life will that man have when all his bones are gone? He cannot walk, he cannot sit; he can only lie down.

And they go on talking about truth, talking about God... and speaking lies.

Doctors from the West have now gone to Kiev and have found that Soviet Russia has given exact information about the disaster in their nuclear plant. Only two persons have died, and America managed to influence the whole world news media to say that two thousand people have died.

There is a limit to exaggeration – two people became two thousand! And now Western experts have gone there and they have confirmed that only two persons have died. Four persons died afterwards, so in all, six persons have died.

And these are religious people trying in every way to deceive the world, to deceive the human mind, to pollute with ugly lies. So don’t be against men as such; just being against Christian atrocities is enough.

And don’t feel bad that something is wrong in you. It must be a remembrance. You can go through hypnosis so that you can remember better. That will help in both ways: you will not feel bad that you are having such bad, evil ideas, and secondly it will help you to make clear the distinction between men and Christians.

Now all European countries are Christian and they are ready for chemical war. And they will go on reading, ”Love your enemies, Love your neighbor,” and they will continue praying in their churches...

and they will prepare a chemical death for millions of people. And the initiator is a fundamentalist Christian.

Ronald Reagan has been brought up in a fundamentalist Christian school, and he has not grown up from there. He is still retarded.

You can see the Christian mind: Americans were asked, ”If you want your brain to be changed, with whom would you want to change it?” God came last. Nobody cares about God; that’s how you can see.

If you directly ask somebody, then he will fight that God is the supreme being. But in an indirect way, they got caught. Ronald Reagan is ahead of God, ahead of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ and God –

these are just fictions, even to the Christian mind. Otherwise, in the poll God should have come first

– he couldn’t even have come second – and Jesus Christ should have come second. And there are hundreds of beautiful people in the world; Ronald Reagan cannot have any place.

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But for two thousand years Christianity has been killing people in the name of religion, in the name of God, in the name of Christ, in the name of the nation – so it is perfectly right to condemn them.

But not every man is a Christian. To be a Christian is a degradation; it is becoming subhuman.

But it will be good to go through a hypnotic process to find out more clearly. Perhaps you may remember what were the techniques of the witches – how they functioned, how they managed to change people – because unless they were a danger to Christianity, Christianity would not have killed them.

It was a real danger, because Christianity has nothing to offer in comparison.

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CHAPTER 3

True balance

27 May 1986 pm in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

YOU ARE UTTER SILENCE AND SO STILL, AND YET I SEE, WHEREVER YOU ARE, A MAD

CYCLONE SURROUNDS YOU. IS THIS JUST YOUR LEELA, OR DOES EXISTENCE ALWAYS

BALANCE SO PERFECTLY?

It is neither. I have nothing to do with it. It is not my leela, my playfulness; nor is it nature balancing itself. It is something totally different from both.

The world is always a madhouse... at least up to now it has been a madhouse. But when everyone is mad, you don’t become aware of it.

If one person, just a single individual, comes out of madness – becomes sane – then suddenly the distinction is seen. Then you see sanity surrounded by madness, silence surrounded by a cyclone.

If everybody else also becomes silent and the cyclone disappears, that will be a perfect balance by existence.

In our logical minds, balance happens between opposite things.

In reality, balance means

disappearance of the opposition, the two becoming one, their diametrically opposite ways merging into one, melting into one reality. That is balance, true balance.

I can understand your problem, that I am utterly silent; still, wherever I go, a great turmoil surrounds me.

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The turmoil was there already; it is just that there was no way to contrast it. It is not that the turmoil suddenly appears. My silence is not creating it, but my silence is exposing it.

In many ways you can understand it. In a world where everybody is blind, to have eyes is dangerous because you are creating an opposition to the whole world. It is more convenient and comfortable to destroy your eyes and become blind, or at least keep your eyes closed and pretend to be blind.

But to make it known that you have eyes and you can see... and naturally, you would like everybody else also to be capable of seeing the beauty of existence, all the colors, all the stars. Without eyes a man is only twenty percent alive; eighty percent of experiences are through the eyes. Naturally you want to help. But if everybody is blind, they are not going to accept such an idea that they are blind. Their parents were such, their forefathers were such; for generations traditionally, this is the way they have been, and this is the only way to be.

And you are introducing something so new, so outrageous, so insulting to them, that rather than helping you to help them they would like to kill you, destroy you, so that any comparison, any contrast, which reminds them that perhaps they are blind, which creates a doubt in them: ”Who knows, perhaps that man is right....”

They don’t want to get into such doubt. They don’t want to have any inconvenient ideas. Removing this man – crucifying him, poisoning him, murdering him – is far easier than for millions of people to accept a very inconvenient, uncomfortable, humiliating phenomenon: they are all blind.

The most difficult thing in the world is to accept that you are ignorant. Even the most ignorant person will not be ready to accept it. Only the greatest geniuses like Socrates have been able to accept that they know nothing.

The normal, the mediocre, the common people love to believe that they know, they know everything.

And anybody who creates a question, creates a doubt, creates an air of skepticism, is dangerous because he is disturbing so many people’s comfortable lives of ignorance. He cannot be tolerated.

This is the greatest crime known to man.

So it is not my leela, not my game; nor is it nature trying to have a perfect balance – because the perfect balance will be absolute silence. There will be no opposition to it.

The situation is created because the society has lived in ignorance, believing it is knowledge. It has lived in all kinds of immoralities, believing they are moral. It has believed in all kinds of things, thinking that they are true; in reality, they are only fictions.

And anybody who tries to expose all these fictions and lies... he will be silent, because only a silent person can do that, only a person whose silence cannot be disturbed even by death. Then suddenly, all around him there is trouble of all kinds – lies, allegations – and every effort is made to prove that the majority of the world cannot be wrong.

It is a strange thing that truth is not democratic. What is true is not to be decided by votes; otherwise, we could never come to any truth ever. People would vote for what is comfortable – and lies are very The Transmission of the Lamp

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comfortable because you don’t have to do anything about them, you just have to believe.... Truth needs great effort, discovery, risk, and to walk alone on a path which nobody has traveled before.

Just today, Anando was giving me some information.

One piece was very significant:

all

schizophrenic people, neurotic people, psychotic people, or any other kind of mentally disturbed people, always want to be in the crowd – they don’t want to be alone. This was discovered by psychoanalysts who have been working with these mental cases for years – that these people have a great fear of being alone and that they are very comfortable in the crowd.

The reverse is also true – if you feel comfortable in the crowd, that means unconsciously you have a tendency to fall mentally sick if you go out of the crowd, if you are left alone.

In jails, the greatest punishment is the isolation cell. When a person is put into a dark isolation cell, just a piece of bread is slipped underneath the door; that is the only communication between himself and humanity. Nobody speaks to him, nobody comes to see him. And within three weeks he starts losing his sanity, he starts seeing things he has never seen – hallucinations, all kinds of illusions...

the crowd was a protection.

Those psychoanalysts have not said what the basic reasons behind it are. The crowd is a protection because it supplies you with a common hallucination in which everyone believes. So you need not be worried about it, you need not think that this is something sick: ”It is healthy to be a Christian, to be a Mohammedan, to be a Hindu, to go to the temple and to bow down before a stone statue and pray to a god who lives in heaven. Everybody is doing it, it must be true; so many people cannot be wrong....” It is a common hallucination.

Now, by putting a person into an isolation cell you have taken him out of the crowd, out of the comfort and the coziness of the crowd. He has never been on his own. Now, for the first time, in darkness, with nobody to talk to, with nobody to say anything to... his mind goes berserk. And now, to keep himself engaged, he has to do something, his mind has to do something.

One Russian scientist was kept in an isolation cell for years, but he kept himself sane by just counting figures. From one he would go counting up to millions and millions, and then he would count backwards, and then again... he was a great mathematician. And he was a chess player, so when he would get tired with figures, he would start playing chess with an imaginary partner. Just by playing chess and thinking of ways to win, he kept himself sane.

But the ordinary man within three weeks breaks down and starts having hallucinations. These are private hallucinations. That is the difficulty: they don’t have the sanction of the crowd. And that is why the jail authorities have thought keeping people in isolation the greatest punishment you can suffer. It is really the most terrible torture.

The crowd is living – it may be miserable, it may be suffering, but so is everybody else. If somebody wakes up and sees that everybody is asleep and having nightmares – unnecessarily suffering, creating illusions which have no counterpart in reality – that man will be looked upon as an enemy.

He is the greatest friend, but he is bound to be looked upon as an enemy.

This is the whole history of man: all the friends have been looked upon as enemies, and all the enemies have been looked upon as friends.

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I am carrying a silence around me. It is simply a by-product of my silence inside. And when I stand in the marketplace, naturally everybody feels disturbed, humiliated, contradicted – his beliefs are being destroyed; otherwise, what danger can I be?

I am a danger only because they are living in false beliefs. And I am doing my best to make it clear to them: whatever you believe is nonsense – and unless you drop it you cannot have any experience of blissfulness, you cannot become in touch with truth as it is.

I will go on doing it because I cannot think that there is not a possibility of humanity waking up – if not today, then tomorrow; if not by me, then by somebody else. But to lose hope means to drop all possibilities of future growth for human beings. So I will continue to do whatsoever I feel is right...

and they will continue to avoid whatever they feel is dangerous.

Even if a few people are turned on, that’s enough – more than enough – because those few people will turn on a few more people. It can become a wildfire.

The turmoil, the disturbance, the ugliness all around has to be destroyed, and it cannot be destroyed by anybody who is using destructive means. It can be destroyed only by silence, by peace, by love, by compassion.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

SITTING IN YOUR PRESENCE IS SUCH A BEAUTIFUL EXPERIENCE. WE CALL IT DISCOURSE.

THIS WORD SEEMS TO ME SO POOR NEXT TO WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE. IS THERE A WORD IN ANY LANGUAGE THAT COULD POINT TO, IF NOT DESCRIBE, WHAT IS HAPPENING

BETWEEN THE MASTER AND THE DISCIPLE?

There is no word in any language for what transpires between the master and the disciple. It is the strangest phenomenon in life. It is not a relationship, it is something far deeper, far greater, far more eternal. Once you have known the taste of being a disciple, the last problem for the master will be how to help you drop it – the idea of disciplehood – because it is so fulfilling, so perfect, that one doesn’t want to stop it.

It is said about Mahakashyap, one of Gautam Buddha’s disciples, that he never said anything. He was asked again and again by other disciples – because he was a great philosopher before he came to Gautam Buddha, and he had thousands of followers; he was one of the sharpest minds around Gautam Buddha, perhaps next only to Gautam Buddha – ”Why don’t you speak? Why don’t you say anything?”

Because the disciples were persistently harassing him, he finally said, ”The truth is that I don’t want to say anything because I don’t want to go beyond disciplehood. Saying anything, coming into the light, becoming important in Gautam Buddha’s eyes, is dangerous. I simply want to sit in a corner and just enjoy the presence of the master. I had come to seek truth, but now I do not have any desire for it. I had come here for enlightenment – I have dropped the idea. Just to be in the presence of this man – just to feel his love showering, his silence penetrating to the very core of my being – is so much, that to ask for more is simply ungratefulness.” The Transmission of the Lamp

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But these are the paradoxes of life: Mahakashyap was the first to become enlightened. His totality in being a disciple was enough to make him enlightened. And the only thing known about him in the Buddhist scriptures is that he laughed. That was the first time that he made any gesture.

Buddha looked at him and said, ”Mahakashyap, you never speak – why are you laughing?” He said, ”It’s hilarious! I was trying to hide myself so that I wouldn’t come into the direct focus of you.

And there are so many who are desirous of enlightenment, of truth, of the ultimate, that I thought,

‘Let all of them reach; I can wait. This waiting is so beautiful.’ But I had to laugh because I’m the first to have entered the world of enlightenment – and I never asked about it.” Buddha said, ”It is because you never asked about it. You in fact even dropped the desire for it. You were coming closer to it, you even became afraid that it might happen, so you were hiding in corners, you would never ask a question. And I knew that it was going to happen to you first – before anyone else – because these are the qualities that are needed. Unknowingly you fulfill all the conditions.

And don’t be angry with me; I have nothing to do with it. You are solely responsible for what has happened.”

Mahakashyap said, ”I have only one desire: though I have become enlightened – and it is a tremendous experience – please allow me, while you are alive, not to be sent anywhere else. Let me remain in your commune wherever you move.”

It was a moving, wandering commune – a few days here, a few days in another place. Buddha said,

”I cannot say no to you; you have never asked anything.” Mahakashyap remained his whole life with Gautam Buddha. When Gautam Buddha died, then he started speaking. Asked why, he said, ”Now I have to create the same atmosphere for those who don’t have any taste of disciplehood. I had no intention of becoming a master, but destiny would not allow me not to. I wanted to die before Gautam Buddha so I wouldn’t have to carry this burden.” He proved to be one of the great masters – of the same caliber as Gautam Buddha – and he created a lineage of great disciples and great masters.

I have talked about Zen: Mahakashyap was the first – not Gautam Buddha – to initiate the process which culminated in Zen, because it was his disciple, Bodhidharma, who took the message to China.

And perhaps Gautam Buddha would not agree with everything Zen consists of, because the real master of Zen and its origin is Mahakashyap, who has a totally different personality from Gautam Buddha – less serious, with a sense of humor, with no idea of holier-than-thou.

The man who was finally the decisive factor was Bodhidharma; he comes in the fifth generation of disciples of Mahakashyap. He was very decisive in giving a certain character to Zen, which it still carries.

Bodhidharma is farther away still from Mahakashyap. He has a great sense of humor, is very straightforward, knows no etiquette, no manners, is very simple and innocent, has no philosophical background, speaks in an ordinary way.

But ordinary words from the mouth of a man like

Bodhidharma start having such freshness, such authority – more than any philosophical jargon can ever have.

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Philosophical words are vague, wishy-washy, big – much ado about nothing. Bodhidharma speaks exactly telegraphically; if ten words will do, he will not use eleven words.

But nobody would have conceived that this small stream arising in a silent man like Mahakashyap would become the world’s most purified and essential religiousness. But Mahakashyap has the quality of humbleness – so humble that he drops even the idea of enlightenment, of truth. Certainly, he has experienced something in the presence of his master: he is ready to forsake everything –

truth included. If Gautam Buddha is going to hell, he would like to go to hell; he is not interested in going to heaven.

It is a strange phenomenon, that the West has no idea about. It knows students, it even knows the word ‘disciple’, but it has never gone very deep into the existential experience of it. The word disciple comes from the same root as discipline, and the root meaning of disciple is the capacity to hear.

Everybody hears, but not like the disciple. Everybody hears because everybody has ears. But the disciple hears not only with his ears but with his whole being, with his heart. While hearing, he is not thinking about it – whether it is true or not. That is the way of the student. The disciple simply drinks it, soaks it up, allows it to penetrate every fiber of his being.

The culmination of disciplehood is the devotee. When the disciple is perfect he enters into a new phase, which is that of the devotee. Now he feels no distinction from the master. Now there are two bodies but one soul. Now he even hears things which are not said, he understands things which are not indicated. He starts feeling the very vibration of the master’s being. The devotee is absolutely unknown to the West.

You are right: what is happening here is not of this world. It is in this world but not of this world. We are trying to bring the other world in – to smuggle it into this world.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

THE MAGIC KEYS YOU HAVE GIVEN TO GO BEYOND DUALITY ARE ONE THING TO HEAR

AND ANOTHER TO LIVE. LAST NIGHT A MIRACLE HAPPENED. I LOVE TO GAMBLE, AND

WALKING THROUGH THE DOOR OF A CASINO FOR ME IS LIKE THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE A SNAKE BITE ON THEIR TONGUE AND HAVE TO STAY AWARE. LAST NIGHT I WAS ABLE TO

REMAIN PRESENT FOR THE FIRST TIME AFTER HUNDREDS OF TRIES; AND EVEN THOUGH

I LOST MONEY, THE VICTORY OF NOT BEING IDENTIFIED COULDN’T BE BOUGHT BY ALL

THE MONEY IN THE WORLD.

BELOVED OSHO, I’M SO HAPPY.

Kaveesha, I am also very happy.

It does not matter where awareness happens; what matters is that it happens. If it happens in a casino, then the casino has become a temple, a sacred place. For most people it does not happen, even in temples, in synagogues, in churches. For them, those places are not sacred because they have not tasted anything sacred there.

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The place does not count, the act does not count. What counts is: can you do it absolutely unidentified? Let it happen in different situations and it will bring more and more flowers to your being.

Question 4

BELOVED OSHO,

A CURIOUS THING HAPPENED TO ME ONCE WHEN I WAS A LITTLE GIRL – PERHAPS

ELEVEN OR TWELVE YEARS OLD. DURING RECESS TIME AT SCHOOL I WAS IN THE

BATHROOM AND I LOOKED INTO THE MIRROR TO SEE IF I LOOKED TIDY. THEN SUDDENLY

I FOUND THAT I WAS STANDING HALFWAY BETWEEN MY BODY AND THE MIRROR, WATCHING MYSELF LOOKING AT MY REFLECTION IN THE MIRROR.

IT AMUSED ME TO SEE THE THREE I’S, AND I THOUGHT IT MUST HAVE BEEN A TRICK

ONE COULD LEARN. SO I TRIED TO SHOW MY GIRLFRIEND AND I TRIED IT AGAIN MYSELF

– WITHOUT SUCCESS. IT DIDN’T, IN RETROSPECT, FEEL LIKE WITNESSING; IT FELT LIKE

MY ESSENTIAL SELF HAD STEPPED OUT OF MY PHYSICAL FORM. IS IT OF ANY VALUE TO

UNDERSTAND WHAT HAPPENED TO THAT LITTLE GIRL?

It happens to many children, but because the atmosphere around is not supportive of awareness, those experiences are not nourished by the parents, the school, the friends, the teachers. And if you say that it has happened to you, people will laugh – and you yourself will think that something has gone wrong, that it was not right.

For example, all children in every culture around the world like to whirl. And every parent stops them from whirling and says, ”You will fall down.” It is true, there is a possibility they may fall down. But that falling down is not going to harm much.

But why do children like whirling? While the body is whirling, small children can see it whirling. They are no longer identified with it, because it is such a new experience.

With everything they are identified – with walking they are identified, with eating they are identified, with anything they are doing, usually they are identified. This whirling is such an experience that the faster the body moves, whirls, the less is the possibility of their remaining identified.

Soon they are lagging behind; the body is whirling but their being cannot whirl. It stops at a point and starts seeing its own body whirling. Sometimes it can come out of the body too. If the whirling child is not staying at one place but goes on moving – whirling and moving around the place – then his essential self can come out and watch it.

Such activities should be helped, nourished, and the child should be asked, ”What are you experiencing?” and told, ”This experience is one of the greatest in life, so don’t forget it. Even if you fall, there is no harm; there is not much that can be harmful. But what you can gain is invaluable.” But they are being stopped in this and in many other things.

My own experience in childhood was... the flooded river of my town – nobody used to cross it by swimming when it was flooded. It was a mountainous river. Ordinarily, it was a small river, but in The Transmission of the Lamp

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rainy times it was at least one mile wide. The current of the water was tremendous; you could not stand in it. And the water was deep, so there was no way to stand anyway.

I loved it. I waited for the rainy season because it always helped... there would come a moment when I would feel that I was dying, because I was tired and I could not see the other shore, and the waves were high and the current was strong... and there was no way to go back, because now the other shore was as far away. Perhaps I was in the middle; it was the same either way. I would feel so completely tired and the water would take me down with such a force that there would come a time when I would see, ”Now there is no possibility of living any more.” And that was the moment when I would suddenly see myself above the water and my body in the water. When it happened the first time, it was a very frightening experience. I thought I must have died. I had heard that when you die, the soul goes out of the body: ”So I have gone out of the body and I am dead.” But I could see the body was still trying to reach the other shore, so I followed the body.

That was the first time I became aware of a connection between your essential being and the body.

It is connected just below the navel – two inches below the navel – by something like a silver cord, a silver rope. It is not material, but it shines like silver. Each time I reached the other shore, the moment I reached the other shore my being would enter into the body. The first time it was frightening; then it became a great entertainment.

When I told my parents, they said, ”Someday you are going to die in that river. This is enough of a sign. Stop going into the river when it is flooded.” But I said, ”I am enjoying it so much... the freedom, no force of gravitation, and seeing one’s own body completely away.”

Then I moved to the university and there it happened once. I have talked about it. Just behind the university campus there was a hillock with three trees. I used to love those trees because it was impossible to sit silently in the hostels. So I used to go and climb up a tree. The middle tree was very comfortable to sit in – the way its branches were – and I would sit there for hours in silence.

One day – I don’t know what happened – when I opened my eyes I saw my body lying down on the ground. It was the same experience that had happened in the river many times, so there was no fear.

But in the river, it used to happen automatically that when the body reached the shore, my being would enter into the body. I had no idea how to enter the body; it had always happened of its own accord. So I was stuck. I had no idea. I could see the cord joining me to the body, but how to enter the body, from where to enter? I had never learned any technique from anybody. I simply waited.

There was nothing to do.

A woman who used to bring milk to sell to the hostel students came by, and she saw my body lying down. She was puzzled. She just touched my head to see whether I was alive or dead, and the moment she touched my head I entered into my body with such a quick force that I still can not get the idea of how it happens.

But one thing became certain: if a man’s being is out, a woman’s touch to the body will help him to come into the body. And vice versa: if a woman’s body is away from her being, then a man’s touch The Transmission of the Lamp

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– and particularly on the forehead where the third eye is.... It was just by accident that she touched me on my head to see whether I was alive or dead, to see what had happened. She had no idea that I was sitting in the tree seeing everything that she was doing. When I opened my eyes she was shocked.

She said, ”What are you doing here?”

I said, ”I was going to ask you what you are doing here touching my head.” She said, ”I was thinking perhaps some accident had happened or something. You looked almost dead.”

I said, ”I was almost dead, and I am grateful to you that you helped me. It was because of your touch that I came into the body.”

She said, ”You mean you were sitting in the tree?” She got so frightened of me. She used to give me milk. She stopped coming to my barrack. She simply said, ”I don’t want to face that person. He is dangerous. What he was doing I don’t know, but he was doing something dangerous.”

I had to catch hold of her and tell her, ”You need not be worried. I was not doing anything. I was just meditating and the body fell. You helped me, and I am grateful. And there is nobody who brings such good milk as you, so you cannot stop doing it. If you stop doing it, I will start sitting in the same tree where you have to pass, coming and going – remember! And my body will be lying down, and I will be sitting in the tree.”

She said, ”Don’t do it again. I will give you milk – pure milk without water – but don’t do it again, at least not while I am passing by, because that hill is empty... there is nobody there, and I have to pass by it to go to my village.” The village was beyond the hill.

So I said, ”Remember, if you stop coming and delivering milk, then I am going to do the trick there.

I can even come to your village; just in front of your house I can do it.” She said, ”I am a poor woman. Don’t create any trouble for me.” What happened to you was just accidental. If you had pursued it, it would have come back.

In fact, to watch in the mirror is one of the methods prescribed by the tantra system – but to watch long enough so that you become so identified with the reflection in the mirror, that when you step back, your body remains in the old position. And for women, it is more possible, because nobody wastes as much time in front of the mirror.

Mulla Nasruddin was killing flies, and his wife said, ”Now it is enough. For one hour you have been killing them. How many have you killed?”

He said, ”Only two: one male, one female.”

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His wife said, ”How did you manage to find out which one was male and which one was female?” He said, ”One was sitting on the mirror for the whole hour; no male can do that. The male was also sitting there once in a while; but the female remained stuck on the mirror.” But it is a method prescribed in the scriptures, that you watch in the mirror long enough so that you become identified with the reflection in the mirror. Then you step back. Your body will not step back, but your being will step back. Then you can see three bodies.

By the way, if you go on looking into the mirror every day for a particular period of time, one hour every day just looking into your own eyes, in a few days, a few weeks – it depends on each individual

– one day you will suddenly see that the mirror is empty. You are standing before it, but the mirror is empty. That, too, is a great experience. When it happens you will feel tremendous silence and a peace you have never known – as if you have gone beyond all reflections and you have come back to the real.

But it was good... it happens to many children. Many people have reported it to me, but nobody persists. So once in a while it happens, and then one forgets it, or one thinks perhaps one imagined it, perhaps it was something, just a fancy, a dream. But it is a reality. You had walked out of yourself, and what you saw is a kind of awareness outside the body.

The same awareness you have to practice from inside the body. They are not different in quality.

And the easiest way to find this out-of-body experience is to lie down on a bed, flat on your back.

Relax, and when you feel completely relaxed, then just start feeling that you are leaving the body, floating upwards toward the ceiling. In a few days you will be able to float above the body. But make sure that nobody disturbs you while you are in such a position, because if somebody disturbs you and the cord is broken, you are dead.

So the best suggestion: ask Kaveesha to be present to help you to relax and suggest to you that your soul is leaving the body and floating in the air. And you will see, from the air, Kaveesha sitting in the room and that you are lying flat on the bed.

Just keep a very dim light with candles, and burn incense. But anything that you do – burning incense, candles – then the same thing should be repeated always so that it becomes associated.

So you need not be dependent on Kaveesha forever.

After two or three sessions, just when you light the incense and the candle and you lie down, immediately you will be able to float out. But keep alert that nobody disturbs you, that nobody comes into the room and wakes you suddenly. That can be fatal. If the cord is broken, then there is no way to rejoin it.

So, first try it with Kaveesha. She can give you post-hypnotic suggestions that you will be able to float out of the body without any disturbance. And tell somebody to wait at the door so that nobody comes in for one hour and you are left alone.

When you give the suggestion that your body will be left by the soul for fifteen minutes or thirty minutes, exactly after thirty minutes it will automatically come back to the body.

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Never forget that – because entering into the body is difficult. And if it happens sometimes... then anybody who is watching the door has to remember: if it is a woman, then a man should touch the third eye, or if it is a man, then a woman should touch the third eye. And the soul will simply rush back to the body. Those opposite energies are needed to attract each other.

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CHAPTER 4

Spreading a net of perfume

28 May 1986 am in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

WHENEVER YOU TALK ABOUT MUSIC AND DANCE, IT TOUCHES SOMETHING REALLY DEEP

IN ME, AND MY WHOLE BEING IS ABSORBED IN EVERY WORD AND GESTURE, LIKE A SPONGE. WHEN YOU TALKED ABOUT AWARENESS AND BEING TOTALLY LOST IN THE

MUSIC, I SUDDENLY UNDERSTOOD WHAT AN INCREDIBLE GIFT YOU HAVE GIVEN ME BY

LETTING ME DANCE AROUND YOU – WHERE NOTHING WAS SAID, BUT AWARENESS HAD

TO BE THERE, AND IT CAME NATURALLY, TOGETHER WITH BEING LOST IN THE DANCE.

IN MOMENTS LIKE THAT I AM FILLED WITH AWE AND GRATEFULNESS, JUST SEEING HOW

YOU GUIDE US SO PERFECTLY AND SO CARINGLY AND HOW YOU CREATE SITUATIONS

THROUGH WHICH, WITH JUST A LITTLE BIT OF EFFORT, WE CAN GAIN SO MUCH.

I AM SO IMMENSELY GRATEFUL TO BE HERE WITH YOU.

Gayan, the most important thing in spiritual guidance is that it should not be direct. The guided should not feel he is being guided. Whenever guidance is direct it brings a kind of slavery; the guided becomes dependent on the guide.

But to guide indirectly is very difficult. It is a kind of persuasion where the guided cannot feel at all that he is being told to do this, to do that. He is simply being given indications, with such love, that he likes to go in those directions in those moments. And he becomes aware that he has been guided on each step – carefully guided – but only when he has reached.

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Now there is no problem and no fear. One who has arrived cannot be made dependent, he can only feel gratitude. The responses will be totally different.

If you guide a person directly he will resist it, because you are trying to mold his personality; you are taking away his freedom, making him move in a certain direction.

In the first place he will never reach, because with this reluctance, this resistance, there is, deep down, anger and rage. He is doing it – becoming dependent, accepting a certain spiritual slavery –

for his own desires.

And these are the factors which will create resentment in him. They will not bridge him to the master; they will create a wall between the two. Reaching the goal is almost impossible.

This is a vicious circle: when you do everything that you are being told to do, outwardly you are obedient, ready to serve the master – outwardly grateful – but inwardly reluctant, resistant, angry.

And when doing everything that the master has said, and you don’t reach... that is the point where these kinds of people turn into enemies. Rather than bringing gratitude into them, the whole process has only gathered more and more enmity.

But to guide a person without his being at all aware that he is being guided... it is just like when you smell perfume in the garden and you start moving towards it. You will not feel reluctant, resistant, inimical to the perfume – although it has guided you. In fact, spreading the perfume is nothing but spreading a net in which those who are capable will be caught and brought closer and closer.

They will recognize only after they have reached that they have been guided, that they have been guarded, cared for – and not a single word has been told to them to do this or not to do this. Their freedom has not been touched in any way. They have not been turned into slaves.

This has been my experience: it is very rare to find a master who can guide you in such a way, because it is with each step difficult, arduous. And the master has to be very conscious, very cautious that the disciple does not feel in any way lower than him. He has to take his hand in his own hand in such a way as if the disciple himself is taking the master’s hand in his own hand. It is a tremendous art. He allures, he does not dictate.

So amongst masters you will find very rare masters who are perfect guides. And this is the definition of the perfect guide: he does not allow you to know that you are being guided. You come to realize it only at the very end of the journey – and suddenly there is great gratitude, gratitude for all the arduous roundabout ways the master has had to use just not to hurt you in any way, not to create any dependence. On the contrary, making you more and more free, he has functioned only as a friend.

But not all the disciples are capable of being guided in this way. I have been asked hundreds of times why women are attracted so much to my philosophy, my way of life. I have given some answers, but the real answer is: the woman is a more efficient disciple than the man, and she knows the delicacy of being guided without direct instructions. She does not function through the mind, which needs a direct, clear-cut catechism.

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”Just tell me the Ten Commandments” – that is the language of man. But there are men also who have the same feeling heart as the women. They can become perfect disciples, but the percentage will be less than that of women.

And amongst the men, those who don’t have a heart, who function through the mind, many may come close to the master – intellectually interested according to their prejudices – and may seem to have understood him well, better than anybody else... their intellectual understanding will be more clear.

The land of the heart is not the land of arithmetic or logic; it is poetry, it is music. You can enjoy it, but you cannot understand it.

I am reminded of one great English poet, Coleridge. Although he never completed more than seven poems in his whole life, he still became one of the greatest poets of the English language

– because it is not the quantity that counts, it is the quality. When he died he left almost forty thousand incomplete poems.

His whole life, his friends were harassing him continuously: ”You seem to be mad! You have such a treasure. Just a few poems have made you a great poet; if you could produce forty thousand poems of that quality, perhaps in the whole world there would be no competition against you – in the whole history of man, past, present and future. Why do you go on piling up incomplete poems?” He said, ”You don’t understand; I cannot do it. Unless existence guides me so politely that I don’t feel the guidance, that I don’t feel the push and pull to do it, I am not going to do it. These poems are the poems of my freedom – existence becoming free through me. These poems will have to wait.” Sometimes a poem was just missing one line, and his poet friends said, ”You can compose that line yourself.”

He said, ”It does not work that way. I have tried, but the quality is as distant as the sky is from the earth. I can deceive others, but I cannot deceive myself. I will wait; when existence comes – without forcing me, because I cannot do it under force – and it simply persuades me, encourages me, and I know only afterwards that I have been guided, then only will I complete a poem.” Once it happened in the London University... the professor who was teaching literature came across a line of Coleridge which he could not make any sense of. And he was a sincere man; he said to his students, ”I cannot give any reasonable explanation for it. And I don’t want to deceive you. Coleridge lives just in my neighborhood; he is old, but being his neighbor, I am still allowed to see him and meet him. I will go to him and ask him myself what the meaning of this line is.” He went to Coleridge the next day and asked him. Coleridge looked at the whole poem and he said,

”There is meaning in it. When I wrote it two persons knew the meaning. Now only one knows.” Hearing him say that only two persons knew the meaning, the professor became afraid: where was he going to find those two persons? And when Coleridge said, ”Now, only one knows,” then the professor became even more afraid. There was only one hope; he said, ”But that one must be you?” The Transmission of the Lamp

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Coleridge said, ”No. When I wrote this I knew it, God knew it. Now, only God knows; I don’t know. It is a beautiful line; alas, I have no way of remembering. In fact, I have not written it.” His name for existence is God, that’s all – there is no difference. He is saying, ”I have not written it. The writing was done by me, but a bigger, vaster energy was persuading me, encouraging me to write it down. I was used as an instrument, a medium.” This word ‘medium’ reminds me of what Gayan is saying, that dancing, singing around me, she had become completely lost in the dancing, in the singing, and she had no idea at all that she was being guided. I have never mentioned any guidance; I had left it to her. The way she wants to dance, she can dance. But I was there.

She was dancing around me, so she could not remain out of my presence. And my presence was persuading her to go further and further, deeper and deeper. Unsaid, unheard... but the guidance was there. Now she remembers, retrospectively, the tremendous experience she has gone through, which has changed her forever. She cannot fall back; she can go ahead, but not backwards.

In the beginning she must have thought that it was just simply decorative: ”In a darshan, dancing must be just decorative.” But slowly, slowly she got into it. If I had said that there are guidelines to be followed, she would not have been able to be totally in it; those guidelines would have been a disturbance.

Whether man or woman, the way of truth is the way of the heart. And the way of the heart cannot be taught, it can only be inspired, thrilled, excited, to go on a new exploration... invited, but not ordered.

She has brought a beautiful question which will help many. The words ‘order’ and ‘guidance’

and ‘commandments’ – they are all mind words. The heart has no parallel words; it knows only inspiration, becoming aflame, not knowing why... but it is so juicy, of such a grand beauty that the heart goes on following it.

But many of the religions have destroyed the way of the heart because there were not many masters who could manage it. It is a fine art, superfine. It was easy to manage teachers, teachings, guidance, discipline for the mind – but the mind has nothing at all to do with religion.

Once, I was coming home from the river, and there was a boy who must have been an idiot; he was trying to pull a cow back towards home. The cow must have gone to the river and was not willing to go back home – and she was much more powerful than the boy. And he was trying hard.

I stood there and watched. Instead of the boy pulling the cow, the cow was pulling the boy towards the river. And he was shouting and asking people to help: ”This cow is going mad!” I said, ”Nobody is going mad; it is simply that you don’t know how to bring a cow home.” He said, ”How do you bring a cow home?”

I said, ”Drop this rope, and instead of the rope, take some green grass in your hands, move ahead of the cow, and the cow will follow. That is persuasion; you are not forcing. The cow is free; she The Transmission of the Lamp

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can go to the river or anywhere she wants... but with this green grass in front of her, she cannot go anywhere.”

Guidance is exactly like that. You have to inspire, not instigate. You have to be very polite and humble, not even giving a hint that the other person is being ordered to do something. You have to be inviting, requesting, and let the person come into the field of energy where things start taking place on their own.

With men the problem is that many cannot manage the language of the heart. Sooner or later they fall out. And when they fall out, then a trouble is there. People start asking them, ”Why have you left?” And the mind never wants to say, ”I don’t know.” The mind may have to create lies, allegations to justify itself: ”I had to leave because that was not the right place.” The reality is you were not in the right shape. You tried to manage the work that can be done only by the heart by something else – by the mind. You failed. In the beginning you will succeed, but soon there will come a point where you will have to turn towards the heart, because the mind can go on, round and round, but it never reaches to the center.

And those who are very deeply grounded in the intellect cannot leave it; it is their investment, their whole lifelong investment. So rather than coming to growth, to gratitude, they fall out – empty, angry, ungrateful, saying things which if they had even thought twice, they would not have said. And all that they are saying really goes against them, because what were you doing for ten years with this man? It took you ten years to find out that this is the wrong place? Then, even in ten lives you are not going to find the right place. You are simply retarded.

To have a soft heart, in a man or a woman, is of immense value in the growth of, the evolution of, your consciousness.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

I RECALL A BEAUTIFUL STORY OF HERMANN HESSE. A WOMAN IS PREGNANT AND AN

OLD WISE MAN TELLS HER THAT SHE MAY HAVE ONE WISH GRANTED IN RESPECT TO

HER CHILD. SHE WISHES THAT HER CHILD BE LOVED BY ALL. THIS WISH IS FULFILLED, AND ALTHOUGH THE YOUNG BOY IS BAD, HE IS LOVED BY EVERYONE. BY THE TIME HE

HAS BECOME A YOUNG MAN, HE HAS EVERYTHING AROUND HIM THAT HE EVER WANTS.

BUT HE IS SO UNHAPPY THAT HE WANTS TO COMMIT SUICIDE. HOWEVER, THE OLD WISE

MAN REAPPEARS AND INDICATES THAT HE CAN HAVE ONE WISH.

THE YOUNG MAN WISHES TO BE ABLE TO LOVE EVERYONE RATHER THAN BE LOVED

BY EVERYONE. HIS WISH IS FULFILLED. HIS BEAUTIFUL FACE BECOMES OLD AND UGLY, AND THE WHOLE TOWN TURNS AGAINST HIM. HE IS STONED AND CAN FIND NO FOOD

OR CLOTHES. BUT HE IS OVERFLOWING WITH LOVE, AND EVERY SMALL THING IN LIFE

BECOMES A LOVE AFFAIR.

HE DECIDES TO GO ON A PILGRIMAGE, AND ONE COLD NIGHT HE ENCOUNTERS THE

SAME OLD WISE MAN, WHO RECEIVES HIM WITH TREMENDOUS LOVE. THE PILGRIM

RELAXES INTO THE OLD SAGE AND BECOMES AN INNOCENT CHILD AGAIN.

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OSHO, WOULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT?

Hermann Hesse is one of the Western minds who has come very close to the Eastern way of looking at things. Perhaps there is no other man of his quality who understands the East better. This story is an indication of his understanding of the Eastern wisdom about love.

The first wish the mother asks is that her child should be loved by all. Looking at the words you will not understand what is hidden behind them. He becomes a young man, he has everything, he is beautiful.

Although he is not well-mannered, he is spoilt because everybody loves him unconditionally. But he is not satisfied. As he goes on becoming more mature, the situation comes to a point where he wants to commit suicide.

This is the whole history of all those who want to be loved. Why is he in so much despair? He should be happy. What more can you ask? – everybody loves you, in spite of you. But to the perceiving eye there is something: when you are loved by everybody you become an object of love. You lose your individuality, you lose your integrity, you lose your subjectivity. You become an object. Everybody loves you like a beautiful piece of art – and nobody wants to become an object.

That’s what his mother forgot. That’s what millions of people in the world have forgotten. The wish looks perfectly good, but its implications are very dangerous. First, it reduces you from the high status of a subjective consciousness into an objective reality. Everybody loves you without bothering whether you are worthy of it or not. And you are not worthy of it; it is because of the blessing of the old wise man that they are loving you. Their love has spoiled you; you are not of any worth. You understand it, that you are not worthy, but still people are loving you. A great guilt arises in you that something has gone wrong.

Love has to be earned. Unearned love is just like a beggar – without earning anything, spreading his begging bowl before you. Man wants everything to be earned; he wants to be worthy of it. He should not be just a beggar. He is reduced to an object, he is reduced to a beggar. And the boy had no love for anybody, because that was not part of the wish. So you can see: he cannot understand love either.

The fire should be burning on both sides simultaneously.

He has no fire; he is utterly cold, ice-cold. He has never loved anybody. And you can understand the misery of a person who has never loved – because he does not know what love is. According to the blessing everybody is loving him, but according to his understanding, nobody has loved him because he does not know the feel of love. He has never loved anybody – how can he know it?

So all that love surrounding him is just meaningless. As far as he is concerned nobody has loved him. And he is not aware of the wish of his old mother, of the blessing of the old sage. And even if he had been aware, it would not have made any difference.

To understand love, first you should be loving.

Only then can you understand love.

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Millions of people are suffering: they want to be loved, but they don’t know how to love. And love cannot exist as a monologue; it is a dialogue, a very harmonious dialogue.

So much love being showered on the man, and still he decides to commit suicide... because it is not what people give to you that satisfies, it is what you give to people that satisfies. It is not by being a beggar that you can be contented, it is by being an emperor, and love makes you an emperor when you give. And you can give so much, inexhaustibly, that the more you give, the more refined, the more cultured, the more perfumed your love becomes – the more there is contentment.

But that poor fellow was in a difficult situation. Everybody was loving him and he did not know what love is. Just fed up with this love he decides to commit suicide. The old sage appears again because the sage knew that that was going to be. The mother had asked something – according to her a great wish but not according to the sage. He knew this wish would lead to suicide. He says, ”I can give you one wish.” And you can see immediately what the boy asks for, because that is what he is lacking.

The story is tremendously methodological.

On the surface you may not understand it, but

underneath everything is so well-connected. The second wish proves what I have been telling you.

He asks that he does not want others to love him, he wants to love others. In that, he is showing that the first wish is meaningless without this second wish. He wants to love everyone.

But the story here may seem strange to you, that as the wish is granted, the young and beautiful man changes into an ugly and old man. It indicates that it is only in old age that people come to understand what they missed in their life: they never loved. In their whole life they wanted others to love them, and were miserable. They always wanted to get more and more love; they were greedy.

At the end, when people start forgetting them because they have become old and ugly, they have a look at their whole life, at what was missing; and the revelation – they never gave, they only wanted.

Ordinarily, it is too late. Now, even to find people to receive love from them will not be possible.

And you have in all languages, ”the dirty old man” – in all languages the same expression – because in old age, when he is no longer young and no longer beautiful and everything has turned ugly and he is ready to die, the understanding arises that he missed one thing. That’s why his whole life has been empty and meaningless; he never loved, he never gave. So now he wants to love people. But who wants to love an old and ugly man? He is disgusting. His love looks like lust – not love but the lust of a dying man.

So the story is significant in that as the young man receives the blessing of the old sage, suddenly he becomes old and ugly. He is granted the wish to love. The whole story is about humanity: now he can love, but nobody will receive his love; now he can give, but everybody will be escaping from him. He will be disgusting. Talking about love is a faraway thing; nobody wants even to sit with him.

He is half dead and he wants to love you. And naturally he will want to love the young, the beautiful, and obviously he will be denied.

He has moved from one extreme of the pendulum to the other extreme of the pendulum; either by itself is only half, and no extreme can be fulfilling. Seeing the situation that neither was he satisfied when people were showering their love on him, nor was he satisfied by loving people – because The Transmission of the Lamp

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now it is difficult to find people to love – he goes on a pilgrimage, and for the last time he meets the sage.

The sage knew, because this is the dialectic: the mother had chosen one part, which proved wrong; he had chosen the other part, which is going to prove wrong. Both together they can prove right, but not separately.

But now, seeing that both have failed, he has come to a kind of transcendence and sees that all dualities fail. And when he meets the old man, the old man hugs him and he becomes just like an innocent child – exactly the same child that the mother had brought to the old sage to be blessed.

Life has done a whole circle; he is back again as a small child.

That too is very significant, because each of life’s failures brings you a little understanding, a little transcendence. It is that little understanding and that little transcendence of dualities that gives you a new birth after death – again as an innocent child; again, an opportunity not to fall into the same old trap. But people go on falling into the same old trap again and again; it becomes habitual.

The innocence of childhood will come after each failure of the extreme – after the failure of both extremes. But you may start again the whole game....

In the East they are right in saying that circles of life go on moving in the same rut with the same failures, into the same ditches with the same miseries – and nobody seems to learn anything. If somebody really learns, and the transcendence beyond duality is no longer the blessing of a saint but your very understanding – it arises out of your own being – then there is no longer any need for a new birth.

This is what I call enlightenment – the understanding that all extremes fail. Remain in the middle, exactly in the middle, where the pendulum stops and the clock stops, where time stops – no movement, no desire, no goal, nowhere to go, but just to be here now.

Now that this innocence is arising out of you, this presence is born out of you, you will not need another birth. Your education in the world is finished. Now you can be accepted in the wider existence, with all the awakened ones.

The story is certainly very beautiful; try to go deeper into its implications. And there are thousands of stories like this, which people simply read like stories. Almost always they are in the books of children, who cannot understand anything; they simply read the story.

These stories are needed to be read by those who are meditating, who are no longer childish, who have a certain maturity, so that they can open the hidden meaning of the story.

Wherever you find such stories, you can bring them to me. They contain the wisdom of the ages.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

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I EXPECT I MUST HAVE CHANGED OVER THE TWELVE YEARS I HAVE BEEN WITH YOU, BUT

I WOULD FIND IT VERY DIFFICULT TO DESCRIBE TO ANYONE JUST EXACTLY HOW AND IN

WHAT RESPECT I HAVE. YET I CAN SEE THAT OTHERS AROUND YOU HAVE CHANGED. I CAN ALSO RECALL AND TRACE THROUGH IT CHANGING ASPECTS OF MY RELATIONSHIP

AS A DISCIPLE TO YOU AS MY MASTER. IN FACT, THAT SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN THE WHOLE

PIVOT FOR ME FOR ANY CHANGE THAT HAS COME ABOUT. MY CONNECTION WITH YOU

HAS BEEN LIKE A LAMP, A GAUGE, A COMPASS.

IS IT IMPORTANT TO HAVE AN IDEA OF WHAT CHANGES HAVE HAPPENED TO ONESELF?

No. If the right changes are happening, then the answer is no. If you are feeling good, if you are feeling that you are in a symphony, then the answer is no. But if things are going wrong – changes are happening, but you are becoming worse – then yes, you have to think about them.

Remember, thinking is needed only when things are going worse. When things are going towards higher states of being, thinking is a disturbance.

It is almost like this: if you are healthy you don’t ask if you should go to the doctor to be examined because you are feeling too healthy, too much in a well-being. The answer would be no. But if you are feeling sick, the answer would be, ”Yes, go to the doctor.” So my answer depends on your feeling. If you are feeling that you are growing, becoming more silent, more peaceful, more loving, more compassionate, gaining higher values, reaching towards the stars, then there is no need to think about what changes are happening and why they are happening, because all that thinking will be a disturbance – it will stop the growth. Then, just forget about thinking; put your whole and total energy into growing.

But if you feel that something is going wrong – you are more tense, more in an-guish, more in misery, more in despair – then certainly you should think about what the reason is, why you are falling back rather than growing up.

Question 4

BELOVED OSHO,

SHAKESPEARE WROTE, AS PART OF THE DIALOGUE DESCRIBING TWO CHARACTERS IN

TWO OF HIS PLAYS, THE FOLLOWING PHRASES WHICH HAVE COME TO ME SO OFTEN IN

THE YEARS I HAVE KNOWN YOU, IN REFERENCE TO YOU.

OF ONE, HE WROTE: ”HE BESTRIDES THE NARROW WORLD LIKE A COLOSSUS. HE IS MAN

OF MEN.”

AND OF THE OTHER: ”AGE CANNOT WITHER, NOR CUSTOM STALE... A MAN OF INFINITE

VARIETY.”

BELOVED ONE, OUR WORDS ARE SO INADEQUATE, AND YET THE DESIRE IS SO STRONG

TO EXPRESS SOMETHING OF WHAT IT MEANS TO US. IN YOU, ALL THAT IS FINE AND PURE

AND OF THE NOBLEST HEIGHTS HAS TAKEN FORM.

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IN YOUR DISCIPLES, THE NAMELESS SILENCE HAS TAKEN ROOT AND WILL FIND A VOICE

AND BE LIVING PROOF OF WHO YOU ARE.

There is no need.... I can understand the desire to describe your feelings. You have devoted your whole life to me; you have given yourself to me totally. Naturally, the desire is bound to arise to describe what kind of man you have come across.

All words will look inadequate.

But there is no need at all – because I can see in your eyes, I can see in your tears, I can see in your laughter, I can see in your silence all that you want to say... and that you cannot say it.

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CHAPTER 5

The very foundation for one world

28 May 1986 pm in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

IN THE JAPANESE LANGUAGE, THE WORD FOR LOVE IS A PICTURE OF A PERSON WITH

A FULL STOMACH, KNEELING, WITH BOTH HANDS RAISED IN OFFERING. THE PICTURE

MEANS, ”I AM SO FULL; PLEASE ALLOW ME TO SHARE, PLEASE TAKE FROM ME.” OSHO, IS IT POSSIBLE THAT THE LANGUAGES OF CULTURES THAT USE SYMBOLS ARE MORE

PROTECTED FROM DEPRECIATION IN VALUE, AS HAPPENS FOR EXAMPLE IN ENGLISH

WITH THE WORD ‘LOVE’?

The languages like Japanese or Chinese are certainly more protective of the essential quality of a word. But these languages are pictorial languages.

The pictorial language is the language of the unconscious mind. That’s why in the unconscious mind you see dreams.

The pictorial languages are also the languages of the child, who can only think in pictures, not by the alphabet. That’s why in children’s books you will see bigger, more colorful pictures. And as the child grows, pictures start becoming smaller, and finally the pictures disappear; only abstractions, alphabetical letters, take their place.

The alphabetical languages have some qualities; that’s why they have won the race against the nonalphabetical languages. They are simple to learn.

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Some languages have twenty-six letters; all words will be made out of these twenty-six letters.

Sanskrit has the biggest number – fifty-two letters. More are not possible, because you cannot make more sounds than fifty-two. So while in English many sounds are missing which are in existence –

there is only one ‘s’ and in Sanskrit there are three – Sanskrit is as perfect a language as it can be.

But Sanskrit also got defeated in the race of languages. It was very poetic like Arabic and other old languages, but you cannot do science in poetry, you cannot do mathematics in poetry. You need a more prose-like style of language. Poetry may be closer to emotions and subjectivity; prose is closer to facts and the objective world. And we are dealing with the objective world. Very few people are dealing with the subjective.

So languages that were leaning more towards the subjective, towards the poetic, got defeated, and languages that were pictorial were very difficult. Unless you are born Chinese or Japanese, it will take almost half of your life to learn the language. That is too much – thirty years – because you will have to remember so many pictures of all things... so many symbols. So although those languages have the innocence of child, a purity....

And they are not so corruptible, because for each different shade of meaning, they have different symbols. For example, love – people love all kinds of things. People love their cars, people love their clothes, people love their food, people love their houses, people love their wives, their friends, their husbands – one word has to be used for so many different things. It naturally loses its purity.

A thing cannot be loved in the same way that you love a person. And if you love both in the same way you don’t know what love is. Love should be a definite quality. But the language does not offer many words – only one word for everything. It is simpler, less complicated, more utilitarian, but you cannot save the purity of the word.

This Japanese symbol for love – a man with a big belly, offering with both his hands – can only be interpreted in one way; there are not two ways. It is simply saying that you are so full that you want to share. And that is the purity of love, when there is no desire to get but to give. And you can give only when you are overflowing, you can share only when you have too much – out of abundance.

The picture makes it definite. But then you will have to learn millions of symbols for every small thing in the world. And it is too tedious, too tiresome; for each small thing you have to make a symbol. In Chinese, the symbol for fight or war is one roof, and under one roof, two women. It shows that if you have two wives, there is going to be a constant fight. So for all fights, this is the symbol.

In a way it is very solid. It has its own beauty and gives a definite meaning which cannot be easily corrupted; hence, you will not find in Chinese or Japanese any commentaries on scriptures. A commentary means you have to interpret.

In Sanskrit you will find thousands of commentaries on a single scripture, because Sanskrit is a subjective and emotional and poetic language, immensely capable of expressing any nuance of feelings, sentiment – the whole spectrum. It has tried to be perfect, and it has almost attained perfection. But in attaining perfection it has lost something of humanness.

Each word has many meanings – a dozen meanings – because it has taken all sounds as letters.

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cannot exhaust the whole existence, so each word has a dozen meanings. It gives a very flexible beauty to it, because poets can play with words more easily when there are so many meanings. But it creates a new phenomenon: the commentary.

Krishna has spoken in the shrimad bhagavadgita, and there are thousands of commentaries. The same line can be interpreted in a thousand ways. Now it has become a jungle of commentaries; you don’t know what Krishna really wanted to say.

It became such a phenomenon – it has not happened anywhere else in the world – that Shankara will write a commentary on Krishna, then Shankara’s commentary itself becomes a question – what does he mean? Then Shankara’s disciples start writing commentaries on his commentary, and so on and so forth, generation after generation.

Krishna’s gita is left far away. You will not find even the echo of it, because from one commentary to another commentary, they are changing their focus. The person who writes a commentary on Shankara is not concerned with Krishna, he is concerned with Shankara – with giving a definite meaning to Shankara. And there are other disciples trying to do the same – to compete with each other – so there are hundreds of commentaries on Shankara. Then these people, on their own, will produce disciples who will be writing commentaries on their commentaries.

To go into Indian scriptures is really to enter into a wonderland. How people can go on playing with words, finding new meanings contradictory to each other! And there is no way to say who is right, because the language allows all the meanings.

Because of this flexibility Sanskrit cannot be a scientific language, although it has beauty. To chant it is almost like singing. It has flexibility, not monopoly. Everybody is free to manage the meaning, to derive a philosophy from it, which nobody else has ever tried to do before. So there is a freedom of thought, but there is bound to be confusion. Science cannot afford that.

The pictorial languages like Japanese are very systematic. They have a single-pointed meaning.

No commentary is needed, the meaning is in the symbol. But you need so many symbols that such a big language cannot be used for the whole world as an international language, because if you are not born with it from childhood, it is going to take half of your life just to learn the language; the question of using it does not arise. Life is so short, people are in a hurry, death is so close, that it will be a sheer wastage of time – thirty years or more just to memorize symbols.

All the languages of the world have something significant in them, but they also have problems.

Geeta’s question is significant. It is true – in English or in any language which uses an alphabet, no word can remain pure, because it will have to be used for many things. In different contexts it will get polluted, contaminated – and people don’t even recognize it. Somebody says, ”I love you” in the same way that he says, ”I love smoking.” He does not see that loving to smoke and loving a person cannot be put in the same category; they can’t have the same meaning. English is poor in that way.

In Sanskrit, if a brother and sister love each other, there is one word for it that excludes a sexual relationship automatically without saying anything. It is love, but not of the kind that exists between husband and wife. So for the husband and wife there is a different word. For your parents there is The Transmission of the Lamp

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a different word, because the same words cannot be used. When you are using it for your parents, there must be something of gratitude in it, something of respect, reverence. And when you are using it for a thing, again, it cannot be from any other category; it will have its own category. It will be more like liking, not loving.

But then there are so many words that it becomes unmanageable, and with slight changes their meanings change. And every language has developed with a different background.

I have been thinking that there must be a language which can have all the beautiful qualities of all the languages without their problems, but it seems impossible. There have been efforts like Esperanto, but they don’t take root; they are artificial, man-made.

It would be a great thing if the whole world had one language.

It would help immensely to

bring humanity closer to each other.

It would be one of the greatest steps against war – a basic groundwork for understanding – because most of the conflicts are of misunderstanding, and language plays a great role in understanding or misunderstanding.

So there have been people who have tried to create an artificial language accepted by the whole world, but no effort has succeeded for the simple reason that the language you have learned since you were born has gone so deeply into your bones, into your blood, into your marrow, that it is almost a part of you. Something can be transplanted over it, but it will not be a joy. And why should one carry a burden?

The mother language goes so deeply into your being.... One of my professors, S.K. Saxena, who lived almost all his life in the West studying, then lecturing, being a professor, came back to India only in his old age. But he confessed to me, ”It is strange, but I have to confess to you that I have lived almost all my life in the West, but still, if I fall in love with a woman, I want to talk in my mother tongue. To talk with her in a language which is not my mother tongue seems to be superficial.” Or in fighting you will forget the transplanted language. You would like to fight in your mother tongue.

There is a famous incident in the life of the famous emperor, Bhoj. He was well-known for respecting all kinds of talented people. His court was full of talented people. From all over the country, he had picked up the best – the cream – in every direction, in every dimension. He had the best scholars, the best philosophers, the best singers, the best poets.

One day a man appeared, and he challenged Bhoj: ”You are too proud of your so-called scholars.

I challenge your scholars to recognize my mother tongue. I speak thirty languages; I will speak in those thirty languages, and if anybody can recognize which one is my mother tongue, then there are one hundred thousand gold pieces for him. If he loses then he has to pay me the same amount

– and all are challenged.”

The first day he spoke a few passages in one language, then in another, then in another. A few people tried and they lost. Just one man, a poet, Kalidas – he is the Shakespeare of India –

remained silent, for the simple reason that the challenge was for the scholars, not for the poets. But he was watching the man very carefully. But after thirty languages – and at least fifteen persons had already lost – even Kalidas could not manage to find even a small way to distinguish which one was his mother tongue.

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When all the scholars were finished – nobody else was ready to take the challenge, seeing the fate of the fifteen most prominent scholars of the court – Kalidas appealed to the man, ”I could not participate today because you did not invite the poets. You invited only the scholars. It would be a great kindness if you can come tomorrow again and give a chance to the poets.” The man was more than happy. He said, ”I can go on continuing as long as you want. Poets, singers, musicians, dancers, theologians, philosophers... anybody. I can go on coming every day.” The next day Kalidas was standing in front of the gate with the whole court and the emperor. He asked them to stand there to receive and welcome the guest. They said, ”This is not necessary,” but he said, ”This is part of my strategy – you just stand here.” There were at least a hundred marble steps leading to the palace, and as the man reached the upper step, Kalidas pushed him. He slipped on the steps, rolled down, and started shouting. Kalidas said,

”This is your mother language!” – and the man had to accept that this was his mother language.

”But,” the man said, ”this is not right.”

Kalidas said, ”There was no other way – either love or fight. It is something that cannot be managed superficially.”

I told the story to Dr. S.K. Saxena. He said, ”The story is perfectly true; it is my experience. I have loved many women, but it was always superficial because I could not speak my mother tongue. I could not say how much I loved her. And to say it in a foreign language was simply a translation; it was not the original.”

In the world there are thousands of languages, and nobody is willing to drop his own language. The only way seems to be that everybody be allowed to have two languages.

One is the international language – and English is perfectly right for it. It is more contemporary than any other language. Every year eighteen hundred words are added to it. No other language has that. It goes on renewing itself continually with the times. It seems right now to be the only language which is still growing, and the future needs a continually growing language, growing in all directions so that it can be very comprehensive.

But it cannot fulfill the need for a mother tongue to everybody. So everybody should be taught two languages from childhood. Every person has to be bilingual. And the gap can be bridged if both languages are brought in from the very beginning. It is not that one first learns the mother language up to a certain age and then starts learning another language; then the other language is never going to have the rootedness which the mother language has.

Any efforts like Esperanto are going to fail. They are arbitrary. They have taken everything good from this language, from that – eclectically. But a language has an organic unity which is missing in Esperanto.

One of my friends, a sannyasin, a traditional sannyasin, Swami Satyabhakta, has developed a language of his own. He was a linguist, knew many languages, and was developing a new language The Transmission of the Lamp

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that could become a world language. He used to stay with me. I told him, ”Don’t destroy your life unnecessarily. Many people have tried, but it simply does not work.” I told him a small story. Charles Darwin’s birthday was being celebrated. He used to teach about birds, insects, animals – that was his whole life. The children of his family and the neighborhood all enjoyed his stories about exotic lands where he had visited and the different kinds of animals there.

The children had an idea: ”Let us see whether he can find it or not....” They caught at least ten or twelve insects, cut pieces from them – somebody’s legs, somebody’s head, somebody’s wings, somebody’s tail – and they glued together all those different parts of the different insects. It looked like an insect. They pasted it well, framed it as a present for his birthday, and they all came to present it to him. They said to him, ”We have only one question. We have found this insect; we just want to know the name of it.”

He looked at the insect.

He had never seen such a thing in his whole life...

and just in the

neighborhood! How did these children get this? He has been searching all over the world.... Then he looked closer and he found that it was not one insect. They had been really clever; all the parts were separate and they were glued together. So he said, ”Its name is ‘Humbug’!” All these arbitrary languages are humbug. You can manage to give them a shape, but it doesn’t work.

But a vast area of the Far East is nonalphabetical, and it will be very difficult for Chinese or Japanese to exist in the future because, for scientific use, they are not the right languages; they are too big.

Science needs precision, simplicity, directness. It wants to use as small an amount of letters as possible. That is a basic theory in science: use as few hypotheses as possible, because otherwise complexities grow.

So for a scientific future of the world, I don’t see that Chinese, Japanese or allied languages of the Far East, can survive. And it will be a sad thing if they don’t survive; they have a beauty of their own.

The only way for them to survive is that one international language be accepted and used for all scientific and international communications and research work – and their own mother tongue can continue to grow in its old path, with its old beauties and its old frailties. If this is not done, then either they will lag behind scientific progress or they will have to kill their own languages.

In India the same problem is there. There are thirty major languages, and all have their own beauty, something of a special quality. Hindi is the most widely understood and widely spoken language, and for forty years they have been trying to make Hindi the national language. But they have not succeeded, because it may be the majority language, but all other languages together....

Against each single language, Hindi is the major language. For example, forty percent of people speak it, and no other language has that majority. But all those other languages together are spoken by sixty percent; so as far as a fight is concerned, they are major. If a vote is to be taken they will defeat Hindi. They are not friendly with each other – they are against each other – but as far as Hindi is concerned, it is a common enemy and they are all together.

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Only two percent of people understand English. But still I have suggested that India should accept thirty national languages and one international language.

English should be the international

language, because nobody is against it, it is nobody’s mother tongue. Nobody is for it, people are neutral about it. And if their national language is also accepted, then the area where their language is spoken can go on growing its own literature, its own poetry, its own drama, without any trouble.

Except for that, there is no solution.

English should be taught from the very beginning, not at a later stage; otherwise, it will always remain superficial. And the world has to accept one language. It is just a coincidence that the British Empire has spread the English language, but the opportunity should be used. The English language should be made the international language by the U. N.

Each person should have two languages: one, his mother tongue; the other, his international language. And efforts should be made that both grow together as early as possible. Then the international language also enters into your being so that your mother tongue and your international language are interwoven. There is no conflict, and you have the capacity of smoothly moving from one language to another language – no question of translation, but a smooth movement – if both languages are available to you with the same roots within your being.

It is one of the significant questions facing humanity. But it is strange that humanity never decides anything that is significant. It goes on fighting about insignificant things, things that are meaningless.

For centuries they have been wasting time and not bothering to see that unless you can create one international language, you cannot create one world. These are basic steps.

I am for one international language, and my choice is English – for the simple reason that it is already spread all over the world, although it is not the major language.

Of the major languages, first is Chinese. But it is confined only to China; it cannot become a world language. More people speak Chinese, read Chinese, than any other language. Out of five, one person speaks Chinese, but they are located only in China; it cannot have any possibility of spreading. And if you have to learn it for thirty years I don’t think it is wise to even advise that it should become a world language.

The second is Spanish, but its scope is also not as wide as English. And it is spoken not in the most advanced countries, but in the less advanced countries.

Third in number is English. Although less people speak it than Chinese or Spanish, it is spread over a wide area, and that is a more significant reason to make it an international language.

But people are concerned with such stupid things. Anando was just showing me a book review on Christianity in the Middle Ages.

I have said again and again that Christianity is a cancer – but that book review even shocked ME!

In the Middle Ages they had special courts appointed by the pope and the Vatican where any woman could declare that her husband was impotent and that she wanted a divorce. And you cannot think of such stupidity – none of those bishops or cardinals had any knowledge of gynecology. And the The Transmission of the Lamp

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court used to be full, because the man had to be naked before the court and show whether he was impotent or not.

It is a simple, well-known fact that if people are watching you, you cannot have an erection. With so many people around watching and the fear that if he does not succeed in having an erection he will be stamped impotent, divorced.... And even if he managed – if he could not manage, that was decisive, he was finished – if he managed an erection, that was not enough. He actually had to make love to his wife before the court – because you may have an erection and you may not be able to penetrate the woman.

And all this was being done in the name of religion! Humiliating!

And it was an everyday thing. Any woman in anger would simply go, knowing perfectly well that her husband was not impotent. But to show your potency in public is a totally different affair.

All those cardinals and bishops sitting and lining the court as judges were nothing but voyeurs. On a table the naked woman is lying and the man is trying to make love to her before this whole crowd of stupid people. In what kind of things humanity has been involved! – And it continued for centuries.

It was also easy for a man to divorce – very easy. He just had to declare that he is impotent and stand there naked without an erection. Just take a cold bath and stand there in the court so it is proved that you are impotent – and sealed, a divorce is given to the woman. And all these people had great theological degrees and honors – and some of these people were going to become, in turn, popes.

But humanity has remained involved with stupid things. Even if it was such an important thing, then a gynecological doctor and his dispensary – that would be the place to check the man and then inform the court, not in the court itself. But they really were voyeurs; they wanted to see living pornography. They were talking against pornography while creating living pornography, and never thinking for a second that they were reducing two human beings almost to animals, degrading them from humanity.

But you can look from every aspect, from any corner, and you will find the so-called great religious leaders, political leaders, concerned with such stupid and small things – while the bigger issues, the real issues, are not even discussed.

I don’t think anybody is bothering about whether there should be a world language, because that is the very foundation for one world.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

HEARING YOU TALK ABOUT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BEING A DISCIPLE AND A DEVOTEE, I REALIZED HOW FAR AWAY I STILL AM FROM DEVOTION. MY MIND IMAGINES

DEPENDENCY; BUT SOMETHING ELSE IN ME MOVES TOWARDS BEING DISSOLVED AND

SUCKED INTO YOUR BEING, IN SPITE OF ALL THE FEARS. I EXPERIENCE THOSE MOMENTS

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OF DISAPPEARANCE – THEY ARE TREMENDOUSLY RELAXING, BUT ON THE OTHER HAND

THEY ARE PAINFULLY SHORT.

CAN I TURN INTO A DEVOTEE ONLY WHEN I REACH TO THE CENTER OF THE CYCLONE, OR

IS IT A CONDITION FOR REACHING THERE?

It can happen both ways. Either you reach the center of the cyclone and you become a devotee, or you become a devotee and you will reach the center of the cyclone. They are not two things, just two ways of saying the same thing.

And don’t be worried that you are too far away; you are not. Even if you have moments when you feel a merger, that is enough indication that greater moments will be coming. But don’t be greedy; greed is destructive. And don’t be desirous; desire is obstructive.

Go on flowing the way you are flowing. You are exactly on the right path. It doesn’t matter whether you become a devotee or you reach the center of the cyclone; they are two names of the same space.

It is going to happen to everybody – whoever is courageous enough to remain in tune with me just a little more. I don’t ask you for many years, for many lives – but just a little more; because my experience is, if you can go deeper for a few moments it will be beyond you to go back. Once you have passed the barrier from where a person can go back, then there is no fear, then you can take it at ease. It may happen tomorrow or the day after tomorrow – it doesn’t matter.

My concern is only that somehow I should help you to cross the barrier from where you cannot return.

Beyond that, existence takes care of you.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

A FEW YEARS BACK, EVERY NIGHT WHEN I WAS GOING OFF TO SLEEP I WOULD GO INTO A SPACE THAT WAS IN BETWEEN SLEEP AND WAKEFULNESS AND FEEL LIKE I WAS LEAVING

MY BODY. THERE WAS NO EFFORT ON MY PART; IT WAS HAPPENING ON ITS OWN. IT

FELT LIKE I WOULD ALWAYS ONLY GO A LITTLE WAY OUT, AND THEN MY BODY WOULD

SUDDENLY JERK – ALTHOUGH THERE WAS NO OUTER OR INNER DISTURBANCE – AND

IMMEDIATELY I WOULD RETURN TO MY BODY.

NOW THIS SPACE HAS NOT COME UP FOR ME FOR A WHILE. I’M WONDERING IF IT IS THAT I AM LESS RELAXED. ALSO, WHAT WAS HOLDING ME BACK WHEN IT WAS HAPPENING THAT

DID NOT ALLOW ME TO GO OUT FURTHER?

First, there is no need to be worried about it. Out-of-body experiences are good nourishment for your spiritual growth, but they are not necessary. So if they are happening, or just by relaxing they come upon you, it is good; otherwise, don’t bother about them. They don’t have any essential meaning for your growth.

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So just out of curiosity don’t try to get out of your body. It won’t work. It either works spontaneously for certain reasons of which you are not aware... and I cannot say what the reasons were in your situation at that moment which caused your being to go out of the body.

One thing is certain: whenever you spontaneously get out of the body, the body will give a jerk –

because it is the death of the body, and you are going into a dangerous state.

If something happens that disturbs your coming back, if somebody suddenly opens the door and your silver cord is broken.... The body has its own wisdom; it allows you a certain rope of freedom, so it allowed you in a certain state to go out, but not to go too far. That’s where it jerked, and that jerk was enough to bring you back because the relaxation was gone.

And now it is not happening; there is no need, because it helps in no way in your spiritual growth. It only helps you to become a more authentic seeker, because you know your being as a truth. But if you are a seeker already, it will not be happening.

There is no need to worry about it. Always remember: whatever happens, let it happen. Enjoy it.

When it does not happen, just forget about it; perhaps its work is done. Don’t get puzzled, worried about it – why it happened, why it is not happening.

This is what I call trust: something happens, you enjoy it; something does not happen, you enjoy that too. And whatever is necessary for your spiritual growth, existence will go on leading you towards it.

Simply leave yourself in the hands of the unknown.

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CHAPTER 6

Pure consciousness has never gone mad

29 May 1986 am in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

WHEN I WAS A BOY, BETWEEN TWELVE AND FIFTEEN YEARS OLD, I OFTEN HAD, LYING IN

MY BED IN THE DARK, STRANGE EXPERIENCES WHICH I LOVED VERY MUCH. IT STARTED

BY MY IMAGINING THAT MY BED DISAPPEARED, THEN MY ROOM, THE HOUSE, THE TOWN, ALL PEOPLE, THE COUNTRY, THE WHOLE GLOBE... EVERYTHING IN THE UNIVERSE FADED.

THERE WAS UTTER DARKNESS AND SILENCE; I WAS JUST FLOATING IN SPACE.

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE LAST MATERIAL THINGS CREATED A TREMENDOUS

WHIRLING AROUND ME. I WAS SUCKED INTO IT; THIS FEELING WAS ALMOST SEXUAL. IT

CREATED A SWEET, PULLING SENSATION IN MY BELLY, WHICH COULD LAST FOR SECONDS

OR SOMETIMES FOR ONE TO TWO MINUTES.

I NEVER TALKED TO MY PARENTS OR ANYBODY ELSE ABOUT IT, BECAUSE I FEARED THEY

MIGHT THINK ME MAD.

OSHO, WHAT WAS THIS EXPERIENCE?

There is a tantra method in which one does exactly the same exercise as you are describing from your childhood. For children it is easy, but for grown-ups also, it is not impossible. It is simply an exercise of the imagination. But that does not mean that what you experience is unreal.

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First, let me tell you about a tantra method. It is for all ages. It has to be done in the dark, because in the dark you cannot see things, so it is easy to imagine that they have disappeared.

Lying down is the most appropriate posture for it. Because man became man, attained a little bit of consciousness by standing up on his two feet – he became vertical – the blood stream now reaches less to his head than when he is lying horizontal. Lying down, the blood reaches in a greater quantity with more speed just because of gravitation. When you stand up, the blood has to go against gravitation; its flow is slowed down, its quantity is cut.

That’s why no other animal has a conscious mind. Even when walking, a cow, a horse, a buffalo –

they are horizontal. Their heads are receiving as much blood as any other part of the body. They cannot grow the very subtle, very small cells which enable man to think.

But there is a possibility – and as far as I am concerned it is a certainty – that animals do imagine.

They don’t have a conscious mind, but they do have an unconscious mind.

Watching a dog you can see it. A dog is sleeping nearby; you can just watch: once in a while he will try to catch an imaginary fly, a fly which is not there. What is he doing? He imagined it. That catching of the fly which is not there must have been to him a reality in his imagination. And, of course, dogs think of flies just as men think of women.

Nobody has tried to explore the unconscious of the animals. We are not even finished with man, so the question of animals does not arise. They are far back in the queue, standing and waiting. But the wisdom of people has always attributed a certain intelligence to animals.

Aesop’s fables are fables about man, but all the actors are animals. panch tantra, the ancientmost book of stories, has fables which talk about man because they are written by man, but the actors, participants... everybody is an animal. And in every country there are ancient books in which animals are taking part, just like man. For example, in one of Aesop’s fables, a little goat – a kid

– is drinking water from a mountain stream, and the king of the animals, the lion, comes by. It is breakfast time, and the kid is just a perfect breakfast. But even animals have to find excuses first, so the lion says to the goat, ”Kid, you are very arrogant; you see the emperor of the whole animal kingdom, and yet you are muddying the water which I am going to drink.” The poor kid says, ”Uncle, the stream is going this way. I cannot make the water muddy for you; you are standing above me. The stream comes first to you and then to me. This is too much.” He was right. The lion becomes very angry and he says, ”You don’t know manners – how to talk with elders. The same was so with your father. Yesterday he was talking with me and he misbehaved. I was engaged in some political work, but I am searching for him.” The kid says, ”Forgive me, uncle, my father has been dead for a few weeks; he could not have insulted you yesterday.”

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A story about animals but not about animals, it is about man, his inhumanity to those who are weak, powerless, poor. But still, for manners’ sake, you have to find some excuse.

These stories have always been interpreted as parables for children, but my feeling is there is something more to it. It indicates that animals may not be thinking, but they still dream – because dreaming does not need anybody to stand erect.

For dreaming you also have to lie down, to be in a horizontal position, so the conscious mind cannot function. It needs only a very small quantity of blood; with a greater quantity it goes to sleep. If an even greater quantity comes, it becomes dead. But the unconscious mind goes on working. Of course its language is not alphabetical; its language is of pictures.

So a small child lying down on his bed can very easily visualize that the walls are disappearing, the room is disappearing, the bed is disappearing, the trees outside are disappearing. Everything is disappearing and the world is fading... only he is left in his total aloneness in this beautiful dark deep silence.

But this is a method prescribed by tantra scriptures that anybody can do – and it will be helpful for meditation.

It is an unfortunate thing that parents are unaware of the whole heritage of man. In different directions man has been working to develop consciousness. If all that is available to the parents, perhaps they will not think you are going crazy; they will rejoice, they will help you, they will reward you. They will try to help you so you can go deeper into the experience.

You have found, accidentally, a right door. And the child can have from the very beginning a taste of meditation, and he can go on helping it grow every day. By the time he is a young man he will have a mature meditativeness. Then there is no need to lie down on the bed. He can sit or stand, and he can go into the same silence – even with open eyes. It is just a question of going more and more into the same experience so it becomes easy, simple.

But all the societies have condemned everything that can help your being to evolve. They don’t want it. If you had told anybody, you would have been condemned as mad: ”Stop it; otherwise you are risking your sanity.” And in fact by stopping it you risked your sanity.

That’s why I say that every father, every mother, should go through a certain training in which they are taught how to be a father, how to be a mother; where they are made aware that the child is very potent, and that he can manage many things that you cannot, and that this is the time. If you stop him, later on it will become more and more difficult.

Your experience, Premda, was good, immensely good. And if you try it again, perhaps you may be able to enter the same space without any trouble. We are here together to go into all these experiences; these are different ways of touching your own being.

The method is imagination. The walls don’t disappear, and neither do the trees or anything else.

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is beyond imagination, beyond mind. What has remained is a watcher, a witness – and that is your pure consciousness.

So don’t be worried that what you have used as a strategy was imagination. It doesn’t matter, because you were not interested in walls disappearing; that was just to create a space in which you are freed from everything – whether it is there or not – and you come to the beautiful aloneness of your being. Just a moment of it is an eternity.

And this is a prescribed tantra method, well established for centuries. You cannot go mad. In fact, anything that could have led you into madness has disappeared; now only pure consciousness is there. Pure consciousness has never gone mad.

So what happened in childhood was good. It would have been better if you had continued, but you can start again – because anything that has happened once, leaves a certain mark in you; you can start from there again. It may take a little trouble, it may not be so easy, but it will come – in one day, two days, it will come. And if it doesn’t come, then you go to Kaveesha.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

THE OTHER NIGHT, ALONG WITH A FEW OTHER PEOPLE, I WAS HYPNOTIZED BY

KAVEESHA. WHEN SHE BEGAN BY ASKING US TO TAKE DEEP BREATHS – THE ZEN FLUTE

PLAYING, THE INCENSE AND THE CANDLE BURNING – I IMMEDIATELY WENT INTO A SPACE

WHERE MY CHEST FELT FULL, LIKE TEARS WERE WELLING UP INSIDE. I FELT LIKE I WAS

IN A SPACE THAT I ONCE WAS IN BEFORE – A PLACE WHERE I WAS CLOSEST TO MY INNER

HOME, A PLACE MY BODY WAS RELAXED IN, WHERE MEDITATION CAME NATURALLY AND

THE SURROUNDINGS WERE WARM.

WHY WAS THERE SADNESS COMING UP WHEN THIS EXPERIENCE WAS HAPPENING?

With every experience of this kind you will feel a certain sadness coming to you. The sadness is:

”Why does this experience not remain forever?” The sadness simply signifies your deep longing for this state to become stable. And it is a natural phenomenon: whenever you feel something that is of immense beauty and peace, you would like to remain in it forever, to feel there is nothing that can bring you out of it. But one has to come out of it – and that brings sadness.

But don’t take that sadness in any negative way. It is a good indicator. It simply shows that you should practice it more – go deeper – and one day it becomes a natural phenomenon. Twenty-four hours a day you are surrounded with a fragrance, with a light, with silence within. Twenty-four hours a day you are relaxed, there is no tension in your body, in your mind. But before it comes, many times you will feel sad – ”Why is it not a permanent state of my being?” It is simply a longing that is becoming sadness. The window opens, you see the sunset; and before you have even seen it and the beauty has been absorbed, the window closes. And there is sadness:

”The window could have remained open a little more.” But the window opens only according to your capacity. Whatever you have earned, the window remains open only for that long. Beyond that it can be dangerous.

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So don’t feel bad about sadness; it is a safety too. Even in experiences of oneself, safety measures are needed. But nature has them already prepared for you. You will have a glimpse only for that much time and to that much depth – as much as you deserve – neither less nor more. And it is good, because if you get more you will not be able to absorb it.

Everybody who is meditating comes to a point when he starts feeling, ”Why does meditation not continue the whole day?” But he does not know that he is not capable of handling the world and its affairs with meditation running as an undercurrent. He will be in difficulty. He may be in great danger: the world has no need of meditation. You will have just as much as you deserve, and you should feel thankful for it. It will be growing... with your gratitude it will be growing.

But sadness can become a barrier, because each time you come to the window you will have sadness; they will become associated. And the law of association is really a difficult law. Then it will become more and more difficult to get rid of sadness.

So simply don’t pay any attention to sadness. If it comes, take it in the natural way. It is natural; you had a beautiful experience, and it has gone. Sadness is simply its going away, a friend departing.

But don’t give more importance to it. Ignore it; accepting it as natural, ignore it.

You know about Pavlov, one Russian psychologist, who in the beginning of this century proved the law of association – which is his great contribution. In Russia you will not hear the name of Freud, Adler or Jung – only Pavlov. He has developed a totally different psychology – Pavlovian psychology. And because it fits with communism, they have rejected all other psychologies; there is only one psychology, and that is Pavlovian. It is not a complete picture of the human psyche, but this law is certainly true.

He used to give his dog... all his experiments were with dogs... he had seventy dogs. Even after the revolution when private property was dissolved, the communist government allowed him to have private property – because how could he manage his seventy dogs and a big lab with strange kinds of instruments? But his psychology was proving in some way that communism should be allowed.

He was the only man in the Soviet Union who was allowed to remain exactly the same way as before the revolution.

He would feed the dog, and while the dog was eating he would go on ringing a bell. Now, a bell has nothing to do with food; you can ring a bell before any dog and he will not take any interest. He will think that you are a little crackpot: ”What are you doing ringing a bell before a dog? What is the point?” He may even turn away just to avoid listening to your ringing bell.

But you could not have expected what happened to Pavlov’s dogs. After fifteen days of feeding the dog and at the same time ringing the bell, on the sixteenth day there was no food, just the ringing of the bell – and the dog was ready for food, his tongue hanging out. And this was done with not one dog but seventy dogs. He was a scientist: one dog cannot prove anything, you need to have enough evidence – seventy dogs. As the bell was ringing, their saliva was dripping, their tongues were hanging out. Nobody could believe that with the ringing of a bell this could happen. This he called the law of association.

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only when you rang the bell was the dog ready for food – although there was no food – but he was perfectly ready to eat. And vice versa: when the food was there, he was waiting for the bell to ring and he would not eat.

That was a surprise to Pavlov himself. He was thinking that the first thing was okay – that the bell became associated with food. But food is associated with hunger and biology.... The dog would look at him as if to say, ”What are you doing? Ring the bell!” – because it had become locked. Without the ringing of the bell, the dog would not feel that the food was juicy. It became a kind of music that helped him to taste the food better – and not one dog but seventy dogs were behaving in the same way.

So always remember this law. When you are entering inwards, don’t get associated with anything that can become a hindrance.

For example, when you feel some beautiful, blissful experience, sadness is bound to come –

because that experience will go. But don’t pay too much attention to the sadness, just think that it is natural: ”It only shows my longing that the experience should continue.” Otherwise, if you pay too much attention to sadness you are creating an interlock system in your mind, so that whenever you have a beautiful experience, immediately your mind will produce sadness – whether it is now necessary or not.

Emphasize the positive, be grateful for the positive, rejoice in the positive – and ignore the negative that is bound to follow like a shadow.

When your friend leaves your home, departs, do you pay much attention to his shadow? You don’t even take note of it. In the same way, remember: anything beautiful happening to you will have a shadow to it, until you come to a stage when the twenty-four hours of your day are lit up and there is no shadow possible.

That happens – that will happen – but you have to keep these things in your awareness. When sadness comes, thank sadness too: ”You are simply my longing for the beautiful experience.” In this way you are cutting the roots of sadness, you are not making it a polar opposite to your experience.

You are changing the whole arrangement. You are saying to it, ”I know you are my longing for that beautiful experience; but it will come, and it will be coming more and more.” In this way, even through sadness you are emphasizing the beautiful experience, its longing. You are not making sadness a separate entity, in itself important. If it becomes a separate entity, it will become associated; then you can’t have a twenty-four-hour-a-day, waking, sleeping meditativeness, you will have only fragments... alternating, a beautiful moment and sadness. And as the beautiful moment will become deepened, the sadness will also become deepened; it is its shadow.

So on the one hand you will be earning ecstasy; on the other hand you will be suffering again – and the whole fault will be yours. From the very beginning, be careful. Don’t give it any independent existence. Thank it: ”You remind me of the beautiful experience; you remind me that the beautiful experience should be continued.” And soon it will happen.

So make it secondary, just an epiphenomenon. And as your aloneness will be deepening, the sadness will not be deepening, because you are not giving juice to it; it will remain shallow. And The Transmission of the Lamp

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soon a day will come: you will come out of your meditation and you will not find sadness. Now, you have accepted that there are moments of meditation and there are moments of no-meditation; but there is no question of sadness. You have dropped the desire and the longing which were creating the sadness, and you have not paid any attention to it. It has died of its own accord.

Attention is food.

We are not aware of many things which we are living.... In one scientific experiment, two baby monkeys are fed the same food, given the same medical care, the same comforts... everything is the same. Just one thing is different for one baby monkey: the doctor gives him attention – pets him, sits with him, plays with him. And with the second he simply does his duty – no communication, no human warmth, no attention. The monkey that is given attention survives; the monkey that is not given attention dies. The same experiment has been done on other animals; the result is always the same.

Now it is to be accepted that attention is some kind of nourishment. By giving attention to anything you are pouring your warmth, your love, and you are saying, ”There is somebody for whom you have to exist, there is somebody who will miss you.”

The other baby monkey, he lives, but there is nobody for whom he lives; there is no meaning in his life. Nobody pays attention to him, nobody communicates with him. It does not matter whether he lives or not. If he dies nobody is going to shed a single tear for him. That idea itself kills him. But it is the idea – ”If I die somebody will miss me, somebody will come and sit by my cradle and weep” –

that revives the spirit.

So, attention is a very psychological nourishment, a psychological vitamin. And the same is true about your emotions, your feelings, anything that you are doing.

Remember the rule: whatever you want to save, give attention to it, pour your love on it, appreciate it. And whatever you want to disappear from your life, ignore it... at the most thank it: ”You remind me of the positive and the beautiful feeling.” That is a sure killer.

One of my friends married a woman... he used to love another woman, but he could not marry her.

She was of a high-caste Hindu brahmin family, and he was of a low caste. She was rich, he was poor. And in India it is very difficult – an intercaste marriage – because you then become an outcast.

You will not get a job, people will not like to talk to you, you will not get a house for rent – a simple boycott. And you cannot live if the society boycotts you completely.

But finally he married another woman.

I asked him, ”What are you doing?”

He said, ”She looks exactly like the woman I wanted to love.” I said, ”That’s true. But she is not the woman you loved, she only looks like her. And the moment she discovers it – and she’s bound to discover it as you cannot hide it – it will kill her.” The Transmission of the Lamp

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He said, ”No, how she can find out? I have confided only in you, and I know you are not going to tell her.”

I said, ”I am not going to tell her. You, yourself, with your behavior, will tell her twenty-four hours a day.”

And within two years the woman was badly sick. I went to see her. She was a young woman just two years before. I could not believe how she had withered away. I asked, ”What has happened?” She said, ”Nobody can understand, but perhaps you can. He has married me because I look like the girl he loved. But he does not love me; he only pretends. But his pretending cannot satisfy me.

I don’t want to be anybody else’s substitute, I want to be myself. My sickness is not of the body, my sickness is of the soul. I will never say it to him because he has suffered much. The first woman he loved, he could not get. And now I should not make more suffering for him. It is better I should die.” I said, ”This is nonsense – you have your own life.” She said, ”I don’t; I am only a substitute. When he hugs me I know whom he is really hugging. He does not give me any warmth. When he loves me I know whom he is really loving, and suddenly I become cold.”

Within two months she died, and I told the man, ”You are a murderer because you don’t understand a simple fact of life – that people cannot live by bread alone. They need something more: they need attention, they need love.”

And attention and love are very invisible nourishment. But the same is true about your emotions, so never feed any negative emotion. Pour all your love, all your energy, into a positive experience.

And the day will not be far away when the experience will start spreading as an undercurrent into the twenty-four hours of your day.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

I FEEL EMOTIONALLY TOTALLY EXHAUSTED. SOMETHING IS RIPPING ME APART, BUT I CAN’T FIGURE OUT WHAT. IN THE LAST FEW DAYS I’VE BEEN THROUGH INTENSE SPELLS

OF HATING MYSELF. IT FEELS LIKE AN ATTACK, AND IT LOOKS IMPOSSIBLE TO LOVE SUCH

A CREATURE. ON ANOTHER LEVEL I AM TELLING MYSELF TO WATCH, BE AWARE OF THESE

EMOTIONS, TELLING MYSELF THEY ARE NOT REAL. BUT WHEN I AM CAUGHT UP IN THEM, EVERYTHING IS TOTALLY REAL – IT JUST DEPENDS ON WHAT LEVEL HAS THE UPPER HAND

AT THE TIME. WHEN I STEP OUTSIDE OF THIS INNER TURMOIL I CAN SEE THIS INSANE

PERSON GOING THROUGH HER DAILY ROUTINE, ACTING QUITE NORMALLY.

IS THIS THE WAY TO GROW, OR AM I JUST PLAINLY CUCKOO, SCHIZOPHRENIC, STUCK IN

A CIRCLE?

Everybody goes through the circle; it is normal. Only one thing you are doing wrong – which will make you take longer to get rid of the misery – and that is: when you feel these negative emotions about yourself, don’t try to watch them. It is not yet the ripe time. Simply live them.

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It is watching that is giving you the idea of a schizophrenic or split personality – because on the one hand you have these negative feelings about yourself, and on the other hand you are trying to remind yourself that you are just a watcher and these are just images which will fade away. You are cutting yourself in two.

The first thing I suggest is: don’t cut yourself in two.

I would have suggested to you to be watchful, but the time is not ripe, you cannot be. Before you can be totally one with watchfulness, you have to go through the hell of all your negative emotions; otherwise they will be repressed and they will erupt at any moment, at any weak time.

So it is better to get rid of them. But getting rid of them does not mean you have to be watchful.

First, forget about watchfulness. Live each emotion that you feel; it is you. Hateful, ugly, unworthy –

whatever it is, you be actually in it. First give them a chance to come up totally into the conscious.

Right now, by your effort of watchfulness you are repressing them into the unconscious. And then you get involved in your day-to-day work and you force them back again. That is not the way to get rid of them.

Let them come out – live them, suffer them. It will be difficult and tedious but immensely rewarding.

Once you have lived them, suffered them, accepted them, that this is you, that you have not made yourself in this way so you need not condemn yourself, that this is the way you have found yourself – once they are lived consciously, without any repression, you will be surprised that they are disappearing on their own. Their force on you is becoming less, their grip on your neck is no longer that tight. And when they are going away, there may be a time when you can start watching.

In the East they have a parable: an elephant passes through a door... the elephant has passed, but his shadow is still inside the door and it looks almost like the elephant. This is the time when the elephant has passed and only the shadow has remained. That you can watch – because shadows cannot go into the unconscious; shadows don’t have any existence. If you are watchful, aware, the shadow will die, disappear. But first let the elephant go.

You are keeping the elephant in. You can hide the elephant inside, but for how long? And you will be carrying the elephant and its weight all the time. In each of your actions it will have some influence.

You will do things but there will be anger, you will do things but there will be hatred, you will do things but almost like a zombie – because that elephant is too heavy.

And you are not responsible for it. In fact, nobody is responsible for it. God used to be responsible, but he is dead; that was his only function. You can call the society responsible, you can call the parents responsible, but that does not help. That may give you a kind of solace, but it is not a solution. Remember, nobody is responsible; this is the way you have found yourself.

And I don’t see that there is anything abnormal in it; everybody passes through it more or less. One thing has to be remembered: the bigger the elephant you are carrying within you, the bigger will be the release and freedom. So everything is balance. Your suffering may be great, but your blessing will also be great. So don’t be bothered by it. What is wrong in it?

Just live it.

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For you, for the time being, the only way is to live it totally, so that the elephant can come out unafraid:

”Now I am ready to live; there is no problem to hide.” And once everything comes into the conscious mind it disperses, and when only the shadow is there, that is the time to become aware. Right now it will create schizophrenia; then it will create enlightenment.

And never be worried about big problems. All our problems are small. We are small – how can there be big problems? Secondly, whatever the depth of the problem will be the depth of your freedom, of your benediction when the problem disappears. So you will be perfectly balanced.

But remember not to repress. Your idea of being watchful right now is nothing but repression.

I will tell you one day – you will ask me one day – ”Now it is the time to start being awake.” Just a little patience... and we all can afford it.

Question 4

BELOVED OSHO,

WHY DO I ALWAYS FEEL LIKE YOU ARE PULLING MY BIG TOE WHEN YOU ANSWER MY

QUESTIONS?

Milarepa, I am pulling everybody’s toe, but nobody is crazy enough to confess it. Everybody knows it... because do you think I come here to speak? I come here to pull your big toe. And everybody knows – but nobody tells it to anybody else!

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CHAPTER 7

The caravan became bigger and bigger

29 May 1986 pm in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

WHEN YOU RELATE TO US THE STORIES OF YOUR STUDENT DAYS, OR YOUR TIME AS

A PROFESSOR, I OFTEN WONDER WHAT IT MUST HAVE BEEN LIKE TO HAVE BEEN ONE

OF THOSE STUDYING WITH YOU OR UNDER YOU – I KNOW I CERTAINLY WOULD HAVE

HAD A CRUSH ON YOU. I IMAGINE YOUR FELLOW STUDENTS WERE BOTH WARY AND

ADMIRING OF YOU. YOUR OWN STUDENTS MUST HAVE ENJOYED YOU TREMENDOUSLY.

I WAS INTRIGUED WHEN YOU MENTIONED RECENTLY THAT YOU STARTED A SMALL

MEDITATION GROUP IN THE UNIVERSITY. I SHOULD LOVE TO HEAR YOU TALK ABOUT HOW

YOU AFFECTED THE LIVES OF THOSE AROUND YOU. I OFTEN WONDER IF THEY HAVE

FOLLOWED YOUR VARIOUS EXPLOITS THROUGH THE MEDIA AND OTHER FRIENDS. QUITE

POSSIBLY THIS IS SIMPLY ONE OF THOSE QUESTIONS WHICH FALL UNDER THE CATEGORY

OF MERE CURIOSITY, BUT I ADORE IT WHEN YOU TALK ABOUT YOUR EARLIER DAYS. IT

MAKES ME FEEL I LOVED YOU EVEN BEFORE I KNEW YOU.

The students who studied with me had strange feelings about me. Different persons have different ideas about me. The majority was certainly against me for the simple reason that to them I appeared as a disturbance. They were not there for any search, they were there to attain a degree, to find a job, to have a family. I was not interested either in the examinations or in the degrees, my focus was always in the present, on the subject that was being taught. And I wanted to explore it exhaustively.

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The majority was against that, because if each subject has to be studied in such an exhaustive way, then the syllabus cannot be completed in three years... it cannot even be completed in two hundred years... and they were worried about their examinations. My concern and their concern were totally different – diametrically opposite.

I was interested in the moment, in the subject; they were not interested in the subject, they were only interested in taking notes, preparing for the future examination. I have never taken any notes; neither have I allowed any student, when I became a professor, to take notes in my class, because taking notes means you have moved to the future, you are not here now, you are preparing for somewhere else, for something else.

Even professors continually encouraged students – and I think that is the practice all over the world –

to take notes of important things they are teaching, without understanding the simple fact that while a student is concerned with taking notes, he is not being totally available to what is being taught.

I told my professors, ”It is unimaginable for me that you people encourage rather than discourage an activity which is a direct insult to you. You are teaching; the taught should be totally alert, listening to it, absorbing it, drinking it. Not one of you bothers about it. You tell them to take notes; you are teaching them postponement for the future.”

The teachers were against me, the majority of the students were against me, but these were the mediocre people.

There were a few students who were immensely in love with me because what they could not question out of fear, what they could not present in an articulate way as an argument, I could. And they all enjoyed. I became, in a certain way, their spokesman. They were more interested in my arguments than in what the teacher was saying, because my arguments were taking the subject to its deeper roots.

A few teachers were also there who loved me. But very few enjoyed and openly accepted that my argument was weightier than their own argument. They said, ”But please remember that my argument will help you to pass the examination. Your argument will not help.” I told them, ”I have no concern with the examination at all. Whether I fail or pass, that is not the point. To me, the point is whether I present myself sincerely, authentically.” In my final M.A. examination, one of my professors was very much concerned because my paper was going to be examined by an old professor of Allahabad University who was world famous as a scholar on Indian philosophical thought – Dr. Ranade. And it was well-known that to get a passing mark from him was the most you could hope for. He has, all over the country, a name for that.

Mostly, people failed; his criteria were not ordinarily fulfilled.

My paper was also going to be examined by him, so my teacher of Indian philosophy was very much concerned. I told him, ”Relax, because it is my examination, not your examination!” He could not sleep. He said, ”I know you are going into a difficulty. That man is a little eccentric, and he is such an authority that nobody can challenge him.” The Transmission of the Lamp

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I said, ”The need will not arise. Who knows, he may be waiting for me. I may be his criterion.” He laughed; he said, ”You don’t know him. He has failed so many people and he has not given a first class rating to anybody in his whole life. And now he is retired. But still because of his fame, universities go on sending him examination papers.” It was almost as if he was going into the examination. I had to console him and tell him to relax and rest and not be worried.

And I did just what he was afraid of... I did exactly that because I could not do anything else. My answers to his paper, his question paper, became rather an argument, and that’s what my professor was worried about: ”He is such an authority that nobody questions him. And you will create a situation in which he may feel offended. He may give you zero; he has given zero to many people.” His first question was ”What is Indian philosophy?” and I simply answered in one line: ”There is no such thing in the world. The question is absurd and does not deserve any more wastage of time for the simple reason that philosophy cannot be divided by geography; you are putting geography on a higher scale than philosophy. Now, what has philosophy to do with geography? Thoughts have no geographical boundaries, they are universal. There is only one philosophy, and that is universal. So never again ask such a question.”

Certainly he must have been shocked because he was not expecting... and his whole life people have been polite to him. And now he was an ancient, wise man... but all his questions I answered in the same way. And when I told my teacher how I had answered his questions, tears came to his eyes.

I said, ”You are mad! I am going to be given a mark of zero because he cannot give less than that.

But why are you...?”

He said, ”I feel for you. I understand you. What you are saying is right. But right is not the question; the question is what is acceptable, what the knowledgeable people recognize as right.” But Dr. Ranade really proved to be a man of integrity. He gave me ninety-nine percent and wrote a special note to the vice-chancellor mentioning that the note should be shown to me. And the note was: ”You shocked me as nobody ever has. But your answers were original, and you did not care at all whether you were going to pass or fail. You were so total in each of your answers that it was irrelevant what happened to be the result. I loved your totality, I loved your intensity, I loved your originality – and for the first time I have come across a student I have been waiting for.” The vice-chancellor called me. My teacher said, ”Some note against you must have come because the papers have come back. I am coming with you.” And when he saw the note he could not believe it. He said, ”Today I can say that miracles happen. I was thinking you were going to get zero, and you have ninety-nine percent!”

And Dr. Ranade had mentioned in his note, ”I was going to give you one hundred percent but that may look as if I am favoring you too much; that’s why I have taken off the one percent. It is not that something is wrong in your answers, it is just my old habit, a lifelong habit of cutting. I cannot do much, but at least I can take off one percent.”

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I enjoyed my student life immensely. Whether people were against me, for me, indifferent, loved me... all those experiences were beautiful. All that helped me immensely when I myself became a teacher, because I could see the students’ viewpoint simultaneously when I was presenting mine.

And my classes became debating clubs. Everybody was allowed to doubt, to argue. Once in a while somebody started worrying about what would happen to the course, because on each single point there was so much argument.

I said, ”Don’t be worried. All that is needed is a sharpening of your intelligence. The course is a small thing – you can read for it in one night. If you have a sharp mind, even without reading for it you can answer. But if you don’t have a sharp mind, even the book can be provided to you and you will not be able to find where the answer is. In a five hundred page book the answer must be somewhere in one paragraph.”

In Russia they have already experimented with it, and they have made significant conclusions. They allow students to carry as many books as they want. They allow students to ask the teacher in the examination hall, ”I need a certain book.” Immediately it will be brought from the library.

Their understanding is that the old kind of examination was only an examination of the memory; now this is an examination of your intelligence. You have to find an answer – and you can find it only if you have studied, argued, known those books. Only then can you find the answer. In a dozen books you cannot immediately find the question and its answer.

They were surprised to find out that in the ordinary old-style examinations – as they do all over the world – certain students come first. With the same class, with the new methodology – where all books are available – a different kind of student comes first, not the same old ones who were coming first, because now it is an examination of intelligence not of memory. Now memory is not of much help. You need a sharpness, an understanding of what is being asked, and you need to be well read so that either you know the answer by yourself or you can consult the books. But the time is limited; if you are not sharp enough, within three hours you may not be able to answer even one question.

And the phenomenon that a different category of students comes first and the category that was coming first gets a second class rating, a third class rating, definitely proves that intelligence is a totally different phenomenon from memory. Memory can create servants, slaves, computers, not intelligent people.

So my classes were totally different. Everything had to be discussed, everything had to be looked into, in the deepest possible way, from every corner, from every aspect – and accepted only if your intelligence felt satisfied. Otherwise, there was no need to accept it; we could continue the discussion the next day.

And I was amazed to know that when you discuss something and discover the logical pattern, the whole fabric, you need not remember it. It is your own discovery; it remains with you. You cannot forget it.

My students certainly loved me because nobody else would give them so much freedom, nobody else would give them so much respect, nobody else would give them so much love, nobody else would help them to sharpen their intelligence.

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Every teacher was concerned about his salary. I myself never went to collect the salary. I would just give my authority to a student and say, ”Whenever the first day of the month comes, you collect the salary, and you can bring it to me. And if you need any part of it you can keep it.” All the years I was in the university somebody or other was bringing me my salary. The man who was distributing the salaries once came to see me just to say, ”You never appear. I have been hoping that sometime you would come and I would see you. But seeing that perhaps you will never come to the office, I have come to your house just to see what kind of man you are – because there are professors who start early in the morning, on the first of each month, lining up for their salary. You are always missing. Any student might appear with your signature and authority, and I don’t know whether the salary reaches you or not.”

I said, ”You need not be worried, it has always been reaching me.” When you trust someone, it is very difficult for them to deceive.

All the years I was a teacher, not a single student to whom I had given the authority had taken any part of it, although I had told them, ”It is up to you. If you feel like having it all, you can have it. If you want to keep a part of it you can keep it. And it is not lent to you so that you have to return it, because I don’t want to be bothered by remembering who owes how much money to me. It is simply yours; it doesn’t matter.” But not a single student ever took any part of the salary.

All the teachers were interested only in the salary, in the competition of getting higher posts. I have seen nobody who was really interested in the students and their future and particularly in their spiritual growth.

Seeing that, I opened a small school of meditation. One of my friends offered his beautiful bungalow and garden, and he made a marble temple for me, for meditations, so at least fifty people could sit and meditate in the temple. Many students, many professors – even the vice-chancellors came to understand what meditation is, tried....

But as I left the university and I initiated the movement of sannyas, a tremendous change happened.

My initiation of the movement of sannyas created trouble. None of my colleagues – teachers who had been with me for years – would even come to see me. Some were Hindus, some were Mohammedans, some were Jainas – and I was a rebellious spirit. I belonged to nobody.

And the people who used to come to me – I was still teaching the same meditation – started spreading opposition to me, because now it was a question of their religion, their tradition, their church. They did not even come to understand that I am doing the same thing. Just because my people have started wearing red clothes does not mean that my teaching has changed. I just wanted to give an identity to my people so that they could be known all over the world and they could be recognized everywhere.

But they stopped coming – not only teachers but even students who had loved me. And then I saw that all our love and all our respect, all our friendship is so shallow that if our tradition, our convention, our old, ancient beliefs are in some way attacked, all our love, all our friendship disappears.

You will be surprised: even the friend who had given me his bungalow and had the marble temple made especially for me sent a message – he could not face me himself – he sent a message from The Transmission of the Lamp

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his manager that because I did not belong to any ancient path, I should not use his place for my meditation school... as if anything old is bound to be gold. Most probably the older it is, the more rotten it is.

I sent him a message, ”I will leave your house and the temple, and you can do whatsoever you want with it. But I am with the sunrise; I am not with the sunset. And I want the whole world to be with the new and not with the old.”

Truth always moves with the fresh and the young and the innocent. It dies with the knowledgeable, the scholarly, the clever, the so-called wise – who are really otherwise.

After sannyas, there was a demarcation line. The people who used to know me before, slowly, slowly backed away. New people, new faces started coming. And this has been going on with each new phase of my work. A few old faces disappear and a few new faces bring new blood and new juice to the movement.

From all over the world messages have come to me that at every center, even though the whole movement is in a difficulty – I do not have a home, the movement does not have a headquarters

– from each small center news goes on coming that new people are becoming sannyasins, people who we have never thought would become sannyasins. The pressure from all the governments of the world is helping immensely. Anybody who is courageous, who has some respect for freedom, some taste of intelligence, has started coming into the movement.

A few old faces will be lost, and it is good that they are lost. Perhaps they were no longer in tune; their time was over. You can be with me only if you are alive. The moment you are dead, we simply celebrate. We say good-bye to you, and you vacate a space for some new one, some new blood, new life, a new flower to take your place. This has been going on....

There are many layers of people who have been with me and have dropped. Only very few people have remained with me from the very beginning; they are the most blessed ones. Since they have come they have broken their bridges, they have forgotten to look backwards. They know they have come to the home they were searching for and seeking, and now there is nowhere else to go.

One thing is certain: those who for some reason or other are left on the road, who have moved in some other direction, will never find again the same love, the same light, the same understanding.

They will miss me forever. And this is going to be my last life, because I will not be in the body again

– so I feel sorry for them.

Those who are with me can understand it, what those people are missing – people who for some small reason, some excuse, departed on their own. I have never told anybody to leave – I am always a welcome. I feel sad for them, because they cannot find any other place on this planet. They will always remain missing, and because of their ego they will not be able to come back.

But the whole journey has been of tremendous joy. I started alone, and then people went on coming without my calling them, without my inviting them. The caravan began to become bigger and bigger, and now it is spread all over the world.

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This bigness and this spontaneous coming of people has made all the politicians and all the religious people tremendously afraid. Their fear is not unfounded. They know that they cannot give what people can get somewhere else; hence, their efforts are to prevent me from reaching people, to prevent people from reaching me – in such ugly ways. It was good in a way to know that this whole world for which I have been struggling my whole life to make a better world.... But I have never been in such contact all around the world.

From one island, the prime minister himself has invited me to come there and said that he would love it if I accepted his invitation. I sent Jayesh and Hasya to see the place, and when they reached there – just today they informed us – the prime minister asked for one billion dollars as a bribe.

This is our world.

He invites me himself, and I sent my people to work out how many people he can give permanent residence to, how many people will be coming every year to visit. When they arrived he immediately

– he didn’t even bother to talk about anything else – he immediately said, ”I am ready to accept, but the price is one billion dollars, cash.”

These are our political leaders.

In another country we are trying to purchase a castle. Because my name is involved, the price immediately goes so high. The owner is asking nine million dollars for the castle! He cannot sell it for nine million even if he tries for his whole life.

And this is not all – he is asking almost double the price.... The country has two parties, and each party wants some money so there will be no problem from anybody – the ruling party gets money, the opposition party gets money. And it is not only once; every time there is an election they are saying that we have to give at least two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to each party.

And these people teach about morality, purity, character – and this is their character.

It has been a good round. I have just sent Hasya and Jayesh to the last country. I have sent the message to the prime minister: ”We were going to bring five billion dollars, but not now. With such a mean-minded prime minister who invites us and then asks for one billion dollars... we are not going to come to your country, we are going somewhere else.” There is one country left which is a possibility – a one percent possibility; otherwise, we have to go on a liner, an ocean liner. And that will be a clear-cut condemnation of the whole earth and all these nations. If a man speaks the truth, he has no place on the earth... he has to live on the ocean.

We will be bringing the biggest ocean liner so at least five thousand people can be on it. My only worry is that these mean politicians and religious leaders may start – and it has never been done –

to make laws that our ocean liner cannot stop at their ports. If they can make laws that my airplane cannot land at their airports, they can make laws that my ocean liner cannot come to their ports.

But that too... it will be good for the whole world to see their real faces, that they can kill five thousand people, let them go hungry, without water, without food.... They are talking about loving your enemy and they are talking about beautiful things – and their behavior is simply disgusting.

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Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

IN AN AMERICAN MAGAZINE ARTICLE, MOTHER TERESA IS DESCRIBED AS A REBEL IN THE

MALE-DOMINATED HIERARCHY OF THE CATHOLIC ESTABLISHMENT. IF MOTHER TERESA IS REGARDED AS BEING ON A PAR WITH SOMEONE LIKE JOAN OF ARC, GOD HELP THE

CATHOLIC CHURCH!

The person who has described Mother Teresa as a rebel does not know the meaning of the word.

She is a slave in the male-dominated Catholic hierarchy. She is no one. No woman has ever been a pope and no woman ever will be.

And what kind of rebel is she? – she kneels down before Pope the Polack and kisses his hand. This is rebellion? And she goes on supplying more orphans to the Catholics to increase their population...

because population is a great factor in politics, so much so that nobody looks at the whole world.

Just the other day I saw that because Mohammedans produce more children – naturally, because they can marry four wives – Israel is very worried. The Mohammedan ocean all around is becoming bigger. So, Israel is perhaps the only country now in the world whose government is giving incentives to produce more children, saying that everybody should have at least four children. They are not concerned about the world, that the population is already too much. Their only concern is with their local politics, that Mohammedans should not become too many, and Jews, in number, too small.

There is a politics of population. The Catholic church has more than seven hundred and fifty million people in the world – the biggest single block as far as religions are concerned. And Mother Teresa is praised, not because she is a rebel but because she is a servile person who is simply bringing more and more orphans into the Catholic church, converting poor Indians to the Catholic religion.

So the pope blesses her.

I would have accepted the description if the pope had knelt before Mother Teresa and kissed her hand; then it would have meant something, that the Catholic, male-oriented hierarchy accepts Mother Teresa as being higher than the pope. But she is simply an instrument in the hands of the male-dominated church. She has no position. But because she has been helping the population to grow so much, they arrange a Nobel Prize for her, they arrange other awards, doctorates for her.

Don’t be befooled by these things; these are just toys, and all are political.

One of my sannyasins, an economist from England, got a Nobel Prize. Our sannyasins told him,

”You are now a Nobel Prize winner... nobody has contributed so much to modern insights into human relationships, the human revolution, as Osho. You should try for a Nobel Prize for him.” He said, ”Do you think I have not tried? In fact, I tried so much that I said, ‘Don’t give it to me; I am his disciple. Let this Nobel Prize be given to Osho.’ But his name, just his name is enough to shock everybody. There was a pin-drop silence in the committee, and my friends suggested, ‘Don’t mention that name in the committee again. It has nothing to do with what a person has contributed or is contributing – it is all politics. And unless there is political support, it is impossible to get a Nobel Prize.’”

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I informed the sannyasins: ”You tell him to tell the committee that even if they want to give me a Nobel Prize, I will reject it because I know it is all a political drama. And I don’t want to be categorized with Mother Teresa and all kinds of fools.”

In fact, Mother Teresa is against women’s liberation, so whoever has written the article is either ignorant or trying to praise Mother Teresa. And there is a political motive behind it: she is against women’s liberation for the simple reason that she is against birth control. She is against the pill, and the pill is the greatest possibility for women to be liberated from men; otherwise, women will always remain dependent, slaves.

If you follow Mother Teresa’s ideas, then a woman will have child after child, a woman will remain only a mother, continually pregnant. Her whole life will be wasted in producing children, bringing up children. She cannot be economically independent, she cannot be educated, she cannot stand in any field with man as a competitor.

The pill can create the situation where the woman is equal to the man, because the pill makes her free from constant pregnancy, it makes her free from dependence. She can be economically free, financially free, and ultimately she can demand that marriage not be needed: ”If we love, we are together; if we don’t love, we say good-bye to each other – in good faith.” There is no question of any fight.

So whoever calls Mother Teresa a rebel is just an idiot. She is one of the persons in the world who is the most reactionary.

Rebellion needs real guts.

She is traditional, orthodox, conventional... a believer in the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, a believer in the miracles of Jesus Christ, a believer in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, a believer that Christianity is the highest religion, a believer that only one who is Christian will be saved – and you call this woman a REBEL?

Then who am I?

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

SITTING IN THE DARK I BECOME LIGHTER AND LIGHTER, EMPTIER AND EMPTIER, LIKE

A SOAP BUBBLE BOUNCING ON THE GRASS. AND A GIGGLE ARISES FROM MY BELLY TO

PLAY WITH THE SOAP BUBBLE, AND I FEEL POSSESSED. I AM SO HAPPY TO BE WITH YOU.

OSHO, WHEN I TOOK SANNYAS YOU TAUGHT ME HOW TO FEEL POSSESSED, AND THIS

WAS THE GREATEST GIFT OF MY LIFE. AND YET AFTER IT HAPPENED A FEW TIMES, I REMEMBERED THAT IT USED TO HAPPEN OFTEN WHEN I WAS A KID, AT NIGHT, LYING IN

MY BED. IS THAT WHAT YOU MEAN WHEN YOU SAID THAT YOU ARE GIVING US BACK WHAT

WE ALWAYS HAD?

Right... absolutely right!

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Change is the law of life

30 May 1986 am in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO, ALVIN TOFFLER WROTE A BOOK CALLED FUTURE SHOCK.

IN IT HE DESCRIBED HOW THE WORLD AROUND US IS CHANGING FASTER THAN EVER

BEFORE. AND NOT ONLY THAT: THE RATE OF CHANGE IS INCREASING ALL THE TIME.

HE DESCRIBES HOW HALF OF ALL AMERICANS CHANGE HOMES AT LEAST EVERY FIVE

YEARS; HOW PEOPLE CHANGE HUSBANDS, WIVES, JOBS, CITIES AND CAREERS WITH

INCREASING RAPIDITY... NOT TO MENTION ALL THE TRIVIAL PROPRIETARY PRODUCTS

FROM CARS TO SOAP POWDER THAT CHANGE WITH BEWILDERING FREQUENCY.

HE ALSO OUTLINES THE ENORMOUS INCREASE

IN INFORMATION, SCIENTIFIC AND OTHERWISE. HUMAN KNOWLEDGE IS SAID TO DOUBLE

EVERY TEN YEARS, AND THE DOUBLING TIME IS GETTING SHORTER ALL THE TIME.

COMPARED WITH THE RELATIVELY UNCHANGING WORLD OF OUR PARENTS AND

GRANDPARENTS, THIS IS A NEW PHENOMENON INDEED. IN THE OLD DAYS THEY SAID

THAT A SENSE OF STABILITY WAS NECESSARY FOR A NORMAL DEVELOPMENT AND

THE AVOIDANCE OF MENTAL ILLNESS. THIS STABILITY HAS CLEARLY GONE FOREVER.

EVEN IF WE AVOID ANY OF SEVERAL CATASTROPHES LOOMING BEFORE MANKIND, IT

SEEMS THIS RAPIDLY CHANGING WORLD IS ONLY GOING TO BE HEALTHILY POPULATED BY

MEDITATORS – THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO WILL BE ABLE TO LIVE JOYOUSLY IN THE CENTER

OF THE CYCLONE.

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WOULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT?

Alvin Toffler’s book is already out-of-date. He writes that in America people change things within five years. Now the time is three years: within three years’ time they change their jobs, their spouses, their cities – not to mention small things which are changing every day. The rate of knowledge, according to him, is doubling every ten years; now it is doubling every five years.

It is true that in the past there was stability. But it is not true that stability is a basic necessity for normal growth of human beings. Stability is good only for the mediocre, only for the retarded –

because the mediocre and the retarded never want any change, because any change is a trouble.

They would have to learn things again, and learning is their difficulty.

So in the past the world was very good, very convenient for the mediocre people; whatever you learned in your childhood remained true till you died. No change in anything kept the mediocre mind very comfortable.

The new phenomenon is really dangerous, but not for humanity as such; it is only dangerous for the masses, because they cannot keep pace with the change. Before they can become accustomed to one thing, it is already changing. They are always left behind. They can go insane, become abnormal.

But for the intelligent people the changing world is the right world – because intelligence wants new excitements, new challenges, new ecstasies. In the old world there was no possibility.

So I will not agree with Alvin Toffler; he is thinking of humanity as a whole. But this is not a truth; humanity is divided between those who want to remain confined in the familiar and those who want new skies, new stars to explore.

The past was very dangerous for these people – the explorers. The past was against them. In fact, many things were invented in the past, but they were suppressed in favor of the masses. They were dangerous because they bring changes – and the larger part of humanity is more afraid of change than of death, because death is a release, a deep sleep, but a change is a trouble.

Three thousand years ago China developed printing presses. But they never used them widely; they were used only for the royal families. The ordinary masses continued to write their books with their own hands. It was thought that it would be dangerous to give the printing press – a very innocent invention – to the masses, because then there would be so many books available that the mediocre mind wouldn’t be able to cope with it; it would go berserk. To avoid that, printing presses remained suppressed.

Gunpowder was discovered two thousand years ago. But it was never used in war for the simple reason that the soldier is the most retarded person in society. He needs to be retarded; it is society’s demand that he should be retarded. His training is for remaining mediocre so that he never doubts anything, he never questions anything, he never says NO to anything. He has no mind of his own.

Orders come from above, and he simply follows.

He was accustomed to the old strategy of war; he was trained for archery and other things. Now gunpowder will be so new to him that he may not be able to use it, or he will use it wrongly. It is better to leave him alone; he is doing perfectly well with his archery....

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In India it was discovered almost five thousand years ago that the elephant, in comparison to the horse, is not the right vehicle as far as war is concerned, because the horse has more mobility, quickness.

The elephant cannot move as quickly, cannot change positions as quickly. And the most dangerous thing about the elephant is that if a few elephants become afraid, then those who are in front start running over their own army. Horses never do that; horses are far more intelligent. And even if they would, it is not going to kill people. But when elephants run over people, they are finished.

And elephants are accustomed to a certain kind of warfare. For example, for archery they were ready – but not for gunpowder. When the enemy brought guns, they freaked out; they could not understand what was happening. And then they turned back and ran over their own army, killing their own people. Defeat happened again and again in India because of the elephants.

Indians knew that horses were better, but to introduce anything new was against the old mind. The elephant has a prestige, an old and long prestige, and people were trained how to use the elephant, which is not the same as using a horse.

The elephant’s skin is so thick that to move him or to change him or to turn him, you have to use a certain kind of spear; only the spear can make him change his route or movement. Whips won’t do; they won’t reach him. His skin is so thick, and he is bulky. They are good for a royal parade but not good for fighting, where you need more agile, quick movements.

A good horse is one that moves even by the shadow of the whip; you need not hit him.

The whole training was going to be changed... so knowingly they continued with the elephants and went on being defeated by each invader. But they would not change their way of life.

It was comfortable, because everything was static. Whatever your father told you was always right, and that was what his father had told him. Generation after generation the same thing was said; naturally it was bound to be true. So many people cannot be deceived for so long... somebody must have found the fault.

So belief was the basis of the old society, and it worked.

The new world is not for the mediocre.

Toffler is not clear about the distinction – that human beings are not equal. Economically they can be made equal, politically they can be given equal freedom – equal freedom of expression – but what they will express will show you that they are different, what they will do with their freedom will show you that they are different, how they will use their equality will make it clear to you that they are unequal.

So he takes the humanity as a whole; that’s where he goes wrong in his analysis.

The old society was sane for the mediocre and insane for the intelligent – because for the intelligent there was no scope. You were not allowed to invent anything: ”God has made everything. Whatever is needed has already been created by God.”

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A preacher in a church was giving a sermon and saying, ”Everything that is needed is created by God.”

One little boy had come with his father. He stood up and said, ”What about railway trains? He did not create them, and they are needed. You yourself have traveled by railway train to come to the church. We have traveled, to come to the church, in a railway train. What about railway trains?” The priest was shocked for a moment. Then he looked into the Bible and there is a sentence: ”God created all things that creep.” He said, ”It is written clearly that all things that creep, God created.

Everything is not noted down, but trains are creepers. This sentence is enough proof that God created the railway trains.”

But it has to be God who created everything. Man was not allowed.

So it was very sane for the mediocre, for the stupid. They enjoyed it. And nobody could say to them that they are mediocre, they are stupid, because there was no difference between them and the intelligent and the genius.

Today you can see the gap.

So for the genius, the modern world of constant change is just what he has been waiting for for millennia. But to the mediocre, it is very difficult – he cannot exist, things are changing so fast, he feels lost.

For example, in the past there was no divorce; marriage was permanent. Once you got married, there was no way of going back; you were married for your whole life. Even the question was irrelevant.

In the countries which are still living in the past... for example in India, in the villages nobody ever thinks of divorce. The word is never used, although the constitution allows it. But divorce happens only in a very small minority of educated people who are confined only to the big cities like Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, Delhi. The rest of India knows nothing of it.

It was convenient for the mediocre to have one husband, to have one wife, to know each other, to know each other’s habits, to get adjusted to each other. It may be miserable; it does not matter. But at least it was stable and it was good for the children, it was good for the society – because it gives stability to society’s traditions, conventions.

But for a man who really loves, it was not a sane society – because love changes; nothing can be done about it. Just as we accept every other change in the world.... Seasons change – what can you do about it? Summer comes, rains come, winter comes – what can you do about it? Day changes into night, youth changes into old age... the whole existence is changing.

Against this changing world we created a fake society which was stable. It was against existence.

In existence everything is momentary, and we were trying to create something permanent. To the mediocre it brought great happiness, because once something is settled it is settled forever. But to The Transmission of the Lamp

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those who are not just looking for a wife to take care of their children, for a wife who is going to be a factory for producing children, for a wife who will take care of the household affairs, it was not very sane. Those people suffered.

Those who are looking for a woman as a human being, those who are looking for love, they have to accept that love can change. It is a reality; it is not an artifact made by society.

It is a flower that blossoms in the morning, and by the evening it is gone. It is not something plastic.

Those who are looking for the real flower and its fragrance and its aliveness have to accept that change is the law of life – the only law.

It means that the new changing society gives opportunity to authentic, sincere, intelligent people.

They can live together, if they feel like living together, or they can separate.

It does not create insanity; it is really the sanest thing to do. If the love disappears, then what is the point of living together? Why pretend? Why go on saying false things to each other? – ”I love you.” Dale Carnegie suggests in his book, HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE, that every husband at least three times a day should say to his wife, ”I love you.” Whether you feel it or not is not the point; it has to be repeated mechanically. Whenever you have a chance to repeat it, repeat it.

But no intelligent person can do that.

All these kinds of advisers are making man phony. And in America there are thousands of books of this type which make man phony.

I have heard that Henry Ford was in a bookstore looking through the new publications, and Napoleon Hill... he writes well, impressively, but all phony stuff. In his book THINK AND GROW RICH – a best seller – he proposes that if you visualize that you are rich, you will be rich. Your visualization will sooner or later become a reality. You remain poor because you cannot visualize. So learn how to think and grow rich, and nothing else has to be done. You just have to close your eyes and think persistently, visualizing a Cadillac, and one day suddenly it appears on your porch.

His book had just come out of the press, and he was selling them there with his signature. He was very happy that Henry Ford was there. So he said, ”I would like to present one of my books to you.” Henry Ford looked at the title, THINK AND GROW RICH, and he knew that to grow rich is an arduous job; it is not just how you think. He said, ”I will accept your book after a little enquiry. Have you come here on a public bus or in your private car?”

He said, ”On a public bus.”

Henry Ford said, ”That’s enough. Keep your book. First visualize yourself into a private car. The day your visualization materializes, bring your book to me. And I don’t need it; I am Henry Ford. I have more riches than you can visualize, and I don’t think I need any more. So give it to someone else.” The Transmission of the Lamp

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But how beautifully he refuted the man – that you have come on a public transport bus, you don’t even have your own private car, and you dare to write a book that says that just by thinking, visualizing, continually visualizing, things can be materialized.

Now, however many times you may repeat it, if love has disappeared it is not going to come. It had never come because of you. It was not something you had done. It happened; it came and it possessed you. And one day you find it is no more there. It was not your doing, so you cannot do anything to prevent it from going.

So for the intelligent person it is perfectly good that things are changing fast. He will be constantly thrilled by the change.

Now, doing the same job all your life you become a robot; you start doing the job mechanically.

There is no need to think about it.

In the body there is a robot part. First you think something, practice something, and then it is transferred to the robot part. In Gurdjieff’s system, that robot part plays a very important role.

You can see it. If you are learning to drive a car, it is very difficult in the beginning... it is almost impossible. You have to look ahead on the road, so that you do not crash and kill somebody. You have to stay on the right side, so you have to be constantly aware of the steering wheel. You have to stay within a certain limit of speed, so you have to be aware of the speed you are going. And your foot has to be in tune with you on the accelerator. And you have to be constantly aware of the brake, because at any moment anything can happen and you have to brake.

So many things... and in a crazy traffic, which is going all over. If you look at the brake, you forget that you have to look ahead. You are not to look at the brake; your foot has to do the work.

It seems impossible. Things are being asked, so many things together. If you manage one, the other goes off; if you manage the other, something else goes off.

But through a little practice, the whole learning is transferred to the robot part. Then you can sing, you can smoke, you can listen to the radio, you can talk to your friend, you can do anything...

and your body itself takes care of the vehicle. You need not pay any more attention; it is now all automatic. Not only is the car automatic, you are automatic.

The mediocre person finds that once you become automatic in anything, it is good to remain in it.

Learning again a new job, learning again a new wife... you knew perfectly well your old wife; good or bad or whatsoever she was, you knew her. Now this is something unknown. And what she will do with you, you don’t know. A new job means new learning, a new city means finding a new friends, finding a new society.

But, if every three years you have to go on changing, your life will remain sharpened; more and more rich it will become.

So I don’t see the speed of change as a danger to the genius. And the whole progress of humanity depends on the genius; the masses have never done anything as far as progress or evolution is concerned.

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So Toffler is unnecessarily worried... unless he himself belongs to the mediocre. And it seems he belongs; otherwise, it would have been clear to him that we have come to a world where everybody has to sharpen his intelligence just to survive. Even the mediocre person has the potential, but he has not made any effort. But if the world is changing he will have to make the effort.

I can see the difference.... In India, any young man – if he is educated – knows only geography, history, mathematics... but he does not know carpentry, he does not know music, he does not know cooking, he does not know anything else.

While in the West the same young man of the same age knows many more things, because the Western youth has to prepare himself for a world which you cannot take for granted. Today it may be possible that you can be musician; tomorrow it may not be possible, and you have to be a carpenter or a plumber or a cook. It is richer.

For example, the way we created the commune in America.... We cannot create that kind of commune in India, because either you will get absolutely uneducated, unskilled people, who cannot do anything unless supervised, ordered, told, continually reminded – and then, too, it will not be a piece of beautiful art, it will be a hatchet job – or you will get those who are educated, who cannot do even that. They will say, ”We can do geography, we can do history, we can tell you when Socrates was married, and we can tell you when he was poisoned – on what date and at what time.” But that is not needed to create a commune. They cannot make a house, they cannot make a road, they cannot make a dam, they cannot plant trees. They are very poor in that way. Their only capacity is to be a clerk.

It is such a difficult thing because India is still living in the stable past, where things have always remained the same.

This whirlwind that has arisen in the West is of tremendous importance. It is not a crisis, it is a critical moment. It is a great chance for the talented, and also an opportunity, for those who have lived up to now a stable life, to learn something from a changing pattern. It will not make them poorer, it will make them richer. A man should be able to do many things, and that is possible only if he goes on moving from job to job.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the most important philosophers, refused a post as a professor in Oxford because he just wanted to be a teacher in a school. A professor he had been. So he said, ”I know that I would like to know something new – how to deal with small children.” He was not concerned about the salary, he was more concerned about his own learning. And finally he dropped the school and became a fisherman.

Now this is impossible in India, that anybody could drop from professor to teacher, and then from teacher to fisherman. People would think, ”What kind of progress is happening?” But I say that it is progress, because this man knows three jobs and he is enriched because of his many activities.

A man loves a woman or a woman loves a man – it is good as far as it goes, but it should not be stretched when it is no more there. Then it is better to change partners, because each new woman and each new man are going to be different and will bring to your life a new aspect, a new revelation.

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People who have changed their lovers many times are immensely enriched because no two lovers are the same. And this should be the criterion for everything.

There is no danger in this changing world that is opening up. It has already come in. And the speed will go on becoming faster and faster – so you have to learn how to adjust yourself quickly to a new situation. That will give you a flexibility, that will make you more alive. You will have to find ways that you have never tried before, because situations have changed.

And if you are going to change continually you will live, in one life, a thousand lives, and your life will become, not a stale repetition of the same from birth to death, but every day a new sunrise and every day a new flower blossoming in your garden. So to me, it is not something bad.

It is going to be difficult for the mediocre, but they have lived in safety for millions of years. It is time they should be shaken and awakened.

And they have ruled over the intelligent for millions of years. Now it is time they should be put in their right place. Now, one who is capable of adjusting to new modes of living, loving, working, will prove his genius, his talent.

The New Man must be a multidimensional man. And this situation is simply an absolute necessity for the multidimensional man to arrive on the earth.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

IT SEEMS SO UNFORTUNATE THAT EXISTENCE HAD TO GIVE WOMEN THIS THING CALLED

MENSTRUATION EVERY MONTH. IT’S ONE OF THOSE THINGS YOU KNOW IS COMING, AND

YOU KNOW ALL THE EMOTIONS AND CRAZY THINGS THAT FOLLOW WITH IT. AND YET IT

IS THE MOST DIFFICULT THING TO BE ABLE TO WATCH AND NOT BE IDENTIFIED WITH

– AT LEAST FOR ME. FUNNILY ENOUGH, EVEN THE MEN SEEM TO GET INVOLVED AND

IDENTIFIED WITH IT WHEN WE ARE IN IT.

HOW CAN WE WATCH SOMETHING THAT IS SUCH AN INTRINSIC PART OF OUR BIOLOGY?

The art of watchfulness is the same whether you are watching something outside of you or you are watching something in your own biology – it is also outside of you.

I know it is difficult, because you are more identified with it; it is so close. But the problem is not watchfulness, the problem is identification. That identification should be broken.

When you feel that your menstruation is coming, try to watch, try to see what it is bringing along with it – anger, depression, hate, a tendency to fight, a desire to throw tantrums. Just watch – and not only watch but say to the man you love, ”This is going to come within me. I will try my best to be aware, but if I get identified you need not get involved in it, you can simply watch. You are far away and outside of it.”

And the man can know that a woman in menstruation is in difficulty. She needs your compassion.

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And the same should be done by the woman, because you may not know, but man also has his period every month. Because it has no physical expression, for centuries nobody has been aware that man also goes through the same cycle. He has to, because he and she are parts of one whole.

A man also, for four or five days each month, goes into a dark hole. you can at least throw the whole responsibility on your menstruation. He cannot even do that because his menstruation is only emotional – he passes through the same emotions that you pass through. And because there was no physical expression of it, nobody ever thought about it. But now it is an established fact that every month he passes through the same situation as you. So he is not superior in that way, and you are not unfortunate in comparison to him.

The difficulty arises, that when you love a man and you live with him long enough, slowly, slowly your body rhythms become very, very harmonious. So when you have your menstruation, he also has his menstruation. That creates the real trouble – both of you are in a dark hole, both are depressed, both are sad, both are in despair. And you throw the responsibility on each other.

So the man has to find out when he has his period. And the way to find out is to just write down in your diary, every day, how it is. And you will find a block of five days when you were continuously in depression, in a bad mood, ready to fight. Watching for two to three months – noting in your diary –

you will come to an absolute conclusion: these are the five days. Make your woman aware: ”These are my five days.”

If they are different from your woman’s, it is good, fortunate, because the trouble will be only half. So, the man can watch when the woman throws tantrums and does all kinds of stupid things. He need not participate, he need not answer, he need not react. He should play cool and give the woman a chance to see that he is playing cool, which means ”I should be aware.” But if these periods coincide, then there is a real calamity. But then, too, you both can be aware.

You can see that he is also suffering from his menstrual period and it is not good to throw anything more upon the poor fellow, and he can understand that you are suffering and ”It is good to keep my load on myself.”

Just be watchful.

Soon there will be a possibility.... It was really the religions of the world who have been preventing it; otherwise, the menstrual period can disappear – and from women more easily than from men.

If you are on the pill, perhaps it may disappear. To most women the pill is a perfect thing – the period disappears. So there is no harm; be on the pill.

And just a few days ago I heard they have discovered a pill for the man too, so he can also take his pill.

But that will only change your biological situation. What is more important is to be aware. If you can be aware of the situation and not get identified, that will be far more significant.

But the pill will take away your physical pain. And I am perfectly in favor of that. There is no need to suffer any physical pain unnecessarily – if it can be alleviated. So find a pill and forget about the physical, the biological suffering.

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And the man should also do the same, because he goes through the same period. It’s just that the poor fellow has not been aware of it for millions of years because there is no physical expression of it. But there is psychological expression, and it is exactly the same.

So first, find out when the period is. And if the pill is now available in the market for the man too, he should also take the pill.

And awareness you can practice in a thousand other ways. There is no need to suffer bodily, physical pain unnecessarily. Certainly the pill can stop your period; it can also stop the possibility of your getting pregnant – which is a blessing, because the world does not need any more population.

But meanwhile, try awareness.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

WHEN I BECAME A SANNYASIN I STARTED FEELING, MUCH MORE, THAT EXISTENCE IS

TAKING CARE OF ME. IS MY WHOLE LIFE BEING TAKEN CARE OF BY EXISTENCE? AND IF

IT IS, HOW IS IT THAT I FEEL IT MORE SINCE I HAVE BEEN WITH YOU?

Existence is taking care of your whole life, because you are part of it. Being with me, it is not taking more care than before, it is just that you have become more aware of it; you were not aware at all before.

The change has happened in your awareness. It is not that existence has started taking more care, but now you can feel it, be aware of it.

(THERE IS A LOUD NOISE FROM ANOTHER ROOM.)

Is somebody suffering from a menstrual period upstairs?...

Whether you know it or not, existence goes on taking care of you.

If you know it, you feel grateful.

In your gratefulness is your religiousness.

In your gratefulness is your awakening.

But the care is the same. It cares for the smallest blade of grass just as it cares for the biggest star.

But those poor fellows cannot be aware of it. You are fortunate: you can be aware of it.

Awareness will create a new situation in you – that of gratitude. And to me gratitude is the only religiousness there is.

Question 4

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BELOVED OSHO,

YOU MENTIONED THE MEDITATION OF STARING FOR ONE HOUR INTO THE MIRROR. IS IT

GOOD TO LOOK WITH A SOFT, UNFOCUSED GAZE, RATHER THAN TO STARE? ALSO, IS IT

BETTER TO LOOK INTO EITHER THE LEFT OR THE RIGHT EYE, OR AT BOTH? ON ANOTHER

OCCASION, YOU SUGGESTED THAT COUPLES COULD LOOK INTO EACH OTHER’S EYES.

MY QUESTIONS FOR THE FIRST MEDITATION ALSO APPLY TO THIS METHOD. WOULD YOU

PLEASE COMMENT?

It is best to look in the mirror, not in the eyes of your lover – because in the eyes of your lover you can get identified. With the mirror, there is no such possibility.

Staring is not good – it will be tiring and tense. So, a soft gaze... and not in one eye but in both eyes... a very soft gaze, without any tension, just looking for no reason at all. In staring you may stop blinking, but in soft gaze you can continue blinking; there is no harm.

Remain as relaxed as possible.

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Get in tune with the essence

30 May 1986 pm in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

WHEN YOU SPOKE ABOUT DEVOTEES I WAS VERY DEEPLY TOUCHED BECAUSE THAT

IS WHAT I FEEL FOR YOU: DEVOTION. IF THE PRICE OF ENLIGHTENMENT WERE TO

STAY AWAY FROM YOUR PRESENCE, I WOULD GIVE IT UP GLADLY FOR THE BLISS AND

CENTEREDNESS I FEEL RIGHT NOW JUST LOOKING INTO YOUR EYES.

IT HAPPENS TO ME SEVERAL TIMES DURING DISCOURSE: LOOKING AT YOU, SUDDENLY

TIME AND MOVEMENT STOP. AND WITH THIS PHENOMENON I FEEL A RUSH OF ALMOST

TANGIBLE LOVE-ENERGY ENTERING MY BODY WITH SUCH STRENGTH THAT A FEW TIMES

I LITERALLY FEEL MY BODY PUSHED BACK BY IT.

I LOVE YOU, AND I HOPE I NEVER HAVE TO LEAVE FOR AS LONG AS YOU LIVE.

These moments of devotion, of love, are the moments of enlightenment – just glimpses... as if you see, from a faraway place, the sunlit peak of a mountain. Although you are still far away, this is the peak where one day you have to arrive.

You don’t have to go away from me, so there is no question of any conflict between being with me and seeking and searching for enlightenment. You are with me for enlightenment; otherwise, there is no purpose in being with me. The only purpose is to have a little feeling of that great experience, because without this little feeling the word enlightenment remains empty for you.

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These small moments will start filling the word enlightenment with meaning, with a certainty, with a guarantee that it is not just a word but a reality to be realized; that just by being in the presence of a man who has found it, you can be touched by its reality. Time can stop, and for a moment you are transported to another level of existence, where in a sense you are, and in a sense you are no more

– and both are true at the same time.

Enlightenment is not something philosophical, it is very existential. It is something to live, something to be, something to experience, something to share. It is almost tangible.

Looking into my eyes, you are looking into your own silence. Your eyes also have the same silence

– you have never allowed it to happen.

Being in deep devotion comes as a surprise the first time, because it is so difficult for people to feel even love, and devotion is the highest form of love... just the essential fragrance of love. If love is the flower, then devotion is just the fragrance. You cannot catch hold of it. You can feel it, you can smell it, you can be surrounded by it, you can be drowned in it, but you cannot catch hold of it. It is not that material.

If these moments are happening to you, you are on the right path. There is nowhere to go, no need to go. You have found the place from where the pilgrimage begins – it has already begun. You should feel blessed by it.

Otherwise, people are simply wandering into words, theories, philosophies, theologies, religions, and all kinds of gymnastics of the mind; and nobody bothers that the ultimate reality is beyond mind.

You can go on for lives searching into the mind and you will not find anything except empty words.

Mind is a desert where nothing grows.

But if you can move just a little above the mind, the whole sky opens up for you... a little courage, and you can open your wings.

To be with the master is simply to see someone who has opened his wings and is on the wing in the sky. And he reminds you – not only by his words, but by his very being – that the same is possible for you, that you have wings but you have forgotten it. You don’t have to achieve anything, you only have to remember. And these moments, by and by, push you to that remembrance.

That remembrance is freedom from all cults, from all beliefs, freedom from all kinds of stupidities, superstitions. And not only freedom from.... Remember this: freedom from superstitions is good but not enough, freedom from beliefs is good but not enough. Freedom for truth... freedom from beliefs and freedom for truth; freedom from superstitions and freedom for reality. When freedom comes with both wings – from and for – you are coming back home.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

YEARS AGO DURING A PSYCHOSYNTHESIS WORKSHOP, WHEN WE WERE IN A HYPNOTIC

STATE THE LEADER TOOK US THROUGH PLATO’S ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE, WHERE THE

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MEN WERE STANDING BY THE FIRE LOOKING AT THE SHADOWS ON THE WALL, NEVER

HAVING SEEN THE OPENING OF THE CAVE.

THIS LEFT A DEEP IMPRESSION ON ME, AND I WOULD BE SO GRATEFUL TO HEAR YOU

SPEAK ON THIS.

Plato’s allegory is of slaves who, working in a cave, see only their shadows on the walls and believe that what is happening on the walls is the only reality. They don’t know of any other reality except those shadows... they don’t even know that those shadows are their own. They know nothing about the outside world, outside their cave; it doesn’t exist for them.

This is one of the most beautiful allegories – of tremendous importance. It is our allegory. Translated into our life, it means we are living in a certain cave and we are seeing shadows on a certain screen and we know nothing else about the screen. We know nothing about there being a world beyond the screen; we know nothing about these shadows on the screen, even that they are our own.

Looked at rightly, it is the allegory of our mind.

What do you know of the world? Just a small skull is your cave; and just the screen of your mind...

and the things which you call thoughts, emotions, sentiments, feelings, are all shadows – they don’t have any substance in them.

And you get angry, you get depressed, you are in anguish – because you have learned to be identified with those shadows. You are projecting them; they are your own shadows. It is your own anger that is projected on the screen of the mind. And then it becomes a vicious circle: that anger makes you more angry, more anger projects more anger, and so on and so forth. And we go on living our whole life without ever thinking that there is a world of reality beyond the mind, on the outside, and there is also a world of reality beyond all these sentiments, feelings, emotions – beyond your ego. That is your awareness.

The whole art of meditation is to bring you out of the cave so that you can become aware that you are not those shadows but that you are a watcher.

And the moment you become a watcher, a miracle happens: those shadows start disappearing.

They feed on your identity; if you feel identified with them, then they are there. The more you identify with them, the more nourished they are.

When you are just a watcher – just seeing, not judging, not condemning – slowly, slowly those shadows disappear, because now they don’t have any food. And then there is such a tremendous clarity, perceptivity, that you can see the world beyond – the world of sunrise and the world of clouds and the world of the stars; that is your outside. And you can become aware of your inside, which is far more mysterious.

The outside world is so beautiful, but the inside world is a thousandfold more beautiful.

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here forever. Death has never happened and cannot happen. And outside there is a tremendously beautiful existence.

And now to call them ‘outside’ and ‘inside’ is not right; those are the old words when the skull was dividing them in two. Now it is one. Your consciousness and the beauty of a sunset and the beauty of a starry night, your consciousness and the freshness of a rose – they are no longer separate because the principle of separation is no longer there. It is all one cosmic whole.

And I call this experience the only holy experience. To experience the whole is the only holy experience. It has nothing to do with churches, temples, synagogues; it has something to do with you coming out, slipping out of the clutches of the mind. And it is not difficult, it is just that you have not tried it.

One Japanese professor has been training small children to swim. His idea has been that in the mother’s womb the child is in a certain liquid which is exactly the same as the ocean water, with the same constituents. And the child floats in that water.

It is well-known that whenever a woman becomes pregnant, she starts eating more salty food.

She needs more salt because the child needs ocean water. And this has given the idea to the evolutionists that man must have first been born in water. And if you look at the child’s growing stages – in a photograph every day for nine months – you will be surprised: he begins by being a fish.

In the Hindu religion God’s first incarnation is a fish. It cannot be coincidental, because even to conceive of God as a fish would have looked condemnatory. But for thousands of years Hindus have believed that God originated first as a fish. And to them God is life; they are just different words.

This Japanese professor thought that if life was first born in water, then swimming should be intrinsic; it has not to be learned. To prove his point he started working with small babies, and he has been immensely successful. Six-month-old babies can swim. And now he is trying with three-month-old babies – and they are swimming. And his expectation is that one day he will be able to show to the world that the just-born baby can be put in a tub of water and he will be swimming.

Swimming is not an art which has to be learned, it is something that we already know. But how many people know swimming? – Not very many people. Although it is something intrinsic we have the capacity to ignore it, to forget it.

The English word ‘sin’ is very beautiful. I love it because its original meaning is forgetfulness. It has nothing to do with the crimes we call sin. It is concerned with only one crime, and that is forgetfulness. We have forgotten ourselves; the remedy is remembrance.

Plato’s allegory rightly depicts the situation which we are in. But Plato never went further than that.

Plato himself was never a meditator; the allegory remained a philosophical idea.

If he had interpreted this allegory and had given it a turn towards meditation, the whole Western mind would have been different. This allegory would have changed the whole Western mind and the history that followed Plato – because Plato is the founder of the whole Western mind.

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Socrates never wrote anything; he was Plato’s master. Whatever we have about Socrates is from Plato’s notes of him talking with others – the famous Socratic dialogues. As a student he was just taking notes on them. Those notes have survived. In those notes is this allegory.

It is difficult to know for what purpose Socrates was using the allegory, but it is certain that Plato misused it – he was not a man who was in search of truth, he was a man who wanted to think about truth. But to search for truth is one thing and to think about truth is totally different: thinking keeps you within the cave. It is only non-thinking that can take you out of the cave.

So be silent, be still, whenever you can find the time. Allow silence to settle in you like a lake, so silent that there is not even a ripple – no thought in your mind – and suddenly you are out of it. And only then will you understand that the allegory is not for philosophical purposes; it is for authentic search, it is for realization.

Plato never gave that interpretation. So the whole Western mind followed Plato – he was a genius –

and philosophy remained only a thinking about truth.

What can you think about truth? Either you know it or you don’t know it. Sometimes even geniuses can do such stupid things that it looks unbelievable. How can you think about truth? – It is almost like a blind man thinking about light. What can he think about light? – he does not even know darkness.

Ordinarily, people think that blind people are living in darkness. You are wrong, because to see darkness you need eyes – as much as you need them for light. So don’t be in a misunderstanding.

Because you close your eyes and there is darkness, that does not mean that a blind person sees darkness. You see darkness, because you can see light and you can see its absence. The blind man cannot see light, so he cannot see its absence. What can he think about light? And whatever he thinks is going to be wrong. He needs not a philosopher but a physician.

And Gautam Buddha has actually said, ”I am not a philosopher, I am a physician. I don’t want you to become great thinkers, I want you to become great seers.” And if you can see, then it is not a question of thinking; you simply know it. And the way to see is to learn the simple art of non-thinking.

In the beginning it will be difficult because you have become so accustomed to it. It has become such an old habit that it goes on by itself; it has its own momentum. Even if you don’t want to think, it goes on and on. But if you are a little patient and you just watch the mind going on with its routine, without giving it any energy anymore, just seeing it as if you are seeing a film on a screen, remaining aloof, alert, watchful, without getting identified – soon the mind disappears.

And the disappearance of the mind is your coming out of the cave. For the first time you see the world that is surrounding you – its beauty, its tremendous silence. And you can see your own being

– its immense light, its great blessings, its ultimate benediction.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

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FROM EARLY CHILDHOOD UNTIL MY FIRST FEW YEARS AS A SANNYASIN, AN EXPERIENCE

OF EXPANSION WOULD HAPPEN: MY HEAD WOULD FILL THE WHOLE ROOM, AND LATER

ON IT WOULD FILL THE HOUSE AND THEN MOVE OUTSIDE THE HOUSE AND SURROUND

IT.

THIS HAS NOT HAPPENED FOR A FEW YEARS, AND ALTHOUGH IT DOES NOT FEEL LIKE A LOSS, I WONDER WHY IT STOPPED AND WHAT IT WAS.

If every person were to remember his experiences which were extraordinary...

you would be

surprised to know that by just finding those experiences, you would be able to find all the methods that have been developed for transforming man.

This is one of the old methods; it is greatly helpful. Just feeling that your head is becoming bigger and bigger, that you are not in the room but the room is within you... and then your head goes on becoming bigger and bigger. And the garden outside is not outside you but inside you, and the moon and the sun and the stars are not outside you but everything is inside your head, and your head becomes the circumference of the whole existence.... It is imagination; it is not that it is really happening.

But the very imagination gives you a key, and that key is: your mind is your servant. You can make it do things – and it is a very obedient servant. But for your whole life you have listened to it as if it is the master.

These experiments will give you the idea – the most important idea – that you are the master; the mind has to do anything you want it to do.

And also, while you are visualizing expansion, thoughts will disappear – because your whole concentration will be on the expansion, on the mind becoming bigger and bigger – and there will be a great silence. In that silence perhaps you may become aware of your awareness – that you are just a watcher, that you are not the mind. The mind can become big, the mind can become small –

both exercises are as ancient as man’s search for truth.

Another method is: you start thinking that your mind is becoming smaller, very much smaller. Finally it disappears and you don’t have any head. That, too, is perfectly good. It is not that your head disappears – it will remain where it is – but you will learn one thing: mind is nothing but a faculty of imagination, so through mind you can never achieve reality.

The people who are trying to achieve reality through the mind are simply imagining things.

Somebody is seeing Jesus Christ, somebody is seeing Krishna, somebody is seeing Hazrat Mohammed – and they don’t know that this is only their imagination. These people are not there, but their minds are capable of focusing on a certain subject and making it almost appear real. Many religions have been befooled and have been befooling others through such exercises.

I say it is good if these exercises help you to become alert – you are separate and mind is just a game of imagination. But almost all the religions have used these tricks to deceive millions of people. Sitting every day in front of Krishna’s statue, praying, hoping that one day he will appear –

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have played a trick upon yourself. All so-called cults, which depend on prayer, are really based on imagination – and all the religions have done that.

Real religion is to know that your mind is a faculty of imagination. You can create any kind of hallucination you want. If it is something difficult, then there are ways to help, which scriptures have provided. For example, if you fast for twenty-one days, then any hallucination becomes easier, very easy. When you are well fed and healthy, that hallucination will not be easy. Sometimes when you have a fever, lying on your bed, you may see that you are rising up from the bed, or perhaps your whole bed is rising. Beyond a temperature of one hundred and five degrees you start hallucinating all kinds of things.

In isolation hallucination is easy. Go to a mountain cave at night, alone, with all the wild animals.

Fear, death, darkness, all force you; your mind is compelled. Whatever you want... if you want to hallucinate that Krishna is with you or Christ is with you, it will be easier than in your own house where your wife is, your children are, the neighbors are. These people – Krishna and Christ and Rama and Zarathustra – are very much afraid of coming; they always come when you are alone and in a faraway place.

It created in all the religions the idea of renouncing the world, because when you renounce the world and go to the mountains, the realization of God is very easy. On the mountain, Sinai, Moses encounters God. Why could he not encounter God with all his fellow Jews? What was the need that he should go alone? At least he should have kept a secretary and a few journalists with him to report to the world what really happened. Now he is the only person; whatever he says you have to believe.

All the people who have experiences of God or his incarnations have always done so in privacy. Why don’t these people do it in public? The reason is: when fasting, when in darkness, when in the forest, in the desert alone the mind has more flexibility to imagine; then, you can visualize anything that you want. In that way this kind of experience has been exploited by religions. The people who realize God in this way become saints, great prophets, saviors – and they are really simply victims of hallucinations.

But the method itself can be used for better purposes. If you use it to be aware that you are the master and the mind is only a servant, you can give the orders and it has to follow.

Your experience was good. It stopped because you became grown-up and you must have started thinking to yourself, ”This is childish, this is something crazy.” Your rational mind must have been creating antagonism towards it. That’s why it stopped.

If you want it to begin again it can begin very easily, because you have experienced it. You can use it, but use it to remember your mastery, because whatever is happening – either expansion or shrinking – both are imagination; they have nothing to do with reality. But to give you the sense of mastery is great, because that sense can be then used to stop thinking. If you can manage to expand your mind to the very limits of the universe, you can say to the mind, ”Now, stop thinking!” and sit silently and let thinking stop.

This was the original purpose for which these kinds of exercises were used – not to help your imagination but to free you from the grip of the mind.

Question 4

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BELOVED OSHO,

WHAT IS IT ABOUT TREES THAT EVOKE SUCH FEELINGS OF THE PRIMORDIAL IN ME?

THEY ARE BEINGS OF SUCH SILENCE AND STILLNESS. THEY SEEM TO HAVE THAT

DIGNITY WHICH COMES WITH KNOWING SOMETHING ETERNAL, AND THEY REPRESENT

SOMETHING I FEEL I MUST KNOW OR ONCE KNEW. THEIR APPEAL IS NOT SIMPLY THAT

OF THE BEAUTIFUL AND GRACEFUL; THEY HAVE SUCH AN UNOBTRUSIVE ALLUREMENT, THE ATTRACTION OF SOMETHING FATHOMLESS THAT I DO NOT EVEN FEEL I NEED TO

UNDERSTAND, BUT LONG TO BE ENVELOPED IN.

THE INSTINCT IS TO MOVE TOWARDS RELATING TO THEM; AND YET TO HUG OR TOUCH A TREE DOESN’T SEEM TO BE WHAT IT’S ABOUT AT ALL.

AND I KNOW I HAVE OFTEN FELT OF YOU AS A TREE, FOR YOU BEAR THOSE SAME

QUALITIES.

ARE TREES TRYING TO TELL US SOMETHING?

Everything in existence is trying to tell you something – not only trees. The mountains, the ocean, the rivers, the sky, the clouds – everything is telling you something. It is telling you that existence is eternal, that forms change but the essence always remains. So don’t get identified with the form, get in tune with the essence. Your body is your form, your mind is your form; beyond both is your reality. And that reality has everything.

This existence is poor before that inner reality of yours. The tree has many things, the mountain has many things but your inner reality has all those things plus. And this plus point is awareness.

The tree is, but it is not aware that it is. And unless you become aware that you are, you are just a walking tree; you have not evolved. Evolution is trying, through humanity, to reach to the ultimate peak of consciousness.

A few people have reached; they are proof enough that everybody can reach – just a little effort, just a little sincerity, just a little search. Everything is telling you that the way you are living is not enough, the things you are doing are not all. Your mundane life is only the superficial; your real life remains, in most cases, untouched. People are born, they live and they die – and without knowing who they are.

The whole existence is silent. If you can also be silent you will know who this consciousness is within you; and knowing this, life becomes a joy, a moment-to-moment rejoicing, an unending festival of lights.

And then trees will feel jealous of you rather than you feeling jealous of trees – because you can grow flowers of consciousness. Those trees are poor; they are very far back on the way. They are also travelers; some day they will reach where you are today. Some day you must have been in their place.

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Gautam Buddha has told many stories of his past lives. One of his stories is that he was an elephant, and once in the middle of the night the forest caught on fire. It was so wild and the wind was so strong and the fire was spreading so fast... all the animals were trying to escape but were not finding the way.

The elephant was tired of running, so he stood under a tree looking all around to see where he could escape. Just as he was about to move – he lifted up one of his legs – at that very moment a small animal came and sat under his foot. His feet were big enough, and the animal must have thought it was a good place for shade. But the elephant was in a difficulty: if he put his foot down the animal would die, and if he did not put his foot down then he would die – because the fire was coming towards him.

But Buddha said that the elephant decided that it didn’t matter: ”One day, one has to die, I should not lose this opportunity. If I can save one life... as long as I am alive I will protect this creature.” It was difficult to stand in that posture for very long. The elephant fell to the side where the fire had moved to. He was burned and he died. But his decision to save some life, his reverence for a small creature was the reason he was born in his next life as a human being.

We are moving; those trees are also moving. It depends on what we do, it depends on what consciousness we live with; that is what takes us to a higher step.

It is beautiful to enjoy the trees, to enjoy the whole existence; but remember, right now you are at the highest peak – and your basic work is not to miss the opportunity of human life but to find the center of your being.

That finding will make you part of the universal soul; then there is no need for any other form. And to have a formless existence is the greatest freedom. Even the body is an imprisonment, the mind is an imprisonment. When you are pure consciousness, one with the whole, your freedom is total –

and that is the goal.

Question 5

BELOVED OSHO,

RECENTLY YOU MENTIONED SOME ANCIENT MEDITATION TECHNIQUES IN RELATION TO

SOME OF OUR CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES. IMAGINATION SEEMS TO BE THE BASIS OF

MANY OF THESE TECHNIQUES.

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN IMAGINING ONE IS ENLIGHTENED AND BEING

ENLIGHTENED?

Milarepa, what is the difference between me and you? That’s exactly the difference between being really enlightened and just imagining to be enlightened!

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31 May 1986 am in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

TO ME ONE OF THE MOST TRAGIC FALLS OF MAN TODAY IS HIS VALUING ALL THE WRONG

THINGS. SOMEWHERE IN THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS THERE MUST BE SOME IDEA OF WANTING ALL THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THINGS OF LIFE FOR FREE – AND PAYING HUGELY

FOR ALL THE UNESSENTIALS. WE WORSHIP THE WORDS OF FOOTBALL PLAYERS, MOVIE

STARS AND POLITICIANS, WITH NO APPRECIATION WHATSOEVER FOR WISDOM.

THIS SITUATION IS SO PITIFUL: HOW CAN ONE UNDERSTAND THE BEAUTY OF COSMIC

PAYMENT CIRCLING BACK TO THE SOURCE WHEN WE WILL REMAIN IN SUCH POVERTY?

WOULD YOU PLEASE BRING LIGHT TO THESE BLOCKS THAT MAN HAS AGREED UPON, BURIED IN THE UNCONSCIOUS?

The real values are not buried in the unconscious – the real values are revealed when you move above consciousness to the superconsciousness.

What is buried in the unconscious is what is making man’s life so stupid: he may pay attention to a football player’s words, an actor’s words, and will not heed the words of the wise.

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matches and really get excited; and they never think about what they are watching. In boxing they are watching sheer violence. But there is enjoyment; this is the expression of hidden violence in you.

Society has managed man with an absolutely wrong strategy. The idea of the society has been, that if something is thrown into the basement, into the darkness of the unconscious, you are finished with it. That is not the case. You are not finished with it. It will come up in different form – and with a vengeance. And it will go on collecting.

A small anger is not much to be worried about; it comes and goes. But if you go on suppressing anger, there comes a point when it becomes like a volcano which is just going to burst – at any excuse.

Suppression has been the way, for the whole history, to keep man civilized – but in fact, it has been the cause of keeping man only superficially civilized, skin-deep civilized. Just scratch anybody a little and you will find the barbarous, the primitive, the animal, all hidden behind him.

All your games are, in a subtle way, a satisfaction of your desire to be victorious. In the movies you see violence, you see murder, you see rape – and any movie which has not murder, rape, seems to have no appeal. These are essential ingredients which attract humanity.

In the unconscious your desires are waiting to be satisfied, and this is a vicarious way of satisfying them. You become identified with the murderer or perhaps with the murdered. You become identified with the rapist or with the raped. And a little release happens. That is your joy in seeing a movie, reading a novel.

In California, at the University of California they have discovered that for one year continuously, whenever there was a boxing match, crime increased by fourteen percent over the normal rate during that week.

What happens? Things which were hidden... seeing violence in boxing, your own violence starts coming up – and that violence increases the crime rate by fourteen percent over the normal. For almost one week it remains, and then slowly it goes back down to normal.

Now, the government knows it, that boxing should be made a crime, something against the law. But it is not being done because boxing pays money to the people who manage it, it pays money to the government – and it seems that anything is legal if it brings money with it.

In the unconscious, the real values are not there because nobody has repressed the real values.

Real values don’t need to be repressed because they are not against anybody, they do not do any harm to anybody. They are the qualities of love and compassion. But man has not experienced them, because they are above the conscious mind.

You have to go beyond your conscious mind to have some glimpse of the glorious world of real values

– truth, sincerity, love, friendliness, compassion, sympathy, sensitivity, appreciation of beauty, grace.

All those are lined up waiting for you.

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But the society has put you in a struggle with the unconscious, forcing all your animal heritage into the unconscious; you have to go on continually forcing it down. It is not that once forced down, you are finished with it; it goes on coming up, it wants expression.

And you don’t have anything else in your life – creativity of any sort – in which your energy can be involved, so no energy is left for the unconscious to use. So it is a strange situation; all creative dimensions are closed.

The superconscious is not talked about in your educational systems. The only thing talked about is your conscious mind, and that the only way to get any poisonous thing away from you is to throw it into the unconscious.

This whole strategy is wrong. That’s why human society has come to such a wrong situation, where people are living but not truly alive; they are almost like walking corpses. From the cradle to the grave they are simply dying every day, slowly, slowly. It is a long death, a seventy-year-long death.

It cannot be called life – because no flower blossoms, no song arises, no beauty is created.

You do not enrich life. And remember it as a basic dictum: unless you enrich life, you don’t have it.

If you have life, you must enrich life; you must leave the world better than you found it. But right now it seems you will leave the world more dark, more gloomy, more sad, more miserable.

The old strategy has to be abandoned – absolutely abandoned, without any exception.

A few fundamentals have to be remembered. The unconscious has no way of releasing any content directly from itself. It has no doors, it is a basement. For anything to go out of it, it first has to come to the conscious mind. The conscious mind is the door.

In the same way the superconscious mind also has no doors. For anything to be expressed, it has to come to the conscious mind. The conscious mind is your ground floor; only from there can anything go out.

So the first thing is: the unconscious should be emptied. But one becomes afraid in emptying it, because it is carrying all kinds of ugly features. How to empty the violence that is there, the anger, the sadness... all kinds of worries that you have dumped there because you could not manage to sort them out? How are you going to bring them to the conscious? And if they come, then what are you going to do with them?

The unconscious is not interested in the object of the violence, it is interested only in getting rid of the violence. You can just beat your pillow, and you will feel immense relief. It will look a little awkward to you, that you are beating your pillow and the pillow has done no wrong to you. You think yourself very cultured, sophisticated, intelligent – and what are you doing beating the poor pillow who has not done anything? It is not a question of whether the pillow has done anything or not, but beating it will release the violence in you, because violence has nothing to do with the object.

Whether you beat somebody or you beat the pillow, it makes no difference to it. Whether you kill somebody or you just kill a teddy bear, it doesn’t matter. But killing has to be done.

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In many primitive societies even today they sacrifice to their gods cows made of mud – and with great celebration. And they sacrifice other animals – even men – but they are all made of mud. And the strangest thing about these primitive societies is: there is no violence, people don’t fight, they don’t have the energy to fight. They have ”killed” somebody; the killing idea is no longer there.

There are societies in the world where even a dream is taken to be true. It has a truth; Sigmund Freud is a proof of it.

But those societies, for thousands of years, have been doing a far better psychoanalysis – and they are poor primitives who don’t know what they are doing.

If somebody dreams at night.... Those people rarely dream; dreams are there because you have repressed things during the day. You wanted to see a beautiful woman, but your wife was with you and you could not see that woman. In the dream that woman will appear.

In those primitive societies there is no suppressive system. If somebody likes someone, he goes to the person and says, ”You are beautiful and I like you very much.” The person may even be a stranger. But if somebody dreams, the first thing that happens is the elders of the society gather, and he has to confess his dream to them.

It is a great thing that somebody has dreamed. If he has dreamed that he has insulted somebody, then he has to go to that person to apologize and bring sweets and fruits as a present out of friendship, because in the dream he had insulted him.

To us it will look absolutely absurd, because in the dream, what you do is your business; the other person does not know that you insulted him. That is not the question, that the other person does not know; the question is that you have a certain antagonism towards the person that came up in your dream, and it is better to make things clear. Go to the person to apologize, present things to him –

and the dream will never come again.

A king of Egypt had told his court and the whole kingdom that if anybody comes in his dream, death is the penalty. Now this is real absurdity.

People were so much afraid – but what can you do if you appear in his dream? That is really his problem; you have not gone into his dream. And he killed a few people because, in spite of the warning, he saw them in his dream.

Why should anybody disturb his sleep? And he was a monarch with all the powers over life and death; he killed people.

The whole kingdom was afraid that at any moment they could be killed – for no crime. And they had nothing to do with his dream; his dream is his dream, it is his problem. But who was going to say this to him?

These primitive people are far more intelligent, far more innocent.

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had any war in its whole history. Its small tribes have never fought with each other – there is no violence in that sense.

Nobody fights with anyone. If, even in a dream, somebody insults you or you insult somebody and it has to be settled consciously, it is impossible to have any violence. People are utterly simple.

The unconscious simply needs fake objects to get rid of its garbage. There is no need to kill anybody; you can kill a statue, you can kill a photograph, you can burn a photograph – and feel at ease.

And slowly, slowly, whatever comes in your dreams or in your waking hours from the unconscious, give it a reality so that it goes out. Don’t repress it; don’t think, ”This is bad and I should not show it to anybody;” it will become a wound and finally, a cancer.

Release it.

In your private room you can release it in any way you want. Dynamic meditation was basically devised to help the unconscious unburden itself. The Indonesian latihan does the same.

And once the unconscious is completely clean and there is no energy wasted in repressing it, the same energy starts moving upwards – because remember, that energy cannot remain static; it has to move. Now that there is no work in the unconscious, it starts moving upwards towards lighter spaces in you, and there you will find real values which make man a man and take him beyond the animal.

Whatever you experience in the superconscious has also to be brought to the conscious and acted upon. Don’t just think great thoughts, don’t just go on experiencing beauty – let your experiences become actions, creativity. Do something about them. And as you start doing something about them you will find that deeper qualities are pouring in.

Just writing a poem may release a great source of energy. Making any beautiful act, doing any compassionate act, sharing something that you have, in abundance, with anybody... and your superconscious will start coming more and more to the conscious mind. Now it has got a door to move into the world.

And when the superconscious is completely empty, then the collective superconscious starts dropping its great hidden treasures. And when the collective superconscious is emptied you have come to the ultimate glory, the cosmic conscious.

From this cosmic superconscious mind, each of your conscious acts starts taking on a fragrance of divinity, of godliness. Whatever you touch becomes gold, whatever you say becomes truth. Each of your movements in life creates ripples of beauty, joy, ecstasy, which will go to the farthest ends of existence, touching millions of people who have never known you and who may never know you –

but they will share your joy.

You may have felt it sometime: you are sitting, feeling good, and suddenly you become sad and you don’t know why. It is that somebody is releasing ripples of sadness just close by, and they are strong enough to have an impact on you.

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Sometimes you feel just the opposite: you feel very light, weightless – for no reason – a freshness, a joy. You cannot even say to anybody, ”I am feeling joyous;” they will think you are crazy because there is no reason to feel joy.

What is the reason? You cannot give the reason because you don’t know it yourself. It is just somebody’s joy that has created a ripple that has touched you.

We are very sensitive beings. Like the antenna of your radio, we go on catching every ripple that comes close to us – very subtle ripples.

Most of the time you are suffering other people’s sufferings and just once in a while you are enjoying somebody else’s joy – because the sad and the miserable are many, and the joyful, blissful are very few, very rare.

If you can understand this, you will also feel a certain distance when you feel sadness. It may not have anything to do with you. When you feel a certain happiness, a certain pleasure, it may not have anything to do with you. You can keep a certain distance and you can watch these feelings –

and watching these feelings will help you to find your own sources.

Man is born with great treasures, but he is also born with the whole animal heritage, and somehow we have to empty out the animal heritage and create a space for the treasure to come to the conscious and be shared – because that is one of the qualities of the treasure: the more you share it, the more you have it.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

HAVE YOU SUGGESTED THAT NOW IS THE TIME FOR ME TO LIVE OUT MY NEGATIVE

EMOTIONS, BECAUSE IN THE PAST I NEVER ALLOWED MYSELF TO SHOW THEM IN PUBLIC?

I REMEMBER A GROUP EXPERIENCE, YEARS AGO, IN WHICH ONE OF THE EXERCISES

WAS TO EXPRESS, IN YOUR OWN WAY, ANY EMOTION SUGGESTED, AND I WAS UNABLE TO

EXPRESS ANYTHING EXCEPT ANGER. MAYBE I REALLY DIDN’T EVEN KNOW WHAT SUCH

EMOTIONS FELT LIKE, IN A CONSCIOUS WAY; I DIDN’T EVEN ALLOW MYSELF TO ADMIT

THAT THESE EMOTIONS WERE THERE. I AM TRYING TO PUT TOGETHER THE PIECES IN

THIS PUZZLE. AM I ON THE TRACK?

Arpita, first remember not to misunderstand me. I have said, ”Express your negative emotions;” I have not said, ”Publicly.” That’s how things become distorted.

Now if you are feeling angry with someone and you start expressing your anger, the other person is not going to be a Gautam Buddha and sit silently. He is not a marble statue; he will also do something. You will express anger, he will express anger.

It will create more anger in you – and anger or violence create, from the other side, the same, and with a vengeance. And then you will feel like being more into it, because you have been told to express.

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Yes, I have told you to express – but I don’t mean publicly.

If you are feeling angry, go to your room, close off the room, beat the pillow, stand before a mirror, shout at your own image, say things that you have never said to anybody and always wanted to say.

But it has to be a private phenomenon, otherwise there is no end. Things go on moving in a circle, and we want to end them.

So the moment you feel any negative emotion about anybody, that other person is not the question.

The question is that you have a certain energy of anger. Now, that energy has to be diffused into the universe. You are not to repress it within yourself.

So whenever I say, ”Express,” I always mean privately, in your aloneness. It is a meditation, it is not a fight. If you are feeling sad, sit in your room and feel as much sad as you can – it can’t harm. Be really sad and see how long it stays. Nothing stays forever; soon it will be passing away. If you feel like crying, cry – but in your privacy.

These things have nothing to do with others. Everything is your problem; why make it public? And that way, it is not going to be helped but on the contrary, it will be increased.

So every day, before going to sleep, for one hour at night, sit on your bed and do all kinds of crazy things that you wanted to do, that people do when they are angry, violent, destructive. And it does not mean that you have to be destructive to very valuable things; just tearing papers into small bits and throwing them all over – and you know the story. And that will do.

Destroy anything, it can be valueless – but everything has to be done in your privacy, so when you come out, you come fresh.

If you want to do something in public, do what I was telling you about those primitives. You can go to the person you were angry with and tell him, ”I have been, in private, angry with you. I shouted at you, I abused you, I said ugly things to you; please forgive me. But it was all done in privacy, because it was my problem; it has nothing to do with you. But in a certain way it was directed at you, and you are not aware of it; hence an, apology is needed.” This has to be done in public. That will help people to help each other. And that person will not be angry; he will say, ”There is no need for an apology. You have not done anything to me. And if you are feeling clean, it was a good exercise.”

But in public don’t bring your negativities, your ugliness; otherwise, you are creating bigger problems in trying to solve small problems. Be really very careful. Everything negative has to be in private, in your aloneness. And if you want to make any public statement about it – because somebody may have been in your mind with whom you were hateful, whom you killed while you were tearing the paper – go to him and humbly ask for his forgiveness.

And here you can see my differences from the so-called Western therapies. They don’t have... their relief is temporary. But once and for all understand that every problem is yours, so it has to be solved in your privacy.

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Don’t wash your dirty linen in public places. There is no need. Why unnecessarily involve other people? Why unnecessarily create an image of yourself as ugly?

I am reminded of a very strange story. There was a great conference – a world conference of psychologists, psychoanalysts, therapists and all other schools treating man’s mind. One great psychoanalyst was reading a paper, but he could not read it because his attention was continually distracted by a young woman psychoanalyst who was sitting in the front row and an old ugly fellow who was continually playing with her breasts. And she was not bothered at all.

He could not read his paper. He tried to hide that woman and that old man behind the paper, but he would forget which line he was reading and got so messed up that finally he said, ”It is impossible.” The conference could not understand what is impossible and why he is behaving in such a way. He has never been.... He is a very systematic thinker, and today he is talking nonsense. He reads half of one sentence and then another which has no connection with it, and then another page comes in, and now he is saying, ”It is all messed up and I cannot...” And he would not look at the woman who was sitting just in front. Somebody stood up and said,

”What is the matter? Why are you making a fool of yourself?” He said, ”I am not making a fool of myself. This young lady is not doing anything, and that old, ugly fellow is playing with her breasts.”

The young lady said, ”But that is not your problem. You should read your paper. Even I am not taking it as my problem. It is his problem, so why should I be worried?

”He has a repressed sexuality; perhaps he could not get his mother’s breasts for long enough. And he is still, at this age... he must be eighty. And he is not doing any harm to me. And it is not my problem, so why should I stop him? And it is not your problem; why should you get disturbed? It is simply his problem. He should get psychoanalyzed – and he himself is a great psychoanalyst. In fact, he is my teacher.”

But what the woman said, ”What he is doing – it is not my problem,” needs a very integrated personality, a clear-cut vision that even though he is doing something with her, the problem is his.

She continued ”Why should I get disturbed? The poor fellow is suffering from his very childhood it seems, and he has never found any chance... and now he is almost half in his grave. If I can give him some satisfaction, there is no harm. It does me no harm at all – but I am puzzled why you could not read your paper. You seem to be standing behind this old fellow. You also have the same problem.”

And it was a fact. That man also had the same problem; otherwise, there was nothing to be worried about. He should read his paper and let the old man do what he is doing, and if the young lady is not preventing him, is not even taking note of him, it is none of his business.

If people can keep to their own problems and not go on spreading them all around...

because then they become magnified.

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Now what this old man needs is simply a baby’s milk bottle, so in his aloneness at night he can suck lukewarm milk from the bottle and enjoy. And in darkness, whether it is a nipple or just a rubber teat, it makes no difference. All that he needs is a small baby’s milk bottle every night so that he can die peacefully without any problem. But he is throwing it on a poor woman who has nothing to do with it.

And not only that: somebody else who is absolutely out of the whole thing is disturbed, because he also has the same problem.

Just keep your private problems to yourself. No group therapy is of much help, because whatever you do in the group you cannot do in the society. And the group cannot become your whole life; out of the group you will again be in the same trouble.

What I am giving to you is a simple method that you can do yourself very easily. Clean your unconscious and come into the outside world with other people – with a softer face, cleaner eyes, more human acts.

So everything is right, Arpita, just don’t misunderstand me. You have used that word ‘public’; it is not a question of public, it is your problem. Why bother the public? – they have their own problems. Let them tackle their problems in their privacy. Otherwise, you are on the right track.

Express. Find a way to express as cheaply as possible, as economically as possible – but always in your aloneness so that only you know the ugliness that you have thrown out.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

DID YOU HAVE AN AWARENESS OF YOUR PAST LIVES BEFORE YOU WERE ENLIGHTENED?

Yes.

Question 4

BELOVED OSHO,

ALTHOUGH YOU WERE BORN ALMOST ENLIGHTENED, WHEN I LISTEN TO YOUR STORIES

OF YOUR EARLY LIFE, I NEVER GET THE IMPRESSION THAT YOU SAW YOURSELF

AS A SPIRITUAL SEEKER. WERE YOU LOOKING FOR ENLIGHTENMENT, OR WAS

ENLIGHTENMENT A BY-PRODUCT OF AN IMPECCABLE RESOLVE TO NEVER COMPROMISE

WHAT YOU FELT TO BE TRUE?

There are things which cannot be sought directly. The more valuable a thing is, the more indirectly you have to go into it. In fact you have to do something else that simply prepares the situation around you – in which things like enlightenment, truth, can happen.

You cannot go seeking and searching for truth.

Where will you go?

Kabul?

Kulu-Manali?

Kathmandu? Goa?... and then back home. All seekers of truth go this route and come back home looking more foolish than before. They have not found anything.

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Where will you go to seek the truth? You don’t know the way, there is no map, there is no direction available. Nobody knows what, where, when it is possible to realize truth.

The real seeker of truth never seeks truth. On the contrary, he tries to clean himself of all that is untrue, unauthentic, insincere – and when his heart is ready, purified, the guest comes. You cannot find the guest, you cannot go after him. He comes to you; you just have to be prepared. You have to be in a right attitude.

I have never been spiritual in the sense that you understand the word. I have never gone to the temples or the churches, or read scriptures, or followed certain practices to find truth, or worshipped God or prayed to God. That has not been my way at all. So certainly you can say that I was not doing anything spiritual. But to me spirituality has a totally different connotation. It needs an honest individuality. It does not allow any kind of dependence. It creates a freedom for itself, whatever the cost. It is never in the crowd but alone, because the crowd has never found any truth. The truth has been found only in people’s aloneness.

So my spirituality has a different meaning from your idea of spirituality. My childhood stories – if you can understand them – will point to all these qualities in some way or other. Nobody can call them spiritual. I call them spiritual, because to me they have given all that man can aspire to.

While listening to my childhood stories you should try to look for some quality in it – not just the story but some intrinsic quality that runs like a thin thread through all of my memoirs. And that thin thread is spiritual.

Spiritual, to me, simply means finding oneself. I never allowed anybody to do this work on my behalf

– because nobody can do this work on your behalf; you have to do it yourself. And you cannot do it directly either, you have to create a certain milieu in which it happens. It is a happening; enlightenment, liberation, awakening, realization – all these words point towards absolutely one thing and that is a happening.

That creates a kind of fear in many people: ”If it is happening, then what are we supposed to do?

Whenever it will happen, it will happen.” That is not so. It is a happening, but you can do much to prepare the ground for it to happen.

Preparing the ground may not look spiritual to those who do not understand. But it must be spiritual because the enlightenment has happened.

The end proves that whatever means were used were substantially right. It is the goal that proves that the way that was followed was right.

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CHAPTER 11

Footprints in the sky

31 May 1986 pm in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

I CANNOT DISTINGUISH BETWEEN IMAGINATION AND REALITY. CAN I ASSUME THAT I DO

NOT KNOW REALITY YET, SO WHY NOT ENJOY WATCHING THE WHOLE MOVIE WITHOUT

TRYING TO DISTINGUISH? OR, IS IT NECESSARY TO BE AWARE OF THE DIFFERENCE

BETWEEN IMAGINATION AND REALITY?

There is no question of making any distinction between imagination and reality. Imagination is that which disappears if you become aware of it, alert to it.

Reality is that which becomes more real if you become aware of it, alert to it.

You cannot distinguish between the two, because both are never present simultaneously.

And you need not worry about it.

All that you have to do is simply be watchful.

Whatever

passes through your experience – thoughts, feelings – don’t let it go unwatched, and the unreal will disappear on its own accord. It cannot face the watching eyes; only the real will remain.

So for the watcher, there is only the real.

For the sleeper, there is only the unreal.

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And they never meet, so the question of distinction does not arise. It is not that you can put reality on one side and imagination on the other side and make a comparison, or find differences.

For example, in this room, either there is light or there is darkness. You cannot manage to have both. Darkness appears to be as real as light, but it is not a reality because you cannot do anything with it. You cannot bring it in, you cannot take it out, you cannot cut it into pieces; you cannot do anything with it.

Just bring a lighted candle in, and the darkness simply disappears. It is not that it goes out of the door, or runs out of the windows. You can keep all the windows and doors open or closed; in either case darkness will not be found.

Light is real because you can do everything with it. You can bring it in, you can take it out. You can light a candle, you can blow it out. It is a reality.

Darkness is only an absence – an absence of light.

Light is presence, darkness is absence. Imagination is not even absence; it is simply a thought in your mind, just a signature made on water – you have not even completed it and it is gone.

So don’t be worried about these subtle distinctions; rather, simply be aware that shadows will disappear – the unreal, imaginative experiences will disappear – and only that which remains in your awareness and becomes more and more clear as you become aware is true, is real, is the nature of existence.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

IN JAPAN THERE IS AN ANCIENT FORM OF THEATER, WHICH I STUDIED FOR A SHORT

TIME, CALLED NOH. IN IT, THE ACTOR MOVES SLOWLY FORWARDS, ONE STEP AT A TIME; SIMULTANEOUSLY HE FOCUSES INSIDE, AND WITH HIS ENERGY CREATES A PATH BEHIND

HIM. IF THE AUDIENCE IS REALLY IN TUNE WITH HIM, THEY CAN ALSO SEE BOTH HIS

PHYSICAL MOVEMENT FORWARD AND THE PATH HE IS CREATING BEHIND HIM.

OSHO, YOU ALWAYS SAY THAT YOU DON’T KNOW WHERE YOU WILL BE IN THE NEXT

MOMENT, YOU DON’T CARE WHERE YOUR FEET WILL BE NEXT. MY CONCERN IS THAT I BE ABLE TO SEE CLEARLY, EVERY MOMENT, THE PATH THAT YOU ARE CREATING BEHIND

YOU.

WHAT A WONDERFUL JOURNEY TO BE WITH YOU, OSHO! WE GO WHEREVER EXISTENCE

LEADS US.

The moment you trust in let-go, the moment you stop struggling against existence, you need not worry about anything; existence takes care.

The whole trouble with the human mind is, it is constantly fighting, it is trying to go against the current. There is a reason why it does so: only by going against the current does it feel the ego.

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Just going with the flow of life – without any struggle, letting life lead you wherever it wants to – your ego will disappear. You will be, you will be more than you are now – more authentic, more true – but there will be no sense of I. And then you will be able to see where you are going.

Even the path that is created as you move can be seen by those who have no egos. You can even see the footprints of the birds flying in the sky. They don’t make any footprints but if the mind is clear of the ego, the whole being becomes such a clean mirror that even those footprints reflect in it.

The Japanese form of drama called Noh is a by-product of Zen experience. Zen has given birth to many things. No other religious movement in the world has been so creative, so productive. It has created art – which has a quality of its own – it has created poetry, it has created literature, it has created drama, it has created sculpture. Whatever it has created, it has left unmistakably the mark of meditativeness on it; it has turned things into meditation which nobody has ever imagined can even be associated with meditation.

For example, swordsmanship. Who can think that swordsmanship can be a discipline for meditation?

And drama. All other religions have condemned the whole world as drama. Zen has used even drama. And if the actor moves, focusing his whole energy just under the navel – two inches under the navel, where according to Zen is the point hara, our life source – if he concentrates inside on the hara and moves slowly step by step, those who are silent enough in the audience will see, behind him, a path is being created. His energy is moving forward leaving a certain imprint which can be read only by those who are capable of some silent awareness. It is tremendously beautiful, the whole drama. It is not like any other drama in the world, they have changed the whole character; they have made it sacred. The audience is not sitting in a theatre but in a temple, and the actors are not just acting, they are meditating.

Zen painting or Zen poetry, they have the same quality; Zen has transformed the whole meaning of any art that it has touched. No religion has been able to do that; in fact, no religion has been creative. They have all been destructive.

Zen is the very essence of creativity. You can do anything and yet your action can be sacred.

The question is not what you do; the question is whether you do it with awareness or unawareness.

They have shifted the whole question. Every religion thinks, ”This is wrong, that is right. Do this, don’t do that.” They are pointing towards certain acts which are wrong, certain acts which are right

– which is a very childish thing, because an act can be right in one context and the same act can be wrong in another context.

You cannot stamp a certain act as wrong or right. Then how to decide what is moral, what is immoral, what has to be done and what has not to be done? Zen does not decide. Zen simply says, ”Just be aware, whatever you are doing. If your awareness remains unwavering while doing it, it is right. If you have to lose your awareness – only then you can do it – then it is wrong.” The decisive point has gone inward; not to the object, but to your subjectivity.

And the same you have to understand here with me – no act in itself is right or wrong, no person is good or bad. It all depends on awareness.

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I am reminded of one great mystic, Nagarjuna. He used to live naked. He had only a begging bowl; that was his only possession. But perhaps he was the greatest genius that has been born on this earth, as far as intelligence is concerned – his sharpness is incomparable. Great kings, queens, great philosophers were his students.

One queen was very much devoted to him, and when he came to her capital she had made a golden begging bowl studded with diamonds. And when he came to the palace to beg, she said, ”First you have to give me a promise.” He said, ”You are asking a promise from a naked man who has nothing but his begging bowl.” She said, ”That will do. I’m just asking for the begging bowl.” He said, ”You can take it.” She said, ”That is only half. I will replace it, and you will have to take my begging bowl.” He said, ”There is no problem, any begging bowl will do.” He was not at all aware of what she was hiding. It was a golden begging bowl studded with very valuable diamonds.

He took it. As he was going back to the ruins of the monastery where he was staying, one thief saw him and could not believe his eyes. The begging bowl was shining like stars and he is a naked man

– of course very beautiful, magnificent; but what is the begging bowl doing with this naked man?

And how long can he keep it? Somebody is going to take it away, so why not I?

He followed Nagarjuna. Nagarjuna went inside a room, which was a little shed with just the walls left.

The whole monastery was in ruins, and there was a window by the side, and the thief was hiding outside the window knowing that Buddhist monks eat only once a day. Now he will eat, and then he will have a little sleep – just a nap. And that will be the right moment. In this monastery nobody lives. It is thousands of years old.

But before giving him a chance to steal the bowl, Nagarjuna ate his food and threw the bowl out of the window where the thief was sitting. The thief could not believe it. He was really shocked. For a moment he could not think what to do; what kind of man is he? He has eaten his food and thrown away this immensely valuable bowl as if it is of no use – and exactly where I am sitting.

He stood up and he asked Nagarjuna, ”Can I come in just to ask one question?” Nagarjuna said, ”To bring you in, I had to throw the bowl out. Come in. The bowl is yours; don’t be worried. I have given it to you so you will not be a thief. It is a gift, a present. I am a poor man. I don’t have anything else, only that bowl; and I know I cannot keep it for long because I will have to sleep, somebody will take it away and you have taken so much trouble. From the capital you followed me, and I have been watching. And it is a hot summer day. Please don’t refuse. Take it.” The thief said, ”You are a strange man. Don’t you know how costly it is?” Nagarjuna said, ”Since I have known myself nothing is costly.” The thief looked at Nagarjuna and said, ”Then give me one present more: how can I know myself in comparison to which this precious bowl is nothing?” He said, ”It is very simple.” But the thief said, ”Before you say anything I want to introduce myself. I am a well-known thief.”

Nagarjuna said, ”Who is not? Don’t be concerned with trivia. In this world everybody is a thief because everybody comes naked without anything, and then everybody has something or other. All are thieves, so don’t be worried. That’s why I live naked. It is perfectly okay. Whatever you are The Transmission of the Lamp

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doing, do it well. Just do one thing: when you are stealing be aware, be alert, be watchful. If you lose watchfulness then don’t steal. That is a simple rule for you.” The thief said, ”It is very simple.

When I can see you again?” He said, ”I will be here for two weeks. You can come any day, but first try it.”

For two weeks he tried, and he found that it is the most difficult thing in the world. Once he reached even into the palace, opened the door of the treasures, but when he will try to take something he will lose his awareness. And he was an honest man. So he will leave that thing – that cannot be taken.

But it was difficult: when he was aware, there was no desire to take anything; and when he was not aware, he wanted to take the whole treasure.

Finally he came empty-handed to Nagarjuna and he said, ”You have disturbed my whole life. Now I cannot steal.” Nagarjuna said, ”That is not my problem. Now it is your problem. If you want to steal forget all about awareness.” But the thief said, ”Those few moments of awareness were so valuable.

I have never felt so at ease, so peaceful, so silent, so blissful – the whole treasure of the kingdom was nothing compared to it.

”Now I understand what you mean by saying that once you have known yourself nothing else is costly. I cannot stop practicing awareness. I have tasted just a few drops of the nectar which you must be tasting every moment. Will you allow me to be a disciple and follow you?” Nagarjuna said,

”I knew it that very day. I had initiated you already when you followed me. You were thinking you are going to steal the begging bowl and I was thinking how to steal you. We are both in the same business.”

Never be bothered about anything else, only one thing – one thing is the whole religion, and that is awareness, and then you will be able to see where your life is going, where all of life is going. And you will be able to feel that this is the only way to be at ease and in harmony with existence, the only way to dissolve yourself into the whole.

So just remember one thing, whatever you are doing – it may be drama, it may be cooking in the kitchen, it may be washing the dishes.

I used to have a German disciple, Gunakar. He was too much in a hurry to become enlightened, just like any German! While he was with me, of course, he could not become enlightened because I was there and he could not declare himself enlightened, he knew that he is not enlightened; but when he went to Germany, there he will declare that he is enlightened. And he will start writing great letters to world leaders, religious leaders, representatives in the U.N., presidents, prime ministers, advising them how the world can be transformed. And somebody will inform me that Gunakar has become enlightened. And I will call him back, and he will come back to me. And I will say, ”Gunakar, is it true?”

He will say, ”It is not true, but when I go to Germany the temptation is so great – because to other Germans who don’t know anything about enlightenment I can declare, but here it is difficult.

It is strange. People come here to become enlightened, but whenever I come here I become unenlightened. In Germany I remain enlightened.”

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become really enlightened and is afraid to come. But no; the reality was something else. Just two days ago, somebody informed me that he saw Gunakar in a sannyasins’ commune in Germany, washing dishes.

And he knew that this man had become many times enlightened. He asked, ”What happened to your enlightenment?” He said, ”Forget all about it. I’m just a dishwasher. Don’t talk nonsense to me.”

This awareness may make him one day enlightened – washing dishes I am a dishwasher; cleaning the floor I am a cleaner; cooking food I am a cook.

Each moment, whatever you are doing, do it with full awareness, with totality, intensity, love; and do it as if it is the greatest thing in the world to do. Make it an art, so that each moment of your life becomes the life of an artist.

Enlightenment will come on its own accord without even knocking on your doors. One day suddenly you will see that your joy, your ecstasy, never leaves you; whether you are awake or asleep, it is within you. For days you have not been miserable, for days you have not felt any agony, for days you have not felt anger, jealousy, competitiveness, for days you have not felt yourself as an I.

This is the whole work of the mystery school, to let your ego dissolve and to help you into a deep let-go with existence.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

A FRIEND WROTE TO ME THAT TWO DAYS AFTER HER FATHER DIED, SITTING BY THE

CORPSE SHE FELT AN INCREDIBLE RISE OF ENERGY IN HER. WHAT IS HAPPENING

AROUND A DEAD PERSON, AND HOW SHOULD WE LOOK AFTER THE BODY OF A PERSON

WHO HAS DIED?

The moment a person dies he releases all his energy. If you are receptive, you will feel it. If you are available, open, you will feel your energy level rising up. It depends on many things – what kind of man has died, what kind of energy he used to have. If he was a man of anger, violence, then it is better not to be close to him because all his repressed anger, all his repressed violence will be released and you can unnecessarily suffer from all that energy entering you.

And it is very natural because when somebody is dying or dead, you automatically become silent by their side – nobody makes any noise, nobody talks. Death is such a mysterious phenomenon that everybody is in shock.

So the first thing to be aware of is, what kind of person is dying. If the person has been a loving person, compassionate, kind, always helpful, always sharing whatever he had, then to be close to him and sit silently will be very helpful to you. When he is leaving, these energies will be radiated all around him.

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But if he was sexually repressed, a rapist, or some kind of criminal, it is better not be close to him because whatever he has been collecting in his life is going to be released. He is moving into a new house, so all his old furniture is going to be left in the old house. He cannot carry all that furniture with him; it will be diffused around him.

Because of this fact, in India the three great religions – Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism – have decided that the dead person’s body should be burned as quickly as possible, so that it does not radiate unnecessary, harmful things to people – and mostly people are repressing ugly things. So in India, only the saints are not burned; that’s the exception. Their bodies are kept in samadhis – in a certain kind of grave, so that their bodies can go on radiating for years, sometimes for hundreds of years.

But ordinary persons’ bodies are immediately burned – as quickly as possible.

Other religions of the world have decided not to burn bodies but to put them in a grave. It is dangerous. It means you are putting away accumulated anger, hatred, sexuality, murder – all kinds of energies which will be radiating from their graves – and you can catch them, they are infectious.

In the East whenever a man who has attained to himself dies, he announces beforehand when he is going to die so that all his disciples can come to share his energy – his last gift. He wants to die amongst his own people, his own disciples who can understand him and be receptive to him. And his whole life’s treasure of beautiful feelings he showers on them.

As far as the man who is dying or dead is concerned, one has to be very watchful.

There is an ancient parable. A man was dying. He had four sons. They were all present. He said to the eldest, ”Come close to me, I want to give you a message.” But he wouldn’t come. Even though he was dying, the man was very angry; and he said, ”I always knew that you were good for nothing, you cannot even take a message from a dying man and I’m your father.” But the young man remained in his place, like a frozen statue, he didn’t move. He asked the second; he didn’t move.

He asked the third; he didn’t move. But the fourth was very young so he went; and he whispered in his ear, ”All these three are traitors. They have betrayed me. Now you be faithful to me. Do one thing. When I am dead, cut my body into pieces and throw a piece into every neighbor’s house and inform the police.” The boy said, ”But why?” He said, ”Just to give peace to my soul. Seeing them all handcuffed going towards the police station, my soul will feel more peaceful than I have ever felt before.”

The three sons knew their father perfectly well. His whole life he was fighting. His whole day he was in the court. His whole life was nothing but a fight. They were afraid to listen to the last message, in case there may be something dangerous, and you cannot deny a dying man his last wish.

And he died.

They all asked the young man what he had said. The young man said, ”I had no idea that our father was such a man. I cannot do it. But his soul will suffer very much.” This is an ancient parable signifying that whatever a person has been throughout his life, will be accumulated at the end, at the very end; and energy in itself is natural, but what form it has taken in a man depends on the man, his personality, his whole life’s actions.

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Bennett remembers in his autobiography that after the second world war he was so tired – he had been in the war fighting – that he felt close to dying. But he wanted to see George Gurdjieff, his master, for the last time – at least before he dies. So he went to see him in Paris. He went in, and Gurdjieff said, ”What has happened to you, Bennett? You are looking so pale, as if you are going to die. You have come at the right time. Just come close to me.” He took hold of his hands, stared in his eyes, and within two minutes Bennett started feeling a tremendous rush of energy. But that was only one side of it. At the same time he saw Gurdjieff becoming pale, and he became afraid of what he was doing. He stopped him, saying, ”Stop. I am perfectly okay.” Gurdjieff said, ”Don’t be worried about me.” He somehow managed to walk to the bathroom, and closed the door; after ten minutes he came out. He was perfectly okay.

Bennett remembers, ”I had never thought that energy could be transferred in such a simple way.” But it is being transferred.

It was so direct, that’s why he became aware of it. In other ways, every master is giving his energy to his people – every moment he looks into your eyes – every moment he comes close to you. What else he can give to you? He has achieved whatever one can achieve in life. Now his energy is just to share.

But if somebody is dying to whom you are closely related – your father, your mother, your wife, your husband, your child, your friend... and you would like to do something to take part in it – the person is dying, you are alive – you can sit by the side of the person, you can put your hand on his heart or hold his hands and just be silent, and just be peaceful. And your peace and your silence will be transferred, transmitted; and if you can help the person to die peacefully, silently, you have done a beautiful act, a virtuous act. You may feel afterwards a little weak, tired, exhausted; but that is nothing – just a little rest and you will be perfectly okay.

So from your side you can help the dying person to move on to a better plane of life, but for that you have to be silent and you have to be peaceful. Then you are on a higher plane and energy can flow.

Energy flows in the same way water flows – downwards. It cannot flow upwards.

So remember it, that both ways energy can be exchanged. If the person is certainly of an evil character, it is better to avoid him. You will not be able to help him; on the contrary, he may help you

– give you some of his devilry, sow some seeds in your heart, in your being. It is better to avoid him.

But if the person is a good person, has not done any harm to anybody... the basic thing is that if you love the person, you have a feeling for the person, then you can pour your energy into him. This is the time – and the last time; you won’t have another opportunity to give him a gift.

And there cannot be a better gift than this, because this gift can change his whole future journey. If he dies peacefully and silently, he will be born on a higher plane.

But you have to be very careful. Don’t try sitting in meditation and helping Adolf Hitler – don’t try. It is beyond you. You cannot give energy to him; he will give energy to you – and all the more easily if you are silent and peaceful.

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One has to be very careful with the dying person, because much can happen between the two of you. His future life can be affected, your future life can be affected – unless you are so much aware that nothing can affect you. Then there is no problem, then you can sit in full awareness even by the side of Adolf Hitler, he will not be in any way capable of harming you. Perhaps you may be able to help him a little bit.

Question 4

BELOVED OSHO,

IS IT POSSIBLE THAT AS MODERN INTELLIGENT PEOPLE BECOME MORE AND MORE

ACCUSTOMED TO CHANGE AS PART OF THEIR DAILY LIVES, THEY WILL ALSO BECOME

MORE OPEN TO YOUR RADICALLY INNOVATIVE APPROACH TO LIFE?

Certainly. The more they are uprooted from the stable past and become accustomed to changing things in all spheres of life, the easier it will be for them to see what I am saying, to understand what I am saying.

In stable societies in the past people were absolutely closed.

Things were so settled that your religion was given at your birth. There was no question of you changing it. It was part and parcel of your blood, your bones, your marrow.

The two oldest religions in the world are the Hindus and the Jews. Both are non-converting religions, they don’t convert anybody.

These two religions are the oldest – all other religions are off-shoots of these two. They do not believe in conversion because conversion means the possibility of change.

In a stable world, where everything is stable, a Jew is a Jew; he is born a Jew, he will live as Jew, he will die as a Jew. There is no question that he can change.

Now things are in a more flexible state. It is possible to have different views from your parents, it is possible to have different ideologies from your teachers. In fact, if you are intelligent you will have different ideologies because their ideologies are out of date.

You have to find fresher visions, more up-to-date approaches to existence.

So it is absolutely certain that as things are moving and people are moving – changing their jobs, their wives, their husbands, their countries – they will be more open to me. And this you can see.

In the East it is difficult for me to find somebody open and receptive. In India it is difficult.

In the West it is easier. It is not a coincidence that most of my sannyasins are from the West. The reason is clear. The Western mind is now accustomed to change.

The Eastern mind is still not accustomed to change. It still lives in a stable world.

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According to the Hindus, the stars don’t move. Even today they go on saying that. Everybody knows that they move with tremendous velocity. But according to the Hindus, they are just decorations on the ceiling of the earth, they don’t move. Nothing moves.

In fact, India was very much shocked after Hiroshima and Nagasaki – not because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki themselves, but because after the atomic explosions the weather changed, the climate changed. Before, in India dates were fixed. On a certain date every year the rains will come, on a certain date the summer will start, on a certain date the winter will start; it was fixed for millions of years.

There was no question of change. But the atomic explosion shook the whole atmosphere. Now nothing is certain. Even that gave the Indian mind a great shock – that change is possible, that one should not take it for granted that things are going to remain always the same.

But India is still far from being receptive as far as their belief systems are concerned. They are very closed about it. Nobody talks about it. There is no question of talking. Everybody has his god, everybody has his holy book, everybody knows where his temple is, everybody knows his ritual from birth – the prayer, the priest. Everything is settled. There is no need to search. Nobody goes in search of a master.

The search for a master starts only when you become suspicious of your belief systems.

That was the reasoning of the pope when he said to Galileo, ”You should change in your book where you have written that the earth goes around the sun. It should be changed because according to the Bible the sun goes around the earth.” And Galileo said, ”Just a small statement: what difference does it make to you?” And the pope said, ”It is not a question of a small statement. If one statement in the Bible is proved wrong, then suspicion arises in the believers – that if one statement is wrong then what guarantee is there about other statements? And if God can write one statement wrong, then he is not infallible. You have to change it. It is not a question of factuality, of science. The question is the whole prestige of the Christian religion.” – On that small statement, which has nothing to do with Christianity, which has nothing to do with God!

But in a way the pope’s argument was right. If one brick out of your temple is taken, then the danger is that other bricks may start falling. And once doubt arises, there is no end; and doubt has arisen.

The West is far more fortunate because it is now full of doubt, skepticism, disbelief.

The East is unfortunate because it is still lingering in the old stable world where nothing changed, everything was static, and everything was known – there was nothing left to be discovered, so there was no question of any quest, any enquiry, any science. All was in the religious books, and as it was, even to have a question about it was thought to be sinful.

It is a perfectly right time for me.

And the fear of the Western governments shows it clearly. Why they are so afraid of me? I don’t have an army, I don’t have nuclear weapons. What can I do? But they know that I can destroy their belief systems very easily, people are ready; just somebody is needed to make them aware that the earth they used to stand on is no longer there, that they have to find a new earth to stand on.

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This world-wide conspiracy against me looks strange because never before have all the countries agreed about a single individual, that he is dangerous.

Just the other day a German court has given us its verdict, that the German government was wrong to declare me dangerous.

A fight was going on between sannyasins and the German government in the courts, and the German government was trying to prove that I am a dangerous man. And all that they could prove was that I could prove a dangerous man. And the magistrate seems to be a fair man, intelligent.

He said, ”That can be said about anybody – COULD PROVE – but you don’t have any proof that this man has been dangerous. On what grounds are you predicting the future? And just on your assumption?” So he has prohibited the German government from using such words against me, or my followers – that they are dangerous, that they are a cult.

This government’s effort to prove that I am dangerous because I could prove dangerous... but in what ways could I prove dangerous? Can I manufacture nuclear weapons there? They cannot even say it. They know what the fear is, but to say it will expose them, it won’t help them.

The fear is that I can catch hold of the younger people, and they don’t have any way to prevent it. Their philosophies are dead and their theologies are dead, their churches are graveyards, their priests and their popes are just corpses from the past. They don’t have any argument for the present, for the new age, for the new man.

Question 5

BELOVED OSHO,

I LOVE TO LOOK INTO YOUR EYES WHILE IN YOUR PRESENCE. YOU HAVE SUGGESTED A WAY TO LOOK IN THE MIRROR FOR MEDITATION. IS THERE A WAY I CAN LOOK AT YOU FOR

MEDITATION?

There is no harm in looking at me, but the meditation on your own eyes in the mirror has certain effects which will not be the same as looking at me.

Looking at me you may feel peaceful, silent, in a kind of beatitude; but that is not the purpose of the meditation. The purpose of that meditation is totally different.

You can do both. There is no need to make them alternatives.

Nobody is preventing you from looking at me. But don’t try to avoid that meditation, because that meditation will give you great insight into your own ego, your own mind. It will help your watchfulness.

So don’t avoid that.

You can do anything else that you want to do. But every meditation has its own consequences.

Question 6

BELOVED OSHO,

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IN DAYS PAST, SUFIS HAD TO WHIRL IN ORDER TO BECOME AWARE OF THEIR UNMOVING

CENTER. IN THIS RAPIDLY CHANGING WORLD, CAN THE MODERN MAN SIMPLY STAND

STILL AND ACHIEVE EXACTLY THE SAME EFFECT?

No, it won’t do, because you cannot stand still. You don’t know how to be still. It is not just a matter of standing. The world is moving, but that movement is invisible. The earth is moving, but you don’t feel its movement because you are also moving with it. The earth is making a double movement: first, on its own axis – it is moving round and round; and second, it is going around the sun. So a double movement is there, but you are not aware of either. You can stand still, but the earth goes on moving and you are moving with it. In twenty-four hours it makes one round of itself, and in three hundred and sixty-five days it makes another round of the sun.

You will be moving. You cannot stand still. There is no place where you can stand still. Everything is movement. Stillness is possible only if your mind is without thoughts. If your awareness helps you to get rid of your thoughts, then there is stillness; and that is the only stillness possible in the world.

Archimedes used to say, ”If I can find a silent still point in the universe, I can revolutionize the whole world.” But he never found it because he was always looking outside. And that silent still point is within you; it has never moved. The earth moves, the sun moves, the stars move, now everything is whirling; but something within you is always absolutely still, and eternally still.

But to see it, to feel it, you have to get rid of your thoughts. If you don’t get rid of your thoughts, those thoughts will not allow you to see yourself. They keep you engaged, occupied. And it is easy to disperse them.

Just try the simple thing that I am insisting on continually: do whatever you are doing, just go on watching your thoughts. If you miss, no harm; whenever you remember again, start watching. You will miss many times. Slowly, slowly you will miss less. Soon there will be big gaps when you will be aware and there will be no thoughts. In those gaps you will see the silent, still point; and certainly if you have found it, you can revolutionize the whole world.

The people who have brought evolution to the world are those few people who have found their center. They are the people who have changed humanity for better, and they are needed now more than ever, because humanity is in such a critical stage that if we don’t have enough people to transform it onto a higher level, it is going to destroy itself.

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Laughter is the highest spiritual quality

1 June 1986 am in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

I HAVE JUST READ AN ARTICLE BY STEPHEN JAY GOULD, A WARM, AMUSING, OPEN-MINDED SCIENTIST WHOSE FIELD IS BIOLOGY, AND PARTICULARLY EVOLUTION. IT

SEEMS PROBABLE THAT ABOUT FIVE TO EIGHT MILLION YEARS AGO THE CHIMP-HUMAN

ANCESTRAL LINE SPLIT INTO WHAT WAS TO BECOME MODERN CHIMP AND MODERN MAN.

Homo Erectus APPEARED ABOUT A MILLION OR SO YEARS AGO.

THE INTEREST IN ALL THIS IS THAT IF TRUE, IT MEANS THAT MAN LEARNED TO STAND

UP VERY FAST IN EVOLUTIONARY TERMS – OVER ONLY ABOUT A MILLION YEARS.

ELSEWHERE, IN TRYING TO EXPLAIN MISSING FOSSILS IT HAS BEEN SUGGESTED THAT

EVOLUTION IS NOT NECESSARILY SLOW, BUT MAY OCCUR IN SUDDEN LEAPS.

WHEN I THINK OF AN IMAGINARY CONVERSATION BETWEEN PRE-CHIMP AND PRE-HUMAN, AS THEY PARTED COMPANY SO LONG AGO, I THINK OF YOU TALKING TO MANKIND.

ARE WE LIVING THROUGH AN EQUALLY MOMENTOUS POINT IN EVOLUTION, WHERE YOU, AS THE FIRST OF Homo Novus POINT TO A BEAUTIFUL VISION WHICH IS AS FAR REMOVED

FROM Homo Sapiens AS HE, IN TURN, IS FROM THE CHIMPANZEE? MIGHT THE JUMP

INTO ENLIGHTENMENT AS A QUANTUM LEAP IN CONSCIOUSNESS HAVE ANY NATURAL

EQUIVALENT IN EVOLUTIONARY JUMPS IN THE PHYSICAL WORLD?

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The quantum leap is the latest discovery in modern physics. Up to now evolution was always thought of as a slow process. Hence it was always contrasted with revolution. Revolution was fast, quick; evolution was very slow.

But a quantum leap cannot even be called fast. It is instantaneous: from one point, from one stage, you disappear, and you appear at a higher, at a different point, at a different stage.

It was very puzzling in the beginning because no such thing had ever been conceived of. But slowly, slowly physics has settled with it, that it is a reality. Electrons disappear from one point and appear at another point and between the two there is no time gap. Here it disappears, there it appears; the distance is covered but time is not taken in covering the distance.

In physics it has now become accepted; in metaphysics, as far as human consciousness is concerned, it can be even quicker, because if matter can take such jumps that it moves almost beyond imagination, beyond the speed of time, in consciousness many more miracles are possible, because of course consciousness is the highest flowering of existence. It seems that the whole existence has been working to reach to the stage of a Gautam Buddha. Gautam Buddha followed slowly the path of evolution, because that was the only possibility in those days.

After twenty-five centuries, it is possible to declare that quantum leaps are available, for those who have the courage, in the field of consciousness too. Particularly in consciousness, time has no reference, no relevance – consciousness in non-temporal.

One can move from sleep to awakening instantly – or do you think it takes a long slow process –

that first one is partly awake, then a little more awake, and by the evening one is fully awake? And then the second process starts – you start partly asleep, then more, then more, then by midnight you are fast asleep?

We know that it happens to everybody that you wake up instantly. Any device may do – just an alarm clock, which has nothing to do with you. The alarm clock is not even aware of you, is not concerned with you – it may be enough to change you from deep sleep into a quick awakening. The same is possible as far as spiritual sleep is concerned. It is only a question of finding a device. The problem is a little complicated, because an alarm clock will do for everybody, but spiritual devices are meant for unique individuals. One device will not work for all, because people are so different, so unique.

Nature does not produce carbon copies, everybody is original. Hence he needs an original device.

In the past, one hundred and twelve methods have been found for meditation – those are the devices. The undercurrent is the same, just the devices are a little different from each other, because individuals are different from each other.

The religions which have been teaching the same prayer to everybody are doing an enormous harm, because that prayer in the first place is based on a belief in a God no one has seen, no one has heard of. Different religions define God in a different way.

In England there is now a growing movement of satanism, devil worshippers. Thirty thousand people already openly declare that the devil is not God’s enemy, but God’s only begotten son. And they worship the devil because God, after creating the world, has either gone senile or has completely The Transmission of the Lamp

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forgotten about the world. But one thing is certain, that he is no more interested, because after those six days, he has never been seen. There is not a single eyewitness. So why bother the old fellow? His young son, the devil... the word ‘devil’ helps them, because it comes from the same Sanskrit root as ‘divine’. It means ‘godly’.

It depends on you what you make of God, and such things. Nobody interferes. God has never said anything about himself. He has never said to any religion ”Don’t say these things, they are not true.” In fact God is only an image created by man, so is the devil.

You can change your images, and you can go on praying to your own handmade, homemade gods for millions of years. Nothing will happen to you, because these are not devices.

I have told you Leo Tolstoy’s story. Before the Russian revolution, Russia was one of the most orthodox Christian countries, more than anywhere else. The archbishop of the Russian church was getting more and more angry about three men who lived beyond a lake, under a tree – poor folks, villagers, uneducated, uncultured; but people had started worshipping them as saints.

And thousands of people were going there. And that was hurting him very much. These were the people who were supposed to come to his church; they are going to three persons who are not even recognized by the church as saints.

The English word ‘saint’ is ugly. It comes from the original ‘sanction’ – a man who has been sanctioned by the church in his holiness. He has a certificate of holiness from the church.

These people have never been sanctioned in any holiness, and thousands of people are going.

Finally, outraged, he himself went in a boat.

Those three poor fellows were sitting under a tree, very happy, very peaceful, very silent. But the archbishop was very angry. He screamed at them, shouted at them. They all kneeled before him and said, ”Forgive us if we have done anything wrong, but why are you shouting? What is the problem?”

The archbishop said, ”Who told you you are saints?” They said, ”Nobody, and we don’t think we are saints, we are poor people. But what can we do if people have started coming to us, just as you have come. What can we do?”

”But why have people started coming to you? What is your religion?” They looked at each other. They said, ”We are uneducated people; don’t talk in such cultured, sophisticated language. Make it simple.”

The archbishop was happy that they were humbled by him. He said, ”What prayer do you do?” All the three giggled. He said, ”What is there to giggle about; is this your prayer?” They said, ”No, this is not, but what it is creates giggling.”

”Say it.”

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Everybody said to the other, ”You say it.” The second said to the third, ”Better you say it. You are older than us. It is your right to say it.”

The archbishop said, ”I don’t have much time. Say it! What is your prayer?” They said, ”We are ashamed. Just forgive us, because our prayer is very poor. Hearing that God is a trinity and we are also a trinity, we have made our own prayer. Our prayer is simple because we are very simple people. We cannot remember long words and big prayers. Our prayer is, ‘You are three, we are three; have mercy on us.’”

Even the archbishop giggled. He said, ”This is a prayer? You were right that it brings giggling. I have never giggled in my life, I am a serious man, but seeing you three fools creating a prayer on your own – and we have a prayer authorized by the church. I will tell you the authorized prayer, and from today, you start the authorized prayer. Become real Christians!” They said, ”We will try. Just tell us what we have to do.” So he repeated the whole authorized Russian prayer. As he was saying the prayer, all the three were becoming very sad. At the end, they said, ”It is almost impossible for us to remember. You will have to repeat it two, three times so that we can manage. One part I will remember, another part the other remembers, the third part, the third remembers. But the whole prayer to be remembered by one single person is asking too much.” He said, ”Okay, that will do, but at least it will be authorized prayer, the right prayer, the only right prayer in the world.” So he repeated again.

They thanked him; ”It was great of you to come here. God must have sent you here.” And he went very happily back in his boat, feeling satisfied that now this foolishness will stop. People will not go to these people. I will expose them, that this is their prayer. And how have they become saints?

But in the middle of the lake, he saw suddenly all three running on water towards him. He said, ”My God!”

They caught the boat and said, ”One more time because we forgot. We forgot which part is to be remembered by whom. And there was so much conflict that we said it is better to go to you. You can decide which part – and the reality is, we have forgotten the prayer. You repeat it once more.” But now it was a revelation to the archbishop, that these people are walking on water. He said,

”Forget the prayer I have told you. Your prayer is right. You continue your prayer, because I have been praying this authorized prayer my whole life. I cannot walk on water. My prayer has not been heard, but your prayer has been heard. You go. Just forgive me for interfering in your life. Whatever you are doing is right. Continue doing it in your own way.” These one hundred and twelve methods of meditation are exhaustive. There cannot be one hundred and thirteen. Everything that different human types will need is included in one hundred and twelve methods. And they are handed down from centuries. They are simple. The key in all those one hundred and twelve methods is witnessing – in different forms, in different strategies – but the The Transmission of the Lamp

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innermost core is witnessing, awareness, watchfulness. You can call it anything, but it will be another meaning of witnessing.

With witnessing, you can have a quantum leap. You can move from your sleep – not the ordinary, but the spiritual sleep – and you can wake up. Not the ordinary waking that you have done every morning, but the real awakening, which brings you to the highest realization in life – of yourself, and the whole, and that you are part of it; that the whole is you and that you are the whole. There is no distinction.

Physics has given the words ‘quantum leap’. No spiritual thinker, philosopher, has tried to think of a parallel for spiritual growth. That shows the poverty of your so-called spiritual thinkers, theologians.

But in fact, meditation is the way which can bring a sudden flare-up in your being. And not only that, it can start a chain reaction. One flares up and suddenly people of the same type, who have not even tried meditation, who are not even seekers, who have never thought about anything spiritual, catch the infection – it is contagious.

So a few people around the earth get the quantum leap, then thousands more will become part of a world-wide fire. And that is the only way to save whatever millions of years of evolution has brought to us.

You have to choose between Ronald Reagan and Gautam Buddha. It is not a coincidence that Ronald Reagan used to have a chimpanzee as his friend. A man is known by the company he keeps. And when he became president, the chimpanzee was also very happy.

They both went for a walk. An old man saw the chimpanzee and Ronald Reagan; he was ashamed that the president of America cannot find friendship with any human being, he has to find friendship with a chimpanzee.

He went close to them and said, ”Mr. President, this does not look good.” Ronald Reagan said, ”What does not look good?”

That old man said, ”You shut up, idiot. I am talking to the president. You have no right to interfere.

You may be his friend, not mine.”

The future is in danger if man does not understand the methods that can bring him quick transformation. We don’t have time for evolution. We don’t have time even for revolution. Only a quantum leap can save humanity and the universe.

And I think as the pressure of death, destructiveness, nuclear war, becomes more and more heavy, the quantum leap will also become more and more possible, because it will be the only way out of a global suicide.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

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WHEN WE START WATCHING OUR BODIES, AND THEN OUR MINDS AND EMOTIONS, THERE REMAINS AN ELEMENT, ALTHOUGH SUBTLE, OF CONCENTRATION. INITIALLY, FOR EXAMPLE, WATCHING MY BREATHING, I WOULD WATCH IT TO THE EXCLUSION OF

EVERYTHING ELSE – HERE THERE WAS AN ELEMENT OF FOCUS. ON OTHER OCCASIONS, WHEN SILENCE IS JUST THERE, THE BREATHING MAY BE ALL THERE IS TO WATCH.

THIS SEEMS TO BE NEARER, BUT STILL I FEEL THAT MORE SOFT FOCUSING OF THE

AWARENESS WOULD TAKE ME FURTHER AND FURTHER BACK, AS IF RELAXING ENOUGH

TO LET THE WATCHER MOVE FAR ENOUGH AWAY SO THAT ALL IS SEEN, RATHER THAN

ANY ONE THING LIKE THOUGHTS OR BREATHING. DOES RELAXING ALLOW THE WATCHER

TO BE ON THE HILL?

It is true. Relaxation helps the most. No part of concentration should be in your watchfulness.

Concentration is sabotaging the whole process of watchfulness, because concentration is an act of the mind, and watchfulness is something that comes from above, from beyond.

If there is any concentration... I can understand, if you start watching your breathing – in the name of watching, you are concentrating on the breathing, you are excluding everything else. Don’t exclude.

Watch your breathing inclusive of all.

Watching your breathing... a temple bell starts ringing, a car passes by, a child starts crying – all that should be included. Your watchfulness should be open. Watching the breathing is simply to begin with. It is not the end. It is just learning how to watch.

But there is a difficulty – you can start thinking that concentration is watching. Concentration is not watching. Concentration is narrow, narrowing the mind, bringing it to a focus on one thing, forgetting everything else. That’s why in relaxing, you will feel more watchful, yet without concentration. If that is happening, that’s perfectly good.

The essential thing is watchfulness, inclusive of all. Concentration can be disturbed, watchfulness cannot be disturbed.

These are the differences.

If somebody is concentrating on something,

anybody can disturb him. Just a small boy can do something and he is distracted and his focus is lost – or not even a small boy, just the wind comes and the door opens and the noise is enough.

So you will find the phenomenon in so-called religious people. They are always angry, because their concentration is continuously disturbed.

Watchfulness cannot be disturbed. It is simply inclusive of all. If the door opens, makes a noise, the wind passes through the trees singing its song, it is available to it. It is not choosing breathing or anything in particular, but simply being there, open, available, present to everything that is happening.

So remember the difference: concentration is sabotaging watchfulness.

To begin with, something has to be given to you, so you can have a little taste of what watchfulness is. Then it has to be made wider and wider and bigger, so much bigger that there is no need to do anything. You simply sit, or lie down relaxedly and everything that is happening around you is mirrored in you.

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You don’t think about it, you don’t justify it, you don’t condemn it, you don’t evaluate it – you simply watch.

So it is perfectly right.

Relaxation, utter relaxation with no focusing of consciousness is real watchfulness.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

ONCE, SOME YEARS AGO, WHILE MAKING LOVE, I DISAPPEARED. I WOULD LIKE TO SAY,

”LITERALLY DISAPPEARED,” BECAUSE I FELT AS IF ALL OF ME SIMPLY VANISHED. BUT

CERTAINLY MY BODY MUST HAVE BEEN THERE, BECAUSE MY PARTNER DIDN’T NOTICE

THAT HE WAS SUDDENLY ALONE. I HEARD MY VOICE SAY: ”I AM GOING,” AND THEN

POSSIBLY ONLY FOR A SECOND OR TWO, NO ONE WAS THERE. THOUGH I HAVE HAD

MOMENTS OF JOY WHILE MAKING LOVE SINCE, I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN PRESENT TO KNOW

THAT THEY ARE MOMENTS OF JOY. PRESUMABLY ECSTASY WAS THE TRIGGER FOR WHAT

HAPPENED, BUT THE HAPPENING ITSELF WASN’T ECSTATIC, IT WASN’T ANYTHING, IT

SIMPLY WAS.

IS MEDITATION THAT PREVIOUS STAGE OF ECSTASY, OR THAT STATE OF NOT-EVEN-ECSTASY, JUST ISNESS?

Ecstasy or blissfulness are all toys to allure you towards meditation. You will find them only in the beginning. As the meditation grows deeper there is only isness.

Everything disappears, even ecstasy, because ecstasy too, carries with it, just behind it, the shadow of agony. It is a duality. Blissfulness carries with it, hiding behind it, suffering, misery. It is a duality.

Only isness is not a duality because isness is simply synonymous with existence, and there is no non-existence.

Anything can trigger it. Love is one of the most likely things to trigger it because you are so totally in it, so intensely in it – and without any effort. It is a biological help to man to experience his first isness. It can be scary to feel that you have literally disappeared, and to tell your partner, ”I am going,” rather than ”I am coming!” – is to kill the poor man! What is happening? What kind of love is happening?

He has always heard that in love one comes, but this is a rare quality – to be going! The man must have been cultured; otherwise he would have got up and said, ”I am going also! you are going –

what am I doing here?” He was a man of culture and etiquette that he remained!

But coming and going – both are two sides of the same coin. People have noted only the coming; they have not been sharp enough to see the other side of it. The moment of coming is simultaneously the moment of going. You as a personality, you as an ego, are going; you as pure isness, are coming.

So they are not contradictory, they are complementary.

But it can be triggered anywhere... sometimes for no reason at all – just the situation – and you may not be able even to know what has triggered it.

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I used to go for a morning walk, and I used to pass a beautiful house every day – that was my route.

And one day, when I was coming back, the sun was just shining on my face; I was perspiring – I had gone for four, five miles, and just... I could not move from that place. I must have been eighteen or seventeen. Something happened between the sun and the beautiful morning, that I simply forgot that I have to go home. I simply forgot that I am. I was simply standing there.

But the man who owned the house, he has been watching me for almost a year – that I come and go by the side of the house; today, what has happened? I am simply frozen. But frozen in such ecstasy!

He came and shook me, and it was like coming down from a very far away place, rushing into my body. He said, ”What has happened?”

I said, ”That’s what I was going to ask you. Something certainly happened, and something that I would like to happen forever. I was not. You unnecessarily got worried, shook me, and brought me back. I had moved into some space which was absolutely new to me – and it was pure isness.” Anything can do, it seems that just your preparedness, knowingly or unknowingly, your closeness to the point where the phenomenon can be triggered.... But this kind of experience is not within your power. It happens to you like lightning. You cannot do anything to bring it back, unless you start with a device that suits you; for example, if relaxation suits you, then whenever you have time, relax –

and relaxation does not mean that you have to lie down and relax. You can go on walking and relax.

You can go on working, but in a relaxed way. No tension, no hurry, no speed, nowhere to go... just in the moment.

And the window will be opening again and again and more often, and one day it remains open forever.

It is pure isness.

Chetana has asked one question: when awareness is total and all thoughts disappear, does enlightenment, realization, or any other experience happen or only the awareness remain?

The truth is that all experiences are lower. Truth is not an experience. It has to be said that it is an experience; otherwise how to convey it to you?

Truth is pure awareness.

Just all is, and all is beautiful, and all is benediction.

But the basic quality is of awareness.

You can call it isness.

The Sanskrit word for theist is astik. It is a beautiful word, distorted because of the association with God. Astik comes from the root, ast, and asti means isness. In that sense, nobody is astik by believing in God; astik is one who has come to the state of isness, and this state is not separate so there is no way of it going away; it remains.

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All words – silence, peace, ecstasy, blissfulness – fall short. The juice of isness is far deeper, far juicier than any word that any human language can provide.

Question 4

BELOVED OSHO,

LAUGHING WITH YOU IS SUCH A BEAUTIFUL, PURE AND FREEING EXPERIENCE. WITHIN

SECONDS IT TAKES AWAY ALL HEAVINESS AND THOUGHTS. I WOULD LIKE TO DANCE

THE PATH WITH YOU, LAUGHING AND LAUGHING. WHAT IS LAUGHING IN YOU? WHAT

IS LAUGHING IN US, AND WANTS TO LAUGH? WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A BUDDHA’S LAUGHTER AND THE DISCIPLE’S LAUGHTER?

That is the only place where there is no difference.

That’s why it is the greatest spiritual

phenomenon: the master’s laughter and the disciple’s laughter have exactly the same quality, the same value. There is no difference at all.

In every other thing there are differences: the disciple is a disciple, he is learning, groping in the dark. The master is full of light, all groping has ceased, so every act is going to be different. But whether you are in darkness or in full light, laughter can join you.

The darkness cannot distort laughter, it cannot contaminate it; neither can the light enhance it. To me, laughter is the highest spiritual quality, where the ignorant and the enlightened meet.

And if a tradition is too serious, and the master and the disciples never laugh, that means that in that tradition, there is no possibility of meeting: there is a demarcation.

One of my contributions to religion is a sense of humor which no other religion contains. And one of my basic statements about it is that laughter is the highest spiritual quality.

It is such a strange world. Just a few days ago, a court in Germany in a way decided in my favor against the government, but in a way the judge could not understand my approach to life. The government was trying to prove that I am not a religious person, because I myself have said that religion is dead, I myself have said that I am not a serious person, and the judge said: ”Those statements were made in a press conference, they cannot be taken seriously. And we do not know the context. You have to produce statements from his written books. I consider him to be a religious man, and I consider his teachings to be a religion. And whatever he is saying and doing is a serious work.”

Although we won the case, the judge could not understand, neither could the government.

I am seriously non-serious, but that is beyond the scope of courts to understand. I am religiously non-religious, but courts are not meant to understand such koans. The government was thinking that to bring the point that I have said I am not a serious person is enough to prove that I am not religious, because all religious people have been serious.

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rather than just talking about beliefs, arguing about things which cannot be proved.... If Gautam Buddha and Confucius and Lao Tzu and Moses and Zarathustra and Jesus and Mohammed all could have gathered together and laughed, human consciousness would have taken a quantum leap. Their seriousness has become a heaviness on the human heart. It creates guilt in people: when you laugh, you feel you are doing something wrong.

Laughter is good in a movie hall, but not in a church. In a church, you almost enter a graveyard where poor Jesus is still hung on the cross. Twenty centuries... you can take him down now. The Jews hung him for only six hours, and Christians have been hanging him for twenty centuries. And seeing the poor fellow hanging there – it is difficult to laugh.

All the religions have made it difficult to laugh. Sense of humor has not been recognized by any religion as a religious quality.

I declare it to be the highest religious quality. And if we can decide that every year, for one hour, at a certain date, at a certain time, the whole world will laugh, I think it will help to dispel darkness, violence, stupidities – because laughter is the only human characteristic which no animal possesses.

All animals are incapable of laughter, and whenever these religions make somebody a saint, he becomes like an animal, he loses laughter. He falls down the evolutionary ladder, not rises higher.

Laughter has a beauty, multidimensional. It can relax you, it can suddenly make you feel light, it can make your world not a burden, but a beautiful experience. It can change everything in your life. Just the touch of laughter can make life something worth living, something to be grateful for.

So as far as laughter is concerned, the master and disciple meet only at that point. That’s why it is so refreshing, so rejuvenating.

Question 5

BELOVED OSHO,

ONE OF THE THINGS I HAVE HEARD SOME PEOPLE SAY ABOUT YOU IS THAT THEY THINK

YOU ARE THE ANTICHRIST.

WOULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT?

These are the same people who crucified Christ on the grounds that he was not Christ. And these are the same people who poisoned Socrates, claiming absolutely falsely that he is demoralizing the youth, corrupting the youth. These are the same people who murdered Al-Hillaj Mansoor, saying that his utterances are against God. Because he was saying, ”I am God” – ”Ana’l Haq.” But he was not saying, ”You are not God,” he was saying, ”You are God too, but you are determined not to recognize it. I have dropped the old stubbornness and I have recognized that I am God.” Nothing was wrong in it.

Now they are saying the same things about me. In fact all the things that they said about Socrates

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government to another government, one nation to another nation, they are sending messages that this man is capable of corrupting human minds; hence, he is dangerous.

The Christians think I am the Antichrist because that is their way of condemning a person, although I have praised Christ more than any Christian has ever done. But I am absolutely fair: if I see that something is not correct then it does not matter who the person is; I will criticize it. I have praised Christ, I have criticized Christ. I have praised Buddha, I have criticized Buddha, because no human being is perfect. Perfection is not possible.

What they said about Al-Hillaj Mansoor, they are saying about me, that I am against God. And I had devoted my whole life to teach people how to be godly.

One thing should be understood: that all these people have no arguments against me so they just pick up a name which condemns me, without giving any argument. They should prove on what grounds they call me Antichrist, because I am fighting on many fronts; I am not only fighting against Christians, I am fighting against Jews, against Mohammedans, against Jainas, against Buddhists.

Where in their Christian scriptures is it written that the Antichrist will fight against all religions?

Where in their Christian scriptures it is written that the Antichrist will teach people how to rise in consciousness towards enlightenment?

They don’t give any arguments, they simply condemn. Their condemnations are meaningless. They simply show the poverty of their intelligence. They simply show the anger and rage that is boiling within them. In fact, they are saying that if they kill me it will be perfectly right, because I am the Antichrist. They are trying to find an excuse to justify their actions against me.

But Hindus also want to kill me. They have tried.

Mohammedans also want to kill me.

I think if I was the Antichrist, then all the religions who are anti-Christian would have accepted me with great joy – here comes the Antichrist who will destroy Christianity. They will not be against me.

They will not be against the Antichrist.

But you can say anything. The archbishop in Greece declared that I have been sent from hell, a direct messenger from hell, to destroy the Christian orthodox church of Greece; and I was only a tourist for four weeks there. The messenger from hell comes on a tourist visa for four weeks. Have you ever heard such a thing before?

These are just old rotten strategies to condemn something which they cannot argue against, but they are utterly meaningless.

If I am the Antichrist, I have challenged the pope to face me in a public encounter – not anywhere else, but in the Vatican. Christ is on their side, I am the Antichrist – it will really be a great discussion.

But these cowards go on doing things against me in an underground way, and they keep their hypocrisy intact.

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In Italy, sixty-five eminent people in different fields – Nobel prize winners, painters, dancers, directors of world fame, actors, actresses, writers, poets, all kinds of creative people – have signed a petition to the government that I should not be prevented from entering Italy – why am I not being given a visa?

But the pope is preventing it. The government does not say yes or no because that will create a great uproar all over the country. They cannot say yes because the pope is against it, and Catholics may not support them in the coming elections so they want to just keep it in limbo.

But they should see that their most talented people and their geniuses are asking that I should be allowed and I should be listened to.

I have said to my sannyasins, ”You go to the pope too with the protest to sign. If he does not sign it, that means he is against freedom of speech. If he signs it, then show it to the government – ‘Now you are in no danger, even the pope has signed.’ So put him in an embarrassing situation.” I would love to argue on each and every point because Christianity has nothing worthwhile that can be supported by intelligence. That is their fear; otherwise, a four-week tourist visa cannot destroy a church, cannot destroy a country’s morality. And if it can be destroyed in four weeks then it is not worth preserving, it should be destroyed. For two thousand years, you have been creating it and a tourist for four weeks will destroy it... that shows the quality of your morality, your religion, your philosophy.

Things are coming closer to an ultimate exposure, and it is going to be tremendously helpful because all the world governments are now caught in a net.

I am going to fight every country in their own courts, and I am going to enter every country – because nobody can prevent it without any reason, just out of fear.

All these great nations are proving to be simply cowards.

Question 6

BELOVED OSHO,

FOR CHRISTIANS, THE GREATEST MIRACLE IS THAT JESUS COULD WALK ON WATER.

AS I SAW YOU WOBBLE, ENTERING THE ROOM YESTERDAY MORNING, I HELD MY BREATH.

IS NOT THE GREATEST MIRACLE JUST THAT YOU MAKE IT TO YOUR CHAIR WALKING ON

THE ORDINARY FLOORS OF THIS HOUSE?

Milarepa, although you only imagine that you are enlightened, even in your imagined enlightenment you get a few beautiful glimpses. This is true – walking on water is just an invented story.

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That frightened him. He said, ”I will walk only if you two walk first – because you are an older religion.

Jesus was a Jew. You are Jews. And you are great rabbis.” So one rabbi went out of the boat, walked twenty feet on water and came back. The bishop could not believe his eyes.

The second rabbi went out, walked twenty feet and came back. The bishop said, ”My God!” But now he had gathered courage... if two rabbis can walk – who are not even Christians, and I am a follower of Christ.... He got out of the boat and as he put his first foot in the water, he started drowning. The two old rabbis said to each other, giggling, ”Should we tell the poor boy where the rocks are?”

Nobody has walked on water; you have just to know where the rocks are.

But this is really a miracle every morning, Milarepa. I wake up and I think whether I am going to make it to that goddamned chair. But somehow or other, the miracle has continued to happen, and I think it will continue to happen. I am completely drunk on the divine. So it is a miracle to find the way – and that’s why my people have made the chair red, so that I can see where it is.

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Boots, flesh, marrow, and...,

1 June 1986 pm in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

YOU WERE SAYING THE OTHER NIGHT HOW MAHAKASHYAP BROUGHT HIS OWN

UNIQUENESS TO BUDDHA’S RELIGION. WHEN DID THE PATRIARCHS OF BUDDHA STOP

BEING UNIQUE AND BECOME BUDDHISTS?

Gautam the Buddha is one of the most unique expressions of human consciousness. It is difficult to conceive of someone going beyond him, but Mahakashyap, his disciple, really did go beyond him.

Gautam Buddha’s whole life was a fight against the whole tradition, the orthodoxy. He could not express himself; his energy was more involved in destroying the false so that the truth could be seen clearly.

Mahakashyap had a unique position. He had nothing to destroy – Gautam Buddha had already done that. His whole energy moved into creativity. That is where he transcends Buddha.

Mahakashyap lived mostly in silence with Gautam Buddha; hence he was not a great master. When he became enlightened, he was not articulate. Only those who were ready to understand silence could become his disciples, and certainly such people are very rare.

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because it is widespread everybody gets a very small quantity of it. Mahakashyap has only a few disciples, who can be named on ten fingers. As far as numbers are concerned, nobody would consider him comparable to Buddha, but because he was a silent master the people who came to him were of a different quality, very receptive.

Buddha’s story will make you understand it. He used to say, ”There are horses which, unless you whip them, will not move. There are horses to which you simply have to make the noise of a whip –

you need not touch their bodies – and they will move. And there are horses which will move simply with the shadow of the whip – and they are the best quality horses.” And he used to say that disciples are also of those three kinds.

Mahakashyap got the third kind of disciple, who could see the shadow of the whip and move.

Because it was a silent transfer of energy, not through words, there is no scripture. It was person to person, heart to heart, so there is no record.

In this lineage a few names stand out. Bodhidharma is the greatest... in a few ways reaching higher than Mahakashyap. In other words it can be said that Gautam Buddha created a revolution which culminated in Bodhidharma. If Gautam Buddha is the source, then Bodhidharma is the ultimate flowering. He had all the qualities of Gautam Buddha, all the qualities of Mahakashyap, and a few qualities of his own.

For example, he was the first one in history to be outrageous. Buddha is very cultured; obviously

– he is a prince, trained in the manners of the court. He cannot be outrageous. Mahakashyap is a silent master; the question of being outrageous does not arise. Bodhidharma is very outrageous, very straightforward. Whatever he says hits the person almost like a sword. Naturally he also could not transform many people.

People were afraid of him, even emperors were afraid. They wanted to see the man; they had heard so much about him. His ways and methods were unique, and those who had been courageous enough to remain with him changed totally into a new form of humanity. The man suddenly became famous. But side by side, a fear was created in people who wanted to see him, meet him, because nobody knew what he would do, how he would act. He is the most unpredictable master ever.

After Bodhidharma there have been many other patriarchs, but Bodhidharma is the last Indian patriarch of Zen. He crossed the Himalayas and went to China. Asked where he was going, he said, ”In search of lions. I cannot work with cowards.” And he was right: the country was full of cowardly foxes.

China was still a fresh land, just turned towards Buddhism. Even the Emperor Wu, who must have been at that time the greatest emperor in the world, because he ruled over the whole of China, was waiting with eagerness to meet Bodhidharma.

He had met many humble, meek, beautiful, nice Buddhist monks. He had heard stories about Bodhidharma – stories were coming ahead of him, that he was not a meek person, not a humble person, neither egoistic nor arrogant; that he was a very simple and sincere person, but he did not go in a roundabout way, he went directly to the point. He functioned like a surgeon – even though it hurt, he could remove cancers from people’s psyches.

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Wu had come to receive him at the border.

He presented himself and told Bodhidharma, ”I

have opened all my treasures for Gautam Buddha. There are thousands of monks, hundreds of monasteries, temples, sculptures, thousands of translators working on every word of Buddha’s to translate them into Chinese. What will be my reward?” Bodhidharma looked at him with his very stern eyes and said, ”Reward? – you will fall into the seventh hell.”

Wu was crestfallen. He could not believe it; what kind of man was this? Still, he was a man of great patience, and knowing about Bodhidharma, he said, ”I have not done anything wrong. Why should I fall into the seventh hell?”

Bodhidharma said, ”It is not a question of doing wrong or right; you have done it with a wrong motive

– you want a reward. There is a desire to be rewarded; you are still childish. Can’t you do something as a reward in itself? If you cannot do something as a reward in itself, forget all about religion.

”If the reward is in the future, the monks who have been telling you that you will reach to the seventh heaven have been befooling you, cheating you; or perhaps they themselves are fools. Religion has nothing to do with the future. Its whole concern is this moment, lived in its totality. And it brings its own reward. If you have really loved Buddha, then whatever you have done, you should have enjoyed. You have already received the reward.

”Asking for a reward simply means that what you have done was not your love, was not your love affair – it was business. And I am shocked that even being an emperor, you are nothing but a businessman. I will not enter into your empire. I had come in search of lions, but if the emperor himself is not a lion, then it is futile.”

And he went into the mountains. Before he went to the mountains, Wu asked, ”Forgive me, your teaching is so new.... Nobody ever told me that this moment is all, but I can see there is truth in it.

I can see it in your eyes – you are a living proof of it. Don’t leave me like this. At least before you go you have to help me to get rid of the ego – because in every scripture Buddha goes on saying,

‘Drop the ego.’ I have been trying in every possible way, but everything fails.” Bodhidharma said, ”I never say to anybody, ‘Drop the ego;’ I do it myself. You come early – four o’clock in the morning, alone, without your bodyguards, without your sword – to the temple I am staying in and I will finish your ego forever.”

The emperor could not sleep, thinking whether to go or not to go: ”The man seems to be crazy! How can somebody else destroy your ego? I have never heard of it, and I have been listening to so many mystics. They all say, ‘You have to do it yourself, nobody else can do it.’ This is the first man... and he seems to be so certain... and the way he looks and the way he talks, also create fear, and he has asked me to come alone – no bodyguards, no sword – at four o’clock, while it is still very dark;

‘Come, I will be waiting in the temple, and I will finish it forever.’” He had been to wars, and he had never worried, but this man was creating great fear in him; he can do anything. He has a great staff in his hand; he might hit him or...”One never knows, because I will be alone. I have never been alone.” Many times he decided, ”Forget all about it,” but he could not sleep. At four o’clock, he had to go: the man had such charisma.

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And as he arrived, Bodhidharma said, ”So finally you decided to come – and the whole night you wavered.”

Wu said, ”How do you know?”

Bodhidharma said, ”There is no question of knowing. Ego is such a phenomenon that if somebody promises to destroy it, it is going to create a great wavering in you: ‘To go to that man or not to go to that man?’ But you are courageous, and I am happy. Now sit down and close your eyes. And just try to find the ego, where it is. And the moment you catch hold of it – I am sitting in front of you with my staff – one hit and the ego will be finished.” The Emperor Wu could not understand what to make of it. What was he saying? But there was no other way than to do what he was ordering. So he sat in front of him. For the first time in his life, with closed eyes, he tried to find the ego, knowing that Bodhidharma was sitting there with his staff

– a dangerous man.

”And what does he mean that he will give one hit and it is finished? He ill finish me – or the ego?

But now whatever is going to happen is going to happen. It is better to give it a try.” Wu looked all over inside: he could not find any ego anywhere. Ego is just imagination; it is not a reality, something that you can find. And as he was searching for the ego – and so totally, because that madman was sitting in front of him with his staff – thoughts stopped, time stopped. How two hours passed he had no idea, but he felt for the first time such a great silence, such peace.

As the sun was rising, his face was also lit with a new light. Bodhidharma shook him and told him,

”It is enough. You have not found it because it is not there. Those who have looked for it have never found it, and those who go on trying to find out how to drop it, how to get rid of it, how to be free of it, remain confined in the same prison, because they never look for it first. Before you start thinking of dropping something you should find out where it is. You cannot drop something which does not exist.”

Emperor Wu touched Bodhidharma’s feet and said, ”I am relieved of a burden that I thought was impossible to get rid of in this life, because those scriptures say it takes lives and lives to get rid of the ego – and you managed to finish it within seconds.” Bodhidharma said, ”I have not finished it, it was not there. It has never been there – it was only your belief.”

Bodhidharma had his own way. Wu tried hard to persuade him to enter the empire. Bodhidharma said, ”You have missed – that chance you have missed; but you can always come to me. I will remain in this temple, and I will remain in the same position, sitting before a wall, facing the wall, and I will turn only when the right person comes to enquire. I am not interested in curiosity-mongers or in philosophers. Only if a real seeker comes, only then will Bodhidharma look at him, otherwise he is finished.”

It is said that for nine years he sat facing the wall. And then his successor appeared. He cut off one of his hands, threw it before him and said, ”Turn, otherwise I am going to cut off my head too.” And The Transmission of the Lamp

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Bodhidharma had to turn. You cannot refuse such a man, who in advance has cut off his hand, and is ready to cut off his head if you don’t turn.

Bodhidharma said, ”Wait! You are the right man – I have been waiting for you.” He became his successor, and before leaving China to go back to the Himalayas in his old age.... The Himalayas have been for centuries the place where the awakened ones, the masters, the mystics have loved to die – it is so peaceful.... Before going he called his four chief disciples and asked them, ”What is Zen? This is going to be your examination – a single question – because I want to choose my successor.”

The man who had cut off one of his hands was also among them. One man said, ”Zen is silence, peace, the experience of oneself.”

Bodhidharma said, ”You have my boots.” That’s how he was – his way of expression was his own.

The second one said, ”Zen is the transformation of consciousness into superconsciousness.” And Bodhidharma said, ”You have my flesh.”

He turned to the third, and the third said, ”Zen is, but can only be experienced, it cannot be explained.

I hope you will forgive me.”

Bodhidharma said, ”You have my marrow.”

He turned to the fourth, and the fourth was the man who had cut off his hand. He didn’t say a single word. He simply bowed down, touched the feet of Bodhidharma, and tears of gratitude dropped onto his feet like flowers.

Bodhidharma hugged him and told him, ”You have it. Now you will be in my place.” In this way Zen has gone on to many other Chinese mystics, and from China it moved to Japan. It is still alive... the story of a miracle. Twenty-five centuries have not been able to destroy it. With no scriptures, with no temples, with no special commandments, just from one heart to another heart a transmission beyond words.... It is still alive.

When I was arrested in America, on the first day among the many phone calls and telegrams I received, one phone call was from a Zen master in Japan. He had phoned the president, he had phoned the jailer, and he had told the jailer that he would like just a word with me.

He told the jailer, ”You have committed one of the greatest crimes of the century, because we teach Zen through his books in our monastery. Although I am an enlightened master, I am not articulate.

Whatever he says I know is right; but the way he says it, only he can say it – I cannot.” The jailer gave the phone to me, and the old man – I don’t know him – simply said, ”I know that wherever you are, you will be in bliss, so it is pointless to ask you, ‘How are you?’ I just wanted to convey to you that those who know, are with you; and those who do not know, don’t count.” The Transmission of the Lamp

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By the evening the phone calls had become so many that they had to put two or three other phone operators on. The telegrams were so many that they had to arrange a few more clerks. And the jailer, in the night, told me, ”You have created such a chaos in the jail! In this jail there have been cabinet ministers, candidates for the presidency, but we have never seen such love pouring in from all over the world. You can be certain that no government can harm you – the whole world’s eyes are watching. They can harass you, but nobody can harm you – they cannot take the risk.” When that old voice said to me on the phone, ”Those who know, are with you, and those who do not know, do not count,” all these people – Bodhidharma and Mahakashyap and Gautam Buddha –

were whispering in the voice of that old man. He is a living line. He has sent his disciples to India also, and one of his nuns used to come every year to the commune festivals in America.

Zen is still a living current, and it is the only living current. Out of hundreds of schools that have been born in the world, most of them have died; and they died because they became organized religions.

They died because they became more interested in converting people than in transforming people.

They became more interested in the past and in imposing the past on people than in freeing people from the past and opening them up to the future.

Any truth remains alive if it remains open to the future.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

YEARS AGO – I HAD JUST TAKEN SANNYAS – WALKING PAST THE MIRROR IN MY ROOM, I SUDDENLY CAUGHT THE REFLECTION OF MY EYES IN IT, AND WAS PULLED INTO A SPONTANEOUS MIRROR MEDITATION. AFTER A WHILE I STARTED TO SEE MY MOTHER

IN ME; I BECAME MY MOTHER. IT WAS A JOYOUS FEELING, RECOGNIZING ONE OF THE

HALVES I WAS MADE FROM, EXPERIENCING WHERE I WAS COMING FROM.

AT THE TIME, I WANTED THE SAME THING TO HAPPEN WITH MY FATHER, FEELING THEN

THAT SOMETHING WOULD BE COMPLETE. I TRIED, BUT IT NEVER HAPPENED. CAN YOU

SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THIS PLEASE?

The mother is a natural phenomenon, the father is not. The father is a social institution – among the animals there is no father. In nature the father has such a small job to do that he does not become intrinsic to your being, although half of you is the contribution of man, half the contribution of woman.

But man’s contribution is half only at the time of insemination – then his is half and the mother’s part is half – but as time goes on the mother’s half becomes bigger and bigger. Your bones, your blood, your flesh, your marrow – everything is from your mother.

The father was only a trigger. He initiated a process. In the beginning it was difficult without him, but once the process is initiated, he is no longer essential. That’s why in animals the institution of fatherhood does not exist. Man has made it an institution. But for centuries man also lived without the father.

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so all the men of an age to be one’s father were called ‘uncle’. One of those uncles must be one’s father, but there was no way to know.

It was only with private property that the father came into being. As man started gathering private property, as powerful people started gathering more private property than others, their interest became very much concentrated on ensuring that their property, after their death, went to their own children. So it had to be made absolutely certain that their children really were their children.

That was the beginning of the bondage of woman. All her freedom was destroyed, all her movement was destroyed. She was confined to the home, reduced to a subhuman species – no education, no financial status, no social prestige, no religious equality.

Karl Marx used to think that when communism came and private property was no longer relevant, when property became communal, then marriage would automatically disappear.

And it was

disappearing. In the early days of the revolution it started disappearing. It was forcibly brought back because suddenly the people who were in power became aware that if there is no family, then the life of the state is not very long.

The family is the basic unit of the state, of the nation. If the family disappears then the next step will be that the state withers away. And Marx had said exactly that: first the family will go, then the state will go, then the nations will go. Then there will be only free human individuals, living in small communes. The children will belong, not to individuals, but to the commune.

But he was not aware of man’s lust for power. He was just an economist, a theorist, without any understanding of human psychology; hence he missed a basic point. Now, in the Soviet Union, marriage is stronger than anywhere else. It is surprising: if you want to marry in the Soviet Union, you can marry immediately; but if you want a divorce it will take three to four years. They will create all kinds of hurdles.

Divorce is not favored, for the simple reason that the state does not want to wither away. It is better to preserve the family so that the state can remain in power and the dictatorship can continue.

You saw yourself in the mirror, and suddenly a glimpse of your mother. Every girl is a replica, in many ways, of the mother. She is the extension of the mother; the boy is the extension of the father.

And in the old world, when stability was perfect, it was absolutely certain – the girl behaved exactly like the mother, repeated the same pattern in her life. The boy repeated the father’s pattern in his life.

Now things are a little disturbed. Man has come to know many things. One of them is that if you are really an intelligent person you should surpass your mother, your father, the past generation; otherwise you are meaningless. What is the purpose of your being here? Each child should surpass the generation that has given birth to it. Each student should surpass the professors that have given all their knowledge to him. Each disciple should surpass the master.

So when I said that Mahakashyap in a certain way surpasses Gautam Buddha, and that Bodhidharma in a certain way surpasses even Mahakashyap, you should not misunderstand me.

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than blissful that one of his disciple’s disciples has surpassed both of them. This should be the longing, the blessing of each master – that his disciples surpass him. That is his success. Things are now in a flexible state.

You watched in the mirror, and suddenly you found your mother’s face. Every person will find not only his mother’s face, but he can go even further back – his mother’s mother, his father’s father; he can go further back.

But it happened of its own accord. If you make an effort it will be difficult, because effort makes you tense, and tension becomes a barrier. So if you really want to get into such experiences then hypnosis is the best method. You can simply relax, and somebody can hypnotize you and can take you back.

You can be taken back to your own past life, you can be taken back to your mother’s past life. You are connected; you are just a branch of the same tree. Very few people have tried it. People have tried, in the East, to go into their own past lives. But I have made experiments. You can go into your mother’s past lives, because you are a branch, but it will be only a psychological experiment, helping you to know that you are like a tree.

We also have our roots – invisible. We are connected continuously with the atmosphere, with the earth, with the moon. More people go mad on the full-moon night. More people become enlightened also on the full-moon night. More people commit suicide on the full-moon night; more people commit murder on the full-moon night.

The full-moon night seems to have tremendous impact on your mind, just as it has on the oceans

– because man was born in the ocean, thousands and thousands of years ago – but the impact remains. Even today in your body, eighty percent is ocean water; that eighty percent of water is stirred.

We are continuously connected by breathing, by food, by water – everything that we are taking in.

These are our roots, and we have branches spreading far into the past and also into the future.

As a psychological experiment you can do it. It will not help you much spiritually, but it will be a little help in that it will give you the sense that you are not only a body, a sense that you are not alone, that you are connected with the whole. So in an indirect way it may support your spiritual growth.

But there is no need to go so roundabout when you can go directly.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

HOW CAN WE FIND OUT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN IMAGINATION AND REAL PAST LIFE

EXPERIENCES?

It is very easy. First, imagination cannot be repeated again and again, but the past life experience will be repeated the same in detail again and again. Second, the imagination will start from A, go The Transmission of the Lamp

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to B, then to C, from the beginning to the end. The past life experience will start just in the reverse order – from Z.

First you will die; when you go into the past life, what you will come across first will be your death.

Then you will move as if you are reading a novel from the back, or seeing a film backwards.

Imagination will be direct; it will start from birth and move towards death. The past life will start from death and move backwards to your middle age, to your marriage, to your love, to your childhood, to your birth. And if you can go on, then again the same pattern: first will come death. You are going backwards.

In imagination you are creating it, there is no need to go backwards. So this will be a definitive difference.

Second, imagination will go on changing. Today you will imagine one thing, tomorrow another thing.

Imagination is not a stable thing. But your past life is now a closed chapter. Whatever you do you will always go through the same experiences.

The difference is very clear-cut.

Question 4

BELOVED OSHO,

YOU ONCE SAID THAT WHILE WE SIT WITH YOU AND THE MORE WE BECOME RELAXED, WITHOUT OUR KNOWING, OUR UNCONSCIOUS WILL START EMERGING LIKE STEAM FROM

A BOILING TEAPOT. AS THE UNCONSCIOUS STARTS BOILING UP, AND ALL THE SKELETONS

AND DRAGONS START COMING OUT OF THE DARKNESS, I FEEL I NEED SOME GUIDANCE

ON HOW TO DEAL WITH IT – FOR MYSELF, AND IN RELATION TO OTHER PEOPLE.

CAN YOU PLEASE COMMENT?

First, don’t do anything about it – just watch. Doing will create problems. You will get mixed up by it; your emotions, your sentiments, your thoughts, may get mixed with it. Don’t do anything; just remain aloof and watch.

Just by watching it will slowly disappear like smoke disappearing into the sky. You don’t have to do anything at all.

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The greatest surgery possible

2 June 1986 am in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

YOU HAVE TALKED MUCH ABOUT DEATH AND DYING. I UNDERSTOOD YOU TO HAVE SAID

THAT PEOPLE ARE AFRAID OF DEATH ITSELF BECAUSE THEY CAN’T REALLY CONCEIVE

THAT IT IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO THEM.

AM I FOOLING MYSELF WHEN I FEEL TREMENDOUSLY EXCITED AT THE THOUGHT OF

DEATH? IT FEELS THAT – IF THE EVENT WERE PREPARED FOR WITH ONE HAVING

ATTAINED AS MUCH CONSCIOUSNESS AS POSSIBLE, WITH LOVING FRIENDS AROUND AND

AN AESTHETIC ENVIRONMENT – IT COULD BE THE MOST AMAZING THING GOING.

Death itself has no existence. What actually happens is the transformation of consciousness from one form into another form, or, finally and ultimately, into formlessness.

The whole question is whether one can die consciously, or the routine way – the unconscious way.

Nature has made a provision that before dying the person becomes completely unconscious, goes into a coma, so he knows nothing. It is simply the greatest surgery possible. If the surgeon is going to remove a small part of the body, he has to make the patient unconscious; otherwise there is every possibility that the pain will be too much and unbearable. And in pain and agony, the surgery may not be successful either.

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What surgeons are doing, nature has been doing for millennia, and its surgery is far bigger. It takes the whole body away, not a part; it takes the consciousness to another form.

Only if you are almost enlightened – just on the border of enlightenment – can you remain conscious, because the whole process of enlightenment is creating distance between you and your body, you and your mind. If the distance is enough, then you can remain aware and anything can happen to the body – you can watch it, as if it is happening to somebody else. Then it is really an amazing, exciting phenomenon, but not before that.

To say it in other words: To die beautifully one has to live beautifully.

To die amazingly and in excitement, in ecstasy, one has to prepare one’s whole life for ecstasy, excitement, amazement.

Death is simply the culmination point, the crescendo of your life. It is not against life. It does not destroy life.

That’s why I said death does not exist as conceived. It really gives the body another chance to grow.

And if you have grown fully then there is no need for another chance; then your being moves into the ultimate being. You are no more a separate small dewdrop, but the whole ocean of existence.

P.D. Ouspensky, in his book Tertium Organum – one of the most significant books – has many statements that are beautiful, but this statement is the most significant of them all. In ordinary mathematics – and he was a mathematician – the part is part and the whole is whole; the part cannot become the whole, neither can the whole become the part.

But in the mathematics of consciousness the situation is totally different – here the part can become the whole, the whole can become the part, in fact they both are the same. Rather than using the word ‘part’, we should say, ”You have a miniature being, a small image of the whole, and the body disappears: the small image becomes one with the greater image.” Death is a great excitement but only for those who are working towards it, to make it so. The key is that you have to remain conscious.

I have heard that three friends – a surgeon, a politician, and a jurist, a magistrate – were just chitchatting on a morning walk. And talking of many things, they came to the point of whose profession was the oldest.

The judge said, ”Of course mine, because as far as we know, the further back we go we find man more barbarous, more criminal, more animal. I must have been needed to keep the peace, to keep society together, to protect the innocent.

”And the way we see man even today, he is divided into religions, into nations, into races, and into smaller and smaller groups, and they are fighting: there are continuous riots all over the world.

Without the system of justice, it would have been impossible to avoid those riots and save humanity.” Appealing – but the politician laughed. He said, ”You can befool others but not me. First, tell me if I was not there who would have created the riots? The politician is a must for every crime.” Although no politician accepts it, what he said was right.

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The surgeon said, ”You all may be right, but you cannot compete with a surgeon. Surgery happened first. God took out a rib from Adam and made a woman out of it. That was a miraculous surgery.

And that has to be exactly in the beginning, you cannot go further back than that.” But even God has to make Adam unconscious to take the bone.

From ancient times there are strange books – which should be known to the whole world. Nearabout five to seven thousand years ago, there was a man in India – Sushrut, and he has written a book on surgery. And the amazing part is that whatever we are doing now is all included in it – the instruments, the methods, everything – also anesthesia.

In the Himalayas there is found a small plant: just a few drops of its juice are enough to keep a man absolutely unconscious for hours. It is still available.

So if in our small surgery, from the very beginning, unconsciousness is absolutely necessary... death is the great surgery. Nothing can be greater: The whole body has to be taken away from the being which has become identified with it and clings to it. In unconsciousness it is possible to do it.

Very few people die consciously, hence the fear; because very few people live consciously, hence the fear. Whatever you want your death to be, let first your life be exactly the same – because death is not separate from life, it is not an end to life, but only a change. Life continues, has continued, will always continue. But forms become useless, old, more a burden than a joy – it is better to give life a new, fresh form.

Death is a blessing; it is not a curse.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

GURDJIEFF WAS ACCUSED OF TRYING TO KEEP HIS WIFE ALIVE WHILE SHE WAS DYING.

HIS DISCIPLES SEEM SHOCKED AND DIDN’T UNDERSTAND.

IN WHAT WAY WAS HE TRYING TO HELP HER THAT HE WAS UNABLE TO DO BEFORE SHE

WAS DYING?

The 1917 revolution in Russia disturbed Gurdjieff’s whole work. His disciples got scattered. He himself had to escape out of Russia because the communists, who were coming into power, were materialists: they did not believe in any spiritual growth. They conceived of man just as a vegetable.

But Gurdjieff managed to take with him a small group of disciples who had developed and crystallized very much. His wife happened to be one of them. They remained in Constantinople waiting for some opportunity to settle somewhere. It was in Constantinople that they were found by Bennett and brought to Europe.

First he wanted to settle in England, but it seems no country – because of its politicians’ mediocre minds – wants any giant to settle there. They cannot accept anybody who knows more, who is more; and Gurdjieff was a very strong, powerful, charismatic man – whoever came into contact with him was changed. England refused. Country after country refused him.

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It was just by chance that the prime minister of France had read a few of his books and was immensely impressed. He invited him, and gave him a beautiful place near Paris, a few miles away, where he established his commune.

In that commune there were two sections. One was the old-guard Russians who had come with him, who were far more developed than the new followers from the West – particularly from America. The difficulty was double.

First, the Russian group knew only Russian, so communication was impossible. Second, they were highly developed, and these new people were highly educated but spiritually not developed at all. Those Russians were not very educated. So there was another barrier of communication –

intellectually they could not communicate, language prevented it, education prevented it, and on the plane of being also, communication was difficult because the Russian group was far more developed

– Gurdjieff had been working for years with them.

The oldest disciple was his own wife. And it became troublesome to people, particularly the new group: ”Why should Gurdjieff be so interested in his own wife?” It was not a question of being his wife; that was irrelevant. The question was that he had worked on the woman the most, and she was dying. And it was only a question of a few days – if he could manage to keep her alive her crystallization will happen. Otherwise one knows not into how many circles of birth and death she would have to move.

And he was capable of keeping her alive, because in his system, transfer of energy is one of the basic methods. It can be used to the extreme – that the dying person can live as much as the person who is transmitting his energy to him; if he transmits his whole energy he will die immediately, and the dying person can live long.

Gurdjieff was not trying to sacrifice anybody, but everybody could contribute a little bit of energy to his wife. And it was only a question of a few more days of good health, so she can continue the work. She had almost reached, just a step more and she would not be coming back.

But the Western group could not understand why he was so interested: a man who is enlightened should look equally towards everybody – whether one is his wife or not. But they were ignorant of the fact that he was not looking after his wife, he was looking after a human being who happened to be his wife, but who was in such a position that just a few days’ health would release her forever from every imprisonment. It was worth doing. And he managed it – his wife died enlightened.

This is possible in a school. If we see that somebody has developed so much that there is no harm if everybody else contributes a little energy... so that the person can continue more in the body and come to fulfillment. Alone it is not possible: it is not the way of the monk, it is the way of a mystery school.

And Gurdjieff himself had learned all his techniques, all his experiences, in Sufi schools. He was never a monk; that’s why no religious recognition has been given to him. And Sufi schools keep their techniques very secret. Gurdjieff was the first to bring them to light in the Western world.

Sufis were not happy, and the Western world was shocked because they were used to thinking of religion in a totally different way: ”What he is talking about does not seem to be religion. He’s talking almost as if it is a science” – and he was right, it is a science.

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Just because of religious persecution, many mystery schools have kept themselves underground and have worked without anybody’s knowledge. Even if the husband is part of a mystery school, his wife does not know about it – because the church, the orthodox religion, will immediately start persecuting him. So it is better to keep silent, and do what you want to do in a secret way.

Gurdjieff’s intention was to make all those secrets available to a wider number of people – in which he failed, not because of himself but because of the masses. They are deaf; they cannot listen to anything that is so new and goes against their well-trodden path.

Of this caring for the wife, trying to keep her alive, the ordinary mediocre mind will think, ”This is attachment. He’s too much attached to his wife. And a man who is so much attached to his wife cannot be enlightened.” These are the mediocre minds’ logical standpoints; and other mediocre minds will agree perfectly all over the world. The wife has to be renounced! – but here it is something else. He’s trying to keep her in the body, not letting her die.

In India I have seen the man – he was very much respected – Ganeshvarni. He was born a Hindu but became converted to Jainism. And whenever somebody becomes converted to some other religion he’s very much respected in that religion. In his own religion nobody cared about him. But being converted into Jainism he brings to the Jaina’s heart a satisfaction that ”we are more right than Hindus. Look, a Hindu on his own...” – because Jainas are not missionaries; if somebody asks them, they can convert him, but they don’t go out of their way to convert anybody – ”... a man has come by himself.”

And the man proved really of great strength to go through all the Jaina austerities – so that he defeated the born Jaina aesthetics. He became, unnominated, almost the head of the whole Jaina community.

After twenty-two years – he was in Varanasi – his wife died, whom he had left in the Hindu fold. In his autobiography he says, ”I felt a great relief.” When I read this, where he says that he felt a great relief, I wrote a letter to him: ”Your sentence has many implications. It means you still consider your wife your wife. It means that you feel guilty that you have left her poor, without any financial support, and escaped; that twenty-two years have not been able to make any change in you – your relationship with your wife is still intact.” When he received my letter he was very angry. One of my friends used to be with him – edit his books and do other kinds of work. He wrote to me that he was very angry.

I said, ”That shows that whatever I have written is right. His anger is an agreement. Tell him; otherwise what is there to be angry about? If what I had written was wrong, he could have simply laughed – and he has not replied to me. And from you I hear that he was very angry; and he’s supposed to be nonviolent, gone beyond anger, but he has gone nowhere. He has simply forced a certain discipline upon himself because so much respect is being given, his ego is being fulfilled, and people are saying, ‘What a great man.’ The wife dies, and he does not feel sadness; on the contrary he says, ‘What a great relief.’”

And when I pointed it out to these people who were saying that this shows freedom from attachment, I said, ”This is not the case. It shows he was attached, and he was waiting for her death. In fact, perhaps in his own mind he has murdered her many times; otherwise, why should he feel relief?

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”For twenty-two years that poor woman has been cleaning other people’s houses and somehow managing to live.

He has never cared about her.

And he has become a great saint, but

unconsciously those words ‘what a relief’ show that he is feeling good that the wife is dead. The wife was still his wife.”

Now these people – this kind of atmosphere – are all over the world in all religions.

So Gurdjieff was suspected.... ”Is he enlightened or not? He’s trying to keep his wife alive longer; an enlightened man is supposed to be detached – whether one dies or lives does not matter.” But they don’t understand that he is functioning under a totally different system, and to him it is not a question of his wife; to him it is a question of a growing soul which is just on the border of entering into the whole. If those few days are missed, one cannot say how many more lives she will have to suffer, and whether she will be able to get a master like Gurdjieff – which is difficult.

So if you understand it without prejudice then things are very clear, but if you have already a prejudice

– because it was not only his wife, he tried the same with other disciples. Then again too the problem arose, because all those disciples whom he tried, at their deathbed, to help live a little longer happened to be Russians; because they were the most developed, he had worked on them.

Now that too was thought by the Westerners to be discrimination. How reason can create almost valid-looking arguments, ”He has never done that with any Westerner; but about the Russians he has a different attitude because he himself is a Russian.” Now this is nonsense, that a man of the qualities of Gurdjieff should make a discrimination. But certainly if the man is developed – and those Russians continued to develop better than the Westerners for the simple reason that they were confined to the campus. Their language would not allow them to go out. And they had known Gurdjieff for a long time and had understood the man in deeper ways.

The Westerners came like a fashion. To be with Gurdjieff was fashionable; they came, and after a few days they left him – because to be with him was not an easy job. He was a difficult man, and very irrational in his methods; but his methods are very valid under his system.

So your logic may think that it is absolutely wrong. For example, to Bennett he said, ”Today you dig a trench twenty feet long, four feet deep, two feet wide, non-stop.” – not even a coffee break, no food

– ”You cannot go anywhere, not even to the toilet. You have to dig the ditch non-stop.” So he tried hard: ”The quicker it is done the better, so I am freed.” By the evening it was complete.

Gurdjieff came and he said, ”Good. Now fill it up exactly the same as it was before you started digging. Then you will be free.”

He said, ”My God, this is stupid. If it was to be filled exactly as it was, then it was exactly as it was in the morning. Why this whole torture?” The logical mind cannot understand it.

But Bennett remained with him a long time, and understood a little bit later on what he was doing –

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seemed he would fall down, suddenly at that very moment there was a great rush of energy, a fresh energy became available. And he was surprised – from where? He had not even taken his tea. And with this fresh energy he started digging again.

By the evening he was exhausted, was again on the verge of falling down, and then a second release within his own being – the strongest that he had ever felt in his whole life. But unless you listen to his inner experience, the exercise seems to be absolutely absurd. No sane person is going to remain around Gurdjieff if he has to do such a thing.

Only later on when Bennett was lying down in his bed – he could not sleep the whole night because the second release of energy was so much that it kept him awake, it wanted to do something – he said, ”This is absolute madness. The whole day I have been doing. I have never done such work. I am a writer, not a grave digger.”

Next day he asked Gurdjieff. He said, ”That’s what I wanted you to understand, that there are layers of energy in you. The first layer is the routine daily work. It is enough for your routine daily work.

If you go beyond it, you will come to a point where you will feel exhausted, almost feeling that you will die if you continue; but that is the point to continue, because only then will the second layer start functioning.

”It functions only when you are stubborn enough to provoke it, to challenge it to function. That is your emergency layer. You are tired and you are going to sleep and your house catches fire, and suddenly all tiredness is gone and the whole night you are putting the fire out, and you don’t feel tired at all. The emergency layer has taken over.

”And the third layer is the cosmic layer, which is inexhaustible; once you have touched it, you know it, and you can reach it. Then you can work miracles – which will look like miracles to others, but not to you because you know that you have these possible layers.” Almost everybody dies working in the first layer.

So Gurdjieff has a system of his own which is not of the routine, traditional religions – they don’t have anything. And he should not be judged by other peoples’ criteria; he should be judged by his own criteria. So first try to understand his system and then judge – if you are bent upon judging.

He was one of the most misunderstood men in the world, for the simple reason that everybody was judging according to his prejudiced mind, and here was a man who was trying to bring a secret doctrine into the open for the first time; but he could not succeed.

He failed utterly, not because of himself – you cannot conceive a better man than him.

But the thick skulls of the mediocre men who inhabit the earth are really too thick.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

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WHEN I WAS A SMALL CHILD MY MOTHER TOOK ME WITH HER WHEN GOING SHOPPING.

NEARLY EVERY DAY WE WENT TO A SPECIAL SHOP WHERE THE SHOPKEEPER ALWAYS

GAVE ME, AFTER WE PURCHASED WHAT WE NEEDED, A SWEETIE.

ONE DAY THE MAN FORGOT THE SWEETIE, AND CERTAINLY I WAS IMPATIENTLY WAITING

FOR IT. HE STILL HADN’T REMEMBERED TO GIVE IT TO ME BY THE TIME WE HAD REACHED

THE DOOR TO LEAVE, SO I SAID LOUDLY, ”WELL, I DIDN’T WANT A SWEETIE TODAY

ANYWAY!”

I HAVE ALWAYS CARRIED THIS LITTLE STORY WITHIN ME, AND FOUND MYSELF OFTEN

BEHAVING THE SAME WAY THROUGH THE YEARS. NOW, AS I’M ABLE TO SEE THE

MECHANISM OF IT, I ALSO SEE MANY PEOPLE BEHAVING THAT WAY.

OSHO, WHY ARE WE OFTEN UNABLE TO EXPRESS WHAT WE WANT AND WHAT WE NEED, AND WHY DO WE OFTEN CHOOSE THE LONGER WAY INSTEAD OF THE DIRECT?

You are brought up not to show need, not to show your helplessness, not to show your reality, but to pretend that you are a strong character, that you need nothing, that nobody’s help is needed, that you can manage your life yourself. This upbringing goes deep into your fiber. And almost everybody is working as in your story.

I have heard, two beggars were lying down under a tree on a beautiful summer night, at the full moon. One beggar said, ”I would like to purchase the moon, whatever the cost.” The second beggar said, ”It is not possible because I am not going to sell it – whatever the price.” And nobody purchases the moon. Both know it, but nobody wants to recognize it.

Everybody is trying to be stronger than the other. The first was trying to purchase the moon whatever the cost. The second did not say, ”What nonsense are you talking? – the moon is not for sale.” No.

He said, ”I’m not going to sell it whatever the price.” People are prepared to be hypocrites because the whole of society has masks on their faces. You don’t see the real face of anybody. And if you find somebody who has no mask, who is authentic, not a hypocrite, he disturbs everybody because he reminds you of your own original face.

And you are so rooted in hypocrisy, you have so much invested in hypocrisy, that you cannot pull yourself out. The only way is to condemn this man who has no mask, who simply says the truth as it is.

But in this wide world truth does not pay, is not respected. On the contrary, lies pay, and are respected. You have to be very articulate in lying so that every lie looks as if it is the truth.

But truth itself remains condemned; therefore, very few people manage to have the courage to say the truth and suffer the consequences.

My mother’s brother was getting married for the third time; he was fifty-two. He had already killed two wives – not really, they died themselves – but he was a great lady killer. And he was marrying a girl who was fourteen years old.

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And when I came to know about it I said, ”I will protest.” My mother said, ”Are you mad? He’s your uncle, he’s my brother.” I said, ”That does not matter. In fact, because he is your brother and he’s my uncle, it is more of a duty for me that I should protest.”

Now the whole community tried to persuade me, ”Don’t do this to your own uncle.” I said, ”I am not doing anything. I am simply making it clear that a fifty-two-year-old man should not marry a fourteen-year-old girl. He can marry a fifty-year-old woman and I am perfectly in favor. He can marry a widow. But a fourteen-year-old girl....

”By the time she is twenty-eight he may pop off. This time he is not going to kill the woman; he will be killed. And what is the need? His sons are married, his daughters are married; and this girl is just like a daughter to him, the age difference is so much.” And do you know what they did? They locked me in a room, thinking that I am going to create trouble. And whatever I was saying had some truth – they all understood it, that it was true. But nobody wanted to disturb the smoothness of things. ”He is a rich man and he is a powerful man, and he may take revenge. And why should you stick your neck out unnecessarily? – it is not your concern.”

I said, ”Then whose concern is it? – nobody’s concern! The girl belongs to a poor family. The father is selling the girl – because she is getting married to a fifty-two-year-old man. He’s getting thousands of rupees, so he’s happy. But nobody is worried about the girl, about what she will think

– a fourteen-year-old girl getting married to a man who will leave her a widow soon, when she will be at the prime of her life.”

They said, ”It is not a time for argument.” This was the time when the procession was going. On the horse was sitting my uncle as a bridegroom. And I wanted to stop it on the road and collect the whole town.... ”This should be stopped,,it is criminal.” They locked me in. I tried hard, but nobody would listen to me; everybody had gone to the marriage.

And actually what I had said happened, not many years afterwards, just after two years. The girl was only sixteen and the man died. And then I told them, ”Now lock me in the room.” They said, ”We never knew that he would die so soon.” I said, ”One thing was simply clear: the difference of age was so much that he would die, and the girl will remain a widow almost half of her life. And now she will remain a widow her whole life. So now my proposal is that she should be married.”

They said, ”How can it be? Nobody can marry her. Widows are not married again.” At that time there was no law. Even now that the law has come onto the books, widows remain widows because it is so insulting. If a widow marries, she has lost her honor – and she has to live in The Transmission of the Lamp

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the society. So the law gives the opportunity now, but at that time even the law was not giving any opportunity.

But I said, ”I will try to persuade her.”

They said, ”You should not do such a thing. It is a sin if a widow marries somebody.” I said, ”I don’t see it as a sin. I see it as a sin that now a sixteen-year-old girl may live at least sixty years or more just as a widow. This is one of the root causes of perverted sexuality.” And they said, ”Even if she agrees with you – and in the first place she cannot agree, because it is so dishonorable – where are you going to find a man? No man will be ready to marry a widow.” I said, ”She is only sixteen. What does it matter whether she is a widow or a virgin? It is better to marry a widow – a little experience, two years experience – than marry a virgin who has no experience.”

They said, ”Your mind is simply upside down. Just find a man!” I tried many people. Whomever I spoke to, he said, ”Forget all about it. Why should I get involved in trouble?”

But I managed to persuade one of my servants, because I told him, ”You see, she has so much money. The husband has left much money. You cannot earn that money in many lives. Money, a ready-made beautiful girl, experienced – what else do you want?” The servant said, ”You sound right, but if anybody knows that I have said yes, they will kill me. I am a poor servant. If your father comes to know, my service is finished.” I said, ”Don’t worry, you will not need the service. Once you get married you will not need the service.”

He said, ”What is the guarantee? The whole society will prevent me. And you don’t know these people. I am a poor man; I know these people. On any excuse they can lock me up in the police station – that I am a thief or I am anything. And I am a poor man, I cannot even afford an advocate to fight for me.”

I said, ”You simply say it to me, and keep quiet – so I know that I have a man in my pocket; then I can approach the other client.”

He said, ”If you promise you will not say anything to anybody.” I promised him, ”I will not say, but you will have to marry if the girl is ready.” He said, ”I can marry – but in another town, not in this town.” And when I reached the girl, she was so angry at me: ”You are taking me onto the path of sin.” She closed the doors in my face, and she said, ”Never come back again to this house.” The Transmission of the Lamp

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I said, ”I will come. I will not come in; I will stand just on the steps in case you change your mind –

you can just give two knocks from the inside. And I have a man in my pocket!” And I would go there every day. And I knew that she was standing behind the door, but not gathering courage to give two knocks. Finally she gave the two knocks and opened the door.

I said, ”It is a simple thing. Sixty, seventy years you may live in this empty house, and you have not known anything. That man was sick, old, dying; and I wanted to tell these people, ‘Don’t destroy the poor girl’s life.’ Now you be ready. Don’t be worried.” She said, ”Who is the man?”

And as I told her the name she said, ”No, because he is not of my caste.” I said, ”My God, now I have to find a man of your caste! Is it your life or my life? And what has marriage to do with caste? You need a man and I will give you a young, healthy man. What has caste to do with it but prejudices?”

So I told her the name of the man, but she was not willing: ”He is just a servant.” I said, ”You belong to a poor family. Don’t think that just by getting married to this rich man you have become rich. Don’t forget, just two years before you were almost a beggar. He was earning then –

he was never a beggar.”

And from her somehow my grandfather managed to get the name, and the servant was gone. When I tried to ask where he had gone, where he had been sent, nobody answered. I have never again seen the servant. They must have just given him some money and told him to leave the town. And I could not manage to find another man.

It is a society which lives with prejudices, and it wants everybody to accommodate to its prejudices.

So even a small child behaves in the ways of the elder ones. And this creates so much misery in life that you cannot conceive it.

You want love from your man or from your woman, but you cannot say it. You simply sit reading your newspaper – which you have read three times – just waiting so that the woman should say it, that she should come to you. It is below the dignity of your being a man to go after her. And, of course, a woman always thinks that the man should follow her.

I was just telling one woman – because she is feeling alone, she has no lover. I said, ”There are so many people, just catch hold of somebody.”

She said, ”But that has never been my way. I love the game – that somebody should chase me. And nobody is chasing me.”

I said, ”Now, this is a difficult thing. Then you chase somebody.” She said, ”That is against my whole life. Men have been chasing me, and I have been running –

knowing perfectly well that I will be caught, going slow, stopping to see whether the man is coming or not. But unless somebody chases me, I don’t feel the joy of it.” The Transmission of the Lamp

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I said, ”This is very difficult. Now I will have to find some man and tell him to chase you. I have found the man, but he is so dull that he’s not chasing, nothing.” On the contrary, he told the girl, ”I have gone beyond sex. I am no more interested in love, etcetera; it is unnecessary misery.” And that is not true. But a man has to be strong enough; and this is the strongest point when a man says, ”I have gone beyond sex, beyond love.” So I asked the girl, ”And what happened?”

She said, ”Nothing, we just cuddled each other.”

I said, ”Go on cuddling. Something may happen! One never knows.” The Transmission of the Lamp

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: There are times when you need the open sky

2 June 1986 pm in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

I HAVE DONE OR HAD EVERYTHING OF THIS WORLD THAT I HAVE EVER WANTED.

I SEEM TO HAVE RUN OUT OF AMBITION TO ACHIEVE ANYTHING FURTHER. EVEN

ENLIGHTENMENT APPEARS TO BE A REMOTE AND IMPOSSIBLE GOAL, OUTSIDE THE

REALM OF MY UNDERSTANDING.

I LOVE TO SEE YOU AND TO BE WITH YOU AND I LOVE TO SAIL. APART FROM THESE, IT FEELS LIKE I AM SIMPLY WAITING AND BIDING MY TIME. THERE IS NOTHING TO DO

AND NOWHERE TO GO. HOWEVER I HAVE A SENSE OF SADNESS AND A FEELING OF

UNFULFILLMENT.

PLEASE COMMENT.

Jay, it is one of the most significant moments in the life of man, when he feels that he has run out of ambitions and is simply waiting, not knowing for what.

This is the moment when enlightenment is nearest.

Enlightenment is not a goal. It is not there, far away, that you have to reach to it. You cannot make an ambition of enlightenment: that is the sure way to miss it.

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Enlightenment happens in this gap, when all your ambitions are finished, you don’t know what to do, where to go. In this silence – because there is no turmoil of desire, no hankering for ambition –

enlightenment happens of its own accord. It is a by-product, not a goal.

And that’s why you are feeling sad, unfulfilled; although all the ambitions are finished... why should one feel unfulfilled? There must be something in life which is not part of the ambitious mind, without which one cannot feel fulfilled. You can fulfill all your desires, all your ambitions – still you will feel unfulfilled.

In fact you will feel unfulfilled more than those who are still running after desires, because at least for them there is hope that tomorrow they will reach the goal. Today may be empty, but the illusion, the hallucination of tomorrow keeps today in a certain way hidden from them. But now for you there is nothing which can hide your reality.

You are unfulfilled.

So one fundamental thing is very clear: that even if all the ambitions are fulfilled, man is not fulfilled.

There is something which is not an ambition, and unless you achieve it – and it is not an achievement

– unless it happens to you, the unfulfillment will make you sad.

This situation happens to very fortunate people; otherwise everybody is running after desires, and there are so many things in life to do. There is no time to feel unfulfillment, there is no time to feel sadness. The hope for tomorrow dispels all sadness.

But now you don’t have any hope for tomorrow. Only today is with you, and it is good that you are waiting, not knowing for what. If you are waiting knowingly for something, that is desire, then the mind is playing a game with you. If you are simply waiting, you have come to the end of the road.

There is nowhere to go, what can you do except wait? But wait for what?

If you can answer, ”I am waiting for this or that,” you will miss enlightenment. Then your waiting is not pure. Then it is not simply waiting. If you can be clear about it, that it is a pure waiting which is not addressed to anything, to any object, it is the right situation in which enlightenment happens.

So you are in a beautiful state, unaware of it, because pure waiting and sadness... one cannot see what is beautiful about it. Only the awakened ones can see what is beautiful about it. This is the situation in which, as a by-product, you wake up. Otherwise life remains a spiritual sleep. All desires and ambitions are nothing but dreams in this sleep.

So Chuang Tzu, one of the most absurd but one of the most significant mystics, has a beautiful parable. One morning he wakes up very sad. His disciples ask him what has happened. He said,

”Something has happened, and I don’t think any of you will be of any help – but still I will tell you; you can try to help me.

”In the night I dreamed that I have become a butterfly.” They all laughed.

They said, ”There is no need to worry about it. It was only a dream.” The Transmission of the Lamp

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Chuang Tzu said, ”First listen to the whole thing, that is only the half part. Now I am awake, and wondering perhaps if the butterfly has gone to sleep and is dreaming that he is Chuang Tzu. My problem is whether I am Chuang Tzu who dreamed to be a butterfly, or I am a butterfly who is dreaming to be Chuang Tzu.”

They all fell silent. Logically there seems to be no way. Chuang Tzu’s chief disciple, Lieh Tzu, was out. As he came in people were sitting sadly, the master was sitting sadly. He enquired of a disciple, ”What is the matter? What has happened?” The disciple told him the story; he said, ”Don’t be worried, I will put him right.”

And he went close to him and threw a bucket full of cold water into his eyes. And Chuang Tzu said,

”That’s perfectly right, that’s the answer. But if you were not here.... Today I was lost. Now I know that I am Chuang Tzu; you need not bring another bucket, the water is too cold.” Lieh Tzu said, ”When I am out you should not do any such thing. These people don’t understand you. They were all puzzled, and they were all sad that their master is sad, and all that is needed is cold water so you wake up, whoever you are – a butterfly or Chuang Tzu does not matter – wake up! From any point, either from being a butterfly or from being a Chuang Tzu. All that is needed is WAKE UP! Who cares who you are? We care... your wakefulness, that is our concern.” A sadness, a deep unfulfillment, ordinarily will not look something glorious, not something to be proud of, but I say to you that it is something to be proud of. Just remain in your sadness. Don’t try to change it into something else. Remain in your waiting – don’t try to give it an object.

A pure waiting attracts the ultimate experience we call enlightenment to it. One has not to go to enlightenment as a goal.

Enlightenment comes to you when you are ripe, and this is the kind of ripeness which is necessary.

In the West it is happening to many people, but they do not know, because in the West Lieh Tzu has not entered yet. They are sad, in deep anguish; they are drowning themselves in alcohol, in drugs, in perverted sexualities – they are trying to forget their sadness in all kinds of things. They are trying to find ways somehow to make an object for their waiting.

Perhaps they may become religious, and they may start looking for God; but remember, all those who are waiting for God are waiting for Godot.

I used to think that Godot must be a German word – it sounds German. It hits like a German word.

I used to think it must be German for God and that was exactly the message in the book WAITING

FOR GODOT. Nobody has seen Godot, nobody knows about him. Two persons are waiting, but just to wait for nothing is the most difficult thing in the world.

So they have imagined themselves... and they have helped each other, and one says to the other, ”I think he must be coming.”

He says, ”I also think. It is already late.” And nobody knows about whom they are talking, but nobody wants to bring up the question, ”About whom you are talking?” – because they are both afraid that if The Transmission of the Lamp

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the question is raised then their wound will be opened, that there is only waiting and it is for no one, and it will be very sad.

So it is good. And they go on talking...

”This is not right, this is not gentlemanly – promising and then not coming.” And finally one gets up and says, ”I am fed up with this waiting. I am going to look for him – where is he? What is preventing him from coming?”

The other says, ”Where are you going, leaving me alone here? I am also coming with you.” The whole dialogue starts with no base, but they both get engaged in it.

So I thought it can only be God. I asked my German sannyasin, the oldest German sannyasin, Haridas, ”Is ‘Godot’ the German word for God?”

He said, ”No! the German word for God is ‘Gott’.” I said, ”Even better – already got! No question of waiting. In Godot there is some possibility to wait.

God is a faraway goal, but Gott...?” Only Germans have got it. Nobody else has the guts to say that.

A few will become religious and start waiting for Gott. A few may start philosophizing, that life is meaningless, that life is nothing but anguish, that it is nausea. And the beauty is that Jean-Paul Sartre, who was continuously saying, ”Life is meaningless, just anxiety, anguish, nausea” – he also wrote a book titled NAUSEA – he lived long. Then why go on living if life is just nausea – to write a book about it? If it is meaningless, to argue about it? To get a Nobel Prize for it?

That reminds me of Zeno, one Greek philosopher, a very sharp logician. He has left puzzles which have not been solved in two thousand years. And I don’t think there is any way to solve them. The man has a tremendous mind for looking at things in such a way that he will find puzzles everywhere.

And he preached before Jean-Paul Sartre, two thousand years before him, that life is meaningless, but he was more logical. He said, ”Suicide is the only logical conclusion.” Many of his disciples committed suicide, and he himself lived for ninety years! And when he was dying, somebody asked, ”This is strange. You preach suicide and many of your closest followers have committed suicide when they were young, and you have lived to ninety.” And in those days to live to ninety was very rare. ”What is your answer?” He said, ”I had to live, to preach my philosophy, to teach people that life is nothing, and the only way out is to commit suicide. It was such a burden, but a duty has to be fulfilled. I could not commit suicide, because that would have been destructive to my philosophy and its propagation.” He is saying he lived just to teach people that they should commit suicide.

Many intelligent people are committing suicide. Those who cannot gather courage to commit suicide go mad. Either there are drugs or madness or suicide or a superstitious religion and creating a bogus The Transmission of the Lamp

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idea of God far away, just to give you something to wait for; otherwise it seems like an open wound, and there is no way for it to be healed.

Jay, what I am saying is totally different from what is happening in the West. What I am saying is what has happened in the East in the past ten thousand years, whenever a man has come to such a point that all ambitions are useless – he has lived them, and found that it was not worth it; he reached the goal that he wanted and then found that there was nothing to be found, that it was only a hallucination, an oasis that looked to be real from far away – but as he came closer and closer, it disappeared, and there was only desert.

The East has used it in a different way. Not a single philosopher has preached for suicide. Not a single man in this state has gone mad, or has turned towards drugs. But for centuries it has been accepted as the most potential moment in life. If you can just wait, without waiting for anything; just wait – pure waiting.... Let the sadness be there, let the unfulfillment be there – they cannot stop your enlightenment.

Only one thing can stop your enlightenment, and that is if you make some object for your waiting.

If the waiting is pure, enlightenment is going to happen, and with its happening there is fulfillment, and there is great rejoicing and life has come to its flowering.

That’s why I say this is a tremendously beautiful moment. Don’t miss it.

As far as your love for sailing is concerned, that is not a distraction. In fact it can be a beautiful meditation. Being alone in the ocean, no crowd, no society. You can be silent, you can be relaxed, you can be yourself more easily.

And perhaps you are also fortunate, because all the mad politicians of the world may not allow me and my people to live on the earth. Then the only alternative for us is the ocean. And you, Jay, are the only one knowledgeable enough to help in creating the first ocean city of the world.

I have already asked Hasya to go and see some ocean liners. Jay is finding where ocean liners are available, and what kind will be right for us. And I am thinking more and more that it will be the right thing to do.

We can have our own ocean liner – one, two, three big ocean liners; as many sannyasins who want to come can be there for a few months and work and go back again. And we can stay twelve miles away from land, so no problem arises from anybody. And we can be totally ourselves: no disturbance from anybody.

Whatever methods we want to use, whatever techniques we want to practice, we have our own world.

So there is going to be some big responsibility on Jay, to manage at least five thousand people, and slowly we will arrange two, three more ocean liners, so when our festival time comes, twenty thousand, twenty-five thousand people can be there, and a big oil platform, on which twenty-five thousand people can sit and dance and sing – out of the world. And that will be our total no to all kinds of superstitions and to all kinds of stupidities, for which we have to make compromises unnecessarily just to live on the earth.

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And it may be the beginning. Many other groups may start thinking in the same way, ”Why bother with the earth. Why not move into the ocean?”

So our city will be the first ocean city in the whole of history, and I am certain other cities will follow.

So your love for sailing has come handy in time. You have come here right on time.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

MOST OF MY LIFE I HAVE BEEN LIVING BEHIND SOMEONE. I HAVE BEEN SWITCHING BACK

AND FORTH BETWEEN PUTTING MYSELF ON THE LINE AND HIDING BEHIND SOMEONE

OR SOMETHING. I ONLY HIDE WHEN IT GETS TOO HOT, SO I STAY SAFE. BUT THIS IS NOT

WORKING ANYMORE FOR ME AS I REALIZE WHAT I AM DOING, AND IT FEELS THAT IT IS

TIME FOR ME TO DECIDE TO DO ONE OR THE OTHER.

CAN YOU PLEASE COMMENT?

DON’T see the problem: if it is too hot one has to hide somewhere or other, behind someone or other – and when it is cool, come out!

There is no question of deciding that you will always be out, even if it becomes ice cold, or you will always remain behind, whether there is any need to hide or not. There is no reason at all to decide.

Just move and remain flexible. When it is hot it is perfectly good to open your umbrella. Are you against the umbrella or what? There are all kinds of umbrellas. And when it is not hot, close the umbrella.

Life should be taken very lightly, but we are brought up in such a way that everything becomes a serious problem. Now what is the problem in it? I don’t see any problem. It is simply intelligent.

There are times when you need a shelter, and there are times when you need the open sky.

So live according to the moment, without any predecision. In fact predecisions create trouble.

I was staying in Calcutta in one of my friends’ houses. He believed in Jainism, and he could not eat after sunset, so he told me, ”We will discuss later on. The sun is setting, and I have to eat.” The sun had already set – he knew it, I knew it, but there was no point.... So rather than eating on the dining table inside, because there it was becoming darker, we had to eat on the terrace, where it was light.

After eating I told him, ”You are even deceiving your gods.” He said, ”What do you mean?”

I said, ”Whether you ate inside on the dining table or outside on the terrace, the time was the same, and the sun had already set. Yes, inside it was a little darker, outside it was a little more light, but the sun was not there. You have seen it setting, I have seen it setting, but I did not want to disturb you.” The Transmission of the Lamp

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”But,” he said, ”one has to make compromises.”

I said, ”You have to make compromises, because you have already accepted certain formulas of life; otherwise there was no problem. If you had not decided that it was religious to eat before sunset, there was no question at all. And this formula was made almost five thousand years before when there was no electricity. Now you live in an air-conditioned palace. It is better lighted inside. The formula was made so that you don’t eat in darkness, and some insect falls in it....” And it happens in India in villages, where people eat in the night: they don’t have even a small lamp... utter darkness. You can eat any insect falling, any fly falling – and it was perfectly right at the time. But those people were not aware of electricity.

Now in an air-conditioned house, where there are no flies, no insects, nothing, and you have light at your hand – as much light as you want – it is simply stupid... the very idea of sun or no sun.

Whenever you decide beforehand, there is going to be trouble, because life goes on its own way.

It has no awareness of your prejudices, your disciplines – and it has no obligation to follow them.

And you get into trouble, and then life becomes more and more serious, because you have to make compromises, you feel guilty – that you are weak. If you don’t make compromises you will be broken, you may hurt yourself.

In my understanding life is a very simple, playful, light-hearted thing.

Don’t disturb it by your

seriousness. Move with it.

So when it is hot, don’t eat hot-dogs; have a cold drink. When it is cold then change; there is no need to follow the same principle every day forever. That is making people so miserable, because they won’t change. They think to remain unchanging in their principles gives them certain strength.

They are wrong. It simply sucks all their strength, they are the weakest people on the earth.

They are like small children who have grown up and are still using the pajamas which were made when they were babies. Now they are looking awkward. They are feeling difficulty, they are holding the pajamas all the time, because they are slipping again and again. People are laughing. No, as you grow, your pajamas also should grow; but because pajamas do not grow, you have to change them.

So I don’t see any problem in it, but I can see this is not only one person’s situation. Millions of people are living this way. They make a strict discipline and then get into trouble. Nobody is putting them into trouble but their own principles. If they leave them they feel bad, if they follow them they suffer.

Don’t be too hard on yourself. Be a little more compassionate, a little more loving. So I don’t teach a principled life; I teach you clearly an unprincipled life, a life of intelligence which changes with every change around you. You don’t have a principle that creates a difficulty in changing. Be absolutely unprincipled and just follow life. And there will be no misery in your life.

You can live this whole life with so many songs and so many dances, and out of those songs and dances will arise your gratitude. And I call that gratitude your religiousness – gratitude towards existence.

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But you don’t give a chance for your own life to flower. Your principles are your prisons, and they go on becoming bigger and bigger.

You will be surprised to know that for a Buddhist monk there are thirty-three thousand principles to be followed. Now even to remember them is impossible. To follow them means crippling yourself completely. On each step, at each moment you have to consult your holy book: what to do, what not to do.

Just do whatsoever is pleasant – pleasant to you and pleasant to your surroundings. Just do something which brings a song to you and creates a rhythm around you, of celebration.

This life I call a religious life: it has no principles, it has no discipline, it has no laws, it has only one single approach, and that is to live intelligently.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

LISTENING TO YOU, I HEAR THE CONSTANT ETERNAL MESSAGE OF AWARENESS, RELAXATION, BEING IN THE MOMENT, UNDISTURBED. BECAUSE OF THIS BLESSING FROM

YOU, THIS GIFT OF THESE KEYS TO FREEDOM, I FEEL TO DEVOTE ALL HYPNOSIS

SESSIONS TO THESE SUGGESTIONS. COUNTING FROM SEVEN TO ONE, REMAINING

ALERT, FULLY RELAXED, MOVING INTO THE SILENCE, UNDISTURBED, WATCHING AS THE

MIND AND EMOTIONS ARE FURTHER AWAY. THIS HAS BEEN HAPPENING FOR THE PAST

TEN DAYS.

AM I IN TUNE WITH YOUR GUIDANCE?

PLEASE COMMENT.

YES Kaveesha, you are doing very well. Continue.

Question 4

BELOVED OSHO,

YOU BROUGHT THIS SUTRA OF TILOPA’S TO LIFE IN POONA. WOULD YOU SPEAK ON THIS

AGAIN AS WE GO DEEPER AND DEEPER?

DO NOUGHT WITH THE BODY, BUT RELAX.

SHUT FIRM THE MOUTH, AND SILENT REMAIN.

EMPTY YOUR MIND, AND THINK OF NOUGHT.

DO NOUGHT WITH THE BODY, BUT RELAX.

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word – relaxation. If your body can remain relaxed, more and more, you will be coming closer and closer to home.

Just whenever you have time simply watch whether your body is relaxed or whether there are some tensions somewhere. Close your eyes and start from your feet, watching inside upwards, and you will find that the knees are tense or the back is tense – whichever part feels tense, just suggest to it,

”Please relax.”

It is something very fundamental to understand, that the body is always ready to listen to you – you have never talked with it, you have never made any communication with it. You have been in it, you have used it, but you have never thanked it. It serves you, and serves you as intelligently as possible.

Nature knows that it is more intelligent than you are, because all the important things in the body have not been left to you, they have been given to the body. For example, breathing, or heartbeat, or the blood circulating, or the digestion of the food – they have not been left to you; otherwise you would have been in a mess long before.

If breathing was left to you, you would have died. There is no possibility of your living, you can forget any moment. Fighting with someone, you can forget breathing. Sleeping in the night, you can forget your heartbeats. How will you remember? And do you know how much work your digestive system is doing? You go on swallowing things and you think you are doing a great job. That swallowing can be done by anybody.

In the second world war it happened, one man got a bullet through his throat. He didn’t die, but he could not eat or drink from the throat, the whole passage had to be closed. And the doctors made a small passage by the side of his stomach, with a pipe coming out, and he has to put the food in the pipe, but there was no joy. Even when he was putting in ice-cream... he was very angry.

He said, ”This is... I don’t taste anything.”

Then one doctor suggested, ”You do one thing. First you taste, then you throw it into the pipe.” And that he did for forty years. He would first chew and enjoy and then throw it in the pipe. The pipe is just as good, because in your body too it is just a pipe and nothing else, it is just hidden behind skin. This poor man’s was just open. And it was better than yours because it could be cleaned and everything.

The whole digestive system is doing miracles. The scientists say that if we had to do everything that your small digestive system is doing – a single man’s – we would need a big factory to turn food into blood, to sort out all elements, to send those elements which are needed at certain places. A few elements are needed in the brain, and they have to be sent through the blood stream to the brain.

Others are needed somewhere else, to the eyes. Others are needed somewhere else, to the ears, or to the bones, or to the skin, and the body is doing it so perfectly for seventy years, eighty years, ninety years – and you don’t see its wisdom.

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relaxation. Relaxation should become the basement of the temple that you are creating; and the mind should be emptied of all thoughts.

And just by being aware, thoughts start disappearing. There is no need to fight. Your awareness is enough to destroy them. And when the mind is empty, the temple is ready. And inside the temple the only god worth placing is silence.

So those three words you have to remember: relaxation, thoughtlessness, silence. And if these three words are no more words to you but become experiences, your life will be transformed.

People like Tilopa are always simple, direct. These are like maxims of physics or chemistry. Not a single word can be added to these sutras, and not a single word can be taken out. He has put exactly the right words in the right proportion in the right sequence. The body is relaxed, the mind is empty, the heart is silent; and then what happens is the knowing, the experiencing of the ultimate reality, of the immortal life of eternity.

Without this knowing, we will remain always in fear of death; we will remain always in the clutches of desire; we will remain always in tensions, miseries.

Knowing oneself, one is freed from everything; not only one is freed from everything, one is freed from oneself too. Only freedom remains. This freedom is the cherished idea of all the awakened ones.

Tilopa comes into the same category as Gautam Buddha, Mahakashyap, Bodhidharma, Chuang Tzu.

If one is going to get the essence of all the awakened ones, just to understand Tilopa is enough. His sutras will give you all the secrets possible. You need not wander here and there.

Question 5

BELOVED OSHO,

SIGMUND FREUD HAS SAID THAT A SPOILED CHILD, ESPECIALLY ONE WHO IS LOVED BY

THE MOTHER, HAS AN OPEN ROAD TO SUCCESS.

BUDDHA WAS SPOILED VERY MUCH.

JESUS – HAVING SUCH A JEWISH MOTHER – WAS SPOILED TOO.

YOU WERE COMPLETELY SPOILED BY YOUR PARENTS AND GRANDPARENTS.

IT SEEMS THAT SPOILING AND ENLIGHTENMENT WALK TOGETHER HAND-IN-HAND.

FOR YEARS YOU HAVE BEEN SPOILING US SO MUCH, AND NOW IT SEEMS THAT WE ARE

COMPLETELY, TOTALLY SPOILED.

ARE WE READY FOR ENLIGHTENMENT, OR WILL YOU SPOIL US EVEN MORE?

JUST a little bit more!

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3 June 1986 am in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE MASTER-AND-DISCIPLE RELATIONSHIP NOW, AND IN THE DAYS OF BUDDHA AND BODHIDHARMA? IT SEEMS THAT THOUSANDS OF

YEARS AGO A NEW DISCIPLE, UPON MEETING A MASTER, OFTEN HAD A SUDDEN, DRAMATIC REALIZATION THAT OPENED HIM UP TO A STATE OF AVAILABILITY – UNKNOWN

IN THE PRESENT TIME. IT WAS AS IF THE MASTER COULD SLAY THE DISCIPLE WITH ONE

STROKE OF THE SWORD. TO MODERN MAN, THOSE DRAMATIC JUMPS ARE SO RARE.

HIS AVAILABILITY IS SO PARTIAL, HIS COMMITMENT SO FRAGMENTED, THAT THE MASTER

MUST DELIVER A THOUSAND STROKES OF HIS SWORD TO SLAY THE DRAGON.

PLEASE COMMENT.

There are many things which have changed as the centuries have passed. First, the search for truth used to be the only search that any man of genius would undertake. There was no other search in competition with it. For the man of genius there was only one thing, and that was truth. Naturally the highest quality of intelligence came to the masters. And to be a disciple is not an ordinary thing.

It needs immense intelligence, great trust, total surrender.

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mathematician, to become a painter, a musician. There are many choices. The genius is rarely interested in the search for truth. He comes to realize it only when his search – whatever he was doing – has come to an end and he feels unfulfilled and cannot see a way leading anywhere. All goals are missed because he has made a certain goal, he has achieved it, but it gives no satisfaction

– not even to Albert Einstein.

Although his name will remain as one of the greatest scientists ever, it gave him no contentment.

Inwardly he was frustrated. At the moment of death he said, ”If there is another life – the way the Hindus believe – I would like to be a plumber rather than a physicist.” What he is saying is he would like to be a nobody, a plumber, rather than being a celebrity because physics is enriched by his effort but he remains poor. Physics is certainly enriched. Without Albert Einstein it would have been a different story. He influenced all the spheres of life, but his own life remained empty – and this recognition came too late, and even when it came there was nobody he could turn to.

Geniuses have gone on different adventures.

Secondly, there are very few masters available. There are only teachers because religions have not allowed masters to exist. Every master is a danger to the establishment – religious, political, social

– whatever it is. He cannot say but the truth, and the whole establishment is based on lies, lies upon lies.

So down the ages, slowly, slowly, they have crucified masters, poisoned masters, killed masters.

Slowly, slowly the phenomenon of a master has become very rare.

Even if someone comes to the state of realization he remains silent because very few people like crucifixion, and very few people like to be condemned by the whole world.

And the problem is, unless the master declares himself, there is nobody else who can declare him.

There is nobody else who is above him. So it is up to him to keep silent or to take on himself all the antagonism and venom of the ugly people who are in power all over the world.

So in the first place, very few people reach to that state, because the people who might have reached are working in the world of chemistry, physics, mathematics, astronomy.

There are three hundred and sixty-five departments in Oxford University and each department needs geniuses to go deeper into its subject. And there is not a single department in those three hundred and sixty-five departments for mysticism.

So rarely by chance circumstances does somebody move into the world of mysticism. He may become a mystic, but he remains silent.

And the place of the master has been taken by the teacher, and a teacher is thousands of miles away from truth. He repeats only the borrowed knowledge that he has got from the scriptures, from the elders, from the universities, from the libraries – he collects it, he’s a good collector. And he preaches it as if it is his experience.

These teachers cannot help anybody to realize. On the contrary, these teachers put off thousands of people from the very search because as you come closer to them you find that it is an ordinary man, just a little more knowledgeable.

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But knowledge can be accumulated sitting in a library. There is no need to surrender, no need to trust, no need to be devoted and committed. Books don’t ask you for anything.

And as they come closer they can see that he is an intellectual but not an intelligent man, and these are two different things. An intellectual is just a memory system, his memory is full, he’s a well-fed computer.

Intelligence is a totally different thing. It may not know anything in particular, but its capacity to know is very sharp. Its receptivity towards truth is very clear.

So these teachers of different religions, different cults – first, they don’t help anybody; secondly, they disappoint many to such an extent that people are simply put off – they simply forget all about truth, mysticism, the mystic path, the masters. The teacher has created a barrier for them because he has proved wrong, the whole search seems to be hocus-pocus, and people are exploiting.

Many other things have changed.

One is that in the ancient days, people were simple, innocent, childlike. The work of the master was very easy. They were open and they could be read like a book, and the master could see where a few touches are needed and the man will be awakened.

I will tell you a few stories and you can see the difference – if those things happened today what will happen?

Lin Chi, a great Zen master, had many disciples and he had given them the famous koan of ”The Sound of One Hand Clapping” to meditate on and report whenever they had found the answer.

One disciple was very innocent. He will come everyday to report – anything. He was so simple, just childlike. Sitting with closed eyes, he will think, ”One hand clapping... the sound. It must be the wind passing through the pine trees. It makes a beautiful sound.” And he will run. He has found the answer.

And the master will say, ”You should think a little more. You seem to be in such a hurry. The koan has been given to many disciples, months have passed, nobody has reported except you. Every morning I am waiting for you. And you bring any kind of nonsense. Now what has one hand clapping and making sound got to do with the wind passing through the pine trees? Just get lost! And don’t make such a mistake again.”

But he was so innocent. He will go again. The next morning sitting silently he will listen... the faraway sound of a cuckoo. And he will say, ”Now, I have got it! That old man cannot now say to me

‘get lost.’ ” And he went again.

It went on for two or three months and finally one day when the disciple came very joyously – again he has found something – the master said, ”Keep quiet, because I can see you cannot find the sound of one hand clapping. And after three months experience I know what you must have brought. I will have to do something.”

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The master was a strong man. He took the student – they were on the third story of a building – and threw him from the window. He fell down onto the rocks, multiple fractures. And the master came from the same window jumping behind him, stood by his side, leaned on him and said, ”Did you hear it?”

And for the first time he experienced silence. In such a situation what else do you expect? So unexpectedly the master threw him out of the window. He has become accustomed to getting lost, but this was absolutely new. His mind could not work.... And those multiple fractures, and he was lying down on the rocks, and the master is asking, ”Have you heard it?” And he touched the feet of the master. He said, ”This is the sound? How could I have managed it if you had not helped me? I would have never thought to jump from a three-story building onto the rocks and get multiple fractures; but it is really great, the silence. All words simply disappeared.

Now I know you were not telling me to get lost, you were telling my mind to get lost. I tortured you so much. But I have heard it.”

And the master recognized that he has heard it.

But if you do such a thing today you will be in the court. The person will not hear the sound of one hand clapping, he will run directly to the police station saying, ”This master is not a master, he is a murderer.” And soon the master will be in the prison. And the master cannot explain the phenomenon to any magistrate, to any judge. What can he say?

In the first place the magistrate will say, ”You are asking absurd and stupid things – the sound of one hand clapping!” Now, there is no logical way to explain it. ”Secondly, you threw this poor boy from the third story, and you had the nerve to ask him, ‘Have you heard it?’ You almost killed him.” This won’t work today. The simplicity, the innocence, is no more there. The master cannot do any such thing, even though he sees that this will help, that this can bring you instant realization; but still he cannot do it because it will be illegal, criminal; and instead of you becoming enlightened, he will be enchained. And he will not have any answer before the court.

Those days were different, the people were different. It was the childhood of mankind. In that innocence it was impossible not to become enlightened if you desired it; just the longing and you would have found the right man – they were all around, all over the earth.

Today they have disappeared. Their methods are no more applicable. Man has come to maturity, and he has gained a certain maturity but he has lost something far more valuable – and that is innocence.

There is also a maturity which grows in innocence, but that is a totally different thing. The maturity that man has got today he has got against innocence; he has become more cunning, he has become more clever – not intelligent.

Another master had a big monastery and he had a pet cat. And the monastery had two wings, right and left. Just in the middle was the cottage of the master. And there were one thousand sannyasins

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of the master. Once, the master was out; when he came home, there was a great turmoil because both the wings were claiming that the cat belongs to their wing. And they were fighting.

The master came. They became silent. The master took his sword, and called all the monks from both the wings and said to them, ”If you can say or do something which shows your realization then the cat’s life will be saved; otherwise, I am going to cut it in two, and half the cat will go to the right wing and half the cat will go to the left wing so there will be no more conflict.” There was great silence. Nobody had expected this, and nobody could find any word or any way to show his realization.

The master waited for five minutes and he said, ”It seems there is nobody who can come out and claim his realization. So the responsibility of murdering the cat is not mine, it is yours.” And he cut the cat in two, and gave half the dead cat to one wing, the other half to the other wing. It was a very sad affair.

And just then Sosan, a disciple who had gone to preach in another town, returned. People said,

”Sosan, something very strange has happened. We were fighting over the cat – we should not have done it. And the master caught us fighting about it. And he gave us a chance to save it, but nobody could manage to declare his realization in some act, in some word, in any gesture. So finally he cut the cat in half. The poor cat is dead. She was so beautiful. Now what are we going to do with this dead cat divided into two?”

Sosan said, ”Wait. I will see the master.”

He went directly and slapped the master. The master laughed and said, ”Sosan, if you had been here just ten minutes before you could have saved the life of the cat.” The meaning of this story is that a disciple can become so attuned with the master that his hand is not his, it is the master’s hand; that he is not hitting the master, he is hitting himself. He has, through that gesture, declared himself to be realized, enlightened.

And the master called the whole crowd and said, ”If Sosan had been here, the cat would have lived long. But alas, he was not here. And you idiots, none of you could show or say anything that could have saved the cat.”

Everybody asked Sosan, ”What have you done?”

He said, ”I don’t know what I have done. Now, thinking backwards, I feel amazed. Even to touch the feet of the master is a great blessing. But what came upon me? I simply hit him, slapped his face. I will cut off my hand.”

People had to prevent him, saying, ”Just cool down.” He said, ”But how did it happen? And the master is such a beautiful man. I slapped him and he laughed. I slapped him and he recognized me as enlightened.” And Sosan became the master’s successor.

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You cannot conceive of such a phenomenon today because these so-called teachers – bishops, cardinals, priests, rabbis – will not tell you you are enlightened when you slap them – or do you think they will? Try.

To tell you that, you need a real master, one who knows what has happened. Sosan has become so identified with the master that when the master cuts the cat it seems that he has cut the cat. He is not hitting the master, he is hitting himself.

It took a little time for Sosan to understand what happened, but since that moment he was a different man.

And the master used to say later on, ”It was not a great loss. We lost a cat but we got one man enlightened – so it was not a great loss.”

One more story I will tell you to explain the differences that time has brought.

Kabir, one of the most famous mystics and poets of India, had a son, Kamal. The word ‘kamal’

means a miracle. And he was a miracle because Kabir lived in Varanasi, which is the headquarters of Hinduism – and according to Hindus it has remained eternally the headquarters of Hinduism.

According to them, Varanasi is the oldest city in the world. And looking at Varanasi it seems as if it is the oldest city; you can see layer upon layer of different centuries in different parts of Varanasi.

Kabir lived in Varanasi, but he was not a Brahmin. So no Brahmin high caste Hindu will accept him as a mystic – but it was not a problem to him whether you accept him as a mystic or not. He is. You can close your eyes and say there is no sun, that is up to you; but the sun is there.

Every morning hundreds of people will gather at Kabir’s house and they will sing Kabir’s songs – his songs are beautiful, carrying tremendous meaning. And as the time for breakfast comes close, he will say, ”Don’t go. Please accept a poor man’s breakfast.” His wife and his son were both very much in despair, they have borrowed from every shop, from every person; but how long can it go on? They cannot pay it back. And this man goes on inviting people every day, hundreds of people. And the arrangement is in the hands of the wife and the son. They have said to Kabir thousands of times,

”You should not say this; people are going – let them go, because we are poor. And not only poor, we are now in great debt – which there seems to be no way to pay. And now even shopkeepers are refusing. From where can we get things?”

And Kabir will say, ”You are right. I will not say it.” And the next day he will do the same. Again, ”Don’t go. Just accept a poor man’s breakfast.” Finally in despair, Kamal said to Kabir, ”Now the point has come where I have to start stealing.

Unless I become a thief, these so-called devotees cannot have breakfast.” Kabir said, ”My God, you have the right idea. Why have you not said this before?” Even Kamal was shocked. ”Kabir is a saint and he is saying that stealing, becoming a thief, is a great idea.”

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But Kamal was also his son. He said, ”If it is a great idea then you also have to come with me to help me – because I am not an expert. You are old, you have seen the world, your experience may be helpful. You have to come with me.” He was just seeing what he would say.

Kabir said, ”There is no problem. At night I am absolutely free. You just find out where we have to go, and tonight we start.”

Kamal could not believe that this is going to happen – perhaps at the last moment he will refuse.

But he was also of the same caliber, the same blood – and blood is certainly thicker than water. He chose the richest man’s house, went there, looked all around, and found the place where they can break the wall and enter into the house.

And in the middle of the night Kabir was playing on his flute a beautiful song in praise of God. And Kamal said, ”Stop all this nonsense now. Come with me to do something sensible.” And Kabir stood up and followed Kamal.

Kamal said, ”This seems to be too much. Perhaps he too is hoping to the very last moment that I will say ‘You go home, you are old.’ But I am not going to say it. I am also going to test how far he can go.”

He went and started breaking the wall, and Kabir was helping him. He could not believe that this is happening. He entered the house. And he told Kabir, ”You wait here. I will pass things from inside so you take them out.” And he brought a big bag with many ornaments and valuable things and passed him the bag. Kabir pulled it out. Kamal could not believe that now... and as Kamal was coming out, Kabir shouted loudly, ”Thief, thief!”

Kamal said, ”What are you doing?”

He said, ”I am a man of truth. I will say the truth to the world.” The people in the house had awakened. They ran and they took hold of the legs of Kamal – which were still inside.

In the old days the walls of rich people’s houses in India were very thick – five feet, six feet.

So he had made just a small hole, enough to go through; and he was somehow getting out of it.

And Kabir shouted. The people of the house got hold of Kamal’s legs. Kamal said, ”You have done a great job. You have been participating and now I alone am caught.” Kabir said, ”Don’t be worried. I am taking your head with me. So let them keep the legs. They will never find out who you are.”

He said, ”Great. You are a saint. You are helping in stealing, and now you are murdering me.” And Kabir cut off his head and took the whole bag and the head home.

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Those people pulled the man in, and they were surprised – there was no head. They said, ”We have been deceived. And who is this man? How are we going to find out?” The story is very beautiful and up to this point it seems to be perhaps historical. Beyond this point it seems to be allegorical.

Somebody in the house – a servant – who used to go to Kabir’s communion in the morning, said,

”This man is unbelievable. He looks just like Kamal, Kabir’s son. But there is a way to find out if he is Kamal or not.”

They said, ”What way?”

They said, ”We should hang his body by the side of the road near the Ganges where Kabir and his whole group early in the morning come singing, dancing, to take a bath; hang his body by the side of the road on a tree.”

But those people said, ”How will that help? That won’t help.” He said, ”You just listen to me. You do it! You don’t have any other alternative.” And it is said that the body was hung by the side of the road, and the next morning Kabir came singing his song and dancing with his followers to the Ganges. And when they reached the side of the tree, Kamal started clapping – without his head.

This, I say, seems to be a little too much.

And that’s how he was caught. And the servant said, ”This was the secret, because I knew that if he is Kamal he is so accustomed just out of habit – he cannot forget in twenty-four hours – that he will clap when the whole gang comes dancing, he will not be able to resist – head or no head.” But seeing this, the man whose house was broken into and whose things were stolen, was transformed completely. He did not go to the police. He went to Kabir and fell at his feet, and he said, ”Whose disciples, even after their head is cut off, still remember their devotion, their love, their prayer? I have not come to say anything about stealing. You can take anything you want from my house at any time. Just accept me as a disciple.” And Kabir said, ”In fact the truth is, when he said that he wanted to steal from your house I agreed, because I wanted to steal you. I lost my son, but I have got you. And my son was almost enlightened, so there is no problem about him; he will manage. If he can manage clapping without his head – so many people of my congregation have freaked out seeing Kamal clapping without a head – he will manage to enter into a better and higher plane; but you would have missed if I had not come. The stealing in your house was only a device. All your things are here. You can take them. We are poor, we are beggars; it doesn’t matter that we cannot repay people. They already know when they give something to us that we cannot repay.”

But the man became Kabir’s successor. He devoted all his wealth to Kabir’s work.

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Even apart from the clapping of the hands – which does not seem to be historical – it is very difficult to think of such a thing today.... The whole story that Kabir tells, ”I came to steal in your house because I wanted to steal you, and you were not going to come on your own and I am getting old.

And I have seen you many times, you are the right person to inherit everything that I have.” But today if a saint is caught stealing, neither the man whose house has been burgled nor the state nor the law is going to forgive him.

And he murdered also.

But even though he reported to the government of the day, ”I have murdered my son. If there is any punishment for me, I am ready,” they refused, saying to him, ”It is impossible for a man like you to murder. And if you decide to murder, then there must be something good in it. We are not the ones to decide about it. You are beyond our jurisdiction.” Things have changed so dramatically that today, first, it is difficult to find a master; and then it is difficult to have the intelligence, love, devotion, totality, to give yourself completely without any conditions.

But it is not impossible because it has been happening with me more than it has happened with any of the old masters. I have thousands of sannyasins whose devotion, whose love, is in no way inferior to that of any devotees who have ever existed on the earth; it is far superior.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

FOR THE PAST SEVERAL MONTHS, DAY AFTER DAY, I KEPT GIVING MASSAGES IN A LUXURIOUS RESORT OF CALIFORNIA TO PEOPLE WHO REFUSED TO BREATHE, TO FEEL, TO OPEN UP. NO CONNECTION WAS POSSIBLE, AND I FELT MYSELF MORE AND MORE

DRAINED BY IT.

THE OTHER NIGHT YOU TALKED ABOUT THE TRANSFER OF ENERGY BETWEEN A DYING

PERSON AND THE PEOPLE SURROUNDING HIM.

IN SUCH A CLOSE CONTACT AS MASSAGE IS, IS AWARENESS ENOUGH TO PREVENT THE

ABSORPTION OF NEGATIVE ENERGY?

Yes, awareness is enough. It creates a subtle wall around you. Neither will their energy affect you nor will your energy be drained.

And everyone who is doing such an intimate kind of work like massage should learn to be more and more aware; otherwise, massage is dangerous – because you are massaging so many people. You don’t know them. You don’t know their unconscious. You don’t know their anger, hatred, perversions; their energy can flow towards you very easily, and you don’t have any protection.

Awareness certainly functions as an armor.

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Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

THE OTHER DAY YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT THREE DIFFERENT KINDS OF HORSES, IN REFERENCE TO AS MANY KINDS OF DISCIPLES, IN REGARD TO THE USE OF THE

WHIP. I COULDN’T FIND OUT TO WHICH GROUP I BELONG, AND IMAGINE MYSELF BEING

TEMPORARILY IN EACH ONE.

OSHO, TO WHICH GROUP OF DISCIPLES DO I BELONG?

Your feeling may be right. It is not necessary that you should belong to one group. Those categories can be overlapping, sometimes you can function as one category, sometimes as another category.

But this understanding and this feeling can be used to belong to the best category. Whenever you are feeling you are belonging to something lower, find out what are the causes that are preventing you from being your best self. And you will be able to find out, because if you can feel this, it is an indication that you have good feeling, sharp feeling. You will be able to know why you are not in the best category in this moment. Then whatever the cause, drop it; and whatever the cost, drop it; and move to the best category.

Just the shadow of the whip should be enough.

Question 4

BELOVED OSHO,

IN POONA I REMEMBER YOU WOULD SOMETIMES SAY TO SANNYASINS, ”GOOD! FINALLY

YOU HAVE COME. I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU.”

OSHO, DO YOU KNOW OUR PAST LIVES?

If I want to know, I can know, but ordinarily I avoid knowing because your present is enough!

Question 5

BELOVED OSHO,

I LISTEN TO YOU AND WATCH THESE MYSTERIOUS MEETINGS FROM THE SOFT DARKNESS

I KNOW AS MYSELF: SOMETIMES SILENT, BUT MORE OFTEN THAN NOT, A VARIABLY

CLOUDY SKY OF THIS THOUGHT AND THAT. SUDDENLY YOU SAY MY NAME, AND ALL HELL

BREAKS LOOSE – BELLS RING, A WHISTLE BLOWS, AND THE CARNIVAL COMES TO LIFE

AS IF POWERED BY A HIGH VOLTAGE CURRENT, MILLIONS OF LIGHTS, THOUSANDS OF

RIDES, AND HUNDREDS OF CHILDREN RUNNING ALL AROUND IN WILD ABANDON.

I LOOK FOR THE WATCHER, BUT HE IS ON THE FERRIS WHEEL SCREAMING WITH DELIGHT.

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OSHO, WHEN THE LIGHTS GO ON, IT IS CERTAINLY A CARNIVAL OF CELEBRATION INSIDE, BUT MUCH TOO MUCH FOR ME TO WATCH AT THIS POINT. SO FOR THE TIME BEING, ALL I CAN POSSIBLY DO IS LAUGH ALONG WITH YOU AND FEEL GRATEFUL.

Milarepa, everything is right in what you have written in your question except one thing. You should not use the phrase ”hell breaks loose,” that is not right; ”heaven breaks loose” – although there is no phrase like that. But language is a game. We can make it up. And at least here only heaven breaks loose, not hell.

If you were a little aware, you would have watched that phrase. It has a wrong connotation. So just change that, and you are doing everything perfectly well.

Don’t be worried about awareness.

Laugh totally.

Soon awareness will be also coming in.

Question 6

BELOVED OSHO,

ALTHOUGH I SEE MYSELF LISTENING TO YOU WITH AN OPEN HEART AND A SILENT MIND, I HAVE THE FEELING THAT MY MIND IS TRANSFORMED BUT NOT MY BEING.

HOW CAN I MANAGE A HEART UNDERSTANDING THAT HELPS ME TO LET GO?

Don’t be greedy. If the mind is understanding, help the mind to understand it. Mind is bad only when it is your master, bad only when it hinders you from understanding; but if it is helping your understanding then that understanding will sink slowly, slowly, into the heart. You cannot do anything about it, and there is no need to do anything.

The mind is not fighting. That’s enough.

The mind is available. Soon the heart will follow.

Mind opens, it is a good beginning.

Some time, when it is ripe, the heart opens; and some time, again when it is ripe, you will come to your own being. Things are very natural, if the mind is understanding – that is the basic condition.

The problem arises only when the mind is trying to prevent understanding, afraid that if it understands then the heart will soon become the master. Of course the heart is never afraid to open up the path for your being.

So as things are going with you, it is perfectly good. Just wait for the right moment. And you cannot decide the right moment.

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The very understanding of the mind, at a certain point, creates the right moment.

It is just like heating water. At a hundred degrees it evaporates. It will not evaporate before, even at ninety-nine degrees.

So there are laws of inner life, that at a certain degree of understanding the mind gives way. You just go on absorbing in the mind and feel happy that your mind is not antagonistic to you, that it is a friend and not a foe.

Question 7

BELOVED OSHO,

THERE IS THIS VAGUE FEELING THAT WHEN I WAS A YOUNG CHILD I WAS MORE CLEAR, AWARE AND OPEN THAN I AM NOW. TODAY WHEN THERE IS JOY, A CERTAIN DEGREE

OF AWARENESS COMES BACK EASILY. IT LOOKS LIKE FEAR AND SUFFERING MADE

ME BECOME CLOUDED AND UNAWARE, IN ORDER NOT TO BE TOUCHED ... AS IF MY

DARKNESS WERE ABLE TO EXTINGUISH MY LIGHT.

IS A CERTAIN CLIMATE NECESSARY FOR AWARENESS TO GROW?

Certainly a certain climate is necessary, and that’s what we are trying to do – to create a certain silence, a certain devotion, a certain love, a certain courage, a certain longing for the unknown. All these constitute the climate.

And whenever the climate is ready, awareness appears.

There is an old Egyptian saying, ”Whenever the disciple is ready, the master appears.” It is of profound meaning.

Everything appears only when you are ready for it. You cannot bring anything before its season, and you should not unnecessarily try for it because that will bring failure, frustration, and may put you off from the whole search.

So just find out what kind of climate is needed, and create it. Even without your knowing, I am trying to create the climate in which awareness will appear on its own – and when it comes on its own it is such a beautiful experience, such a gift from the unknown, that one becomes full of gratitude for existence.

And this gratitude is the only prayer that I can accept as religious.

Question 8

BELOVED OSHO,

YOU SPOKE OF THE HIDDEN TREASURES STORED IN THE SUPERCONSCIOUS. ARE THERE

ANY TREASURES IN THE UNCONSCIOUS OR IS IT JUST A PANDORA’S BOX FULL OF

AGONIES? SOMETIMES I FEEL I SUPPRESS HAPPINESS AS WELL AS NEGATIVE EMOTIONS.

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The treasures are only in the superconscious.

The unconscious is a Pandora’s box.

And

if sometimes you repress happiness, then there must be something wrong in that happiness; otherwise, why should you repress it? It may have some implications which are not right.

The very effort to repress it shows that you can see something is wrong in it. But you can repress only in the unconscious.

So first, you see if your happiness has something wrong in it. Perhaps you are happy because of somebody else’s misery, perhaps you are happy because others are not happy. There must be some reason which is not right. So first that happiness becomes a wrong thing, and when it moves into the unconscious – which is full of garbage, stinking – it will be pressed by all that garbage into the unconscious. And if you want to get it back again, you will not find it the same; it will not be happiness at all. Perhaps it was not in the first place. And once it is repressed in the unconscious, the unconscious itself changes its character.

And the unconscious is so vast and so big and so powerful, that a small happiness will be crushed by it. It will no more be happiness.

So never repress any happiness at least. If you want to repress, repress unhappiness, repress your misery. If it has become a habit that you cannot resist repression, then repress something wrong.

But don’t repress something which can be enjoyed.

Happiness should be enjoyed.

I have told you the story of one of my teachers. He was a Sanskrit scholar and a very funny looking fellow – very fat, a round face, and he used an old type of headgear, the safa, which is very long – it makes the head look really big; it is almost thirty-six yards of cloth, that one puts on round and round and it makes it bigger and bigger. But he was very simple, almost a simpleton. The Hindi word for simple is ‘bhole’, so we used to call him ”Bhole Baba.” And whenever he would come it was enough to trigger him, just to write on the blackboard ”Bhole Baba.” And he would go mad, and he would throw the chair and he would say, ”I am not going to teach this class.” And he would shout and he would throw a tantrum, and we all enjoyed it – because he never asked who had written it. That was the most beautiful thing about it, he never asked who had written it, he never punished anybody for it.

In fact, we used to have small stones with us so as he is wiping it off we would be throwing stones at his back. And he would say, ”I will see you. First let me finish it.” And still he would not inquire who has been throwing stones.

He died. I must have been not more than nine or ten years old. So I went with my father. And he was lying down dead with all his cloth. Seeing his dress, I was almost going to burst into laughter, but my father was holding my hand and pressing it, saying, ”Keep quiet!” He had taken my promise at home that I would not do anything.

And I had promised him. So I kept it. But it was really hard to see him dead and still with this thirty-six-yard-long headgear.

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And then suddenly his wife came from inside and fell over him, and said, ”Ah, my Bhole Baba.” That was too much! She was hearing continuously that we were taunting him, ”Bhole Baba” – we were writing on his door ”Bhole Baba,” and he was washing it off. And whenever we were passing by we would shout ”Bhole Baba!” And his wife was so angry sometimes. She would say, ”You will be satisfied only when he is dead.” But that ”Bhole Baba” got into her mind also, because thousands of times she has heard it. And it was so fittingly descriptive of the man, that I simply pressed my father’s hand and I laughed.

He was very angry. He took me away and he said, ”You promised me.” I said, ”I promised you, but I was not aware that his wife would play such a trick. ‘Bhole Baba’ was his nickname and he was so much against it that the whole period would be destroyed if ‘Bhole Baba’ was mentioned. And we tried him and tortured him, and now the poor man is dead and his own wife is doing the same trick on him. I could not contain myself; that’s why I did not allow you to press my hand, I pressed yours. I meant that this is time you should also laugh.” He said, ”From now onwards you are not going to anybody’s death, when somebody’s body is being taken to the crematorium.”

I said, ”I will not go with you. That is decided. But I will go on my own.” In fact that is the only procession at which nobody prevents you. If you go into some marriage procession people prevent you, because you are not invited. If you go to some party, people prevent you because you are not invited. That is the only open procession, and I didn’t want to miss it. If I had not been there the whole thing would have been missed; nobody understood because all the people there were grown up. They were not his students. I was the only student.

But everybody was asking me, ”What happened to you?” And when I told the story to all the people they all started laughing. They said, ”It was worth laughing at.”

Even my father was laughing. He said, ”The story is certainly worth laughing at, but the situation is not.”

I said, ”When there is something to laugh at, don’t bother about the situation because then you have to repress it.”

From my very childhood I have been against repressing any joyful feeling that comes to you. Why throw it into the garbage of your unconscious? And if you throw it into the unconscious, it is not true happiness; there must be something in it of which you are afraid, something which makes you repress it. Otherwise it is such a human phenomenon to share.

But once you repress, remember, everything repressed goes to the unconscious, and that dark hole changes the quality of everything.

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3 June 1986 pm in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question

BELOVED OSHO,

A FEW DAYS AGO I WAS FEELING FULL OF ENERGY AND A LOT OF LOVE FOR MYSELF.

THE OPPORTUNITY AROSE FOR ME TO LET MYSELF FACE MY NUMBER ONE DEVIL: JEALOUSY. I WENT FOR IT WHOLEHEARTEDLY, AND THE RESULT WAS TO SEND MYSELF

EVEN HIGHER: I FELT EUPHORIC AND SO GRATEFUL.

I AM STILL LEFT WITH AN ALMOST UNCONTAINABLE ENERGY WHICH SEEMS COMPOSED

OF SENSUALITY AND OF LOVINGNESS.

IF I GO INTO IT, I RISK HURTING OTHER PEOPLE; BUT THE ALTERNATIVE SEEMS A COMPROMISE. SITTING AND WATCHING IT DRIVES ME BANANAS!

OSHO, MY MAIN QUESTION IS: WHAT IS IT THAT I HAVE LEARNED FROM THIS EXPERIENCE, AND HOW TO USE THIS SO AS NOT TO BE TAKEN OVER AGAIN BY JEALOUSY? HOW TO

ENJOY THE FREEDOM TO EXPRESS SENSUALITY WITHOUT COMPROMISING, GETTING

FRUSTRATED OR SLIPPING ON THE BANANA?

Vivek, it has been a very meaningful experience for you, one of the key experiences which can help one to change one’s energy totally.

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George Gurdjieff used to find the first thing in his disciples – the characteristic that was their number one enemy because their number one enemy contains the key which either can destroy them if they don’t understand it or can bring a transformation.

You faced jealousy. Jealousy is one of the most dangerous elements in human consciousness, particularly in the female mind.

To face your number one enemy without hiding it, without whitewashing it, without trying to interpret it favorably – that you are right, the situation is such that of course you have to be jealous – without in any way satisfying yourself by explanations that the jealousy was right.

If you satisfy yourself that it is right, it is going to remain and it will become more powerful; then the energy that you are feeling now, you would not feel, this energy would have been absorbed by jealousy, it would have remained contained in jealousy, and would have remained looking for a moment when it could explode – to find some excuse. But because you faced it without bringing any explanation to explain it away... you did not justify it, you simply faced it as a fact, that you have this jealousy... and you accepted it, that it has something to do with you, not with anyone else, that nobody else in the whole world is responsible for it.

All those are excuses to protect it.

You did a good job, and the result is that just being watchful the jealousy disappeared.

And that’s what I have been telling you continually for years, that nothing has to be done; simply face a problem the way a mirror reflects something, with no judgment.

And because it was your number one enemy, it contained a lot of energy. Now it is gone, and the energy is free. That’s why you are feeling more alive, more loving, more sensuous.

Remember one thing: again you can commit the same mistake. Don’t condemn sensuality. It has been condemned by the whole world, and because of their condemnation the energy that can flower in sensuality moves into perversions, jealousy, anger, hatred – a kind of life which is dry, with no juice.

Sensuousness is your very life. That is the difference between you and a stone – because the stone is not sensuous. The more sensuous you are, you more alive you are. And if your whole energy is released in loving, in being playfully sensuous without holding yourself back, without any fear –

there is nothing to be afraid of. Sensuousness is one of the greatest blessings to humanity; it is your sensitivity, it is your consciousness; consciousness filtering through the body is what sensuousness is.

Remember never to compromise. Compromise is absolutely against my whole vision.

You see the people. They are miserable because they have compromised on every point, and they cannot forgive themselves because they have compromised. They know that they could have dared, but they proved cowards. In their own eyes they have fallen, they have lost self-respect; that’s what compromise does.

Why should one compromise? What have we got to lose? In this small life, live as totally as possible.

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compromise. Your whole mind will go for compromise because that’s how we have been brought up, conditioned.

Compromise is one of the most ugly words in our language. It means, ”I give half, you give half; I settle for half, you settle for half.” But why? When you can have the whole, when you can eat the cake and have it too, then why compromise?

Just a little courage, just a little daring – and only in the beginning. Once you have experienced the beauty of non-compromising and the dignity that it brings, and the joy, and the integrity, and the individuality, for the first time you feel that you have roots, that you have a center, that you live out of your own, you don’t live like a businessman – living life like a businessman is prostitution.

Live like a warrior.

This way or that, but never compromising. It is better to be defeated, but totally, than to be victorious through a compromise; that victory will not give you anything except humiliation, and the defeat without compromise will still give you dignity.

Life is mysterious.

Here sometimes victory is just shameful and defeat is a dignity because one would not compromise.

So whatever sensuality you feel, whatever love you feel, just don’t keep them in your mind; otherwise, they get sour, they get bitter. Express them.

And remember one thing, that expression is always a tremendous release of your own energy; otherwise, your energy goes on accumulating and becomes a burden. And when it becomes a burden, you start throwing the responsibility on other people because you are sad, you are heavy, somebody must be doing something wrong. If you are sad, you are wrong; if you are joyful, you are right.

It has been almost a criterion to me that anybody who is sad, complaining, grumpy, is wrong, is bound to be wrong. He may find a thousand and one reasons why he is sad. I don’t accept it. He is sad because he has not allowed his life to blossom. He has been holding back. Even when people want to love each other, they are holding back – because all the religions have poisoned love. They have not been able to destroy it, but they have succeeded in poisoning it.

And sensuality is so much condemned, and if you condemn sensuality then what is to remain? Then man remains like a marble statue – you touch his hand and you feel like you are shaking hands with a dead branch. All his energy has shrunken in himself – rather than blossoming in flowers, it has become complexes within himself which are making him sad.

At least my people should never think of compromise. Compromise for what? Be true. Be honest.

Be sincere. Love as much as you can. Enjoy your sensuality – it is a gift of nature. And be watchful, because what you are enjoying is everybody else’s right too. Otherwise there will be conflict. Because of that conflict people compromise.

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If you enjoy intense living, you should appreciate everybody who is living intensely. With whom he is living does not matter – because we are all one life, one life force.

All the traditions have been against expressiveness because a person who is expressive attains a certain kind of solidity, a freedom. You cannot enslave him. He lives according to his own nature.

You cannot force him. You cannot make him a husband or a wife. That’s why the society has tried hard to repress, because the repressed person is so much reduced – he’s almost like the castrated bull.

You cannot use a bull in a bullock cart. The bull is too powerful. He can take your bullock cart and you anywhere, where you never wanted to go. You cannot control him. And if he comes across a beautiful female, he will simply jump out of your bullock cart. What happens to you and your bullock cart, that is your business. He will start a love affair immediately, not bothering at all that you are under the bullock cart, the bullock cart is upside down.

Man must have learned very early that bulls cannot be used, they are useless.

But they found the idea of why they are useless, because they are so full of energy, and so sensuous, and so loving.

People started castrating them, and once a bull is castrated you have reduced him to a totally different being that he was not destined to be. Now you can use him in a bullock cart. You can enslave him. You can use him in farms, and wherever you want. You have destroyed his possibility of regenerative forces. You have done a crime against nature. Now the cow may be passing by his side, he will not even look at her, he doesn’t have energy.

In my childhood when I saw the farmers castrating the bulls, I inquired what is the matter. My father said, ”When you are old enough you will understand.” I said, ”I don’t want to wait. I want to understand now, why these poor creatures are being tortured.” He said, ”You just wait.”

And when I understood, I told him that, ”You have not only been doing that to bulls, you have been doing that to human beings too – in a different way, not physiologically but psychologically.” All the religions are castrating human beings. For example, all over the world ladies are told that while making love they should not show any sign of joy. What nonsense. Even while making love they are not allowed to show any signs of joy because that is what prostitutes do, not ladies – and this is compromise. Being ladies they compromised. So when the man is making love to them, they are lying down with closed eyes, because even to open their eyes is not right for a lady – to see such an ugly scene, that the beast on top of them is doing push-ups. It is not lady-like. It is better to keep your eyes closed. And don’t move.

For thousands of years women had no knowledge of orgasm – and even today in the East, almost ninety-nine percent of women don’t know what orgasm is. And the same was the story all over the world because they never moved, they never enjoyed, they never allowed their body to dance.

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There is a difference between man’s and woman’s sexuality. Man’s sex is local, it is genital. Woman’s sexuality is more sensuality than sexuality, it is all over her body. Unless her whole body participates, she will not experience the orgasmic joy – which is the greatest gift nature has given.

And it is really shocking and surprising, that because man destroyed the woman, because she was not allowed to enjoy lovingness, he himself was alone making the push-ups. There was no other.

I have heard of a drunkard who was walking on the beach... and then he saw a man doing push-ups.

The drunkard looked down, looked from this side and that side, went around, tapped the man, and said, ”Boy, your girl is gone. Why are you unnecessarily tiring your body? Go home.” But this is really the situation, and the by-product is that these same so-called gentlemen who produced this ugly situation – that they made their own wives non-sensuous, dry – created many things because these women became angry, nagging, fighting. These were just perversions of the energy that could have become flowers, fragrance. And on the other hand, these gentlemen had to go to prostitutes; they created prostitutes – which was another ugliness. To force women just for money, to sell their bodies – because with their own wives they themselves could not get the orgasm.

Ejaculation is not orgasm. They could produce children but they could not produce orgasm.

Orgasm needs both the partners in a sensuous dance.

To create the ladies, they had to reduce other poor women into prostitutes. It is such an ugly society, so nauseating, if you look into its structure and the way it has behaved and destroyed man.

At least my people should be totally free. They should love. And there is no lady here, and there is no gentleman here; here are only men and women, real men and real women.

And be sensuous. Enjoy life to its fullest, and help others also to enjoy the life to its fullest. And you will find, strangely, that because of your love, your sensuousness, all your ugly traits have disappeared because they no more get any energy – they were perversions, they were by-products of your compromises. No compromise for any reason – respectability, honor, all are nonsense.

How many million people have lived before you? And do you remember a few names who were very respectable, very honorable, and they had sacrificed their whole life for their honor and their respectability, and now even their names?... Nobody knows whether they ever happened or not.

In Jaina mythology there is a very beautiful story. I have loved it very much. In Jaina mythology if a king conquers the whole world he’s called the chakravartin. chakra means wheel, as if the world is a wheel – it is a wheel – and he has conquered it completely. And the mythology is that in heaven only chakravartins are allowed to make their signatures on a golden mountain.

One man became a chakravartin, and he was very happy that now he will be able to write his name on the golden mountain. Very few people – once in a while – have been able to write their names.

The mountain is enormous. As he died and entered the gates of heaven, the doorkeeper said, ”You have to sign your signature on the golden mountain, but go alone. Don’t take anybody with you.” He said, ”Why? I would like a few of my friends who have died before me and who must be here to be with me; otherwise, what is the joy of signing on the golden mountain? Nobody is watching you, nobody will ever know that you have signed there.” The Transmission of the Lamp

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The doorkeeper said, ”Listen to me. I have been on this post... before me was my father, and this is our heritage. For centuries our family has kept this post. And to everybody who has gone to sign, this was suggested; and everybody wanted the same that you are wanting. And afterwards, everybody thanked us, ‘It was so kind of you to have prevented me from taking anybody.’ So please go alone.”

Reluctantly he went in, and the mountain keeper opened the doors and said, ”There is a difficulty.

The mountain is full of names. There is no space. And this is not only with you; before me my father was here, before him his father was here. This is our family post. And I have heard that since centuries this has been the case, that the mountain is full. So every time a new person comes, first you have to erase one name and then sign your name. There is no other way; there is no space.” Then he recognized that it is good that he has not brought his friends to see. A great mountain and there is not even a small space for his signature.

But he was – he must have been – a man of understanding. He said, ”I will not erase, because what is the point? Somebody will come tomorrow and erase my name and will sign his. This is all futile. So my being chakravartin, a world conqueror, is useless and I was thinking that it happens only once in a while. I was wrong. This whole mountain is full of signatures.” Just a small life you have. Don’t bother about any respectability, don’t bother about any honor, don’t bother about what others will say. Simply listen to your own energy and follow it. I call it courage.

Be sensuous, be loving, and if you can be totally loving and sensuous there is a possibility one day to transcend, to come to a point of awareness where all your energy turns into just a flame of awareness – all your sensuality, all your sexuality, all your love, everything in you – turns into a flame that has been called enlightenment, awakening; a flame that remains forever in the universe without taking another form again, because it has used the whole potential of forms. People are being born to the same class again and again. It is not dignified.

If you live totally, once is enough.

So Vivek, you did perfectly well with your jealousy. Now the energy is released – because you did not get into jealousy; otherwise that energy would have burned you, wounded you, made you sad, harmed you, and poisoned others – because we are not so separate as we think.

We are very deeply connected, and particularly here with me.

You become more and more

connected with each other. The differences drop, nobody bothers what is your religion, what is your nation, no barrier remains. People come closer and closer. That means they are affected also.

If one person gets sick, becomes sad, feels nauseous, then everybody else will be affected in some measure or other. If one is joyous – dancing, singing, playing on his guitar – then everybody else also feels a certain song in his heart.

And I want you to become more and more close, almost like one soul in different bodies.

You have been struggling with jealousy for years. Now you have found the key.

Next time if jealousy comes, immediately catch hold of it; and the same that you have done with enemy number one, you can do with all the enemies that come into your mind. They are smaller enemies, they will disappear even sooner, they don’t have that much energy.

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But when energy is left then this problem is bound to arise – what to do with this energy. Up to now it was used by, sucked by, jealousy. Now it is all over your body. You feel more sensuous, you feel more loving. And you, up to now, have remained in a rigid way, always keeping yourself a little off from people. It is not your fault; it is the misery of all England! So drop this England too. Just be human.

And don’t wait, because that energy unexpressed can create problems. Express it – dance, sing, love, whatever comes to your mind to do.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

WHEN AN ARTIST IS ON THE STAGE OR PAINTING, SOMETIMES SUDDENLY THE MIND

STOPS AND THERE IS NO ONE ON THE STAGE OR DOING THE PAINTING. AS YOU SAY, THE CREATIVITY PASSES THROUGH THE ARTIST WHILE HE IS A HOLLOW BAMBOO.

THEN A BEAUTIFUL WORK OF ART IS DONE BECAUSE NO ONE BUT EXISTENCE HAS DONE

IT.

I WONDER IF IT IS LIKE A GLIMPSE OF ENLIGHTENMENT. BUT IT LASTS THE TIME OF A SOAP BUBBLE. BACK TO NORMAL, THE POOR GUY IS BACK IN THE DESERT OF DAILY

LIFE WHICH IS VERY MEDIOCRE, AND HE DOESN’T HAVE THE PASSPORT TO REACH THE

REALITY OF HIS GLIMPSES. THE WORK OF ART STAYS AT THIS HEIGHT – IT IS FAR BEYOND

THE CREATOR – BUT THE POOR FELLOW STAYS DOWN THERE IN THE VALLEY. SOMETIMES

HE CAN RIDE ON ANOTHER SOAP BUBBLE, BUT HE’LL SOON BE BACK IN THE VALLEY.

MOZART, BEETHOVEN, LEONARDO DA VINCI, VINCENT VAN GOGH, AND MANY OTHERS, BURNT THEMSELVES IN THIS SEARCH, BUT IT SEEMS THEY DIDN’T ARRIVE ANYWHERE.

IS IT BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T FIND THE RIGHT MASTER?

AND ANOTHER QUESTION ARISES: IF EXISTENCE IS GENEROUS ENOUGH AND HAS GIVEN

THOSE GUYS ANOTHER CHANCE, ARE THEY AROUND NOW?

OSHO, WHY DOESN’T THE BOAT OF CREATIVITY HAVE ENOUGH FUEL TO REACH THE

SHORE OF ENLIGHTENMENT?

The creative people – whether painters, musicians, poets or dancers – reach to a place once in a while that can be called ”a glimpse of enlightenment” but it is only a glimpse. It is not a realization.

They have not prepared themselves for it. It has come accidentally.

The painter was absorbed in painting. He was so absorbed in painting that he forgot himself, forgot the ego, forgot his thoughts, and without knowing it he was in a state of meditation, and accidentally a door opened and he saw the beauty of the beyond.

But because he is not prepared, he cannot remain in meditation. He does not even know the ABC of meditation; he may never have heard the word. He was doing something else. It was just because he got lost in his work – in dance, in music, in singing – he fulfilled the condition for a glimpse.

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Soon he will be back – when the dance is over, when the painting is complete, he will be back in the desert of daily life. And he will be worse than the ordinary man because he has known something which the ordinary man has not even dreamt of. His misery is more. He has seen the door open, he has seen the door closed, and he feels utterly helpless.

Now a great problem has arisen for him, that there is something far more beautiful than any painting, far more musical than any music, far more poetic than any poetry. There is a dance beyond dance, but how to reach there? All that he can manage is his ordinary dance. In his ordinary dance, if he becomes conscious that he’s doing it to get the glimpse back, he will not get the glimpse because the condition will not be fulfilled, he will not be lost in the dance. Technically he will be doing the dance but his ego will remain watching for the window to open; it will not open. It will open only when he forgets himself.

The problem is that this situation has been only in the West, not in the East.

The East is poor, immensely poor, but in a way tremendously rich. In the East if the poet or the painter or the musician had the glimpse, he would not bother about the dance or the painting, he would look for a master, because it is understood – it is in the atmosphere, and it has been there for thousands of years – that creativity can give you a glimpse but not more than that. If you want something that becomes part and parcel of you, then you have to find a master, a path; you have to change yourself, your ways of living. You have to bring awareness to everything that you do, and you need somebody to tell you – not only to tell you, but somebody whose presence becomes a proof that you are not chasing some shadow, some hallucination.

The West is poor. It has created great artists, but unfortunately in the West there has been no atmosphere for enlightenment, no masters who could show you the way. The Western artists have suffered more than anybody else – they have gone mad, they have committed suicide, they have drowned themselves in drugs. The Western artist suffered more than anybody else in the West, because he had a glimpse of the beyond and he could not manage to make that glimpse a reality which remained twenty-four hours with him like the heartbeat. His anguish is tremendous.

In the East I have not found the name of any painter, any sculptor, any musician, any poet, who has gone mad, who has committed suicide, who has drowned himself in drugs, for the simple reason that in the very air it was possible to find a master. And if you had a glimpse, you were fortunate because you would know that something exists beyond, you had just to find the bridge to go there, to just be there.

The division of East and West has been one of the greatest tragedies. It should be dissolved.

The Eastern science of inner being should be brought to each Western seeker or potential seeker or possible seeker.

And Western science and technology should reach to every nook and corner of the East to destroy the poverty, the uneducatedness.

Both have something and both are missing something. And this is really amazing, that what the East is missing the West has, and what the West is missing the East has.

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It is a simple question of understanding, to let there be a meeting of East and West so that the outer poverty disappears from the East and the inner poverty disappears from the West. The whole earth can be rich, rich in both ways. There is no need for choice, no need to choose; both can be ours, and both should be ours. There is no conflict.

My whole work is basically this, but neither is the East ready to listen to me nor the West. It seems to be really an insane situation.

Just the other day Anando was giving me information that millions of tons of butter and other foodstuffs have again accumulated in the European market. And just a few months before they had destroyed so much foodstuff that in destroying it they had to spend four million dollars. And again it has accumulated – the surplus. They cannot stop the farmer because then the farmer will fall economically low, so the farmer has to be helped to go on producing; and the market is already overfull, so every three months they have to destroy food.

And in the East people are dying every day because there is no food.

This is strange and stupid, inhuman too – that every three or four months you have to destroy huge mountains of butter and other foodstuff – and by just drowning them in the ocean you waste millions of dollars. Those millions of dollars can be used to transport those things to the poor countries.

But they will not do that.

In the East there was Shri Raman. He would not come to the West, and I can understand why –

because I have come and I have suffered and seen. Many times he was asked, invited, and he refused. He simply said, ”I will not be understood; I will be misunderstood. Just leave me alone.” And now I can understand him. He was right. I have tried my best and the result is a tremendous antagonism. Even in the countries where I have never gone, even in the countries where there is not even a single sannyasin there is so much fear, and absolutely unfounded fear.

The man who created all kinds of lies against me has been rewarded; today he has been rewarded by the United States government as a great researcher, investigator; he has been given a gold medal. And whatever he has investigated was absolute lies. But they managed to destroy the commune.

The commune could have become a meeting place for East and West. That was my idea.

But it seems the East is satisfied with its poverty but will not lose its superstitions – which it has to lose if science and technology are to be introduced. And the West seems to be satisfied with its inner poverty, because if it wants to be inwardly rich it will have to lose all kinds of superstitions that it has been carrying for thousands of years – and it is not willing to do that.

Just the other day the secretary of the Dutch parliament, answering the questions of journalists, said that I have not been allowed in Holland and I will not be allowed in Holland because I have said something in praise of Adolf Hitler. And the journalist pointed out that I have contradicted it –

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that that was true, it was a misrepresentation, but still...”His coming may create a disorder.” And the journalist said that when the pope came there was tremendous protest against him and great disorder, and yet he was allowed, and he was a guest of the government.

And, as far as I am concerned, in no country have I been protested against by the people. There is no precedent for it, it is just their assumption.

And Holland has thousands of sannyasins, the reporter said, who would welcome him.

And I am ready to face those protests. I would really love to see who are those people who want to protest against me, on what grounds.

And I don’t even want government security. I don’t even want them to be responsible if anything happens to me, it is my responsibility.

But the fear is somewhere else. All others are excuses. The fear is that I can change the mind of the younger generation. That’s what the American president has sent in a message here to Uruguay, ”The man is dangerous for the simple reason that he is extremely intelligent and is capable of changing the minds of the younger people.”

You don’t have anybody else to contradict me? There are six hundred fifty million Catholics – you don’t have a single Catholic who can argue against me?

What is the problem? It should be simple and human. I am ready for any public discussion. I am ready to come to all these parliaments who are talking about me. In fact, if they have any guts they should invite me to their parliament – and I am ready to face their whole parliament. But the fear is

– they themselves know – they have no future, their death is so certain that they are afraid that I will expose them.

But they are not concerned that I am not exposing them in a destructive way. I am exposing your fallacies so that I can substitute the positive, the right dimension which can help the West, its creative people, its intelligent people, to have a transformation.

In the West, enlightenment is an unknown factor. There have been great saints like Francis of Assisi

– a beautiful man, a very loving man. You cannot find anything wrong in him, but that is not enough; he does not have the experience of the ultimate reality, and that is proved by small incidents. The pope became jealous that Francis was attracting followers and he was not even accepted yet as a saint. He was called to Rome. Now, you cannot call Gautam Buddha like this. And he came, kissed the feet of the pope, who was just an idiot. And he was very happy; he conferred the title of ‘saint’

on Francis of Assisi. He was a good man, but not an enlightened man; otherwise, there would have been a rebellion – he would not have cared a bit about the degree of ‘saint’ given by the pope, and he would not have kissed his feet. He would not have bothered to come to Rome as a servant, having to present himself to the court of the pope. A nice man, a good man – everything is right about him, just there is no light, the room is dark.

The West has not known the experience of enlightenment.

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But I am insistent that we are going to make hundreds of Western people, for the first time in history, enlightened.

All these governments and their opposition are not going to stop me. It is not a question of my idea; it is now an existential necessity – that the West must have enlightened people. Only those enlightened people of the West will be able to help the West to be generous towards the poverty of East, only they will be able to create an atmosphere where it is simply inhuman and ugly to go on destroying food when people are dying, just to keep your prices high, so your economy remains the same and does not suffer.

It seems economics is more important than love, than compassion; but it is possible only if we can manage – and we will manage.

My people are trying to find the place.

My other people are trying to find the ships – to create a city in the ocean. And it seems most practical and probable to create a beautiful city of five thousand resident sannyasins, with the capacity of twenty thousand more who will be coming and going. And we can move the city from one place to another place. We can go around the earth.

This is how blessings come in disguise.

I’m really excited about it!

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4 June 1986 am in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

WHEN I HEAR YOU TALK ABOUT THE INTERDEPENDENCE AND INTERWOVENNESS OF

EVERYTHING THAT EXISTS – THAT NOBODY AND NOTHING IS AN ISLAND, SOMETHING IS

DAWNING IN ME WHICH I CAN HARDLY PUT INTO WORDS. WHAT SO FAR HAS JUST BEEN

AN INTELLECTUAL PERCEPTION SOMETIMES CRYSTALLIZES AS MOMENTS OF AWE AND

ADMIRATION FOR EXISTENCE’S INTELLIGENCE, WHICH GOES SO FAR BEYOND OUR OWN

LIMITED THINKING.

THE SMALL BUT SO REVEALING FACT THAT A SINGLE ELECTRON CAN DISAPPEAR AND

REAPPEAR SOMEWHERE ELSE WITH NO TIME GAP – NO MATTER HOW FAR APART EVENTS

HAPPEN – WAS SOMETHING LIKE A CLUE TO ME. IMAGINING IN TERMS OF ENERGY THAT

NOTHING IS LOST OR DISAPPEARS, I FEEL SOMETIMES HOW THE ESSENCE OF PLANTS, ANIMALS AND HUMAN BEINGS IS INTERCONNECTED, AND JUST CHANGES FORMS ON

THIS OR ANOTHER PLANET – LET’S SAY, SOME MILLIONS OF LIGHT YEARS AWAY. EVEN

THE BIGGEST STARS DISSOLVE AND REAPPEAR SOMEWHERE ELSE IN THE COSMOS.

I AM REMINDED OF THE INSIGHT OF AN ANCIENT MASTER: ”AS ABOVE, SO BELOW” – OR

VICE VERSA.

COULD YOU PLEASE TALK ABOUT THIS?

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The ancient saying, ”As above, so below,” or vice-versa, contains one of the most fundamental truths about mysticism. It means that there is no above, no below, that existence is one.

Divisions are created by the mind.

Existence is divisionless.

Divisions are our projections, and we get so much identified with divisions that we lose contact with the whole.

Our mind is just a small window opening towards the vast universe, but when you look always from the window, the frame of the window frames the sky outside – although there is no frame on the sky, it is frameless. But to your perception the frame of the window becomes the frame of existence.

It is something like... once in a while it happens to people who use glasses that they have their glasses on their nose and they are looking for them. And they have even forgotten that they cannot see without the glasses, so if they are looking and seeing, it is an absolute certainty that the glasses are in place.

But if you have been using glasses for years, slowly, slowly they become part of you, they become your eyes. You don’t think of them as separate from you. But each pair of glasses can give its own color to the things it sees. You are the seer behind – the glasses cannot see themselves. Things outside don’t have the color that the glass is imposing upon them, but you have become so identified with the glasses.

I used to live with a man – he was a very nice man – who had glasses from his very childhood, and now they had become thicker and thicker. He was so accustomed to them that he would go to sleep with his glasses on. When one day I saw him sleeping with the glasses on, I woke him and said,

”This is too much! Do you need these glasses for dreams? You can see dreams without glasses.” He became aware that he had completely forgotten that those glasses were separate from him. For fifty years continuously they have been there, and he cannot see without them, so even to go to his bed he has to use them, and slowly, slowly, he started sleeping with his glasses on.

His whole world depends on his glasses: if they are green, everything will look green; if they are blue, everything will look blue; and he will believe that what he is seeing cannot be wrong.

Man’s mind also is only an instrument. The glasses are outside the skull – the mind is inside the skull, so you cannot turn it off every day. And you are so close to it within, that the very closeness has become the identification, so that whatever the mind sees is thought to be the reality. But mind cannot see the reality; mind can see only its own prejudices. It can see its own projections displayed on the screen of the world.

I have told you, once it happened that I was traveling from Bombay to Calcutta, and on the railway station hundreds of people had come to see me off. As the train moved, I went in. It was an air-conditioned coupe, and there was another man also in it. He simply fell flat, touched my feet.

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He said, ”There is no need to know you when there are so many people to see you off; and many of them are very rich people of Bombay – I know them.” I said, ”It is your joy – if it feels good, you can touch my feet – but I am a Mohammedan.” He said, ”My God! You are a Mohammedan? – you must be joking!” He tried hard to console himself for touching the feet of a Mohammedan. He said, ”I am of the highest caste of Kashmiri brahmin.

Are you really Mohammedan?”

I said, ”There is no question about it – I am saying it myself.” He said, ”But the people who had come to see you off, they did not look Mohammedan” –

Mohammedans use special caps, a special dress, a special language – ”they were all Hindus.” I said, ”They were all Hindus, but because I can give you the number of the horse who is going to win the next race, those people, just to know who is going to win the race next time, were harassing me.”

He said, ”My God! I will have to take a shower.”

I said, ”You will have to.”

He went, he took a shower, he changed his clothes and he came back. He said, ”Is it really true?” I said, ”I was just joking! I am of the highest class of Hindu.” He fell at my feet again, and I said, ”You don’t understand at all. I had told you that I am a Mohammedan....”

”But,” he said, ”just now you were saying....”

I said, ”I was just joking.”

He said, ”It is so cold, and I have to take another shower. And why are you making a fool of me?” I said, ”I have not done anything – you started the whole game.” He went again, took a shower, came back and didn’t say anything to me; he sat in his seat and wouldn’t even look at me. But I called the servant and told him, ”From my suitcase bring the SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA” – that is the Hindu’s bible.

And the man jumped up from his corner and touched my feet. He said, ”I have a certainty that you are a Hindu and just joking.”

I said, ”The night is cold, and again you have made the same mistake. And even if I am a Hindu, you need not touch my feet.”

He said, ”How can it be? a saint who can see the future – which horse is going to come first in the race... I have to touch his feet.”

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I said, ”That is your decision, but the SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA is really not the SHRIMAD

BHAGAVADGITA.”

He said, ”What? Then what is it?”

I said, ”What does it have to be – it is the KORAN SHARIF. There is only one book in my suitcase, and you will see – let the servant bring it.” He went to bring it: it was the KORAN SHARIF. One man had continually been at me for years that I should speak on the KORAN SHARIF, the bible of the Mohammedans. This time he had brought the best translation, just published. So I said, ”Then let the book come, and you will see.”

And when the book came he said, ”My God, you are really a Mohammedan. I feel like killing you!

– three times I have taken a cold shower, and again I have to take a cold shower. You could have simply said, ‘Bring the KORAN.’”

I said, ”This is my own way. You don’t have to dictate to me.” Before taking a shower he tried to find the conductor. But the conductor was not in the compartment, so he took a shower. And while he was taking a shower the conductor came in, because the man had asked for him. I was there, I told him the whole thing. He laughed loudly. I said, ”When he asks you to change the compartment and put him into some other compartment – there are seats vacant, but you simply say that those seats are booked; passengers will be getting on at the coming stations.

”And say to that man, ‘He’s neither Mohammedan nor Hindu; he is a Christian – and in fact he is a sudra who has turned into a Christian.’ ” And to touch the feet of a sudra – a sudra is the lowest Hindu caste – after touching even the shadow of a sudra you have to take a bath... just the shadow!

He came out. Seeing the conductor he was very happy. He took him aside and he told him, ”This man seems to be crazy or something. Four times I have taken a shower – and the night is getting colder and colder, and the water is ice cold. And he goes on deceiving me: he finds ways, and I get caught in them. I don’t want to go inside. You just give me a seat somewhere else.” The conductor said, ”What do you think he is, Mohammedan?” The conductor said, ”I have known him for years. He is a sudra who has turned and become a Christian.”

The man said, ”My God, a sudra! I feel like jumping out of the train and finishing myself! Four times I have touched the feet of a sudra. Never in history has any Brahmin done that. Now I cannot go inside the compartment.”

But the conductor said, ”I am sorry, all seats are booked. You will have to. Don’t touch his feet – he does not tell to you to. Does he tell to you to?” He said, ”No, he does not say anything, but he manages it in such a way that I feel like touching them.”

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The conductor said, ”Now you be alert. Now you have taken a bath, just go in. Just don’t look at him. Don’t give him any chance.”

He would not look at me. I tried to ask how the water was. He simply said, ”Just keep quiet –

because I am an angry man. You have fooled me four times. And the conductor said you are a sudra. Either I will kill myself or I will kill you.” I said, ”I know what has happened – that conductor is such a joker! He must have told you, ‘He is a sudra. I have known him for many years and he has become converted to Christianity.’ ” He said, ”Yes, he told me.”

I said, ”You are so gullible – anybody says something, and you believe it.” So he said, ”What finally have I to decide?”

I said, ”You don’t have to decide at all – just go to sleep.” He said, ”I cannot sleep with a sudra. And four times you have deceived me, and I am afraid you can do ANYTHING.”

I said, ”I will not do anything... but do you want the number of the horse?” He said, ”You have got me in your hands because that’s why I have been touching your feet and taking a cold shower. But I will take the number only if you are a high-caste Brahmin.” I said, ”There is no question about it. Let the next station come and you will see.” me – with many flowers and garlands – and he was convinced that they were all Hindus.

When I came back he was smiling and was saying, ”Please forgive me. I have been telling you that you are this and that; just forgive me.” And he touched my feet again!

I said, ”You are a fool! First you should have taken the number of the horse. You have committed the same mistake again.”

Then he freaked out, shouting all over the compartment. The conductor came, the servants came:

”What is the matter?”

He said, ”Nothing is the matter. I am a fool!” He asked the servants, ”Does this man travel in the air-conditioned class often?”

They said, ”Often – he is almost always traveling, and always in the air-conditioned class.”

”And does he know anything about horse racing?”

Those people said, ”He knows nothing about horse racing! Are you talking nonsense? He talks about meditation, he talks about consciousness, But horse racing?” The Transmission of the Lamp

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He said, ”My God, he is deceiving in that too – that those people are after him for a number. I can sleep in the corridor, but I cannot go inside the room. I cannot look at him. Seeing him, something goes wrong in me.”

His mind has a prejudice, and that prejudice decides every decision. He has a greed; that greed decides. But these are subjective feelings – they have nothing to do with objective reality.

You don’t see the world as it is. You see it as your mind forces you to see it. And this you can see all over the world – different people are conditioned in different ways, and the mind is nothing but conditioning. They see things according to their conditioning – and that conditioning is a certain color.

We make distinctions: We make somebody superior, somebody inferior; man is more powerful, woman is less powerful; somebody is more intelligent, somebody is less. Races have been claiming they are the chosen people of God. Every religion is claiming that their book is written by God himself. All these things, layer upon layer, make your mind; and unless you are able to put the whole mind aside and see the world directly, immediately, with your consciousness, you will never be able to see the truth.

Mind is polluted by every society for its own interests, given ideas which have no correspondence with reality, but help a certain society to feel egoistic, superior. And you cling to the mind because that mind gives superiority to you too.

In this world the greatest courage is to put the mind aside. The bravest man is one who can see the world without the barrier of the mind, just as it is. It is tremendously different, utterly beautiful. There is nobody who is inferior and there is nobody who is superior; there are no distinctions.

One Zen master, Hui Hai, was asked, ”What do you think about the inferior and the superior people?” He said, ”Just outside my door there is a small rose bush and there is a big, one-hundred-foot-high, hundreds-of-years-old cedar, but I have never heard them talking about superiority or inferiority. The rose bush is a rose bush, the cedar is a cedar. Neither the cedar says, ‘Look! I am one hundred feet high and you are just a small bush. You don’t count. I will live for hundreds more years; many like you will come and go,’ nor does the rose bush say to the cedar, ‘Although you are so huge and so big and so ancient, you have not been able to produce a single rose flower. All your life is useless, meaningless. You have not created anything to give as an offering to existence. I am a small rose bush but look at my flowers.’

”No, there has been no discussion. I have been hoping that some day the discussion will be there; but the rose bush is happy as it is, and the cedar is happy as it is, and there is no comparison because they are totally different. You cannot compare different things.” In existence there are only unique things; no comparison is possible, no distinction is possible.

And once you can see it with your own eyes, it is such a revelation, it brings such peace and benediction to your heart – that in existence there is nobody higher, nobody lower, nobody superior.

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The biggest star... and you can conceive how big the biggest star is. Our sun is a star; it is sixty thousand times bigger than the earth, and it is considered to be a very mediocre star, a middle-class fellow. The bigger stars which you see in the night as stars are also suns; they have their own solar systems and they are thousands of times bigger than our sun. But the smallest blade of grass and the biggest star in the whole of existence are respected by life equally. They both are fulfilling some need. The world will be less if this small blade of grass is destroyed, it will be less green. And no star can replace it, take its place.

Existence is absolutely communistic: everyone is unique and equal. All distinctions are because of our bourgeois mind. And you can go on making distinctions, as many as you want; and those distinctions have been the causes of wars. Millions of people have died for those distinctions, which do not have any relevance as far as reality is concerned.

The man who knows, also knows that existence is one. Its expressions are millions, but the spirit that is expressed is the same. It is one godliness with an infinite variety of creations. To see it as it is makes you free from complexes.

Ask the psychoanalyst. Most of his patients are suffering from either an inferiority complex or a superiority complex. And you cannot convince them... it takes years; the person who suffers from an inferiority complex still goes on finding reasons why he is inferior. Somebody is more beautiful, somebody is more intelligent, somebody is richer, somebody is taller, somebody is stronger, somebody is never sick – always healthy.

Unless you uproot the very idea of comparison it is impossible to free a man from his inferiority complex, and his inferiority complex creates competitiveness. He wants to prove that he is not inferior. In the first place he accepts that he is inferior; and then in the second place he starts fighting with the ghost – which does not exist anywhere – the idea that he is inferior. So he fights elections, he becomes a president or a prime minister; but that ghost is there, it never leaves.

Then there are, at the other extreme, people who feel they are superior. That, too, is a disease.

Because they have to prove their superiority continuously, they have to condemn everybody, criticize everybody. And it is very easy to criticize, very easy to condemn.

Turgenev has a beautiful story. In one village there was a young man who was thought to be an idiot.

The whole village treated him as an idiot. He was tired of it, but there was no way to convince the village that he was not an idiot. From where had they got the idea? And once they had got the idea they were proving it in every way... every small fault was a proof, solid proof, that the idiot could not do anything else, it was expected. If anybody else had done it, it would have been just a mistake.

One wandering monk was passing through the village. The boy was suffering too much. He went to the monk and asked, ”What am I to do?”

The monk said, ”I will tell you a simple formula. Practice it, and when I come back from my pilgrimage

– it will take one year – then report to me what the situation is. You will be the wisest man in this town in one year’s time.”

The formula was simple – the young man could not believe it. He said, ”Just a simple formula?” The Transmission of the Lamp

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The old monk said, ”You simply do it. Just now go and do it, and you will see how it changes the whole thing.”

The formula was that if somebody says, ”What a beautiful sunset,” you immediately ask, ”What is beautiful in it? Prove it. Don’t talk nonsense. What evidence have you got that the sunset is beautiful? What is the criterion of beauty?” Somebody says, ”That book is great.” Immediately jump on them – whether you have read it or not, that does not matter – ”That is all rubbish. Who says it is great? Prove it! On what grounds? What are your arguments for its greatness?” Just go on criticizing, condemning any statement anybody in the town makes. You just watch and immediately jump on it, criticize it, condemn it, and ask for evidence. Nobody can prove that the sunset is beautiful. What proof is there? If somebody says to you, ”This woman is beautiful,” and you say, ”I don’t agree,” there is no way to convince you – because beauty is not something that can be measured, weighed; there is no criterion.

After one year, when the monk came back, the people of the town met him as he was coming to the town and said, ”You should see our young man, he is the wisest man we have ever seen!” He said, ”I know!”

And that boy came, fell at the old monk’s feet and said, ”You are really a miracle-maker – just such a simple formula, and the whole town asks my advice. Everybody thinks I am the most intelligent, the most learned, the most educated, the most well-read. Suddenly, in one year, I have become the wisest man of the town – and I’m really the same old idiot, nothing has changed.” But it is difficult to prove that you are superior. Anybody can condemn it. What criterion have you got for your superiority?

Even Adolf Hitler could not prove that the nordic Germans were the most superior people in the world, that they were born just to rule over the world, that in comparison to nordic Germans, everybody is sub-human – only they are superhuman. He convinced the Germans, and they enjoyed the idea. But nobody else in the whole world was convinced of this nonsense – everybody laughed.

And their failure in the second world war proved that they were not born to rule over the world. Hitler killed six million people with this superiority complex – because to kill the inferior people is good for the earth, they are an unnecessary burden. But the people he was killing were Jews – who have been carrying the same idea for centuries, that they are the only chosen people of God.

But they have not been able to prove it to anybody else. It is impossible. You can believe it yourself, and you will suffer for it, because everybody whom you are trying to condemn, whom you are trying to make inferior, is going to be revengeful. So Jews have been tortured for four thousand years continuously. They are still tortured, but they will not leave that idea of superiority; that is their disease.

And if anybody – a person like me – says, ”That is your disease. Drop this idea. There is nothing wrong in being a Jew; simply drop this idea that you are the chosen few of God, because that makes the whole world your enemy,” they are not going to drop it because that is their cherished ego. They cannot prove it – they cannot drop it.

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It is like the situation when you swallow something – you can neither swallow it nor can you take it out, it is just stuck in your throat. And you are dying because you cannot breathe. Unless your throat is cleared, you will not be able to breathe.

This superiority complex has destroyed the Hindus. The Hindus have the same idea – that God created them, that God has chosen them as His people, that he has given his own written book to them, that they are the highest and the purest people. Because of this nonsense, the people who were intelligent enough – even among the Hindus – went out of the Hindu fold. The Buddhists, the Jainas, they left the fold, saying, ”This is an ugly idea.” But the trouble is, if somebody gets some fixed idea, and there is some investment in the idea –

howsoever crazy the idea may be – you cannot prove it wrong. The man may like to suffer, but he will not leave the idea. All religions do the same, all nations do the same, all races do the same.

I am reminded of a mad man. His madness was really special: he thought that he was dead.

First his family laughed, and said, ”This is the most outrageous thing one can think of. You are alive

– you argue about your being dead. That is enough proof that you are alive.” But there was no way to convince the man. He would not go to the shop. He would wake up when he wanted, he would go to sleep when he wanted. He said, ”What can I do? You cannot control a dead man’s behavior. I am dead.”

Finally they took him to a psychoanalyst. The psychoanalyst said, ”Don’t be worried, I have cured many cases – leave him with me.” First he tried to tell him, ”You are not dead. You have walked here and you are sitting here on the chair. How can you be dead?” He said, ”Where is it written that dead people don’t walk?” Even the psychoanalyst was at a loss!

The man said, ”Show me some evidence, where it is written that dead people don’t walk, that they don’t sit on chairs, that they don’t talk. I am a living proof that dead people can walk.” The psychoanalyst saw that the man seemed to be difficult! He took out a paper knife and just cut the man’s hand a little so blood came out. And before cutting his hand he asked the man, ”What do you think: do dead men bleed?”

The man said, ”I have heard that they do not bleed.” So he cut his hand and blood came out. The psychoanalyst was very happy and he laughed. He said, ”Now, what do you say?”

The man said, ”That simply means that that proverb is wrong. Dead men do bleed – the proof is here.” Once you get identified with a certain idea, then you are sick.

All identification is mental sickness.

In fact, mind is your sickness.

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And to put the mind aside and just to look silently – without any thought, without any prejudice – into reality is a healthy way of being acquainted with reality. And you will find a totally different reality.

The finding of the real will release you from many stupidities, many superstitions. It will clean your heart of all kinds of rubbish that generations have poured into you. Diseases go on from generation to generation; you inherit the whole past with all its stupid ideas. Otherwise, there would be no distinction, there is no comparison.

And once you are free from making comparisons and distinctions, you are light, your whole existence is light. You lose all heaviness. You become so light that you can open your wings and fly.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

YOU SEEM TO HAVE RETAINED, OR REGAINED, FROM YOUR CHILDHOOD, A CAPACITY

TO DREAM – SOMETHING WHICH PROBABLY ALMOST ALL OF US BEGIN LIFE WITH, BUT WHICH, BY AND BY, BECOMES ERODED WITH CYNICISM AND THE FEAR OF BEING

THOUGHT NAIVE AND UNWORLDLY.

I LOVE WATCHING YOU WHEN YOU TALK OF A COMMUNE IN THE SKY, FLOATING

VEGETABLE GARDENS AROUND AN ISLAND-BASED CITY OF SANNYASINS, A MYSTERY

SCHOOL ASAIL THE HIGH SEAS: YOUR EYES OPEN WIDE, AND WHATEVER YOU SAY –

HOWEVER OFF-THE-WALL – ALWAYS SEEMS ABSOLUTELY POSSIBLE, AND I CAN NEVER

BRING MYSELF TO LAUGH BECAUSE I ADORE THIS ABILITY IN YOU.

I CAN SEE THAT THIS FACULTY ALONE IS ENOUGH TO DRIVE THE POLITICIANS AND

RELIGIOUS LEADERS ALL OVER THE WORLD, NUTS. INTERNALLY THEIR MOUTHS MUST

BE AGAPE AT YOUR SHEER AUDACITY, BECAUSE IT SEEMS YOU CAN ENVISAGE ANYTHING

AND GET AWAY WITH IT. LAWS OF LOGIC, GRAVITATION AND RELATIVITY, ALL TAKE LEAVE

OF THEIR SENSES IN YOUR HANDS.

AND EVEN IF ONE OR OTHER IDEA DOESN’T COME ABOUT, YOU ARE NOT REMOTELY

PERTURBED. IT IS AS IF THE VALUE LIES IN THE ABILITY TO DREAM – NOT IN WHETHER

THE DREAM IS REALIZED OR NOT.

IF THE MINDS OF THOSE AROUND YOU HAD THEIR SAY, WE WOULD FIND OURSELVES

CONFINED TO THE FEEBLE MUTTERINGS OF THE MEDIOCRE, THE SAFE, THE CERTAIN.

BUT IT IS AS IF YOU ARE SITTING IN THE FRONT SEAT OF A ROLLER COASTER, AND

WE, THE PASSENGERS, ARE BEHIND YOU. THE HEIGHTS ARE SO DIZZYING, THE PACE, SO EXHILARATING, THE JOY, SO ADDICTIVE, THAT ONE FEELS, ”HANG THE EXPENSE – I’M

GOING WHEREVER THIS JOKER TAKES ME!”

It is possible that to you it may seem that I have retained the small child’s capacity to dream. But that is not the reality. I have certainly retained the innocence of the child, but anything that I have said, or done, or will do, is not a dream; and it is never ”off-the-wall.” It looks off-the-wall because you think in very utilitarian terms.

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I am not a utilitarian. I am a poet, who does not compose poetry, who composes living beings.

My effort is not to materialize a dream – I don’t have any dream – but to help you to see that your utilitarian life is not all: that much more is possible, it is just that you have not dared to cross the mundane line; that everything is possible, you just have to gather courage.

And courage with innocence makes you capable of being a visionary, not a dreamer – and there is a great difference between dream and vision.

Dreams happen while you are asleep. They are part and parcel of our spiritual sleep. A vision is the equivalent when you are fully awake. Then you can see things which to others may look off-the-wall, but to you they are just in the tomorrow. The day after tomorrow, just a question of a little time, and they will be realities.

The politicians and the religious leaders are afraid because they know that whatever I am saying is going to happen. All their efforts are against the current. They can make a little delay, but they are moving against the current.

For example, my vision of ocean cities is going to happen – whether we make the first ocean city or somebody else makes it. But the earth is becoming smaller, and the population is becoming bigger.

Except for the ocean there is no place where these people are going to live. And if the whole world becomes full of people, houses, roads, then where are you going to produce food?

I am a very realistic person, not a dreamer. When I say ocean cities I speak of a simple reality: If all the people of the world move to ocean cities, around the earth, and the whole earth is used for production – for food, for vegetables, for everything else – we can support a bigger population than is present today, without any difficulty.

The ocean also has an infinite capacity for providing food, which has not been explored. It grows a certain kind of vegetation, deep down, thousands of feet down, that can be used as food. And it has been found in experiments that it is full of the vital elements needed for food. And this is simply wild growth. We can manage – just the way we have managed on the earth – to grow food underneath the oceans.

Once man was a hunter, and he never thought that he would live in cities, and that he would not be a hunter, but a farmer, a shopper, a professor. For millions of years man remained a hunter, but a time came when the population became too much, and it became difficult to survive through hunting.

Then some visionary must have given the idea: ”We have not used the fruits which are growing all around. To support a greater population, use fruits.” Then somebody else may have given the vision: ”Why just use wild fruits? We can cultivate food.

Just watching nature, how these fruits fall, how new trees grow out of the seeds... we can manage it better than nature – we are nature’s conscious hand.” Cultivation came in.

And that’s how, slowly, slowly, man has developed things. But first it was always a vision, and people laughed at it, because they were only accustomed to the past, the old way. But the old way had come to an end – something had to be done. So these visionaries who appeared to be off-the-wall had to be listened to. Unwillingly, reluctantly, people followed them and found that they were right: we The Transmission of the Lamp

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cultivated the whole earth. Now the earth is in a situation where it cannot feed the whole population sufficiently. The ocean is available. Life can be shifted to the oceans very easily.

Just last night I was asking Jay – because I am planning for it – about the platforms which people use in wartime for their aircraft. Huge platforms floating in the ocean are used for hundreds of planes to land and take off. And underneath the platform, five or six thousand people can live; they have cabins underneath the platform.

I loved the idea. Just one platform, and five or six thousand people, with all the luxuries: with television, with telephone, with radio, and your own airport on top of you – a meeting place, a mandir. And there is no problem, it simply just has to be done. One person does it, and you will see many others following.

And the tremendous silence of the ocean... and you are under no government; just twelve miles off shore and you are really free. No government is over you, and you can prove that six thousand people can live without any government, without any police, without any courts, without any legal experts – without all that paraphernalia – in immense harmony.

And on the huge platform you can make lawns, you can make gardens; you can have the beauty of the earth too. So you are not closed up in the cabins; you can come out on the platform, and you have miles of tennis courts, a golf course, swimming pools, lawns, beautiful trees. All this can be managed on the platform. If it can keep hundreds of planes, it can easily bear the weight of earth that we will bring to it and the trees. And you can get your food from the nearby port. Small boats can go and come for your food and your daily needs.

The idea can become a world-wide phenomenon. It is not a dream. Once people see that it works, then around the earth there can be many cities, vacating the earth for production. People can go in the day to work on the earth, and at evening come home to the ocean. And it seems to me very logical: man was born in the ocean, and perhaps it is time to come back home.

I don’t see it as a dream; it is just a reality which has to be dared. And it is always that somebody has to be the pioneer; then others will follow. Then for them there is no difficulty, they can see that people are living beautifully. A whole university can float; there is no need for them to destroy the earth with their campuses.

Finally, if we exhaust the ocean too – which will take many thousands of years – there is always a possibility of having floating cities in the sky. All scientific facts are available on how a city can be floated in the air. People will be coming to the earth for production and taking their production back, but they will be living high in the sky.

And these should be adventures, great ecstasies for people, rather than starving and dying like in Ethiopia – one thousand people dying and starving every day, and nobody has any idea what to do.

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If they had listened to me they would not be in such a trouble. Now the population is nine hundred million – more than double. And by the end of this century, India will have a population of one billion, eight hundred million.

There is no possible way to feed this population – these people are going to die. Fifty percent of the people will be dying, and when fifty percent of people die, you can understand what will happen to the remaining fifty percent: they will be living in a graveyard. Everywhere will be corpses. Nobody will be there to burn them.

It is not my dream. I have all the facts from scientific experiments, that cities can be floated in the sky: but for that, the time has not come.

But for cities in the ocean the time has come, and it is particularly a blessing that existence has given us the chance to be the pioneers – because no country will accept me and my people, but the ocean belongs to no country.

We are going to do it. And only when you see with your own eyes, only when you are living on the ocean, then will you understand that it was not a dream, that it was a vision.

Dreams cannot be fulfilled – dreams are unconscious. Visions are conscious. Dreams happen to all sleeping people; visions happen only when you are awakened. A vision is a reality that can be managed; you just have to have courageous people with you. And I have the best, the most intelligent, the most courageous people with me.

Never think anything I say is off-the-wall. It may appear to be to you – that is just because you compare it with the old, trodden path. I see it happening.

So just wait a little and you will be on the ocean.

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4 June 1986 pm in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

A VERY REVEALING INCIDENT OCCURRED RECENTLY. IN THE WAKE OF THE SO-CALLED

”GIANT STEP FOR MANKIND,” WHEN THE FIRST ASTRONAUT SET FOOT ON THE MOON, THE

AMERICANS HAVE CONTINUED THEIR SPACE EXPLORATION, NOW WITH THE REUSABLE

SHUTTLE.

SUDDENLY, A LITTLE WHILE AGO, THIS 2.3-BILLION-DOLLAR SPACECRAFT BLEW UP IN THE

SKY, KILLING ALL SEVEN PASSENGERS.

IT CREATED AN ENORMOUS REACTION IN THE U.S. – SORROW, ANGER, HURT NATIONAL

PRIDE, ETC. IT TURNED OUT THAT BEHIND THE TRAGEDY LAY THE USUAL HUMAN FORCES: EGOTISM, PREJUDICE, DISHONESTY, COMPETITION, ARROGANCE, FEAR, AMBITION, AND

SO ON.

AN

OFFICIAL

INVESTIGATION

CONCENTRATED

ON

”FLAWED MANAGEMENT PROCEDURES,” AND ”REORGANIZING THE CHAIN OF COMMAND,” BUT NOWHERE FELT IT RELEVANT TO INVESTIGATE EGOTISM, PREJUDICE, DISHONESTY, AND ALL THE REST.

ISN’T THE REAL ”GIANT STEP FOR MANKIND” YET TO COME – THE REALIZATION THAT IT IS

MAN HIMSELF WHO LIES AT THE ROOT OF HIS OWN CATASTROPHE?

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It is man himself who lies at the root of all the catastrophes, but the trouble is, it goes against man’s ego to accept it.

The way of the ego is very simple: always throw responsibility on somebody else. It is always the other who is hell. One never looks at oneself. The other cannot be hell for me, unless I in some way support the other to create the hell for me. It must be somewhere in the unconscious, my own need.

Just today I came to know, that all over the world man wastes enough energy, money, technological power and human genius in three days to support the whole earth for a year with food, clothing, shelter, everything that a human being needs to survive. And this figure is five years old, so I guess that now man must be wasting perhaps every day as much energy as is needed to support the whole of mankind for one year.

And who is at the root of it, who is forcing you to do all this nonsense? All this is being done to prepare more efficiently for war, to kill more, to destroy more.

It seems man is insane.

Everywhere you can see his insanity, and if it were only a few people who were insane, it would be easy to do something for them, but if the whole humanity is functioning in an insane way, then a tremendous effort is needed to stop this idiotic behavior.

The people who are responsible for the basic catastrophe – that is, the insanity of humanity –

are the people who are in power. They want more and more power. The desire for more and more is unending, and everybody is competing without thinking of the whole humanity – that all this competition for destructiveness is suicidal.

The rocket that was carrying seven passengers was not a big catastrophe, but this earth which is carrying six billion people is in the same danger. And there seems to be no thinking about what is needed first. If you have more than enough, then it is worthwhile to explore space. But right now even America does not have more than enough. Millions of people are on the streets: no food, no clothes, no shelter.

But Ronald Reagan is not interested in those millions of people, he is interested in the national ego,

”We are the first to take passengers into space.” It is hilarious. As far as is known, no planet around the earth is habitable. In this solar system, except for the earth, no planet is habitable – all efforts are useless, because there is no oxygen, no water, and life cannot exist. Perhaps in other solar systems, there may be planets where life can exist, but to reach to those planets is an impossible job right now. They are too far away.

We don’t have the energy, and we don’t have the money, and we don’t have the expertise – and right now it is not a problem at all, they are not disturbing you.

Our problems are simple, which we are capable of solving for the first time in man’s history. For the first time it is possible – there is no need for poverty; no need for people to die without medicine, without proper care; no need for millions of people to remain uneducated, never knowing great literature, great paintings, great music.

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Up to now man has simply been fighting. Except for fighting he has not done anything else. One war after another war. What we call times of peace are nothing to do with peace, they are really preparations for the next war. There are only two periods in history: war and the preparation period for another war; we have not known peace at all.

Our problems are so simple. Seeing our developed technology, it is absurd that in Ethiopia one thousand people continue to die every day and nobody bothers. Every day one thousand people...

from hunger. And death from hunger is not easy, it is the worst death, because it takes almost ninety days for a person to die. Ninety days he has to suffer in starvation. It is really cruel, and nobody seems to be interested.

These toys – rockets for space – are absolutely unnecessary. It is not the time for them. Something else is needed that can educate every human individual, that can make every individual live long, be healthy, be capable of understanding all the great treasures of art, literature, music, sculpture, that for centuries human genius has created, and give an opportunity to everyone. Who knows how many Beethovens, how many Leonardo da Vincis, how many van Goghs, simply die uneducated, without any opportunity to express themselves, their talents?

There is no way to know how many Gautam Buddhas we have missed, and by missing them how much human consciousness has suffered, human evolution has suffered. And now that science has brought us to a point where everybody can be given equal opportunity to grow, to express his talents, the idiots who are in power are not allowing scientific progress to help humanity to reach to a higher status of evolution, but are trying to divert all scientific progress towards a global suicide –

and in the name of beautiful words: democracy, communism, freedom, individuality. And there is no freedom anywhere. There is no freedom of speech, there is no democracy anywhere.

And we are forcing the whole world to die for these empty words, which contain no meaning. And this has been going on.... First we were fighting for God. Now nobody is fighting for God, because we have found out that there is nobody behind the word, it is simply a word. We have been fighting for love, for truth, for peace, just words.

Rather than fighting with each other, we should fight together, against the ugly past of humanity, so that we can get rid of it; and our love is freed, our freedom is in our hands, our individuality is given to us. There is only one fight which can be justified, and that is against the past, because the past has been simply destructive of all human values.

If we can only disconnect ourselves from the past, there is hope for humanity, not only to survive, but survive blissfully; not just to drag on somehow, but to be creative. And unless a man reaches to the fulfillment of his potential, he is never blissful.

And the discontented man is the cause of all our catastrophes. Bring contentment to man. Give him simple things – survival and opportunity to express himself – and this very planet will become far more beautiful than the farthest star. There is no need to go anywhere.

Restore to every individual his self-respect, which religions have destroyed – people are living like zombies. So many millions of people and just a few politicians and a few religious leaders go on creating all kind of nuisance, and nobody even raises his voice. We have been so suppressed, so humiliated.

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My only suggestion is: everybody has to take it into his own hands, the dignity of man, and everybody has to be assertive, and everybody has to be questioning about all the rules that the past has forced upon you. And any discipline that is unreasonable, is irrational, is unintelligent, should be dropped without a second thought.

If my people can do this much, become purely individuals, freed from all kinds of dark shadows from the past; declare themselves – we are the new man, we are not Christians, we are not Hindus, we are not Mohammedans, we are not Americans, and we are not Russians – we are simply the new man. And we want to live from the very scratch, from ABC, not according to any discipline laid down by the ancient, centuries-old scriptures, which had no idea of what is going to happen in the future.

We are facing a time that no scripture has had any idea of. All those holy scriptures have to be reduced to ordinary books. That’s what they are: there is nothing holy in them.

Just free yourself from the rotten, from the junk, and free yourself for some creative expression of your life, and you will be laying down the foundation of a new humanity; otherwise more and more catastrophes are going to happen. We are sitting on volcanoes created by our own great leaders, blessed by our great religious saints.

Once and for all we have to understand the conspiracy of religions and politics against man. And man has to be freed from politics and religion, both, because both have been exploiting him, destroying him, not allowing him to be individual, completely free and natural, without guilt, enjoying like an innocent child.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

YOU WERE SPEAKING LAST NIGHT ABOUT GURDJIEFF’S WORK, AND THE INDIVIDUAL’S

CHIEF CHARACTERISTIC. HOW DOES ONE FIND OUT WHAT ONE’S CHIEF CHARACTERISTIC

IS?

It is very simple. Just watch your mind for a few days and see what is the thing that takes most of your energy: jealousy? lust for power? ego? Just watch whatever takes most of your energy, and you will find what is your chief characteristic, and that it is your number one enemy; and you have always thought that that is your number one friend.

Somebody may find greed, somebody may find anger, somebody may find repressed sexuality, somebody may find an inferiority complex or a superiority complex – it does not matter what it is.

Finding it is almost half the victory. And only you can find it out.

Gurdjieff had his own ways to find it. He will force his disciples to drink as much wine as possible.

He will go on forcing them. And by midnight everybody was flat on the floor, and then he will go and listen to what each is saying.

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psychoanalysis, because that takes years – ten years, twelve years. Gurdjieff manages to do it within three or four days.

The psychoanalyst finds out what is your chief characteristic by examining your dreams and finding through your dreams what are the dreams that you dream continually... again and again. And then too, his finding is just guesswork, because he has to interpret it, and his interpretation is his interpretation.

Another psychoanalyst interprets the same dream in a different way, for him something else is the chief characteristic. For Sigmund Freud whatever dream you bring, he reduces it to repressed sexuality. A few people have even tried to create bogus dreams, but Freud will not change. They have made such dreams that nobody can find any sexuality in them, but not Freud. He will find sexuality in them.

Anything – it doesn’t matter, his interpretation is fixed, and he was right about most people, because in a Christian Jewish society sex is repressed. It would have been really worth seeing if he had come to the East to interpret the dreams of a different culture, different traditions, where sex is not repressed, and he would have been at a loss, or he would have had to force his interpretation even on them.

The same dream you take to Adler, and it is always will-for-power. Go to Jung, and it is always some ancient mythology being repeated in your dream – the same dream.

Gurdjieff was the greatest psychoanalyst of this century. Just within three, four days, forcing people to drink wine, making them as unconscious as possible, and they start showing their true colors.

A man who has never been angry is shouting and is angry and throwing things and is ready to kill anybody. You could have never thought that this gentleman can do such things. And he did it continuously for three or four days – that means it is lying down there in his unconscious, as his chief characteristic. Once it was discovered, then Gurdjieff would give him the work to do.

With me things are easier. Gurdjieff had no understanding about Freud, Jung or Adler. His method was very crude. He had learned it in the Caucasus. It was a very primitive and ancient method, thousands of years old.

My method is so simple. Just put down in your diary for seven days, noting every day what it is that takes most of your time, what it is that becomes your fantasy most of the time, where your energy always moves readily. And just watching for seven days, noting in your notebook, you can find your own chief characteristic. And this finding is half the victory. It gives you a great strength, that you know the enemy.

And then the second part is very simple: now be aware of it. When the enemy attacks, don’t react.

When it comes, you just remain cool. Just watch it, as if something is passing on the screen, and you have nothing to do with it.

If you can remain detached, unaffected, suddenly a great energy will be released which was contained in your enemy, which you were putting into that enemy every day.

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You were watering it, you were caring about it. If anybody pointed at it, you were very angry; you protected it in every possible way. You gave all kinds of rationalizations. Now you are simply watching. All that energy is simply released. You will feel revitalized. Your whole being suddenly becomes new.

And then go on looking for the enemy number two, the enemy number three, because you have to finish all the enemies.

The day you don’t have any enemy left in your mind, you have a grace, a beauty, and a great energy that blossoms in thousands of flowers.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

MANY TIMES I FIND MYSELF WITH TEARS OF GRATITUDE FLOODING MY HEART, AND WHEN

I START TO WHISPER THANKS, OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT, INEVITABLY I BECOME DUMB, NOT KNOWING IF I BOW TO YOU, BELOVED FRIEND, OR THIS WHOLE EXISTENCE, WHICH

GIVES US THE BLESSING OF HAVING YOU AMONG US. I READ SOMEWHERE THAT THE

BUDDHA SAID, ”IF YOU MEET ME ON THE WAY, KILL ME.” IS THIS RIGHT, EVEN THOUGH I WILL ALWAYS BE HONORED TO BOW TO YOU, AND WHENEVER POSSIBLE, TO SIT AT YOUR

FEET?

The statement of Gautam Buddha and your problem are two separate things. Gautam Buddha is saying that in meditation people see Jesus Christ, and they feel great joy, thinking that Jesus has come to their consciousness. And it was only their imagination: there is nobody to come to your consciousness. Or Krishna.... Different religions have different gods, and if you go on repeating their names, watching their images, sooner or later you will start hallucinating. You will start seeing them.

Buddha is saying to his disciples, that if even in your meditation you meet me, don’t be hindered by me. Cut off my head, throw me away, because you have to reach to a point where you experience only nothingness, only pure silence – no image, because all images are imagination.

He is not saying that you have to kill Gautam Buddha. He is saying you have to kill the image which is bound to come to you because you love Gautam Buddha. And he is a great master in the sense that he will not even exclude himself. Everybody has to be thrown away: Krishna, and Rama and Mahavira – whoever comes in the way has to be removed. You are not to stop before you have come to pure nothingness.

The purity of nothingness is the experience of your isness, when there is nothing to see as an object

– any image. As far as you can see, all is nothing. Your consciousness turns back upon yourself, and for the first time you see yourself. For the first time you become aware of your real being.

What Gautam Buddha is saying is perfectly true. Your problem is that it will be difficult for you to cut off my head. No problem. First bow down, and then cut off the head. Be respectful, be grateful, but don’t miss the head. If you love sitting beside my feet, cut off the head and sit beside my feet, but don’t miss cutting off the head.

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Once you have cut off the head, the feet will disappear, and once you have allowed me to disappear as an image, you will be closer to me than ever. And this is not something ungrateful. You will feel more grateful to me than ever before, because now you will see that as I disappear, the whole existence opens up to you. I was blocking it.

This is not ungratefulness, and anyway you are following the instructions of the master. And this is only a question of the image, while you are meditating. Just try it once, and you will be surprised.

It looks ordinarily that this is not gratefulness, but you don’t know. There is a bigger gratitude just waiting. You will be grateful to the master, that he even suggested to you that you shouldn’t let him become a barrier, that his work is not to become a barrier between you and reality. His work is not to be between you and reality, he has to remove everything, and finally he has to disappear also.

This can be done only by a man of immense compassion. And you will feel that compassion when you realize what has happened, you will feel that compassion. And your gratefulness will be a thousandfold more.

So don’t make a conflict between the two.

Question 4

BELOVED OSHO,

IS IT A COSMIC JOKE THAT MOST OF US ARE BORN WITH AWARENESS AND DIE IN

UNCONSCIOUSNESS?

No. Most of us are not born in awareness. Most of us are born in innocence, but that innocence is equivalent to ignorance, it is not awareness.

Only very few people are born with awareness. Those are the people who die in awareness. If the death was conscious, then the birth will be conscious, because the death is the one side and the birth is the other side of the same coin.

So only very few people, who have attained to a certain consciousness in their life, die consciously and are born consciously. And those who are born consciously will die enlightened, because a child who is born in awareness – it is impossible to conceive how he can miss enlightenment. In his seventy years’ life he is bound to become enlightened.

But most of us are born unconscious, and die unconscious.

And between the two do you

think you live consciously – between these two unconsciousnesses – birth unconscious, death unconscious? How can life be conscious between these two? It is unconscious. People are living like somnambulists, sleepwalkers.

You may have seen somebody, or may have heard about somebody who is a sleepwalker. There are many people who will get up in the night... they are asleep, their eyes are open but they are asleep, and they will go directly into the kitchen to the fridge, eat something, drink something, come back, go back to bed. And in the morning they will not remember it. ”I have not done anything,” –

because the ice-cream is missing, somebody has taken it; but that person is completely innocent, he has not done it consciously.

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It happened in New York, one man used to sleepwalk and jumped from one terrace to another terrace. High rise buildings... if he falls, you will not find even bits and pieces of him. But this was a nightly routine – in the middle of the night – and slowly the neighbors became aware. And he was doing really something, the jump was long, and people will watch silently down on the street.

And in the middle of the night he will come up, every night at the same time, and jump from one side to the other side, then jump back, and go back to bed. And he will not remember in the day.

Slowly, slowly the crowd became bigger, and one day when he came, the crowd was so big that they cheered him.

The man woke up, because of their cheers, just in the middle of the jump, and he missed and fell down and died. And this had been happening for years, but it had remained confined to the neighbors who remained silent and became more silent when he came, because he was asleep –

everybody knew.

But these new people came; they thought that it was something like a circus or... so many people, and he is jumping over such a long distance. They cheered, and in the middle he woke up. Seeing himself what he is doing, he could not manage it.

And to every psychoanalyst, every day, people are brought who are somnambulists.

One of my friends was very much disturbed, because every night in his house something was burned: some cloth, some furniture. And he was there, his wife was there and his fourteen-year-old daughter – three persons only in the house; and naturally in India, if such a thing happens people think some ghost... the place is haunted. And many people were brought to drive away the ghost, the evil forces, but nobody could succeed.

Just by the way he mentioned it to me, because he was the registrar in the university. As I was walking in the corridor by his office, he looked very sad and very disturbed, and I went in and asked,

”What is the matter?”

He said, ”For six months my life has become a hell. Every night something is burned, and we have tried all kinds of people who think that they can drive away the evil spirits, the ghosts – nothing works.”

I inquired, ”How many people do you have in your house?” He said, ”Only three.”

I said, ”If you won’t feel any interference, I would like to sleep in your house.” He said, ”If you can help in any way, I will be grateful.” So I slept in the house, because my sleep is almost no sleep. I am just resting with my eyes closed.

So I remained looking in the dark, again and again, if any noise was there. And then I found out; the girl stood up, went inside, took out one of the saris of her mother and burned it, went back to her bed and to sleep.

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In the morning I asked the girl if she had had a dream of something burning.

She said, ”No.” And she was absolutely innocent.

But these are the times when girls and boys become sexually mature, when they are in a very critical situation. Their energy is going through such a change, that many haunted places are nothing but the results of some girl or some boy who is getting sexually mature, and his energy is going through such a deep transformation that he can function as a somnambulist.

So I told the father, ”I have one suggestion. You send the girl to the hostel.”

”But,” he said, ”why?”

I said, ”You simply send her, only for two, three days. And you are the registrar, so there is no problem. You simply manage a room for her. Send her to the hostel. And for three days I will be here, and seeing whether anything is burned or not.” And for three days nothing was burned. The father and the mother could not believe it, they said,

”What is the matter?”

I said, ”Nothing is the matter. Your girl is becoming sexually mature and must be going through some great changes inside her, and this is a common phenomenon, that at these times people can do things which normally are not done. She has been burning these clothes and things for six months. Now bring the child home, and let me have a session with her.” And I talked to her, and I told her, ”It is you who have been doing it, but you are not responsible, because you were not conscious.” So I suggested to her, ”Do one thing. Tie one leg to the bed, so that you can experience for yourself what I am saying. My saying is just my saying. You have to know it as a validity.”

And that very night she woke up, asleep, but could not get up, because the leg was tied down. She tried hard, but could not. The father was awake, the mother was awake, everybody was watching what would happen. And trying to untie the leg from the bed, she woke up, and we turned the lights on.

And we asked her, ”What are you doing?”

She said, ”I don’t know, but faintly I remember that I had to do something, and my leg is tied down.

So I cannot get to the place where I have to do something. I don’t know what exactly I have to do.” And these people walk in darkness with open eyes – you would not think that they are asleep. They don’t stumble over furniture or anything.

Between an unconscious birth and an unconscious death, our whole life is the life of a somnambulist

– of course with open eyes – and only a very little part is conscious. And that is our only hope. Only through that little consciousness in us, is a bigger consciousness, a deeper consciousness, possible.

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It is only a seed, but if you work upon it, slowly, slowly it can grow. And you can die consciously, if you have lived before it consciously.

The whole of religion consists of a simple thing: to live consciously, so that you can die consciously.

And once you have died consciously, you will be born consciously, and that will be the life which will be the easiest for you to attain to enlightenment in.

You can attain to enlightenment right now, but for that a tremendous intensity and totality is needed.

Evolution will not do; only a revolution, a radical change, a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn.

Otherwise, slowly go on trying to be conscious. If you can manage even to die consciously, you have managed much. Then your next life is going to be the life of an enlightened person. And the enlightened person has no more lives, because he dies with no desires, with no ambitions; hence he simply becomes one with the whole.

Question 5

BELOVED OSHO,

SITTING HERE EVERY DAY WITH YOU, HEARING WHAT YOU SAY, LISTENING TO HOW YOU

SAY IT, WE GO UP AND DOWN SO MUCH. YOU ARE CONTINUOUSLY PULLING OUR BIG TOE, HERE AND THERE, TRYING TO PUT US RIGHT, AND WE GO TOO FAR, AND FALL BACK INTO

THE DITCH, AGAIN AND AGAIN.

TODAY, I WAS WATCHING, NOT WHAT YOU SAID, BUT WHAT YOU DO, AND A BIG LAUGH

CAME OUT OF ME. I IMAGINE THAT MILLIONS OF TIMES YOU MUST HAVE THOUGHT, ”MY

GOD, THEY HAVE MISSED AGAIN.”

BELOVED MASTER, PLEASE DON’T GIVE UP ON US. LITTLE BY LITTLE WE ARE GETTING

THIS BIG JOKE.

Don’t be worried. I am not the one who gives up. You can rely on it. It is a promise.

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CHAPTER 20

The revenge of the pygmies

5 June 1986 am in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

IT SEEMS THAT THE IMPLICATIONS OF GURDJIEFF’S WORK WERE AS REVOLUTIONARY, AS THREATENING TO THE STATUS QUO, AS YOURS. MANY OF HIS METHODS WERE

UNEQUIVOCALLY OUTRAGEOUS, YET IT SEEMS HE WAS NEVER REPORTED IN THE LOCAL

RAGS AS RUNNING A CAMP FOR SLAVE LABOR, DISRUPTING PUBLIC TRANSPORT, BEING

A MENACE ON THE ROADS OR BEING THE INSTIGATOR OF RIOTOUS BACCHANALIAN

ORGIES.

YOU SAID THE OTHER MORNING THAT GURDJIEFF FAILED BECAUSE OF THE THICK HUMAN

SKULL. IS IT FOR THIS REASON THAT HE CHOSE TO WORK WITH A SMALL, SELECT GROUP

OF PEOPLE – RATHER THAN CHALLENGE THE ENTIRE WORLD AS YOU HAVE? AND IF YOU

HAVE SUCCEEDED – WHICH YOU HAVE – WHERE HE DID NOT, IS THAT IN PART BECAUSE

MAN WAS NOT IN QUITE SUCH A PITIFULLY DESPERATE STATE FIFTY YEARS AGO AS HE IS

TODAY?

There are a few things to be understood.One, George Gurdjieff was never interested in changing society. His reason was very strange but seems to be meaningful. He believed that people are not born with souls: the soul has to be earned, you have to deserve it.

So the question of the society being revolutionized, transformed, does not arise. For him, only very few people, who have worked hard to crystallize their being, have souls; others are simply vegetables, they don’t count. It hurts. It is shocking. And it is not true either, but it is meaningful.

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All the religions of the world have been teaching that man is born with a soul. Gurdjieff is the first man in the whole of history with this strange idea – that man is born only with the possibility of having a soul, if he chooses.

There have been atheists who have said there is no soul in man, but they never accepted that there is any possibility of deserving it. And there were theists who believed man is born with a soul; the question of deserving it does not arise, you have to discover it.

Gurdjieff stands alone in his idea that people are born just as the atheists say, but if they make enough effort they can create souls in themselves as the theists say.

Now the problem is a little complicated. It is not a question of what is true and what is untrue. The question is always, what works?

The atheist who simply denies the soul – as the communists are doing all over the world – is immensely harmful because he stops man’s possibility of growth. He gives you the idea that you are material and you are going to remain material; there is nothing more. You are born matter, you will die matter, and nothing will be left; life is only between birth and death, neither before or after.

It is a dangerous creed, and half of the world has accepted it. It seems it fulfills some inner necessity of man.

Man does not want to be a soul, because to be a soul means a struggle for freedom, a struggle for individuality, a struggle to live totally. Once you accept the soul, you are accepting the whole sky of growth. For people who don’t want to struggle for so many things, the easiest way is that there is no soul, so the question of any growth does not arise.

It is not coincidental that half of the world or more, for the first time in the whole history of man, are atheists. There have always been atheists, but single thinkers, or a small group, never such a large amount of humanity.

All the religions are on one side, and atheism alone is equal in strength on the other side. This is happening for the first time.

It seems there is a revenge; a revenge against all those whom we call the enlightened ones, the awakened ones; a revenge against Gautam Buddha, Mahakashyap, Bodhidharma, because their status, without their intention, made you inferior. They never wanted it to be so. They wanted to help you to grow to even greater heights than themselves. But that was only in theory.

Humanity remained deeply rooted in the earth. For thousands of years it has worshipped the awakened ones. And always remember the basic rule of life: if you worship someone, one day you are going to take revenge.

And this is the revenge against all spiritual giants – the revenge of the pygmies – the declaration,

”There is no soul at all, so what all these people are talking about is mere talk. It means nothing.

They are talking of the soul and its growth just to reduce you into an unspiritual, retarded human being.”

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It happened in the court of one of the great emperors of India, Akbar. He was very interested in collecting all the geniuses to his court – and he had really great people in his court. One day he came, and he drew a line on the wall and said to his people in the court, ”Can you make this line small without touching it?”

They thought of all possible ways, but how to make it smaller without touching it? But one man stood up and drew a bigger line on top of it; he did not touch the line the emperor had drawn, but made it small.

It is for centuries that humanity has been accumulating a revenge against all those who really were giants, but whose level the masses could not rise up to. And how long can you live in shame? It is better to accept a philosophy that denies that there is any possibility of any growth – that all these great awakened ones are just fictitious.

And spiritual growth is not something that can be put before the people. It is something invisible –

either you feel it or you don’t feel it. If you deny it, whatever the reason for your denial, unknowingly you are also denying your own growth and its possibility. Now you can not conceive that a Gautam Buddha can be born in the Soviet Union. It is impossible.

Atheism was a very small thing in the past, but still it hindered people from growing. Theism proposed that everybody is born with a soul. All that he has to do is to discover it – nothing has to be created, no arduous effort. A simple awareness of yourself and the cover is removed, and you are face to face with yourself. And the moment you know it, your life is transmuted. Everything in your life changes.

These people thought that by insisting that you are born with a soul, the masses will start – because now it is not a question of arduous effort to create it, but only to uncover it.

But the masses took another interpretation of it, they interpreted it, ”If the soul is already there what is the hurry? – and you have eternal life, you can uncover it any time. But the fleeting pleasures of life – which are not eternal – don’t miss them!

”You cannot miss the soul because it is always there and will remain with you always – whether you discover it or not. So it can be delayed, postponed for the next life or another life; but the fleeting pleasures of the flesh... enjoy them!” Even a very great idea can be interpreted in such a way that it turns exactly to its opposite.

So all the religions of the world were in a strange situation. There were atheists who were denying the soul, and people were not making any effort – there was no question, no such thing exists. And there were theists who believed in a soul, but when it is already yours, there seems to be no need to be in a hurry – before you discover it, enjoy everything of the world.

In both cases people remained materialists.

It is against these two standpoints that Gurdjieff brought a new, original idea, that you are not born with a soul. Remember, unless you create it you will simply die, nothing will be left, you will not survive your bodily death. You can, if you work hard, create the soul. It is not a question of uncovering it – you don’t have it right now – it has to be crystallized.

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But because of his idea – and his idea seems to be significant because it avoids the pitfalls of both the theists and the atheists – a new problem is created. The problem is that the greater masses cannot be inspired to make arduous effort; only a few intelligent people....

And I say only a few because even intellectuals will say, ”If I die and nothing survives, so what?

Once I was not; it was not a problem to me. Before birth I was not; it was not a problem for me because if I am not how can there be any problem for me? After death, if I am not – that seems to be the best solution of the whole problem.”

So only a few intelligent people became interested in Gurdjieff. And he never hammered on society’s vested interests, he never hammered on religious superstitions, he never hammered on political social conditions. He was not interested at all. His whole effort was so that he can create a few people who have a crystallized being.

He was not interested in the masses. And you cannot complain against him. The masses are such that to be interested in them means to be stoned, to be crucified, to be poisoned, to be killed. The same people for whom you are working hard are going to destroy you.

The reason is the same – without intending it, you are reducing the masses to ignorant people. You KNOW – and you can show the path for them to come to the same knowing. But they don’t know, and they are the majority – the whole world.

Rather than bothering about your path and its mysteries, the easiest way is to finish you so you don’t bother them; otherwise you create disturbances in people’s minds. They were satisfied with ”eat, drink and be merry”; and suddenly you come and start talking about enlightenment. You disturbed their ignorant life – ignorant but with a certain satisfaction.

P.D.Ouspensky, before he betrayed Gurdjieff, wrote one book on Gurdjieff’s teachings, IN SEARCH

OF THE MIRACULOUS. He dedicated it to ”the man who disturbed my sleep.” But nobody likes to be disturbed in sleep, and spiritual sleep is so deep that to be disturbed... there is anger. Gurdjieff knew exactly what happened with Socrates, what happened with Jesus, what happened with Al-Hillaj Mansoor, what happened with Sarmad – and thousands more who tried to liberate humanity. Humanity rewarded them with death.

He was a totally different kind of man, a very practical and pragmatic man. He said, ”Why bother about these people and waste my time? I should just choose those who are ready to go all the way along with me.”

It is because of this that there was no world-wide antagonism against him. Very few people in America, a few people in France, a few people from Russia, a few people from England – not more than two hundred – were working on his principles. Now, if only two hundred people are working on the principles, and those principles are not against any orthodox system, any religion, any tradition, any past, the society will ignore it.

They thought that he is a slightly eccentric person and those who are of the same type go to him.

But he could not disturb the whole world, he could not create a stir; he was not interested. And even if he was interested, he could not do it; he was not articulate.

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He never delivered a single lecture in his life; he never talked, even to his own disciples. He will write; somebody else will read it, and he will watch the faces of his disciples to see what impression the reading of the article is creating. And according to that impression he will change again the article, and it will be read again. The same article may be read for the whole year, until he was satisfied that it was creating the right impression on everyone.

This kind of person cannot stir the whole world. To write one lecture, if it needs one year.... He has written only three books – in this way. It seems that he wrote those books more for himself than for anybody else, because he wrote them in a strange place. He was a strange man.

People go to a silent place in the mountains to write something. He will go to a restaurant in Paris and just sit there in the restaurant, in the middle of hundreds of people coming and going... and all kinds of talk and everything happening... waiters bringing things and plates being broken, and he will be writing there. That was his place to write.

His disciples said, ”You have a beautiful silent place near Paris. Why don’t you write there?” He never agreed. He said, ”I want to write in a place where every kind of disturbance is there – the road is there, the traffic is there, and a restaurant.... I want to write there and remain undisturbed. I don’t want any outer silence to help me. My inner silence has to write it.” So he wrote those three books for two reasons. Basically it was his own continuous testing, that if you are writing in such a disturbing situation and you remain undisturbed and calm and quiet – as if you are in the hills in a silent cabin writing by yourself.... So first it was for himself; and second, whatever he would write would be read before the students.

He was not certain that the impression he wanted to create would be created by what he had written.

So there were continuous changes in his script. He took his whole life to write three books. And still they are of no use to the common people. You cannot understand what he is writing. He was not a writer. He was not a speaker.

He had learned a few techniques, and he had worked hard and achieved a crystallization in himself; but he was not articulate enough to express it to others. In fact, he had learned from people who were less concerned with verbal communication, than with actual exercises. He had been through monasteries. He went up to Tibet. And he moved in many hidden Sufi monasteries – but they were all interested in exercises.

But the modern man first wants to be convinced intelligently that something is worth doing; otherwise, he is not going to waste his life doing something, about which he has no conviction.

That conviction Gurdjieff could not create.

He had a charismatic personality so that those who came close to him became almost convinced of the fact that whatever the man says has to be true. But only a few people – he was not a world-famous name. But those who came to him certainly gained much – although the exercises were outrageous – because in the Western tradition that kind of exercise has never existed. But in the Sufi tradition they are common exercises. They look outrageous because they are out of the Sufi context.

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And he was not basically interested in creating a revolution in the world, creating a new man, a new humanity. His concern was very limited; to create a few people – because that’s how Sufis have worked for centuries – just to create a few people, because this has been their understanding: the more you become known the more there is danger.

Many Sufis who became known have been killed. Then Sufis went completely underground. Now to find a Sufi master may take months or years for you. Unless you happen to meet a disciple of the master, and he is convinced of your real search for the truth – that you are not just a curiosity-monger, not just a tourist who by the way wants to see what a Sufi school is like, what Sufi exercises are like – then only through a personal introduction will you enter into a school, on the responsibility of that person who is bringing you to the master. It was sheer necessity because Islam was very cruel.

Jews have killed only one Jesus.

Islam has killed many Jesuses.

And unfortunately, Gurdjieff learned everything from the Islamic Sufi schools, so he always remained secretive; it became part and parcel of his being – just a few students and he was satisfied.

My situation is totally different, because for centuries we have been trying to change a few individuals; and a few individuals have been changed, but that has not affected humanity at large.

And unless humanity at large evolves in consciousness, we will not be able to create thousands of buddhas.

One emperor in China made a temple of ten thousand buddhas. In that temple there are ten thousand statues of buddhas. The whole temple is nothing but statues – all the walls. It is a whole mountain cut into a temple.

I understand the message of the man who made that temple of ten thousand buddhas. To me it is not a temple, it is an indication that unless we create thousands of buddhas in the world, this world is going to remain miserable unnecessarily, suffering for no reason at all, creating troubles for itself – because you cannot create anything else. Unless your creativity moves towards some other meaningful projects, you are going to create trouble for each other.

We have seen it – buddhas have been here, there have been teachers like Gurdjieff who changed the quality of a small group, but it is like throwing a teaspoonful of sugar into the ocean – the ocean remains the same, it takes no notice of the sugar. It does not become sweet.

The effort for creating enlightenment has been very disproportionate. The masses are huge, and once in a while one person, or a few people, get the point. But it remains in the margin – and the world goes on moving in the same rut, on the same rotten wheel.

My interest is to create as many buddhas as possible, around the world; as many lighted beings as possible, so that even if they want to destroy me, it doesn’t matter because there will be thousands of others who will do the same work.

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And you cannot think that thousands of people can be crucified. And even if it happens, that very fact that ten thousand buddhas are crucified, perhaps may be enough of a shock to the whole humanity

– to wake them up so they can see what they are doing in their sleep, in their slumber.

Moreover, the time is short so I cannot depend on the old slow methods. They are bullock-cart methods. Buddha had a long future ahead of him. I don’t have.

Humanity is in danger any moment: by the end of this century, if we have survived it will be a miracle.

So the pressure of time, the experience of the whole past, makes me take the risk and start cutting the very roots which are preventing people, and create so many conscious beings around, that the masses cannot think that it is just one man trying to be holier-than-thou. There are thousands... and they can see their actions, their behavior, their love, their compassion, their changed life... and the future is dark, death may take over.

We have to use this critical stage. We have to make the masses clearly aware: ”You can die any moment – you may not wake up tomorrow morning, so you cannot waste your time in trivia. Do something essential. Do something that can bring you in touch with eternity. So even if the whole globe dies, it doesn’t matter. At least for those who have touched the experience of eternity, for them there is no death.”

And it is possible that if we can create thousands of people... the very phenomenon may start triggering it in others, because we are made in the same way, we are connected with each other.

Just a strong enough atmosphere is needed, so the forces of awakening move around you like a whirlwind and trigger your own process.

And I don’t see that it is impossible.

It is possible.

It has to be made possible.

We are at a point where the forces of sleep and the forces of awakening are coming into conflict in a final battle; and basically the forces of sleep – howsoever big – are weak.

Twenty persons may be asleep here, and one person may be awake; that one person who is awake is more powerful than the twenty persons who are asleep.

The masses may be asleep, they don’t have any force.

We just have to create enough force of awakening.

And this is the time. If we miss this time, perhaps something for which the whole of nature and existence has been working for millennia will fail. But I don’t think it can fail.

If existence wants that the people should evolve into a superhuman race, then all the nuclear weapons and all the Ronald Reagans just don’t count.

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Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

YOU HAVE POINTED OUT THAT IN DREAMS WE OFTEN LIVE OUT THE CONTENT OF THE

UNCONSCIOUS IN A SYMBOLIC FORM. FOR EXAMPLE, THE WISH FOR A LOVE AFFAIR WITH

ONE’S SISTER IS PLAYED OUT IN THE DREAM AS A LOVE AFFAIR WITH HER BEST FRIEND.

IN THIS SITUATION, WHO IS DOING THE CENSORING AND WHY?

The conditioning of the conscious mind has gone so deep that even in sleep it won’t allow a few things. Even in deep hypnosis it won’t allow a few things.

For example, people have been worried that a hypnotist hypnotizing a woman can rape her under hypnosis. But unless the woman herself is willing it is not possible, she will wake up.

I was working with one of my cousin-brothers. He was a very talented boy; he is now a professor in a university. But he is very cowardly. So whatever he clings to, it is very difficult to persuade him to drop it if something better is available – because what he is clinging to is safe, he knows it.

He was from a very poor family. His mother died and his father married again, and the woman started torturing the boy. So I told the boy to come and live with me so he lived with me. He was studying and he was also working part-time in an office.

The principal of his college was a friend of mine. I told him, ”He has great talents and it is stupid that he should be working in an ordinary office as a typist. You can employ him also in the college part-time as a librarian, or something you can find.” And he was willing.

The boy was getting only seventy rupees per month from the office, and the principal was ready to give two hundred rupees for the same time – and almost no job, just being a librarian.

And I said to him, ”It will be good, you can read while there is nobody disturbing you, and you can become acquainted with the great literature; it will all be available to you. And you will remain in the college. You can study, you can work there.

”Show your talents, so finally I can manage to tell the principal when you pass your M.A. that it will be good to make you a lecturer in the college.” But he would not leave the part-time typist work in the office. It was very difficult for him to move from anything that he has become accustomed to and was secure in.

Finally I tried hypnotizing him – and he was a good medium, he did everything that I told him to do.

When I became perfectly satisfied that he goes really deep and forgets everything, I said to him one day, ”Now is the time. Tomorrow you resign from your post.” He immediately opened his eyes and woke up. He said ”I was afraid continuously for all these days.

I can do everything else, but not this resignation. I knew that you would one day tell me to resign from that post.”

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”But,” I said, ”how did you manage it, because you were so deep in hypnosis?” He said, ”I was deep in hypnosis, but it was with my willing cooperation. On this point I was not willing.”

So even in dreams the long training of your mind will interfere to change the dream, to make it as if you are chasing the best friend of your sister. But your unconscious desire is for your sister, the best friend is only a substitute. But the conditioned conscious has deep roots which have gone even into the unconscious.

So if a woman is willing the hypnotist can rape her; but she if is not willing, the moment he suggests anything against her will, she will wake up – however deep the hypnosis may be.

It was really a revelation to me, because he was doing everything else. I would tell him, ”You just get up. It is morning and you have to milk the cow.” And he would sit in the posture, as in India they do for milking the cow – and there is no cow. He will start milking the cow. And he will not remember anything about what happened. But to resign from the post... he was keeping his conscious censor alert about it.

You cannot tell somebody to go and murder, unless that person really wants to murder. Anything that the hypnotized medium does is his willing cooperation – not that he is conscious, but even in unconsciousness the conscious mind is alert so that nothing goes against the conditioning.

And if the suggestion is such as making love to your sister or your mother – which is one of the greatest sins in every society, the biggest taboo – the mind will immediately disturb the whole thing.

The consciousness will disappear, the hypnotist will disappear immediately, and the person will be awake, fully awake, and will be angry at you that you wanted him to do something which is not right.

So it is the conscious mind... but conscious mind, unconscious mind, these are just arbitrary divisions. There are not really walls between them, that they cannot cross each other. There are no divisions, these are just lines on the map. They are all one piece, just one part has become conscious; the other part has not become conscious – but they are joined.

So even in dreams there is a censor.

And all your dreams, unless they are not against your conditioning, are distorted. And that is the whole work of the psychoanalyst, to find out where they have been distorted and put things right. To find out what was actually wanted by the unconscious, but was diverted by the conscious, that is the whole art of psychoanalysis: to find it out, and to lead the unconscious to exactly the point where it wanted to go, and make you aware of it.

And once you become aware of it – that you wanted to make love to your sister, it was not her best friend, you are not interested in her at all – once this is clearly understood, the dream will not appear again, because now there is no point: you have accepted the fact that that was the unconscious desire. And there is no sin in it. All taboos are man-created. It is good for biological reasons that brothers and sisters don’t get married.

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But in India, the ancient story is that in the beginning, the child was born with his partner – the boy with the girl together, they were twins. So he was born with the wife; there was no question of choice or finding or astrology or anything.

The Sanskrit word bagni means both ‘sister’ and ‘wife’. When I first became aware of the meanings of the word, I was puzzled how a word could mean both ‘sister’ and ‘wife’.

So I worked on it and found out that in the beginning – this is the Indian mythology – everybody was born with his wife or husband. And life was very peaceful because they grew up together; they had the same tastes, the same likings. There was never a conflict or fight. But it had to be stopped because their children suffered.

If a man marries his own sister, their children will be retarded, crippled, blind, something or other; they cannot be perfectly healthy babies. Crossbreeding brings the best results. This was understood thousands of years ago. That’s why it became a taboo – that no brother should marry his sister, because the children will suffer.

But it has to be carried to its logical point. No one should marry into his own caste because, somehow or other, far back they will be related as cousins – their great-grandfathers or even further back. The best is that they should marry into a different caste, a different nation where there is no possibility of their blood being the same.

Now, it is an established fact as far as animals are concerned. We are using crossbreeding and the animals are becoming better and better. But with man we are superstitious and stupid.

In fact, marriages should be from one continent to another continent – as far away as possible so there is no connection at all; so even thousands of years back there is no connection. If that becomes possible, humanity will have better health, more intelligence, more beauty, less sickness, a longer life. Now these are scientifically established facts.

But one of the miseries is that man will not apply his findings to his own behavior. His behavior will be dominated by customs made by people who had no knowledge, no awareness of all these facts that have come just now into our understanding.

They should be used with human beings too. And if someday we can find a planet which has human beings, that will be the best. Because not even a suspicion... because here, even if you marry somebody from one continent to another continent, it is not absolutely certain, because all the civilized peoples of the world once lived in central Asia, in Mongolia.

When their population increased they had to spread from there. The same people are in India, the same people are in Iran, the same people are in Germany, the same people are in England, all over Europe, in America. Hundreds of generations have passed, but we can find that they were once in one group because of their languages.

English has thirty percent of its words from Sanskrit. Russian has forty percent of its words from Sanskrit. And one Western language, Lithuanian, has seventy percent of its words from Sanskrit.

All western languages have roots in Sanskrit.

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That simply means that once a tribe lived in one place, used one language, and then had to spread into different parts of the world because of the population explosion. They learned new words, they made new words, they came across new realities; but a certain percentage of their old language remained with them.

Language is a sure sign of whether these people come from one tribe or different tribes. For example, Chinese is a totally different world.

Even South Indian languages have no Sanskrit

roots. European languages are closer to Hindi than South Indian languages, because South Indian languages and the people who speak those languages are not part of the Aryan group that spread all over Europe and India.

The best will be to find someone who is as remotely connected to you as possible; if not connected, that’s the best.

So every society tabooed it out of necessity – but every child is bound to fall in love with his sister.

One of my sannyasins was just asking me, ”I am in trouble. You said that couples should make love without hiding from their children; the children should know that making love is a human phenomenon, natural. Their parents are doing it. And this will be an experience for them to watch, to see, and they will take it not seriously – but playfully.” She said, ”It was good, but the boy now says that he wants to make love to me. Now what am I supposed to do?” – because the whole taboo is that you cannot make love to the mother. They had allowed him to be present and he was very happy that he had been taken into their confidence – the father making love to his mother – and he watched it. And he said, ”I had never thought of it. But now I want to do it myself.” And he is so small, perhaps six years old.

I told the mother to tell him, ”You will make love when you grow up. You will have a wife. You are too small, I am too big. Just wait. It is natural, and it will come. And when you are mature, you will be married; you will fall in love with a girl and you will be married. Right now you should learn that there is nothing wrong in it, nothing guilty about it, no sin in it – that it is not something to be done in hiding, even from your own children.”

Because when the children discover – and they do discover – their respect for their parents flops.

Then they cannot respect these people, they are prohibiting them from doing the same thing that they themselves are doing.

She explained it to the boy. And children are very perceptive and very understanding. And he understood that it is right: he is not old enough so he will wait. But he felt grateful, and he will feel grateful his whole life – that he had a special kind of mother and father who took him into their confidence, even in their privacy. They never kept anything secret from him.

Now this boy has already asked to make love to his mother, has had explained to him the reasons

– ”It is not useful, it is meaningless; you are not mature yet” – and he will never have a dream of making love to his mother. It has become consciously clear.

But every other boy is unconsciously hankering to make love to the mother, and because of it he is jealous of the father. Every girl wants to make love to the father, and she is jealous of the mother.

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And that’s how we are creating complexities of the mind which will create mental troubles for these people in their future life.

But if everything is cleaned and cleared, explained, you will bring up your child without any repressed feelings. He will have a totally different quality of being: a freshness, a sharpness, and a deep acceptance of himself.

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CHAPTER 21

Spice in buddha’s pot

5 June 1986 pm in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

BODHIDHARMA ADDED A SPICE TO BUDDHA’S COOKING, WHICH EVENTUALLY BECAME

ZEN.

WHO ELSE HAS THROWN SPICE IN BUDDHA’S POT?

The number is really vast. Buddhism in itself became a world of philosophy – not just a philosophy, but a source of many philosophies because it spread all over Asia, meeting with different cultures, different people, different philosophies.

In Tibet it came to a different kind of flowering which is rare. It is pure mysticism and is founded on a school method. Hundreds of lamaseries developed all over Tibet in the deep Himalayan mountains, where people devoted their whole lives in search of truth. It became almost a convention that every family should donate one or more members for these lamaseries, these mystery schools.

And what has happened in Tibet has not happened anywhere else. The whole country turned towards a single search devoted to a single goal. It certainly developed its own methods, the seeds of which are in Buddhism, in Gautam Buddha; but in the seeds you cannot see the flowers. When those seeds blossom, only then do you become aware of the fragrance and the color and the beauty.

Tibet has given many awakened people; and their methods are as far removed from Zen as they can be. There is no meeting ground. Their source is the same, but they developed in different 219

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atmospheres, were developed by different kinds of people, came to the same conclusion but moved on different paths – as if on one mountain you can move from different directions on different paths and still can reach to the same peak. They meet at the peak, but on the way there is no meeting, they are completely unique and separate.

In Thailand, Buddhism has taken a different form, a different shape.

In China, meeting with Tao, it absorbed completely the whole spirit of Tao.

Buddhism has a very big heart. It is not like Christianity or Mohammedanism, confined to a very limited area; it can absorb so many things, apparently looking even contradictory.

Tao has no method. Tibet is all method. Tao is no-method, simple spontaneity – living life according to nature with no fight. Every method is a fight, every method is to define yourself. Tao’s work is how to become undefined, how to become one with the whole; and absorbing Tao, Chinese Buddhism came to have a different taste, totally different.

And the same has happened in Korea, in Mongolia, in Sri Lanka, in Burma, in other small countries of Asia – because it became the religion of the whole of Asia. And it became a great religion, influencing different races, different cultures, different countries, without any fight. It is something unique in history.

Christians have been converting people, Mohammedans have been converting people. Buddhism has never converted people; it has simply allowed itself to be open, available. It has opened its own heart and helped other people to open their hearts, and there has been a meeting – but the meeting was not the victory of anyone. It was simply a merger.

In India itself, Buddhism has a totally different characteristic – more philosophic, more logical –

because in India, Buddhism had to survive amongst many Indian philosophies which had reached to a climax of understanding. To survive amongst them, Buddhism developed great philosophies.

Nagarjuna, Vasubandhu, Dharmakirti – such philosophers are unique in the whole world in their logical penetration.

But in Thailand Buddhism is completely non-philosophic: it is devotional. In Japan it is neither philosophic nor devotional; it is pure meditation. In Tibet, it is all methodological. In China, it is no method, no effort, no action.

But the beauty is that Buddhism – mixing with so many different philosophies, cultures, viewpoints –

still retains its basic character. It is not lost. It has a tremendous vitality to survive. It adapts to any kind of situation without fighting, and slowly, slowly absorbs the situation into itself.

And in those days, twenty-five centuries ago, spreading a totally new vision to a whole continent just by sheer intelligence and discussion was a miracle. Not a single man has been killed, not a single stone has been thrown. And all these people have contributed and made Buddhism richer.

Ordinarily religions like Christianity or Mohammedanism are afraid that if they allow somebody to come too close, they may lose their own identity. Buddhism was never afraid, and it never lost its identity.

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I have been to Buddhist conferences where people from Tibet and Japan and Sri Lanka and China and Burma and other countries were present, and that has been my one experience – that they all differed with each other, but they were still connected with a single devotion towards Gautam Buddha. About that there was no problem, no conflict.

And this was the only conference – I have attended many conferences of other different religions, but this had something unique about it, because I was using my own experience in interpreting the teachings of Buddha. They were all different, and I was bringing still another different interpretation.

But they listened silently, lovingly, patiently, and thanked me, ”We have not been aware that this interpretation is also possible. You have made us aware of a certain aspect of Buddha, and for twenty-five centuries thousands of people have interpreted it, but have never pointed this out.” One of the Buddhist leaders, Bhadant Anand Kausalyayan, told me, ”Whatever you say sounds right. The stories that you tell about Gautam Buddha look absolutely true, but I have been searching into scriptures – my whole life I have devoted to the scriptures – and a few of your stories are not described anywhere.”

I asked him, ”For example?”

And he said, ”One story I have loved. I looked again and again in every possible source – for three years I have been looking into it. It is not described anywhere; you must have invented it.

The story I have told many times. Gautam Buddha is walking on the road. A fly sits on his head, and he goes on talking with Ananda, his disciple, and mechanically moves his hand and the fly goes away. Then he stops, suddenly – because he has done that movement of the hand without awareness. And to him that is the only wrong thing in life – to do anything without awareness, even moving your hand, although you have not harmed anybody.

So he stands and again takes his hand through the same posture of waving away the fly – although there is no fly any more. Ananda is just surprised at what he is doing, and he says, ”The fly you have brushed away from your face long before. What are you doing now? There is no fly.” Buddha said, ”What I am doing now is... that time I moved my hand mechanically, like a robot. It was a mistake. Now I am doing it as I should have done, just to teach me a lesson so that never again anything like this happens. Now I am moving my hand with full awareness. The fly is not the point. The point is, whether in my hand there is awareness and grace and love and compassion, or not. Now it is right. It should have been this way.” I had told that story in Nagpur at a Buddhist conference. Anand Kausalyayan heard it there, and three years later in Bodhgaya – where there was an international conference of the Buddhists – he said, ”The story was so beautiful, so ESSENTIALLY Buddhist, that I wanted to believe that it was true. But in the scriptures it is not there.”

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He said, ”It does, certainly. This is his essential teaching: awareness in every action. But it is not historical.”

I said, ”Who cares about history?”

And in that conference I told them, ”You should remember it, that history is a Western concept. In the East we have never cared about history because history only collects facts. In the East there is no word equivalent to history, and in the East there was no tradition of writing history. In the East, instead of history we have been writing mythology.

”Mythology may not be factual, but it has the truth in it. A myth may have never happened. It is not a photograph of a fact; it is a painting. And there is a difference between a photograph and a painting.

A painting brings out something of you which no photograph can bring out. The photograph can only bring out your outlines.

”A great painter can bring you out in it – your sadness, your blissfulness, your silence.

The

photograph cannot catch hold of it because they are not physical things. But a great painter or a great sculptor can manage to catch hold of them. He’s not much concerned about the outlines, he is much more concerned about the inner reality.”

And I told the conference, ”I would like this story to be added to the scriptures because all the scriptures were written after Gautam Buddha’s death – three hundred years afterwards. So what difference does it make if I add few more stories after twenty-five centuries, not three centuries. The whole question is that it should represent the essential reality, the basic taste.” And you will be surprised that people agreed with me; even Bhadant Anand Kausalyayan agreed with me. This kind of understanding and agreement is a Buddhist phenomenon, it is a speciality which has happened in different branches of Buddhism.

And I am not even a Buddhist. And they went on inviting me to their conferences. And I told them,

”I am not a Buddhist.”

They said, ”That does not matter. What you say is closer to Gautam Buddha than what we say –

although we are Buddhists.”

You cannot expect that from Christians or Mohammedans or Hindus. They are fanatics.

Buddhism is a non-fanatic religion.

Just now when we were in Nepal – Nepal is a Buddhist country – the chief of all the Buddhist monks used to come to listen to my lectures. And I came to know that he was going round meeting ministers, and the prime minister, and other important people and telling them, ”You should come.

Don’t decide by reading nonsense newspapers. Come and listen to him.” He used to sit just in front of me – an old man – and whenever I said something which was very close to Buddha’s heart, I could see that old man’s head nodding. He was not doing it knowingly.

He was just so much in tune that he felt it; this was the purest thing that he has heard. And I was not talking about Buddha; but the taste he understood.

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The whole day he was moving around Kathmandu, forgetting his own work as president of the monks of Nepal. He was telling people that they should come and listen to me, and saying, ”Don’t be bothered what newspapers say. When the man is here, why should you miss him?” And he brought many people by and by.

You cannot hope for this with a Hindu shankaracharya, or the head of the Jaina monks, or a Catholic pope. It is impossible.

Buddha has left a tremendously meaningful legacy, and his impact is still alive. No man has left such an impact on humanity; no man has made man so humble, so receptive, so intelligent, so unprejudiced.

So thousands of people have thrown their spices in the Buddhist pot, but nobody has been able to change its basic essence.

That is the greatness of Gautam Buddha – that great philosophers merged with him, great cultures merged with him, but his essential truth remained unaffected. It is still the same.

It has taken all the beauties from everywhere, it has collected all the juice from all possible sources, but it has not lost its own identity. It is so certain of its own identity that it is not afraid of mixing with anyone, everyone.

This certainty is possible only if the truth is your own experience. You are not a prophet, not a savior, not a messiah, you are not a postman bringing a message from God – this certainty is possible only if the truth is your own.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

I GET SO CONFUSED WHEN IT COMES TO WOMEN. I HAVE SO MUCH TROUBLE SEEING

THE REALITY.

WHEN A WOMAN LOVES ME, I FEEL STRONG, ATTRACTIVE, AND I LIKE MYSELF MUCH

MORE. THEN OTHER WOMEN ARE ATTRACTED TO ME AND I GO TO THEM.

THAT’S WHEN CONFUSION REALLY SETS IN.

IF I ACT ON THE ATTRACTION, THE WOMAN WHO LOVES ME, STOPS; THEN I FEEL GUILTY, WEAK, AND UNATTRACTIVE, AND LOSE THE OTHER WOMEN TOO. IF I DON’T ACT ON THE

ATTRACTION I FEEL FALSE, COWARDLY, AND ANGRY WITH THE WOMAN WHO LOVED ME.

IT SEEMS LIKE IT’S NECESSARY TO WALK A TIGHT WIRE, AND I GET TIRED AFTER A WHILE

AND THE FALL IS SO PAINFUL.

OSHO, I KNOW MY EGO MUST BE INTERMIXED WITH ALL THIS, BUT I CAN’T SEEM TO SORT

IT OUT. I HAVE RECENTLY FALLEN IN LOVE AGAIN, AND I’M AFRAID IT WILL AGAIN END

DISASTROUSLY.

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WOULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT?

The basic problem is not love. Love is never a problem. The basic problem is that you don’t have any self-respect, any individuality. You are made up only of the opinions of others.

So if a woman loves you, you feel great because the woman gives you the sense that you must be beautiful. You don’t have any sensibility about yourself – your beauty, your intelligence. You are very much dependent. That’s where the problem is. And because the woman’s love makes you feel great, beautiful, approved, appreciated.... You are not really in love with the woman, you are using her love for something else that you are missing – your self-appreciation. And you are becoming dependent.

If the woman stops loving you, again you will be ugly, again you will lose the small support that you had found, again you will start drowning in the ocean.

And because the woman gives you the sense of greatness and beauty and a certain individuality, other women also become attracted to you. Then you feel even more a hero.

You love to be loved. But you don’t know what love is.

You are not sensitive about love, so immediately you don’t miss the chance of using the other woman’s love to make you feel greater. But then the first woman slips out of your hands. That makes you feel guilty, that makes you feel ugly; all your greatness disappears, all your charm disappears. It was borrowed, it was just a reflection. It was given to you by that woman, and she has dropped you.

Soon the other woman also leaves you.

It is not a question of love at all.

You are trying to make it a problem of love.

The question is that you don’t have any identity, that you have never loved yourself, that you don’t have any appreciation for yourself. Perhaps you condemn yourself, perhaps you hate yourself, perhaps you feel you are a nobody. In this big world there are great people, talented geniuses. You stand nowhere.

This is your problem, and unless you change this, nothing is going to help you. And to change it is so simple, because it is just your idea.

Everybody is in the same boat. Just a few people are intelligent enough to appreciate themselves

– because whatever nature has given to you, you have not earned it; you have to be thankful for it, you have to be grateful for it – whatever you have got. And whatever you have got, you have to use it creatively.

Everybody has some talent. If he uses it creatively it will bring an identity to himself, and that will not depend on anybody else. You will be independent. And if then somebody falls in love with you, you will not feel great for it, you will feel grateful for it. It won’t make you a hero, it will make you rather humble.

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And not being dependent on the person who loves you, you will not be deep down angry – because nobody likes to be dependent on anybody else, everybody hates it. So the person who makes you great – you hate that person and you are just looking for an opportunity to show your hate. That’s why soon the other woman appears; that is the chance to show the first woman ”it is not only you that love me. There are thousands of others.”

But this is basically ugliness, insensitiveness, and it arises out of your dependence. Any person who is independent, who is perfectly happy alone – it doesn’t matter whether anybody loves him or not, he is enough unto himself. To love such a person is a joy because that person is not going to hate you, that person is not going to resent you, that person is not going to take revenge on you: he is an independent person, he has no complaint against you.

So even if he falls in love with some other woman, this will not be a revengeful act. He will apologize to the first woman. He will make it clear that ”the love that used to exist between us has disappeared.

I am helpless. You are helpless. I feel sorry, but there is nothing that I can do about it. Anything done will only be pretension, hypocrisy; and I cannot be a hypocrite to someone I have loved. It is better to say clearly that love is over – in sadness, but we have to part.

It will not create any guilt in you because you have not hurt anybody. It will not create any ugliness in you because you have not used anybody. And the reason does not exist for the other woman to leave you. And even if she leaves.... One should never take life for granted – everything is in a flux and changing. And who knows, a better woman may be available; but first this woman has to pass.

If you are an independent person, you will take all the changes in life as a great situation for learning, for maturing, for graduating.

All these love affairs are momentary. They don’t have any insurance, any guarantee with them. They come like a breeze and they go like a breeze.

If you are afraid of change, then it is better to be as far away from these love affairs as possible because love is the most changing phenomenon in existence – because it is the most beautiful flower. In the morning it opens, in the evening it is gone. But tomorrow other flowers will open, they have always been opening. So just rest for the night.

It is good between two women to have a little time for rest – or don’t you want any rest? Then you will kill yourself. So, sometimes in love, sometimes not in love, is a perfectly good rhythm. You just have to be independent.

Your love should be just love. It should not give you anything else that can be taken away. So when it comes it is good, when it is gone it is good; you remain the same.

I have seen in my life every kind of situation. But I never look back. I have always found that it was good that it finished: now something new is possible. Otherwise, you would be still playing with toys, teddy bears. Things come and go. You remain; and you go on maturing with every change.

Every change is beautiful.

Make it as much of a celebration as possible. Don’t hurt anybody, and don’t let anybody hurt you.

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Just remain human. We are not stones. Things will be changing; there are good days and there are bad days, but if you have a certain integrity, you can pass through good days, bad days, just the same. It does not make any difference to you. On the contrary, everything contributes to your growth.

But you have to remember first to find out exactly where the problem is; otherwise people go on solving problems which are not their problems. So they do much work to no purpose.

It is not the ego, as you are thinking, that is the problem.

You have simply remained from your childhood dependent on other people’s opinions, what they say about you. And you have been collecting those opinions; and files of opinions are surrounding you

– that’s what you are.

One of my friends – he was an old man, but by chance he came very close to me – he was India’s oldest member of parliament, Seth Govind Das. He was known as the father of the Indian parliament.

He had been a member, without any break, for sixty-five years.

His son died. His son was acquainted with me, and he was a minister. And just to console the father, I went to see him – for the first time – and he was sitting in his beautiful luxurious palace. He had a palace. His father had the title of raja. And as he saw me, immediately tears came to his eyes.

And I said, ”You have seen life much more than me, and you know that death is bound to happen, and when it will happen nobody can say.”

And he was crying, and he pushed a pile of telegrams towards me – from the prime minister, from the president, from the governors, from other state ministers, and this and that, vice-chancellors of universities.... I said, ”That’s okay. That’s perfectly good, they are all sending their consolations.” He said, ”But the chief minister of this state has not sent anything.” I was shocked, that his son is dead... and they were once friends – the chief minister used to live with Seth Govind Das in his own palace. But he was a cunning man, a cunning politician. He used Seth Govind Das and his popularity, and his power and money, to become the chief minister.

And once he was in power, he did not want it to appear to anybody that it had anything to do with Seth Govind Das. So slowly, slowly they turned into enemies. And even when Seth Govind Das’s son had died, he did not send a telegram of consolation.

But I told Seth Govind Das, ”That does not matter. It won’t help in any way to revive your son. But it seems you are more interested” – he had all the cuttings of the newspapers in which the news of the death and his son’s photos and biographical sketches appeared – ”in the publicity than in the death. I don’t see that you are really shocked by his death. There seems to be something else.” He said, ”What do you mean?” He was offended, and it was our first meeting.

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him to the federal government... and you must be hoping in some way for something that you could not be.”

He was one of the oldest fighters of the freedom movement, but he could not get any post after the freedom. He was a simple man, not cunning, not a politician. He had sacrificed much. But who cares about sacrifice, who cares that he has been in jails many times and he has gone against his family – because his father was a very staunch supporter of the British government. And the father had threatened that he would disown him if he did not stop that nonsense that he was doing.

Against his father, he went on fighting with the British government. He was hoping that he would get some big post. And he got nothing. And I know that he was not capable of any post. He was such a simple person. To fight for freedom is one thing, and to become a prime minister or to become a governor is another thing – different qualities are needed. So he was hoping....

I told him, ”You were hoping.”

He said, ”But how” – all his tears disappeared. And he said, ”How could you find that out, because you have met me for the first time?”

I said, ”Seeing all these cuttings and telegrams, it seems you were ambitious. Your own ambitions are unfulfilled and you were hoping that through the son you will be able to fulfill your ambitions. And now the son is dead. You never loved the son, because you have a second son also, and I knew both your sons.

”You don’t take any note of the second son because he’s not in politics. Your whole love is for ambition. The son was simply a means. You wanted to use him, and now he is gone. Don’t be worried: use the second son. Politics is not such a big thing. Idiots are succeeding, and you have every power, influence, connection – push the other son.” And he forgot all about his first son. He said, ”That’s right, I didn’t think about it.” And he pushed the second son. In the place of his first son, he pushed the second son. He became the deputy education minister. But by a strange fate, the second son also died before the old man.

He also could not even become a fully-fledged minister.

When I went to see him, I said, ”Now I am really sorry, because you had only two sons. Now there is only one way.”

He said, ”What? It was you who suggested it, and I did it. And things were going well. I had forgotten the first son. What can you do against God’s will? But now he is dead.” I said, ”What about your son-in-law?” – because he had a son-in-law – ”force HIM!” He said, ”But even now, forcing him, I feel a little afraid. What if he dies too?” I said, ”Then we will see. Somebody else we will find. First you force him. Because if you die, then nobody from your family can enter into politics. You have all the connections, although you don’t The Transmission of the Lamp

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have any actual power. But all the great leaders of the country are connected with you, are friends with you. You can force it.”

He said, ”It is worth trying. At the most he can die. What else can he do?” And the son-in-law was not ready at all. Seeing two sons had died in the same post, he had become afraid. He even came to me, saying, ”Please don’t suggest anything. That man is dangerous. Now he’s after me; and the same post is vacant because again the son has died, and I am very much afraid. And I’m not a politician.”

I said, ”It is just a coincidence. And you are not his son in the first place, you are his son-in-law. You just get into it and see what happens.” Fortunately he survived!

But the old man died. And once the old man died, nobody cared about the son-in-law, and in the next election he was thrown out. He could not even get the ticket to stand in the election. It was all the old man’s influence.

So when he met me, he said, ”Even worse has happened. If I had died, even as a deputy minister, at least with government honors, with great publicity.... But something went wrong. The old man died before me, and now I am nowhere. He destroyed my business. I closed the business and went into politics, and now the politics is finished. Because I don’t have any connections or any relationship with those people, I could not even manage to get a ticket to be elected to the assembly.” I said, ”You should thank God that you are alive. Just open your shop again and forget all about politics.”

That old man was threatening, at the time when his first son died, that he will kill himself. His wife was very much afraid. She told me, ”Somehow, prevent him. He says that he will jump, he will kill himself.”

I said, ”Don’t be worried.

A man who is carrying a load of telegrams, all the cuttings of the newspapers, he is not going to jump. This type of person doesn’t commit suicide.” She said, ”Are you certain?”

I said, ”I am absolutely certain. Don’t be afraid of him. He’s perfectly alright, and I have given him the solution.”

The death was not the problem. But he was thinking that the death is the problem: that his son has died and he loved him so much, that he cannot live without him.

I said, ”That is not the problem. The problem is that you loved your ambitions, and he was just being used for your ambitions – and you cannot live without ambitions. Just look at the real problem and things will be immediately clear.” And he understood. And he became a great friend to me. And he was eighty years old.

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I said, ”If you had remained with that idea, you would have remained miserable because that was not the real problem. And the real problem was your ambitions – just put forward the second son.” And as the second son became the deputy minister, he was happy again. He forgot the first son. It was not a question of who, but that somebody should carry his ambitions.

Always remember whenever you are facing a problem, first to find out what exactly is the problem.

Don’t be too much worried about the solution.

Your most important work is to find and pinpoint the problem. The solution is very easy. But if you have missed the problem, then the solution is impossible – whatever solution you bring will not work.

So ego is not your problem.

Love is not your problem.

Your problem is that you have not been able to accept yourself, to stand on your own feet, to be respectful to yourself, to do something so that you can feel that you have some worth.

Your worth should be within you, not donated by somebody else. A borrowed worth is dangerous; the person can take it back. And this goes on happening in so-called love affairs.

Only an independent person can love and can be loved. And love will not create any problem for him.

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CHAPTER 22

Man has suffered enough

6 June 1986 am in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

EACH NEW ERA OF THE LAST FEW CENTURIES HAS AFTER A SLOW START EMERGED

VERY SUDDENLY – THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND THE ERA OF COMMUNICATIONS

ARE TWO OBVIOUS EXAMPLES.

BEING WITH YOU I ALWAYS HAVE THE FEELING THAT WE ARE SITTING AROUND A WARM

COSY FIRESIDE, AT THE FEET OF THE MAN WHO INVENTED FIRE, WHILE ALL AROUND ARE

THE HOWLS OF AGONY AT THE ICY WORLD EVERYBODY ELSE IS ENDURING.

AS MAN SCRAMBLES TO EXAMINE EVERY NOOK AND CRANNY OF THE WORLD ABOUT

HIM, FROM THE DEEPEST OCEAN TO THE FARTHEST STAR, THE ABSENCE OF ANYBODY

LOOKING INTO MAN HIMSELF IS BECOMING SO PERVERSE THAT THE SILENCE IS

DEAFENING. AND THE SUSPENSE OF WAITING FOR THE PENNY TO DROP IS SIMPLY

BREATHTAKING.

WHEN THE OBVIOUS BECOMES SUDDENLY OBVIOUS, I THINK WE ARE GOING TO SEE AN

EXPLOSION OF INTENSE INTEREST IN YOU AND ALL THE INNER BEAUTIES YOU HAVE FOR

SO LONG BEEN POINTING AT – AND THE WORLD WILL BE TRANSFORMED FOREVER.

OSHO, IS THIS POSSIBLE?

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It is possible, and evolution happens only in this way. First, things go very slowly, then they start accumulating momentum, speed, and a point is reached when the speed and momentum are so much that it becomes explosive.

The days of waiting are long, the nights of patience seem to be unending – but they end, the morning comes.

What is happening here around me will gather speed and momentum soon. It is only a question of how deep our waiting is, how patient our silence is, because the darkness has no force.

Religions have created a very stupid idea in the mind of man, that evil has force. Evil has no force.

There is no such thing as evil. Truth has force and energy – a mountain of lies cannot prevent it – it just takes time for it to grow.

It cannot be stopped, it cannot be hindered, the ultimate explosion is absolutely certain.

Man has to become superman.

Consciousness has to reach to the world of superconsciousness.

And blessed are those who can wait, who can be silently watching the door when the guest comes.

The guest certainly comes, has never failed. And there are no evil forces working against the truth, working against the forces of good.

It is only darkness, ignorance – you cannot call them forces. You have to be compassionate towards them, they are not enemies, they are just like big blocks of marble waiting for a right sculptor to cut a few chips here, a few chips there, and a hidden beautiful statue, which was always there, emerges.

The artist only helps that which was hidden to emerge. Nobody is preventing it.

But the idea that evil is working against the forces of good has made people impatient, and afraid too.

I say unto you there is no evil, and there are no evil forces in the world. There are only people of awareness and there are people who are fast asleep – and sleep has no force. The whole energy is in the hands of the awakened people. And one awakened person can awaken the whole world.

One lighted candle can make millions of candles lighted, without losing its light.

And the time is not far away, because the sleeping humanity has suffered much and is going to suffer more, and as the suffering grows deeper... it is a blessing in disguise. Man can tolerate only a certain quantity of suffering, and then he wakes up. And man has suffered enough.

Before this century ends we will see the emergence of the superman.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

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IS THERE A PLACE FOR HYPNOSIS OF THE VERY YOUNG? IT OCCURS TO ME THAT IF

CHILDREN WERE HYPNOTIZED AT THE FIRST STAGE OF THEIR BEING COGNITIVE, THERE

WOULD BE ALL KINDS OF RAMIFICATIONS WHICH WOULD ONLY BE TREMENDOUSLY

BENEFICIAL.

THEY COULD BECOME AWARE OF THEIR PAST LIVES AND THUS, OF ANY SELF-DEFEATING

PATTERNS THEY WERE CAUGHT UP IN. THEY COULD GAIN AN UNDERSTANDING

OF WHY THEY WERE BORN IN A PARTICULAR FAMILY, TO CERTAIN PARENTS. THEY

COULD PERIODICALLY, THROUGH HYPNOSIS, BE CLEANED OF THE ACCUMULATED

UNCONSCIOUS MOTIVATIONS FOR FUTURE NEUROSIS. AND ABOVE ALL, THEY COULD

DISCOVER WHERE THEIR PARTICULAR POTENTIALITIES LAY, AND THUS DIRECT THEIR

LIVES MORE CONSCIOUSLY.

YOU HAVE TOLD US OF THE YOUNG GIRL FOR WHOM THE RECOLLECTION OF A PREVIOUS

LIFE PROVED TRAUMATIC, BUT IF HYPNOSIS WERE CONDUCTED UNDER THE RIGHT

SUPERVISION, WITH THE RIGHT GUIDANCE, IT COULD PROVE THE KEY TO A WHOLE NEW

GENERATION OF PEOPLE.

WOULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT?

Hypnosis is a very powerful method, and one has to be always aware that it can do immense good, but it can also do immense harm. The question is, in whose hands is the power?

You are right that hypnosis can help children immensely in every direction: in maturity, in individuality, in freedom, in meditation, in education, in intelligence, in memory. It can help them, but it can also harm them.

If the power is in the wrong hands the same hypnosis can be used to enslave people, to destroy their individuality, to destroy even the idea of freedom; to convince them that they are born slaves and they will remain slaves and that to revolt is simply risking their lives.

So the whole question depends on whose hands hypnosis is in. Right now I will not suggest it, because society is in the wrong hands and the society is causing every wrong to be planted in human beings. But hypnosis can be of tremendous help to them.

I would certainly suggest that children of sannyasins can be helped, but before anybody starts helping children, he should go through the whole process himself, so he is acquainted with the terrain, and knows where there are pitfalls.

We cannot use it yet with the masses. One day, when the whole world is a little more alert, the children can be benefited inconceivably, but right now you have to confine yourself first to sannyasins, and secondly to their children, and you have to be very aware of what you are doing, because children are very delicate. Nothing wrong should reach their minds.

And hypnosis takes things deep into the unconscious. It is a tremendously powerful method, and can bring great joys to children – and multidimensionally. In education: if a child is lagging behind, he can be supported by hypnosis and the same child will be in the front. If in a certain subject the child is finding difficulties, those difficulties can be removed just by suggestions in hypnosis.

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If you want to learn a new language, it is always more difficult as you grow older – for children it is not difficult, they can be molded very easily. Each child should be made capable of learning the international language through hypnosis. The other language he will be learning in the routine way.

He can become more independent, he can become more loving – all ugly things like jealousy, anger, hatred can be removed completely. Competition, ambition, he will never know. And all the energy that goes into jealousy, anger, hatred, competition, ambition, can be focused towards a certain talent. That talent also can be discovered in hypnosis; otherwise it is very difficult –

almost impossible – to find out what talent a child has, what genius he has. We know only when a person has expressed his genius. We do not know millions of others who have died without expressing themselves, because they had no opportunity, no situation supporting them, and every kind of hindrance. And they themselves had no idea what was their destiny, what they were meant to be.

Hypnosis can discover first what the child is meant to be, and then redirect the energies from all wrong sources towards the creative talent.

So on the one hand, wrong expressions, ugly

expressions disappear, which create only misery and poison for the child and for others, and on the other hand, all that energy becomes his creative expression.

And one thing should be remembered as a fundamental rule: if a person finds a way to express himself, in tune with his destiny, he will be always joyous. He will be bubbling with happiness. He has found the right path, but again I would like you to remember, it cannot be done with the masses.

These methods should be kept confined to the world of sannyasins, so we can show to the world,

”You can see our children, and you can see your children, and you can see the difference.” Seventy percent of diseases are mind-oriented. Through hypnosis those diseases can be prevented before they occur. Through hypnosis it can be found out what kind of sickness is going to happen in the near future. There are no symptoms on the body, the routine physical examination of the person will not show any indication that he is going to be sick or ill, he is perfectly healthy.

But through hypnosis we can find that within three weeks he is going to fall sick, because before anything comes to the body, it comes from the deep cosmic unconscious. It travels from there to the collective unconscious, to the unconscious, and only then, when it comes to the conscious mind, can it be checked and found in the body.

Sicknesses can be prevented even before the person has any idea that he is going to be sick.

In Russia, one genius photographer, Kirlian, has even photographed people.... His whole life he has been working in photography, with very sensitive plates, sensitive lenses, to find something which is not available to ordinary eyes and ordinary instruments. And he was puzzled that he can see in his photographs at least six months ahead.

If he takes a picture of a rosebud with his special sensitive plates, the picture is not of a rosebud, the picture is of a rose. Tomorrow it is going to be a rose. No other camera can do that miracle.

First he himself was puzzled how the sensitive plate can take a picture of something which has not happened yet – and when tomorrow the bud opens up, it is exactly similar to the photograph, there is no difference at all.

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Then he discovered more and more that there is a certain aura surrounding the bud – just an energy aura, and that energy aura has the whole program of how the bud is going to open. The sensitive plate gets the picture of the energy aura that we cannot see with our bare eyes. Then he started working on diseases, and in Soviet medicine he has created a revolution.

You need not first become sick, and then be cured. You can be cured even before you had any knowledge of any sickness, because Kirlian photography will show in what part the sickness is going to show, because the energy aura will be sick, already sick. It is six months ahead. It is connected with your cosmic unconscious.

Through hypnosis and deeper experiments with it, you can find sicknesses that are going to happen and they can be treated. The children can be more happy. It has been a topic of concern to the psychoanalysts why all over the world, except in a few places, seventy years has become the routine idea of the length of life, because there are a few tribes in Kashmir, in India – now that part has been occupied by Pakistan, a very small part – where people have always lived one hundred and thirty years, one hundred and forty years, one hundred and fifty, and even at the age of one hundred and fifty they were as energetic as any young man. They never became old, they remained young until they died.

In Soviet Russia, in the Caucasus, from where Joseph Stalin came and George Gurdjieff came....

The Caucasus has produced really strong men. There is a small part where people live even to one hundred and eighty years. There are thousands of people who have passed one hundred and fifty.

One of my friends was working there and he asked a farmer, who was tilling the ground, ”How old are you?”

He counted on his fingers, because he was uneducated. He said, ”It must be nearabout one hundred and eighty.”

My friend could not believe it – one hundred and eighty! – and he is still young.

He enquired in the town and they said, ”He is right. His father lived for two hundred years and we hope that he will also live two hundred years, because no sign of death can be seen.” Psychologists have been concerned to find the reason why in a few places people live long and in most of the world people live only the routine seventy years.

George Bernard Shaw, when he became seventy years old, moved away from London. His friends said, ”What are you doing? In old age it is better to be here with friends, society – and you are a man of society, a man of culture.”

He said, ”I cannot live here. I am now seventy. This society believes that people die at seventy and that belief is dangerous. I am going to find some place where people don’t believe such a thing.” And he found a small village nearby, and the way he went to find out was to go into graveyards and look on the stones for how long people had been living; and on a stone he found in one graveyard it said that the man had lived one hundred and twenty years. And the graveyard stone was saying,

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He said, ”This is the place to live, where people think that somebody dying at one hundred and twenty is untimely.” And he lived there, and he lived long. He managed to live a century. And in that graveyard that was the case; on all the stones nobody had died at seventy.

It seems to be that it is just a psychological programming.

For centuries we have been

programmed... seven decades and you are finished. That has gone so deep that you die, not because your body is not capable of living, but because your psychology insists, ”Follow the routine.

Follow the crowd.” And in everything else you are following the crowd, so naturally you follow the crowd psychology in this too.

Scientists say that man’s body is capable of living at least three hundred years. Just as it goes on rejuvenating itself for seventy years, in fact it can go on for three hundred years, but the program has to be changed. Scientists think in a different way how to change the program, and it will take very long for them. They think the program is in the cells of the body.

So unless we split the human cell, just as we have been able to split the atom, and reprogram it, which seems to be far away, because even the scratch work has not started....

But my understanding is that there is no need to go through physiology, you can go through psychology. If your hypnosis goes deep enough... the more you go into it, if it becomes an every day thing, slowly, slowly you will touch the cosmic unconscious and there is the real programming, you can change it.

Our children can live longer, our children can live healthier, our children can live without old age. All this is possible, and we have to make it, to show to the world, but it is dangerous in the sense that if politicians get hold of hypnotic methods they are going to use it for their own purposes.

Now in the Soviet Union every child has to be born in the hospital. Nobody is allowed for his child to be born in his own house, with friends, with warmth – no, that is illegal. There is a danger that if the child is from the very beginning in the hands of the bureaucrats, they can implant an electrode in the head of any child, or all children, and that electrode in the head can be controlled from far away

– remote control.

It can be helpful, but not in these ugly politicians’ hands. They are going to make dangerous use of that. No revolution would be possible, because your mind would no more be in your own control. It has never been, but at least you had the idea that your mind is free – it never was. It was Christian, it was Hindu, it was Mohammedan – it was never free.

But there was a possibility, because the old method of conditioning the mind was a very long process; but putting an electrode in the mind is a simple process, and the control is in the hands of the government, or it can be in the hands of a computer.

It can enslave people, it can force people to go to fight – it can do anything, and you will feel that you are doing it.

The same is the thing with hypnosis. Even without electrodes children are in the hands of the government. In the schools they could enforce one hour of hypnotic sessions for every child, and The Transmission of the Lamp

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they could manage to program it in any way they want: that there is no soul, there is no evolution, that man is only matter.

Then all efforts of searching for truth would disappear.

So we have to use these methods with our own children, and we have to be very cautious that these methods are not made available to politicians. Once anything is in their hands they are going to exploit it. And this is the greatest thing – man’s whole personality is just in their fist.

They will never allow the children to have individuality, or any love for freedom, or any desire to be creative. They would like them to be servile. That’s why I am calling this a mystery school. We will work as a school, and once we start different schools in different countries, I have to make you aware about many things that have to come, that they should not be made public. At least their basic secrets should not be made public; they should remain in the hands of your school. Anybody who wants to go through the transformation has to come to the school, so that governments cannot start using them for their own vested interests.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

IT IS SAID THAT IF ONE TRAVELS AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT, ONE DISAPPEARS, AND WHEN

ONE IS ENLIGHTENED, ONE ALSO DISAPPEARS.

IS THERE ANY RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE TWO?

There is – from two different sides. They come to a meeting point in the middle. If somebody travels at the speed of light, he will become light, because the speed of light is so tremendous, it will burn anything. Scientists have been thinking to make some kind of vehicle which can travel with the speed of light, but the question is of what metal to make it, because at that speed everything will burn.

We don’t have anything yet, unless science manages to create something synthetic. Up to now there is no hope, it is only theoretical. Even at lesser speeds things burn.

You see every night stars falling; they are not stars – if a star falls on the earth, the earth is finished

– they are stones. Stones from when the earth was liquid and was solidifying and was moving as fast as it is moving now. Any liquid thing if it moves will throw off many parts. Liquid parts will get off and be thrown away.

The moon is part of the earth – when it was very liquid a big chunk fell off. These big oceans –

Pacific, Atlantic – are just places from where pieces of the earth have been thrown off. But when big things like the moon were being thrown off, many small stones were also being thrown off, and they have been roaming through space for millions of years.

Whenever they come close to earth – that is, the earth’s gravitation which extends two hundred miles from the surface of the earth into the sky.... If they come within a two-hundred-mile radius, then the The Transmission of the Lamp

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earth pulls them and the pull is so much, and they run so fast towards earth, that they burn up on the way. That’s what you see when you say, ”A star has fallen.” And at least thousands of stars fall every night, all around the earth. Sometimes a stone is so big that even though it burns, it reaches to the earth.

The stone in the Kaaba, which Mohammedans worship, is such a stone – it is not of the earth, and that’s why it became special, because nowhere on the earth can that kind of stone be found. It burnt but it fell. Mostly they never reach the earth, and this is not the speed of light.

The speed of light is tremendous – it is the ultimate speed. In one second light travels one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles. Multiply it by sixty, that will be how far it goes in one minute. Multiply it by sixty again, that will be how far in one hour. Multiply it by twenty-four, that will be how far in one day. And multiply it by three hundred and sixty-five, that will be how far in one year, and that is the smallest measurement of distance in space.

So distance is measured in years, light years – how many light years a certain star is away. For example the sun is nearabout ten light minutes away from the earth. Even ten minutes.... So if a certain thing moves with that speed, it is bound to disappear.

And the question is that the enlightened person also disappears.

The enlightened person

disappears through a totally different process, but his disappearance and calling that disappearance enlightenment, as if his being has become light, certainly means that after enlightenment he has the speed of light. He is not trying to move at the speed of light, his disappearance is from a different process of awakening, but when he disappears that disappearance has been described by all the mystics in terms of light.

I must have come across hundreds of mystics describing it as if suddenly thousands of suns have risen within you. That is a common expression in the mystic’s language, in all languages, in different countries, in different races. So although the disappearance happens from a different process, the ultimate peak is that the whole being becomes light. And certainly light always travels with the same speed.

So either you travel with the same speed and you will disappear, or you disappear and you will be traveling with the speed of light. Traveling with the speed of light is the work science has to do, and disappearing through being aware is the work that religion has to do.

And there is the meeting point. Coming from different routes, but coming to the same peak, to the same experience.

There is certainly a deep relationship between the two experiences but their processes are different.

Question 4

BELOVED OSHO,

THERE SEEMS TO BE MANY WAYS OF ENTERING THE BASEMENT OF THE UNCONSCIOUS, AND EQUALLY AS MANY WAYS INTO THE SUPERCONSCIOUS. IS IT POSSIBLE TO BECOME

ENLIGHTENED FROM MY CHAIR IN THE LIVING ROOM?

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Milarepa, it is possible to become enlightened from anywhere, and a comfortable chair, particularly, is not a hindrance to it. Just don’t try my chair!

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CHAPTER 23

Nothing but a dead skeleton

6 June 1986 pm in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

WHEN YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT THE WAY THAT DIFFERENT BUDDHIST MASTERS HAVE

BEEN ADDING THEIR OWN FLAVOR TO BUDDHA’S TEACHING, I STARTED WONDERING

WHETHER THERE WILL EVER BE ANYBODY ADDING A NEW FLAVOR TO YOUR POT. IT

LOOKS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO ADD A NEW SPICE TO SOMETHING WHICH ALREADY

CONTAINS ALL THE SPICES WHICH CAN BE FOUND ON THIS EARTH.

It seems almost impossible, but one can never predict about the future.

The future remains open. What seems inconceivable today, may become conceivable tomorrow.

We can never come to a point where the future closes. That’s the whole meaning of existence being eternal.

It may be very difficult because I am not confined to any particular path, to any particular philosophical viewpoint. I am vast enough to contain contradictions, and whatever has happened on the earth as far as the evolution of consciousness is concerned, I have made it part of my own vision of life.

So if you look backwards, everything else will seem a little poorer, even the greatest giants will seem limited. But you are looking to the past, you are not looking to the future – which is absolutely unpredictable.

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Things will go on happening, new things will go on being added. And I am not a pond which is closed; I am more like a river, which goes on flowing, inviting every other river to join.

Whatever I have been giving you will remain uncontaminated, but it will be enriched more and more by the future evolution of man, because it is an open phenomenon.

I am not the last prophet, messiah or savior of a certain tradition. I am the beginning, not the end, of a totally new approach to life and its problems, inviting everything conceivable, unconceivable, to be my guest.

So you are right. It seems very difficult, but existence is so vast and the possibilities so infinite that you can never say that the full stop has come. It never comes, not even a semicolon comes. Life knows no full stop, no semicolons; it simply goes on and on, and it will continue to add spices of which we are not even aware. And it is good.

It means that I am giving you something living, which will go on growing – even beyond us it will have its own growth. I am not giving you something dead, as was the convention of the old.

Mohammed says, ”I am the last messenger of God. Now there will be no other messenger. And the Koran is the last message. After the Koran there will be no other holy book.” He is not aware that he cannot stop existence with his own death. Many prophets have come and gone.

They have added to the beauty of existence, but nobody should be so arrogant as to say, ”I am the last.”

The same is the situation with Mahavira. He is the last tirthankara of the Jainas. Now there is not going to be any other tirthankara, nothing can be added to his teachings, nothing can be taken away from his teachings.

But these people were not aware that they are making their vision into a dead thing with their own hands.

That’s why Christians are so afraid in case science should discover anything which goes against the Bible, Mohammedans are so afraid in case anybody should say anything that goes beyond the Koran. But these are the enemies of progress, enemies of life.

I am not. I am just a friend, a humble beginning, a living reality with every day new excitement, new ecstasies, new spaces; and capable to absorb them all, not afraid of any progress. If anything is wrong, I am always ready to drop it, always to be on the side of truth.

There are two kinds of people: those who want the truth to be always on their side – these are the egoists, arrogant. And there is another type of person who always wants to be on the side of truth, whatever the cost; if he has to lose everything, he is ready, but he cannot stop being on the side of truth. These are the humble ones, these are the true holy people of the earth – and there have been very few.

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Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

I LIKE TO HEAR YOU SPEAK ON THE MEETING OF INNER MAN AND OUTER WOMAN.

IS THE INNER MAN TO BE FOUND IN ONE OF THE REALMS OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND IF

SO, IS THERE A WAY TO PROVOKE HIS PRESENCE SO THAT I MIGHT RECOGNIZE HIM IN

SITUATIONS WHERE I HAVE PREVIOUSLY BEEN UNAWARE?

The inner man or the inner woman is not to be found unless you reach to the highest peak; unless you come to the cosmic superconscious you will not be able to recognize it; only at that peak the dualities meet and you can feel the orgasmic experience of the meeting. Slowly, slowly you can become aware of two opposite polarities moving together in harmony, in a dance, but you will not come across it at all on the way, only at the end of the journey.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

LOOKING FOR MY CHIEF CHARACTERISTIC – JUST LOOKING FOR IT – IS PROVING A GREAT DEVICE. IT IS AS THOUGH I HAVE ALWAYS ACCEPTED THAT THERE ARE CERTAIN

”UNDESIRABLES” IN MY CLOSET, WHICH AT DIFFERENT TIMES I GATHER SOME DEGREE

OF ENTHUSIASM FOR GETTING RID OF OR WITNESSING MORE CONSCIENTIOUSLY.

SETTING ABOUT TRYING TO PINPOINT THEM DURING THE LAST FORTY-EIGHT HOURS, I HAVE FOUND THAT THE ACTUAL PROCESS OF OPENING THE CLOSET AND FLASHING THE

TORCH AROUND HAS, IN ITSELF, RENDERED THOSE SKELETONS IMPOTENT IN A WAY. IT

IS CERTAINLY AS IF MERELY TALKING ABOUT THOSE SKELETONS AS PROBLEMS, RATHER

THAN LOOKING AT THEM, GIVES SUBSTANCE TO SOMETHING THAT ACTUALLY HAS NO

LIFE OF ITS OWN.

OSHO, AM I KIDDING MYSELF, OR IS IT REALLY THAT EASY?

It is that easy. Many of our problems are just there because we have never looked at them, never focused our eyes on them to figure out what it is.

It is like an ancient story. It was a fullmoon night and a thief had stolen much jewelry. And of course he was afraid. He was running, and suddenly he heard some steps following him.

It almost always happens – if you have ever tried running in the dark – you hear your own footsteps and you feel as if somebody is following you.

And when he looked, he found somebody actually was following him; it was his own shadow. But he was not in a situation to figure out who it was. His problem was somehow to escape out of its clutches. He ran faster, but he heard the follower also running faster. And he went on looking back and he found that it was just behind him. The poor fellow was tired, utterly tired, but could not get The Transmission of the Lamp

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rid of his shadow. Exhausted, he fell under a tree where the moonlight did not go and he looked all around and he wondered where the other fellow had gone – just now he was behind him, so close.

Gathering courage, looking all around, he could not see him anywhere; but then he came out of the shadow of the tree and again he was behind him. But this time he could not be deceived, he turned around and looked at the fellow. It was no one. It was his own shadow.

Many of our problems – perhaps most of our problems – are because we have never looked at them face to face, never encountered them; and not looking at them is giving them energy, being afraid of them is giving them energy, always trying to avoid them is giving them energy – because you are accepting them. Your very acceptance is their existence. Other than your acceptance, they don’t exist.

So if you open your closets, and take your light, and look at the skeletons, you will find they are dead.

Skeletons cannot do anything, but almost everybody is afraid of skeletons. It is a strange situation.

You are not afraid of living people who can do damage to you, who can even kill you – and they are all hiding a skeleton underneath just skin deep, and they are living people. But if you suddenly come across in a room a poor skeleton who has no life, you become so afraid. What can the skeleton do to you?

In my university I had a friend who was the son of a doctor, and the doctor was the head of the university hospital and also it was part of the medical college.

And they had many skeletons for studying purposes.

And one day I was saying to his son, ”Your father at least must be the one man who is not afraid of skeletons.”

He said, ”Certainly he’s not afraid. The whole day he is telling the students about the skeletons, their parts.”

And he had a good collection. He used to live in the compound of the hospital.

So I said, ”Then we have to check whether it is true or not.” I asked the son, ”Somehow you have to get the key of the room where the skeletons are and in the night we will bring one skeleton out. Just knock on the door, the father comes to open it and we will hide and the skeleton will be standing there and let us see what happens.”

The son said, ” You will get me into trouble.”

I said, ”You don’t be worried. You simply escape as far as you can. And you can trust me, I will never mention your name if anything happens.”

And you will not believe, the man who has been dealing with skeletons for years, when I knocked on his door, he said, ”Who is there?”

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I said, ”Can’t you recognize me?”

He opened the door.

I slipped to the side behind a tree; there was a very big bodhi tree there. And he saw the skeleton.

And you should have seen the scene, just as if he lost all his nerve. He fell on the earth. And on top fell the skeleton.

His wife came, ”What is happening?” Seeing the skeleton on her husband, she screamed and became unconscious.

And the neighbors woke up because of her scream, and everybody was coming there – but they were all standing far away, seeing the situation. The wife was lying flat, the husband was lying there, and the skeleton was on top of him. And I was hiding behind the tree. And I thought, ”Now what to do?” We had not conceived of such a situation. I had just thought that he will freak out. But the situation had become so complex. And his son was looking from far away.

I called to him, ”This is not the time to be afraid.” Somehow he picked up the skeleton, left those two there – both were unconscious – and put the skeleton back in its place. And it took great effort to put it back because it had fallen, so one hand was going this way, one leg was going this way, and we were both trying to fix it.

Somehow we fixed it, by looking at the other skeletons, ”You should behave exactly like the other skeletons.”

Then we came back to take care of the doctor and his wife, sprinkling water on their faces, and telling them, ”There is nobody. You unnecessarily got worried.” The doctor said, ”I cannot believe that there is nobody. He was standing in front of me, and he is no one. He’s skeleton number seventeen, I know him well; but how he dared to come here? And the door is locked, and I always check the lock because skeletons are skeletons, you can’t trust them.” We said, ”We have not seen anybody. We had just gone for a walk and we have just come in and we saw you lying down here as if somebody is on top of you and there is nobody. And your wife is on the floor flat. Do something to bring her to consciousness.” So he did whatever he could. Somehow she came to consciousness. And she asked, ”Where is he

– the skeleton?”

And the doctor said, ”I cannot believe it, because number seventeen is an old skeleton and has never misbehaved, and suddenly it came and knocked on the door and even said, ‘Can’t you recognize me?’” He said, ”Now it will be very difficult for me to continue going into that room. I am going to change my department, no more skeletons.”

I said, ”You have unnecessarily hallucinated after a whole day working with the skeletons . You may have just seen an illusion – because we were coming, we did not see anybody coming or going, and the key is in your pocket.”

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So he saw. He said, ”The key is in my pocket.”

I said, ”If you want, we can go and see where number seventeen is. ” He said, ”No, I won’t allow you to go there. If he has gone out without even opening the door, he can do some harm to you. You need not bother. Tomorrow I am going to change my department.” He changed his department. The vice-chancellor tried hard, saying, ”Skeletons don’t come out, and you have had such a long experience with skeletons.” He said, ”Whatever, but what happened last night, if it happens again I will die. And you have to think about my wife also. She is very delicate and she has had one heart attack already. And if these skeletons start coming in the middle of the night knocking on the door...!” I have always been puzzled why people are so afraid of skeletons, because they are very poor people – with no life, they cannot do anything. But there seems to be some unconscious current,

”We are also skeletons.” Seeing a skeleton, you are seeing yourself without the skin.

And this will be your situation one day. Perhaps the skeleton reminds you of death, it reminds you of your reality which the skin goes on hiding. Otherwise skeletons are very innocent, they have never done any harm to anybody.

I used to sell skeletons from a Mohammedan graveyard because the medical college needed them and they gave a good price for a skeleton. And nobody was ready to bring a skeleton. I had made friends with the guard of the graveyard and arranged that we would split half and half, ”Just you dig out some old fellow and I will take him in my car and deliver him to the medical college.” Once when I was taking a skeleton in my car, a policeman stopped the car – because I was going too fast. He wanted to see my driver’s license. I said, ”The fellow in the back seat has it.” So he looked in the back seat.

And he said, ”Yes, I have seen it. Everything is okay. Go fast, as fast as you can. I can understand now why you are going so fast, but however fast you go he’s sitting just behind you. You cannot escape. But please go.”

And many times when I bring those skeletons to the medical college, somebody will see – some professor or some servant. And they will simply just get frozen. Nobody ever asked for a lift in my car, because they knew that a skeleton sits in the back seat. Nobody ever asked. I used to ask professors, ”Would you like to come?”

”Not in your car.”

Such a fear, but it must have some roots.

And I can see that the first thing is that it reminds you of yourself. This is going to be the situation.

We are all simply well-covered skeletons.

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And this will be the situation when death comes. So it reminds you of death. So nobody opens the cupboards in their unconscious where they have many skeletons, of many kinds.

You yourself have put them there and now you are afraid of them. But the reality is that they are dead; just open the doors, bring light, clean your closets, clean your mind of all the dead luggage that you are filled with – it is making your life really miserable, a hell.

And nobody except you is responsible. In the first place, you hide things which you should not. It is good to give them expression and release them. So first you hide them, and just remain a hypocrite

– that you are never angry, that you are never hateful, that you are never this, never that; but all that goes on collecting inside. But those are all dead things. They don’t have any energy of their own, unless you give them energy. You have the source of energy. Whatever happens in your life needs your energy. If you cut the source of energy and... in other words that’s what I call identification; if you don’t identify with anything, it immediately becomes dead, it has no energy of its own.

And non-identification is the other side of watchfulness.

Love the beauty of watchfulness and its immense capacity to transform you. Simply watch whatever it is, and you will suddenly see that there is nothing but a dead skeleton, it cannot do anything to you. But you can give energy to it, you can project energy onto it. Then a skeleton which cannot do anything can even kill you, can give you a heart attack; just start escaping from it and you have given it reality, you have given it life.

Give life to things which are beautiful. Don’t give life to ugly things. You don’t have much time, much energy to waste. With such a small life, with such a small energy source, it is simply stupid to waste it in sadness, in anger, in hatred, in jealousy.

Use it in love, use it in some creative act, use it in friendship, use it in meditation; do something with it which takes you higher. And the higher you go, the more energy sources become available to you.

At the highest point of consciousness, you are almost a god. But that moment we don’t allow to happen to us. We go on falling downwards into the darker and darker and darker spaces where we ourselves become almost living dead.

It is in your hands.

Question 4

BELOVED OSHO,

A WHILE AGO I REALIZED THAT IT IS NOT SITUATIONS BUT RATHER PEOPLE THAT I CAN

REACT TO – BECAUSE IF SOMEONE I FEEL GOOD ABOUT DOES SOMETHING, IT DOESN’T

BOTHER ME, BUT IF SOMEONE I DON’T LIKE DOES THE SAME THING, I MAY THINK, ”WHAT

AN AWFUL THING TO DO.”

INTELLECTUALLY I HAVE COME TO UNDERSTAND THAT THE REASON I DON’T LIKE CERTAIN

PEOPLE IS SIMPLY THAT THEY REFLECT CERTAIN CHARACTERISTICS IN MYSELF THAT I WOULD RATHER NOT KNOW ABOUT.

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I WAS HOPING THAT GRADUALLY, DEEP INSIDE, I WOULD COME TO ACCEPT THIS RATHER

UNPALATABLE FACT, AND THAT MY JUDGMENTS WOULD MIRACULOUSLY DISAPPEAR

WITHOUT MY HAVING TO FACE ANYTHING UNPLEASANT IN MYSELF. UNFORTUNATELY, SO

FAR THIS HASN’T HAPPENED. I STILL REACT STRONGLY TO SOME PEOPLE, AND FIND

IT DIFFICULT SOMETIMES EVEN TO REMEMBER TO TURN MY ENERGY INTO WATCHING

MYSELF RATHER THAN JUDGING.

I HAVE BEEN COMFORTING MYSELF BY SAYING, ”NOTHING TO DO, JUST KEEP WATCHING,” BUT AS MY WATCHING IS SO WISHY-WASHY AND THIS IS TAKING SO LONG, I WAS

WONDERING IF YOU COULD SUGGEST SOME TRICK TO HELP ME – PREFERABLY A SHORTCUT THROUGH THE WHOLE PROCESS.

There is no trick and there is no shortcut because watchfulness is the shortest way to enlightenment.

And the question of tricks does not arise at all.

No trick can help you.

Tricks are good in playing cards and cheating people, but you cannot cheat existence, you cannot deceive life.

If you want to go a longer way, that can be found; because you can be shown some unnecessary, non-essential things and the path becomes longer.

Religions have done that. They have made the path very long, so that it cannot be achieved in one life, many lives are needed. It was a strategy of the priests to deceive people because if it is said that it can be achieved right now, then the question is why are you not achieving it, perhaps you don’t want it, perhaps you want to wait a little, perhaps you want to finish some other jobs first, perhaps you think that enlightenment should be the last thing in life. And the trivia, the mundane things of life, keep you engaged.

But there may be a few people who may try and still will not get it. Then the priest will be in trouble because he himself is as far away as you are. To be a priest is just a profession for him, he is not a seeker. And you may start asking him, ”Why is it not happening?” And he cannot really answer you relevantly because he does not know himself what it is, what can prevent it, what can help it.

So the easiest way for him is to say, ”It is such a long way. It will happen but in several lives. So don’t be in a hurry, it is not something that you can manage now. Go on working, go on praying; when the time is ripe in some life it will happen.” This was just a shelter for the priest.

Watchfulness is the shortest way. It does not need lives to attain it. It needs not length of time but intensity of longing, the way you feel thirst; when you feel thirsty for truth – as if it is a question of life and death – you put your whole energy to this moment and the door is bound to open.

And remember never to think of tricks because you cannot get anywhere through tricks as far as reality is concerned.

The simple truth is that watchfulness is the shortest possible way. It cannot be made shorter.

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What is expected of you in watchfulness... just try to see, nothing is expected. You already watch things, you know what watchfulness is. You watch a football match, you watch a movie, you watch the television. You know what watchfulness is, there is no need to tell you; just the same watchfulness has to be applied to the screen of the mind. Close your eyes and let your mind function as a screen of a movie or a television, and whatever passes on the mind you simply remain watchful, doing nothing, not even judging.

And this is the only miracle I know of, that as your watchfulness becomes more and more stable, the screen becomes empty. Soon the watcher is there but there is nothing to be watched, the screen is completely empty.

And when the watcher is left alone, it starts watching itself – because that is its nature, to watch.

And to watch oneself is the greatest happening in anyone’s life. Everything else happens through it

– blissfulness, silence, peace, ecstasy, and finally going beyond even all these experiences and just remaining in a pure isness.

Those who have attained that pure isness have fulfilled the mission of human life.

Question 5

BELOVED OSHO,

A FEW DAYS AGO I WATCHED YOU BRUSHING ASIDE A FLY, AND THERE WAS ALL THE

AWARENESS, GRACE, LOVE AND COMPASSION IN IT WHICH WERE MISSING IN BUDDHA’S

FIRST MECHANICAL MOVEMENT IN THE STORY YOU TOLD A FEW DAYS LATER. YOU EVEN

WAITED FOR THE RIGHT MOMENT TO DISGUISE THE MOVEMENT OF YOUR HAND IN A GESTURE ILLUSTRATING YOUR WORDS.

I WAS REALLY THRILLED. THANK YOU, OSHO.

I can understand your thankfulness because even to watch, even to see a gesture which is full of awareness and grace is a great experience, a great learning.

The master not only goes on saying beautiful things to you, he also goes on showing beautiful spaces to you. So you have to be alert not only in hearing him but also in seeing him, also in feeling him – not only his words, but his gestures; not only his gestures, but his presence. All are part of the teaching.

Words are the least important.

Question 6

BELOVED OSHO,

AMONG THE CONCLUDING SENTENCES OF THE BOOK OF MIRDAD ARE THE FOLLOWING: The Transmission of the Lamp

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”LET THOSE WHO WOULD BREAK THEIR MOORINGS FROM THE EARTH, AND THOSE WHO

WOULD BE UNIFIED, AND THOSE WHO YEARN TO OVERCOME THEMSELVES – LET THEM

COME ABOARD.

THE ARK IS READY.

THE WIND IS FAVORING.

THE SEA IS CALM....”

BELOVED MASTER, YOUR CREW IS READY!

That is good news because Noah’s Ark is also getting ready, and soon you will be all aboard Noah’s Ark – the first ocean city of the world.

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Souls are not male or female

7 June 1986 am in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

I LOVE HEARING THE STORIES OF THE OLD MASTERS AND THEIR DISCIPLES. IT IS SO

BEAUTIFUL TO FEEL THE ESSENCE OF THOSE SMALL OASES OF CONSCIOUSNESS –

WHICH CENTURIES OF RELIGION HAVE SINCE COVERED IN THE DUST OF DOGMA AND

DECEIT. BUT STILL, AS I LOOK AT US SITTING HERE, FEELING THE JOY, THE SILENCE, THE

TEARS, THE LAUGHTER, I SUSPECT THERE IS SOMETHING PRESENT THAT NO MASTER

MAY EVER HAVE EVOKED BEFORE. IS IT, PERHAPS, A SENSE OF LOVING TENDERNESS, A JUICINESS IN THOSE AROUND YOU – SOMETHING THAT COULD ONLY HAVE EMERGED HAD

FEMININE ENERGY BEEN AN INTRINSIC PART OF THOSE CARAVANSERAIS OF SO LONG

AGO?

OSHO, ISN’T THIS ONE OF YOUR GREATEST CONTRIBUTIONS TO SPIRITUALITY?

The realm of spirituality has remained male-dominated – not only male-dominated but male-chauvinistic. There were reasons why all spiritual traditions were against women. They were against women because they were against life, and to destroy life, the most basic thing is to separate man and woman. They were against any joy, any love, any juiciness. The simple way was to condemn the woman, and separate her from man as much as possible, particularly in the monasteries.

Women were second class human beings, not on the level of man.

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Naturally it disturbed many things. It took out all playfulness, sense of humor, rejoicing, and created a very dry structure of life for man and for women too. They are part of one whole, and once you separate them, they are both continuously missing something – and that gap cannot be filled, and that gap makes people serious, sickly serious, and perverted, psychologically unbalanced. It distorts the natural harmony; it distorts the biological balance. It is such a big calamity that for centuries man has suffered under it.

Yes, it is my greatest contribution to the future of man, that the women are on the same level as men

– spiritually there is no question of inequality.

You can see here laughter, tears and joy; this was impossible to see in Buddha’s commune. It was not possible in Mahavira’s communes. They had separate communes for women, but they were in every way humiliated. Even a one-day-old male sannyasin, in Jainism, has to be respected by a seventy-year-old woman sannyasin. She has been a sannyasin for seventy years, but she has to bow down to a man who has just become a sannyasin, because he is a man.

And although men were working for their enlightenment, the women were not working for enlightenment directly; they were working to attain to manhood first, because you cannot bypass manhood; first you have to be a man, and then only you can be enlightened.

So they looked like monks and nuns, but their goals were totally different. Man had already a far higher spiritual status, which the woman was trying in this life to achieve for the next – she was one life behind. And this is all bullshit. There is no question of man and woman as far as spirituality is concerned, because it is not a question of body or biology; it is not a question even of mind or psychology.

It is a question of being, and being has no sexual differences. Souls are not male or female, and the same method will lead man to his inner self, and the same method will lead the woman to her inner self. There is no question at all... because the whole thing is of witnessing. What you are witnessing is not in question – whether you are witnessing a female body or a male body, a female mind or a male mind, is just out of the question; the emphasis is on witnessing – and witnessing has no gender.

Even great people like Mahavira and Gautam Buddha remained somehow part of the male-dominated world, and they could not revolt against it. This is the first time that man and woman are together, working for the same experience, and naturally, when opposite energies are working together, there is more playfulness, more sense of humor, more laughter, more love, more friendliness – all the qualities which make us human.

The old saints were almost inhuman, dry bones. To be juicy was against their spirituality. To be juicy, to me, is the very foundation of spirituality; if a spiritual person cannot be juicy, then who can be? If the people who are in search of the ultimate truth cannot celebrate, then nobody else has the right to celebrate. But all the traditions were insisting not on celebration but on celibacy, and through celibacy they were creating such psychological disturbances in people that the question of spiritual growth did not arise.

First they have to be mentally healthy – they were mentally sick.

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I want my people to be naturally, biologically, physiologically, psychologically – on every level –

healthy. Only then, in these healthy steps, can they move to a healthy spirituality. And their spirituality will not be against anything; their spirituality will absorb everything that is below it. Hence it will be far richer.

To me a spirituality that makes you poorer in every dimension of your life is a slow suicide. It is not spiritual. It is not a coincidence that all old spiritual traditions are against me, because what I am trying to do is to uproot them from their very base. If I am successful then ten thousands of spiritual pasts prove to be wrong.

So my experiment is very crucial, very definitive, very decisive, and my feeling is that you can get over jealousy only where there is possibility of jealousy; you can get over sex only when there is possibility of sex; you can get over anything only if the possibility is there.

Old traditions tried to deceive people; making them separate, the very possibilities were not there, and slowly, slowly, the monks and the nuns started believing that they have transcended jealousy, that they have transcended sex. The reality was just the opposite: they have not transcended, they have repressed with all kinds of religious rituals. Women have repressed everything that needs man; man has repressed everything that needs the woman, to such depth that he himself has become unaware that it is there.

A Chinese story is: a woman served a master for years. He was living outside the town in a hut, and this woman was very rich, and she would bring the most delicious food for him, and whatsoever was needed, she provided. He was not forced to go to beg – the woman brought things herself to his hut. And he became a very great saint.

The woman was older. Before she was dying, just a day or two days before, she was very sick and felt that her time has come. She called the prostitute of the town – a very beautiful woman – and said to her, ”Whatever is your price I will give you but I want just one simple thing. In the middle of the night you go to the monk I have worshipped for my whole life. He thinks that he has transcended sex; I also believe it, but there has been no opportunity to check on it.

”In the middle of the night you go – he meditates at that time – you knock on the door, go inside.

Just drop your clothes, be naked, and remember everything that he says or does, and then come back to me. And whatever your price, that I will give you.” The prostitute said, ”There is no problem in it.” She went, she knocked on the door; the monk opened the door. She immediately dropped her robe – she was only wearing one robe – and stood naked before the monk.

The monk shouted, ”What are you doing!” and was trembling, and before the woman could say anything, he escaped out of the door. She came back to the old woman and told her, ”Nothing much happened. He opened the door, I dropped my robe; he started trembling, shouted, ‘What are you doing? Why have you come here?’ and through the open door he escaped towards the forest.” The woman said, ”I wasted my years in serving that idiot. You take your price, and do one thing more; for that also I will give you whatever you want – go and set fire to the hut!” The Transmission of the Lamp

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These monks and nuns are forced by their religions to live separately, and sometimes if you look into their scriptures, it is hilarious. A Jaina monk first enquires before he sits in any place, ”Has there been any woman sitting here before?” At least nine minutes have to pass. I don’t know how they manage nine minutes! Only then he will brush the place with his small broom made of soft wool, so no small insect or ant is killed, and then he will spread his bamboo mattress and sit on it.

I asked these people, ”Why nine minutes?”

They said, ”After a woman has been sitting in a place, for nine minutes her vibrations continue, and a monk can be disturbed by it.”

I said, ”What kind of monks you have? Ordinary men are not disturbed. Monks are disturbed? It simply shows that they are continuously thinking of sex and nothing else.” It has been found that ordinary men think of women at least once in nine minutes. Perhaps for thousands of years these people have figured it out in some way – that there is danger for nine minutes, but the danger is not in the vibrations, the danger is in man’s mind. Every man, the whole day, every nine minutes, at least once thinks of women. Women are a little spiritual: they think of man once only in eighteen minutes – twice as spiritual.

The basic reason for separating man and woman was that by a single stroke you are destroying many things; otherwise you will need many strokes, and still you will not be able to destroy them from the roots. The seriousness in the religious people has nothing to do with spirituality; it has something to do with the way they are living, separated from their hearts.

Just now in Germany we have won the case in a court against the German government, and the German government was trying to prove that I am not a religious person, because I have said in a press conference that I am not a serious man. Their argument was that a religious man is bound to be serious. They go together, you cannot separate them – if a man says that he is not serious, how he can be religious?

Looking at the past, what the government attorney was saying was right. All religious people have been serious.

But the judge seems to be reading my books, because in his statement he says that because it was in a press conference, we do not know in what context I have said that I am not a serious man. ”You have to prove it from his written books, and even if he says he is not serious, that does not matter, because what he is teaching is religion. He is teaching that man is not body, that man is not mind, that man is a transcendental, spiritual being.” and he quoted from my books – and insisted on the words ”transcendental spiritual being.”

He said, ”That’s enough for him to be religious, and for his people to be religious. What he has said in a press conference is irrelevant.” He gave the verdict in our favor, but the government attorney was trying to prove that a non-serious man cannot be religious.

If I had been in the place of the judge, I would not have brought any quotations, I would have fought on the same point, that seriousness and religiousness in fact cannot go together, because seriousness is sickness – sickness of the soul, and when the soul is sick, one cannot be religious.

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A religious person has to be rejoicing, full of humor, laughter, love.

It is certainly one of the most important contributions we are trying to make. It will be opposed by all the traditions and all the religions – by the whole world, because we are proving that for ten thousand years they have been wrong – and it hurts their egos. They would like to destroy us rather than accept the fact that spirituality should be full of laughter, full of a sense of humor, full of playfulness; because now there is no anxiety, no problem, no anguish, and the person has relaxed into a deep let-go with existence.

Why should he be serious?

But it is going against the whole past. It is not only on this point that I am going against the whole past; on so many points I am going against the whole past, for the simple reason that the past was male-dominated, so only men have created rules, without having any consideration for the female.

The female has not been taken into account at all; but the tragedy is that if the man does not take any account of the female, he is cutting himself into half, and the moment he denies the female outside, he has also denied the female inside – and you have created a schizophrenic, not a spiritual being.

He needs psychological treatment, not worship.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

ONE OF THE GREATEST EXPRESSIONS OF THE MASTER LIES IN HIS ART OF GIVING. IN

FACT HE HIMSELF, JUST BY BEING, IS A CONSTANT GIVINGNESS.

IT SEEMS TO ME THAT PART – OR PERHAPS ALL – OF THE ART OF BEING A DISCIPLE, IS

LEARNING THE ART OF RECEIVING... TO RECEIVE ATTENTION FROM THE MASTER NOT AS

FODDER FOR THE EGO BUT AS A NOURISHMENT FOR SOMETHING MORE ESSENTIAL...

TO SEE THAT WHEN YOU THINK YOU ARE NOT BEING GIVEN TO, IT IS YOUR INABILITY TO

RECEIVE. IT IMPLIES THE ABILITY TO RECEIVE DIRECTION – WHEN ONE IS GOING OFF

TRACK – WITH A HEALTHY SENSE OF HUMBLENESS BUT NOT WITH A CRIPPLING LACK OF

SELF-WORTH... TO BE ABLE TO RECEIVE NOT ALWAYS WHAT ONE MIGHT HAVE WANTED, BUT WHAT ONE NEEDS.

OSHO, COULD YOU PLEASE SPEAK ABOUT THE ART OF RECEIVING ON THE PART OF THE

DISCIPLE IN THE MASTER/DISCIPLE RELATIONSHIP?

It is true that the whole phenomenon of master and disciple is the art, from the side of the master, of going on pouring whatever he is receiving from existence. He is not the source of it, he is only a vehicle, a hollow bamboo, and if the hollow bamboo is turned into a flute, still the hollow bamboo is not playing the music, the music is coming from somewhere else.

The master is a hollow bamboo, a bamboo flute. He is making available to his disciples the music of the divine.

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The art of the disciple is to absorb, is to receive, but not to demand – and there is a fine demarcation.

The disciple has to understand the fine demarcation.

Just the other day Amiyo has written a question, ”Osho, when you look at me, I feel tremendously joyful. But when you don’t look at me, then I feel very sad.” She is honest in saying it, but one has to understand that if it becomes a binding on me – that I have to look at everyone, otherwise somebody will become sad – then you are making me a prisoner, you are taking even my freedom.

When I look at you, you rejoice. You are many, I am alone. Sometimes I may miss you. You need not miss me.

In a Sufi saying it says that the eyes of all the disciples should be on the master – that is absolutely necessary. But the eyes of the master cannot be on every disciple – that too is as absolutely necessary as the first. Disciples can be thousands – they are; you should not only rejoice when I see you; you should rejoice when you see me. That keeps your independence, your freedom, and that keeps me free; otherwise you are forcing me.

And I don’t look considerably towards anybody in particular. Just as my hands move on their own accord wherever and whatever is needed to be expressed by them, in the same way, my eyes move.

I am not the mover, I am not doing anything with my hands or with my eyes.

The disciple has to learn receiving.

I am available to all, without any question of anybody’s worthiness – whether you deserve or you don’t deserve, that is not the question. You should be open and vulnerable to receive, and whenever I look at you, rejoice, but don’t be sad if sometimes I miss looking at you. Don’t make it impossible for me.

For example, Kaveesha is sitting in such a place that to see her I will have to make a special effort; naturally I will not be looking at her. She has to understand that – and she understands. Somebody who is just sitting in front of me is naturally seen more than anybody else – it does not mean that he deserves more; it simply means his position is in front of me.

The presence of the master is overflowing with subtle vibrations, and you should remain open to absorb those vibrations. No demand has to be made, because all demands are ugly. And just see: I don’t demand anything from you.

For centuries masters have demanded a thousand and one things from the disciples, all kinds of disciplines. I don’t demand anything from you. I want to keep you absolutely free to receive. And please, allow me my freedom; don’t ask such questions or even think such things because that means you are making demands on me. And I may feel that if I don’t look at Amiyo today she will be sad; I have to look – and the whole beauty is destroyed because that will be an effort, and I don’t want to make any effort. I want everything to happen in this mystery school on its own accord. And it is happening beautifully.

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in the front line. A few people are very much worried, sad, and they don’t understand that in this small space you are all in the front line.

In the commune in America, with five thousand people, you would have been somewhere in the back.

I would not even have been able to see your faces; neither were you able to see my face. And when there were festival times and twenty thousand people were there, it was almost impossible to see who is there beyond three or four lines, it was impossible. And all people cannot be accommodated into the first three lines.

Here you are all in the front line. In fact, the first line in the commune was as far away from me as the last line here. So whoever is in the last line here is almost in the first line. And I can see you all, your faces; you can see me. But even this question has come to me that somebody is very much disturbed that they are not in the first line, that they have not yet been given a chance to be in the first line.

You are interested in trivia. Be a little more alert and be interested in the significant, and all that is needed is your opening and receptivity.

Sometimes it may happen that I may see you; sometimes it may happen that I may not see you.

That is not deliberate; that is just as spontaneous as I am speaking to you. Everything with me is spontaneous, so the moment you demand anything from me, I feel you have not understood me.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

WHEN I WAKE UP FROM THE RELAXATION SESSIONS AND OPEN MY EYES, FOR A FEW

MOMENTS IT FEELS LIKE COMING INTO THIS WORLD FOR THE FIRST TIME... LIKE A NEW-BORN CHILD OPENING HIS EYES TO THE WORLD. EVERYTHING LOOKS TOTALLY NEW.

EVEN A FLY ON THE CEILING I LOOK AT IN AMAZEMENT AS IT IS PART OF THE WHOLE.

IS THIS WHAT YOU SEE ALL THE TIME IN EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE?

That’s true.

Question 4

BELOVED OSHO

OUR QUESTIONS SEEM TO FUNCTION AS GRAVITATION, TRYING TO KEEP YOU WITH US, WHILE EVERYTHING IN YOU IS BEING PULLED UP INTO THE SKY AND AWAY FROM US BY

THE LAW OF GRACE.

WHENEVER WE RUN SHORT OF QUESTIONS, I PANIC, ALMOST SEEING YOU FLOATING OFF

ON THE END OF A BALLOON, AND I WANT TO CALL OUT, ”OSHO! PLEASE WAIT! WE’VE

FOUND ANOTHER QUESTION!”

Don’t be worried: whenever you will say, ”Osho, wait!” I will wait!

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Bravo, America!

7 June 1986 pm in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

MAHAVIRA WAS THE TWENTY-FOURTH TIRTHANKARA OF THE JAINA RELIGION. DID THE

JAINA RELIGION START WITH THE VERY FIRST TIRTHANKARA OR WITH MAHAVIRA? AND

WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THE WORD ‘JAINA’?

The word ‘Jaina’ has a very beautiful meaning, just like the word ‘Buddha’. Buddha means the awakened one. Jaina comes from a root jinna. Jinna means one who has conquered.

The movement of conquering the ultimate peak of being, started with the first tirthankara, Rishabhdeva.

Perhaps he is the most ancient mystic in the whole history of man, and Jainism the most ancient religion. Because it is very small in numbers, the world is not very well aware of it; otherwise, its contribution is immense.

Rishabhdeva, the first tirthankara, the first Jaina master, is mentioned with great reverence in the oldest book in existence, the Hindu holy scripture, the Rigveda. The Rigveda is thought, by scholars, to be at least five thousand years old. But these are Christian scholars who are trying to fix everything within six thousand years – because the world started just six thousand years ago, according to them. So they have a prejudice: nothing can be older that that – there was no world before that. And this is simply stupid.

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Even this earth is four billion years old by scientific findings. This solar system is much older; and this is not the oldest solar system. There are millions of other solar systems which are even older.

The Christian idea that six thousand years ago the whole existence was created, is very retarded.

You cannot even call it wrong, it is simply idiotic.

It is against science, it is against even common sense, because we have found in India cities buried underground which are seven thousand years old. And a city buried underground seven thousand years ago, must have existed before some calamity happened. The city must have existed before that; the calamity happened seven thousand years ago, the city may have existed for longer.

Looking at those cities – because they have been excavated – one can see that they were not primitive, they were far advanced. The roads are as broad as any modern city’s roads, and that is significant. Varanasi has roads where no car can go, you can only walk. That means those roads in Varanasi are really primitive – when there was no vehicle, people were simply walking. In those small streets the sun never penetrates because on both sides are huge buildings. There is always shade; you will not find such coolness anywhere as in Varanasi. Even in the hottest summer you can walk in the streets; it is cool because the sun never reaches there.

Hindus think Varanasi is their oldest city, and they claim it is the oldest in the world. The two cities I am talking about are Mohenjo Daro and Harappa; now they are both in Pakistan. I have been to both the cities.

It is simply unbelievable but those cities had bathrooms attached to the bedrooms.

You will be surprised as to why this fact should be so important, but just in the last century – just a hundred years ago – when people in America started to make attached bathrooms, there was such a reaction from the masses that the government had to step in. There were cases in the courts claiming that it is ugly, unchristian, because cleanliness is second to godliness, and these people are doing something ugly – having a bathroom, a toilet, attached inside the house. It has always been outside the house; its name was the outhouse.

Seven thousand years ago those people were far more advanced in thinking – they had beautiful swimming pools.... And the most miraculous thing is that in Harappa and Mohenjo Daro they had a hot and cold running water system. It was a highly developed civilization. And they must have had vehicles big enough; otherwise there was no need to make such broad roads. They had big windows, which was rare; big doors, which was rare at that time; gardens....

According to Hindu scholars, the Rigveda is ninety thousand years old. And the man who proved it, Lokmanya Tilak – one of the most intelligent Hindu scholars of this century – has proved it on such grounds that nobody has been able to argue against him – because he proved it on grounds not logical, but astronomical.

In the Rigveda there is a description of a certain happening in the world of stars, a certain meeting which has not happened since then. The description is absolutely clear, and it would have been possible only if the people who were describing it had seen it. And in fact astronomy now agrees with Lokmanya Tilak – that it happened ninety thousand years ago, and the way it is described in the Rigveda is exactly right – the way astronomical things should be described.

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So astronomy was highly developed, and the people could see the conglomeration of the stars. They even described stars and planets which we have just discovered; otherwise, fifty years ago people were simply laughing, ”Where are these planets?” Pluto and Neptune had not been discovered fifty years ago and people were laughing. ”This is just fictitious!” But now they have been discovered with better instruments; more and more stars, more and more planets have been discovered; and they are all fitting together with the chart that is given in the Rigveda.

The Rigveda mentions Rishabhdeva’s name with great reverence. I am emphasizing the words

‘great reverence’ because Rishabhdeva was not a Hindu. He was born a Hindu but he was starting to disagree with Hindu philosophy, Hindu doctrines, and he was originating a new religion; he was the source of Jainism.

In ninety thousand years Hinduism and Jainism have gone very far apart, so far apart that the twenty-fourth tirthankara, Mahavira – the last tirthankara – is not mentioned in any Hindu scripture...

just to ignore him; it was thought not worthwhile to mention him.

But Rishabhdeva they have mentioned with such reverence.

That shows something very

psychological. Nobody shows reverence to any contemporary, particularly to a contemporary who is cutting the roots of your vested interests, your powers, who is against the Brahmins who are writing the Rigveda. If they had criticized him that would have been perfectly right; but they are so full of reverence.

To me it proves only one thing, that Rishabhdeva must have lived a little before the writing of the RIGVEDA – five centuries, six centuries. By that time he had already become well known, worshipped. So even the RIGVEDA describes him with reverence. People don’t speak against the dead, but to respect a contemporary needs a very intelligent and innocent mind.

He is the first Jinna. Jinna means the conqueror, and Mahavira is the twenty-fourth Jinna. Those who follow the Jinnas are called Jainas; they are simply followers.

The word ‘jinna’ is equivalent to the word ‘buddha’; they are exchangeable, because in many places in Buddhist scriptures Buddha is called a Jinna, and in many Jaina scriptures, Mahavira is called Buddha. These words are not anybody’s monopoly. They simply signify a state which can be described in many ways through different aspects.

When I was in America, the ambassador of Sri Lanka to America wrote a letter to me telling me that I should stop calling our discos around the world ‘Zorba the Buddha’ because it hurts the religious feelings of the Buddhists.

I answered him, ”You don’t seem to be aware of the fact that ‘Buddha’ is nobody’s monopoly. It simply means ‘the awakened’. Now, if Zorba becomes awakened – nobody can prevent him; he has a birthright to be awakened. And everybody who is not awakened is a Zorba – he may not be so great a Zorba, but in his own way, in a small measure, he is living a life which has no awakening to it, he is asleep. So there is no question of changing the name. My whole effort is to create a bridge between the Zorbas – the sleeping ones – and the Buddhas – the awakened ones. And this word simply signifies an awakening of consciousness.”

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But somebody may be an ambassador of a country – that does not mean that he understands. He never replied, because it is absolutely clear that it is nobody’s monopoly. And everybody has to become a buddha. It should not hurt your religious feelings, it should really make you happy that even Zorbas are becoming buddhas. You should rejoice! But somebody may be an ambassador or a president or a prime minister: the sleeping mind is the same.

Just this morning I talked about Amiyo, but she could not get the point; on the contrary, she behaved exactly as one should behave in sleep. It was her question, that when I look at her she feels very happy, very blissful; and when I don’t look at her she thinks perhaps I am angry, perhaps she is not doing well – she feels sad.

I answered it, and when I went back, after the lecture, and looked at her, she closed her eyes. That’s how the sleepy mind behaves. On the one hand it asks that I should look at her, she rejoices; and when I looked at her, she was so angry, hurt, that she closed her eyes; she didn’t look at me. And it is not only the case with her, it is the case with everybody else. We are functioning out of sleep; we do not know what we are doing, why we are doing it.

A Jinna is one who has conquered his sleep. Jainism has not become as famous as Buddhism because it never became a world religion; it remained a very small sect in India. There were basic reasons. First, its monks could not go out of India for the simple reason that they could not accept food from anybody who was not a Jaina.

Now, before you go to another country, you cannot expect that people, because you are coming, will turn into Jainas. They could not accept food from anybody else, not even from Hindus or Buddhists

– nobody, only Jainas. So they move in a small circle; they cannot get out of it.

Secondly, the monks of their most orthodox branch live naked. They cannot go to the colder countries, they have to remain in the warmer places. They cannot eat non-vegetarian food. The whole world is non-vegetarian – Jainas are totally vegetarian.

So these restrictions did not allow them to go out of the country, and because of this, it is unfortunate; they have a great philosophy, much to contribute to human understanding, but that remained in the shadows. It never became known to the world.

Even today their scriptures are not being translated. Who cares? – they are such a small minority.

Numbers play such a role – but truth has nothing to do with numbers. Because they were a very small minority, they managed many things which in India were otherwise impossible.

For example, you will not find a single beggar from their community; they are all rich. They had to be rich; otherwise survival was difficult. They were surrounded by people who would have liked to destroy them. They could not take swords in their hands because they believed in nonviolence. The only way to survive was to have as much money as possible – that was their only power.

And they became really rich, so rich that even kings had to borrow money from them. Nobody was a beggar, nobody was uneducated. And because they were such a small minority, attacked by all kinds of philosophies, they had to protect themselves; they sharpened their intellect. They created better arguments than anybody else, because for others it was a luxury to argue, but for Jainas it The Transmission of the Lamp

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was a question of life and death. They had to win the argument; otherwise they were finished. So they have developed logical systems, great philosophies, which should be made available to the whole world.

But the world cares only about numbers, and they are a non-converting religion, so the question of creating great numbers like the Catholics is not possible. They are non-converting because, according to them – and I accept the idea – the very effort to convert somebody is ugly.

You can explain your philosophy, you can make your philosophy available, and if somebody wants to join you, that’s one thing. But to make an effort to convert the person, by hook or by crook, just to bring him into your fold to make your fold more powerful, is politics; it is not religion.

I may have told you: I was staying in Central India – there is a small aboriginal tribal land, Bastar. I used to go there often just to see how man was ten or twelve thousand years ago, because they are that far back. They live naked; they eat raw meat.

I used to study how man must have been and how he must have evolved. I was staying.... In those days Bastar was a state, and the king of Bastar was my friend. He was a very courageous man, and he loved me so much that just because of me, he was killed.

The government became afraid because he was a king of a state, and he was too much under my influence. He was allowing me to use all his resthouses in the mountains, in the jungles of Bastar, and they thought that if he wanted... because he was worshipped by the aboriginals as God, just as in the old way every nation in the past worshipped kings as gods. They are still in the past, they are not contemporary people, and if he said anything about me, they would accept it without any question.

The chief minister of Central India was very much against me. He was a Brahmin, and he wanted that I should be prevented from reaching Bastar. He told the king; the king refused. He said, ”He is my friend, and I love what he says – and I am not under anybody’s power.” Finding some excuse, police action was taken and the king was killed... thirty-six bullets; no chance was taken that he would be left alive. His name was Bhanjdeo. Because of him I enjoyed absolute freedom in his state.

I was staying in one of his guesthouses, and I saw a bonfire in the middle of the tribe – the tribe make their beautiful huts in a circle. So I went there – it must have been nine or ten o’clock in the night – and a Christian missionary was teaching them that the real religion, the only real religion, is Christianity.

So I sat just there with the crowd, and the missionary was not aware that somebody else from the outside was present. He had a bucket full of water, and the bonfire was there – it was a cool night.

He brought from his bag two statues; one was of Rama, the Hindu god, and one was of Jesus Christ.

And he said, ”You can see these statues: one is Rama – the Hindu god you worship – and one is Jesus Christ; he is our god. And I will put them to a test to show you.” He put both of them in the bucket of water. Rama drowned, and Jesus remained floating.

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And he said, ”You can see! – this fellow cannot even save himself; how can he save you? And look at Jesus Christ: while he was alive he used to walk on water; even in his statue he is floating! He can save you.”

And many poor aboriginals nodded their heads, ”That is true. You can see – there is no question.” I said to myself, ”This is something I had never imagined – that these aboriginals are being converted to Christianity in this way.” I stood up, I went close, and took both out of the bucket – Rama and Jesus

– and as I took them I immediately felt that the Rama statue was made of steel, painted exactly the same way as Jesus’ statue; and Jesus’ statue was made of very soft wood, very light wood. So I asked the aborigines, ”Have you ever heard in your scriptures about a water test?” They said, ”No.”

”Have you heard about a fire test?”

They said, ”Yes!”... because in Hindu scriptures, the fire test is a well-known fact. A water test nobody has heard of.

I said, ”So you can see now....” I threw both of them into the bonfire. Jesus immediately started burning! The missionary tried to escape. I said, ”Hold this man, don’t let him go! Let him see the whole scene. Now Rama is safe even in the fire; Jesus is gone.” The aboriginals were very happy, and they said, ”This is the real test, and this man was cheating us; a water test we have never heard of. But we never thought – we are poor people, we don’t think

– we agreed with him. If you had not been here he would have made us all Christians. This is his way; he has converted many tribes here in the forest to Christianity. This is his only game.” I said,”What do you think? – should we put him also to the fire test?” They said, ”That will be great, but that will be dangerous because he will be caught in it; he will not be able to save himself.” And he was in such fear, trembling, that these people... and if I had told them to, they would certainly have put him in the fire!

And he said, ”I will never do such a thing again.”

”But,” I said, ”this is absolutely ugly. It is not religion that you are practicing; you are cheating poor people, innocent – and you call it conversion.”

Any dignified philosophy does not believe in conversion. Jainism does not believe in it. It simply makes available to you all its treasure, and if you are interested you can join the caravan, but nobody wants you to be converted.

So only once in a while somebody... because who takes that much trouble to go through scriptures and study and find out what is right and what is wrong? But it is something to be taken note of, that there may be other similar minority groups in the world who have great treasures not translated into world languages. It should be the duty of an organization like the U.N. to translate all those treasures into world languages so they become available to all.

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Jainism is the first religion that has made vegetarianism a fundamental necessity for transforming consciousness. And they are right. Killing just to eat makes your consciousness heavy, insensitive; and you need a very sensitive consciousness – very light, very loving, very compassionate. It is difficult for a non-vegetarian to be compassionate; and without being compassionate and loving you will be hindering your own progress.

And there are many diamonds in that small group – the Jainas – which can help many people. They are available, but they are available in a language which is no longer alive; they are written in Prakrit.

That word is also worth understanding. It is thought that Sanskrit is the oldest language. There is a consensus amongst scholars that Sanskrit is the oldest language of the world; only Jainas don’t agree with it – their language is Prakrit – and I feel that they are right. The very meaning of the word

‘prakrit’ is ‘natural’, and the very meaning of the word ‘sanskrit’ is ‘refined’.

Prakrit seems to be the original language which the people were using, and Sanskrit seems to be the refined form of it which scholars were using. Their very names indicate something. Prakrit means raw, and Sanskrit means cultured. Certainly Prakrit has to be first and only then is Sanskrit possible. And the same words are there; it is just that they are, in Prakrit, more simple – the way people will use them. In Sanskrit those words have taken a cultured form; only educated people can use them.

And I have seen it happen in India with English. There are simple words – for example, ‘station’....

But in every village of India, for the poor, uneducated people, ‘station’ is difficult; they use ‘teshan’

– that is simpler. ‘Station’ seems to be a little complicated for them. ‘Teshan’ seems to be simple, uncomplicated.

You can see in India how English words, moving to the masses, have taken a different shape.

‘Report’ – every village in India uses simply, ‘rapat’, not ‘report’, that is too cultured. ‘Rapat’ is very simple.

Exactly in the same way are the words in Prakrit and Sanskrit. All Jaina scriptures are in Prakrit. It is a very beautiful language because it has the smell of everything simple, unpolished... diamonds just out of the mine – not cut, not polished, but they have a beauty of their own, something wild.

It is the duty of the U.N. to bring all this literature – and it is vast – into international languages, and people will be simply shocked.

For example, Albert Einstein in this century talks of the theory of relativity – and Mahavira, twenty-five centuries ago, talks about the theory of relativity. Of course his conception is philosophical, he is not a scientist; but the meaning is the same. Albert Einstein has scientific evidence, Mahavira has philosophical arguments, but both are trying to say that in existence there is nothing which is absolute, everything is relative.

Aristotle divides everything into black and white – either this or that; his logic is either/or. Mahavira divides everything into seven categories.

It is more complicated, more complex, but shows tremendous insight, intelligence. Aristotle looks like a pygmy – and the world must be made aware that there have been giants of which you are absolutely unaware.

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It is one of my deep desires that when our mystery schools are functioning, slowly slowly, we will bring from all over the world the great mystical scriptures, without any consideration of to whom they belong, and publish them with the latest commentaries, so that mysticism does not remain just a word but becomes a vast literature, and anybody can devote his whole life to understanding what the mystics have given to the world.

Nobody is taking note of it, and its significance is tremendous – because it is not only literature, it has secrets for the transformation of your being.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

A FEW DAYS AGO YOU SAID THAT AN AWARE PERSON COULD FOLLOW THE FOOTPRINTS

OF A BIRD’S FLIGHT. HOW ABOUT THE FOOTPRINTS AN ENLIGHTENED PERSON LEAVES?

DO THEY KEEP THE RADIANCE AND THE FRAGRANCE OF THE ENLIGHTENED ONE FOR

LONG? IS IT LIKE NUCLEAR RADIATION? – IF A PERSON STEPS IN THE FOOTPRINTS OF AN

ENLIGHTENED ONE, WILL HE BE AFFECTED?

IF THE ANSWER IS YES, THEN AMERICA SHOULD BE CONSCIENTIOUS ENOUGH TO MAKE

THAT DESERT IN CENTRAL OREGON WHICH ONCE WAS MADE INTO AN OASIS, A HIGH-RISK

AREA OF DANGEROUS CONTAMINATION. THEY SHOULD PUT UP A SIGN POST: ”WARNING!

DANGEROUS AREA OF HIGHLY AWAKENED CONSCIOUSNESS. KEEP OUT!” IT IS SAID THAT GURDJIEFF’S LAST WORDS WERE, ”BRAVO AMERICA!” IN MY IMAGINATION

I ADD ON TO THIS, ”BUT AMERICA, WHAT A PITY: YOU MISSED.” AND THE REALITY IS THAT NORTH AMERICA MISSED YOU. AND NOW IT SEEMS THE TURN

OF SOUTH AMERICA TO MISS YOU TOO.

OSHO, IS IT POSSIBLE THAT HUMAN STUPIDITY CAN PREVENT THE REALIZATION OF

COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS?

There is no power in human stupidity to prevent the evolution of consciousness. It is impotent. It seems powerful only because the majority of the world has been brought up in it, is conditioned for it. People have been prevented from growing up from their very childhood; but it cannot prevent evolution of consciousness.

Once the movement for evolution gathers momentum, it may change the whole face of the earth.

And it is time that it should gain the momentum. There is no possibility of remaining lazy any longer; the future is becoming shorter and shorter. Either stupidity will destroy the whole earth, or a conscious evolution can bring a new man into existence. The choice is so clear that I don’t think, however asleep man may be, that he is going to choose suicide instead of a new phase in the life of man.

Just now as I was coming in, Amiyo tried again: she closed her eyes when I looked at her, but opened them in the middle. That is a good sign, a great sign. She herself must have felt what she was doing.

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Human sleep is going to be broken, and the days are very few; you can allow yourself a little more sleep. And remember, before the morning, the night becomes certainly very dark, but there is no need to be afraid of it; the night becoming very dark simply heralds the coming of the morning. We are very close to it.

And it is true that wherever an enlightened person lives, moves, sits, he leaves a certain vibration which remains for centuries – and those who are sensitive enough can be affected by it.

And your idea is good: America should be aware that the desert that we had turned into an oasis is dangerous. They have forced me out of America, thinking me dangerous. They have destroyed the community, thinking it dangerous. But there are certain invisible things which they cannot destroy; on the contrary, those invisible things will destroy them... not that they will kill them, but they will transform them. That place – they should be aware of it.

And how long can they prevent? – because it is not a question of me. How can they prevent Americans from becoming enlightened? I may not be able to go to America but America can come to me. And we don’t need that the whole of America should come to me, we need only a few intelligent people to carry the flame back home.

Although America has misbehaved with me and my people, I still insist on Gurdjieff’s statement,

”Bravo America!” because the American government is not America. These are the few elected fools. The whole of America has a totally different flavor to it. It is more innocent than any other country, because it is younger than any other country. And it is innocence that is needed as a base for somebody to become enlightened.

The old countries have such a long past that they also have a long conditioning. America has no conditioning, just three hundred years. It makes nothing, just a thin layer which can be easily peeled off. Perhaps that’s why the American government became so much afraid of me. They are really living in a paranoia.

Here they have tried hard that I should not be allowed. They have blackmailed this small country, threatened it. And we are looking in other places, but wherever we are looking, as we start looking at any country, immediately American pressure reaches ahead of us – because all our telephones are tapped. You will be surprised that all our telephone calls go through the American Embassy, everything first reaches to the American ambassador. They know where we are searching, where we are going, where our people are working; and immediately, before our people reach there, their pressure on the government of that country reaches there.

Just two days ago in Ireland things were simple. The man whose property we were going to purchase, on the condition that he obtains a permanent residence for the commune.... It is a big, beautiful castle, renovated completely. He was asking too much. We said, ”We will give it, but it will be your responsibility to make the government... all the facilities possible.” And he was absolutely sure. He is a duke and has great influence.

But just today the information has come: the American government has pressured the Irish government. Nobody has reached there yet, but the pressure was because the phone call has been detected, tapped. And the duke was surprised. He informed us, ”Suddenly the government is The Transmission of the Lamp

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afraid.” He had been absolutely certain that there was no problem, the government was willing. Just as a routine procedure, permanent residence would be given within sixty days. But now he is afraid, the pressure is too much.

And the kind of pressure America is putting on countries shows that there is no freedom anywhere.

The old kind of political slavery has disappeared; a new kind of economic slavery has taken its place.

They threaten the country, ”First, if you want to allow him and his people to be in your country then you pay off all loans.” And America has given billions of dollars to every country, knowing perfectly well that they are not capable of paying them back, they will never be able to pay them back.

”Secondly, if you cannot pay us back, then we are going to increase the rate of interest. Thirdly, if you still insist that you will allow him to stay in the country, then no future loans” – which have been already granted, billions of dollars in this year, billions of dollars in the coming year – ”they will be immediately cancelled.”

Now this is too much for a poor country – and all countries are poor. They cannot pay the loans back, they cannot pay that much interest, and they cannot manage all the projects that they have started. Roads or hospitals or universities or bridges or railway lines, are all incomplete; and if the loans are stopped, then their whole economy will simply fall flat.

Here, one minister said – because the same thing they did here – ”At least one thing has become clear, that we were under the illusion that we are independent. We are not – nobody is.” But this is only the American government. Don’t make it equal to America. The people of America are the most innocent, fresh, young, and are capable of giving birth to the new man.

Whatever happens to me and to my people, I will not disagree with George Gurdjieff.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

WHEN, IN THE PAST, I ALLOWED MYSELF TO BE OPEN AND VULNERABLE, I OFTEN HAD

THE FEELING THAT PEOPLE TENDED TO EXPLOIT THIS STATE OF MIND TO HURT ME OR

TO DO SOME HARM TO ME.

RECENTLY, WHEN IN A SIMILAR SITUATION, I FOUND MYSELF BEING LESS IDENTIFIED

THAN IN THE PAST. I COULD STAY MORE ALOOF AND WATCHFUL, AND DIDN’T DRAW

MYSELF BACK. I STAYED VULNERABLE AND OPEN AND I DIDN’T FEEL HURT OR HAVE THE

FEELING OF INFERIORITY AS MUCH AS BEFORE. IN FACT, I FELT MORE RECEPTIVE AND

FEMININE THAN EVER BEFORE, AND KNEW THAT I WAS ON THE RIGHT PATH.

I SAW MYSELF AS A SMALL BIRD WHO HAS ACCIDENTALLY FLOWN THROUGH A WINDMILL

AND EMERGES FROM IT WITH FEATHERS ASKEW AND A LOOK OF SURPRISE ON ITS FACE.

CAN YOU PLEASE COMMENT?

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CHAPTER 25. BRAVO, AMERICA!

You are on the right path. What you have been doing in the past was out of unawareness. You have tried just a little bit of awareness, and things have changed. Awareness is the greatest alchemy there is.

Just go on becoming more and more aware, and you will find your life changing for the better in every possible dimension. It will bring great fulfillment.

And, yes, you will be immensely surprised that you were capable of so much joy, so many blessings.

Why did you go on missing it?

When one becomes enlightened, one cannot believe it. ”It has happened to me?” It takes a little time to believe it, because the phenomenon is so big, and our sleep has been so long and our stupidities have been so deep. And suddenly all has melted away and there is nothing but pure light and a subtle dance and a fragrance that follows you twenty-four hours a day. You have the feeling that now this fragrance and this light and this rejoicing is going to be eternal. It is forever.

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Cut the social crap completely

8 June 1986 am in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

YESTERDAY I WAS TOLD THAT I AM INTELLIGENT. I FELT AS IF I HAD BEEN CALLED

SOMETHING TERRIBLE... AS IF IT WAS EVEN DANGEROUS.

WOULD YOU PLEASE SHED SOME LIGHT ON THE FEAR OF INTELLIGENCE?

Avirbhava, to feel terrible for being called ”intelligent” proves you really to be intelligent. The first and the most important part of intelligence is innocence. That’s why you felt terrible – because in the world innocence and intelligence have been divided, not only divided but put diametrically opposite to each other.

If intelligence remains innocent it is the most beautiful thing possible, but if it is against innocence then it is simply cunningness and nothing else; it is not intelligence.

The moment innocence disappears, the soul of intelligence is gone; it is a corpse. It is better to call it simply ”intellect”. It can make you a great intellectual, but it will not transform your life and it will not make you open to the mysteries of existence. They are open only to the intelligent child, and the really intelligent person keeps his childhood alive to his last breath. He never loses it – the wonder the child feels looking at the birds, looking at the flowers, looking at the sky.

Intelligence also has to be, in the same way, childlike.

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Jesus is right when he says, ”Unless you are born again, you will not see the kingdom of God.” What he calls ”God” I call ”existence”. But the statement is true. ”Born again” means becoming a child again.

But when a mature person becomes a child again, there is a difference between the ordinary child and the reborn. The ordinary child is innocent because he is ignorant, and the reborn innocence is the greatest value in life because it is not ignorance, it is pure intelligence.

So don’t be afraid of intelligence; be afraid of intelligence only if it is against innocence.

And I know Avirbhava: she is innocent. That’s why she must have felt terrible being called intelligent.

To her it must have appeared that she is being called cunning, crafty, clever. And her feeling is right.

But don’t be against intelligence if it goes in tune with your innocence. Innocence alone becomes ignorance. Intelligence alone becomes cunningness. They both together are neither ignorance nor cunningness, but simply a receptivity, an openness, a heart which is capable of wondering at the smallest thing in life.

And the man who knows the feeling of wonder, to me, is the only religious man. It is through his wonder that he comes to know that existence is not just matter, it cannot be. It is not a logical conclusion for him, not a belief for him, but a real experience. Such a beautiful experience, so mysterious, so unfathomable, indicates tremendous intelligence in him.

But existence is not cunning. It is very simple, it is innocent.

If you can keep these two qualities together, you need nothing else. These two will lead you to the ultimate goal of self realization.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

IT SEEMS TO ME THAT HUMAN BEINGS FEEL THAT JUST TO BE THEMSELVES IS NOT

ENOUGH. WHY DO MOST PEOPLE HAVE SUCH A COMPULSION TO REACH POWER AND

PRESTIGE AND SO ON, RATHER THAN JUST BEING SIMPLE HUMAN BEINGS?

It is a complicated question. It has two sides, and both have to be understood. First: you have never been accepted by your parents, teachers, neighbors, society, as you are. Everybody was trying to improve upon you, to make you better. Everybody was pointing at the flaws, at the mistakes, at the errors, at the weaknesses, at the frailties, which every human being is prone to. Nobody emphasized your beauty, nobody emphasized your intelligence, nobody emphasized your grandeur.

Just being alive is such a gift, but nobody ever told you to be thankful to existence. On the contrary, everyone was grumpy, complaining. Naturally, if everything surrounding your life from the very beginning goes on pointing out to you that you are not what you should be, goes on giving you great ideals that you have to follow and you have to become, your isness is never praised. What is praised is your future – if you can become someone respectable, powerful, rich, intellectual, in some way famous, not just a nobody.

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Constant conditioning against you has created in you the idea, ”I am not enough as I am, something is missing. And I have to be somewhere else – not here. This is not the place I am supposed to be, but somewhere higher, more powerful, more dominant, more respected, more well known.” This is half the story – which is ugly, which should not be the case. This can be simply removed if people are a little bit more intelligent about how to be mothers, how to be fathers, how to be teachers.

You are not to spoil the child. His self-respect, his acceptance of himself, you have to help it to grow.

On the contrary, you are becoming a hindrance for growth. This is the ugly part but it is the simple part. It can be removed, because it is so simple and logical to see that you are not responsible for what you are, that this is the way nature has made you. Now unnecessarily weeping over the spilled milk is sheer stupidity.

But the second part is tremendously important. Even if all these conditionings are removed – you are deprogrammed, all these ideas are taken out of your mind – then you will still feel you are not enough; but that will be a totally different experience. The words will be the same, but the experience will be different.

You are not enough because you can be more. It will not be any longer a question of becoming famous, respectable, powerful, rich. That will not be at all your concern. Your concern will be that your being is only a seed. With birth you are not born as a tree, you are born only as a seed, and you have to grow to the point where you come to flowering, and that flowering will be your contentment, fulfillment.

This flowering has nothing to do with power, nothing to do with money, nothing to do with politics.

It has something to do absolutely with you; it is an individual progress. And for this, the other conditioning is a hindrance, it is a distraction, it is a misuse of a natural longing for growth.

Every child is born to grow and to become a fully-fledged human being, with love, with compassion, with silence. He has to become a celebration unto himself. It is not a question of competition, not even a question of comparison.

But the first ugly conditioning distracts you because the urge to grow, the urge to become more, the urge to expand, is being used by the society, by the vested interests. They divert it. They fill your mind so you think that this urge is to have more money, this urge means to be at the top in every way – in education, in politics. Wherever you are, you have to be at the top; less than that and you will feel you are not doing well, you will feel a deep inferiority complex.

This whole conditioning produces an inferiority complex because it wants you to become superior, more superior than others. It teaches you competition, comparison; it teaches you violence, fight. It teaches you that means don’t matter, what matters is the end – success is the goal. And this can be easily done because you already are born with an urge to grow, with an urge to be somewhere else.

A seed has to travel far to become flowers. It is a pilgrimage. The urge is beautiful. It is given by nature itself. But the society, up to now, has been very cunning; it turns, deviates, diverts your natural instincts into some social utility.

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These two are the sides that are giving you the feeling that wherever you are, something is missing; you have to gain something, achieve something, become an achiever, a climber.

Now your intelligence is needed to make it clear what your natural urge is, and what is social conditioning. Cut the social conditioning – it is all crap – so that nature remains pure, unpolluted.

And nature is always individualistic.

You will grow and you will come to blossom, and you may have roseflowers. Somebody else may grow and will have marigolds. You are not superior because you have roseflowers; he is not inferior because he has marigolds. You both have come to flowering, that is the point; and that flowering gives a deep contentment. All frustration, all tension disappears; a profound peace prevails over you, the peace that passes understanding. But first you have to cut the social crap completely; otherwise it will go on distracting you.

You have to be rich but not wealthy. Richness is something else. A beggar can be rich, and an emperor can be poor. Richness is a quality of being.

Alexander the Great met Diogenes, who was a naked beggar, with only a lamp – that was his only possession. And he kept his lamp lit even in the day. He was obviously behaving in a strange way; even Alexander had to ask him, ”Why are you keeping this lamp lit in the day?” He raised his lamp and looked at Alexander’s face, and he said, ”I am looking for the real man day and night, and I don’t find him.”

Alexander was shocked that a naked beggar should say such a thing to him, the world conqueror.

But he could see that Diogenes was so beautiful in his nudity. His eyes were so silent, his face was so peaceful, his words had such an authority, his presence was so cool and calm and soothing, that although Alexander felt insulted, he could not retaliate. The presence of the man was so much, that Alexander himself looked a beggar beside him. In his diary he has written, ”For the first time I felt that richness is something other than having money. I have seen a rich man.” Richness is your authenticity, sincerity, your truth, your love, your creativity, your sensitivity, your meditativeness. This is your real wealth.

Society has moved your head towards mundane things, and you have forgotten completely that your head has been moved.

I remember it actually happened.... In India a man was driving on a motorcycle, and it was very cold so he put his coat on back to front because his chest was feeling very cold and the wind was just hitting him. From the other end of the road a sardar – the sardars are simple – was also coming on his motorbike. He could not believe his eyes because he thought, ”This man has got his head on back to front!”

He became so afraid, that as he came close, he stumbled with his motorbike against the poor man, and the man fell on the ground, almost unconscious. The sardar looked closely and he said, ”My God, what has happened to him? The city is far away, the hospital is far away, but something has to be done.”

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Sardars in India are the most strong people. And the poor man was unconscious, so he forced his head and put it right according to the coat. At that very time a police car reached there and the policemen asked, ”What is happening?”

He said, ”You have come in the right time. Look at this man – he has fallen from his motorbike.” They asked, ”Is he alive or dead?”

The sardar said, ”He used to be alive when his head was in a wrong position. When I turned his head in the right position he stopped breathing.” Those policemen said, ”You were too interested only in the head. You did not see that the coat is wrong, not the head!”

The sardar said, ”We are poor and simple people. I have never seen anybody wearing a coat whose buttons are at the back. I thought some accident had happened. He was breathing, although he was unconscious. I turned his head – it gave me trouble, but when I want to do something, I do it. I did it, and turned his head exactly right until it was fitting with the coat. Then he stopped breathing.

A strange fellow!”

Your head, your mind, has been turned in many ways by many people according to their ideas of how you should be. There was not any bad intention. Your parents loved you, your teachers loved you, your society wants you to be somebody. Their intentions were good, but their understanding was very short. They forgot that you cannot manage to make a marigold bush into roseflowers, or vice-versa.

All that you can do is help the roses to grow bigger, more colorful, more fragrant. You can give all the chemicals that are needed to transform the color and the fragrance – the manure that is needed, the right soil, the right watering at the right times – but you cannot make the rose bush produce lotuses.

And if you start giving the idea to the rosebush, ”You have to become lotus flowers” – and of course the lotus flowers are beautiful and big – you are giving a wrong conditioning which will help only in that this bush will never be able to produce lotuses; and also, its whole energy will be directed on a wrong path so it will not produce even roses, because from where will it get the energy to produce roses? And when there will be no lotuses, no roses, of course this poor bush will feel continuously empty, frustrated, barren, unworthy.

And this is what is happening to human beings. With all good intentions, people are turning your mind. In a better society, with more understanding people, nobody will change you. Everybody will help you to be yourself – and to be oneself is the richest thing in the world. To be oneself gives you all that you need to feel fulfilled, all that can make your life meaningful, significant. Just being yourself and growing according to your nature will bring the fulfillment of your destiny.

So the urge is not bad, but it has been moved towards wrong objects. And you have to be aware not to be manipulated by anybody, howsoever good their intentions are. You have to save yourself from so many well-intentioned people, do-gooders, who are constantly advising you to be this, to be that.

Listen to them and thank them, they don’t mean any harm, but harm is what happens.

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You just listen to your own heart – that is your only teacher.

In the real journey of life, your own intuition is your only teacher.

Have you looked at the word ‘intuition’? It is the same as ‘tuition’. Tuition is given by teachers, from outside; intuition is given by your own nature, from inside. You have your guide within you. With just a little courage you will never feel that you are unworthy. You may not become the president of a country, you may not become a prime minister, you may not become Henry Ford; but there is no need. You may become a beautiful singer, you may become a beautiful painter. And it does not matter what you do.... You may become a great shoemaker.

When Abraham Lincoln became the president of America.... His father had been a shoemaker, and the whole senate was feeling a little embarrassed that a shoemaker’s son should preside over the richest people, the high-class people, who believe they are superior because they have more money, because they belong to a long-standing famous family. The whole senate was in a way embarrassed, angry, irritated; nobody was happy that Lincoln had become the president.

One man, who was very arrogant, bourgeois, stood up before Lincoln gave his first, his maiden address to the senate. And he said, ”Mr. Lincoln, before you start I would like you to remember that you are a shoemaker’s son.” And the whole senate laughed. They wanted to humiliate Lincoln; they could not defeat him, but they could humiliate him. But it is difficult to humiliate a man like Lincoln.

He said to the man, ”I am tremendously grateful that you reminded me of my father, who is dead. I will always remember your advice. I know that I can never be such a great president as my father was a shoemaker.” There was pindrop silence – the way Lincoln had taken it....

And he said to the man, ”As far as I know, my father used to make shoes for your family too. If your shoes are pinching or some trouble is there – although I am not a great shoemaker I have learned the art with my father from my very childhood – I can correct it. And the same to anybody in the senate; if my father has made the shoes, and they need any correction, any improvement, I am always available – although one thing is certain, I cannot be that great. His touch was golden.” And tears came to his eyes in the memory of his great father.

It does not matter: you may be a third-class president, you may be a first-class shoemaker. What fulfills is that you are enjoying what you are doing, that you are putting all your energies into it; that you don’t want to be anybody else; that this is what you want to be; that you agree with nature that the part given to you to play in this drama is the right part, and you are not ready to change it even with a president or an emperor.

This is real richness. This is real power.

If everybody grows to be himself, you will find the whole earth full of powerful people, of tremendous strength, intelligence, understanding, and a fulfillment, a joy that they have come home.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

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FOR A FEW MOMENTS THE OTHER MORNING, WHILE WATCHING YOU, I SAW THAT NOBODY

WAS THERE. I SAW THE EMPTINESS, THE HOLLOW BAMBOO. WHY DID I FIND THIS SPOOKY

AND AWESOME WHEN YOU HAVE BEEN SPEAKING OF THE BEAUTY OF EMPTINESS FOR

YEARS?

It is just because from your very childhood you have been told that the goal is not emptiness, but fullness. Emptiness symbolizes the beggar’s bowl. In the West particularly, the word ‘emptiness’

never achieved any positive meaning. In the East the case is different.

We have two words for emptiness. One – which will translate the English word ‘emptiness’ – is riktata. It simply means absence of something. And the other is shunyata for which, in the Western languages, there is no equivalent because that kind of experience has not happened in the West.

Shunyata is emptiness from one side, and fullness from another side. For example, this room is full of people now, furniture, things. We can empty it – all the people can leave the room, all the furniture can be removed – and then somebody can come and see and can say, ”The room is empty.” He is just seeing one side of the phenomenon.

What he is saying is that the things that were in the room are not there. But he is forgetting that now the room is full of roominess. The room has more space now than it had before. Before it was cluttered; its space was cut up into pieces – furniture, people, things. Now it is clean, now it is pure.

Now it is itself, full of itself. That is the meaning of shunyata in the East; the second side – which has been overlooked in the West.

So the Western mind has a certain antagonism about emptiness because it knows only its negative aspect. It does not know its positive side. That’s why it looks spooky, fearsome.

And moreover, when I am sitting here talking to you and suddenly you become aware that there is nobody – the chair is empty – it becomes more spooky. You start feeling as if you are seeing something which is not the case; or, if this is the case, then just a moment before you were seeing a person when that person was not real, ghostly.

You have to look deeply into the phenomenon of the enlightened person. He is and he is not – both together. He is because his body is there; he is not because his ego is no longer there. All the furniture of the mind has been removed: now it is really a hollow bamboo. And if the hollow bamboo is functioning as a flute, then too it does not become anything else other than a hollow bamboo.

And the experience becomes even more mysterious because the hollow bamboo flute is creating a music.

The Western mind has been trained to think that nothing can come out of nothing. The Eastern mind has been trained to see that everything comes out of nothing. And modern physics agrees with the mystics of the East.

It is very surprising that the modern Western physics goes against all Western religions and agrees with all the Eastern mystics. The same experience.... The hollow bamboo is not giving you music of its own, somebody else – perhaps existence itself, perhaps a strong wind passing through the hollow bamboo – is creating music. But the music is coming in from one side and is going out from the other side; the flute remains hollow.

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The West is so much interested in things being solid, steel-solid. It is not a coincidence that it creates men like Stalin. The word ‘stalin’ in Russian means ‘man of steel’. It was not his name; it was given because he was so like solid steel – there was no hollowness in him. Hollowness is condemned.

When you want to condemn somebody you say, ”He is just hollow.” But in the East it is a totally different thing. The greatest mystics – Gautam Buddha, Lao Tzu, Bodhidharma – they all call themselves hollow bamboos. They have disappeared as an ego. There is no one who can say, ”I am”, and yet the whole structure is there, and inside is pure space. And that pure space is your divineness, your godliness; that pure space is what, on the outside, is pure sky. The sky only appears to be – it does not exist. If you go in search of sky, you will not find it anywhere; it is only an appearance.

The enlightened man has an appearance like the sky, but if you get in tune with him sometimes you will find he is not. That can make you feel spooky, afraid; and that’s what must have happened.

You got in tune with me. In spite of yourself, once in a while you will get in tune with me. You may forget yourself once in a while and will get in tune with me – because only if you forget your ego can there be a meeting. Otherwise there cannot be any meeting. And in that meeting you will find that the chair is empty. It may be just a glimpse for a moment, but really you have seen something far more real than anything else that you have ever seen. You have looked inside the hollow bamboo and seen the miracle of the music coming out of it.

You know I have prohibited Milarepa from using my chairs because who knows? – I may be sitting there!

Question 4

BELOVED OSHO,

THERE IS AN EXOTIC FLOWER GROWING IN URUGUAY – A FLOWER WHICH ORIGINATED IN

THE EAST AND HAS SPREAD ITS SEEDS ALL OVER THE ENTIRE WORLD.

OVER THE YEARS, MANY HAVE BEEN DRAWN TO THE FLOWER BECAUSE OF ITS

EXTRAORDINARY BEAUTY. SOME HAVE ENJOYED THAT BEAUTY, BUT FLEETINGLY, AND

HAVE GONE ON THEIR WAY. OTHERS HAVE SEEN ITS LOVELINESS, AND HAVE BEEN

DRAWN EVEN CLOSER, FOR ITS FRAGRANCE IS LIKE NONE OTHER. ITS PERFUME HAS

BECOME PART OF THEIR VERY BLOOD, AND THEY NOW HAVE NO OTHER WORLD EXCEPT

THAT WHICH HAS SPRUNG UP AROUND THE FLOWER.

THE FLOWER HINTS OF EVEN GREATER TREASURES THAT IT HOLDS – OF GREATER

DEPTH, NOT READILY AVAILABLE TO THE CURIOUS, THE CAUTIOUS, THE GREEDY, THE

AGGRESSIVE. AND THOSE WHO LINGER BY ITS SIDE, BEGIN TO PERCEIVE, AS THEY FIND

THE EYES, WHAT THE FLOWER EMBODIES.

BELOVED OSHO, I DELIGHT SO MUCH IN THIS DELICATE GAME OF QUESTION-AND-ANSWER, THIS GENTLE DRAWING OUT OF ALL THAT YOU HAVE TO SHARE.

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Yes, you are right, this is a game of questions and answers. They are simply an excuse so that you can be with me. You are so accustomed to words that without words you cannot find out what you are doing here. You feel a little crazy. But with words, everything feels right.

I would have preferred to sit silently with you, but the trouble is, if I sit silently, then your mind goes yakkety-yak, yakkety-yak. I can even hear the sound – so many wheels moving. So I decided this way it is better.

I use words. Listening to my words you stop thinking. And in those moments when there is no thinking, much transpires, much that cannot be said but can only be understood; much which no language is capable of expressing. But the very presence of a man who knows, starts stirring your heart, changing your being.

The West does not know, is unacquainted with many things. For example, it has nothing to compare with what is called in the East satsanga. To a Western mind it will look absolutely absurd. Satsanga simply means sitting with the master, doing nothing; nobody speaks but nobody thinks either. Any observer is bound to get puzzled.

When, for the first time, P.D. Ouspensky was allowed to be brought to George Gurdjieff – one of Gurdjieff’s inner circle of disciples had been trying for months, saying that he wanted to bring a friend.

Finally he was given permission. On a cold night in Russia – the snow was falling – Ouspensky, with great excitement, thousands of questions and words passing through his mind ... he was a world-famous man, one of the most significant mathematicians of his time. And as far as writing is concerned I don’t see anybody comparable to him; he writes magically. His books were already translated into many languages. And nobody knew Gurdjieff; just a small group of twenty people was all that he had. Ouspensky was thinking that this was the same way that he had been introduced into other societies, clubs, meetings... but there was something totally different.

By dim candlelight Gurdjieff was sitting looking at the floor, and twenty people around him were sitting in the same posture looking at the floor. These two also joined in, and Ouspensky – seeing everybody, what they are doing... neither was he introduced nor was anything done. The man who had brought him simply sat in the posture and started looking at the floor.

Ouspensky, thinking that perhaps this was the way, also sat in the same posture and started looking at the floor. But whatever he would do his mind was working: ”What am I doing here? And he has brought me to introduce me to George Gurdjieff. This is the fellow, it seems, who is sitting in the middle; but he has not even looked at me. And what are they searching for on the floor? There is nothing – a clean floor. And all the twenty are just sitting!” Minutes passed – and minutes seemed like hours. A silent night, just the flickering light of a small candle, and the sound of the snow falling outside.... And those people went on sitting. Half an hour passed, and his mind was running like mad: ”What is happening, and what am I doing here?” At that moment Gurdjieff looked at him and said, ”Don’t be worried. Soon you will be sitting here with these people in the same way, without disturbance. They have learned how to sit with a master... to sit in such a way that the consciousnesses start merging and melting into each other. Twenty-one people are not sitting here, just twenty-one bodies and one soul, and no thought. But it will take time The Transmission of the Lamp

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for you. Forgive me for making you wait for half an hour; it must have seemed to you as if days have passed.

”Now take this paper, go to the other room. On one side write what you know. On the other side write what you do not know. And remember that whatever you write down as knowing, we will never discuss; that is finished. You know it and it is none of my business to interfere in it. What you do not know, that will be the only part that I will teach you.” With trembling hands – for the first time Ouspensky became aware of thinking about what he knows.

He has written about God, and he has written about heaven and hell, and he has written about the soul and the transmigration of the soul – but does he KNOW?

He went into the other room and sat there with the paper and the pencil. And as he checked in his mind what he knows, what he does not know – for the first time in his whole life he was checking it; otherwise nobody bothers about what one knows, what one does not know. And after a few minutes he came out with the empty paper, and he said, ”I do not know anything. You will have to teach me everything.”

Gurdjieff said, ”But you have written so many books. I have seen your books and I did not think that a man who knows nothing could be writing so well.” Ouspensky said, ”Just forgive me. I am not acquainted with the way you work, but within a few minutes you have made me aware of my utter ignorance. And I want to begin from the very scratch.

Forgive me for those books. They were written certainly in sleep, because now I can see I don’t know anything about God. I have read about God but that is not knowing. Just one thing I want to know: what is happening here?”

And Gurdjieff said, ”This is a way of creating hollow bamboos. All these people are waiting here to become empty. When they become empty, that is their entrance to the school. This is just outside the school, a school is inside. When they become empty, when I am satisfied that they are empty, they will be taken in. We are not here to teach you anything. We are here to help you to know. We will create situations in which you yourself come to know.” Satsanga... just to be with the master.... But for the West it is difficult; hence I speak to you. These questions and answers are really just a game to help you to get rid of words, thoughts. Slowly, slowly you are finding it more and more difficult: what to ask?

Just last night Maneesha was worried, ”If questions are finished and you start leaving because there is no question, I will shout ‘Osho, I have found a question! Wait!’” No, I will not leave. I am waiting for that moment when no question is left within you; then my real work will begin.

Right now we are just sitting outside the school. Once you are silent, utterly silent, then there is no need to ask anything; there is nothing to ask, there is nothing to answer.

Silence is the question.

Silence is the answer.

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Silence is the ultimate truth.

In silence we meet with existence – words, languages, all create barriers. And to be silent means to be a hollow bamboo. And the miracle is, the moment you are a hollow bamboo, a music descends through you which is not your own. It comes through you; it belongs to the whole. Its beauty is tremendous, its ecstasy immeasurable.

These meetings are just a preparation for that music to descend in you.

But you can make a flute only of a hollow bamboo. If you are full of your thoughts and ego and philosophy, religion, theology and politics – all kinds of rubbish – then that music is not for you.

And to me, that music is the ultimate experience, the last benediction, the highest flowering of your consciousness.

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8 June 1986 pm in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

IN HOMER’S GREAT EPIC STORIES, THE ILIAD AND THE ODYSSEY, HE DESCRIBES

ULYSSES’ VOYAGE HOMEWARD WHEN HIS SHIP SAILS NEAR THE ISLAND OF THE LOTUS-EATERS. THE SIREN’S SONG WAFTS ACROSS THE OCEAN, HYPNOTIZING THE SAILORS

AND CAUSING THEM TO STEER OFF THEIR COURSE TOWARDS THE SENSUOUS SOUND.

ULYSSES’ EFFORTS TO KEEP THE SHIP ON COURSE WERE OF NO AVAIL. SAILORS LEAPT

OFF THE SHIP AND MADLY RUSHED TO DRINK THE LOTUS ELIXIR POURED DOWN THEIR

THROATS BY THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMEN IMAGINABLE. SOON THE ANESTHETIC AND

HYPNOTIC NECTAR DULLED THEIR SENSES, GLAZED OVER THEIR EYES, AND THEY FELL

INTO A SENSUOUS, ETERNAL TRANCE.

ULYSSES TRIED TO STOP THE MELEE, AND HIMSELF BARELY RESISTED THE BEAUTIFUL

WOMEN LOTUS-EATERS. BADLY SHAKEN, HE MANAGED TO ESCAPE TO CONTINUE ON HIS

ARDUOUS JOURNEY HOME. HE MADE IT; BUT MOST OF HIS CREW DIDN’T.

OSHO, WILL YOU SPEAK ABOUT THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS STORY TO THE SEEKER? IS

THERE A SIREN’S SONG OF SANNYAS?

The story is almost factual; it is a parable. On the way to truth one comes across many spaces which can stop the seeker because the joy, the pleasure, is really hallucination. One has to be continuously aware of beautiful experiences on the way, because no experience is of the truth.

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Truth is not an experience.

Truth is when all experiences have passed away. It is pure isness.

There are moments in meditation when one feels as if one has arrived – now there is no further to go. It is so fulfilling and one has never experienced anything like this before. It is inconceivable that things can be better than this, that there can be more pleasant, more blissful experiences.

One of the most famous books, and one of the first ones that appeared in the West on Zen, was Christmas Humphreys’ ZEN BUDDHISM. He really wanted to give it the title GO ON. He mentions it in the introduction, but it didn’t feel very appealing, GO ON, so he changed the title. But GO ON

was more appropriate.

Gautam Buddha’s constant use of it makes it emphatically significant. Whenever somebody would come to Gautam Buddha and would describe his experience of his meditation – how beautiful it is, how joyous he is feeling, how blissful he is – in the end Gautam Buddha would say, ”Go on, don’t be stuck by it; there is much more ahead.”

And this was a constant thing, whatever you would bring to him he would say, ”Go on. Don’t stop.

I know you want to stop because you cannot conceive what more there can be, but I know there is much more.” And one day would come when the disciple will approach Gautam Buddha, touch the master’s feet, sit silently by his side. And Buddha would ask, ”How is the experience going?” And he would start laughing and he would say, ”You pushed me and pushed me and pushed me.

Now there is no experience at all, just a pure isness. The beauty of it, the benediction of it, is qualitatively different.

”You cannot say ten thousand times more, that will not be right; no quantity will be able to describe it. It is qualitatively different, and I have come just to thank you for your patience – I went on coming with experiences, and you went on sending me back with only the same one sentence, ‘Go on. Don’t stop.’”

Because of Gautam Buddha’s ”Go on,” Christmas Humphreys wanted to use it as the title to his book, but he finally changed it, thinking that it would not appeal in the market. And perhaps he was right; ”Go On” seems to be very flat for a book title.

This parable, Homer’s story, has not been understood in the West the way it has to be understood. It is the story of spiritual growth. You will come many times to stages which give you the feeling that the time has come to stop – because the experience is so much that it is beyond your comprehension that there can be anything more.

So the mind which has always been telling you, ”More, more” – for everything was asking for more

– suddenly stops. It cannot comprehend there is more. And that is the point when the master wants you to go on: ”Don’t be addicted to any experience, howsoever beautiful, don’t become a lotus-eater; otherwise you will be unconscious – blissfully unconscious, blissfully asleep.” But you had not started the journey for this. You were going to reach yourself, fully awake.

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The parable is simple if understood in the right way, but the parable must have reached Homer from the East. That’s why in the West there is no explanation for it: it is just a story, a beautiful story.

It is an actual existential, experiential factuality of human growth towards the ultimate meaning of life.

So remember only one thing: Go on, until there is nowhere to go, until there is no one to go, until you have exhausted everything – the road, the goal, the traveler, all have disappeared – and there is just pure silence of isness.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

WHEN WE SLEEP, THE UNCONSCIOUS IS EXPERIENCED AS DREAMS. DURING DREAMLESS

SLEEP, WHY DOES THE UNCONSCIOUS STOP EXPRESSING ITSELF? IT SEEMS THERE

MUST BE A LOT OF REPRESSED MATERIAL THAT NEEDS EXPRESSION. DOES DREAMING, THEN, ACT LIKE A SAFETY VALVE, ALLOWING JUST ENOUGH MATERIAL TO BE EXPRESSED

SO THAT SOME STEAM IS LET OFF AND THE PRESSURE COOKER OF THE UNCONSCIOUS

DOES NOT COMPLETELY EXPLODE?

No, it is not like that. According to the Eastern psychology, there are four stages of mind; not just two, as it is according to the Western philosophy – conscious mind, unconscious mind. In the context of the Western division between conscious and unconscious, your question is very relevant.

But the truth is that mind has four states: the waking state, which is comparable to the conscious mind; the sleeping state with dreams, which is parallel to the unconscious mind; third, the dreamless sleep which the West has yet to find; and the fourth, the real waking state.

The first is only the so-called waking state, and the fourth is real awakening. The second is sleep with dreams, but sleep with dreams is a disturbed state. In an eight-hour night, six hours you are dreaming and for only two hours are there no more dreams. Those two hours belong to the third state, which is not yet recognized in the Western psychology; it has not come across it yet.

Those two hours are not in one solid block, but a few minutes here, a few minutes there; in total in the whole night of eight hours sleep, you have two hours of the third state – which is dreamless sleep, which is really the rejuvenation, revitalization.

That’s why in this state dreams stop, there are no dreams because there is no suppression.

Suppression only goes up to the second, the unconscious state, so the dreams remain only in the unconscious state. The third is deeper than the unconscious; it is unconscious, but far deeper, so that even a dream is not possible.

And these two hours are the most valuable because there is no disturbance at all. The body functions absolutely naturally. Everything is relaxed, suspended. Time disappears. You are as if you are dead.

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And it is also beautiful; it gives you rest. If you miss it, in the morning you will feel you have been sleeping – but you get up more tired than you had gone to bed, as if sleep itself has been tiring.

Because dreams are just like worries, pictorial worries, pictorial tensions.

And this third is also important because just below it, deeper than it, is the real awakening.

This very morning I was saying to you that before the morning the night gets very dark. Don’t be worried about the darkness. The darker the night gets, the closer the morning is.

The third state is the darkest, the most unconscious.

If you are a meditator, then you can go from this third stage to the fourth. If you are not a meditator, then from the third you come back to the second, from the second back to the first, and your daily routine goes on. And the fourth just remains there in the underground, which is your basic reality.

The meditator starts watching with the first stage, the so-called waking stage. And then slowly he starts watching the second stage – when there are dreams he is also there watching. Now he is not a part of the dreams, he is standing alone and the dreams are on the screen.

As he becomes more skillful in watching, he can slip even deeper, to where there is all darkness, nothing to watch except darkness, but it is tremendously peaceful, immensely silent, its depth is unfathomable. And the watcher goes on watching it: it goes on becoming darker and darker, thicker and thicker.

This has been called by the mystics ”the dark night of the soul.” If one becomes afraid – because one has never seen such darkness, one has never seen such deafening silence, one has never entered into such an unknown, unfathomable space – one can go back to the second or to the first.

But if one goes on, remembering one thing, that when the night is the darkest, the morning is very close.... These are the moments when the master is helpful; otherwise it will be very difficult – it is only for a very few rare courageous people to enter into such a cave. One knows not whether it ends anywhere or not; you cannot see any end to it, it is endless.

But if the master is there and he says, ”There is nothing to be afraid of. This is one of the most restful, most nourishing life-giving forces. You should go without any fear. It is your home.” And if you can go without any fear, soon suddenly you see on the horizon the sun rising – and not just one sun. According to the mystics of all the ages, it is as if thousands of suns are rising all over the horizon; the light is so much one cannot believe that one was carrying so much light within oneself under these dark layers.

So when the dreams stop, it is not that the repression is working, that only a little steam is allowed to go off. No. You are moving into a third stage which is more necessary – the second is only a passage. But we are so much full of rubbish that six hours are wasted in the second stage just on the bridge, moving here and there, not landing on the other side.

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And even when we land we remain there only for two hours, and that, too, not in one block – just a few minutes here, a few minutes there, and again we are back on the bridge shuttling between dreams.

As your meditation grows deeper, the second space disappears because dreaming stops. As your thinking stops in meditation, in sleep your dreaming stops.

Dreaming is like thinking; the difference is that thinking is linguistic and dreaming is pictorial.

Dreaming is like Chinese, Japanese, the ancient languages; and thinking is like more contemporary languages. But both are the same.

Once you are able, by watching, to stop thinking, you will be able to stop dreaming; then the second stage disappears. From the first stage you enter into the third directly.

And because thinking and dreaming have stopped, your third stage will not last long either, because your first stage is becoming closer and closer to the fourth, it is becoming thoughtless awareness.

So finally, the second disappears first, then the third disappears, and then the first changes its character totally and becomes one with the fourth. And only the one stage remains, the fourth.

In the East we have called it turiya. Turiya simply means ‘the fourth’. It is a number; it is not a name.

We have given names for the other three. First is jagruti, ‘so-called awakening’. Second is sopan,

‘dream’. Third is sushupti, ‘dreamless sleep’. But for the fourth the East has not given any name, it is a nameless reality because you can never get rid of it.

All those three were not part of your nature, they were imposed layers; but the fourth you bring with your birth, and when you die you take the fourth with you. The fourth is you. Those three were three rings of experiences surrounding you – the fourth is the center.

It is a different way of saying the same thing that reaching the fourth you become enlightened, you become the awakened one.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

YOU SAID THAT THE MASTER IS LIKE THE SKY; HE APPEARS TO BE, BUT HE IS NOT.

I THINK I AM, THEREFORE I AM.

IS THIS THE ONLY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ENLIGHTENMENT AND UNENLIGHTENMENT?

It is one of the most significant differences. In the Western philosophy there are few names which are more important than the name of Descartes. Descartes’ whole philosophy is based on the single statement, ”I think, therefore I am.”

But it is obviously very childish because you are not thinking constantly, still you are; you are not thinking while you are asleep, still you are; you may be in a coma, you are not thinking, still you are.

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”I think I am, therefore I am.” Thinking seems to be the most significant part. It is a conclusion of thinking that ”I am,” but when you are not thinking, what happens?

In meditation there will be no thinking. And those who have meditated for thousands of years, their experience has to be compared. They say, ”When thinking ceases, then I am;” just the opposite of Descartes – because thinking is a disturbance. And when you are engaged with thoughts, you are engaged with something objective, and you are not an object.

When all thoughts have disappeared and you are sitting silently doing nothing, the East says, ”For the first time you know you are – because now there is no object to distract your consciousness.

Your whole consciousness is settled at the center, in the heart.” And it is not a conclusion; it is not ”therefore...” What Descartes is saying is ”my existence is a logical conclusion: I think, therefore I am.” It is not an existential experience, it is a logical conclusion.

The East says, ”When there is no thought, you experience that you are.” There is no question of

”therefore...”

Descartes can be refuted because it is only a logical conclusion. It is so simple to refute him, and he has become the father figure of Western philosophy! It is so simple to refute him because when you are asleep, you are – and you are not thinking. Even when you are just going for a walk, you are not thinking.

If Descartes is right, then a person will be in a continuous trouble; he will have to think continuously,

”I am thinking,” to keep himself alive. The moment he forgets thinking, he is finished.

It would be rather more mature to say, ”I am, therefore I think. I am, therefore I dream. I am, therefore I meditate.” Then every possibility is open. Then you can do many things, everything: ”I am, therefore I am silent.”

I can be simply in my amness, doing nothing. There is no need for anything to prove it; my existence is self-evident. That’s what Descartes is missing. He’s trying to prove one’s self.

It reminds me of a Sufi story I have told many times to you, but those stories are such that they have so many aspects, so many implications.

Mulla Nasruddin is sitting in the coffee house and bragging as ever about everything – that there is nobody as generous as he is.

Somebody said, ”Mulla, we go on tolerating your bragging about everything, but about this generosity – we have never seen any proof of it. For years we are friends. You have been drinking coffee, and you have never even paid the bill, other friends are paying. We have invited you many times to our houses for dinner; you have never invited us even once. Even a miser would have thought of it. And still you have some nerve: ‘I am the most generous man in this city.’” He said, ”Then come on, all of you, the whole coffee house – everybody is coming for dinner at my house. Close the coffee house. The owner, the servants, everybody is coming.” The Transmission of the Lamp

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A procession of about fifty or sixty people went towards Mulla Nasruddin’s house. And he was just ahead, going along with strong willpower. And as he was coming close to home, he started staggering a little. He hesitated.

Just in front of the house he said to the people, ”Listen, please. You are all married and you know...

I have also got a wife. In the morning she sent me to purchase vegetables, and I have not returned home. The whole day I have been gossiping here and there. I have eaten with friends, and then I was in the coffee house with you.

”I had completely forgotten about the vegetables. And she must be angry. And you know I am a simple man. And now seeing that sixty persons are invited for dinner – and in the house, I tell you truly, there is nothing. So you just wait. First let me go in, so that I can console her. And then I will take you in. Just a few minutes... be kind.”

They said, ”We understand wives. You go in. It is perfectly right. In front of sixty people, getting insulted is not good. You go alone and first settle with your wife. We are waiting.” He closed the door, went in, and told the wife, ”The whole coffee house has come, they were so insistent, for dinner. And you know that we are poor people. And I have not even brought the necessary things that you had asked, because I had no money. How can you manage? So I have thought of a way. You simply go and ask them, ‘Why are you waiting here? What are you doing here?’ And don’t be afraid.”

The wife said, ”But they will say that you have invited them for dinner.” He said, ”You forget about it. You simply say that I am not in the house.” The wife said, ”But they have seen you – they have come with you, and they have seen you enter in the house. They are sitting on the steps, and you entered the house and closed the doors.” Mulla Nasruddin said, ”You don’t be worried. You just do what I am saying. You simply insist that I am not in the house; since the morning nothing has been heard about me.” The wife said, ”If that is the only way, I will go.” And she also had to agree; otherwise, from where to produce a dinner for sixty people? And she said, ”I will see you later on. First I will go and finish with them.”

She opened the door and asked really strongly, ”What are you doing here? Who are you?” They said, ”We are Mulla Nasruddin’s friends.”

She said, ”Whoever you are, your friend has not turned up at home the whole day. From the morning he has been missing. Go and find out where he is.” They said, ”This is too much. He came with us. He told us to wait here, and went in just to make a settlement with you about the dinner.”

She said, ”Nobody has come in.”

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But they said, ”We are not leaving like this, because that man goes on bragging about everything, and this is too much. We had to close the coffee house. He had brought us here. And now this is insulting. We will go inside the house and search for him.” The poor woman could not think what to do, because they were too many, and she could not prevent sixty people.

Mulla Nasruddin was hiding upstairs, looking from a small window at what was happening there.

And when he saw that ”those idiots are coming in the house to search for me, and they are going to find me,” he opened the window and shouted, ”Listen! He may have come with you, but he could have gone from the back door.” He himself is saying it! ”And don’t you feel ashamed? – arguing with a poor woman whose husband has not come home since the morning? You should feel ashamed!

”And it is simple logic. He may have entered through the door. You may be right. And who knows whether you are right or wrong? For argument’s sake, you may be right that he entered into the house, but there is a back door; he may have gone back out again. Find him.” Those sixty people looked at each other, ”What kind of man is this? He himself is saying ‘I am not in the house.’”

Descartes perhaps never came to know the Sufi story. He is also doing the same, saying the same thing. He is saying you have to prove that you are in the house. And he is trying to prove ”I think, therefore I am”. ”I am” is secondary; thinking is primary. Thinking is a proof.

But he does not know that the whole East has been making the effort not to think. And thousands of people have succeeded in coming to the state where thinking disappears. And their experience is that when thinking disappears, only then you are. Before that it was illusory: You had not really tasted your existence; you had seen yourself as if in a mirror, a reflection.

If you ask me, I will say: ”I am, because there is no thinking. I am, only when there is no thinking.” Thinking is a barrier, not a proof.

But the Western philosophy is a process of thinking, and the Eastern way is a process of getting free of thinking. They have moved in diametrically opposite directions.

The West has produced great thinkers, but not a single Buddha.

And thinkers who are great – Immanuel Kant, Hegel, or Descartes – if you look at their lives, you will find them just like you – no peace, no silence, no compassion, no sensitivity, no awareness. Nothing of the essential has happened to them. They are great thinkers, but they are not great beings.

In the East they have been trying to get rid of thinking, so that the being can have all the scope, the whole space.

Gautam Buddha may not be a great thinker, but he is a great being.

And who cares about thinking? It is like thinking about food – you are a great thinker about food –

but you are sitting hungry. And somebody has eaten delicious food and does not think at all about food. Why should he think about it? The essential thing is not thinking about food, but eating food.

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These great philosophers have been thinking about love, but they have not loved; they have been thinking about peace, but they are as angry as anybody else, as violent as anybody else; they have been thinking about silence, but they don’t know any taste of it... they have had many thoughts about it.

So one thing has to be remembered: Thinking about something is one thing; and to be that which you have been thinking about, is quite another. And that is the real thing: to be.

So I would like you to remember – forget Descartes – never to make your existence secondary to any logical argument. It is self evident. It needs no proof, for or against. And it reveals itself totally when there are no thoughts, no emotions, no feelings – when the whole inner sky is absolutely empty of all the junk and furniture that you call thinking.

In that silence, in that serenity, you become a shrine, you become holy.

For the first time you know your godliness.

Question 4

BELOVED OSHO,

OF ALL THE WONDERFUL, EXCITING, AND BEAUTIFUL EXPERIENCES YOU HAVE HAD IN

YOUR LIFE, THERE IS ONE EXPERIENCE – THE MOST GLORIOUS OF ALL – YOU HAVEN’T

HAD, AND THAT IS KNOWING WHAT IT’S LIKE SITTING IN YOUR PRESENCE, WATCHING YOU

WALK IN THE ROOM, MELTING FROM YOUR LOOK, RECEIVING YOUR GRACE, COMING TO

LIFE HEARING YOUR WORDS, DROWNING IN YOUR SILENCE.

BELOVED MASTER, WE ARE THE BLESSED ONES.

PLEASE UNDERSTAND, I REMAIN HELPLESS IN NEVER HAVING ENOUGH OF YOU, SINCE I KNOW FROM MY OWN AUTHORITY YOU ARE EVERYTHING.

I LOVE YOU.

Kaveesha, that’s certainly true. I have missed what you have got without any effort. Those who understand will feel they are blessed. Most will take it for granted; they are unfortunate.

It is part of human nature that whatever you get without any effort on your part, you tend to forget all about it. You don’t feel any gratitude for it. This is one of the great miseries of the human mind.

But you are awakening out of this misery and are feeling the blissfulness that only a disciple can feel. I have never been a disciple. That experience certainly I have missed.

You have it, but remember that it will be more penetrating if you don’t take it for granted, if you continuously keep reminding yourself that out of the five billion people in the world, suddenly you have come close to a master – just stumbled upon, accidentally.

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If you feel grateful to existence for it, it will make the experience deeper, more valuable, immensely transforming. There is no need to do anything – if you can be in tune with the master, that is enough to be enlightened – just merging in his presence, just melting in his silence, just dropping the duality between you and him, just feeling oneness. And that feeling will take you to new dimensions of life.

It will help you to transcend the small mind and will open up the whole sky with all the stars for you to explore.

Question 5

BELOVED OSHO,

YOUR STORY ABOUT BUDDHA AND THE FLY HAS ALWAYS INTRIGUED ME.

DO YOU HAVE THE CHOICE STILL TO BE AWARE OR NOT?

No, I don’t have any choice any more. I am in a choiceless awareness. I don’t have to be aware. I am simply aware. Now it is just like my heartbeat or like my breathing. Even if I try not to be aware, it is not possible; the very effort will make me more aware.

Awareness is not a quality, a characteristic; it is your whole being. When you become aware, there is no choice left to be otherwise.

Question 6

BELOVED OSHO,

YOU MENTIONED A FEW DAYS AGO THAT THE VARIOUS EXPERIENCES WE HAVE

RECOUNTED TO YOU ABOUT OUR CHILDHOOD ARE ACTUALLY TECHNIQUES THAT HAVE

BEEN USED FOR CENTURIES TO LEARN A DISTANCE FROM THE BODY.

WERE THESE DEVELOPED AS TECHNIQUES BECAUSE THEY WERE EXPERIENCES THAT

CAME NATURALLY TO MAN IN HIS INNOCENCE AND AVAILABILITY AS A CHILD? OR HAVE

WE RETAINED MEMORIES OF THESE TECHNIQUES FROM PAST LIVES?

These techniques – and not only these, but all the techniques that have been developed – are based in human experiences.

Many of the techniques are based in the innocent child and his experiences. You have to regain that innocence to make the experience possible.

It is through centuries that people with keen insight into human affairs have been watching themselves and others, and finding methods. But all methods are based on certain experiences that naturally happen. But nobody takes care of them; on the contrary, the society tries to repress those experiences, because those experiences will certainly make the individual rebellious.

For example, Jalaluddin Rumi became enlightened with a very strange method that he had remembered from his own childhood, whirling.

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All children like whirling because ordinarily your being and your body are fixed, settled. But when you start whirling and you go faster and faster, the body goes on whirling and at a certain speed your consciousness can’t keep pace with it. So your consciousness becomes a center of the cyclone: the body moves and the consciousness remains unmoving.

All over the world small children do that, but parents are afraid they will fall, they may break a bone, get a fracture, they may have sickness, nausea. So they are stopped because their parents don’t have any idea, they never inquire of the child, ”Why you are whirling and what you are getting?” Jalaluddin, from his very childhood, retained the capacity for whirling and enjoyed it immensely. And because people were preventing him, he would go into seclusion in the desert and whirl there. And the desert is the best place to whirl because even if you fall you don’t get hurt; you can go with as much speed as you want.

He was not aware that he is experiencing something spiritual, but he was seeing changes happening. He was becoming a different person. He was not easily irritated, annoyed, humiliated, insulted. His intelligence was becoming sharper.

And he was not behaving like other children, he was becoming a separate individual. He was not interested in their games. While they were playing, he was whirling somewhere far away in the desert. It was so blissful and so peaceful, but he was not aware that this is spiritual or that this is something to do with enlightenment. There is no way he will be able to describe it as spirituality.

When he became a young man, many masters were interested in him – seeing his qualities. He was a rare individual. He was just on the verge of enlightenment, and he was not aware of it – he was not even a seeker after truth. Just one thing he was doing and that was whirling. That he continued.

And one time he decided to whirl to the uttermost to see what happens. These beautiful experiences are happening – what happens if he goes on whirling as long as possible? He whirled for thirty-six hours non-stop, day and night. And when he fell, after thirty-six hours, he was a totally different man, radiating a new light.

He made a tradition, which has remained for twelve hundred years, of the whirling dervishes. They have only one technique – they don’t have anything else. They don’t have any scripture, they have Rumi’s poems – he was a poet of a great caliber. They have Rumi’s poems and one technique, whirling. And just with one technique, many people in these twelve hundred years have reached to the ultimate. And it was found by Rumi – who was not even seeking anything.

All the techniques of the world – I have looked into every technique possible, to see how it must have come. Because they are not inventions, they are based on some human experience which was already happening. It just had to be made more acute, more sharp, more methodological, more clean and more clear, so that the person is not doing it on any biological basis or physiological basis for some small gain, but was searching for the ultimate truth through it.

All methods have happened that way.

I have not come across a single method which is not based in human experience. It seems that nature provides you already with everything to transcend the ordinary mind and to reach to the superconscious. But unfortunately we don’t use it, we don’t even understand it.

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But there have been people who have collected all the possibilities, made them clean, short, simple so everybody can use them.

It will be really a great job. If I have time I would like to go into explaining every technique used throughout the world, from which human experience it has arisen.

But one thing is certain, that there are no techniques for spiritual growth which can be artificially enforced on a man. Nature has already provided – you can purify it, make it better, make it more refined. But there is no way to make an artificial method work.

With nature, no artificiality is going to help.

And when nature itself is ready to help you, it is simply stupid to go for artificial methods.

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CHAPTER 28

Unless your feet are holy...

9 June 1986 am in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

IT SEEMS SO IMPOSSIBLE: SO MANY COUNTRIES HAVE SAID ”NO” TO YOU IN THE WEST.

BUT EVEN IF THE SO-CALLED DEMOCRACIES ACCEPTED YOU, WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT

RUSSIA AND THE OTHER COMMUNIST NATIONS? UNLESS THERE IS A GREAT AWAKENING

THERE, IT LOOKS LIKE THE WORLD IS DOOMED.

It is true that so many so-called democratic countries are not courageous enough even to give me a tourist visa. It is a great compliment. They have never given such a compliment to any other man in the whole of history.

Their religion is twenty centuries old, so is their morality, so is their tradition; and they are afraid of a man who has no power, and who is coming just like a tourist – only for three weeks. Their paranoia is apparent.

It seems they have made castles in the air. Even my presence will be enough to destroy those castles; otherwise, it is impossible – a tourist for three weeks cannot destroy a tradition which has been there for two thousand years, a morality they have been conditioning the people in for two thousand years. They have accepted defeat, and they have also shown that they are not democratic.

They don’t value freedom of speech, respect for the individual. They don’t have any value that can be called ”democratic.” They have simply shown their cowardice.

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But I am never pessimistic. One country or other is going to dare to show courage in spite of all the pressures, and once one democratic country allows me in – I am not much worried about the Soviet Union and other communist countries, for the simple reason that if I can raise the level of consciousness of any single, non-communist country, the Soviet Union is going to invite me and my people.

It is sheer competition. It is not only a question of them having more nuclear weapons, it is also a question of them having a more solid, integrated individual. If any democratic country dares to let me work on its people, that will be enough to show to the Soviet countries that if these people are ready to drop two-thousand-year-old superstitions, it is not difficult for the Soviet Union. Its superstitions are not even two centuries old.

If they can see it as a fact – today what they see in democratic countries is only fiction... talking about God, talking about the soul, but there is no evidence.

I can produce as proof people so significantly different from ordinary people that the Soviet Union cannot lag behind; otherwise, even with all the nuclear weapons it will be defeated.

The question is to make religion a fact.

I started criticizing the BIBLE on many points; and now Christian theologians are having a conference in Europe – late, but it is better than never. Still cunning, still not mentioning my name, that I was the man who criticized all those things in the BIBLE – now they themselves are discussing how to save the holiness of the BIBLE and how to interpret the ugly facts that are there. At least they have come to the recognition that there are ugly facts. So either they have to be dropped or interpreted in such a way that the common masses can be befooled a little more.

They are ready even to drop God if Christianity can be saved. They are ready to drop the idea of Jesus’ virgin birth if that can save Christianity. They are ready to drop the idea of Jesus’ resurrection if Christianity can be saved. And for two thousand years they have been insisting that without God, without the virgin birth, without resurrection, there is no Christianity; these are the distinct characteristics of Christianity.

They will be happy simply to keep the name, even if everything is dropped. Nobody is concerned with God or the virgin birth or resurrection. You can interpret it in a way that it looks like parables...

but up to now, for two thousand years consistently, these same people and their forefathers have been insisting that these are historical facts.

If a two-thousand-year-old tradition can do that, it is not difficult, not impossible at all, for communism to drop just two things: the materialist attitude, and the by-product of it, that there is no soul in man.

But somebody needs to prove it. If thousands of people meditate and spiritually become totally transformed, new human beings, the Soviet Union is not going to be the last....

I am trying the democratic countries, but I have not forgotten the Soviet Union or the other communist countries. They will follow suit once they see that meditation can transform human beings and can give them new values, new awareness, new freshness. I will not knock on the doors of the Soviet Union. They will invite me and you to come to their land and change their inner being.

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And their tradition is just a hundred years old, not much of a tradition. And there is no problem in dropping it, in dropping two things – the idea that matter is all, and the idea that there is nothing spiritual in existence. They are in a much more simple situation than the Christians or the Hindus or the Mohammedans – they have a thousand and one things to drop. They have accumulated for centuries superstitions upon superstitions. The Soviet Union has only two superstitions.

All that is needed is a country which is ready and courageous enough to allow me to experiment on a greater scale, so that I can show to the whole world that spirituality is not a fiction, that enlightenment is not an illusion.

The evidence has to be proved in the individuality of human beings. Once it is proved, the Soviet Union is going to be the first to invite us – because it is a competition. They cannot lag behind any other country. It may be nuclear weapons or enlightenment, it does not matter; the question is of competition. In their mind the whole thing is competitive. And to me, that is a great hope. There is no need to be worried.

We cannot approach them directly.

They will be absolutely antagonistic, because their whole philosophical standpoint is against me.

In countries whose whole philosophy is not against me... in fact, I can make philosophy more substantial, more alive, not just a dead past but a living present. If they are afraid, naturally the Soviet Union cannot open its doors to me. So I have kept the Soviet Union on the side.

Once a country allows me to work, allows my people to come and transform the whole atmosphere

– to bring peace and silence and tranquillity, love and compassion – the Soviet Union is not going to be so stupid as not to see it. And their conditioning is a very thin layer, it can be dropped.

So there is no need to be worried about the Soviet Union.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

YOU SPOKE THE OTHER MORNING ABOUT HOW MUCH IMPORTANCE WE MAY ATTACH TO

WHERE WE SIT IN RELATION TO YOU DURING DISCOURSE.

WE SEEM TO DO THIS KIND OF THING, WHATEVER THE CIRCUMSTANCES OR THE GROUP

OF PEOPLE WE HAPPEN TO FIND OURSELVES WITH. THE COMPULSION TO JUDGE ALSO

SEEMS SYMPTOMATIC OF A NEED TO CATEGORIZE PEOPLE, TO COMPARE OURSELVES, AND THUS COME TO SOME DEFINITION OF WHO WE ARE.

WOULD YOU TALK ABOUT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THIS AVID AND NON-ENDING

STRUGGLE TO HAVE SOME KIND OF IDENTITY – HOWSOEVER SUPERFICIAL AND

TRANSITORY – AND THE SEARCH THAT BECOMES SPIRITUAL, THE QUEST TO KNOW ”WHO

AM I?”

It is something very ancient in man. It must be a heritage from his animal ancestors. A position gives power, gives identity. In sitting in front it seems to you that you are more important; those who are sitting at the back are less important.

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But at least with me you have to drop this animal heritage. Be a human being. Rather than depending on the place, turn the wheel completely: wherever you sit, that place is important. Why make the place important, and yourself unimportant and dependent on the place? Have some self-respect – and self-respect has nothing to do with sitting in the front row. It has something to do with your inner understanding, that wherever you are, you are yourself, and you accept yourself. The place where you sit becomes more important just because you are sitting there.

There is a story about Nanak, a great mystic, who founded the religion of Sikhism. He traveled far and wide. And he was more generous in his attitude; he allowed anyone who wanted, to be in his world. Even Mohammedans entered it, Hindus entered it; all kinds of people from different religions became part of it. The man had tremendous charisma.

He went to the holy place of Mohammedans, the Kaaba. It is said that every Mohammedan at least once in his life should go to visit the Kaaba; otherwise he has missed something tremendously important. And even poor Mohammedans go on collecting money – they will starve, but they will collect money. They will sell their houses, their lands, and will go on a pilgrimage to the Kaaba. And they are given tremendous respect for it, those who go to the Kaaba.

The pilgrimage is called hajj, going to the source.

It was at the Kaaba that Mohammed first

proclaimed the basic elements of his religion. And the person who goes and comes back is given the title hajji, which is just like ‘holy’.

There was no need for Nanak to go to the Kaaba – he was not a Mohammedan. But he never considered himself as Hindu or confined to any religion. Millions of people go to the Kaaba, and Nanak thought it would be a good place to go, to see and meet millions of people.

He went to the Kaaba. It was a long journey, and when they reached, it was getting dark, the sun had set, and they were so tired that he told his companion, Mardana.... That was a beautiful combination.

The disciple, Mardana, was a great musician, a genius, and Nanak would sing – his teachings are all songs – and Mardana would play on his instruments. And the company of two had become famous.

Mardana was Mohammedan. The master was Hindu, the disciple was Mohammedan, but there was such a meeting between the two, that nobody was a Hindu and nobody was a Mohammedan.

Nanak told Mardana, ”First we should rest tonight. Tomorrow we will start moving amongst the people.”

And as he was going to sleep, Mardana said, ”Master, you are doing something wrong. You are lying with your feet towards the Kaaba. That is never done.” Nanak said, ”But do you think Nanak comes every day to the Kaaba? That too is never done, will never be done again. So don’t be worried, just follow what I am doing.” Poor Mardana, he was a Mohammedan, he knew that this was absolutely wrong, but if the master was doing it.... He also slept putting his feet towards the Kaaba, just outside the Kaaba temple.

Somebody saw them, informed the high priest, and the high priest came with guards. They woke up Nanak and Mardana and told Nanak, ”We had heard that you are a holy man. What kind of holy The Transmission of the Lamp

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man are you? You don’t understand a simple thing – that the Kaaba is the holiest place in the world

– and you are lying with your feet towards the Kaaba.” Nanak said, ”I was told by Mardana – he is my disciple – that it is the holiest place. But my difficulty is, wherever I put my feet I find the place holiest. It is not the place, it is my feet which makes every place so holy. And if you are skeptical, you can try; you can turn my feet wherever you want.” Up to this point I see that this is history; beyond this it is a metaphor – but significant, meaningful, completing what history cannot complete. The priest turned Nanak’s feet in every direction, and they were amazed that the Kaaba turned to exactly where Nanak’s feet were turned. They went all round turning him, and Mardana could not believe it. Nanak was laughing and saying, ”Do your best, don’t leave out any place – because this is my problem: where should I keep my feet? Every place is holy, the whole existence is divine.”

The priest touched the feet of Nanak and said, ”Please forgive me. People have come here, but none was like you. We have never seen the Kaaba moving wherever someone’s feet are moved.

Why did you come here?”

Nanak said, ”Just to show you that it is not the Kaaba that is holy. Unless your feet are holy, nothing is holy. Worshipping a stone you think you are worshipping something holy.” Wherever you are sitting, wherever you are, your being there should make the place important, not vice versa – not that you start thinking, ”Which place is important?” Do you see my point? You are putting places above you. This is self-condemnation. You are not respectful towards yourself.

And this is happening all over the world. Somebody becomes the president of a country, and thinks he has arrived. To be the president or the prime minister is just to reach to a certain place – you have not grown. Your growth would show that wherever you are, you have created the center.

Become more appreciative of yourself, accept yourself.

And at least with me you have to learn it absolutely – that nothing else matters. What matters is your self-respect. Why should you bother who is sitting in front? I don’t see any difference. Those who are sitting at the back, I am available to them as much as to those who are sitting in front. My presence is filling the whole room. I am giving myself equally to you all. Now it is up to you whether you receive me or not. If you get interested in trivia – where you are sitting, whether you are in the first row or in the second row or in the third row – then it is you who are closing yourself.

Just open yourself and rejoice that you are here with me.

The trivia should never be a concern. The significant part is that you are receptive to me. Give it a try. And the more receptive you are... you will be surprised that your body may be sitting at the back, you are in the front. Somebody’s body may be sitting in the front, and he is in the back. It will all depend on who is more receptive.

And always think that the problem is yours. Don’t dump it on anybody else – that because of somebody else you have to sit in the second row.

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If you can’t even forget where you are sitting, how are you going to welcome me within you?

Just be receptive, be available.

And I am equally available to all.

It does not matter at all where you are sitting.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

IN A RECENT ARTICLE BY STEPHEN JAY GOULD, HE SAID, ”CERTAINTY IS UNATTAINABLE

IN SCIENCE.”

OSHO, IS MODERN MAN AT LAST SHOWING SIGNS OF COMING OF AGE?

That Stephen Jay Gould is saying it is certainly a sign of maturity, and a few people are coming of age, but very few. But that is a good beginning. More will be following. Twenty-five centuries ago, the Indian mystic, Mahavira, said, ”Nothing is certain. There is no such thing as certainty.” Because of this – he used a strange language – people were puzzled, because before every sentence and every statement he will put a word syat. Syat means ‘perhaps’, it is to avoid certainty; otherwise your minds are too willing to make things certain.

If you asked him anything he would simply say, ”perhaps.” He would leave you in uncertainty because perhaps does not mean yes and does not mean no. Perhaps exactly means po. The word ‘po’ is the invention of a modern, contemporary logician.

Looking at scientific researches, which are tending more and more towards perhaps... because what is certain this moment becomes uncertain the next moment, because life is a flux, a change.

Except change, everything changes. You cannot be certain of anything. The cowards will be very afraid because they were clinging to things, thinking they are clinging to certain absolutes, ultimates.

This logician has invented a word – because there is no word between yes and no. Both give certainty; one gives positive certainty, another gives negative certainty. He has invented a word ‘po’.

Just the sound of ‘po’ takes away all certainty. You start wondering, ”What do you mean – yes or no?” and he says, ”po” – neither yes nor no, or both yes and no together.

Life is continuously moving, changing. It is a dialectic between yes and no, positive and negative, day and night, life and death.

Mahavira, twenty-five centuries ago, had already used the word ‘syat’. If you asked him if there was a God, he would say, ”Perhaps.” But is that an answer? Either God is or is not – that is our mind, how we have been trained. If you ask somebody, ”Are you there, in the room?” and he says, ”perhaps,” what you are going to make out of it?

Mahavira saying ”perhaps” is closer to reality – because the man’s body may be in the room, he may not be, his mind may be millions of miles away. How can he say yes? What about the mind?

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How can he say no? What about the body? He says ”perhaps”; he leaves it up to you – that it is something that cannot be confined to positive or negative terms. Both have to be used together.

In the beginning of this century scientists were very certain – in fact, that was one of the definitions of science; philosophy is all wishy-washy, religion is simply fiction, science is certainty. Two plus two is always equal to four. But this was in the beginning of this century, and in the previous century science had been very fanatic about certainty because it was only superficial, the work had not gone deep. Now it has gone deep, so deep that to understand it you will have to sharpen your intelligence.

Bertrand Russell has written one of the most important books on mathematics, PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA, and you can understand how complex the thing is. Two hundred and sixty-five pages are simply devoted to proving that two plus two are really four. Two hundred and sixty-five pages of a big book – which nobody reads, which is almost unreadable; it is only for mathematicians.

Even Bertrand Russell alone could not write it, because he was not a mathematician – he was a philosopher, and he has philosophic ideas about mathematics – so he had to work in collaboration with one mathematician, Whitehead, who was also a philosopher, and could understand both philosophy and mathematics.

Both worked together for years to write PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA – which nobody reads. Two geniuses wasted years. And you can see the wastage: ”two plus two is equal to four,” needs two hundred and sixty-five pages of intense logical argumentation. But the book was written at the beginning of this century. Now it is no longer relevant.

They did hard work. You simply know that two plus two are four; they did hard work from all aspects to prove it. But now the new mathematicians say that two plus two are not four; sometimes they can be five and sometimes they can be three – it all depends.

Their reasoning is very deep but very clear. Their reasoning is that two plus two making the figure four has remained traditionally an absolutely certain truth, because you have forgotten one thing –

that these figures don’t exist, they are imaginary. Two chairs plus two other chairs, that is reality; but two plus two...? Because you have never met any mathematical figure... Mister One going to the market? The whole of mathematics is imaginary.

New mathematics tries to bring it to reality, and then there is a problem. In reality two things are not exactly the same. What to say about four things being exactly the same? For example, two women plus another two women, you cannot make them four – because all four are unique. To combine those four unique persons is to take it for granted that each is given one number – which is not right.

In reality it all depends; sometimes one man may be equal to the whole world – a Socrates, a Gautam Buddha, an Albert Einstein may alone be equal to the whole humanity, or perhaps more –

because the rest of humanity has not contributed anything and this single man has contributed great insights into matter. You cannot count him as one, equal to anyone; you are not right, you are not thinking of the quality.

But then it becomes difficult. So they say for ordinary use in the marketplace, two plus two are still four; but for extraordinary perceptivity, two plus two can be five, can be three, can be anything – it all depends. The old mathematics is gone, the old certainty is gone.

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The Euclidean geometry was certain; that was its beauty. There was no question of uncertainty, the definitions were clear. The shortest distance between two points makes a straight line. But it is all abstract. If you actually want to create a straight line, you cannot.

So there is now neo-Euclidean geometry which says straight lines don’t exist – because you can draw a straight line here on the floor, but this floor is part of a round earth. If you go on stretching your straight line, both ends, sooner or later it will come to a point where it becomes a circle. If a straight line stretched finally becomes a circle, then it was not a straight line, it was an arc, part of a circle; it was just that the part was so small, and the circle was so big, that you fell into the fallacy of certainty.

There are no straight lines. All Euclidean definitions have been proved wrong. In abstraction they are right, but in reality they fail; and modern science is trying to be closer and closer to reality.

And that’s why I say that it is coming very close in many points, and agreeing, without knowing it, with the mystics, because the mystics were also trying to come to the real, not to the imaginary. From a different path they were coming to the real. And when they came to the real, either they became silent – because to say anything is going to be wrong – or they said things like Mahavira did, ”perhaps it is so, perhaps it is not so,” – making at the same time positive and negative statements, which for ordinary use seems to be just confusing.

Mahavira could not influence many people, and the basic reason was that he had come twenty-five centuries ahead of his time.

Einstein would have understood him.

Mahavira was not a

mathematician, but what he was saying was essentially the same – the theory of relativity. It is stupid to say that somebody is tall, unless you also say in comparison to whom, because there is no such thing as tallness; it is only a comparison. Some pygmy has to be compared with him, then he is tall.

There is an ancient proverb: Camels don’t like to go to the mountains. I don’t know what the camels think about it, but it is certain they don’t go to the mountains. They go to the deserts where there are no mountains. But the people who formed the proverb knew better. Camels don’t like to go to the mountains because as they come close to the mountains they feel very inferior, they have an inferiority complex.

Freud discovered it just recently, and camels have known it since the beginning – that it is better not to go to the mountains; there you will get an inferiority complex, and then it is very difficult to get rid of it. It is better to be in the desert where you are the highest, tallest, biggest thing. So why not enjoy a superiority complex? Why unnecessarily go to the mountains?

Everything that we say is relative, and the relativity changes, because as I said to you, life is a flux.

I have told you the story that Mulla Nasruddin had a beautiful bungalow in the mountains, and once in a while he would say – when he was tired of business and other things – ”I am going for three weeks or two weeks or four weeks.” But he was never consistent. He would go for three weeks, and by the fourth day he is back.

His friends said to him, ”If you were going to come back after four days, why were you telling unnecessary lies? We were not objecting, saying that you cannot come back on the fourth day.

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It is your house – you can come and go wherever you want, and you can stay there as long as you want. But why do you always say...? We have never found you sticking to the date that you have given.”

Mulla Nasruddin said, ”You don’t know the reality. I have kept one of the ugliest women as a housekeeper, to look after the house, to clean the house and keep it ready for whenever I go.” Those fellows said, ”But that has nothing to do with your four weeks, three weeks....” He said, ”Just listen. When I go, I see her, and feel she is disgusting. And I have made it a point that the day she starts looking beautiful to me, I escape. I say, ‘Now it is time.’ So it all depends. I don’t know exactly how long it will take for her to appear beautiful to me. Missing women, sometimes it takes four days, sometimes seven days; it is unreliable. But one thing is certain – I have made it clear – the moment I start thinking of the woman as beautiful I say to myself, ‘Mulla, this is the time.

Escape! This is the same woman!’

”And I pack up my things and rush away, because if I stay a little longer I may never come back.

And the woman is so disgusting! But in three or four days’ time, one gets accustomed to her, and the need for a woman, for a companion, for a friend – there is nobody, only that woman – it changes your perception.”

So the same man can say that the woman is disgusting one day, and after a week he can say she is the most beautiful woman. This is ”po”.

It is better not to say yes, not to say no; to keep the judgment suspended, uncertain.

Science is certainly coming of age. Man is lingering, and one hopes that he will also come of age.

The moment man comes of age, all religions will disappear; they are childish. All political leaders will look like buffoons – that’s what they are. Cunning, hypocritical, destructive, murderous criminals

– that is what they are. If man comes of age the whole vision of life is going to change. Science certainly is coming of age. But one of the unfortunate things is, the vast majority of humanity is not aware of the latest insights of science or the oldest insights of the mystics.

My effort, my whole life, I have devoted to bringing the mystics’ vision close to the scientific approach.

I want that one day when science has become really fully mature, the distinction between mysticism and science will disappear. They will speak in the same language.

Mysticism will speak of the inner reality of man, science will speak of the outer reality; but the language will be the same. And the understanding between the two will be immense. There will be no conflict – there cannot be.

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9 June 1986 pm in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

A SOCIOLOGIST HAS A THEORY THAT WESTERN CIVILIZATION IS TAKING OVER THE

WHOLE WORLD. ALREADY THE WAY OF LIFE IN ALL THE BIG CITIES OF THE WORLD IS

THE SAME, AND WHEREVER THERE IS PROGRESS, IT IS ACCORDING TO THE WAYS OF

WESTERN CIVILIZATION.

IT WAS SAID THAT ONE OF THE BY-PRODUCTS OF STANDARDIZATION WOULD BE THAT

COMMUNISM AND CAPITALISM WOULD BECOME SO SIMILAR THAT THEY WOULD MERGE

INTO A WORLD GOVERNMENT, SO POWERFUL THAT NO MINORITY COULD EXIST.

IS THAT GOING TO HAPPEN, OR IS THERE A WAY TO AVOID IT?

It is true that Western civilization and culture are taking over the world. In almost all the advanced countries, the way of life is according to Western standards. Up to this point the sociologist is right, but to conclude from this that communism and capitalism will become so similar that one day they will merge into a world government – there he is simply guessing. It is not going to be so.

Communism has a philosophy, while capitalism has no philosophy. Communism is uncompromising, particularly on the fact of materialism; the Western society, although materialistic, is ideologically spiritualistic. It believes in God, it believes in the soul, it believes in eternal life. So on philosophical grounds there is no possibility of any merger.

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The communist countries are full of hate against those who have; they still belong to the world of the have-nots. So, economically it is not possible that they can meet.

Politically, communist countries are dictatorial: they believe in the dictatorship of the proletariat. They don’t have any respect for democracy; to them, democracy is a cunning device to exploit people, to keep the poor, poor, to make the rich more rich. In the name of freedom, it is nothing but exploitation.

And there is some truth in it. So politically, the gap is vast, and meeting is impossible.

What is more possible is a world war, rather than a world merger and a world government. And man has proved so stupid in the past, without exception, that the possibility of creating a world government still remains utopian. Only people like me think about it. When a communist thinks of a world government, he thinks in terms of a communist world government. When Ronald Reagan thinks of a world government, he thinks in terms of a capitalist world government.

In the vision of communists, capitalism has to be destroyed; only then can man evolve. And in the mind of the capitalist, communism is a cancer. The meeting of the two is impossible. There are no signs indicating a meeting of communist and capitalist governments making one world government

– which would really be, if possible, immensely powerful.

But powerful against whom?

Power is meaningful only against someone.

Power in itself is

meaningless.

Communists would like to be more powerful than America – which is the spearhead of capitalist imperialism. America would like to be more powerful than Russia. Power is a relative phenomenon.

But if they both meet, certainly two great powers would make the greatest power the world has ever known. But against whom?

That sociologist is not aware of the dynamics of the human mind. What he is saying is possible only if we are invaded by another planet; then communist Russia and capitalist America would fight together as one. We have seen it happen: against Adolf Hitler, communist Russia and capitalist America and imperialist Britain all came together. They forgot all distinctions, all conflicts; they became friends because now they had a common enemy.

Unless somewhere – on some planet – a common enemy can be found, what the sociologist is saying is not going to happen. It is mere guesswork.

The reality is that both powers are getting more and more ready to come to a confrontation. Both are waiting for the right moment so the responsibility is thrown onto the other, because it will be a great responsibility – risking all life on the earth. Both are trying to protect themselves from nuclear weapons before the war begins, and both are trying simultaneously to find something more dangerous than nuclear weapons; for example, death rays.

No weapon is involved – it is just like an X ray. Rays just come and pass through a person, and the person is dead; you will not find even the cause of it, why he died. There will be no possibility of finding out.

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to drop bombs on you, just release a certain disease which is a sure killer, and which goes on spreading.

As far as I can see, both are stubborn, adamant. If there is some possibility for humanity, it is going to come from the communists, not from the capitalists; it is going to come from the Soviet Union, not from America. My reasoning is that America is a decadent society which is dying of its own accord.

There are poor people who are dying of hunger and starvation; and there are super-rich people who are dying because they don’t have any meaning in life, they don’t see any point in it. ”Why go on living? Why get up again tomorrow? What is the meaning of moving in the same circle?” America has come to a point where the super-rich – which is the powerful class that rules over the continent – has lost excitement, has lost the meaning, the significance, the very reason for existing.

And when these things disappear, there is a suicidal wave that gets hold of the people. America is in the grip of a suicidal wave.

For America, it is very difficult to have any hope, because they are living in a hopeless condition.

And when somebody is dying, what does it matter if everybody else dies too? In fact, why should he bother? After him, if there is no life in the world it is not his problem.

The Soviet Union is in a different situation. First, the country is still poor. It has not tasted the bitter fruits of richness. It is still excited about getting small things; even to have one’s own car is such an excitement in Soviet Russia, because not everybody has his own car – only very few people, very significant people. Everybody else has to move by public transport.

In Soviet Russia there is a great desire for freedom because they are living in a concentration camp.

There is a great desire for freedom of speech because there is no freedom of speech at all; all newsmedia is controlled by the government, all publications are controlled by the government. You cannot publish a book on your own unless it is approved by the communist party. No news can be published unless it is released through the proper channel – even news like the death of Joseph Stalin. They declared it three days afterwards. For three days they kept it a secret; the world believed that he was living. The communist party was first choosing who was going to be in his place, and only then were they going to declare his death. Even death cannot be declared. There is no freedom of anything, so there is great joy in small things and there is great longing for freedom, for individuality.

There is no question of suicide; nobody commits suicide in Soviet Russia. There is nothing like psychoanalysis in Soviet Russia because nobody goes as crazy as they do in California. They cannot afford it, they are poor. These are luxuries: psychoanalysis, all kinds of therapies, primal therapy – and new schools go on producing new theories about how to bring man to his normal state.

Soviet Russia may step back from jumping into a third world war – its people are not suicidal. And the capitalist countries are worried. Their worry is that the more they wait, the more countries will go on becoming communist. If they had gone to war immediately after the revolution in Russia, they would have crushed the Soviet Union without any difficulty; but they waited, and the more they have waited, the more countries have joined the communist camp. Those who have joined are halfway, they have become socialists. Socialism is simply a softer way of being a communist, more The Transmission of the Lamp

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polite, more gentlemanly, less shocking; but it is no longer capitalist. Its whole creed is the same as communism, with a simple demarcation – it calls itself democratic.

But I have seen all these democracies – you have seen them with me; none of them are democracies. So it is just a beautiful name.

And the fear of the capitalist countries is that their number goes on lessening; more and more people are turning towards communism. So if they want to have a war, the quicker the better; otherwise, if they wait to the end of this century, only the U.S. will remain alone to fight the world. And then it will be pointless to fight, then their defeat will be certain.

And you can see it every day: the Soviet Union is behaving more humanly, and America is behaving in a more inhuman way.

The Soviet Union has tried for years to come to an agreement on a treaty for the cessation of creating more nuclear weapons. But it was impossible – America would not agree. Finally, the Soviet Union for ten months has not created any nuclear weapons; on its own, alone, without any treaty, it has stopped producing nuclear weapons. This is a tremendously courageous step.

And now America wants to get out of a treaty it has with Russia and the European countries not to produce weapons beyond a certain limit.

America wants to pull out of that treaty, and is saying that it is because Russia is cheating, they are producing more weapons. And Russia is saying, ”We are available for any inspection from scientists, from U.N. experts. We have not produced anything more than is allowed by the treaty.” The whole of Europe is in an uproar against America for the first time because they can see that this is simply an excuse, you cannot prove it. But America wants to pull out so it can produce more weapons without any limit.

One can see that Ronald Reagan and his company can lie so much because when the nuclear disaster happened in Russia, and only two people died, American propaganda put it out all over the world that two thousand people had died. And Russia was absolutely right – only two people died –

because later on, experts from outside Russia confirmed that only two people had died at the time of the accident.

Several people died later on, after a few days; in all, less than twenty persons have died, but as far as the accident is concerned only two people had died. Can two people be made into two thousand?

One cannot believe that you can lie so much about something which you cannot prove.

Since then America has been silent. It has not said anything about those two thousand. If they had any evidence they could have come out and proved it, but their own experts have been there and checked that only two people died. And there is a great difference between two and two thousand –

one thousand times more.

But why is this happening? This is happening for the simple reason that America, deep inside, feels afraid that if there is no war, America is going to lose. If there is war at least America will not lose –

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the whole of life will be destroyed. If there is choice – either to be a loser without a war or to destroy the whole of humanity – America is ready to destroy the whole of humanity.

These are the signs of a decadent society, a society which has come to a suicidal point – a society which itself does not have any reason to live, and feels, why should anybody else have any reason to live?

Communist countries are poor, have no freedom, are not democratic; but this whole thing has made them love life more. They are not suicidal, they are not psychologically sick.

If the people of America can see that they are in the hands of mad people, if they can change their government, take it over from the mad people and give it to more intelligent people of whom there are so many in America.... But the trouble is, the intelligent people don’t feel like getting into dirty politics. It is a strange phenomenon that only mediocre people go into politics – the intelligent people remain far away – and these mediocre people have to decide the destiny of the whole world.

It is time that American people should take over all the powers from the mediocre people. These powers should be given to those who have real merit – and there are enough people who have merit.

The whole nation just has to wake up and think about what these politicians are doing, and create a government of non-political people.

Make it a point that politicians are no longer needed, professional politicians are no longer needed.

There are doctors, there are professors, there are surgeons, there are scientists, there are artists, there are poets, there are painters – there are thousands of geniuses. Once a nation decides.... ”We are not going to vote for the politician; it is not a question of this party or that party, it is a question of politicians versus meritorious people who have nothing to do with politics.” If America changes the power from the hands of the politicians to non-politicians, what the sociologist is saying can become possible – a world government, of immense richness. The question of power does not arise, only that of immense richness.

I told you that during three days we waste so much money for war preparations, that it is enough for one year’s food, clothing, shelter – every ordinary need – for the whole of humanity. Just in three days... and these figures are five years old – it may now be just one day. Every day we are wasting so much that the whole earth could live on it for one year comfortably.

If there is only one government, there is no need for war. With whom are you going to fight? Then the whole energy is released for creative purposes. Nobody needs to be poor, nobody needs to be without medicine, nobody needs to be without education. We can make this earth a living paradise.

But the whole thing depends upon the American government. The mad dogs should be thrown out, they should not be in power anymore. They are the only danger in the world.

And American people are capable. Intelligent people just have to spread the message: ”Let us have a non-political government. We will not choose any professional politician of this party or that party. All politicians have to be branded ‘criminal’. We will not choose them, we will choose only non-political people – of some talent, of some genius.” The Transmission of the Lamp

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The whole thing depends on America because America is in a hurry to go into a third world war.

Russia is not in a hurry, because Russia knows that sooner or later all poor countries are going to become communist. It is not a question of communism having to be imposed from the outside

– communism is not to be imported; people are going to become communist by themselves. The world is going to be theirs without any war. So why fight? – just wait. Russia’s whole strategy is to prolong, to give time. And America is afraid of it because there is no way for America; as time goes on, America goes on losing its friends.

So the danger is from the White House in Washington. That is the most dangerous place on the earth today.

I don’t know whose idea it was to make it a white house.

It always reminds me of Mulla Nasruddin....

The road was empty except for a beautiful woman who was going to her home, and Nasruddin was following her. He was old, nearly ninety, and he was trying in every possible way to catch hold of the woman. Finally the woman turned, and she said, ”Feel ashamed! Just look at your hair – it is all white, and you are trying to chase a young girl!” Nasruddin said, ”Believe me, my hairs are white but my heart is not – it is still black, as black as ever. In fact, I don’t know what is happening, it goes on becoming blacker and blacker. As I become older it is becoming blacker! First I used to think of other things also; now I think only of women. So don’t look at my hair, just look at my heart.”

This White House seems to have the blackest heart in the world.

There is still time for the people of America to prevent the catastrophe from happening. If the people of America cannot do anything, then these politicians are going to drag the whole of life on this earth to the graveyard.

Question

BELOVED OSHO,

DO YOU THINK THERE IS ANY POSSIBILITY OF YOUR BEING RECOGNIZED, OR EVEN

ACCEPTED, BY MANKIND DURING YOUR LIFETIME?

YOU HAVE SAID YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS TO YOU AFTER YOU LEAVE

YOUR BODY, BUT FOR THE POOR HISTORIANS WHO WILL BE STRUGGLING WITH THE

IMPOSSIBLE – TO CAPTURE THE PHENOMENON WHICH IS OSHO – CAN YOU SAY

SOMETHING ABOUT THE IMPACT OF YOUR PRESENCE AND YOUR TEACHINGS IN A FUTURE HISTORICAL CONTEXT?

ALSO, HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE REMEMBERED?

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and Krishna. That does not help. So what I would like: forget me completely, and forgive me too –

because it will be difficult to forget me. That’s why I am asking you to forgive me for giving you the trouble.

Remember yourself.

And don’t be bothered about historians and all kinds of neurotic people – they will do their thing. It is none of our concern at all.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

WATCHING THE BREATH IS MY MEDITATION. I FIND IT MIRACULOUS. IS IT A METHOD THAT

NEEDS TO BE DROPPED, AND IF SO, DOES IT DROP ON ITS OWN?

WOULD YOU SPEAK MORE ABOUT VIPASSANA MEDITATION?

Kaveesha, there is nothing more to say about vipassana meditation. The word ‘vipassana’ means watching, particularly watching the breath – as it comes out, as it goes in. You simply continue to watch it, its movement in and out.

And the method has not to be dropped, because when the time comes it disappears of its own accord. When your watchfulness is perfect, the method disappears. All the methods that I have given to you are such that you will not need to drop them. Just use them to perfection, and the moment they are perfect they will drop on their own – just like ripe fruit falling from the tree. And when a method disappears on its own, it has a beauty; then your watchfulness is unscratched.

You are on the right path; just continue till the method disappears of its own accord, and you are left simply a watcher on the hill.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

I UNDERSTAND YOU TO HAVE SAID THAT WITNESSING IS NOT AN EXPERIENCE; IT

IS ALWAYS THAT WHICH STANDS BACK FROM ALL EXPERIENCES, WHETHER THEY

ARE MENTAL OR PHYSICAL. HOWEVER, I NOTICE IN DISCOURSE THAT WHENEVER

WITNESSING IS HAPPENING, A CERTAIN INNER MILIEU WHICH AFFECTS MY BODY AND

PSYCHOLOGICAL SPACE IS CREATED.

IT’S AS THOUGH I STEP INTO A CERTAIN MODE OF BEING WHICH IS QUITE DISTINCT AND

RECOGNIZABLE FROM OTHER WAYS I EXPERIENCE MYSELF AT DIFFERENT TIMES.

CONVERSELY, DURING THE DAY I CAN TRY THE REVERSE PROCESS; I RECALL THAT

MILIEU WITH ITS PHYSICAL AND MENTAL MANIFESTATIONS, AND THAT BRINGS ABOUT THE

SPACE OF WITNESSING.

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CAN YOU PUT ME ON THE RIGHT TRACK IF THIS IS OFF?

No, it is not off – it is perfectly right. Witnessing certainly creates its own milieu, its own space, and soon the witnesser starts recognizing the specific features that are created. And the process can be reversed; you can create those specific characteristics of the milieu – the peace, the space, the silence – and suddenly the witnessing will be there.

They are two poles of one phenomenon; if you get hold of one, the other is already in your hands.

You can catch it from both sides. And it is perfectly good to change once in a while, to catch witnessing from the milieu. Ordinary witnessing, and creating the milieu, are both perfectly right.

But whether it is an authentic phenomenon or not will be determined by whether it is created by the reverse process – you create the milieu and the witnessing happens. That is evidence, a proof, that you are on the right path.

Question 4

BELOVED OSHO,

I SET MY ALARM CLOCK AT NIGHT AND TRUST IT TO WAKE ME UP WHEN THE MORNING

COMES. I SOMETIMES SEE THE MASTER AS AN ALARM CLOCK THAT AT ANY MOMENT MAY

RING LIKE CRAZY AND ROUSE ME FROM MY SPIRITUAL SLUMBER.

OSHO, AM I SIMPLY WAITING FOR YOU TO RING?

Milarepa, I have been ringing and you go on turning from this side to that side, and you go on pulling your blanket over yourself.

What do you want? Should the alarm clock jump up on you and take the blanket off, and also throw some cold water on your face? What else have I been doing? But sleep is such – spiritual sleep –

that you start interpreting even the alarm.

In ordinary sleep you also do it. When the alarm goes off, you have a dream that you are in a temple and bells are ringing. That is a trick of your mind. It is deceiving you; it is the alarm clock, not the temple, not the bells ringing.

Spiritual sleep is far deeper and thicker. First, it is difficult to hear – and even if you hear it, there is every possibility of interpreting it as something else.

Stop interpreting it. Make it a point while you are awake – sometimes you are really awake, when you are with me here – and there are moments when you are touching the fourth stage of awakening.

In those moments make a decision that you will not forget. This decision just has to be reinforced again and again in the waking moments; then one day you are going to wake up.

It is everybody’s birthright to wake up. It is our intrinsic quality. But everything depends on your decisiveness.

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I have seen people putting on an alarm clock to wake them up at four o’clock in the morning, and then, in sleep, just putting it off and going back to sleep. And in the morning they don’t remember.

They look at the clock: ”What happened? I put the alarm on.” And I had to tell them, ”Your alarm awakened me and I saw you – you were putting it off.” I have seen people throwing their alarm clocks – so angry, because at four o’clock one is really in such a beautiful sleep, and this alarm clock seems like an enemy. People have broken their alarm clocks, and I have seen it happen in front of me. And I said, ”This is something!” And they went back to sleep. And in the morning they inquired, ”What happened? Who threw my alarm clock?” And spiritual sleep is certainly far deeper.

So your decisions have to come not with ordinary

wakefulness; you have to decide to wake up when you are really feeling awake. Then the decision goes deep, as deep as your spiritual sleep.

And everybody is going to wake up.

Every night has its morning, and every man has his enlightenment.

It is just a question of when you want it.

Do you really want it?

Then it can happen even without any alarm clock. Then it can happen right now.

It happened in Sri Lanka... a great mystic was at the last moment of his life, and he gathered his followers. He had thousand of followers who had been listening to him for years. And the whole teaching of the Buddhist mystics is vipassana – watchfulness, witnessing.

Before leaving the body, he said, ”Now I am leaving. I will not be here again tomorrow to tell you to watch, to witness, to be awake; so if anybody is ready, he should stand up and I can take him with me.”

Everybody looked at each other, thinking that perhaps somebody might be ready. Just one man raised his hand but he did not stand up. Out of those thousands, one man raised his hand. The mystic said, ”Even that gives me great satisfaction.” That man said, ”Don’t misunderstand me – I am only raising my hand. I want to ask – right now I am not ready because there are so many things to do. My girl is becoming marriageable, my boy is graduating from the university, my wife is sick, some help has to be found. I raised my hand just to ask you, as you will not available again, to tell me what has to be done.” And the mystic said, ”I was telling it my whole life! Where have you been?” He said, ”I have been coming every day, but what to do? – the whole night there are worries, all kinds. Only in your presence do I find peace and fall asleep. So I have not heard what you have been saying. I wait every morning to come here because this is the only place where I find peace and fall asleep. And because tomorrow you will not be here, I want simply to ask what has to be done.”

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But not a single man was ready to go or stood up with the master.

And the master laughed. He said, ”I was just joking! I cannot take anybody with me. But I was seeing whether you have been listening to me or not. And this man is right. And he is not right only about himself, he is right almost about everybody. So I will explain vipassana again.” He said, ”This time, please don’t fall asleep, remain awake because this is the last time. I will not be here tomorrow. Don’t try any kind of consolation – ‘he is just joking, he will be here, he cannot leave us’ – I am certainly going.”

And while he was telling them about vipassana, he looked all around – particularly at the man who had raised his hand. He was fast asleep! It had become deeply associated – the master talking about vipassana was the beginning of sleep; the moment the master started talking about vipassana, the man felt so peaceful....

The mystic said, ”It is useless – you will not hear me unless the time is ripe for you. Perhaps in some life....”

It is not necessary that a master is needed. If you are awake then anything can function as an alarm.

Your symbolism is right: the master is an alarm, but even the alarm of the master cannot function without your cooperation; you have to be with him, available, ready. It is only a question of total determination in a fully awakened state of mind.

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This chair is empty

10 June 1986 am in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

IN THE FACE OF THE HUGE MYSTERY OF LIFE, SINCE THE EARLY AGES HUMANKIND

HAS CONSULTED ORACLES. IT’S VERY FAMOUS THROUGHOUT HISTORY – LIKE THE

ORACLE OF DELPHI. PEOPLE ASKED THE ADVICE OF THE STARS TO KNOW ABOUT HUMAN

DESTINY; WITCHES OR WISE WOMEN USED TO READ DESTINY IN THE TEA LEAVES OR

EVEN IN TORTOISE SHELLS. The Book of Changes AND THE ALEISTER CROWLEY TAROT

DECK ARE OFTEN USED NOWADAYS.

WE USE YOUR TAROT DECK AS A MEDITATION TO HELP US TO MOVE FROM THE HEAD TO

THE HEART IN OUR DAILY LIFE. BUT IT SEEMS THAT ALL ORACLES ARE POINTING NOW TO

THE PRESENT.

JUST THE VERY FACT OF YOUR EXISTENCE IN THIS MOMENT OF THE UNIVERSE HELPS

TO MAKE SIMPLER OUR DESTINY, SHOWING ONLY TWO ALTERNATIVES: DISAPPEARING

OR NOT.

OSHO, WOULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT ON THIS SUBJECT?

There has been a great misunderstanding between life and time. Time is thought to consist of three tenses: past, present, future – which is wrong. Time consists only of past and future.

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It is life which consists of the present.

So those who want to live, for them there is no other way than to live this moment. Only the present is existential. The past is simply a collection of memories, and the future is nothing but your imaginations, your dreams.

Reality is herenow.

Those who want just to think about life, about living, about love, for them past and future are perfectly beautiful, because they give them infinite scope. They can decorate their past, make it as beautiful as they like – although they never lived it, when it was present they were not there. These are just shadows, reflections. They were continuously running, and while running they have seen a few things. They think they have lived. In the past only death is the reality, not life. In the future also, only death is the reality, not life.

Those who have missed living in the past, automatically, to substitute for the gap, start dreaming about the future. Their future is only a projection out of the past. Whatever they have missed in the past, they are hoping for in the future; and between the two non-existences, is the small existent moment which is life.

For those who want to live, not to think about it; to love, not to think about it; to be, not to philosophize about it – there is no other alternative. Drink the present moment’s juices, squeeze it totally, because it is not going to come back again; once gone, it is gone forever.

But because of the misunderstanding which has been almost as old as man – and all the cultures have joined in it – they have made the present part of time. And the present has nothing to do with time.

If you are just here in this moment, there is no time. There is immense silence, stillness, no movement; nothing is passing, everything has come to a sudden stop.

The present gives you the opportunity to dive deep into the water of life, or to fly high into the sky of life. But on both sides there are dangers – past and future are the most dangerous words in human language. Between past and future, living in the present is almost like walking on a tight rope – on both sides there is danger.

But once you have tasted the juice of the present, you don’t care about dangers. Once you are in tune with life, then nothing matters.

And to me life is all there is.

You can call it ”God”, but that is not a good name because religions have contaminated it. You can call it ”existence”, which is beautiful. But what you call it is not of any consequence. The understanding should be clear that you have only one moment in your hands – the real moment.

And again and again you will get that real moment. Either you live it or you leave it unlived.

Most of the people simply drag themselves from the cradle to the grave without living at all.

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I have heard about a Sufi statement that a man, when he died, suddenly realized, ”My God, I was alive.” But only death as a contrast made him aware, that for seventy years he had been alive, but life itself had not enriched him.

It is not the fault of life.

It is our misunderstanding.

My insistence for watchfulness will give you life without even thinking about it, because watchfulness can only be in the present. You can witness only the present.

Live totally and live intensely, so that each moment becomes golden, and your whole life becomes a series of golden moments. Such a person never dies, because he has the Midas touch – whatever he touches becomes golden.

When he touches death, death also becomes golden. He enjoys it as much as life – or perhaps more – because death is more condensed than life. Life is spread over seventy, eighty years. Death happens in a single moment. It is so condensed, that if you have lived your life rightly, you will be able to enter into the mystery of death. And the mystery of death is that it is only a cover.

Inside is your immortality, your eternal life.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

IN ONE OF THE FESTIVAL DARSHANS I WAS SITTING AT YOUR FEET, BOWING DOWN

TO YOU, AND SUDDENLY FOUND THERE WAS NO YOU – THERE WAS ONLY AN EMPTY

CHAIR. AND ALL THE THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE WERE BOWING DOWN TO AN EMPTY CHAIR, SITTING IN SILENCE WITH AN EMPTY CHAIR, SINGING AND CELEBRATING WITH AN EMPTY

CHAIR. I NEARLY BURST OUT LAUGHING, SEEING THE RIDICULOUSNESS OF US NEEDING

YOU AS AN EXCUSE TO BE ABLE TO DO ALL THIS. BUT THEN COMES THE GRATEFULNESS

OF SEEING THE CARING OF EXISTENCE TO LET US HAVE BEAUTIFUL, LOVING EYES TO

LOOK AT, A VOICE TALKING TO US, A BODY WE CAN GIVE A DRESS TO, A CAR TO DRIVE...

TO LET US CARE ABOUT SOMEONE SO TOTALLY, THAT THIS VERY LOVE OPENS US UP TO

BE TRANSFORMED.

BUDDHAM SHARANAM GACHCHHAMI – YOU ARE THE FEET OF THE WHOLE WORLD FOR

ME, WHERE I CAN BOW DOWN IN GRATEFULNESS.

Gayan, that was the real experience of me as non-existent. Once in a while a disciple will come so close that he will be able to see that there is no ”I” within me. It has died long ago. This body is empty, this chair is empty. But it will be only at rare, intimate moments, that you will be able to penetrate to my reality. I am simply a nothingness – of course covered with a body.

Ordinarily you will see the body. To see the nothingness within you need a deep insight. And one never knows in what condition it may happen.

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You were dancing around me joyously, so deeply in the moment. With great love you were sitting in front of me, bowing down, repeating the greatest mantra there has ever been: buddham sharanam gachchhami, ”I go to the feet of the awakened one”. And thousands of people were creating a milieu around you. It was not an ordinary situation: an extraordinary device, so when you opened your eyes suddenly for a moment I was not there.

And your understanding is right, that it is just for your love that I am carrying the body. Howsoever difficult it may be, it is worth it if it can help you to realize your potential. Otherwise my body’s work is long ago finished. It should not be there.

I am trying every effort to hang on to it, because most of you are not yet ready to see me. You see only the body. The day you all will be able to see me, there will be no need for the body to be carried continuously – which is for me just a burden, just a trouble. But I will wait until enough of you are aware of my nothingness.

Remember, the moment you are aware of my nothingness, you are also experiencing nothingness in you. Only two nothingnesses can recognize each other.

Gayan, you saw the chair empty, and the experience was so strange that you forgot to look within yourself. If you had done that, you would have found that the same nothingness is there.

We are not egos. We consist of universal nothingness. And nothingness is not a negative word; it simply means absence of everything, just pure existence. Of course the pure existence cannot have a form. So if you happen to see pure existence, you will see the body disappear, the chair empty.

If it happens again, then in the same moment look within yourself, and you will find your body is also absent – you are not. And to know that one is not is the door to know that one is eternal. This is the ultimate paradox of spiritual experience.

Shakespeare is puzzled by the problem ”to be or not to be,” because he is absolutely unaware that the way to be is not to be. There is no question of choice. It is not that you have to choose one.

If you choose to be, you will have to choose not to be. If you are ready to disappear, evaporate, you will find your authenticity for the first time. It is certainly a paradox. No logic can explain it, but experience can make it absolutely clear.

You had felt ridiculous. You had laughed, because thousands of people are bowing down to an empty chair chanting buddham sharanam gachchhami, and there is nobody.

Your laughter, Gayan, was still half. If you had looked into yourself, your laughter would have been complete. Then you would not have only seen me not there, you would have seen yourself not there, you would have seen those thousands of people disappearing – an empty mandir resounding with the chanting of buddham sharanam gachchhami.

Next time it happens, don’t let it be incomplete. Because if it is complete, then you have come to a clear understanding which will follow you like a shadow in every act throughout your life. It will change your whole being. It will give you a new aroma, a new aura – and not only to you, you will see it in others too; although those others are not aware of it. But you will be aware of it.

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That’s why the Japanese awakened soul Hotei has been called the laughing Buddha. For what is he laughing? – his whole teaching was laughing. Seeing this ridiculousness that people are not what they are thinking they are, and people are what they never dream about.... It is a cosmic joke, but one has to understand it to come to a point when one can become a laughing buddha.

And I want the world filled with laughing buddhas, not the serious ones. We are sick of them.

We need the whole earth filled with laughter, and not ordinary laughter but cosmic laughter – a laughter that arises out of the understanding that it is a beautiful joke existence has played with us.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

THE OTHER NIGHT YOU SPOKE OF THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL – THAT STATE ONE

PASSES THROUGH AS ONE MOVES FROM SUSHUPTI INTO TURIYA.

LOOKING AT IT LOGICALLY, IT SEEMS CURIOUS THAT AS ONE MOVES TOWARDS THE

ULTIMATE STATE OF AWARENESS, ONE IS – JUST BEFORE REALIZATION – OVERCOME

MOMENTARILY BY DARKNESS. I WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THAT ONE WOULD HAVE BEEN

GATHERING MORE AND MORE AWARENESS, THEREBY DISPELLING DARKNESS AS ONE

MOVED THROUGH THE STATE OF DEEP MEDITATION – SO DEEP THAT THERE ARE NO

LONGER DREAMS – TO THE POINT WHERE THE WATCHER IS EVEN ABLE TO WITNESS

SUSHUPTI.

IS IT PERHAPS, ANALOGOUS TO WHAT HAPPENS AS DEATH APPROACHES? YOU HAVE

SPOKEN OF HOW LIFE SUDDENLY ASSERTS ITSELF AT THE POINT OF DEATH – THE

RESURGENCE OF THE BODY’S LIFE-FORCE IN THE FACE OF ITS EXTINCTION. IS THE

DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL THE FINAL EFFORT OF ANY REMAINING VESTIGES OF THE

UNCONSCIOUS TO EXIST BEFORE IT IS TOTALLY ANNIHILATED BY THE LIGHT OF TOTAL

ILLUMINATION – ENLIGHTENMENT?

Yes, it is the last effort of your millions of lives lived in darkness. The darkness has become so much attached to you, just as you have become so much attached to it. It is the last effort. So in sushupti it brings all its forces possible at a single stroke.

So you go deep into sushupti where even dreams cannot enter – but this happens only when the dark forces in your life, the unconscious forces of your life, clearly see that their death is approaching.

And naturally they would not like to die. They have dominated you for so long, and suddenly you are slipping out of their hands. They will make the last effort.

And don’t think about it logically. Logic and life have nothing in parallel. Thinking logically you go away from life. Don’t think at all, because every thinking in some way is logical; just see the fact that this is how it happens.

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not at ninety-nine? It would be logical that it starts evaporating slowly, slowly: ninety, just a little bit... ninety-one, a little more... ninety-two, a little more, and at one hundred it just evaporates. That seems to be logical. But the water knows no logic. And you cannot ask anybody why it evaporates at a hundred degrees. We simply accept facts of existence as they are.

D.H. Lawrence, one of the men of this century I have loved most, was walking in the garden with a small child who was asking questions, as every child is bound to ask – just curious. And finally he said, ”Uncle, why are trees green?” Perhaps nobody had ever asked why trees are green.

For a moment Lawrence stood there thinking why trees are green. And then suddenly it dawned on him that there is no question of why; trees don’t follow any logic, existence is not logical. So he said to the child, ”Trees are green because they are green.” The child said, ”That’s right. I have asked the question to many people. Nobody can answer – and you have answered. That seems to be perfectly right. Trees are green because they are green.” Neither the child understands logic nor do the trees understand logic.

So don’t think logically about inner reality, the inner science of discovering yourself. Be factual, realistic. This is how it happens: before the explosion of light all the unconscious forces make their last effort – and they should be given a chance; you have been using them since the beginning.

These forces have every right, every legal right, not to let you go into a totally different realm. And you have been a slave. And once you move out of the darkness of the night, you will be a master.

There is a great vested interest of the unconscious forces, so naturally they gather up and create sushupti, dreamless sleep.

And the mystics are right to call it the dark night of the soul. It is no ordinary dark night. It is the dark night of the soul, because what is going to happen is the golden dawn of the soul.

But remember always to be factual.

Logic is not a substitute for it.

Question 4

BELOVED OSHO,

IS IT NECESSARY THAT THE INNOCENCE OF CHILDHOOD AND THE IDEALISM OF

ADOLESCENCE MUST ALWAYS BE SHATTERED BEFORE EACH INDIVIDUAL FINDS WITHIN

HIMSELF THE CAPACITY TO SEARCH FOR WHAT HE CONSIDERS THE REAL VALUES OF

LIFE?

It is absolutely necessary, because childhood has been conditioned – not knowingly, not intentionally, but just by unconscious forces – through your parents, through your neighbors, through your teachers, through everybody.

Your innocence has been covered with so many layers of conditioning that you cannot find it easily.

And your youth has ideals, utopian ideas, great plans for revolutions for changing the whole of humanity. You think they are yours; you are wrong. They are only biological.

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The biology of man gives him a very romantic youth, because that is the time when he is going to produce children, which in itself is such a mundane affair, if not dirty, that unless it is covered with romanticism it will be very difficult.

Have you seen animals making love? Everybody must have seen some animals making love. But have you watched one thing, that while making love both the partners look sad – not happy, as if they are being forced to do something which they don’t want to do.

And the force is coming from within their own biology, so they cannot do anything about it. But they are in a good position in a way, because they have only seasons when they make love – two months, three months in the year, and for nine months they are really free.

For man the difficulty is very great. One, he is capable of making love all the year round; and each time he makes love, he feels something is wrong. If he sees photographs of himself making love he will not believe that he can do such stupid things. If he is interested in gymnastics, he can go to a gym. But what is he doing here? Women are more clever in keeping their eyes closed, just not to see the gymnastics the man is doing. And also the man is in a hurry. He wants to do it as quickly as possible and be finished. There seems to be a certain biological slavery. He cannot avoid it, and there seems to be nothing in it that looks beautiful.

Specially for man, biology has given romantic idealism. That covers his eyes – the woman becomes almost a goddess. And in the eyes of the woman the man becomes almost a god. And their love affair becomes such a poetic thing, such a great romance, as if nobody has ever loved the way they are loving. For the first time in history, something great is happening.

This hallucination is necessary; otherwise, man may stop producing children. Animals will go on reproducing, because they don’t have intelligence. But man has intelligence; he may stop producing children, or he may find some other way – test-tube babies made in the lab of some scientist – which looks more clinical, more sophisticated, less animalistic, less barbarous.

But because of this romantic fever, he manages to continue. Every day his fever goes down. After making love, ashamed, he pulls his blanket over himself and lies down there, thinking, ”What an idiot I am. I did it again, and I have thought thousands of times that this is just stupid.” And the woman is crying on the other side, tears in her eyes, because all the poetry ends here on the bed in an ugly exercise. But after twenty-four hours he will be again ready, he will forget those thousands of idiotic acts he has done. After twenty-four hours he is again feeling romantic.

It is simply biology, because biology takes time to create sexual energy again. And as one starts growing older, then it takes a longer time. Then he cannot make love every day: then twice a week, then once a week, then once a month, and he knows now death is coming close. And by the time his whole illusion has disappeared, death is ready to take him away.

In those illusory times, there are other dimensions also. Every young man feels romantic, very idealistic – not knowing that this earth has been filled with youth for thousands of years, and every young man has been thinking of idealism, of great revolutions, of great utopias. But they are simply a by-product of his biological romance. It is a chemical thing, a hormonal thing.

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And it is proved perfectly that if hormones are removed from a man or from a woman, she goes into a complete change of personality. Or if hormones are added, injected, then he becomes even more romantic, almost mad, ready to change the world, ready to save the whole world, ready to become a savior, a messiah.

My own feeling is that all saviors, messiahs, prophets, were freaks; just by accident they got more hormones than other people, so their romantic ideology was so much that they were even ready to sacrifice their life; but they will not sacrifice their ideology. Ideology became greater, more important than life itself.

But the reality is that generation after generation of young people come and go, and the world remains the same. Their whole idealism and their whole romantic philosophies, utopias, simply go on creating more population. That’s all. Creating more difficulties for humanity – that is the only revolution they bring.

A real revolutionary is not romantic, but is very realistic. It is not a dream that he wants to impose on the whole humanity. Who are you to impose your dream on the whole of humanity? Everybody is free to have his own dream, and if everybody starts imposing his dream on everybody else, there is going to be chaos.

And there has been chaos, because of Christians wanting their dream to be imposed on everybody, Mohammedans trying to do the same, Jews trying to do the same, Hindus trying to do the same, Buddhists trying to do the same, communists trying to do the same.

There are so many dreamers and this poor humanity... and they all want to mold it according to their dream. The ultimate result is they fight, they kill, they create wars and violence. No utopia comes, only war comes. There is no evolution of consciousness but only ugly incidents which the whole past is filled with, all the way along.

I would like my people first to meditate, first to become aware – because that is the only loophole through which you can get out of the slavery of biology. And once you are aware, you don’t have dreams. Then a totally new reality comes to you, and that is a vision – you start seeing.

And that’s what has been called in the past, the oracles. Women have been found to be more capable of being visionaries – men are more prone to dream. So there were oracles all around the world; and the woman will go into a trance – that is a state of meditation. And in that state she will start saying things, describing the vision.

Christianity has committed many crimes. One of their greatest crimes is that they destroyed all those women visionaries – calling them witches, burning them alive, because they were wiser than their popes and cardinals and bishops, and they could not be tolerated. They were a great competition.

And all these cardinals and bishops and popes were simply knowledgeable people, not people who are wise.

The word ‘witch’ means a wise woman. There is something tremendously significant in this. Again there will be oracles. Once these rotten religions have lost their hold on humanity, all that they have destroyed – which was worth preserving – will come back.

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When you are meditating, you can give it any name – you can call it trance, you can call it latihan....

It is simply a state of silence where no thoughts, no dreams are moving on the screen of the brain.

In that clarity you start seeing things which are going to happen.

It is almost like you are standing under a tree, and somebody is sitting on top of the tree, and a road is just there. You cannot see anybody on the road, it is empty; but the man at the top of the tree can see a bullock cart coming from the left. He can see a bullock cart that is leaving from the right side.

To the person who is standing under the tree, those bullock carts don’t exist; as far as he can see, the road is empty.

One bullock cart is past, one is in the future, but none of the bullock carts is present to his eyes.

But to the man who is sitting at the top of the tree, both of the bullock carts are in the present – the bullock cart that has passed, the bullock cart that is coming; they are not in different tenses. The whole road is present to him, it is just that his vision is from a height.

The oracle is really nothing but your consciousness looking at things and the world from a height which is not available to ordinary people. So they can see things which are going to happen, as far as the ordinary people are concerned. For them, they are already happening. They can also say things about that which has happened; but for the ordinary person, there is no trace of it at all.

And there are different heights of consciousness, as I have told you: superconscious, collective superconscious, cosmic superconscious. It depends, the trance of the oracle may be only of the superconscious. Still it will be far bigger, far more real than the ordinary man who lives in the conscious – just a small slit.

But the trance can be of the collective superconscious, then the area will be vast. And if the trance is leading the person to the cosmic superconscious then everything is present to him – then there is no past and no future.

That is going to be one of the basic practices in the mystery school, how to create oracles. The capacity is there – more in women, less in men. But it can be brought back to reality. The burning of thousands of women in the middle ages by the Christian church on the orders of the pope has not destroyed the capacity. We will bring it back. We will introduce techniques for how to reach to those trances.

I wanted to go to Delphi when I was in Greece, because that was the place of the greatest oracle.

The very genius of oracles was selected from Delphi. It was one of the most significant mystery schools. But the Greek government would not allow me even to stay overnight.

For no reason at all, they arrested me, and they wanted to force me to go onto a boat for India.

I refused. And later on I saw that their behavior was changing; they were becoming more polite, more friendly, bringing water or anything needed. Only later on I came to know that our friends in Athens had given a twenty-five-thousand-dollar bribe to the chief of police. Otherwise, they could have forced me onto the boat which was going to India.

And I was telling them, ”My jet is standing in Athens. If you allow, it can come here – to Crete. Or I can go by plane to Athens.” Only here I came to know why their behavior had suddenly changed –

money is a miracle.

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It was in the middle of the night that I reached Athens; and my friends wanted that I should stay the night in a hotel. The police would not allow it. I could not leave the airport. I had to go to my jet immediately. I could not go to Delphi, but one day I will go to Delphi.

Our people are fighting the case in the court, because it was absolutely illegal to arrest me. My visa as a tourist was still valid for fifteen days more – it was for four weeks, and I had been there only for two weeks.

And they should not deport me without giving any reason – because there was no reason. I had not even left the house. Just as I am living here in the house and never leave the house, I had not left that house.

But the archbishop of Greece was continuously giving press conferences, and sending telegrams, and telephoning the president and the prime minister saying, ”If this man is not removed immediately, we are going to burn him alive with his house.” These are religious people. These are democratic governments.

I was asleep when the police came. Anando tried, saying, ”You just sit, and we will wake him up,” but they wouldn’t listen.

John came to wake me up. As I was getting ready in my bathroom, suddenly I heard sounds as if bombs were being exploded. I could not believe what was happening. Those police people started throwing rocks at the windows, at the glass, at the doors – they were destroying.... and they had dynamite, and they were threatening, ”We will dynamite the house.” They could not wait for five minutes for me to put my clothes on, wash my face and come down. They were in such a hurry... five minutes more and Christianity will be destroyed, morality will disappear, no woman will remain a virgin – just in five minutes; and I am in my bathroom!

And then I was sitting unnecessarily in their jail for almost seven hours. They could not wait for five minutes, and I had to sit there unnecessarily for seven hours. These are the people who are running democratic governments.

I told the man, ”I came here to see who are the people who poisoned Socrates, and I am not disappointed – I have seen them.”

Just one thing I have not been able to see, and that is Delphi. It is now in ruins, but once it was one of the greatest temples in the world, ruled completely by wise women. And only the genius ones were going into trances and saying things about the past and future. And whatever they were saying was going to come true.

It is not prediction, it is simply their vision. It is not prophecy, it is not astrology. It is simply the height of their consciousness, that they can see a far bigger horizon.

The science has to be revived, but it can be revived only on the grave of the Christian church.

Question 5

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BELOVED OSHO,

HOTEI IS REMEMBERED BY THE FIREWORKS IN HIS POCKETS AT HIS FUNERAL. WAS

YOUR GREATEST JOKE THE ENLIGHTENMENT LIST, OR DO YOU HAVE SOMETHING MORE

DEVILISH UP YOUR SLEEVE?

I will not tell you right now.

Milarepa, you will have to wait for it!

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I am an adamant optimist

10 June 1986 pm in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

THE PHRASE ”A BROKEN FAMILY” IS USED TO CONJURE UP THE ESSENCE OF A DISASTROUS CHILDHOOD.

BY THE TIME I WAS AT UNIVERSITY, I HAD HAD TWO FATHERS AND THREE MOTHERS; AND IF YOU INCLUDE MY GRANDPARENTS – WHO ALSO FUNCTIONED AS PARENTS FOR

A GOOD WHILE – A GRAND TOTAL OF SEVEN, INSTEAD OF THE CONVENTIONAL TWO.

INITIALLY I WAS PUZZLED HOW IT WAS THAT I SEEMED RELATIVELY FREE AND WELL-ADJUSTED, WHILE SO MANY OF MY MORE ”FORTUNATE” FRIENDS – WHO HAD HAD THE

PROPER STABLE FAMILY LIFE – SEEMED ENDLESSLY TROUBLED BY THE CONTINUING

DEMANDS OF FAMILY TIES THAT PURSUED THEM INTO ADULTHOOD. MIGHT NOT A BROKEN

FAMILY REALLY BE A BLESSING IN DISGUISE?

The conventional family is already out of date. It has served its purpose, and it has no future.

Psychologically it is very dangerous for the child to be confined to only two parents. If the child is a girl, she starts loving the father and creates an inner image of a man she would like to love. Of course she knows she cannot love the father the way her mother loves him, so she is jealous of the mother.

It is an ugly situation to create for the child: from the very beginning, the first woman in her life is an object of jealousy, and the first man in her life she is never going to get.

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But her mind will carry the image of the father her whole life, disrupting all her marriages because in every husband she will be looking for the father – unconsciously – and no man can fulfill the requirements. And no man has married her to be her father.

From the man’s side, he is searching for his mother. If the child is a boy, he falls in love with the mother, and he carries the image of that first woman his whole life, unfulfilled.

He will fall in love with many women, finding some similarity. But similarities are one thing – perhaps just the hair style is like his mother’s or the way the woman walks, or the eyes, or the nose. But the nose is not the whole woman, and the hair style is not going to help in any way. So no woman is going to fulfill his longing for a mother, and no woman marries him to be a mother.

Now we are creating such a complex situation for children that their whole life will remain in a misery, and they will dump the responsibility on the other. The man will think the woman has betrayed him

– because she was looking just like his mother, and after marriage she turns out to be something totally different. She deceived him.

The same is the situation from the other side. Every woman thinks the man has deceived her, cheated her, pretending to be nice and good and everything before the marriage. After the marriage the mask that he was wearing disappears, and she finds just a male chauvinist.

And both the parents are continuously fighting, nagging each other, trying to dominate each other; and the children are learning – because there is no other way, this is their first school. And it is not a question of arithmetic or geography or history; it is a question of life. They are learning life’s ABC, and what they are seeing is that the mother is continuously harassing the father, and the father is continuously trying to dominate, subjugate, enslave.

They also can see... and children are very perceptive, because they are very new in the world, their eyes are clear, their perceptions are not yet covered with the dust of experience. They can see the hypocrisy of it all – because if some neighbor comes in while they were fighting, they immediately stop fighting, start smiling at each other, talking beautiful things, receiving the neighbor, giving the impression to the neighbor that they never fight.

The child is also learning hypocrisy. Whatever you are is one thing; you have to present to the society what the society expects you to be – not what you are, but what the society wants you to be.

From the very early childhood we are creating a split personality in each child, schizophrenia, a dual being.

They are learning the ways – the girl is learning how a wife should be, according to the mother’s behavior with the father; the boy is learning how the husband should be, according to the behavior of the father.

It is because of this that in generation after generation the same stupidities are repeated again and again. And the whole world lives in misery, lives in hypocrisy; and the root cause is the conventional family, where the child is exposed only to two persons, the mother and father.

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In the future it has to be changed, because almost ninety percent of mental sicknesses are born out of this family. We have to make a bigger family. I call it a commune, where many people are living together.

In our commune in America five thousand people were living together, working together; in one single kitchen, five thousand people were eating together. Their children were getting acquainted with so many people – everybody of the age of the father was an uncle, everybody of the age of the mother was an aunt. They were learning from everybody.

They had a vast possibility of experience; and there was no way of having a fixed image of a woman or a man, because they were coming in contact with so many women who were all loving towards them, so many men who were all loving towards them. They were not living with their parents; they had their own campus. Parents could go there, meet them. They could come to the parents, live a day or two with the parents. They were invited by other couples, they were invited by couples who had no children. They were moving all over the commune.

The whole commune was their family.

Psychologically it created only a vague image of a woman in the boy’s mind, and a vague image of a man in the girl’s mind.

This is of tremendous importance. Because the image is vague and is made up of many impressions of different women, there is a possibility you may find a woman who can easily fit. Because you don’t have a fixed idea, you only have a vague conception, any woman can fulfill it, any man can fulfill it.

And you have not been living with the parents, so you don’t know how a wife has to behave, how a husband has to behave. You will start innocently, lovingly. You love the man – that’s why you have married him. You love the woman, and you are not carrying a certain pattern of how the woman should behave.

The Hindu so-called saint, Tulsidas, is the most important Hindu saint in India; no other book is read as much as his. His book is the bible of the Hindus. He writes in his book ”If you don’t beat her –

physical, corporal beating – you will lose control of her. By beating her, you prove that you are man enough.”

Your manliness is proved by beating the woman; but if you beat the woman, the woman is also going to find a thousand and one ways to torture you. Whenever you want to make love to her, she will say she has a headache. There is no communication between the two of you. How can there be? You have enslaved her, and no slave can forgive the person who has destroyed his freedom. No woman can forgive the man who has taken away her freedom. But Hindus have been following their saint’s advice – and it is not new: the five-thousand-year-old manusmriti, the moral code of the Hindus, says the same thing.

There is a book published by a psychoanalyst about the man-woman relationship.

Its title is

significant: THE INTIMATE ENEMY. That’s how men and women have lived up to now, as intimate enemies. And the children are learning, and they will repeat it – they don’t know any other way.

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The family has to change into a commune. Five thousand people, ten thousand people living together, are economically better off than five thousand families living separately.

In our commune, just fifteen people were looking after the kitchen – for five thousand people.

Otherwise, twenty-five hundred women would have been crushed and destroyed in their kitchens!

And remember, not all women are good cooks! There is nothing in being a woman that makes you a good cook. In fact, all great cooks are men; in all the great hotels you will find that the great cooks are men, not women.

Every family cannot afford a great genius of a cook, but a commune can afford fifteen really inventive and creative cooks – men and women both. And we have experimented and found that it works so beautifully.

Because the children live together on their own campus, many other things happen. The parents don’t feel burdened. They have a certain freedom which children destroy – you have to wait for the children to go to sleep, and by that time you are also feeling sleepy. And children are very strange people; if you want them to go to sleep, then they won’t go. They become certain that there is going to be something happening, that’s why they are being forced to go to sleep.

And they cannot understand the logic, that when they want to remain awake, they are forced to go to sleep; and when, in the morning, they want to sleep, they are pulled out of the bed and forced to be awake. They can’t understand the logic of it. It seems so absurd.

But parents feel freedom, because their children living with other children. We discovered a new phenomenon; we were thinking that there might be trouble – the children might fight with each other.

But what we found was just the opposite of it: the older children took care of the smaller ones.

There was no fighting. And nobody had any personal things – all toys and everything belonged to the campus – so there was no jealousy.

The children enjoyed the tremendous beauty of being with other couples – not just their parents –

and naturally, uncles are nicer people than fathers. In fact, the Jewish God in the Old Testament says: ”I want you to be aware that I am not your uncle, that I am not a nice person, that I am an angry person, a jealous person, revengeful.” His use of ”I am not your uncle, I am your father” makes it clear that an uncle has a nice quality about him.

Thousands of uncles around him, aunts around him – the child feels almost surrounded in love; wherever he goes he is respected. Because people there are not his parents, they don’t force any ambition of their own on the child. The child is not their own. Otherwise, every parent is trying to fulfill his ambitions, which he could not manage to fulfill in his life, through his children.

The child is not their own. Otherwise if a man wanted to become a doctor, but he could not become one, he wants to make his boy a doctor – whether the boy wants to become a doctor or not is not the question at all. So there are doctors who would have been better as butchers, and there are butchers who would have been better as doctors. Everything is upside down.

Nobody bothers about what the child’s potential is. Everybody thinks of what his own ambition is –

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boy is potentially a musician, a Yehudi Menuhin, or an artist, a Michelangelo, or a mathematician, an Albert Einstein. Nobody cares abut the child, he is not to be considered at all.

In a commune, it is not the parents who are going to decide what their children should be. The children are born out of the parents, but they don’t belong to them. They belong to the commune, and the commune will decide – through psychoanalysis, through hypnosis, through other methods

– what is the potential of the child. And a child should be helped in every possible way to become what he has come here to become; then he will be immensely happy.

In life there is only one blissfulness, and that is to become what you have been carrying within you

– the potential – and to bring it to a full flowering. A rose bush should become roses, and that is its joy.

One great surgeon was invited by his friends, because he was retiring. He was the greatest surgeon of his country, and people were celebrating the occasion, giving him a good farewell. But he looked very sad. And one friend came to him and asked,”Why are you so sad?” He said, ”I am sad because I never wanted to become a surgeon. I wanted to become a musician.

Even if I had to die on the street as a beggar with my guitar in my hands, I would have been more happy than to be the greatest surgeon in the country, because that was not at all my longing; it was not my destiny.”

So much misery in the world – and the basic cause is that people are not allowed to move towards their destiny. Everybody is distracted.

The family is no longer needed, and it will be a tremendous blessing – not only to the children, but to the parents also, as it is because of the children that parents go on remaining together even though they don’t love each other.

The moment a man does not love his wife or the wife does not love the man – and they still go on pretending that they love each other – it is nothing but prostitution, permanent prostitution. And the reason is just because of the children; otherwise, in the broken family, what will happen to the children?

In a commune there is no problem. You can be with a woman as long as you love her. The moment you find that the love has disappeared.... In life nothing is permanent, nothing can be permanent.

It is not within your hands to make anything permanent; only dead things can be permanent. The more alive a thing is, the more fleeting.

Stones may be permanent.

Flowers cannot be.

Love is not a stone. It is a flower, and of a rare quality.

Today it is there, tomorrow one knows not – it may be there, it may not be there. It is not in your hands to control it. It is a happening. You cannot do anything: you cannot create it if it is not there; either it is there or it is not there. You are simply helpless.

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If children are being taken care of by the commune, then parents can move easily. There is no burden. And the children will not miss you, because they can find their father, they can find their mother – there is no problem. The mother can go to the children, the father can go to the children...

and the children will become aware from the very beginning that love is a changing phenomenon.

To make love permanent has been the greatest fallacy of mankind.

Love cannot become marriage. Marriage is law, and love cannot be put under any law. It is wild. It is just like a breeze that comes and goes away; fearing that it may go away, you close all the windows and all the doors – but then there is no breeze, just stale air.

Marriage is stale air and nothing else. The breeze that was felt – which led you to marriage – is not there anymore. But because of the children you have to pretend as long as possible – suffer, pretend. And it creates perversions of all kinds.

If the husband no longer loves the wife, he will start moving with some other woman – his secretary in the office. If the woman does not love the husband, naturally she will find somebody – the chauffeur.

Ready-made people – the secretary, the chauffeur. What else to do? Where to go?

This creates unnecessary complexities, ugly fights. The whole home becomes tense. The vibrations are no longer calm and quiet and peaceful. And because you are not satisfied with your woman, you have created prostitutes. It is one of the ugliest things that man has done – to force women to sell their bodies just for money. And remember well: you can get the body for money, but you cannot get love for money.

Love is not for sale.

Up to now, there were just women prostitutes – because it was a male-dominated society for thousands of years. But now there is a women’s liberation movement. This liberation movement is creating more stupidities, because it is simply imitating man.

It is not trying to raise the

consciousness of women; it is simply trying to imitate man, creating hatred for man. And it has created it.

Now in big cities like London or New York or San Francisco, you can find male prostitutes. Naturally –

the woman has equal rights. If there are female prostitutes, then male prostitutes should be available too.

The women’s liberation movement is trying to create so much hate for man that there are a few of the leaders of that movement who are preaching lesbianism: women should love only women – just cut out man completely.

And this is happening. Homosexuality is happening. Men are tired of women, of being harassed by women, nagged by women. They have started looking for some substitute, and they have found that it is better to love a man – it is at least not miserable. It is not a coincidence that homosexuals are called gay people; they are gay. But this is turning the whole society into a madhouse. These perversions of sex are going to create great disturbances. Homosexuality has already brought the ultimate disease AIDS, for which there seems to be no cure.

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Lesbianism also...

because it is something new it may take a little longer, but it will produce something. They will have to produce something, otherwise the women’s liberation movement will feel, ”We are lacking something which men are having; they have AIDS and we don’t have anything.” The women’s liberation movement is making women ugly – they smoke because men smoke, use four-letter words because men use four-letter words, use the same clothes as the men use. But somebody has to tell these women that it is not liberation: ”You are simply becoming second-rate men. It is very degrading, it is humiliating.” All this is happening because of the family. Unless we dissolve the family into a bigger phenomenon, these things will not disappear. If nobody is forced to live with a man or woman for whom love has disappeared, then prostitution itself will disappear.

There is no need to fight and be intimate enemies. If you cannot be intimate friends, there is no need to be intimate enemies – it is better to say goodbye and become strangers again.

Life is so short. It is not to be wasted in unnecessary foolishness.

Live and love – and love totally and intensely but never against freedom. Freedom should remain the ultimate value.

The family has destroyed that freedom.

In my vision, the future is not for families. The future is for communes, and the commune is the refined, bigger family; so big that whatever the small family was creating – all kinds of perversions –

is no longer created. And children should be taken care of by the commune, by the experts. In the first place, just because you have a wife, it does not mean that you have the right to become a father or the right to become a mother.

The commune should have a training. Anybody who wants to become a father or mother must go through the training. You can remain married, you can remain together – that is between you two –

but you don’t disturb a third life.

You have no right to produce a child if you don’t have the right training to bring him up, to help him to be a blissful human being. The psychologists will discover, the doctors will think about it, the gynecologists will have to ponder over it, and unless you get clearance from these people, you are not to produce a child.

Man can produce children without any difficulty. That does not mean that you become a father and a mother. Those are skills, arts. To help a living being grow needs some expertise.

And the society, the commune, will decide how many children it needs – so that children can be nourished well, educated well; so that over-population does not disturb things; so nobody is unemployed, nobody is uneducated, nobody is poor.

So much is known now about the human child, and impregnation, that not to use that scientific knowledge would be simply idiotic. We are using it on animals, but we are not using it on human beings. In human beings we are still continuing with the accidental way of producing children.

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One of the great poets of India, Rabindranath Tagore, was the thirteenth child of his parents. It was good that at that time there was no birth control; otherwise the world would have missed Rabindranath Tagore. And we do not know how many geniuses we go on missing, for the simple reason that as far as human beings are concerned, we are still behaving very superstitiously.

In a single intercourse a man releases millions of sperm. At that moment, politics begin – a great race, a competition, to reach to the female egg. To us the distance seems to be very small, but to the sperm, for his size, the distance is proportionately almost two miles – and his life is only two hours.

In two hours, millions of sperms are running to reach the female egg. Only one will succeed. And you can take it for granted that the better people will stand aside. The Ronald Reagans will reach first. Better people are better from the very beginning – they will give way to others.

Now it is possible to donate your sperm to the hospital, and they can find out how many sperm can become geniuses and how many sperm will be just mediocre human beings – Hindus, Christians, Mohammedans, Jews, that kind of people; they can be discarded from the very beginning.

The best can be chosen – you can find them. Floating in that crowd there are people like Socrates, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Moses, Jesus.

Why bother with mediocre people?

And why remain

accidental when the scientific facts are perfectly known and established? Because when this crowd

– and it is not a small crowd – starts moving, it may be that those who are just in front reach first, for no other reason than that they may be Adolf Hitlers, they may be Mussolinis, they may be Joseph Stalins. Why create these people?

And you go on saying history repeats itself! You are the reason it repeats itself, because you go on being accidental. History can be changed completely so that it will never be repeated again; one just has to use a little intelligence.

Choose the finest, the best, rather than filling the earth with billions of people. Right now there are more than five billion people; it is better to have just one billion people. But we can create supermen; we just have to change our old patterns of thinking.

And we have to use science in the service of man, too. Science should be used for children.

Families should be made very loose, relaxed, and bigger; and we can create a paradise on the earth.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO

UPON BEING QUESTIONED ON HIS PLACE IN HISTORY, EINSTEIN SAID, ”IF RELATIVITY

IS PROVED RIGHT, THE GERMANS WILL CALL ME GERMAN, THE SWISS WILL CALL ME

A SWISS CITIZEN, AND THE FRENCH WILL CALL ME A GREAT SCIENTIST. IF RELATIVITY

IS PROVED WRONG, THE FRENCH WILL CALL ME A SWISS, THE SWISS WILL CALL ME A GERMAN, AND THE GERMANS WILL CALL ME A JEW.”

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IN YOUR CASE, OSHO, I IMAGINE THE INDIANS WILL SAY YOU HAD TO LEAVE INDIA FOR LACK OF SPACE – YOU HAD TOO MANY INDIAN FOLLOWERS; THE AMERICANS

WILL SAY THEY PERSUADED YOU TO LEAVE TO HELP SPREAD YOUR MESSAGE; THE

GREEKS WILL SAY THEY WERE SO IMPRESSED WITH YOU, THAT THEY PROVIDED A POLICE

MOTORCADE TO THE AIRPORT; AND THE BRITISH WILL SAY THEY EVEN PROVIDED YOU

WITH GOVERNMENT ACCOMMODATION. AND ALL THE REST WILL SAY THAT THEY WANTED

YOU TO STAY BUT DID NOT WANT TO GAIN AN UNFAIR ADVANTAGE OVER THE OTHERS.

BELOVED OSHO, WHAT DO YOU SAY?

Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity was a simple matter: either it is right or it is wrong. Hence what he said is relevant. My work is more complex, almost impossible, because it is not a question of any theory being right or wrong. I can be right only if humanity goes through a transformation – which is hoping against hope. But I am an adamant optimist.

Knowing the impossibility of the job, I go on working with absolute trust that the revolution is going to happen. And if my revolution happens, there will be no India and no Indians, no Germany and no Germans, no America and no Americans.

This small planet earth is simply one.

All divisions are false.

If I fail, then these divisions can remain.

If I succeed in convincing the intelligent youth of the world, then all the political lines on the map will have to disappear – they are absolutely unnecessary. They are against humanity’s welfare.

It is one single whole; and we should be proud that our planet earth is the only planet in this vast universe, where there are millions of solar systems having millions and millions of planets. Our planet is the only one which has evolved not only life, not only consciousness, but has even produced the ultimate flowering of consciousness in people like Gautam the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Tilopa and many more.

We should be proud of this planet earth.

All flags need to be burned, and all divisions need to be destroyed, and a single humanity has to be proclaimed.

So if I succeed, Devaraj, there will be nobody as Indian, as German, as American, to say anything about me. Yes, if I fail – which is more possible – then they all will condemn me. They are all condemning me already.

Perhaps never a single individual has been condemned by so many nations – almost the whole world – together, because my fight is not against any particular superstition, any particular religion, any particular nation. My fight is against the very concept of nationality, the very concept of the divisions of religions.

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If there is only one science, there can be only one religion. If one science is enough to explore the inner world of man, then that one religion need not have any adjective to it – Christianity, Hinduism, Taoism or anything.

Just as science is simply science, religion is simply religion.

In fact, according to me, there is only one science with two dimensions: one dimension working on the outside world, the other dimension working on the inside world. We can even get rid of the word

‘religion’.

This is a fundamental rule of science, that a minimum of hypotheses should be used. So why use two words? Just one word is enough. And ‘science’ is a beautiful word, it means ‘knowing’.

Knowing the other is one aspect, knowing one’s self is another aspect; but ‘knowing’ covers both.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO

RECENTLY WHEN WE WERE IN KATHMANDU, A JAPANESE BUSINESSMAN STEPPED INTO

THE LIFT WITH ME AND CONVERSATIONALLY ASKED ME WHAT COUNTRY I WAS FROM.

WITHOUT THINKING, I SAID, ”OH, I’M A SANNYASIN.”

I DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT MAN MUST HAVE MADE OF MY REPLY, BUT I REALIZED ONLY

AFTERWARDS THAT SOMETHING SEEMED TO FALL AWAY FROM ME IN THAT MOMENT, THROUGH SUCH AN INNOCUOUS KIND OF SITUATION. A SENSE OF NATIONALITY, OF

HAVING ROOTS SOMEWHERE, EVEN A MOTHER TO RETURN TO IF I REALLY HAD THE NEED

– EVERYTHING THAT AUSTRALIA REPRESENTED FOR ME IN TERMS OF THE PAST – SIMPLY

DIED RIGHT THEN AND THERE.

NOW I REALLY DO FEEL LIKE AN EXISTENTIAL GYPSY, AND I LOVE IT!

I want everyone to become an existential gypsy. You don’t need roots – you are not trees. You are human beings. And the moment you become a sannyasin, everything else automatically falls away from you. To be a sannyasin simply means renouncing your past, renouncing all political ideologies, renouncing all religious theologies, renouncing everything that belongs to the dead past.

It means just becoming completely clean, unprogrammed, unconditioned, so that you can clearly see the present and the future, and you can start growing on your own insight. Whatever feels right to you, is right, and whatever feels wrong to you, is wrong.

And the moment you take such a standpoint, you become for the first time an individual. For the first time you have respected yourself, you have accepted yourself. For the first time you are grateful to existence to have made you the way you are.

You don’t have any ideals any longer. You are not to become like Jesus, you are not to become like Buddha. You have just to be yourself and allow your being to grow in freedom without any ideals –

because every ideal leads towards slavery.

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And once you are unburdened of the past and free to move in freedom, you almost have wings and the whole sky is yours.

The moment you drop the roots, you grow wings.

And it is so beautiful to have the whole sky with all the stars available to you – with no guilt, with no fear, with no God to dominate you, to enslave you, with no devil to destroy you – just for the first time you, in your crystal clear aloneness.

I teach you simply to be yourself.

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Water into wine is not the real miracle

11 June 1986 am in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

IT STILL PUZZLES ME HOW, FROM THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS AND MOHAMMED, TWO

RELIGIONS COULD EVOLVE THAT WOULD BRING SO MUCH DEATH AND UGLINESS TO THE

WORLD. THEIR INTOLERANCE AND VIOLENCE SEEM EVEN DARKER AS IT IS COVERED BY

THE IMAGE OF THEIR ALMIGHTY GOD, ALLOWING ONLY THOSE WHO BELIEVE IN HIM AND

HIS SON, HIS PROPHET, TO ENTER HEAVEN.

DID MOHAMMED AND JESUS THEMSELVES PLANT THESE SEEDS OF UGLINESS? OR IS IT

THE UNAWARENESS OF THE MUSLIMS AND CHRISTIANS? WAS THEIR ENLIGHTENMENT

OF A DIFFERENT QUALITY FROM THAT OF LAO TZU, BODHIDHARMA OR BUDDHA?

There was no enlightenment in the cases of Jesus and Mohammed, and whatever happened after them, they are wholly and solely responsible for it. They have sown the seeds of fanaticism.

The very declaration of Jesus, ”I am the only begotten son of God”, is fanatic and without any evidence.

First, God is only a hypothesis, and hypotheses are not known to have sons and daughters. And the emphasis of Jesus is ”the only begotten son”, so nobody else can claim that he is another son of God – because I don’t think in those days birth control methods were known. On the one hand they say God is omnipotent, and his potency was finished only in one son!

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Jesus’ claim is simply to make himself unique amongst all the prophets that have passed before him. They were just prophets, messengers of God; he was more intimately related, and blood is always thicker than any message.

Also, he insisted, for all the three years that he was teaching, that he was the messiah for whom the Jews had been waiting.

The Jews were not ready to accept him, but he went on insisting. The only people who followed him were uncultured, uneducated, poor people – and not many. They followed him in the hope that perhaps he was the son of God, perhaps he was the messiah, and he would fulfill his promises:

”Blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit the kingdom of God.” ”A camel may pass through the eye of a needle, but a rich man cannot pass through the gates of heaven.” He was consoling those poor people who had no understanding. And Judea was full of learned scholars, rabbis – nobody was impressed by him.

His claims and his teachings are contrary. He teaches ”Blessed are the meek” but he is not a meek fellow. He teaches, ”Love your enemies just as you love yourself,” but he curses a poor fig tree because it is out of season and there are no fruits on it! And he becomes angry, ”I and my followers have come here hungry, and you are not ready with fruits – there is no welcome from your side.” Now, cursing a tree when it is not the season for the fruits – what can the poor tree do about it? This is the man who is teaching ”love your enemies,” and he cannot even forgive a poor fig tree, which has not committed any crime.

He himself was uneducated, uncultured, but had got into his head this madness that he was the only son of God, that he was the messiah the Jews had been waiting for. He has given these ideas to the following generations of Christians.

All his miracles are bogus. Miracles don’t happen. Existence never changes its laws for anybody, even for the only begotten son of God. I say with absolute certainty that all his miracles are bogus, because if a man had done those miracles, the whole Jewish community would have accepted him as the messiah.

Even today, if a man can walk on water, change water into wine, feed thousands of people from one or two loaves of bread, raise the dead back to life, do you think he will be crucified? He will be crowned! – his miracles will prove what he is saying. But not a single Jewish book of Jesus’ time even mentions his name – he was not even news. A man raising the dead back to life – if he is not news, then what is news? A man being crucified and coming back, resurrected – can you avoid giving him the headlines in all the newspapers? But not even his name is mentioned. The reason is clear: he never performed any miracle. All those miracles were added by the disciples to make his claim substantial – that he is the only son of God, that he is the messiah.

They have tried for two thousand years to make Christianity a special religion, unique, far above any other religion for reasons which are all bogus. Buddha never walked on water, Moses never made any dead come back to life again, Krishna was not resurrected – once dead, dead forever.

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Even trying to prove that he was born of a virgin mother is just a strategy to make Jesus special, unique; he is not a product of sexuality. It is the anti-sexual attitude, the anti-life attitude. Everybody is born out of sex; that means you are born out of sin. How can God’s son be born out of sin? So he is born out of a virgin mother.

For two thousand years these have been the pillars, none of which has anything to do with religion.

Even if you can walk on water, so what? – you will simply look stupid. And if you can change water into wine, you will be behind bars because you are committing a crime. Being born of a virgin mother will simply make you a bastard, not a great god.

And so many people died in Jesus’ time: if he was capable of raising people back to life, then he seems to be very miserly, there seems to be no generosity. He raises only one person – who is a personal friend of his. The conspiracy is clear. Lazarus is his personal friend, and the whole miracle is a made-up phenomenon, if it ever happened.

He was not dead. The two sisters of Lazarus were followers of Jesus: they put Lazarus in a cave, and they waited for Jesus. Jesus came after four days, and in four days the body started deteriorating, it was stinking. And Jesus simply called out, ”Lazarus, come out!” And it seems Lazarus was completely ready, just waiting; and he came out of the cave.

If a man was capable of raising the dead, then he should have shown... Many people must have died, he could have revived them. Why a friend? And what is the point? – because Lazarus, even after being raised from the dead, did not change. We don’t hear of him again, that he was transformed, that his life was now a new life. Nothing happened: he was the same man, with the same ugly jealousies, stupidities, insensitiveness. He had not become a light unto himself.

Even Jesus’ resurrection is completely bogus. I have seen his grave – it is in Kashmir in India. He lived in Kashmir to an old age, one hundred and twelve years. A Jewish family – and Jews are very rare in India – still has been taking care of two graves. And a very strange coincidence: Moses died in Kashmir, and Jesus also died in Kashmir. And the reason for this coincidence is that Kashmiris are basically Jews. They are one of the tribes of Jews who lost their way while Moses was finding Israel.

It took forty years. In forty years, almost everybody who had started with him was either dead or was going to die, was too old; a new generation had come into power. And Moses was tired of wandering all over the desert of the Middle East. Somehow he convinced his people, ”This is Israel, the promised land of God.”

It has nothing beautiful. And Jews have not forgiven Moses – because he bypassed all the oil lands.

And they will never forgive him; otherwise today Jews would have been the richest people in the world, all the oil would have been in their hands. And this great prophet, Moses, could not see the oil running under the earth and see the future. They ended up in Israel, which is a barren country.

And my feeling is, because the new generation was very much frustrated with Moses, just as an excuse he left them in Israel to settle, and he said, ”I am going to look for one tribe which has got lost in the desert.” And following the track of that tribe, he reached Kashmir; they had settled in Kashmir.

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Kashmir seems certainly to be God’s land. It is a paradise on earth. When the first Mohammedan invader of India, Babur, reached Kashmir he could not believe his eyes. He had lived his life in the desert, and then to see the lush green beauty of Kashmir.... Without thinking he said, ”If there is any paradise it is here, and only here.”

Even today you can find that the Kashmiris look more like Jews than like Hindus. Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister, was originally a Kashmiri, he comes from that same stock; Indira Gandhi –

just look at the face, look at the nose. They are all Kashmiris.

Moses reached the tribe, and he could see that they had found Israel, but now it was too late. He must have been very old; it was too late to recognize a mistake. And prophets are not supposed to recognize that they have committed mistakes, they are infallible. But he settled with the group, and he died in Kashmir.

Jesus also reached Kashmir. He was crucified, but the Jewish way of crucifixion is such that an ordinary, healthy man takes at least forty-eight hours to die on the cross – because death comes only by the blood slowly leaving through your hands and your feet. And Jesus was only thirty-three, and perfectly healthy, young.

It was a conspiracy with Pontius Pilate because Pontius Pilate was not a Jew, he was a Roman, and Judea was under the Roman Empire. He could not see what was wrong in Jesus. He had not committed any crime, and if he goes on his donkey saying to people, ”I am the only begotten son of God” – if you want to believe it, you can; if you don’t want to believe it, you don’t have to. But he was not a criminal type.

At the most you could think that he is a little eccentric, a crackpot; or you can think he is just a buffoon. He must have looked like a buffoon – riding on a donkey followed by twelve fools, none of whom had any education, none of whom had any idea of what religion is. It was a joke! People could have laughed and enjoyed it – there was nothing to be taken seriously.

Pontius Pilate did not want to crucify Jesus, so he made an arrangement – because he felt that he was crucifying a very innocent man – that Jesus should be put on the cross as late as possible on Friday. So it was delayed and delayed, and when finally he was put on the cross, he was left there for only six hours. Nobody has ever died on the Jewish cross in six hours in the whole of history.

And then came the sabbath, and Jews stop every action. And this was the strategy: they had to bring down Jesus’ body. Perhaps he was feeling weak – blood had gone out, but he was not dead –

and he was put in a cave. And then it was very easy for Pontius Pilate – because Roman soldiers were guarding the cave – to allow Jesus’ followers to take him out of Judea as quickly as possible.

Those wounds healed and he lived a long life. But in India he lived very silently. He had learned the hard way that to say, ”I am the only begotten son of God, I am the last messiah, the one you have been waiting for” just brings crucifixion and nothing else.

No miracle happened.

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convinced, that after watching for a few hours, he shouted towards the sky, ”Father, have you forsaken me?” – because no miracle was happening. It seems he was hoping angels would be coming, playing on their harps, sitting on white clouds. Nothing happened.

In India he remained silent with the group that had traveled with him. Thomas traveled with him. You will be surprised to know that Indian Christianity is the oldest Christianity in the world; the Vatican comes three hundred years afterwards. He sent Thomas to south India, and made it clear: ”Don’t talk about those things we were talking about in Judea.” But in India it is not a problem.

It happened once, I was staying in one campus, a university campus – it was holiday time, and the campus was used for a Hindu world conference. There were at least nine people who thought they were gods. Hindus don’t bother about it. They said, ”There is no harm, it is harmless.” Somebody believes he is a god – rather than crucifying him, they worship him. That is more torturous, remember, because now he has to behave like a god, and he is just a human being so he has to repress his humanity, his biology, his physiology – everything. But Hindus don’t do any harm to him; he himself does it.

Just in one campus, nine people proclaiming themselves god... and there is no problem about who is the true one, because Hindus believe in thirty-three million gods, so what does it matter? It is not a monopoly of one god. Only Hindu gods are democratic. All other gods are dictatorial – just one god. They cannot tolerate another.

Thirty-three million – that was the population of India in the old days. They have made exactly the same number of gods. So you can have your own special god – unique and personal, no need to share it with anybody else. They can choose their own god. And there are so many religions in India.

So Jesus had been in India before, also, and after the crucifixion he was back again. He knew that in India nobody bothers about these things. If you say you are a messiah, they may say, ”Perfectly good – remain one!” Nobody will feel offended. In fact they themselves think they are messiahs, so what is the problem? ”You are god, we are god – perfectly good. Shake hands! It is always better to be two than just one!”

Thomas adapted himself completely to the Hindu way of life. He changed his clothes; he was even wearing the Hindu thread that symbolized the Hindu. He was using the red mark on his forehead that symbolizes a certain sect of Hindu. He shaved his head, and he was using wooden sandals which only Hindu monks use. He tried to learn from Hindu masters whatever he could manage. And he tried in the south of India to teach Christ translated into Hindu terms, and he succeeded.

Kerala – the province where Thomas lived, is ninety percent Christian. But he never claimed that he was a prophet or anything. In India these things don’t matter. There are prophets on every street, gods in every bazaar. Nobody takes note of it; it is their personal problem. If somebody thinks he is a god, it is his personal problem.

So the resurrection is absolutely false; but for two thousand years these have been the pillars. In all these pillars of Christianity there is nothing which can be said to be spiritual.

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And now Christian theologians are having a conference in Europe to decide that these things should be dropped because they make the religion look childish. There are religions which have such high flights of consciousness, much deeper insights into human beings.

It is Jesus who is responsible for Christian fanaticism because he said to his followers, ”Soon you will be with me in paradise.” I like the word ‘soon’, but I cannot stretch it to two thousand years –

a few days maybe, but not two thousand years. ”And at the judgment day I will choose those who follow me, these are my sheep, and they will enter into paradise; and those who don’t follow me, they will fall into eternal darkness and hellfire forever. There is no rescue from there.” Just an absurd thing.

You can see the absurdity. In Christianity there is only one life – seventy years. One third of it goes in sleeping, one third goes into education. Of the remainder, much goes into earning bread and butter; whatever little is left goes in nagging, fighting, watching the television, shaving your beard twice a day. You don’t have much time to commit sin. What sin will you commit? – time is needed.

Bertrand Russell is right. He says, ”If the strictest judge decides about the sins which I have committed, and also includes those that I have only contemplated, not committed, he cannot send me to jail for more than four and a half years.” And Christianity sends you to hell as a punishment for your sins for eternity. There can be no justification. It is the most absurd idea that any religion has ever produced.

It is Jesus who is creating the idea in his followers. For these two thousand years Christians have been trying to convert people to Christianity because that is the only way to avoid hell, the only way to be chosen by Jesus at the judgment day. If Jesus does not choose you, your fate is sealed; you fall into eternal darkness, into hell-fire. All kinds of tortures have been invented in hell by Christian saints. And this will continue forever, there is no way out, no exit; you only enter into hell, you never get out of it.

This is absolutely illogical, but because Jesus said it, the Christians down the ages have been forcing people in different ways to become Christians. Their intention is very good; they want to save you –

even if you don’t want to be saved.

I was sitting on my lawn one day when I was a teacher in the university, and a Christian missionary came and started talking to me. And this I have found very characteristic of Christian missionaries

– they don’t listen to you, they go on talking, and they go on opening the BIBLE and reading the passages.

I said, ”But first you should listen. I don’t want to be saved. That is the basic question you should ask a person before you waste his time. I don’t want to be saved by anybody. If I cannot save myself I don’t want to be saved. And I don’t want to become a sheep, I am a human being. You just go and talk to sheep.”

First they were forcing people by the sword – crusades, religious wars – to change them into Christians. Millions of people have been killed by Christianity, burned alive because they were reluctant to be saved. Strange kind of saviors! Strange kind of compassion! If you don’t want to be saved you will be burned alive.

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Things have changed. Now they don’t come with a sword in one hand and the BIBLE in the other.

They come now with bread and butter in one hand and the BIBLE in another – to save the poor, to save the orphans.

The whole effort is... and I again repeat their intention is not bad, it is just that they are idiots.

Religion is a transforming process, it is not a question of believing in Jesus Christ or believing in Mohammed or believing in Krishna that can save you. That is simply a consolation so that you can, under that consolation, continue your life the way you want.

An authentic seeker tries to find methods to transform his ugliness into beauty, his violence into non-violence, his cruelty into compassion, his hate into love.

The real miracle is not changing water into wine; the real miracle is changing hate into love, changing your unconscious into consciousness – that is the real miracle, and that has to be done by yourself.

Nobody else can do it. Buddhas can only show the way, they cannot do it on your behalf. There are things which cannot be done on your behalf.

One of the existentialist novels has a beautiful idea of the future. A rich man said to his servant,

”Just go and make love to my wife.”

The people who were sitting there, they could not believe it. They said, ”What are you saying?

Sending your servant to make love to your wife?”

He said, ”I can afford it. Poor people have to do it themselves. I am rich enough to have it done on my behalf.”

The servant was also a little shocked and was still standing. And the rich man shouted, ”What are you standing there for? You are not going to make love to my wife; you are simply my representative.

So just do it on my behalf – don’t start doing it on your own.” The poor servant had to go if the master said so.

But can love be made by somebody else on your behalf? And if love cannot be made by somebody else, then can paradise, can spiritual transformation, can enlightenment be managed by someone else on your behalf because you can afford it?

The same is true about Mohammedanism; it is even worse – because Mohammedanism was born in Arabia in the desert where nothing grows, and people lived only on invading the neighboring countries; they were the most cruel people. And Mohammedanism has the same idea, that there is only one god, Allah, and there is only one prophet, Mohammed, and there is only one holy book, the KORAN. These are the three basic things.

If you look into the life of Mohammed you will not find the search of Gautam Buddha, you will not find the search of Mahavira. Jesus and Mohammed are not the scientists of the inner being; Mohammed was not even aware.

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because there was nobody there, that he ran to his home. He had fever, he was shivering. His wife covered him with many blankets, still he was shivering. She said, ”What is the matter? You left home perfectly okay. What happened?”

He said, ”Something very strange. God spoke to me and he said, ‘You are my last messenger,’ and that he will go on sending messages to me which I have to collect. But I don’t know how to write – I have to tell somebody to write it. But nobody will believe that I have heard God. That’s why I am so afraid.” People ordinarily think that he became so shocked, that’s why he had a fever.

My understanding is just the opposite. He was in a delirium, he had a fever which must have been beyond one hundred and four degrees or one hundred and five degrees, which is when people start hallucinating – hearing things, seeing things, their bed is flying in the sky... all kinds of things after the fever reaches the point of one hundred and five degrees. Then your mind cannot distinguish between reality and dreaming. So it is not that he heard the voice of God and became feverish –

because this has not happened ever.

There have been thousands of mystics in the world. When somebody has come to the ultimate truth of life, he has felt so tremendously beautiful, a well-being that he has never known before.

Fever is only the case with Mohammed. Truth does not bring fever, truth is not a disease. My own explanation is that he was suffering from fever, and he heard in his fever that God was speaking to him. And the proof is that the KORAN is the most third-rate book in the world; it can be only out of a mediocre mind, and in fever.

In the KORAN there is nothing that is elevating. It is very difficult, I have tried many times – because I have been speaking on all the scriptures of the world, and Mohammedans wanted me to speak on the KORAN. And so many times, in so many places, Mohammedans presented me with beautiful copies of the KORAN, asking me when I was going to speak on it.

I tried to read it again and again to find something that I can speak upon, but it is so full of rubbish that I could not manage to find even a few places on which I can elaborate and give some insight into human nature. The book is an absolute proof that it has come out of a feverish mind, and very mediocre.

Mohammed married nine women. Now, this is simply ugly, because men and women are of equal number in the world and if one man marries nine women, then what are the other eight men going to do? They will become homosexuals, or they will become rapists, or they will start stealing women from other tribes – and that’s what Mohammedans have been doing all along, for fourteen hundred years.

And of course when Mohammed has nine wives he allows a special favor to his disciples – they can have four wives. But he has not made any limit.

One of his disciples, the Nizam of Hyderabad in India had five hundred wives – just in this century.

This is so stupid and ugly. Women are treated like cattle.

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great diamonds have come from Hyderabad – the Kohinoor and others. He himself had so many diamonds that once a year they had to be put into sunlight and given air. They were not counted because counting was impossible, he had so many.

His whole palace had basements which were filled with diamonds, and they would be taken out and spread on all the terraces of his temple. I have seen the terraces; the palace is one of the biggest palaces in India. He had all the money, he had all the power. He was old, but he could purchase any woman. He could give enough money to any man and purchase his daughter. I don’t think he even remembered the names of his five hundred wives, and I don’t think that all the wives had seen him. Perhaps the early ones may have seen him.

And he was not worth seeing anyway, an ugly man, and so superstitious that you will not believe it

– in the night he used to put one of his feet in a bucket full of salt, the whole night. The reason was that he was very much afraid of ghosts. And Mohammedans believe that if one of your feet is in salt, ghosts don’t come close to you.

When I went there he was dead, but I asked his son, ”Have you put the bucket in his grave? –

because ghosts in the palace are not many, but in the graveyard there are ghosts and ghosts and nobody else, and in the dark night that old man....” The son said, ”You are right! We forgot completely about the bucket of salt.” I said, ”It is not too late.” Mohammedans don’t make marble graves or anything, just mud graves – to show humbleness. So I said, ”Just arrange with the gravedigger to put one of his feet into a bucket of salt.”

He said, ”I will do it. I myself sleep with a bucket because ghosts are very dangerous; and certainly in the graveyard there are only ghosts and nobody else.” Mohammedans have invaded people, forced people at the point of sword to become Mohammedans because there is no other religion which can save you. And the KORAN is the only book on which there is no commentary because no commentary is needed, it is the last word of God. The commentator may put in his own ideas – you have to read it directly. And in fact no commentary is possible because there is nothing to comment on.

It is not a religious book at all. All kinds of things are in it – how many wives you should marry...

things which have nothing to do with religion. And things which have to do with religion are not there at all, and it is the holy book!

Both these religions, Christianity and Mohammedanism, are by-products of Judaism. And if these two are responsible for all the cruelties, the ultimate responsibility goes to Judaism, which is the father religion of both, because Jews got the idea that they are the chosen people of God. From that simple idea, the whole stream of fanatics – Jewish, Christian, Mohammedan – has been born.

Once you start thinking that you are the chosen people of God, that God has given you something special that is not given to anybody else, you are setting yourself up as ”holier-than-thou,” and the danger starts.

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A religious person is the most humble person. He is not a prophet, he is not a messiah, he is not a savior. At the most he is only a finger pointing to the moon.

Don’t pay much attention to the finger. Look at the moon and forget the finger – because the purpose of the finger was just to point to the moon.

A truly religious person simply shows the way, the way that he has traveled, and with the condition that you are not to follow it in detail. It is just a vague idea I am giving to you, because your way cannot be exactly the same. You are a different person, you have your own uniqueness. My experience may strengthen your search, my explanation of the way may help you to find your way.

But no religious person ever tries to convert anybody.

Conversion is an ugly word. It hides in it spiritual slavery.

Mohammed continuously carried a sword with him. His whole life was just fighting, killing. And you will wonder – on his sword he had written, ”My message is peace.” The word ‘Islam’, which is the name of the religion of Mohammed, means peace. A strange kind of world – the religion means peace, and on the sword also is written ”My message is peace”, but Mohammedans have killed and burned, massacred whole towns without mercy. And still I say their intention was to save people.

I would like you to be aware: don’t be too interested in saving somebody. That is an interference in somebody’s life. You can explain your experience, you can share your experience; and if the other finds something useful in it, if the heart of the other person starts throbbing with something in it, that is his business. It is not conversion, it is simply a human communication.

These two religions are the ugliest in the world. And they go on doing one ugly thing after another.

And when it is done in the name of religion, people simply accept it – whatever it is, however stupid it is. It just has to be given a good name and that will do.

For example, Jews go on doing circumcision. Mohammedans also do it, but at a later stage, not when the child is very small. At a later stage it is more painful. But what is this nonsense? It is symbolic of the fact that anything, once it gives the idea that you belong to a certain community, that you have a certain identity, can take on a religious flavor.

I have heard: one bishop used to live opposite a rabbi, and both were competitors in everything.

The bishop sold his old Ford and purchased a new Chevrolet. The rabbi was just coming out when the bishop was pouring water on the Chevrolet. The rabbi said, ”What are you doing?” The bishop said, ”I am baptizing the Chevrolet I have purchased. Now I am making it Christian.” Now this was too much for the rabbi. The next day he managed to purchase a Cadillac, and when the bishop came out, the rabbi came out with garden scissors and started cutting the exhaust pipe.

The bishop said, ”What are you doing?”

He said, ”Circumcision. I am making this Cadillac a Jew.” Humanity has been in the hands of these people, and still their grip is strong.

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A new man can emerge only if such idiotic beliefs completely disappear from human consciousness.

Man can evolve spiritually; no belief is needed – either to be Hindu, Mohammedan or Christian. In fact all beliefs are barriers. Once you believe in a thing you stop searching for it; when you believe it, there is no need to search for it. If you believe and still search, then your belief is not complete, is not total, there is doubt in it; then your belief is only hypothetical.

All the religions have stopped people’s seeking and searching by giving them beliefs – and any kind of belief is dangerous.

My own approach is: start with no belief, start with a clarity of mind, start with intelligence. Be available to whatever you come across, but without any prejudice. Only then is there a possibility to find the truth. And it is truth that saves – neither Christ saves anybody, nor Mohammed saves anybody, nor Krishna saves anybody.

It is truth that is a deliverance.

It is truth that makes you free from all garbage, the rotten past. It gives you a new birth.

Once I was sitting by the side of the Ganges in Allahabad alone, in a very lonely spot, and I saw a man jump into the river. I thought he must be taking a bath, but then he started shouting, ”Help!

Save me!” – he was drowning.

I don’t believe in saving anybody, but I thought that this is a totally different case. So I jumped in after him and I pulled him out. It was hard, he was a very big and fat fellow, but somehow I brought him out. And he started being very angry with me. He said, ”Why did you save me?” I said, ”This is something! You were shouting, ‘Save me, help me!’ I am not a person to save anybody, but there was nobody else here, and I thought that this is a totally different context. But why are you getting angry?”

He said, ”I was really going to commit suicide.”

”Then,” I said, ”why did you start shouting, ‘Save me, help me’? You should have committed suicide

– I would not have disturbed you. I was simply sitting silently, I was not interfering with you.” He said, ”What to do? I wanted to commit suicide, and with a total decisiveness I had jumped in.

But when the cold water touched me, I forgot all that, and when I started drowning and came up, I don’t know how, but I started shouting, ‘Help me, save me!’” I said, ”Don’t be worried. Come here.”

He said, ”What do you mean?”

I said, ”You just come close to me.” He came. I pushed him back into the water. He went under once and started shouting again, ”Save me, help me! What are you doing?” I said, ”Now I am not going to be worried. I did wrong the first time – please forgive me for that time.

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He said, ”This is not” – and it was difficult to say anything because he was going down and up –

”This is not a joke! Just save me. I don’t want to commit suicide!” Somebody else jumped in and saved him. I said, ”You are doing something wrong because that fellow wants to commit suicide.”

And that fellow said, ”No, I have dropped the idea. It is too difficult, I will find some easier way. This going under water and coming up – it is too much for me.” I said, ”I can help you with good ideas about how to commit suicide.” He said, ”You seem to be a strange man. First you pushed me into the river – I had never expected that anybody would do it.”

I said, ”I simply did... when I saw that I had done something wrong, I had to put it right. I put you back into your position. But I can suggest to you some better ways. Just near here a railway line goes by, just lie down there. And it is a junction, a big junction; every moment trains are going by.” He said, ”The idea is good, but right now I am feeling hungry.” I said, ”That is your problem. You can go home, take your meal, and if you are afraid that the train may be late, then bring a tiffin carrier with your food. Lie down on the railroad with the tiffin carrier by your side; if the train is late, you can eat. I can give you any suggestion you want, but I will not do anything for you.”

Everybody has a right to live his life according to his own light.

We can make the light brighter, but by cutting off the head of somebody, you are not going to help him become religious. Or giving bread and service or a job or education, opening a hospital, you are not going to help people to be religious; you are simply playing a game of numbers, which is a political game – the politics of numbers.

Mohammedanism and Christianity both have proved simply evil.

I was telling you just the other day that in the Middle Ages they killed thousands of women on the order of the pope because they were witches. And what was the criterion? How did you find out a woman was a witch? The criterion was that anybody could report about any woman that she was a witch, and then that woman was tortured so much, unless she confessed that she was a witch. And that confession meant that she had had intercourse, sexual intercourse, with the devil. And once she had accepted it, she was burned. They forced her to confess, tortured her, and then punished her.

There were special courts arranged by the pope; any woman or man could report to the court if they wanted divorce. There was only one way in the Middle Ages; the woman had to say that the man was impotent or the man himself had to confess that he was impotent.

And whenever such a case was there in the courts, great crowds would gather to see the scene

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the seats – it was great entertainment for them. The man had to stand naked, and before a crowd he had to prove whether he was potent or impotent. If he was saying that he was potent, and his woman was saying something otherwise, then he had to show his penis erect before the court. What kind of religion is this, and what business are they doing?

First, it is really difficult when a crowd is watching and you are afraid – and it is a very sensitive matter. Even a potent man may not be able to have an erection with so many voyeurs in deep silence watching him.

And if he had an erection then he had to show the second step: ejaculate there before the court.

But that was not enough: the third step was the final one, he had to make love to his wife before the court. Now what kind of ugliness in the name of religion is this?

So a table was placed there, a naked woman lying down on it, and the man was doing all kinds of gymnastics to prove that he was potent. And mostly even potent people failed – because of the crowd, so many people watching, and so much fear, ”If I fail, then the whole world will know that I am impotent.” This was done by religions.

Mohammedans, I told you, marry many women, and if they find anybody in any homosexual relationship, they cut off their hands. You force them into a homosexual relationship because they don’t have any woman available, and then the punishment is to cut off their hands! You are almost killing them, because now they will not be able to do any work. How are they going to earn their food? – you have finished them.

And with their hands removed, wherever they go, they will be condemned, stoned, and finally they will be killed by people. And this is done in the name of religion, religiousness; but I don’t see there is any connection between such things and religiousness.

One Mohammedan, Khalif Omar, burned the greatest library of the world in those days, in Alexandria. It had all the treasures and all the developed literature, poetry and history of the continent Atlantis – which has since drowned in the Atlantic. It was immensely valuable because Atlantis had reached almost to the same level of civilization as we are now – thousands of years before. From Atlantis they had gathered many books. Alexandria’s library was so big – you can’t imagine: when Omar burnt it, the fire continued for six months to finish off the whole library.

And the way Omar did it is worth understanding. He went into the library to the chief librarian with a burning torch in one hand and the KORAN in the other hand. And he said to the chief librarian, ”I have just two questions to ask you. One is: is there anything more in your library than the KORAN?

If there is, then it need not exist because all that is true is in the KORAN. Apart from that, everything is untrue.

”The second question: if you say that it contains only the same content as the KORAN, then too this library need not exist. What is the point? – the KORAN has it all. Why keep this big library and this arrangement? It is unnecessary. So in both the cases I am going to burn the library – whether you say yes or no will not make any difference.” And he burned the library.

Those who had seen the library – for example, Pythagoras – remember that perhaps never again would there be such a rich treasure. The whole civilization of Atlantis – all its growth, all its scientific, technological, literary and artistic treasures – everything was collected in Alexandria.

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First it was thought just to be a myth, but now scientists have found that there is a vast continent under the Atlantic – ruins of a great civilization, miles down.

But this has been the attitude of the Mohammedans. They destroyed the library in Alexandria. They destroyed in India immensely beautiful sculpture because Mohammedanism does not believe in images. Although it is not right, because they go to the Kaaba to worship a stone. What does it matter if the stone is a stone or a statue? They are stone-worshippers.

In India there were millions of beautiful statues of Buddha, Mahavira, other mystics – they have destroyed all of them. Somebody’s head is missing, somebody’s hands are missing. They spoiled thousands of temples, temples which were built in hundreds of years.

In Khajuraho – I have been studying the temples of Khajuraho for years – there were one hundred temples. Seventy temples have been completely destroyed. Thirty temples, out of fear, the Hindus covered with mud; they were in a valley so they were saved. Now they have been restored, the mud has been removed.

Looking at those thirty temples – even just one temple – you can understand what they have destroyed. Seventy temples...! One temple seems to be the work of thousands of sculptors over hundreds of years. It has so many beautiful statues. Not a single inch is uncarved in the whole temple, and the temples are big; they all have thousands of statues covering all the walls of the temple; and each statue is a piece of art, nothing like it exists anywhere in the world.

Now, it is one thing to believe that you don’t worship images; it is another thing to destroy somebody else’s images. It is his freedom to worship an image or not. You can explain to him that it is not useful; but to destroy his image is inhuman, it is destroying human rights, birthrights.

Christianity and Mohammedanism both have been a calamity to human progress. Other religions have done harm to human progress, but they have also contributed something which is beautiful.

These two religions have only contributed ugliness; there is nothing beautiful that they have contributed.

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CHAPTER 33

I need your intelligence, not your surrender

11 June 1986 pm in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

LOOKING INTO WHAT IS MY ENEMY NUMBER ONE, I REMEMBERED THAT AS A CHILD WHEN

MY FATHER USED TO BEAT ME WITH A BELT OR SOMETIMES EVEN A WHIP, I WOULD

NOT CRY OR IN ANYWAY SHOW HIM I WAS HURTING. AS SOON AS HE WOULD LET ME

GO, I WOULD SING, THINKING OVER AND OVER AGAIN, ”I WOULD RATHER DIE THAN

SURRENDER.”

THIS EVERYDAY SELF-HYPNOSIS FOR YEARS MUST HAVE CREATED A SUBTLE ATTITUDE

OF PASSIVE RESISTANCE.

BEING WITH YOU I HAVE NOT HAD MUCH OPPORTUNITY TO WATCH THIS RESISTANCE

BECAUSE BEING AVAILABLE TO YOU AND YOUR WORK IS THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS

TO ME NOW. BUT MY FEAR IS: HOW DEEP HAS THIS CHILDISH DETERMINATION NOT TO

SURRENDER GONE? AND HOW CAN I ALLOW IT TO SURFACE?

The attitude of not surrendering is in everyone. It is something natural. It simply means that nature wants you to be yourself, not somebody else’s idea of you.

So when such a situation arises in childhood, that you have to constantly fight against surrendering, the idea goes very deep. It is a natural idea. Nothing is wrong in it. This has to be understood very 345

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clearly, that there is nothing wrong in it. It can be used in a right way, it can be used in a wrong way, but the idea itself is very natural.

People can exploit you, using your own natural instincts; people can also help you to grow in the right direction, using the same natural instincts.

So the first thing you have to do is you have to drop the idea that there is something wrong that you have repressed within yourself. There is nothing wrong in it. It is perfectly good that you did not surrender, that you resisted, that you kept your identity safe and well guarded.

As far as the world is concerned, up to this point everything is absolutely right. The problem arises only with the wrong kind of teacher, who again asks you to surrender.

The right master never asks you to surrender. His very presence is enough.

There is no need for him to ask for any surrender. Just in his presence you feel so perfectly accepted that the question of rejecting him, the question of creating a wall between him and you, does not arise. There is no passive resistance.

The problem arises only if you happen to be with a wrong kind of teacher; one who is not a master, one who has not a presence, one who has not yet realized himself, one who is simply repeating somebody else’s words, quoting scriptures – the kind of man who is between inverted commas. He will insist for surrender.

And anybody who insists on surrender, resist him, because the very effort by anybody to impose himself upon somebody else is against human dignity.

I don’t want you to surrender. I want you to be yourself, purely and simply just your natural being.

That’s enough. It will create the bridge between me and you.

I am not here to enslave you spiritually.

I am here to make you free from all spiritual enslavement.

The people who have been asking for surrender are asking for slavery in the name of spirituality.

And millions of people on the earth are just living in a spiritual slavery – with different names –

Christians, Hindus, Jews, Buddhists. It doesn’t matter what name, but they have surrendered their freedom, they have surrendered their awareness, they have surrendered their capacity to choose what is right and what is wrong.

The real master simply teaches you what is right and what is wrong. To accept it or not is simply left to your intelligence, not to your surrender.

I need your intelligence, not your surrender. I need your consciousness, not your slavery.

So there is no problem at all. However deep the idea has gone, let it remain there; it is a perfectly good protection in a society where everybody is trying to make the other in some way dominated, The Transmission of the Lamp

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possessed. It is good to have great stamina – that whatever happens, you are going to remain yourself.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

AFTER TWO WEEKS OF HYPNOSIS SESSIONS WITH KAVEESHA, I CAN NOW SEE MY

RESISTANCE TO RELAXATION. IN LOOKING FOR A CAUSE FOR THIS, I SAW THAT TO ME, TO RELAX MEANS TO BE LAZY AND USELESS.

MY FAMILY WOULD RATHER BE SICK THAN LET GO OF THEIR SO-CALLED POWER, THINKING THAT BEING BUSY AND FRANTIC MEANS SUCCESS. I LEARNED THEIR MESSAGE

TOO WELL, AND NOW, ONCE MORE, I NEED YOU TO REDEFINE A WORD.

WOULD YOU PLEASE EXPLAIN WHAT RELAXATION REALLY IS?

Relaxation is not something big. It is a simple matter. It is just waking sleep. You need every day a few hours of sleep. Try to understand the phenomenon of sleep.

The child in the mother’s womb sleeps twenty-four hours a day for nine months continuously. After he is born, slowly, slowly the sleep hours are cut – twenty-two hours he will be sleeping, twenty hours he will be sleeping, eighteen hours he will be sleeping, sixteen hours he will be sleeping.

And as he becomes mature, it comes to a fixed normal routine of seven or eight hours. This will continue until he starts feeling old. This will be different with each individual, because somebody will die at seventy, somebody will die at eighty; and some fellows are so stubborn, they will die at ninety, a hundred – and there are people who have gone beyond a hundred.

So as a person starts feeling old, tired, his sleep is cut even more – he is sleeping three to four hours, then slowly to two to three hours.

Why does this happen? – that in the mother’s womb a child is sleeping twenty-four hours a day, and an old man is sleeping only two or three hours in the night?

The reason is that in sleep your body functions perfectly without your interference. For nine months in the mother’s womb, the body works so much – it will not work that much in the whole remaining life – because in those nine months the body has to pass through all the evolutionary steps that humanity has taken since the very beginning.

The scientists now say that life was born in the ocean, and the child in the beginning is exactly like a fish. In nine months he covers almost two to three million years of progress. The body is involved in such a work that it does not want any interference; and if a child is awake, there will be interference.

The old man, as he gets older his body is no longer building any new tissues, any new nerves. The old nerves are dying, and they are not being replaced by new ones. The inner work of the body is lessened because the man is going to die. Now the preparation for death is cutting off the sleep.

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Just as in preparation for life twenty-four hours of sleep a day was needed, now preparation for death needs almost no sleep.

Relaxation is a deliberate effort to allow the body to do its work without your interference. You simply become absent; you leave the body as if it is a dead corpse – and it is needed. As human life has become more and more tense, more and more frantic, more and more speedy, the ordinary sleep is not enough. Relaxation leads you to a deeper realm of sleep.

Hypnos means sleep. The word simply means sleep, but a sleep of a different kind – consciously produced, not biologically but psychologically. Biologically, sleep can go only to a certain extent, but psychologically, sleep can penetrate very deep. It all depends on you.

The society certainly prepares you for activity, for ambition, for speed, for efficiency. It does not prepare you to relax and to do nothing and to rest. It condemns all kinds of restfulness as laziness.

It condemns people who are not madly active – because the whole society is madly active, trying to reach somewhere. Nobody knows where, but everybody is concerned: ”Go faster!” I have heard about a man and his wife driving on a road as fast as they can. The wife was telling the man again and again, ”Just look at the map.”

And the man was saying, ”You keep quiet. Shut up! I am the driver. It doesn’t matter where we are going, what matters is that we are going with speed. The real thing is speed.” Nobody knows in the world where they are going, and why they are going.

There is a very famous anecdote about George Bernard Shaw. He was traveling from London to some other place and the ticket collector came. He looked in all his pockets, in the bag, he opened his suitcase. And the ticket collector said, ”I know you. Everybody knows you. You are George Bernard Shaw. You are a world-famous man. The ticket must be there, you must have forgotten where you have put it. Don’t be worried. Leave it.” George Bernard Shaw said to the man, ”You don’t understand my problem. I’m not looking for the ticket just to show you. I want to know where I am going. That stupid ticket – if it is lost, I am lost.

You think I am looking for the ticket for you? You tell me where I am going.” The ticket collector said, ”That is too much. I was just trying to help you. Don’t get disturbed. Maybe you can remember it later on by the time you reach the station. How can I tell you where you are going?”

But everybody is in the same position. It is good that there are no spiritual ticket collectors around, checking, ”Where are you going?” Otherwise you will be simply standing without any answer. You have been going, there is no doubt about it. Your whole life you have been going, somewhere. But actually you don’t know where you are going.

You reach a graveyard, that is one thing that’s certain. But that is the one place you were not going to, the one place nobody wants to go, but finally reaches. That is the terminus where all trains end up. If you don’t have a ticket, wait for the terminus. And then they say, ”Get down. Now the train goes nowhere anymore.”

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In my village we had a beautiful graveyard just by the side of the river. It was a very silent place, and nobody came there unless he was brought. Nobody wanted to come there. I had found it a beautiful place to meditate, to relax, to rest. Beautiful marble graves – big trees with great shadow. It was a beautiful place.

My father was very angry when he came to know – that when I suddenly disappeared, and I could not be found anywhere.... Somebody told him, ”You will not find him whatever you do, because one place you will never look and that is the graveyard. And I have seen him, because going to the river is my business.” He was a fisherman. He said, ”I have seen him many times going to the graveyard; and he disappears there.”

My father said, ”This is strange. Why should he go to the graveyard? Let him come home.” Nobody even tried to look for me in the graveyard; nobody wanted to go there.

When in the evening I came home, everybody was angry, and they stopped me outside. They said,

”First you take a bath. And every day you have been going to the graveyard?” I said, ”Finally one has to go there. Why are you getting so angry? You all will be going there. I am simply visiting the place where finally one has to rest. I am learning already to rest there. One day I will be resting underneath the marble, right now I rest on top of the marble. And it is a tremendously beautiful and silent place.”

They said, ”We are not concerned about these strange explanations. First, you take a bath.” I said, ”I can take a bath. I will take a bath every day, that is not a trouble for me. That will not prevent me going to the graveyard, because your temple is continuously crowded, it is a marketplace – it is in the marketplace. Every place is full of people – wherever you go, there are people. That is the only place where there are many people, but they are all relaxing, in deep relaxation, with no way to wake up again.”

In the night my mother asked, ”But you must be feeling afraid.” I said, ”Why should I feel afraid? Those people are dead. One should be afraid of the living, because those are the people who can do something. These poor people are dead, they cannot do anything.

They cannot even get out of their graves. And you are afraid of them, and they are simply relaxing, relaxing forever.”

The whole society is geared for work. It is a workaholic society. It does not want you to learn relaxation, so from the very childhood it puts in your mind anti-relaxation ideas.

I am not telling you to relax the whole day. Do your work, but find out some time for yourself, and that can be found only in relaxation. And you will be surprised that if you can relax for an hour or two hours out of each twenty-four hours, it will give you a deeper insight into yourself.

It will change your behavior outwardly – you will become more calm, more quiet. It will change the quality of your work – it will be more artistic and more graceful. You will be committing fewer mistakes than you used to commit before, because now you are more together, more centered.

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Relaxation has miraculous powers.

It is not laziness.

The lazy man may look, from the outside, as if he is not working at anything, but his mind is going as fast as it can; and the relaxed man – his body is relaxed, his mind is relaxed, his heart is relaxed.

Just relaxation on all three layers – body, mind, heart – for two hours he is almost absent. In these two hours his body recovers, his heart recovers, his intelligence recovers, and you will see in his work all that recovery.

He will not be a loser – although he will not be frantic anymore, he will not be unnecessarily running hither and thither. He will go directly to the point where he wants to go. And he will do things that are needed to be done; he will not be doing unnecessary trivia. He will say only that which is needed to be said. His words will become telegraphic; his movements will become graceful; his life will become a poetry.

Relaxation can transform you to such beautiful heights – and it is such a simple technique. There is nothing much in it; just for a few days you will find it difficult because of the old habit. To break down the old habit, it takes a few days.

So go on using the hypnotic technique for relaxation. It is bound to come to you. It will bring new light to your eyes, a new freshness to your being, and it will help you to understand what meditation is. It is just the first steps outside the door of the temple of meditation. With just deeper and deeper relaxation it becomes meditation.

Meditation is the name of the deepest relaxation.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

IT ALWAYS AMAZES ME HOW CHEMICALS CAN HAVE SUCH A DRASTIC EFFECT, NOT ONLY

ON THE BODY, BUT ALSO ON THE MIND.

FOR EXAMPLE, MY NEW BIRTH CONTROL PILL CONTAINS DOUBLE THE AMOUNT OF

ESTROGEN AS MY OLD ONE; AND IMMEDIATELY UPON TAKING IT, IT THREW MY BODY AND

PERSONALITY INTO CHAOS – NOT JUST PHYSICAL SYMPTOMS SUCH AS NAUSEA, BUT

ALSO A SENSE OF DULLNESS AND LOW ENERGY, A BRITTLE TENSENESS, AND A FEELING

OF BEING COMPLETELY ”OFF”.

IT IS SO FRUSTRATING TO FEEL SO HELPLESS IN THE HANDS OF A FEW CHEMICALS AND

HORMONES. YET I WAS AMAZED TO NOTICE THAT SITTING WITH YOU IN THESE MEETINGS, ALL THE SYMPTOMS DISAPPEAR. THEY ARE THERE BEFORE AND AFTERWARDS, BUT NOT

WHILE IN YOUR PRESENCE.

WHAT IS IT ABOUT YOU THAT INFLUENCES EVEN THE ACTION OF CHEMISTRY? AND IS

THERE SOMETHING WE AND SCIENCE CAN LEARN FROM THIS TO HELP PEOPLE BE MORE

INDEPENDENT IN SUCH CIRCUMSTANCES?

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Our whole structure of body and mind is made of matter. And unless you transcend your body-mind structure and become a watcher – beyond both – they will deeply affect your behavior, your thinking, your emotions, your sentiments. Hormones, chemicals or anything – they are the components of our body, but they are not the components of our consciousness.

That’s why, when you are sitting here with me, you forget all about the body, all about the hormones, and without your effort a certain transcendence happens. You reach a quality of silence, watchfulness. That’s why their effects are no longer felt – because you are far away, beyond the boundary line of their effect.

One Western seeker of truth, in the beginning of this century, was moving in the Middle East, in India, in Tibet, in Japan, in China, and he reported many strange experiences and people that he came across.

One of the men he describes is a very well-known Hindu mystic, Brahma Yogi. He became famous in the 1920s all over the world. His only quality was that he could drink any kind of poison, and no poison affected him. And he moved around the world in every university, every scientific lab to show the experts. And they were all puzzled, because poisons which will kill immediately... and that man was taking twenty, thirty times more and he was not even affected. He would not even become unconscious.

But in Calcutta he died just by accident. At Calcutta University he exhibited his capacity, drank the poison, but nobody knew his secret. His secret was simple. The secret was that he could keep his witness for thirty minutes without any wavering. In those thirty minutes he would drink the poison, finish the show, rush back to his hotel, and vomit everything.

And yogis know how to vomit – because that is one of the parts of their training – to drink water as much as you can and then throw it up. I have seen people drinking two, three buckets of water with living fish in the water; and then they will throw up the water, and the fish will come out alive.

His whole expertise was that for thirty minutes he remained a witness, but more than thirty minutes he could not. The accident happened because there was a problem on the road and the traffic was blocked, and he could not reach the hotel in time. He died in the car because after thirty minutes he became again identified with the body and the mind.

Paul Brunton is the man who went around the whole of Asia finding out all these strange kinds of people. Naturally everybody was impressed, although there is nothing spiritual in it; the strategy was part of a spiritual technique which he was using for trivia, wasting his time.

If he had not wasted his time, if he had continued to practice witnessing – forty-eight minutes is enough. One who can be a witness for forty-eight minutes continuously, without any coffee break –

that man has gone beyond the body-mind complex. Now he can live, but he is living almost above his body, not within his body.

So what is happening to you here is that you forget your body, you forget your hormones and the pill and everything; you become so silent, so peaceful, so attuned with me. If you can remain the same way afterwards, the effects will not show; if you can remain the same way the whole day, the effects will not show.

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But out of old habit we immediately fall back – get identified with the body – and then anything that the body feels, we think we are feeling. Now we have lost the distinction.

In fact, you know that that body is feeling it. When you are feeling thirsty, it will be a little complex to say every time, ”I think, I watch, that the body is thirsty.” Your family and people will get angry at you, saying, ”Stop this nonsense; just say simply that you are feeling thirsty.” But for your inner self it is worth remembering that you are always a watcher, you never feel; the body feels and you watch, and you are like a mirror. The body feels and the mirror reflects, but the reflection does not change the mirror, it does not leave any marks on the mirror. The mirror remains pure.

Then you can be having immense trouble with the body, and yet you can remain calm and quiet.

You know that there is trouble and there is pain, but you are simply a watcher.

Learn the art of watching, and you have learned all the religion there is.

Question 4

BELOVED OSHO,

AWAKENING SEEMS MORE LIKE A PROCESS THAN A SINGLE LIGHTNING-BOLT TYPE OF

EXPERIENCE AS IS OFTEN DESCRIBED IN ZEN STORIES.

COULD YOU PLEASE SAY MORE ABOUT THE DIFFERENT WAYS THE GUEST COMES TO

ONE’S DOORSTEP?

It can happen both the ways. It depends on what kind of method you are using. There are gradual methods in which enlightenment comes very gradually, part by part. And there are sudden methods in which for years nothing happens; and then suddenly one morning like a lightning bolt, you are awakened.

Because of these two – and there are only two possibilities – Zen has two schools. You are aware only of the sudden school, because I go on telling you stories from the sudden school, for the simple reason that the gradual school has no stories. The enlightenment happens, but there is not anything that makes a story. Even the man to whom gradual enlightenment happens does not know with certainty that the process is complete, unless his master says so.

It is something like this. If you put two buckets – one with boiling water and one with just ordinary cold water which is slowly becoming warmer, the fire is there.... And you put a frog in the boiling water, he will simply jump out. If you put the same frog in the gradually heating water, which is going to boil at some point, the frog may settle there. It is cozy and lukewarm and good, and it is becoming so gradually warmer, that he cannot see the difference.

And the moment comes, the water is boiling, and the poor frog is boiling but he cannot jump. From the lukewarm to the boiling point, the change has been so slow that the poor frog cannot make the distinction.

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The same is the situation.... There are methods of gradual enlightenment – vipassana is a gradual enlightenment method. Slowly, slowly, changes will go on happening; you will feel better and better and better. But the koan is a sudden school method. Sudden school methods create beautiful stories.

For example, one of the great masters, Rinzai, was given the famous koan of ”the Sound of One Hand Clapping.” He meditated over it; and he would find something, and he would come to the master. And the master just seeing his face would say, ”No, no! Get lost! Meditate; don’t waste time.” He wouldn’t even listen – that he had brought a conclusion.

And Rinzai would go again and sit in his bamboo grove to meditate. Again it had gone wrong. It continued to happen.

One day he insisted, he said, ”You have to listen to me. I have heard it! And you are simply just looking at me and don’t even allow me to enter the room. You say, ‘No, no, just go and meditate.

Don’t waste time.’ Now it is too much. For months I have been meditating. I have to say it.” The master said, ”Okay, say what you have found.” He said, ”Sitting in my bamboo grove, I heard the breeze passing through the bamboo grove making a beautiful sound. That is it.” And he was not hoping....

The master slapped him so hard on the face that he forgot all about the bamboo grove, meditation, the sound of one hand clapping. And the master said, ”Did you hear the sound of one hand clapping?”

He said, ”This is the sound of one hand clapping? You slapped me. If this was the sound, then why you were unnecessarily harassing me for months?”

The master said, ”This is not the sound. This is the reward for your insistence on wasting my time and your time. Now get lost and meditate. Find it out.” This was very insulting. Rinzai was very well educated, connected with the royal family. With great determination he went back and sat in his grove. And he said, ”I am not going to move from here unless I hear it.”

Days passed. The master enquired, ”Where is Rinzai? I don’t see him, and he does not come to report.”

They all said, ”He is just sitting in his bamboo grove.” The master went there, shook him. And he said with closed eyes, ”Don’t disturb me.” And the way he said, ”Don’t disturb me,” with a face of silence as if he was a Buddha statue!

And the master said, ”Open your eyes and listen. I am your master.” He said, ”Forget all about it.”

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The master said, ”What happened about the koan I had given to you?” He said, ”What koan? I don’t remember anything. But don’t disturb me, please, whoever you are.” The master had to wake him, force him to open his eyes.

He looked at the master as if he was looking at a stranger, someone who has not been known before. And he asked the master, ”Who are you?”

The master said, ”Now you have heard it. Come along with me.” But he said, ”Who are you, and where you are taking me? I was rejoicing so much. There was no hand, and there was no sound, there was simply silence.” The master said, ”That silence is what we call the sound of one hand clapping. You heard it, and you heard it so deeply you have even forgotten me.” He brought Rinzai back to the monastery, introduced him to all the monks saying, ”He has heard it.” And when someone hears, he does not come to report because what is there to report? There is no sound. One goes on insisting to listen to the sound of one hand clapping, and a moment comes

– one gets tired and forgets all about the hand and the sound, and only silence prevails. Even the desire or the idea to report does not arise.

And the master said, ”Rinzai is going to be my successor, because he is my first disciple who has even forgotten me. In his silence he has forgotten the koan, he has forgotten the master, he has forgotten his own name. He has simply become silence.” The sudden school makes stories, because its very methodology is such that it gives scope for sudden turns. But both methods are absolutely correct, equally valuable. It depends on the master to give one to someone according to his capacity, potentiality.

For example, in the modern world the gradual method seems to be more useful. The sudden method can be dangerous to the modern man. Few modern people may be able to realize through the sudden method. Most of them will go mad – they are already on the verge of madness, so it is better to gradually change them rather than a sudden change. They may not be able to absorb it.

But it does not matter whether you become enlightened gradually or you become enlightened suddenly. What matters is that you become awakened.

Most of the people in the world who have become awakened have followed the gradual method. Just very few people – and particularly in Japan – have used the sudden method; it suits the Japanese character. Japanese have a little different character from others, subtle differences.

The whole world – all the cultures, white and black – if they want to say yes, they will nod their head; only Japanese won’t do that. If they want to say yes, they move their head from side to side.

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When for the first time Japanese started coming to me, I was so puzzled. I will ask something, and they are saying yes, but their yes is not the way the whole world does it, nodding the head up and down. That is their no. Moving the head side to side is their yes.

So I was at first very much puzzled. The person who used to translate, she told me, ”Don’t get puzzled. When they nod this way they are saying yes, and when they do the other way they are saying no”.

I said, ”My God!” Because I asked them, ”Don’t you want to take sannyas?” And they nod the head.

And I say, ”Then come” – and they are saying no! The Japanese character has developed through the centuries in a very different way.

And then Zen came, and it molded itself according to the Japanese character. The sudden method was very suitable. Although there is the gradual school, it never became famous; the sudden school became very famous. But to explain the sudden school to the modern mind is very difficult, because it is illogical.

Sometimes Gurdjieff used it, but it is illogical and dangerous. He was working with a small group in Tiflis in Russia, and there was, just by the side, a small canal. He was sitting inside the house, and the canal was empty – the water was not there. It used to be opened once in a while for irrigation purposes.

And the people were passing from this side to that side, and he was teaching them a certain exercise,

”stop”; so whenever he would say ”stop!”, everyone had to stop the way he was. If one foot was up, then he had not to put it down, it had to remain that way – he had to stand on one foot. And whatever he was doing, whatever the position, the posture, he had not to change anything.

A few people had been told ”stop!” while crossing the canal and suddenly the water came. It was time for the water to come. As the water came, one person looked around, and he thought, ”Gurdjieff is inside the house, he knows nothing about the water.” He waited till the water came up to his neck, then he jumped out; he said, ”This is stupid. This is simply committing suicide.” The other person waited a little longer, till the water started touching his nose – then he jumped out.

But the third person remained. The water went over his head, but he remained as he was. Gurdjieff rushed out of the house, pulled the man out – he was unconscious – got the water out; and as he became aware, he was totally transformed.

This was a sudden enlightenment.

But a tremendous quality, trust, was needed.

He also knew, ”The master is inside the house, and he knows nothing...” but rather than saving his life, he chose to follow the exercise that he was supposed to do. The water went over his head, and Gurdjieff was aware of it – he knew the times when the water comes. It was well-managed.

Those two other persons simply missed – but they were more reasonable. This man was absolutely irrational. But he changed forever. The old mind was gone. The moment the water went over his head, it took everything with it; he was a new man.

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Sudden methods have been used by other people also, but very rarely. Sufis have used them, but very rarely. The most they have been used is in Japan, and all those stories are of tremendous beauty. But if it is done to you, you will freak out; you will not be able to assimilate it.

Your mind has developed in a very different way for centuries – towards rationality, reasonableness.

So the way of gradual enlightenment is for most people, unless it does not fit someone; then only a sudden method has to be used. Otherwise sudden methods are dangerous.

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CHAPTER 34

Truth cannot be humiliated

12 June 1986 am in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

THE OTHER NIGHT WHEN YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT THE DECADENCE AND SUICIDAL

TENDENCY OF WESTERN SOCIETY, PEAKING NOW IN THE USA, I WAS WONDERING

WHY THE WESTERN LIFESTYLE IS CAPABLE OF PENETRATING OTHER CULTURES AND

SPOILING THEM IN A SHORT TIME.

IT AMAZES ME AGAIN AND AGAIN HOW EASILY ABORIGINAL TRIBES ON ALL THE

CONTINENTS, WITH, BUT MOSTLY WITHOUT FORCE, DROP THEIR MILLENNIA-OLD

CIVILIZATION AND CULTURE AND START IMITATING THE WESTERN WAY OF LIFE – OFTEN

IN QUITE RIDICULOUS WAYS.

ABOUT FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, A FAMOUS PHOTOGRAPHER PRODUCED TWO WONDERFUL

PHOTO ALBUMS DEPICTING TWO REMOTE TRIBES IN THE SUDAN, CALLED THE NUBA.

THESE PHYSICALLY AND PSYCHICALLY VERY BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE, CREATED OVER

THOUSANDS OF YEARS – BESIDES AMAZING SKILLS AND ARTS – A SOCIAL STRUCTURE

FULL OF LOVE AND RESPECT FOR EACH OTHER. INCIDENTS OF MAJOR VIOLENCE WERE

UNKNOWN. ONE INCIDENT HAS BEEN REPORTED IN ONE OF THESE BOOKS AS A TYPICAL

EXAMPLE OF HOW THESE PEOPLE TREAT EACH OTHER.

CLAY POTS TO THEM WERE AS PRECIOUS AS THE FINEST CHINESE PORCELAIN IS TO US

– THOSE POTS CARRIED SUPPLIES OF DRINKING WATER IN THAT BAKING-HOT CLIMATE.

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ONE OF THE WORKERS DROPPED A POT BY MISTAKE AND IT BROKE. NOBODY JUMPED

ANGRILY UPON THE POOR GUY; RATHER, THEY CONSOLED THE UNLUCKY ONE AND

WORKED ON. TO ME, THIS IS HIGHLY-DEVELOPED, CULTURED BEHAVIOR – MISSING IN

OUR RAT-RACE SOCIETY.

SOME YEARS LATER THESE PEOPLE CAME FOR THE FIRST TIME IN CONTACT WITH

THE WESTERN LIFESTYLE. WITHIN TWO YEARS, THE WHOLE SOCIAL STRUCTURE HAD

COLLAPSED, DECAYED. THEY NOW RATE A TRANSISTOR RADIO, A TORN T-SHIRT, AND AN

ARMY CAP MORE HIGHLY THAN THEIR OLD VALUES. ONLY PHOTOGRAPHS SHOW WHAT

HAS BEEN LOST FOREVER.

OSHO, WHAT DRIVES PEOPLE SO EASILY INTO THE ARMS OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION, THUS DESTROYING THEIR UNIQUE HERITAGE?

It is not a question of Western society. Basically the poor are always attracted towards the rich. They desire to be rich. They can drop any culture, any civilization if they can find a way to riches.

The first thing is that their ancient culture and civilization looks to us very beautiful because we don’t know the details of their whole culture – just facets, fragments. If you know the whole culture and its implications, it won’t be difficult to see why these people dropped their heritage so easily, without resistance.

For example, in India the same has been happening for hundreds of years. Aboriginal people are becoming Christians. They have a beautiful culture seen from the outside and a highly developed sensitivity. So much so that in one culture which I have been visiting continually in central India, Bastar – the whole mountains are full of aboriginals whose culture must be at least ten thousand years old – there is no police station, there are no police, there is no court, there is no law; yet no theft happens, no murder happens.

And if sometimes a murder happens, then a very rare thing happens – which is inconceivable to the outsider. The murderer goes hundreds of miles to the capital to surrender to the police, confessing that he has murdered a fellow man and he needs to be punished. Unless he is punished, he will not find peace of mind.

These things look beautiful – nice people – but they are hungry, starving. They don’t have clothes.

They live naked. They don’t have any of the facilities that science has made available to man – no comforts, no entertainment. Their life is boring from inside – no education....

And the culture that looks to us beautiful, to them is simply taken for granted, they don’t see its beauty. They have been born in it, brought up in it. They have not suddenly come across it, they have grown slowly into it.

Things look good to us – that there is nobody who is a thief; but the truth is there is nothing to steal.

People are so poor. The same fact can be looked at from two viewpoints. Somebody can say people are so moral that locks are not needed on the houses, and people don’t use locks; but the reality is that there is nothing in the house that needs to be locked. Secondly, the lock itself is a highly technological thing for them, they cannot make locks. They are so far behind.

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Gautam Buddha, his whole life, was teaching people not to steal. Mahavira was teaching not to steal. One of Mahatma Gandhi’s successors, Vinoba Bhave, spoke in a meeting. I was only a student then. He said that at that time people were so educated, so moral, so cultured that no locks were used.

I was just graduating from the university; I wrote a note to him and I told him, ”You should tell the whole truth. Was there anything in their houses that had to be locked? Were they capable of making locks? And moreover, you will have to give a second thought to why Gautam Buddha and Mahavira

– the great teachers of that time – were telling people every day not to steal.

”How do you manage both the facts together? Either Buddha and Mahavira were mad – nobody was stealing and they were continuously preaching to people not to steal – or your story that people did not lock their houses simply means that the vast mass of people had nothing to lock. Those who had something to lock, they had guards with weapons. They also had no need of locks.” So when you look from the outside it is one thing; when you look only at one facet, it is one thing.

Their nakedness is not their innocence, it is simply their incapacity to produce clothes. Clothes are the second category of the basic necessities. The first thing is food. If there is no food, what you are going to do with clothes – making beautiful dresses for the corpses? They don’t have enough food. One meal a day – if you can manage it, you are very fortunate. No hospitals. No schools. If somebody falls sick, there is no way for them to help him to recover.

When Western civilization reached to these aboriginals, it was not their culture that impressed them.

It was not their holy BIBLE that impressed them. It was simply a question of survival: it was their capacity to give food, clothes, education, medicine, hospitals, doctors, teachers. They made the first roads so people had not to walk hundreds of miles for small things. They could use the public transport. They laid down the railway lines.

And if you look into the life of the aboriginal people in even more detail you will be surprised. They don’t murder the way we murder, but that does not mean they are not cruel. They are far more cruel.

In an aboriginal tribe, if somebody behaves in a way which is not in tune with the tribe, he is boycotted, completely boycotted. Nobody will speak to him. He cannot draw water from the tribe’s well; he may have to go miles to fetch water for himself. He is left completely alone and isolated. He cannot ask for any help in any trouble. If his hut catches fire, nobody from the tribe will come to help him to put the fire out. Once they have boycotted somebody, he does not exist for them.

This is psychological murder – far more dangerous than sitting in an electric chair and within a second you are transported into another world. That is the simplest way, the most kind way.

But this man will be in constant trouble. No job can he find. No other tribe will accept him. And what was his crime? Small crimes. For example, he has fallen in love with a girl who belongs to another tribe. And this is not allowed; you should marry into your own tribe. And your parents should decide on the marriage, not you.

Now his crime was that he loved, and what is being done to him will be done to the girl too by the other tribe. And in those mountains and forests, you cannot live alone. Life is so interwoven that everybody is dependent on everybody else for everything.

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In aboriginal tribes there is nothing like freedom, no concept of freedom of speech. The elders decide everything. No younger person can even raise a question – that is disrespectful, and he will be punished for it. And you know their punishments.

Just the other day Anando brought me the news. The chief minister of Punjab, under the pressure from the central government, took over the Sikh holy temple – the Golden Temple of Amritsar – just a few weeks ago. This was the second time that the army has taken it over. Immediately the high priest of the temple expelled the chief minister – because he is also a Sikh.

Then he was in a dilemma. If he does not follow the central government’s orders he will be thrown out of power. If he follows their orders, he is going against his own religion and they will punish him.

So he had to choose between the two. He thought perhaps the religious people would be more humane. But what happened was that the whole Punjab was in uproar against the chief minister, that he should resign immediately, or he should go to the Golden Temple, touch the feet of the high priest, confess his crime and accept whatsoever punishment is given.

Resignation was difficult because if he resigns from the chief ministership, he will be killed immediately – the Sikhs will kill him; his own people will kill him because he has trespassed their holy place. And he was one of them.

So he went to touch the feet of the priest and the priest said, ”I forgive you, but you will have to do a penance. For seven days in Delhi” – they have a big Sikh temple in Delhi – ”you sit outside the gate where people leave their shoes.” And he has been doing that for seven days, cleaning the people’s shoes outside the temple in New Delhi. And everybody is looking and a crowd is watching and people are laughing and people are joking and making a fool of him.

This kind of punishment reminds one of very old traditions. Otherwise it was enough that he was asking to be forgiven. He should have been forgiven. But no, he has to be humiliated. And what kind of humiliation? The ancient methods of humiliating people, the inner workings of the tribal mind, were really ugly. And on top of it all, they were poor.

So it was very easy for Western civilization – particularly Christianity – to open hospitals, schools, to give these people clothes, food. And naturally, when these people were helped in such a way they started imitating those who were helping them. So in the wake of that came transistor radios, army caps – they started dressing like army people. They looked foolish. Naked they were more beautiful, their bodies were more proportionate.

Their life was difficult; Western civilization made their life very easy, and provided all these things

– second-hand clothes which have been rejected by the army, and small toys like transistor radios.

And for them it was something miraculous, that somebody is speaking in New Delhi – thousands of miles away – and they can listen to what he is saying. This was a miracle – because they had no idea of the technology, no understanding of what was happening.

Christianity was certainly bringing miracles. Now television has reached. People cannot believe their own eyes, that they are seeing people who are thousands of miles away. Through television and radio, cars, small mechanical things, they proved to these poor people that Jesus walked on water, turned water into wine, raised the dead to life.

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And seeing all these miracles – for them these are miracles – they could not deny that if these people, who are just followers of Jesus, can do such great miracles, Jesus must have done them.

It is very simple to understand the process – that within two years any older civilization will collapse if Western civilization approaches it. The basic things are that the older civilizations should be starving, should not have clothes, shelter, jobs, education, and then certainly the missionary becomes their prototype. They have to become like the missionary.

Even if they get second-hand things – used and thrown away – they are perfectly happy with those shoes and caps and dresses. They don’t fit them because they are not made for them – some are longer, some are shorter – but still they enjoy it, it is better than to be naked and cold.

They have tasted for the first time something of the man-made world, and they are grateful; and to show that gratefulness they become Christians. In India all the aboriginals are turning Christian by and by. And power functions like a magnet.

When there was the British Empire all around the earth, the British missionary was part of the power machine. So anybody who has been humiliated for centuries became an imitator. He could not become Western, but he could at least imitate.

It is ugly to look at from outside. They have now got bicycles, they can move far and wide, now they are smoking cigarettes, going to see the movies. Their whole structure has collapsed. Now the elders cannot dominate them, they have lost all their power. They are feeling more free. They can fall in love with a girl of another tribe and both can escape to the city. They are educated. They can find a job.

Naked they could not come to the city, and even had they come, they had nothing to do except begging. They were not capable of doing any job or any skill; they were never taught.

So the mechanics of the change are very simple; but if we look at the whole thing with a humanitarian vision, it is ugly of Western civilization to exploit these people. You could have given them hospitals, you could have given them schools, you could have given them skills, craftsmanship trainings. There was no need to convert them – as a payment for all your services – to Christianity; that’s where the West has been ugly.

Otherwise, whatever has been done is perfectly good. But they were not doing all these things to help these people, they were doing all these things to convert these people – to make their numbers greater. Now in India Christianity is the third biggest religion.

They are asking in Nagaland, ”We want to have an independent country.” And Christianity, from the outside, is supporting them. Their leaders have been given refuge in London. They are being supplied arms. Their leaders are protected in London because it is now a question of Christians –

they are no longer aboriginals – the whole of Christianity will stand behind them.

To help the poor is not bad, but to exploit the poor is certainly evil – and in the name of helping them, converting them to your religion. They don’t understand anything about religion, but because you have helped them so much they feel so obliged that whatever you say must be right. This is a very cunning device.

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In India I have been trying to find a single high-caste brahmin who has been converted to Christianity.

I have not been able to find one – and I have toured India many times for years.

Not a single high-caste Hindu has been converted to Christianity, because what do you have to give to him? He does not need clothes, he does not need education – he has enough, he can educate you. If anybody is going to learn anything, the Hindu has a long tradition of learning; he can teach you. What do you have to give to him? Naturally no high-caste people have been converted – just the very lowest of the low.

It is not a credit to Christianity.

It is a discredit.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

I LOVE THE WAY YOU DEMONSTRATE AT EVERY TURN JUST HOW ABSOLUTELY

UNTOUCHABLE YOU ARE. THE AMERICANS IMPRISON YOU, TORTURE YOU, DESTROY

YOUR COMMUNE AND CLEARLY ASSUME THAT YOU WILL BE HUMILIATED BY THEIR

TREATMENT OF YOU; BUT INSTEAD, THAT UNTOUCHABILITY SHINES THROUGH, AND IT

IS THEY WHO ARE LEFT HUMILIATED – THIS IS SO CLEAR FROM ALL THEIR CONTINUING

ANGER AT YOU.

YOU ARE AN IMPOSSIBLE ENEMY! YOU ARE THAT SIMPLE TRUTH – THAT ONLY WITHOUT

AMBITION IS ONE FREE TO EMBRACE THE STARS.

One can be humiliated only if one is thinking of oneself as higher than another, holier-than-thou –

such a person can be pulled down.

You cannot humiliate a humble person.

There is no way at all.

America has done everything – and is continuing to do it. That simply shows utter foolishness. If they could not humiliate me in their jails, how can they humiliate me outside America? I will turn all their efforts of humiliation upon themselves because there is no other way. I simply don’t accept it.

I have told you many times the story of Gautam Buddha. He was passing by the side of a village.

His enemies had gathered, and they wanted to humiliate him – they were shouting ugly words, four-letter words at him. He remained silent. They looked a little awkward because he was not saying anything.

And finally he said, ”If you are finished, can I move on because I have to reach the other village before sunset. And if you are not finished, I will be coming again after few days – I will inform you –

on the same route; then I will have enough time for you. Then you can do as much as you want, say as many things as you ever wanted to.”

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One of the men in the crowd said, ”We are not just saying things, we are insulting you.” Gautam Buddha said, ”You can insult me, but if I don’t accept it, that is not in your power. You can try to humiliate me, but I simply don’t accept these things. You should have come ten years before when I used to get caught in anybody’s net – somebody would insult me and I would feel insulted. At that time I was a slave to anybody; now I am a free man. I choose: whatever is right I take, whatever is not right I give it back.

”In the last village people had brought sweets, flowers, to present to me. I said, ‘We eat only once a day and we have taken our meal. So please – we don’t store things, we cannot keep them. We are sorry. You will have to take them back.’ I ask you, what could they do with all those sweets and flowers and fruits that they had brought?”

Somebody said from the crowd, ”They could have distributed it in the village.” Buddha said, ”You are intelligent. Do the same. Whatever you have brought – for ten years I have stopped accepting such things. Now go back home and distribute these things to whomsoever you want.”

Humiliation is impossible when you are not living as an ego. It is the ego that is humiliated.

And America had to take its humiliation back. That’s why they are still angry and still trying their hardest to harm me in every possible way. They have not learned a simple lesson.

I was in chains – they had done everything illegally – without an arrest warrant. At the point of a gun they arrested me, without even showing the cause, with handcuffs, with chains on my legs, another chain on my waist – exactly arranged because they knew my whole medical history.

We had presented my medical history to the government – that my back is bad. So the chain was kept on continually, because it was chained on every time I changed jails: five jails in twelve days.

But it remained exactly on the point where it hurts. It was absolutely not accidental, because not even a single time was it in another place – and it could have been. I told them, ”Just keep it loose.” They said, ”No. We will keep it the way we have been ordered.” And they were worried that I would wave to people, even with handcuffs, so they tied my handcuffs with the chain on my waist so I could not move my hands either.

And the cars... the way they took me – I have never seen cars driven in such a way. Suddenly they would take speed, and suddenly they would stop, just to hurt my back.

The first time Devaraj was with me and he was telling them, ”This is not right. There is just no need to do this.” They wouldn’t listen. And this continued for twelve days. Everywhere there were instructions, it seems, how the car should be driven: for no reason, suddenly the car would take speed to a hundred miles an hour, and suddenly it would stop; then again it would speed and stop just to give me as much of a jolt as possible, to hit the painful back with the thick chain they had put on it.

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But it does not humiliate me. It was simply showing their stupidity. They could not prevent me from smiling. Everywhere people were standing by the side of the road to greet me. It doesn’t matter that I could not wave my hand to them, but I smiled at them.

In the court when the magistrate comes, they declare that the magistrate is coming, ”Stand up” – so everybody stands up. When the magistrate sits on the chair, then everybody is allowed to sit. When I was coming into the court, people were standing up on their own. There was no declaration – you don’t declare for a prisoner.

And that was a clear humiliation of the magistrate and all the police officials and all the court people, that all the people... even those who were not sannyasins, even those who had never seen me, had never heard of me except that just then they had seen me on the television and seen the brutality of the American government.

They tried in every way. They were thinking that I would be humiliated; but whenever the press inquired of me, I said, ”I am feeling great. As far as I am concerned, I am feeling perfectly great.

They can torture my body, but they cannot touch me.” And because I exposed their whole thing ... and they are not even capable of replying to it, to all the facts that I have told to the world news press. They have not been able to reply to a single point because I have simply described the story as it was. They are feeling humiliated, and they are trying to harass me – but they are again wrong.

They have arranged a world travel for me. I may not have traveled around the world without their help! I may not have been able to see all my people in their own countries, and I may not have been able to expose that political imperialism has ended, but its place has been taken by economic imperialism – which is far more dangerous. Now, as with themselves, they are arranging humiliation for other countries.

I was in Ireland for fifteen days. The man who gave the visa must have taken too much beer –

just the Irish way of living – so he did not look whose visa it was, whose passport it was. He simply stamped it. We were asking for only a one night stay. He stamped it with a seven-day seal – perhaps it was the closest to his hand! We said, ”That’s good.” We moved into a hotel; and as America’s information reached them, that our plane had landed in Ireland, immediately the police went to the airport and found that we had already entered the country.

So next morning the police officers came and canceled all the visas for seven days. But we said,

”You can cancel it; we are not going to go. We have been here only one night. What crime have we committed that you are canceling them?”

They said, ”No crime.” They were afraid – because the first man had made the mistake of giving us seven days. ”You can live here silently and leave silently.” This is the police. Without our having a visa, they were allowing us to live in the country silently and to leave silently, just to hide their mistake.

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We lived there for fifteen days, and after fifteen days, when we left, the minister concerned said, in the parliament, that I had never been in Ireland, that it was just gossip. He knew perfectly well that for fifteen days my group had been there.

And the day we moved, the press was there, the photographers were there; they took my photograph in front of the hotel. Perhaps they took away all those photographs and all that material from the press before declaring in the parliament that I had never been here. So now America is degrading every country.

In Greece, within fifteen days, they arrested me – and the passport and the visa was given to me by the son of the president, who is a minister. He had issued the visa for four weeks himself, and he himself canceled it.

And they wouldn’t allow me even to stay in the hotel for the night. But at the airport the whole news media was there – all the television channels and newspapers and magazines and the radio – and at least forty top police officers. I cannot understand what they were afraid of – I don’t carry nuclear weapons with me.

And when I was talking to the press, the chief of the police stepped in front of me to stop me. And I said to him, ”Shut up and go back and stand in your place!” Perhaps in his whole life nobody has said that. And he was wise enough to simply move back and stand in his place – because he saw the situation, that if he said something, I was going to hammer him then and there. And everything would be in the reports, on the television, on the radio; it was better just to....

But this much was on the television, that he came up to prevent me because I was talking against the police, that they wanted to dynamite the house, to burn me alive, that they were threatening my people.

Because I was asleep, John came to me; and when he woke me up, I said, ”Just tell them to sit and wait five minutes so I can change my clothes and get ready to get arrested again.” Now I am an experienced man, there is no problem.

But they wouldn’t listen. They started throwing rocks at the windows, at the doors. From my bathroom I heard explosions as if somebody was throwing bombs. I said, ”This is strange.” And when I came down I was informed that they were threatening that if I didn’t come down they would dynamite the house. And I had not left the house for the whole fifteen days I was there.

And after I left Athens, the same minister who had given me the visa and who canceled the visa, lied before the parliament again. So it has been a tremendous experience. What I have been saying about politicians has proved one hundred percent correct.

Hasya, my secretary, had been with that minister for one hour, and he denied in parliament that he had seen my secretary at all. He said that he had been deceived, and that somebody else managed to arrange the visa and his signature.

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These are your leaders upon which the whole destiny of humanity depends.

We are going to sue every politician. For example, this minister we are going to sue. And Hasya has to be in the court to testify that she has been with the minister for one hour explaining about me, everything that he asked, and he had given the visa only after being fully satisfied. And he simply denies that he has ever seen my secretary.

And the same thing has been happening all around the whole civilized world of the West. A few countries are so afraid that I have not even applied for visa and they have decided already that the visa should not be given. I have not even applied... the visa should not be given.

They have informed all their embassies that I am a dangerous man and no visa should be granted.

If my application comes then it should be rejected immediately. They are so afraid that almost all the parliaments of Europe have discussed me, and on strange things.

The Dutch minister for foreign affairs has said that I have been denied entry into Holland because I have spoken against homosexuality, I have spoken against Mother Teresa, the pope, the Catholic religion. And each democracy contends that it is secular.

The pope can criticize any religion and he is welcome – I cannot criticize the pope. If he has any guts he should reply to my criticism rather than pulling the strings of these politicians – he has a Catholic majority in these countries so the politicians are afraid of losing votes.

I can understand catholicism, the pope, Mother Teresa; but homosexuality is a totally new thing.

I was not aware that homosexuality is Holland’s official religion – criticize homosexuality and you cannot enter Holland. That minister has condemned the whole of Holland as homosexual. If the people of Holland have any sense, they should force that minister and his ministry to resign, because he’s abusing the whole country.

And I am dangerous because I have criticized homosexuality. I am criticizing every perversion, and I will continue to criticize them.

And America is trying in every way.... It is a humiliation for America. Now they are trying to make every other country also feel humiliated. All the countries which are with America will be humiliated in the same way. And a single individual can put the whole world against himself, and still you cannot humiliate him.

The truth is simple. If one is humble, humiliation is impossible. Truth cannot be humiliated. You can crucify it, but you cannot humiliate it.

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CHAPTER 35

Worship may be a worse crucifixion

12 June 1986 pm in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

IN INDIA THERE IS A PROVERB, ”VASUDHAIVA KUTUMBAKAM: THE WHOLE EARTH IS A FAMILY”. PERHAPS THIS PROVERB IS ONE THOUSAND YEARS OLD. OSHO, WERE THERE

REALLY PEOPLE ONCE WHO LIVED LIKE A FAMILY? OR WAS IT A VISION OF SOME MYSTIC, A VISION WHICH YOU ARE GOING TO BRING TO REALITY?

There has never been any society who has lived according to the vision of ”VASUDHAIVA KUTUMBAKAM: the whole earth is one family.”

The mystics have been, for thousands of years, talking about it, visualizing it, but unfortunately people worship the mystics but don’t allow the mystic to transform them. Worshipping is really a way of escaping from transformation; it is saying, in other words, ”You are right, but it is not time for me yet. I respect you, I worship you, and I will remember what you are saying; but I cannot act accordingly right now. I am just an ordinary human being, you are a great realized soul – the distance is vast.”

Worshipping the mystics is not real respect. It is a strategy of the mind to avoid seeing the finger that is pointing towards the moon.

Man is very cunning. He can crucify somebody to get rid of him, he can worship somebody to get rid of him. Crucifixion and worshipping are not different because the basic purpose is the same: 367

CHAPTER 35. WORSHIP MAY BE A WORSE CRUCIFIXION

”Just leave me alone; your stupid utopia is good, I don’t have any argument against it, but you are a special being, and I am just an ordinary creature.” To prove this fact, people have called their mystics incarnations of God, messiahs, saviors, messengers. In some way they have made them so far away, they have created such a distance between themselves and the mystics, that the vision of the mystic remained a vision. It is impossible with this approach to make it a reality.

The first step to make such a grand vision a reality, is to realize that the mystic is just as ordinary a human being as you are. If he has realized himself, you can also realize yourself. What has become actual in him, is potential in you. What has blossomed in him, is just a seed in you. But between the seed and the flower there is no distance at all. The seed is already on the way, making every effort to become a flower.

But there have been two reasons denying this simple fact. One was that the masses wanted the distance; and the other was that it fulfilled the egos of many who were not really mystics, who were simply pretenders.

To say, yourself, that you are sent by God, is such a lie – because God is a lie, and now you are making that lie even more destructive by saying that you are a messenger, that you are a prophet.

It fulfilled the egos of those who were not really realized people, so they never made any effort to destroy the distance. On the contrary, they emphasized that it was true – what was possible for them was impossible for you.

To prove that the distance is immense, either they fabricated miracles or after their death you added miracles in their life – because that makes the distinction very clear. You cannot do miracles, and these people were doing miracles. Certainly, they were coming from a higher order, with some spiritual power that you don’t have.

They also wanted that miracles should be fabricated around them; it helped their ego. It helped you also to protect yourself; otherwise you would have to transform yourself, bring something which looks impossible into reality – ”Vasudhaiva kutumbakam: the whole world is one family.” Even one family is not one family. Brothers are fighting with brothers, husbands are fighting with wives, wives are fighting with husbands, children are fighting with children. Even the family is not a family – and the mystics are talking of the whole world being conceived as one family.

So it helped their egos to create the distance, it helped you because it seems almost impossible.

Even five persons in one home cannot live peacefully; there is constant quarreling and fighting and conflict. Even the people who love each other are a pain in each other’s neck. So what possibility is there that the whole world becomes a family, a loving commune?

Seeing the impossibility, it is better to accept that it is beyond you, it is only possible for those special beings. But the whole world is not consisting of those special beings, ”so all that we can do is worship them.” That is a very sophisticated way of crucifying a person.

A real mystic will deny it, that there is any difference, because he can see why you want the difference and the distinction.

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In Gautam Buddha’s stories about his past lives there is one story that just before this life, when he became Gautam Buddha, he was an unconscious human being as everybody else is, and he heard about one man that had become awakened, enlightened. Everybody was going to see him. He also went to see him, with flowers to offer. He touched his feet, offered the flowers unto his feet. As he was standing up, he could not believe it; the man who was thought to be enlightened bowed down to this unconscious human being and touched his feet.

Buddha said, ”What are you doing? I am an unconscious, ordinary human being; you are an enlightened, awakened soul. Why have you touched my feet?” The man laughed, and he said, ”Yesterday I was also unconscious, unawakened; today I am awakened. Today you are unconscious, tomorrow you will be awakened. Remember that I touched your feet. Never forget it when you become awakened.” This story is so significant. That man is saying, ”I am trying to teach you that from now onward...

because I can see the possibility, the potential that you will become awakened. It is only a question of time. The time does not matter – tomorrow or one life afterward. But remember that a Buddha touched your feet while you were unawakened.”

What is the message? The message is, he is trying to create a bridge. He is trying to declare that awakening is not something supernatural, it is something that is intrinsic in your nature; that it is not something to do with God, it has something to do with you. It depends on you. You can go on sleeping as long as you want, and the moment you want to wake up you can wake up.

And Buddha remembered it. His last words when he was dying were, ”Please don’t start worshipping me. I was not here to create worshippers – there are millions of worshippers already. Don’t make statues of me; otherwise you will forget my teaching, a deviation, and you become satisfied with worshipping – which makes no difference to you. You remain the same.” And that’s exactly what people did. He died, and they started making statues and worshipping him in spite of his last words. In fact, there are more statues of Gautam Buddha in the world than of anybody else.

The Middle Eastern languages like Arabic and Persian don’t have another word for statue. Their word for statue is budt, and ‘budt’ has come from ‘buddha’. The statues of Buddha were so many that his name became synonymous with statue. And for twenty-five centuries people have been worshipping him. There are thousands of temples in the East. Nobody seems to be interested in the transformation he was teaching, and everybody is very enthusiastic about worshipping him.

Worship seems to be a very subtle strategy to avoid the man.

Jews also avoided Jesus, but they used a very primitive method. Hindus have also avoided Gautam Buddha but they have used a very sophisticated method. And you can see by the results – because Jesus was crucified, and crucifixion became the source of Christianity. It is out of murder, out of violence and blood, that a religion arises. You cannot expect from Christianity anything else. In two thousand years it has killed millions of people. Its very origin was in murder, in crucifixion.

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They have not bothered about Jesus’ teachings. He was saying, ”Love your enemy like yourself.” Then I cannot understand who these people were killing. If you are going to love your enemy, are you going to kill your lovers? Enemies have to be loved, so who is to be killed – friends? No, the teaching has not been followed; only sermons were given in the churches. But enemies – and innocent enemies, who have done no harm to the Christians.... Their only crime was that they were not Christians, and they were not willing to be Christians; and that was too much, too big a crime.

Hindus used a more sophisticated method, perhaps because it was an older civilization, more cultured. They could have crucified Gautam Buddha, but they did not do that. On the contrary, they accepted Gautam Buddha as one of the incarnations of the Hindu God.

You will be surprised that Hindus have twenty-four incarnations of God. This number twenty-four got fixed in the mind of India. Just as there are twenty-four hours in the day – one circle is complete

– one creation is one circle of millions and millions of years. In one circle of existence there are twenty-four tirthankaras; that was the Jaina concept.

Things arise out of strange things. Every language and its arithmetic is based on ten digits, and those ten digits have come from the ten fingers – because uneducated people count on their fingers.

So the first counting was done on fingers, and there are ten of them; this is just a coincidence. That’s why from one to ten the whole mathematics is complete, then it is repetition. Eleven, twelve, thirteen

– that is repetition. Then you can go to millions of numbers, but they are all repetitions. The basic numbers are ten, but there is no necessity that there should be ten basic numbers.

There have been mathematicians like Leibnitz who worked only with three numbers – one, two, three – and managed to do every calculation. After three, four does not come because four does not exist in Leibnitz’ mathematics. After three comes ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, twenty. There is no problem – you can count that way. In the ordinary mathematics there will be four chairs in the room; Leibnitz will count ten, and it makes no difficulties, the calculations will be perfectly right.

Albert Einstein even tried to work with two. Just reading Leibnitz he said, ”Why three?” That too was another coincidence; it was because Leibnitz was a very Christian-minded person, and the trinity would be disturbed. If you bring down the numbers to less, if you make the numbers two, what will happen to the trinity? If there are only two digits, then one, two, ten, eleven. Ten will be the number, not three. To save the trinity and not to get into trouble with the pope, he kept the number three. Albert Einstein tried with number two. Two is certainly absolutely essential – you cannot work with just one – and he succeeded; with two it is possible.

The same kind of coincidence happened in India. Jainism, being the oldest religion, had the idea that just as a day and night make the whole circle, and then begins another day and night, another circle, it is the same with creation... one creation, then everything goes into dark night, disappears, then another creation starts.... Each creation has twenty-four teachers; those are called tirthankaras, the path-makers. That is the literal meaning of tirthankara.

Before Jainism’s twenty-four tirthankaras became famous, Hindus had only ten incarnations of God; but then they started feeling a little poor. ”Jainas have twenty-four and you have only ten?” The Transmission of the Lamp

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In every sphere, people are so competitive and behave so stupidly, that unless you look you will never find out how suddenly after Mahavira, because he was the most prominent Jaina tirthankara....

Although he was the last, he was the most important person in the whole range of twenty-four. Up to Mahavira, all Hindu scriptures have ten incarnations. Perhaps the fact there were ten incarnations is nothing but the result of tenfinger counting. Perhaps the reason is the same as in mathematics; and you will not be surprised that the number ten is also a Hindu concept. It was the Hindus who first brought the digit ten.

So it is not impossible that ten is the complete number; naturally ten incarnations are complete. You can look into your languages and you will find it. For example, all languages which are originated from Sanskrit – particularly all the languages of the developed countries of the West.... The Sanskrit for two is ‘dwa’, which becomes in some languages ‘twa’ and finally culminates in ‘two’.

The English ‘three’ comes from Sanskrit ‘tri’. The difference is so small – because in English there is no ‘dthra’ sound. The alphabet in Sanskrit is double that of English, so in English you cannot write

‘dthri’; if you write ‘dthri’ it will become ‘three’. You have to make ‘dthra’ by making ‘t-h’, joining two letters.

The Sanskrit for six is ‘sasth’, and you can see it is connected. For nine it is ‘nov’; and you can see it is connected. Ten was the complete number; after ten it is a repetition.

But once Mahavira emphasized twenty-four tirthankaras, Hindu scholars started feeling that they were a little behind. People started saying, ”You have only ten tirthankaras, while Jainas have twenty-four.” So after Mahavira, Hindu scriptures started talking about twenty-four reincarnations –

suddenly, with no reasoning, with no cause. Just as Mahavira died, immediately Hindu scriptures started talking about twenty-four reincarnations, just to compete with Jainism.

It gave them an opportunity also, and this was the opportunity – perhaps for this opportunity they made it twenty-four, or vice versa. They accepted Gautam Buddha, who was the most influential person outside the Hindu fold. They could not really crucify him – they were much more sophisticated people – but they could still crucify him in a very logical way.

They started a story about Buddha in their famous scriptures, the shivapuram. The story is that God made the world. He made hell and heaven; he made hell to be guarded by the devil. The devil was the king of hell, just as God was the king of heaven; the devil was his shadow, his opponent.

But millions of years passed and nobody came to hell – everybody died and reached to heaven, because people were not doing anything wrong. They were not being criminals, sinners.

The devil was very angry, and he reached heaven and he asked God, ”This is absolutely stupid!

Why have you made hell? If nobody has to come there, then it is mere wastage. And my life is wasted – I am simply sitting there! You have made me the king of hell, and there is nobody in my kingdom. It is just empty space. Millions of years I have waited, and it is enough. You finish that kingdom, or start sending people. I want real people to dominate, I don’t want to sit there alone.” And God said, ”Don’t be angry, you go back. I will be born as Gautam Buddha soon, and will convince people to do wrong things. And soon hell will be overcrowded.” That’s why God took an incarnation as Gautam Buddha.

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You see the strategy: they are accepting Gautam Buddha as a Hindu incarnation of God, but the purpose is to send people to hell. So whoever follows Buddha is going to hell. And since then hell has been overcrowded. And they go on making extensions, but people are always coming in more and more. The situation has completely reversed: now very rarely does someone go to heaven.

Most of the trains are going to hell.

In the shivapuram it is said that the crowd is so much that sometimes a few people are kept alive on the earth because they are on the waiting list. You cannot take them to heaven, and in hell there is no room; they are making room as fast as they can. So many people on the earth are on the waiting list, living just until some place is ready for them; then they will be taken there.

This way they have condemned Gautam Buddha’s whole teaching – that it is just to destroy people’s spirituality. And you see the effect in India: Buddhism disappeared. It was born in India, and India was immensely impressed with Gautam Buddha. There are thousands of temples and statues that show that the whole country was under his impact.

But Buddhism disappeared so totally that even in the most holy Buddhist place, Bodhgaya, where Gautam Buddha became enlightened – the bodhi tree is there and a temple stands as a memorial

– they could not find a Buddhist priest for the temple, so a Hindu brahmin has been performing the worshipping rituals for hundreds of years. It has become a family tradition.

I asked the man who is the priest, ”How long have you been here?” He said, ”We have been here since this temple has been here.” Hindus created such an atmosphere that those who had started following Gautam Buddha moved back – who wants to go to hell, and hellfire – to the Hindu fold.

I am trying to say to you that Jesus’ crucifixion made a fanatic religion of Christianity, which has been killing millions of Jews down the centuries, and their vengeance is not fulfilled.

Hindus did far better. They did not disrespect Gautam Buddha, they respected him as an incarnation of God, but managed to convince people that whoever followed him would go to hell, so not to follow him. The whole of India became completely clean of Buddhism. Buddhism spread all over Asia except in India. I used to go to their world conferences in Bodhgaya. Every nation of Asia was represented except India, because in India, Buddhism does not exist.

You can use crucifixion, you can use worship, and manage the same result; and sometimes worship may be a worse crucifixion than any crucifixion can be.

The mystics – the authentic mystics – have always tried to convince man: ”There is no difference between us and you. The only difference is that you are sleeping and we have opened our eyes and we are awake – and it is not much of a difference.” Vasudhaiva kutumbakam – ‘vasudhaiv’ means the whole earth, ‘kutumbakam’ means the family –

has never been realized. One hopes that some day it will be realized.

It is my vision too.

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Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

ONE DAY IN AUGUST, 1985, I WAS TRYING WITH ALL MY EFFORTS TO CLEAN THE BAR

OF THE DISCO IN RAJNEESHPURAM, AND I WAS SURE YOU WOULD GO THERE THAT

NIGHT FOR THE SIMPLE REASON THAT THE ”MAMA” WAS SO WORRIED THAT CLEANING BE

PERFECT! WHILE I WAS EXPECTING YOU, I WAS FEELING LIKE A HOUSEWIFE EXPECTING

THE HUSBAND, BUT I WAS THINKING, ”THIS HUSBAND WILL NOT NAG ME, WILL NOT

CRITICIZE MY WORK. HE WILL FIND EVERYTHING BEAUTIFUL.” AND IT HAPPENED THAT YOU ENTERED THAT SALOON SO GENTLE, SO FULL OF DIVINE

CHARM; MY HEART WAS BEATING SO FAST. I HAVE TO CONFESS I WAS PRETTY ASHAMED.

I WAS SURE THAT I HAD FALLEN IN LOVE WITH YOU, DEEPLY, INCURABLY.

AND IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT IN JESUS GROVE SOME THIRTY DAYS LATER; I WAS THERE

CELEBRATING YOU, AND IN MY HEART I WAS A LITTLE BIT JEALOUS OF THOSE BEAUTIFUL

LONG-HAIRED GIRLS THAT USED TO DANCE WITH YOU!

I ALWAYS HAD THE INFERIORITY COMPLEX OF BEING UGLY – AND NOW, AGED! ”OH,” I WAS THINKING – NOT WITH ANGER BUT WITH SORROW – ”I WOULD LIKE SO MUCH TO BE

PRETTY NOW SO HE WOULD SEE ME!”

AND WHEN I WAS NOT EXPECTING IT – SURPRISED – I SAW YOU COMING TOWARDS ME, GAZING AT ME AND DANCING AND CELEBRATING WITH ME! IT WAS AN ETERNITY – THOSE

LONG, LONG MINUTES!

OSHO, WHEN I WENT TO MY RESIDENCE THAT NIGHT, TALKING TO THE STARS, TO THE

FULL MOON, I WAS SAYING, ”NOW I KNOW SOMEBODY LOVES ME! I AM SURE HE LOVES!

WE ARE HIS BELOVEDS, I AM SURE OF THAT!” AND THAT CERTAINLY CHANGED MY LIFE

ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY DEGREES. FROM THAT DAY ON I HAVE FELT WARMTH INSIDE

ME – NOT THE UNCOMFORTABLE ABSENCE I USED TO HAVE BEFORE, BUT SOMETHING

THAT GAVE ME EXTRA ENERGY TO LIVE AND TO SPREAD BEAUTIFUL THINGS THAT COME

FROM YOU.

OSHO, YOU ALWAYS SAY THAT WE SHOULD DROP THE ATTACHMENT TO YOU SOMEDAY, BUT THE ONLY THING I DEEPLY WISH IN MY HEART IS TO BE CLOSE TO YOU, SHARING

GOOD AND BAD MOMENTS, UNTIL DEATH DO US PART.

CAN I POSTPONE THE MOMENT OF DROPPING THE ATTACHMENT TO YOUR PRESENCE TO

ANOTHER LIFE?

You are not aware of the dynamics of spiritual changes. I can say to you, ”you can postpone,” but the more you will love me, the more you will love the whole existence, the more you will love yourself.

And as that love deepens, you start disappearing. There is only love – and love is not an attachment.

The attachment is of the ‘I’. Love is enough to take you away from that I.

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So I say don’t be worried, you can postpone; don’t be afraid. Allow love to become total, and the I will disappear; and when on your part the I disappears, who is going to be attached to whom?

Attachment falls of its own accord.

And you have a feeling – which is in almost everybody’s heart – that when attachment disappears, love will disappear. That’s what happens in ordinary love experiences – love and attachment are almost one thing.

But loving me is a totally different phenomenon.

In the beginning the attachment will follow just out of old habit, but soon it will understand that now it is no longer needed, love is enough unto itself. And when attachment disappears, it is not that love disappears; it is for the first time that you feel its purity, its grandeur, its perfection. You are not a loser. Attachment dropped, you are victorious.

But it is up to you. You can postpone – about that I will not stop you – you can postpone for the next life. But don’t stop love. Get deeper into love, and it will take care of the whole thing. The attachment will go, the postponement will go. It will take away all junk that surrounds your inner space. And when there is only love, it is divine. Then it is not addressed to anyone, it is simply a fragrance available to all – to all the winds wherever they will take it.

But feel blissful that it has knocked on your door. And drop the idea that attachment and love are one thing. They are enemies. It is attachment that destroys all love. If you feed, if you nourish attachment, love will be destroyed; if you feed and nourish love, attachment will fall away by itself.

They are not one; they are two separate entities and antagonistic to each other.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

YOUR STORY THE OTHER NIGHT ABOUT THE MYSTIC WHO ASKED FOR VOLUNTEERS TO

JOIN HIM IN NIRVANA PRODUCED SUCH A STRONG SENSATION IN THE ROOM!

USUALLY WHEN YOU SAY, ”IT CAN HAPPEN NOW!” I FEEL, ”I’VE GOT TO GET IT THIS TIME

BECAUSE YOU’VE SAID IT SO OFTEN AND IT’S SIMPLY BEING RETARDED NOT TO GET IT.” ALONG WITH THIS FEELING THOUGH, SOMETHING IN ME RETRACTS WITH FEAR.

THE OTHER NIGHT I DIDN’T FEEL AFRAID AT ALL. I FORGOT ALL THE UNFINISHED EDITING, I FORGOT ALL THE QUESTIONS THAT NEED GATHERING. I EVEN FORGOT THAT YOU’VE

TOLD ME NOT TO DISAPPEAR YET. I SAW THE CHANCE TO JUMP, BUT THE CHANCE DIDN’T

SEE ME. COULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT?

It is easy to forget that I have told you not to disappear yet, but I don’t forget anything. You can drop anything you like, but you cannot drop your editing work!

So when I say, ”It can happen now,” you are not included in that!

Question 4

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BELOVED OSHO,

IF THE WITNESS IS BEYOND THE BODY/MIND COMPLEX, HOW IS IT THAT WHEN THE

BODY/MIND COMPLEX GOES TO SHOWER IN THE MORNING, IT DOESN’T LEAVE THE POOR

WITNESS IN THE BED?

Milarepa, it leaves the witness in bed – particularly when it is too cold. It rests in the bed and waits for you to come from the shower!

The watcher is very intelligent!

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13 June 1986 am in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

IN AMERICA, MANY PEOPLE – FROM MEDITATORS TO MANAGERS – ARE USING A TECHNIQUE CALLED ”POSITIVE THINKING.” THEY ARE TRYING TO CHANGE DESTRUCTIVE

THOUGHTS AND CONDITIONINGS ABOUT THEMSELVES, OTHERS, AND EXISTENCE, INTO

POSITIVE ONES, AND IN THIS WAY HOPE TO BE MORE SUCCESSFUL ON THE LEVEL OF

THEIR LIVES THAT THEY ARE CONCERNED WITH. PICTURING THEIR MINDS AS A CAGE, I WONDER WHETHER THIS TECHNIQUE IS JUST LIKE PAINTING THE CAGE GOLDEN.

OSHO, IS THE TECHNIQUE OF POSITIVE THINKING HELPFUL FOR AWAKENING? OR DOES

IT DULL THE AWARENESS OF BEING IMPRISONED AND THE DESIRE TO BECOME FREE?

The technique of positive thinking is not a technique that transforms you. It is simply repressing the negative aspects of your personality. It is a method of choice. It cannot help awareness; it goes against awareness.

Awareness is always choiceless.

Positive thinking simply means forcing the negative into the unconscious and conditioning the conscious mind with positive thoughts. But the trouble is that the unconscious is far more powerful, nine times more powerful, than the conscious mind. So once a thing becomes unconscious, it 376

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becomes nine times more powerful than it was before. It may not show in the old fashion, but it will find new ways of expression.

So positive thinking is a very poor method, without any deep understanding, and it goes on giving you wrong ideas about yourself.

Positive thinking was born out of a certain Christian sect in America which was called Christian Science. To avoid the word ‘Christian’, so others can also be allured to it, they slowly dropped that old label and simply started talking about the philosophy of positive thinking.

Christian Science – which is the original source – proposed that anything that happens in your life is nothing but a thought projection. If you want to be rich, think and grow rich. It is by thinking positively that you are rich, that you are getting richer, that dollars will start coming towards you.

I am reminded of an anecdote. A young man met an old lady on the road. The old lady asked, ”What happened to your father? He is not coming to our weekly meetings of Christian Scientists – and he is our oldest member, almost the founder of our society.” The young man said, ”He is sick and feeling very weak.” The woman laughed. She said, ”It is just his thought and nothing else. He is thinking he is sick – he is not sick. And he is thinking he is weak – he is not weak. Life is made of thoughts; the way you think, you become. Just tell him to remember his own ideology that he has been preaching to us.

Tell him to think healthy; tell him to think full of vigor.” The young man said, ”I will give the message.”

After eight or ten days the young man met the woman again, and she asked, ”What happened?

Didn’t you give the message? – because he is still not coming to the weekly meeting.” The boy said, ”I gave the message, madam, but now he thinks he is dead. And not only does he think he is dead, my whole neighborhood, my family, even I myself think he is dead. And he is no longer living with us; he has gone to the graveyard!” Christian Science was a superficial way... it may help in a few things; particularly those things which are really created by your thought can be changed. But your whole life is not created by your thought.

Positive thinking came out of Christian Science. It talks now more philosophically, but the base remains the same – that if you think negatively, that is going to happen to you; if you think positively, that is going to happen to you. And in America that kind of literature is widely read. Nowhere else in the world has positive thinking made any impact – because it is childish.

”Think and grow rich” – everybody knows this is simply foolish. And it is harmful, and dangerous too.

The negative ideas of your mind have to be released, not repressed by positive ideas. You have to create a consciousness which is neither positive nor negative. That will be the pure consciousness.

In that pure consciousness you will live the most natural and blissful life.

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If you repress some negative idea because it is hurting you.... For example: if you are angry, and you repress it and try to make an effort to change the energy into something positive – to feel loving towards the person you were feeling angry with, to feel compassionate – you know you are deceiving yourself.

Deep down it is still anger; it is just that you are whitewashing it. On the surface you may smile, but your smile will be limited only to your lips. It will be an exercise of the lips; it won’t be connected with you, with your heart, with your being. Between your smile and your heart, you yourself have put a great block – the negative feeling that you have repressed.

And it is not one feeling; in life you have thousands of negative feelings. You don’t like a person, you don’t like many things; you don’t like yourself, you don’t like the situation you are in. All this garbage goes on collecting in the unconscious, and on the surface a hypocrite is born, who says, ”I love everybody, love is the key to blissfulness.” But you don’t see any bliss in that person’s life. He is holding the whole of hell within himself.

He can deceive others, and if he goes on deceiving long enough, he can deceive himself too. But it won’t be a change. It is simply wasting life – which is immensely valuable because you cannot get it back.

Positive thinking is simply the philosophy of hypocrisy – to give it the right name. When you are feeling like crying, it teaches you to sing. You can manage if you try, but those repressed tears will come out at some point, in some situation. There is a limitation to repression. And the song that you were singing was absolutely meaningless; you were not feeling it, it was not born out of your heart.

It was just because the philosophy says to always choose the positive.

I am absolutely against positive thinking. You will be surprised that if you don’t choose, if you remain in a choiceless awareness, your life will start expressing something which is beyond both positive and negative, which is higher than both. So you are not going to be a loser. It is not going to be negative, it is not going to be positive, it is going to be existential.

So if tears are there, they will have a beauty; they themselves will have a song. You need not impose any song on them, they themselves will be out of joy, out of fulfillment – not out of sadness, failure.

And if the song bursts forth, it is not against tears, despair; it is simply the expression of your joy...

not against anything, not for anything. It is simply the flowering of your own being; hence I call it existential.

Positive thinking has led America into a very wrong path; it had made people hypocrites. It is the most influential philosophy in America, and in fact, it is not even a philosophy, it is just rubbish. It does not understand the psychology of man, it is not grounded in the findings of psychology; it is not grounded in the deeper findings of meditation. It is simply giving people hope – people who are losing all hope. It is giving people ambition.

The poor man thinks that if he goes on thinking, then suddenly out of the blue, a Cadillac will appear in his porch – although right now he has no porch. First he has to think of a porch! Positive thinking will create a porch, then positive thinking will bring a Cadillac. And even if it happens, please don’t sit in such a car; it is dangerous. There is no car, and there is no porch – that man is hallucinating.

He is not in his senses.

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Everything has to be earned. There is a famous book by Napoleon Hill, THINK AND GROW RICH, and his whole emphasis is that if you think really hard, you will become rich. Millions of copies have been sold because he is a good writer, one of the best that America has produced. He writes well, convincingly.

But I have told you before that when his book was first published, he was at the bookstall so that the publisher could introduce him to the customers, and he could put his signature on the books.

And it happened that Henry Ford just came in – he was looking at books, he loved books – and he inquired, ”What is happening? What is this man doing?” He found out that this was Napoleon Hill, a great writer, and his new book was just published. ”He will be very happy to be introduced to you.” So Henry Ford went to him. The publisher introduced Napoleon Hill, saying, ”He has written this book, THINK AND GROW RICH.” Henry Ford looked at the cover, at the title, and asked Napoleon Hill, ”Have you come in your own car, or in a public bus?”

It seemed so irrelevant, but when Henry Ford was asking, Napoleon Hill had to say, ”Yes, I have come in a public bus.”

Henry Ford returned the book and told him, ”When you have thought enough about a beautiful car and it appears in your porch, then bring this book to me. I am Henry Ford – I don’t need this book.

I know you cannot grow rich by thinking. You can cheat poor people by this book. Everybody wants to become rich, so the book will sell well, and perhaps by the book sales you may become rich, and you may purchase a car. But remember, that is not the condition. I will accept the book if the car appears by your thinking.”

The car never appeared, he could never go to Henry Ford. And that old man was very strange; he used to call once in a while on the phone and say, ”What happened about the car? If it has not appeared yet, withdraw the book from the market. It is sheer cheating!” And the whole book is about positive thinking – only think positive thoughts.

And you can see the difference: what I am doing here is... all thoughts are useless – positive or negative. They are two sides of the same coin. You are not to change from the negative to the positive; you have to go beyond both. You have to drop them both, you have to become a thoughtless consciousness. And out of that consciousness, whatever you do will be right. Whatever you do will have tremendous beauty. Whatever you do will be satisfying.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

DOES SEX ENERGY NEED TO BE EXPRESSED THROUGH SEX, OR IS IT JUST THAT WE

LABEL THIS ENERGY AS SUCH THROUGH BIOLOGICAL NEEDS? IF ENERGY DOESN’T GET

EXPRESSED THROUGH SEX, IS IT A REPRESSION, OR CAN IT BE TRANSFORMED AND FIND

OTHER CHANNELS?

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The energy can be transformed, but only after you have lived it naturally. If you have not expressed it naturally – sex energy, sexually – you cannot move towards transformation.

When sex is expressed as pure sex – and there is no sin in it, there is no need to feel guilty about it; this is the way your bodies are made, this is the way your biology functions – express it. Just by expressing it naturally, there will come a moment when the compulsion to express it as sex will disappear. That is the turning moment, now transformation is possible.

First, natural expression to the satisfaction of the natural instinct in you, and then transformation is possible, because now the energy will not compel you to express it as sex; it is satisfied. It has known what sexual experience is. Only after this, the transformation is possible, and the transformation will happen through meditation.

So whenever you feel energy in you, and no desire to express it sexually, simply sit silently and meditate. Meditation will make the path for the energy to move higher, and you will know that the same energy which was expressed as sex, ultimately is expressed as samadhi, as superconsciousness. It is the same energy – just the label of expression goes on changing. But if something remains incomplete, you will be dragged again and again to it.

The religions have a reason to repress sex. They all wanted to transform the energy, so naturally they thought that sex should be blocked, expressed in any other way; that blocked energy then could be transformed into spirituality. But they had no understanding about sex or energy or transformation.

Sex is not something of which you have only a certain quantity in you. It is produced every day, so if you express it sexually, it does not mean that you don’t have any more energy left, so how will you transform it? Sexual energy is created every day. It is not a reservoir, not a bank, that if you take out something, that much is less. It is created every day by your living, by your movements, by your food, by your breathing, by the circulation of the blood – by your very life. It is a by-product of life.

But if you start stopping it forcibly, you will be doing a harmful act to yourself.

First, if you forcibly repress sex, your mind will continuously think of sex – sex and nothing else, because the energy that has been repressed is going to revolve in your mind.

Let me remind you that your sexual center is in your mind; genitals are just the extension of a center which is in the head. That’s why you can dream about sex, you can fantasize about sex – and each fantasy will immediately affect your genital organs. You are thinking, it is in the head. The genitals are the extension of a subtle center in your head, so when you repress the energy, your head becomes full of it. Your sex becomes cerebral, mental, so you think about it, you dream about it. And this is an ugly state.

One man reached to a psychoanalyst’s office and said, ”Help me; otherwise I will die.” The psychoanalyst said, ”You look perfectly healthy and young. Why should you die? What is the problem?”

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He said, ”You don’t understand....”

So the psychoanalyst said, ”I will try and understand.” He drew a line of the paper and asked him,

”What is it? What does it remind you of?”

He said, ”Don’t joke with me! It reminds me of sex.” A line? – even the psychoanalyst was a little shocked that a line reminded him of sex. And the man said, ”I have read all the psychological books

– this is a phallic symbol.” And he was right, because that’s what Freud’s analysis says it is, it is a phallic symbol.

So he drew another figure, a triangle. The man closed his eyes, he said, ”Don’t! I don’t want to think about that.”

The psychoanalyst said, ”It is just a triangle!”

He said, ”It may be triangle, but think of Sigmund Freud and you will understand what I am saying.

This is my trouble.”

The psychoanalyst said, ”Okay.” He drew a third figure – a circle. And the man jumped up from the chair. He said, ”Stop! Stop! I am not a homosexual! And I have never seen such a pornographic psychoanalyst – you do nothing but make pornography!” And just then from the window they saw a camel passing by, and the psychoanalyst said, ”Forget about that. Look outside. What does that camel remind you of?” He said, ”The camel? It is the most dangerous animal; I don’t want to have anything to do with camels! Anything to do with the camel, forget all about it.” The psychoanalyst said, ”But this is strange.”

He said, ”Nothing is strange – everything reminds me of sex, and it is because of an idiot who has told me to repress, because this is the way: when you repress the energy, the energy level inside you starts going higher. It is not going higher, I am going lower! I have never had such fear of camels or other things, but now I cannot move outside, I cannot look at anything, because everything somehow manages to remind me of sex.”

Repression will do you harm in that it will make your mind full of sex... no transformation but only an ugly, cerebral sexuality.

Natural sex is far more beautiful. It is simple and innocent.

Secondly, if you start repressing sex, you will never be able to transform it. Your whole energy will be split in two parts. Sex is your energy that has to be repressed, and the remaining energies of your life have to repress it, and nothing is left which can be transformed. Who is going to transform it? Who is going to be transformed?

Repression is the worst thing that religions have preached to people.

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A natural sex automatically brings you to a point where you feel that it is a simple, biological phenomenon, and the old compulsion is gone. Through experience it goes; and now the energy will be there, but because you are not repressing it, it will not become cerebral, it will not make sex any problem for you.

With meditation you will be opening up higher doors of your consciousness, your superconscious.

And the energy always needs movement, it cannot remain static. And these new areas will be far more enchanting.

The sexual area you have experienced. It was good as far as biology goes, but it was an ordinary experience available to all the animals, to all men, to all birds. It was nothing special, nothing unique.

But if meditation makes a way towards superconsciousness, and energy is available, that energy will automatically start moving through the new channel that has opened up.

This is what I mean by transformation.

So take everything at ease. Just remember one thing, that with your at-easeness with nature, meditation should continue. So whenever anything with nature is satisfied, energy is available; it will move into the paths meditation has created.

It is a simple process. In transformation you don’t have to do anything. All that is needed is that there is no repression. Energy is available – there is no compulsion that it should go into the sexual ways – and a new way has opened up. The energy immediately becomes excited about moving into the new ways. And once it has experienced higher qualities of blissfulness, there is no question of repression; it never arises.

And remember the last thing, that even if you have experienced superconsciousness and higher levels through sexual energy, it does not mean that you cannot use the energy through the sexual channel. From the higher you can always come lower without any difficulty; but from the lower, to go to the higher, a great preparation is needed.

You will be surprised to know about a strange phenomenon that used to happen in India, in the Vedic times, five thousand years before – almost unbelievable.... If some couple found that they were incapable of producing children, then they would go to the great seers, the great masters who lived in the forest, in the mountains, and had their universities – thousands of students.

And they would ask the master, ”We would like somebody who is no longer sexual to be compassionate on us and give a child to my wife.” And it was an accepted phenomenon, there was no condemnation in it. But you can see a great insight – that somebody who has gone beyond sex has much more potentiality to give birth to a better child than an ordinary person.

It continued in India till Buddha and Mahavira’s time. These were the two persons who brought repression and condemned this convention.

I am still for the vedic convention; that is absolutely closer to science. Buddha and Mahavira, both, are in favor of repression – and that is dangerous. It was not a repressive society in India before Buddha and Mahavira; it was a very different kind of society. Everything natural was accepted, and The Transmission of the Lamp

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if a couple was finding difficulty in having children, the best way was to find someone who had no sexuality in his sex, whose sex was just meditation. In that meditative act there is more possibility of having a better child than in any other way.

So remember it, Arpita: everything in life has to be accepted naturally, and by the side you continue meditating. And whatever energy comes to a point of satiation as far as nature is concerned, that energy will start moving towards meditation, on its own.

Transformation happens to you – you cannot do anything about it. You can simply prepare the ground.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

WHY IS IT THAT ALL OVER THE WORLD, THROUGHOUT THE AGES, PEOPLE HAVE HAD

SUCH A GREAT CAPACITY TO IMAGINE GHOSTS?

It has always been one of the most important problems for people: what happens when a man dies?

There have been very few materialists in the past, most of the people were believers in a spirit, in a soul; the body dies but the soul remains. Different religions tried to explain what happens to the soul, but there were loopholes everywhere. And those loopholes gave the idea of ghosts.

For example, Christians, Jews, Mohammedans, all believe in one life, and then will come the final judgment days. But in between, what will happen to the soul? One person dies today; tomorrow is not the judgment day, the judgment day will be at the end of the world. So up to now all the Christians and all the Mohammedans and all the Jews asked, ”What are these people doing? And where are they?” After judgment day a few will go to heaven, most of them will fall into hell; but in the meanwhile they are roaming around without bodies – ghosts.

And man has passed through such periods of fear. There was no fire at the time, the night was dark; no fire, wild animals, and above all, these ghosts. Because of the ghosts, people started worshipping their elders who had died, just to keep them satisfied, ”We remember you – don’t torture us.” In India, even today, every year there are a few days set aside for all the old generations who have died, and people throw sweets and fruits and other things towards the crows. I don’t know how they have got the idea that those ghosts will come in the shape of crows, but the crows will eat the sweets and they will be satisfied.

Crows are ugly, they are black – I don’t think there is anybody who loves a crow and has made a cage in his house and put a crow into it. You will think him mad. And crows are such a nuisance. If they remain silent it is good, but they don’t remain silent, they are continuously vocal. Perhaps their ugliness, their blackness, their sound, all gave the idea that these are ghosts in the form of crows.

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whatever they can. That offering goes to the brahmin, who does the worshipping. But they satisfy them every year, ”Don’t be worried about us. We are happy, you remain happy. There is no need to come here.”

This kind of ritual must have come when people were very much in fear; fear of wild animals was tremendous. And there are schizophrenic people, people who have been thought up to now to be possessed by a ghost. They are psychologically sick; but for centuries they have been the proof that ghosts are there.

In India, moving around the country, I have seen many trees which are famous for releasing you from the possession of ghosts. And what actually happens is really ugly. The person thinks that he is possessed of a ghost, and he behaves in a different way – he is really a split personality. Sometimes he is perfectly okay, ordinary; that is one personality. Everybody is split, but he is so split that he has become almost two persons in the body, and both need space for expression.

People are accustomed to one – when the other takes over, people think a ghost has taken possession. That is the ancient interpretation – they had no idea of split personality. So they take them to these trees; the person is beaten, badly beaten, so that he comes to his senses. And coming back to his senses means he has come back to his old personality.

The tree is worshipped because it is thought that the tree has helped, so a piece of the man’s clothing is hung on the tree. So if you come across thousands of pieces of clothes hanging on a tree, that means thousands of people have been beaten under that tree. And with each person coming back to his personality, a big nail is hammered in, into the tree. That means that the ghost has been hammered in with the tree; now he cannot escape from there.

The beating is such that in most of the cases it helps; the person becomes afraid to move to his other personality because he has been given such good treatment. It is just an old way of psychological treatment, but it works.

I had a neem tree by my house – a very big neem tree. I just purchased a few big nails and stuck them all around the tree, and a few pieces of cloth I hung here and there on the tree. The next day people said, ”What happened – because this tree was never thought...?” But nobody knew, nor did my family know, what I had done. And the unknown is always fear-creating.

Why should anybody do it? – there was no reason – so something unknown had happened. And from that day, that small street by the side of my house became dangerous. After evening nobody would pass by there. They would go round about, almost a mile, to reach their homes, and from my place it was just a few feet away. But to pass under that tree was dangerous; who knows, sometimes a nail may become loose, and a ghost may get out.

My family had a suspicion about me; they started asking me, ”Is it your work?” I said, ”I don’t know anything about ghosts.”

They said, ”Nobody can come into the house, so it is somebody in the house who has done this.

And now you have prevented people from passing by here.” And even the people of my family...

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because just by the side of the tree was the well, and in the night, if water was needed, they would wake me up: ”You go and pull up a bucket of water.” I said, ”This is strange. Why should I be unnecessarily harassed?” They said, ”You are harassing the whole neighborhood.” I said, ”If you know absolutely that I have done it, then you need not be afraid.” They said, ”We know you have done it, but still the fear comes – because you won’t admit that you have done it, it is just our guess. Whatever the case, you go and bring one bucket of water; it is needed right now.”

The tree became so troublesome that one of the students who was studying with me used to go from that street – it was a small street, and the teacher lived on the other corner – he used to go there, and he would run from this side to that side; with closed eyes he would run.

I would tell him, ”Don’t be afraid – those are all very friendly ghosts.” He said, ”Don’t talk to me about ghosts! And when you say friendly, that makes me more afraid. I don’t want any friendship!”

He told his teacher – he was an old man, a brahmin, and very well respected in the town. The brahmin said, ”Don’t be worried. I will give you a mantra: ‘Hare Krishna, Hare Rama.’ You just say,

‘Hare Krishna, Hare Rama,’ and pass that tree fast.” But the boy said, ”I am becoming more afraid every day. You are not afraid?” He said, ”No, I am not afraid. I am a believer in God – I can go anywhere.” So the boy said, ”Today you lead me. Anyway it is so late in the night” – it must have been ten o’clock

– ”you lead me out of the street.”

I had told him, ”Your teacher has given you this mantra; first tell him, ‘You show me how to do it.’

Bring him one day.”

He said, ”I will bring him today.”

So I was waiting; the boy and the teacher, with a lamp in his hand, came just looking all around to see whether any ghosts or anything were there or not. And the teacher said, ”There is nothing. Just start, ‘Hare Krishna, Hare Rama.’” And they both were repeating, ”Hare Krishna, Hare Rama.” I had simply to drop a tin can of kerosene oil – an empty tin can. I beat it first with my hand, and just dropped it on the teacher – it simply hit the teacher’s head, and it was worth seeing how he ran away! And he would not remove it. Even with the tin can, he rushed towards the road, and a crowd gathered – I was also in the crowd.

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And they said, ”Now it is becoming too difficult! Such a respected brahmin, well versed in the ancient law – and the ghosts are not afraid even of him. And this is not right” – because when they removed the can, the teacher was smelling of kerosene because it was a fresh tin, I had just emptied it.

They all smelled him, and they said, ”This is strange! And why were you going there? And what happened to your lamp?” The lamp was dropped there; in such a critical moment to remember it....

Somebody said, ”Go and bring his lamp,” but nobody was ready to. So I told his student, ”You can go. You know the mantra, ‘Hare Krishna, Hare Rama.’” He said, ”That mantra is useless! Even my teacher could not... he was repeating the mantra, and just as he was repeating the mantra, the can came down with a noise, and got fixed onto his head.” My father told me, ”I know... because a new can has come into the house – where is it? Certainly you are part of it. And now the only way to keep this neighborhood free of fear is to cut this tree down.”

I said, ”I have no objection, but can you find any man who is capable of cutting the tree?” He said, ”I knew it – that that’s why you were agreeing, because nobody will be ready” – and nobody was ready to cut it.

There were many woodcutters in the town. They said, ”That tree we cannot touch. Releasing those ghosts... who knows, whether they will start coming to our home, or follow us, or possess us.” My father was ready to give double the price. They said, ”Whatever you want to give us – you find somebody else.” They suggested, ”You enquire in some other town for somebody who does not know anything about the tree.”

But anybody who came from another place, looking at the tree with the nails and the pieces of clothes hanging from it, would simply refuse. There was no way.

I told my father, ”I am the only person – if you want, I can cut this tree. But then don’t tell me if your whole house becomes full of ghosts. They are living in the tree – leave them alone. And they are peaceful people, they don’t harm anybody. They just did that to the teacher because he was saying a mantra against them. He started the antagonism. They were not... they are peaceful ghosts.” My father said, ”I know they are peaceful ghosts, but we also have to live in this house. Nobody now can sleep on the terrace.” In the summer in India people sleep on terraces or outside. ”Nobody is ready... except you, nobody goes to the terrace in the night,” because the tree was spreading its branches on the terrace.

And things started happening which I had not done; people managed it themselves. Somebody would suddenly fall there, near the tree. The reason may have been that it was raining and it was slippery, and he slipped. But the whole blame went on the tree, that the ghosts were now slipping people up.

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It came to a stage that even in the day the street was blocked, nobody was going there. And people were angry because they had to go so long round about to reach to their home from the main street; and it was so close by the small street.

There is no such thing as a ghost. The ghost is in your fear; and the fear can be created by anything.

And once it is created, it becomes difficult to get rid of it.

In fact all these three religions are wrong about souls. The moment a person dies, he immediately –

within two, three seconds – enters into another womb. Only a few people remain in the unembodied state – very bad people like Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin, because they cannot get such a bad womb, so they have to remain hundreds of years; or very good people remain for hundreds of years waiting to find a right womb. But they are rare. The good ones will not do any harm to anybody; and the bad ones have done so much harm in their life that now they are repenting, feeling guilty.

A few people of these two types may be around the earth, but they are not going to hurt anybody or harm anybody. The whole idea of ghosts has arisen out of fear – and anything can create fear.

People passing by the side of a graveyard will run. If it is night, they will be afraid to go that way.

Just small things... it is really your fear that becomes the ghost. If you don’t have any fear....

In the East, because transmigration of the soul is a fact accepted by all the religions, there is not so much fear of ghosts. England is the most ghost-haunted place – and this question is from Chetana!

So many houses in England are ghost-haunted, but it is strange that this happens only in England; in other places, very rarely. But in England there are so many houses which are ghost-haunted.

It seems for a long time England has been doing as much evil in the world as possible; otherwise you cannot create an empire. Millions of people have been murdered and butchered; and whenever you do so much evil, you cannot remain unaffected. The fear of the unknown – that you have killed so many people....

In my town there is a beautiful ashram of the followers of Kabir... which is rare, because there are very few followers of Kabir. The man who was there as the chief of the ashram, Satya Sahib, was really a sincere man, and a seeker. He died. The ashram has many beautiful things; it has caves, and it has underground caves, so deep that half the cave is filled with water, so you can have two parts in the cave. Half the cave is just a little higher, where you can go for bathing, for drinking or for anything else; the water is there, constantly flowing. And there are many caves.

Satya Sahib was a man of great discipline and had a good following. But he died – I had not seen him but I knew his follower, Sahibdas. He had no qualities of his teacher, but was very much knowledgeable. I used to go to him with my father – my father was a friend of his teacher.

One day he started talking about ghosts; somehow the topic came up, and he said, ”There are no ghosts.”

I said, ”That is not right. Even your guru, Satya Sahib, has become a ghost.” He said, ”What!”

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I said, ”I have seen him, just standing on his grave. And if you want to see him, I can make arrangements.”

He said, ”To see him? He was dangerous even when he was alive – I don’t want to see his ghost.

But how did you come to see him?”

I said, ”I was just passing by, and he was standing, naked, on his samadhi. And as you know, I just enquired, ‘What are you doing, Satya Sahib – standing naked here on such a cold morning?’” And he said, ”For a ghost there is no cold, no hot; everything is perfectly good – clothes are not needed.”

Sahibdas said, ”This is all nonsense! You are just making it up.” My father said to him, ”Don’t listen to him! He has made my house almost into a haunted house –

people are afraid to pass. He never told me that he has met your teacher – and he was my friend.” I said, ”I did not tell you because you would not believe that he has become a ghost, poor fellow.” But Sahibdas, his disciple, became interested, although he was afraid: ”What is the truth?” So he called me one afternoon, and he said, ”You just tell me the truth – what is the truth?” I said, ”I have told the whole thing. All that I can do is, I can make some arrangement. I have met your guru again.”

He said, ”What!”

I said, ”Yes, he was again standing there – just a coincidence. I go for a morning walk, and he was standing, naked, and I told him this time, ‘Your disciple does not believe that you have become a ghost.’ He said, ‘He is an IDIOT! He never believed anything I said.’ I said, ‘I have given him the opportunity to see you. What can be done so that he can see you?’

”He said, ‘Just bring him in the night, midnight, when the watchtower of the city makes it twelve.

Bring him, and he will see me here. But because he is such an unworthy disciple, I will have to cover myself with a cloth, a white cloth. I don’t want to show my face to him, nor do I want to see his face.’

”

”Whenever you want, I can arrange...”

Sahibdas said, ”He is angry?”

”He is certainly very angry. He said, ‘Don’t touch my clothes and don’t come close to me.’ He has shown me the place, ‘Stand there, near the tree’ – there was a tree – ‘near that tree. And don’t come close, because I am really angry: my disciple has proved absolutely unworthy. And in anger, you know, a man can do anything.’”

So that night, at twelve o’clock, I had to persuade one of my friends, who was the same height, to stand there with a white cloth covering him, and I took Sahibdas. And as the watchtower clock gave The Transmission of the Lamp

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the signal of twelve, Sahibdas looked and said, ”My God! He is standing there! He is so angry that if we go near him, he can do anything!”

I said, ”You can go near him, but he has said that he will do anything – I don’t know what he will do – that he will jump upon you, or he will hit you or something.” I had given the friend a good staff and said, ”If he comes, just give him a good hit.” He had a clean-shaved head, the way the Kabir followers keep their heads, clean-shaved. ”Just give a good hit on his head, and that will be enough, with the fear and all, and he will become unconscious. And I will call over everybody concerned, my father and others, and say, ‘Look!’ ”

And that happened. He went close, got a good hit, fell down, and became unconscious. When I brought my father and other people with lamps and torches, they saw Sahibdas lying down by the side of the grave. He would open his eyes and just look at the grave – the afterimage was still there

– and would close his eyes again, because he was still seeing...

My friend had disappeared; I had told him, ”You disappear; otherwise people will beat you very badly. You simply give the hit and disappear.” And the place was such, almost a jungle type – ”You can disappear very easily.”

It took almost one hour to bring Sahibdas back. My father asked him, ”What happened?” He said, ”Your son was right; we unnecessarily suspected him. He has shown me my guru – he was standing here! And he had told me, ‘Don’t go near him because he is very angry.’ But even when he was alive, he never hit me that hard! He hit me with a staff so hard on my head” – there was blood on his head – ”And the fear of his ghost... I fell, and then I don’t know what happened.” He became so afraid – it was outside the town, the ashram – that he left the town the next day.

We have never heard about him or what happened to him. But one thing is certain, he must have remained believing in ghosts, spreading the story of ghosts.

I have enjoyed showing many people ghosts – which is very easy. They have believed it; and the reason is the basic fear within you. Otherwise, I have not come across any ghost, and I have been in search of them.

Now psychologists are working on it, and finding different reasons for happenings that were unaccountable before; now they can be explained. But one thing is certain: ghosts don’t exist.

They are just as much a creation as God – out of fear.

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CHAPTER 37

There is no power which is higher than love

13 June 1986 pm in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

YOU HAVE DESCRIBED HOW THE ABILITY TO COMMUNICATE HIS EXPERIENCE IS THE

ESSENCE OF THE MASTER. YET IN YOU SOMETHING EVEN MORE BEAUTIFUL HAS

HAPPENED.

BUDDHA CONVEYED HIS MESSAGE TO A SELECT FEW THOUSAND MEN IN THE LOCAL PALI LANGUAGE – IN RESPONSE TO THE FAILINGS OF BRAHMINISM.

BY COMPARISON, YOU ARE TALKING TO MILLIONS OF MEN AND WOMEN FROM

EVERY CONTINENT, FROM EVERY RACE, FROM EVERY RELIGION, FROM EVERY

POSSIBLE BACKGROUND. RATHER THAN BEING RESTRICTED TO THE SHORTCOMINGS OF

BRAHMINISM, YOU DRAW FROM, AND SYNTHESIZE, EVERY SPIRITUAL, PSYCHOLOGICAL

AND SCIENTIFIC ELEMENT EVER CONCEIVED BY MAN.

YOU WERE ABLE TO EXPRESS EXISTENCE IN HINDI SO POETICALLY THAT PEOPLE SAID

YOU WERE THE FINEST HINDI SPEAKER ALIVE. ON TOP OF THAT, YOU ARE ABLE TO DO THE

SAME IN A SECOND, FOREIGN LANGUAGE, TO PEOPLE FROM THESE WIDELY DIFFERING

CULTURES WHO ARE, FOR THE MOST PART, A GENERATION AWAY. YOU DON’T JUST

EXPRESS YOURSELF IN THAT SECOND LANGUAGE, BUT MANAGE TO CATCH THE FINE

NUANCES AND COLLOQUIALISMS OF EVERYDAY SPEECH THAT USUALLY ONLY NATIVES

HAVE A GRASP OF.

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OSHO, IS THIS SUPREME ABILITY TO COMMUNICATE WHAT MAKES YOU THE MASTER OF

MASTERS?

The situation of the world has changed dramatically. Just three hundred years ago, the world was very big. Even if Gautam Buddha had wanted to approach all human beings, it would not have been possible; just the means of communication were not available. People were living in many worlds, almost isolated from each other. That has a simplicity.

Jesus had to face the Jews, not the whole world. It would not have been possible, sitting on his donkey, to go around the world. Even if he had managed to cover the small kingdom of Judea, that would have been too much. The education of people was very confined. They were not even aware of each other’s existence.

Gautam Buddha, Lao Tzu in China, Socrates in Athens – they were all contemporaries but they had no idea of each other.

That’s why I say that before the scientific revolution in the means of communication and in the means of transportation, there were many worlds, sufficient unto themselves. They never thought of others, they had no idea even that others existed. As people became acquainted more and more with each other, the world became smaller. Now a Buddha will not be able to manage, nor Jesus nor Moses nor Confucius. They will all have very localized minds and very localized attitudes.

We are fortunate that the world is now so small that you cannot be local. In spite of yourself, you cannot be local; you have to be universal. You have to think of Confucius, you have to think of Krishna, you have to think of Socrates, you have to think of Bertrand Russell. Unless you think of the world as one single unit, and all the contributions of different geniuses, you will not be able to talk to the modern man. The gap will be so big – twenty-five centuries, twenty centuries... almost impossible to bridge it.

The only way to bridge it is that the person who has come to know should not stop at his own knowing, should not be contented to only give expression to what he has come to know. He has to make a tremendous effort to know all the languages. The work is vast, but it is exciting – the exploration into human genius from different dimensions.

And if you have within yourself the light of understanding, you can create, without any difficulty, a synthesis. And the synthesis is not only going to be of all the religious mystics – that will be partial.

The synthesis has to include all the artists – their insights – all the musicians, all the poets, all the dancers – their insights. All the creative people who have contributed to life, who have made humanity richer, have to be taken into account. And most important of all is scientific growth.

To bring scientific growth into a synthetic vision with heart and religion was not possible in the past.

In the first place there was no science – and it has changed a thousand and one things. Life can never be the same again.

And nobody has thought ever of the artistic people, that their contribution is also religious.

In my vision it is a triangle – science, religion, art.

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And they are such different dimensions, they speak different languages, they contradict each other; they are not in agreement superficially – unless you have a deep insight in which they all can melt and become one.

My effort has been to do almost the impossible.

In my university days as a student, my professors were at a loss. I was a student of philosophy, and I was attending science classes – physics, chemistry and biology. Those professors were feeling very strange; ”You are here in the university to study philosophy. Why are you wasting your time with chemistry?”

I said, ”I have nothing to do with chemistry; I just want to have a clear insight into what chemistry has done, what physics has done. I don’t want to go into details, I just want the essential contribution.” I was rarely in my classes, I was mostly in the library. My professors were continually saying, ”What are you doing the whole day in the library? – because so many complaints have come from the librarian that you are the first to enter the library, and you have to be almost physically taken out of the library. The whole day you are there. And not only in the philosophical department, you are roaming around the library in all the departments which have nothing to do with you.” I said to them, ”It is difficult for me to explain to you, but my effort in the future is going to be to bring everything that has some truth in it into a synthetic whole and create a way of life which is inclusive of all, which is not based on arguments and contradictions, which is based on a deep insight into the essential core of all the contributions that have been made to human knowledge, to human wisdom.” They thought I would go mad – the task I have chosen can lead anyone to madness, it is too vast.

But they were not aware that madness is impossible for me, that I have left the mind far behind; I am just a watcher.

And the mind is such a delicate and complicated computer. Man has made great computers but none is yet comparable to the human mind. Just a single human mind has the capacity to contain all the libraries of the world. And just a single library – the British Museum library – has books, which if you go on making them like a wall, one by one, they will go three times round the earth. And that is only one big library. Moscow has the same kind of library – perhaps bigger. Harvard has the same kind of library.

But a single human mind is capable of containing all that is written in all these books, of memorizing it. In a single brain there are more than a billion cells, and each single cell is capable of containing millions of pieces of information. Certainly one will go mad if one is not already standing out of the mind. If you have not reached the status of meditation, madness is sure. They were not wrong, but they were not aware of my efforts towards meditation.

So I was reading strange books, strange scriptures, from all over the world; yet I was only a watcher, because as far as I was concerned, I had come home. I had nothing to learn from all that reading; that reading was for a different purpose, and the purpose was to make my message universal, to make it free from local limitations.

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And I am happy that I have succeeded in it completely. I don’t have anything which is local. I don’t have a land, a mother country. I don’t have a house to live in. I don’t have any place on this earth anywhere. This is a very strange situation.

I am a world citizen, but in the world I don’t have even a space to stand, anywhere.

I can remain here only four or five days more; then I have to move. But perhaps that is good. What I have known through books, this way I am coming to know in reality.

I have become a universal gypsy.

Because you love me, you call me ”master of masters.” It is out of your love.

As far as I am concerned, I simply think of myself only an ordinary human being who was stubborn enough to remain independent, resisted all conditioning, never belonged to any religion, never belonged to any political party, never belonged to any organization, never belonged to any nation, any race.

I have tried in every possible way just to be myself, without any adjective; and that has given me so much integrity, individuality, authenticity, and the tremendous blissfulness of being fulfilled.

But it was the need of the time. After me, anybody trying to be a master will have to remember that he has to pass through all the things I have passed through; otherwise, he cannot be called a master. He will remain just localized – a Hindu teacher, a Christian missionary, a Mohammedan priest – but not a master of human beings as such.

After me it is going to be really difficult to be a master.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

AFTER BEING HERE WITH YOU TWO MONTHS, I WILL BE LEAVING TODAY.

LAST NIGHT I THOUGHT THAT SINCE I MIGHT BE AWAY FOR A WHILE IT WOULD BE A GOOD

IDEA TO CLEAR UP ANY PROBLEMS OR ISSUES WITH THE PEOPLE IN THE HOUSE WHERE

I’VE BEEN LIVING. I WAS SHOCKED TO REALIZE THAT THERE WERE NONE – THAT WE HAD

BEEN LIVING IN SUCH HARMONY AS I HAVE NEVER EXPERIENCED BEFORE. NOWHERE

ELSE COULD THIRTY PEOPLE LIVE IN ONE HOUSE WITH SO LITTLE JEALOUSY, FIGHTING

OR TENSION.

YOUR MIRACLE IS HAPPENING – THE NEW MAN IS BEING CREATED, YOUR VISION IS

MANIFESTING. WE WILL MOVE ON. WE WILL SHOW THE WORLD THAT WITH YOU THE

IMPOSSIBLE HAPPENS EVERY DAY.

Avirbhava, that is our whole effort, to show to the whole world that there is no need of any war, no need of any fight, no need of jealousy, no need of hate. Life is so short and love is so precious. And The Transmission of the Lamp

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when you can fill your life with love, with harmony, with joy, when you can make your life a poetry unto itself.... If you miss, only you are responsible for it, nobody else.

What can happen in a small group can happen in a bigger group, can happen all over the world. It is only a question of understanding; a simple insight is needed not to be dragged down by the forces of darkness, negativity, destructiveness. Just a little alertness is needed to devote oneself to creativity, to love, to sensitivity, and to make this small life just a series of songs... that you dance in your life and that your death will be your crescendo of dance; that you live totally and you die totally with no complaint, with gratitude, with thankfulness to existence.

I don’t call the prayers that happen in synagogues and churches, and temples and mosques, real prayer. The real prayer is only one, and that is to live in such a way that you start feeling grateful towards existence, that existence has given you such an opportunity – which you had never asked for, which you never deserved. And yet you got it, and you blossomed into thousands of flowers, and you left the world with the fragrance of thankfulness.

Avirbhava, what is happening around me in different places – we want to make it a wildfire so that before the idiotic politicians of the world destroy life, we can make life so precious that nobody is ready to fight. The politicians can commit suicide with their own nuclear weapons if they want, but humanity is no longer interested in killing and being killed. And it is such a simple phenomenon, that once you have got the taste of it, you can never be the same person again.

And we are determined, against all powerful forces.... We don’t have any power. Love is our only power, silence is our only force. But I say unto you that there is no power which is higher than love, and there is no force which can defeat silence. And it is through love and silence that one comes to know truth... which is the ultimate victory of life.

I repeat: we are determined to spread the message to all nooks and corners of the world, to every intelligent person who can understand. Except this, there is no way to save this beautiful planet.

And this planet is the blessed planet, because all other planets – and there are millions of planets in the universe – are simply dead, not even grass grows there. Nobody sits there silently doing nothing. It is all empty. Only this small earth is so fortunate that all kinds of life exist. In man it has become conscious, and in a few men it has become superconscious, and in every man it has the possibility of becoming superconsciousness. That means attaining, arriving at the very essence of truth, of immortality, of eternity.

We may not have a home, but we will go on wandering like gypsies around the world, making the whole world our home.

Home is where we are. Home is where there is love. Home is where there is harmony.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

I OFTEN FEEL THAT PEOPLE, PARTICULARLY MEN, ONLY SEE CERTAIN FACETS OF ME, THINKING THIS IS THE REAL ME, BUT DEEP DOWN I FEEL MISUNDERSTOOD BECAUSE I The Transmission of the Lamp

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DON’T KNOW IF ALL THESE FACETS ARE ALL THAT I AM. BUT I FEEL THERE IS MUCH MORE

TO ME THAT NOBODY SEES OR PERHAPS WANTS TO SEE.

WITH YOU I FEEL THE SITUATION IS JUST THE OPPOSITE: I FEEL YOU CONTACT THE REAL

ME. WHEN I AM SURROUNDED BY PEOPLE, IT MAKES ME SAD THAT THEY DON’T SEE THE

REAL ME.

COULD YOU PLEASE SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THIS?

Firstly, people can see only aspects of you. They cannot see your real self because they have not seen their own real self. Neither have you seen your real self.

You simply feel that people are taking your aspects as your whole reality – and that is not true, because you know there are other aspects.

But you also are not aware of your real self. Even the sum total of all your aspects is not the real you – you are more than the sum total of all the aspects.

In fact, it has nothing to do with aspects.

Your real being is only a watcher, a seer, a witness.

All the aspects are of your mind, of your personality.

You are simply a mirror which reflects anything that comes in front of it, but the moment it has moved away the mirror is again empty.

So the first thing to remember is; don’t get angry, don’t get disturbed that people are not seeing you in your reality. You yourself have not seen you in your reality. First try to see yourself in your reality.

The moment you see yourself in your reality you will not feel angry if somebody thinks a certain aspect is your whole; you will feel compassion for the person because his capacity to know is very limited. You will help the person to know your other aspects, and finally to know you – which is not an aspect, which is something beyond all aspects.

That is why with me you feel different.

I don’t see your aspects. I am not concerned with them. I simply see you as a mirror, because I know everybody is just a mirror in their deepest core.

So I never judge a person because every judgment means you have taken certain aspects and you have made that aspect the person’s whole being.

Somebody steals. That is only an aspect. Somebody murders; that is only an aspect – because the person who has murdered somebody, has also loved. Perhaps he has murdered because he loved too much, because he was a friend indeed to someone, that was... another aspect.

But our whole society is based on judgment. Even our so-called fair courts are all judgmental, prejudiced.

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Just the other day I was looking at a judgment one court in America has given against my commune.

In the judgment the judge has made it clear that all the laws are in favor of my commune, but still he feels that the money – one hundred and forty thousand dollars – should be given to this man, from the commune’s fund.

He says in his judgment ”I assume” – that is a strange word in a judgment – ”I assume that this man needs that money. All the laws are in favor of the commune. They are for the commune.” And that man was a servant of the commune. He was receiving one thousand dollars per month. He managed, with the clerk who was giving the salaries, that rather than getting one thousand dollars per month he was getting one thousand dollars per week.

Now even the president of America, I don’t think, gets one thousand dollars per week.

And his work was nothing.

Because we purchased the land and he was the caretaker of the land for the old owner, the old owner said that he will be helpful. The land is big – one hundred and twenty-six square miles. ”He will be helpful to you to find places where cultivation is possible, where water is possible.” So we had kept him.

And when we found out that he has been drawing four thousand dollars per month instead of one thousand dollars, naturally we had to put a case against him. That case has not been decided.

This is what prejudice is. That man put a case against the commune that because we put a case against him we have made his name notorious, we have condemned him as a thief. So he was asking for three million or four million dollars as a compensation.

The first case is not decided yet, and perhaps will never be decided, but the second has been decided, and the wording is simply amazing – that all the laws are in favor of the commune but still this man is to be paid one hundred and forty thousand dollars. He needs it. His name has been damaged.

His act has not been yet decided, whether he cheated the commune or not, but because we have put the case against him and published it in the paper, his name has been condemned, and he needs the money. And the judge himself feels that all the laws are in our favor, but still he ”assumes”.

Our whole society depends on aspects, judgmental.

Now this judge must have been feeling jealous of the commune and its standard of living, and this is a good chance – without showing any jealousy; otherwise, there is no reason. He should have at least waited for the first case to be decided. But his own jealousy must have been creating the prejudice.

In another case they were trying to find twelve jurors who were unprejudiced to me and to the commune. They interviewed at least fifty people, and putting their hand on the BIBLE they became afraid and they said, ”We are prejudiced.” So they were rejected as jurors; otherwise, they were going to sit as a jury.

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Now these people were rejected – because we insisted that their interview should be taken and their oath. It was so difficult that even the judge said, ”Your cases should be decided outside of the state of Oregon because in Oregon you cannot get justice. Everybody is prejudiced.” But outside also we have seen the same thing.

In North Carolina, for three days the U.S. government attorney tried hard to prove that my arrest was legal, and he himself had to accept in the end that ”We have not been able to prove anything.” Now this is a simple thing, that the U.S. government attorney accepts that he has not been able to prove anything against me. Still the magistrate said, ”You may not have been able to prove that his arrest was legal, but I am not going to give him bail.” Of all my friends who were arrested with me, without any arrest warrant, three were left without bail, three were left on bail. I was not given bail. The reason that was given was that I am extremely intelligent, that I have thousands of followers who can do anything for me, that I have unaccounted sources of money, that however big the bail is – five million dollars, ten million dollars – I can jump it and go out of America.

I have not committed any crime. My arrest is unjustified, but bail cannot be given because I am capable of getting out of America.

This raises two points. One, is America such a weak country, powerless? It is the most powerful country in the world – all the armies, all the police, all the nuclear weapons. A single man, and you are afraid that you cannot give him bail?

Secondly, if this is the case then in America anybody who is rich enough should not be given bail.

You can arrest any Rockefeller for no reason, there is no need to prove anything. Bail can be refused because he has so much money he may manage to get out of America. Then no rich man should be given bail. But for me a special reasoning has been found: the real thing has been put aside, that I have been arrested illegally without any arrest warrant, without any reason for arrest; and a secondary thing, which is absolutely illogical, has been used. That means only poor people can get bail, the very poor who cannot escape, who cannot purchase a ticket from one place to another place, who don’t have any friends – only these people can get bail. Anybody who has friends, who has money, who has sources, cannot be given bail.

And the real reason... when I came back to the jail, the jailer was very much shocked. The old man’s eyes had tears. He told me, ”This is sheer injustice as I have never seen in my life. They could not prove – with three days continually arguing – they could not prove anything. And still they refused bail. This I have never seen or heard in my whole life.” He had come perfectly prepared to release me from the court. And he said, ”This is simple injustice, and the reason is that the woman magistrate is hoping to become a federal judge. The post is vacant, and it is in the hands of the politicians who are pressurizing her, saying, ‘If you give bail to this man you will never become a federal judge, remember. So use any reason, that is up to you; but bail has not to be given.’ ” I said to that old man, ”If this is the reason, then there is no harm. Let that woman become the federal judge. At least I have come to be of some use to somebody; otherwise, I am good for nothing!”

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The whole society is based on judging. It takes one aspect – because you cannot see the whole person. The whole person is a big thing. If I put a small stone in your hand, you cannot see the whole stone; you will see only one side of it, and when you will see the other side then the first side will not be seen. You cannot manage to see it in one glance in its totality.

What to say about human personality, which is a multi-dimensional phenomenon?

So don’t be angry with anyone. They see a certain aspect.

It is as if you take out from a novel a page and you read the page and you decide about the novel.

A single aspect, a single act, is just like that.

But this is the way people have lived, judged; and the reason is because they themselves are not aware of their wholeness. Once they become aware of their wholeness then they cannot judge anybody by any small aspect. They know that the man is far bigger. In its wholeness this small thing will be lost, like a dewdrop in the ocean. It doesn’t matter.

But to come to such compassion, to such non-judgmental seeing, you need first to realize your own wholeness.

So it is not a question about others.

It is a question about you.

With me you will feel good – because I never judge anybody. I have no prejudice against anybody, and I know that anything that comes in front is only a small part – which may be deceptive, the whole may just be different. And this small part taken separately may have a different meaning; in the whole it may have a different meaning because the whole will give a context which is not possible taking things out of context.

So do two things. One, make every effort to be watchful of your own life so that slowly, slowly you simply remain watchfulness. That is your reality. Secondly, don’t judge others.

You cannot prevent others, of course, judging you – that is not possible; but you can stop judging others. Perhaps that may help. Others may start thinking about you as a man who never judges, and they should be more compassionate towards you.

And there is no need to feel hurt because whatsoever they are doing, in their sleep, in their unconsciousness they can only do that.

So remember to forgive people, to forget people. Otherwise you will start having a prejudice against the person, that he judged you wrong; and then any moment, any situation, you will take revenge.

This game goes on in society.

At least from your side, stop it, let the other person play the football alone. Soon he will be tired.

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as a realization of your inner being, not as a determination by the mind. Then it is so simple that I don’t think there is anything simpler than this – not to judge people.

Otherwise people judge every moment; everybody – whether it is their concern or not it is not the question, it is just a mechanical habit.

I was traveling in a car from Nagpur to Gandhi’s ashram in Wardha, with a very rich woman follower of Gandhi. She had come to take me. On the way, one tire got punctured so I told her that I would rather sit out under the tree, as it was a beautiful evening. So I went out and sat under a tree, the driver also went. She was alone in the car. And the driver was sitting by my side smoking a cigarette.

When I came back and entered the car, I was sitting in the back seat with the lady – some smoke of the cigarette must have caught either on my hair or on my clothes – that woman just looked at me and said, ”I hate smoking. You have been smoking outside!” I said, ”You should at least be graceful enough first to enquire.” She said, ”What is there to enquire? I can smell.” I said, ”You can smell. I can smell also. I could have said, ‘In the car there is a smell of cigarettes.

you must have been smoking – because you were alone here.’ I didn’t say that.” And I said, ”You seem to be a snobbish type. What business is it of yours if I have been smoking? Who are you?

Have I made any conditions that I will not smoke? You have just come to receive me from the ashram. I don’t even know you. You may be rich. You may have your influence in the ashram. I don’t care about all these things.”

The driver was listening. He stopped the car and he said, ”This is wrong,” to the lady. ”I have been smoking and I know how ashram people are. In Gandhi’s ashram smoking is a sin. I was afraid that this man may stop me, but he didn’t say anything. And even now he has not mentioned that I was smoking.”

I said, ”You don’t come into the picture. I am trying to tell the lady that if she doesn’t like smoking she can go and sit in front. And judging just by the smoke, and I have not been smoking! Still, just the smell and you just... and not only your condemnation, the way you told me, the way you looked at me.”

I refused to go in that car. I got out. I said, ”Tell the ashram to send another car. This lady smells too much of smoke.”

The driver said, ”I will be in trouble because you were not smoking and this woman is dangerous.

She gives money, so she has great hold in the ashram.” I said, ”Either she gets out or I am out. Just bring my luggage out and leave me here under the tree. And tell to Ramdas, Gandhi’s son” – Gandhi had died, but his son was my friend – ”Tell him what happened. If he can manage to send another car, good, otherwise I will find my way back to Nagpur.”

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Seeing the situation, the lady became aware that she was wrong, she should have asked. I was not smoking. The driver was smoking, and she simply jumped on me. And I am not an ashramite, I am not a Gandhian. I am against Gandhi on each and every single point. And Ramdas will be very angry if I am left here. So she came out, and said, ”I am sorry.” I said, ”This will not do. You will have to change your attitude. You must be doing it to everybody.” I was staying in another Gandhi ashram, where one of his chief disciples, Balkova Bhave, was the teacher of the ashramites. Every morning he would go and look into the rooms and he would look even into their bathrooms – whether they are clean or not. I said, ”This is insulting.” And I said, ”All these people go on suffering this torture. It is to be made clear that things should be clean, but that does not mean that every day – EVERY DAY....” And he would find something or other, and that would be enough to condemn the man. I said, ”It seems it is just an excuse to find something to condemn.”

The same was the situation in other Gandhi ashrams in India – you cannot drink tea, you cannot drink coffee, you cannot smoke cigarettes, you cannot play cards. It is okay if you prevent gambling, but just playing cards is innocent, there is nothing in it, no harm. You cannot use even mosquito nets because it is luxury.

And in Wardha there are such big mosquitoes that you cannot sleep, and the whole night the mosquitoes will suck your blood.

So Gandhi has found a way, kerosene oil. Everybody has to paint his face with kerosene oil – and his hands or anything that remains out of the clothes.

I said to Ramdas, ”Up to evening I can be here, but not in the night. I don’t think a mosquito net is a luxury; it is nonsense, whoever says that a mosquito net is a luxury.” Mahatma Gandhi must have been a mosquito in his past life! Otherwise from where he can get this idea?

”I cannot stay here. And painting your hands and face with kerosene oil, you can simply see that even mosquitoes don’t come close and how can you sleep? The whole night you are smelling the kerosene oil. Even mosquitoes are intelligent enough, they are not coming. How can you sleep?” I said, ”I can stay only up to the evening; then I go back.” But these things were judged.

If you start judging people, then you can condemn everybody in the whole world, and the ultimate result will be that you will be living in a world of condemned people so you will be in misery because everybody is condemned all around you.

I live in a world with beautiful people because I never condemn anybody for anything. To me, everybody is intelligent enough to take care of his life.

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This is because Avirbhava could not find, in two months, any quarrel, any fight, any tension, any disharmony. She must have been puzzled, thirty people living in a house in great harmony. The only way is that they are not judging each other. That is not proper, that is inhuman.

Start from yourself. Don’t judge others. Don’t take their aspects as their whole personality, and find out your wholeness. And slowly, slowly you may be able to see better, and you will not feel hurt if somebody judges – that is his problem.

Question 4

BELOVED OSHO,

IT USED TO TAKE A FULL GLASS OF WINE TO GET ME DRUNK, BUT THE OTHER NIGHT I GOT COMPLETELY SLOSHED ON JUST ONE THIRD OF A GLASS.

WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE?

Just wait and you will start getting drunk with empty glasses. When you start getting drunk with an empty glass, just remind me. You’re coming closer!

That’s how I get drunk.

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14 June 1986 am in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

RICHARD WILHELM, THE MAN WHO TRANSLATED THE I CHING FROM CHINESE TO

GERMAN, CAME BACK TO VIENNA VERY DISTURBED AFTER SPENDING THIRTY YEARS IN

CHINA. HE CONSULTED HIS FRIEND, CARL GUSTAV JUNG. JUNG’S DIAGNOSIS WAS THAT

WILHELM WAS IN A DANGEROUS CRISIS. HE HAD PUT ASIDE THE GERMAN CULTURE

AND ADOPTED THE CHINESE ONE, THE WHOLE PACKAGE – RELIGION, EDUCATION AND

WHATSOEVER.

JUNG SAID, ”THE PART YOU SACRIFICED COMES BACK AS THE SACRIFICER, THE

REPRESSED PART COMES BACK AS THE REPRESSOR.”

AND WILHELM LOVED THE CHINESE CULTURE, HE EVEN WORSHIPPED IT, BUT HIS MIND

WAS NO HELP AT ALL. HE DIED FROM THIS CRISIS.

NIETZSCHE, THE MAN WHO WROTE ”OUT OF CHAOS IT WILL SHINE FORTH – THE DANCING

MORNING STAR”, WAS NOT A LUCKY MAN EITHER. HE FREAKED OUT.

NIJINSKY USED HIS BODY BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES, AND FREAKED OUT AS WELL.

IT SEEMS THAT MIND ALONE OR BODY ALONE CAN’T TAKE YOU ANYWHERE.

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OSHO, IS THE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE THE WINGS THAT WILL TAKE MIND, BODY AND

HEART TO A NON-SLEEPING CONDITION? ARE YOU THE DANCING MORNING STAR THAT

CAME OUT FROM THE EAST TO PUT FIRE TO THE WORLD – OR BETTER, TO THE REBELS

OF THE WORLD?

Richard Wilhelm certainly died in a very torturous way. He was a genius, and spending thirty years in China, he became aware of the subtleties and the grace that Chinese culture had developed for thousands of years.

The I CHING is a very strange book.

There are many books like that in the East, which give you a glimpse of your future and also a glimpse of your past.

The crisis was that he was educated, brought up in the Western style, in the German culture, which does not believe in any past lives, which does not believe that the future can be seen. But thirty years is a long period, and to become a real scholar of Chinese language, that is the minimum time needed.

He devoted himself totally. The result was a schizophrenic personality, he became two persons –

one that had gone to China, and one that came from China.

The one that had gone to China was absolutely Western, and the idea was only to translate the book; but as he was translating the book, he got more and more involved in it. The whole Western culture started looking pygmy in comparison to the Chinese insight of Tao. So a second personality started growing, and in thirty years the second personality became perfectly mature. But the first personality was not erased.

And Carl Gustav Jung, the great psychoanalyst and his friend, simply did a diagnosis – but a diagnosis is not a cure.

What Wilhelm needed was meditation, which could have bridged the West and the East in him. He was torn apart. His logic was saying one thing; but he has seen in thirty years that there is much more to life than logic, and people have lived it, experienced it. But this was only an intellectual understanding, it was not an insight.

If he had in those thirty years also meditated, the catastrophe would have been avoided, and a genius mind would have been of tremendous help in bringing East and West closer.

But he was too much in learning the language and translating the I CHING. He forgot completely that a book like the I CHING is not an ordinary book, it is a book out of deep meditative insights. It is not intellectual, it is intuitional.

He managed to translate literally, but he missed the point that the book was also totally different from all the other books he had known before. They were produced by the mind, by the intellect.

This book was not produced by the intellect. It created a chaos in his being.

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It is unfortunate that he died in that chaos. It made Carl Gustav Jung very much afraid of the East, and he started teaching a certain hypothesis – which is simply stupid – that Eastern methods are suitable only to Eastern people, and Western methods are suitable to Western people, and they should not be mixed.

This seems to be a very superficial analysis of the whole case.

This means that your intellect should remain unbridged with your intuition. This means that your head should never come in contact with your heart. This means that the West will remain half, and the East will remain half.

Richard Wilhelm’s case is very symbolic. It shows that things should be done under proper guidance.

He was learning language from the linguists – they were not masters of intuition. He was translating a book which has nothing to do with intellect, which needed a master to help him, so that the translation is not only literal but essential, that it carries the very fragrance of the original – not just the verbal change of language.

He was never a disciple of a Tao master; otherwise, this catastrophe would have been avoided, and things would have been totally different. Because since his death, nobody has tried that hard to understand the East’s basic contribution.

Intuition cannot be translated into intellect. A certain bridge can certainly be made, but the more intuition takes possession of you, the more intellect has to function as a servant.

And that was the problem. Although for thirty years he worked with an intuitive book, his intellect remained the master.

And intuition can never be a servant. It is your innermost core. It opens up only in deep meditation.

And Richard Wilhelm never bothered about meditation. His whole concern was the translation of the book, without thinking that books can be different. The books written by the mind – of which the West is full – and the books arisen out of intuition are a totally different category.

The I CHING is perhaps five or seven thousand years old. Nobody knows who wrote it – because in the East it is not important that the name of the person should be on the book, particularly the intuitive ones whose egos have been lost, in fact they have become nameless. Some nameless master, a visionary, wrote the book not because he wanted to write it, but because existence wanted it to be written. He was simply a vehicle, a hollow bamboo.

Although Richard Wilhelm remained thirty years in China, he remained with wrong people. He had to. First he had to learn the language, and for that he had to be in contact with linguistic experts.

And once he had learned the language, he started translating the book, thinking that every book belongs to the same category – and there is the fallacy.

The UPANISHADS in India do not belong to the ordinary category of books. The DHAMMAPADA of Gautam Buddha does not belong to the ordinary category of books.

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Even in modern times there have been a few intuitive books. The GITANJALI of Rabindranath Tagore, THE PROPHET of Kahlil Gibran, THE BOOK OF MIRDAD by Mikhail Naimy – they do not belong to the ordinary category of books, and if you think they are just as other books are, you are going to have trouble. Your heart will accept them, and your intellect will reject them. So you will be split in two parts, a constant conflict.

That’s what happened and it killed one of the great geniuses of the West, Richard Wilhelm.

And the man he consulted was not the right man – although they were friends. And again he committed another mistake.

The problem could be solved only by an Eastern master of meditation, not by Carl Gustav Jung –

who had no idea of meditation.

After Wilhelm’s death, Jung had gone to India – because he was interested in the ancient mythologies. And wherever he went, he was told, ”Why are you wasting your time in ancient mythologies, when by chance there is a man alive who represents existentially all the best that has happened in the East. Go to south India, to the hills of Arunachal and meet a simple man, Shri Raman Maharshi.”

He was told so many times the same name everywhere he went, but he was afraid. His friend had died, and he did not want to get into any trouble. He went up to Madras, from where Raman Maharshi’s place was just two hours drive, but he did not go there. On the contrary, to explain his behavior, he said, ”Eastern methods are developed only for Eastern people. They are not suitable for Western people.”

This is utter nonsense.

”Western people should remain confined to their own tradition, to their own past; otherwise they will create the same kind of trouble for themselves as Richard Wilhelm.” It is nonsense, because man in his essential being is neither Eastern or Western. It is only a question of right approach under right guidance, so the split is not created. On the contrary, a bridge is made

– and a bridge between the intellect and intuition will give you a tremendous clarity, understanding, a new kind of intelligence of which you are absolutely unaware.

Jung has prevented many people, because in the West he is thought to be an authority. And he knows nothing about the Eastern methods. Just the fear of the death of his friend.... But that fear does not mean what he makes of it, he has not understood the whole situation.

If I was to suggest, I would have told Richard Wilhelm, ”You learn language from a linguistic expert. And while you are learning language, also learn meditation under some Taoist master –

because the I CHING is a Taoist book – so before you are capable of translating it, you are also capable of understanding it; so it is not only word-to-word translation, but it is translation of a deep understanding.

”And it will not only produce the I CHING in Western languages, it will also produce in you a new man.”

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And the same things have been happening with other people. The reason is always a split.

In the case of Nietzsche, he is not a meditator but he has the capacity of flights towards the unknown.

Once in a while a window opens, and he sees things. But the window is not under his control, it is circumstantial. If circumstances are right and suitable, if he is feeling a well-being, a certain kind of joy, peace, the window opens, and he can see beyond the ordinary human mind. And he can write about it.

If he was also a meditator, the window would not be accidental; it would be within his own power to open it or to close it.

So he becomes dependent, and that also creates a deep trouble in his being – because ordinarily, in twenty-four hours he lives just like everybody else, and then suddenly one evening looking at a sunset the window opens, and he sees things which are self-evident, they don’t need any proof.

They are more real than your reality, they are so authoritatively real that you cannot even question them. But it is only for moments, and then it is gone, and he is back again on the earth.

You can understand the difficulty of the person.

Now all kinds of doubts, all kinds of questions – whether he has been dreaming, whether it has been a hallucination, illusion – and the intellect goes on. But again the window opens, and the scene is the same. You cannot have the same hallucination again and again, and you cannot have the dream either – and fully awake.

This made such an anguish in his being – what is real? The ordinary reality that he sees twenty-four hours, or the reality that once in a while opens its door?

The same was the case with Nijinsky. He was the greatest dancer perhaps of the whole history of man. But it is strange that a man like Nijinsky simply suffered in deep anguish. This is not a reward of being a genius. The trouble was that while dancing, he will become sometimes so deeply one with the dance that there was not the dancer and the dance, but only the dance. In those moments almost a miraculous thing used to happen.

He will take such long jumps, high jumps – which are not possible, physically not possible – and he himself was not capable of doing those high jumps or long jumps in other times. He could not believe it, as if certainly when the dancer disappeared somehow gravitation lost its grip on him. And he jumped so high that nobody could believe that this is possible. And more miraculous was his coming down; anything falling down, gravitation pulls it with great force.

Just the other day Anando was telling me that when asteroids fall towards earth, they come into the sphere of earth’s gravitation, which is two hundred miles around it. They start falling with a great speed of fifty thousand miles per hour, and that’s why the friction burns them. But once in a while, if it is a very big asteroid – miles long – then it may not be burned completely, it may reach to the earth. Sometimes it has killed many people. It is a very strange kind of stone, because it has passed through a strange experience; that fifty thousand miles per hour, and the heat and the friction give it a new quality.

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In the Kaaba, the Mohammedan’s holy place, is an asteroid that has reached the earth, and they have been worshipping it, just because there is no other stone like it, it has come from heaven. And certainly it has come from the sky.

But when Nijinsky used to come back, everybody in the audience forgot to breathe. It looked so dangerous from that height – if gravitation works rightly, he is going to have multiple fractures. But he will fall like a leaf, slowly descending towards the earth – with no hurry. And the movement of coming back was so slow that even physicists had no explanation of it. The jump was unexplained, and the coming back was even more mysterious. He himself had no idea.

Only one thing he said, ”Whenever I try it does not happen. I would like it to happen every time I am on the stage dancing, but whenever I am consciously, deliberately trying, it simply does not happen.

It happens only when I am not trying, when I am not even thinking of it, when in fact I am not there.

In my absence, when there is only the dance, and the dancer has completely become one with the dance, it happens. So I cannot give you any explanation, because I was not there.” He also died badly. First he became mad – because such a thing has never happened to any other man. He was trying hard, and it would not happen, and then when he was not thinking about it, it happened and with no explanation coming from the experts. And he himself had no idea why it was happening. It drove him mad. For one year he was in a madhouse, and he died in the greatest misery.

The same person would have become a Gautam Buddha in the East – because he has found the key – but he could not recognize it. And there was not a single master in the West to show him what was happening.

And this is the whole teaching of the East, that if you forget the ego, if you forget yourself, if you are just nobody, miracles start happening. That is the law of nature. There is nothing in it to be disturbed about. In that moment when you are absent, it means you are so silent, so peaceful, so at ease, that there is no disturbance at all.

The East has known a certain thing against gravitation. They call it levitation. The grip of gravitation loosens; and it has happened even to people who have been meditating that suddenly they have started moving upwards. If it was happening in the West, the man was certainly going to be considered mad. He could not say to anybody that it is happening, because nobody is going to believe, and they will think that he is cuckoo. How can you go on just sitting in a lotus posture? And the man said, ”But what can I do? Just when I opened my eyes, I saw my head is touching the ceiling.”

The ego is very heavy. It is like an anchor that keeps you under the control of gravitation.

In meditation you may find, even if your meditation is not very deep, one thing: while you are sitting with closed eyes, you will feel that you are rising up. You open your eyes, you are sitting in your place.

And what was happening? Because the moment you close your eyes – again you are attuned, and the feeling arises that you are rising up. But opening the eyes, suddenly you find yourself sitting just as you were sitting before. Your body remains still on the ground, but your soul, your consciousness, starts rising up beyond the body. This is the beginning. Soon a day will come when meditation will be so deep that with the consciousness rising, your body will also follow.

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Body is a little slow, in everything.

Man learned to stand up in one million years. Between the monkeys and man, just learning to stand up on two feet, there is a gap of one million years.

The body learns very slowly, very cautiously; but it learns.

If Nijinsky was in the East he would not have been mad, he would have been declared enlightened.

His dance was his meditation.

Just like Jalaluddin Rumi’s whirling was his meditation, and he became the most loved Sufi master.

No other Sufi has been called MEVLANA. Mevlana means ‘my beloved master’. Only Jalaluddin Rumi has become known as Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi. People loved the man so much, because he has given such a simple method, that thousands of people in these twelve hundred years since him have become enlightened just by whirling.

It is unfortunate that Nijinsky had to go to a madhouse – because he could not understand what was happening, nobody could explain what was happening. It disturbed him too much.

The thing was the very simple thing I have been telling you every day, that your effort is a barrier.

If you really want to go deep in meditation, then make it effortless – it sounds crazy, how to make it effortless? – because that too will be effort. Just drop those words because they give you a wrong connotation. It is better to say, ”Be in a let-go, just relaxed.” Sit silently, watching whatever is happening inside you with closed eyes, just watching it – and a moment comes when only the watcher is there, and there is nothing to watch. And for the first time you will be on the threshold of the miraculous.

All these three people would have reached to a state of tremendous benediction.

Something was happening which was immensely valuable, but the West pressured them, ”You are mad, you are a split personality” – all condemnatory terms – ”you are schizophrenic....” In the East, the same people with the same talents would have been worshipped, loved, respected.

And I can understand a certain secret principle: when somebody is moving into a new world, into a new realm, he needs an atmosphere where he is respected, loved, appreciated, encouraged. That’s the purpose of a mystery school. Alone you may go mad, but in a mystery school you have people who will support you; that you are on the right path, that you are blessed, that you should just go on.

There is no need of explanations, because they will only delay the process, disturb the process.

The West is too much interested in explanations, and the East is interested only in experience – not in explanations.

And you cannot eat explanations, you cannot be nourished on them. It is experience that is going to nourish you, and a supportive milieu.

And I don’t see that there is any problem of bringing Eastern methods to the West.

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As far as human consciousness and its evolution is concerned, there is no problem in taking the Western scientific technology to the East. So why there should be any problem in bringing the spiritual technology to the West? Carl Gustav Jung is absolutely wrong, and if such wrong ideas are being spread, then there will be cases like Nijinsky, Richard Wilhelm, Nietzsche and others.

And the time is ripe. The East is taking all objective scientific technologies from the West. The West should try to pick up all methods of maturing consciousness from the East. This way we will be creating a new man who will not be Eastern or Western, who will be simply man.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

AS FAR AS I CAN REMEMBER, I HAD THE FEELING THAT THERE WAS SOMEBODY

SOMEWHERE ALIVE ON THIS PLANET THAT I HAD TO MEET, WHO WAS A SAGE, AN

ALCHEMIST, A MASTER. THIS WAS LONG BEFORE I KNEW WHAT A MASTER REALLY MEANT.

I THOUGHT THIS WAS JUST A FANTASY, BECAUSE AS A CHILD I LOVED READING STORIES

ABOUT PEOPLE LIKE MERLIN THE MAGICIAN AND OTHER ALCHEMISTS. THIS FEELING WAS

SO STRONG THAT IT KEPT ME FROM COMMITTING MYSELF TO ANYTHING – MARRIAGE, BUSINESS, POLITICS, COUNTRIES.

COULD THIS FEELING BE A VAGUE REMEMBRANCE OF HAVING BEEN WITH A MASTER LIKE

YOU AND MISSING THE OPPORTUNITY IN SOME PAST LIFE? IF SO, WHY WAS THERE SUCH

A STRONG FEELING THAT I HAD TO FIND HIM IN THIS LIFETIME?

I AM ASKING THIS, BECAUSE MAYBE SOMEBODY ELSE MAY HAVE THE SAME FEELING, AND IF THEY KNEW THIS IS POSSIBLE, THEY WOULD NOT LOSE AS MUCH TIME AS I DID IN

IRRELEVANT THINGS.

Premda, there is every possibility that you have been with a master in your past life. Lives change, but as far as evolution of consciousness is concerned, and its experiences, they go on goading you to start again from the point you stopped at in the last life. Otherwise it will be almost impossible for anyone to become enlightened, because man’s mind is such, he wastes his whole life in irrelevant things.

But after each death, whatever has been your most precious experience follows with you. Anything gained in spiritual evolution remains with you, you don’t lose it. And it certainly creates a goading feeling in you to search for a master, to search for a path, to do something – although you are not clear what exactly has to be done.

But any desire, any longing for truth, any longing to meet someone who can guide you, who can help you, will persist. Unless you meet the person.... There is a simple criterion for whether you have met the right person or not – if the goading disappears, if there is no more persistence of searching, then you have found the person you were looking for.

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many desires to be fulfilled, so many ambitions to be achieved, that everybody is running faster and faster till he falls into his grave.

The Eastern religions agree only on one point – and that is significant.

They have different

philosophies, different explanations for different things, but on one point all Eastern religions are absolutely in agreement: that reincarnation is a reality, that you have been here since eternity, in many lives, in many forms, developing slowly, slowly towards man. And in man’s form you may have been many lives; and you will remain in man’s form in the future too for many lives unless you attain to the ultimate experience of truth.

And it seems to be right. Giving man just a seventy-year life span and so many desires and so many ambitions and so many troubles – where he is going to get time to meditate? Where he is going to seek the truth or the master?

And science is absolutely certain that in existence nothing can be destroyed, it only changes forms.

If nothing in existence can be destroyed – not even a stone – then the most valuable phenomenon, consciousness, cannot be destroyed just by one death.

You have been born many times, you have died many times, but you have continued. And all your experiences, as far as your evolution of consciousness is concerned, are with you. That is the only possibility for man some day to become enlightened, because even if he gets a few steps closer each life towards the truth, one day he is going to reach home.

To me, it is a truth – reincarnation. I am not telling you to believe in it – because I am against believing. I am simply saying, accept it as a hypothesis, so that you can work upon it.

A hypothesis is not a belief, neither is it an experienced truth. It is simply accepted, so that you can work in a certain line.

The master – the real master – cannot give you any belief, because belief is the number one enemy of all search. The real master can only give you a hypothesis – which is for him his truth, but for you he gives it as a hypothesis to work out. Perhaps you may also find truth. When you find the truth, then it is up to you. Once you have found it, there is no question of belief either; you know it.

Your constant yearning, longing, from childhood for a master, an alchemist... because alchemists were also masters. They were hiding behind alchemy, because Christianity was destroying every school of wisdom, and people had to hide even to meditate. So alchemists were not really as it is said in the books and the encyclopedias, that they were trying to change base metal into gold; that is not true, that was only a code language for alchemy. Base metal is the man who is unaware of himself; to change him into gold is to make him aware of himself. That was their code language.

And they had to use code language, because the church and the pope did not want anything other than Christianity to have the monopoly of man’s consciousness.

And it is a very strange thing. They had nothing to offer, and they destroyed all those people – the witches were simply wise women who had certain secrets to impart, the alchemists were simply hiding behind the name of alchemy, that they are trying to make gold. In every alchemists’ school, if you entered in the beginning, in their reception room you will find all kinds of fictitious instruments, The Transmission of the Lamp

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tubes filled with different color water, and it looked as if it is a great chemical shop, a workshop, a lab; but this was only the frontage. Behind it was their real school, where they were trying to change base humanity into golden humanity.

Your constant longing is certainly a proof that you have carried a seed from your past life.

Now don’t miss this life. Make every effort that the seed starts becoming a sprout, so in the next life you are not unconsciously groping for a master, you are fully conscious – and even without a master you can work.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

WHEN I BECOME ENLIGHTENED, WHO WILL BE THE FIRST TO KNOW?

Milarepa, as far as you are concerned, I will be the first to know. As far as others are concerned, they may be able to know.

But Milarepa is a special case.

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CHAPTER 39

Donkeys carrying great scriptures

14 June 1986 pm in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

IF THE WHOLE HISTORY OF THE WORLD WERE CONDENSED INTO ONE YEAR, WITH US

STANDING AT THE END OF THAT VAST YEAR, IT WOULD LOOK SOMETHING LIKE THIS.

THE EARTH IS FORMED ON THE FIRST OF JANUARY. IT IS ONLY IN DECEMBER THAT THE

CONTINENTS START DRIFTING INTO THEIR PRESENT POSITION. THE DINOSAURS BECOME

EXTINCT ABOUT FIVE DAYS BEFORE THE END OF THE YEAR, AND NOT UNTIL ABOUT

MIDDAY ON THE 31ST OF DECEMBER DOES MAN EVOLVE FROM THE MONKEYS. FROM

WHERE WE ARE STANDING – AT MIDNIGHT ON NEW YEAR’S EVE – THE ICE AGE TOOK

PLACE JUST OVER A MINUTE AGO, AND BUDDHA, LAO TZU AND SOCRATES APPEAR ONLY

SEVENTEEN SECONDS AGO. THE WHOLE OF MODERN TIMES SINCE THE BIRTH OF KARL

MARX HAPPENS IN THE LAST SECOND BEFORE MIDNIGHT. WHEN I THINK OF YOU AS THE

CROWNING GLORY OF THIS LONG YEAR, IT SEEMS TO ME, WHETHER OR NOT THERE IS A NEW YEAR’S DAY, THE EXPERIMENT SUCCEEDED.

There will be a New Year’s day. The forces of darkness may be great but they can’t stand even a small flame of a candle. Their greatness is only an appearance, because basically darkness has no existence of its own. It is only the absence of light.

Light has its own existence, and to have one’s own existence is the true power.

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The dawn is bound to come. The night may be long. The agony may be great. The darkness may be becoming more and more dark but nothing can prevent the new man arising on the horizon.

In a way, he has already come, he has just to be recognized.

One thing has always to be remembered, that whatsoever is destructive is impotent, only creativity has potentiality, is potent.

Hate, anger, jealousy, despair – they may overwhelm you for a moment, and you may think that all is lost, but all these things are impotent. They cannot destroy the eternal being in you. In fact, the situation today is more destructive than it was ever before.

But as I see it, it may prove a blessing in disguise.

Nuclear weapons have made war itself out of date. It is meaningless. There cannot be a third world war, and the whole credit goes to nuclear weapons – because now there is no point having a war.

Nobody is going to be victorious, nobody is going to be defeated, all are going to be destroyed. The third world war will be a global suicide, and life is not ready to commit suicide. Life wants more life.

Love wants more love.

All that is beautiful and real in existence has an inner urge to expand.

So I can say it with absolute certainty that the third world war is never going to happen.

But it has created a great opportunity, a pressure on the consciousness of man, that if you remain as sleepy as you are it is dangerous. Something has to be done to bring more consciousness, to bring more love, to bring more light.

The nuclear weapons are serving in two ways. First, they have stopped the possibility of the third world war, and secondly they have awakened man towards growing into a better consciousness, into a more harmonious existence.

As far as I can see, everything is just going fine.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

FROM WHAT YOU HAVE SAID ABOUT MASTERS WHO PRECEDED YOU, IT SEEMS THAT

NONE, OR VERY FEW OF THEM, HAD LOVE AS A BASIS FOR THE MASTER/DISCIPLE

RELATIONSHIP. BUDDHA’S COMPASSION SEEMS COOL AND DISTANT.

GURDJIEFF MUST HAVE ALWAYS REMAINED AN ENIGMA TO THOSE AROUND HIM. THEY

MUST HAVE ADMIRED HIM, BUT ONE DOESN’T GET THE IMPRESSION THAT THEY LOVED

HIM.

AND IT SEEMS KRISHNAMURTI NEVER ALLOWED PEOPLE INTIMATE CONTACT WITH HIM.

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WHILE AWARENESS IS THE GREATEST KEY I HAVE RECEIVED FROM YOU, I KNOW I WOULD

NEVER PERSEVERE IF IT WEREN’T FOR THE LOVE YOU EMIT, AND THE LOVE THAT YOU

EVOKE IN US.

WOULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT?

It is true that the masters of the past have not only been cool, they have been really cold. They had to be, according to their own standpoint. Love was the most dangerous thing in their view. The whole past of man is dominated by religions which are against life, against love, against joyfulness, against celebration.

In fact, in the eyes of so-called religions life is a curse, it is a sin.

According to the Western religions, man is born out of sin and life is a punishment – because Adam and Eve disobeyed God.

This is such an irrelevant idea, what Adam and Eve did. Thousands of generations have passed, but every man still carries the same sin, and life is a punishment. Adam and Eve were thrown out of the Garden of Eden as a punishment, that’s how life began; and unless you go backwards renouncing life, its joys – even renouncing the fruits of the tree of knowledge – you will not be able to enter into the garden of God again. You can enter again only when you have renounced everything that life gives to you.

In the Eastern religions there is a different interpretation, but pointing to the same thing. You are born because of your past lives’ evil acts, and you are born to suffer the consequences of them as a punishment, and you will continue to be born again and again until the moment you have cleaned yourself totally. It may take thousands of lives, and only then you will be accepted back into the divine, into the truth.

So one thing is certain, that all the religions – whether Eastern or Western – agree on one point, that life is not something to be proud of, it is something to be ashamed of. And these masters of the past were part of the milieu in which they were born.

They managed to rebel against many things, but this is very fundamental, the whole religiousness has depended on it, that man has to cut himself completely from any love, any intimacy towards the other. He has to be absolutely independent and alone.

Naturally they were afraid, and they were cold.

And this is one of the reasons that all the religions are against me, because I am taking their very foundation stone away.

To me religiousness means warmth, to me religiousness means lovingness. To me religion does not mean that you have to be a stone – make your heart a stone. To me it means that you have to melt into thousands of intimacies, that you have to disappear, and just a lovingness remains.

All the religions will condemn me. I can understand their condemnation, because if I am right then their whole past and their so-called masters prove to be wrong. They have to be against me, because The Transmission of the Lamp

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too much is at risk. But they are not going to win finally, because coldness is inhuman – and who cares about the Garden of Eden, and what will you do there? Adam and Eve, before they disobeyed God, were just animals. Their disobedience was the first signature of man becoming independent of animalhood, their disobedience was the first act of intelligence.

I have all the respect for Adam and Eve and no respect for the God who expelled them. He is just an ugly dictator, to prevent his own children from becoming wise, from eating the fruit that will make them eternally alive. What kind of father who does not want his children... two things – knowing, and eternal life. Then what does he want? That they just go on grazing the grass in the Garden of Eden? If Adam and Eve had not disobeyed, you would not have been sitting here, you would be in the Garden of Eden – but not like human beings.

In England there are thirty thousand people now who are worshippers of the devil – because they say either God is dead, because nothing has been heard about him since he created existence, or he has abandoned existence and does not care what is happening here. And you cannot deny their arguments, they have a certain sincerity. World wars go on happening, and God has no concern –

and he was so much concerned that Adam and Eve have eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and he is not concerned at all that Adolf Hitler should kill six million people.

So these devil worshippers – they call themselves satanists – they have brought a very new idea, that the devil is the son of God – a rebellious son, just the generation gap. So either God has gone senile, has abandoned the world or has died. But they don’t have one significant argument that I would suggest for them, that it was the devil who suggested Eve to revolt, to disobey; otherwise she will remain an animal.

The whole of humanity and progress would not have been possible without the devil. They have not added that argument. They should add it, because that is the most potential, that whatever we are, the whole credit of our evolution goes to the devil.

I am not telling you to become devil worshippers. To me God and the devil are both just fictions.

None of them exist.

But one thing is certain, that man’s whole progress has depended on disobeying, on doubting, on being skeptical; not on being naive, or on being believers, or on being faithful, but asking questions and finding the answers. Very few people have contributed to the whole progress of man.

These masters who were very cold have also contributed. They could have done much more, but their coldness deprived humanity of many more things. They were all male chauvinists, and they all thought that the woman is the way to hell, so the woman has to be avoided.

And the woman is the source of warmth. Her love, her devotion, if combined with man’s intelligence, her heart if combined with man’s head – then miracles are possible. And that’s what my basic contribution is: I want man and woman to be together growing in a symphony, in a deep intimacy and harmony.

We can create a totally different world.

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Right now it is so miserable. It is in our hands to make it happier, full of laughter. And I don’t see that there is any reason that people who are happy, blissful, singing, dancing, celebrating, are in any way harming existence. They are enhancing existence, they are making it more alive.

And if the whole humanity lives in love and warmth, spiritual growth will become very easy. It will not be so arduous and so long a journey. It was arduous and long because it was cold.

You can reach to the ultimate, dancing all the way, singing all the way. There is no contradiction in being blissful, in being loving, in being warm, and being spiritual. In fact, you cannot be spiritual if you are not able to share your love, if you are not able to share your heart.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

FROM THE STORIES OF THE TIME BEFORE YOU BECAME ENLIGHTENED, IT LOOKS LIKE

YOU HAVE BEEN A MASTER AND AN ALARM CLOCK TO YOUR SURROUNDINGS ALL ALONG.

IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MASTER AND DISCIPLE ONE OF CONSCIOUSNESS ONLY, OR IS THERE SOMETHING LIKE A MASTER PERSONALITY AND A DISCIPLE PERSONALITY?

The truth is that there is a difference of type. Everybody cannot be a disciple. I have missed, myself, being a disciple. For lives I have been searching but I could not manage to be a disciple.

I came in contact with many masters, but to be a disciple simply was not in my very nature. I had to go alone, I had to find the way myself. There was no question of ego, there was no question that I don’t want to learn from others – I was completely willing, but something was not in my very type.

Everybody cannot be a disciple, and everybody cannot be a master either.

It seems to be a difference of personality type – not only a difference of consciousness.

There have been many disciples who attained enlightenment but never became masters.

In this life I used to know a certain very remarkable man, Masto. The word means ‘drunk with the divine’ – and he was drunk with the divine, a man of the highest caliber, but not a master. He remained a disciple even after he became enlightened.

And I used to talk to him again and again – because he loved me very much, and I said, ”Now your master is dead, and you have to spread his word, his message.” He said, ”I have thought about it, but it simply does not ring any bell in my heart. I am perfectly happy just to be a disciple. It does not matter that my master is dead; my discipleship is not dead, I am still alive.”

And there is no question of hierarchy either, that the master is higher than the disciple. All that nonsense is not part of the spiritual world. The disciple can reach to the same level of consciousness as the master, but even if the master encourages him to become a master now, it is just not possible.

It is not in his nature. It is not in his blood and bones and marrow.

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So the question is not that somebody is higher and somebody is lower. The difference is just like man and woman – nobody is higher, nobody is lower.

But a man cannot be pregnant with a child. He cannot become a mother. A woman cannot become a man.

This kind of effort is being made, and it creates only idiots. There are men, particularly in California...

California is simply the human zoo. Anything that is stupid, nonsense, absurd, will find a way towards California.

Because I used to receive letters from California that a few men wanted to become sannyasins but they wanted my permission to dress as women. We have enough women here already – men are in shortage! The situation has become so difficult that women are chasing men. Whenever something is in shortage naturally... otherwise the woman is not a chaser. She loves to be chased, that is natural to her. But in the commune how long can you wait for nature – because nobody is coming to chase you. And sannyasins were writing letters to me, ”What should we do?” I said, ”There is nothing to do. Just start chasing! Forget about nature. Perhaps we have come to a point where we have to transcend nature.”

I have to refuse those people; we have a shortage, and they will create even more trouble.

Why should men want to dress like women? Why should women want to dress like men? Why can’t you be just yourself? Because we have created hierarchies – which are all man-created.

At least in the world of spirituality there is no hierarchy, the master is not higher than the disciple.

The master is master and the disciple is disciple. Both together are doing something which is miraculous. Neither the master alone can manage it nor the disciple alone can manage it, so they are complementary. They are archetypes.

And once we know what type you are, things become very simple. Then you stop trying to be somebody else. You simply follow your own type and don’t waste your life and time, and put your whole energy into your own type. And then there is every possibility you will come to flowering.

Question 4

BELOVED OSHO,

THE OTHER DAY YOU SAID THAT YOU ARE MAKING EVERY EFFORT TO HANG ON IN YOUR

BODY BECAUSE MOST OF US ARE NOT YET READY TO SEE YOU AND YOUR NOTHINGNESS.

OSHO, THE WAY YOU SAID THIS REACHED DEEP DOWN INTO ME. I HEARD AND FELT SO

MANY MORE THINGS LIKE, ”COME ON! WHY DO YOU WAIT? THERE IS NOTHING ELSE

TO WAIT FOR.” THERE WAS THIS INCREDIBLE SWEET PERSUASION, ALMOST LIKE A SEDUCTIVE INVITATION TO MELT INTO YOUR BEING AND INTO EXISTENCE.

I DON’T KNOW HOW I CAN STILL MANAGE TO RESIST. PERHAPS YOU REALLY HAVE TO WAIT

AND NUDGE US A LITTLE LONGER. I KNOW THIS IS NO QUESTION, BUT I STILL WANTED TO

SAY IT.

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I also know this is not a question, but I will have to answer it! Geeta... you can laugh! There is no need to worry. I can wait as long as it is needed by you.

Waiting, for me, is not a problem. I am becoming accustomed, because for years now I have been somehow hanging around, but now I have become an expert in hanging around. So you need not worry. You can take your time.

Just remember that whatever I am saying to you I will make my best effort to keep my promise, but it is not within my hands totally. I am in the hands of existence; as long as it allows I will be here to go on knocking at your doors.

But don’t take it for granted, because it cannot be continued forever.

Question 5

BELOVED OSHO,

WHEN I FIRST READ YOUR BOOKS IT DAWNED ON ME WITH TOTAL CLARITY THAT, ”THIS

MAN SPEAKS THE TRUTH. HE KNOWS IT AND HE IS IT.”

HOW IS IT POSSIBLE TO RECOGNIZE THE TRUTH WITHOUT KNOWING IT? AND THERE ARE

MANY PEOPLE WHO I THINK ARE MORE AWARE THAN I AM AND HAVE MORE EXPERIENCE

IN LIFE, AND STILL THEY DON’T RECOGNIZE YOU.

IS MY RECOGNITION AND THEIR NON-RECOGNITION JUST A DIFFERENT KIND OF DREAM?

No. If you listen to me or read my words without bringing your own prejudices, without bringing in your own knowledge, your own so-called experience of life, then you will instantly recognize whether it is true or not.

So the first thing; you recognized it, not because you are much more experienced, much more knowledgeable, much more prejudiced, but simply because you are more innocent, and innocence has a clarity.

The others who seem to know more have simply lost their innocence, they know nothing, just garbage that they have collected from experience or from books or from universities. Their heads are full and heavy, and it is very difficult to penetrate their heads – they are really thick.

In the world they will be respected as wise people. The truth is they are otherwise people.

But the masses are impressed by their knowledge, but knowledge is not knowing – knowledge is simply repeating somebody else’s words. Knowing is your own.

So it happened to you, because you are not knowledgeable, you are not full of rubbish gathered from all kinds of sources.

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You are not aware that truth is not something far away from you, it is something within you. You may not be aware of it, but if you read something or hear something which is even just an echo that reminds you of the truth that is hidden behind you, in your own innermost core, there will be recognition, immediate recognition. It is not a question of knowing truth or not knowing truth. You have the truth. Your being is the truth.

How do you recognize when you see your face in a mirror that it is your face? You have never seen your face – as far as I know! Nobody has known his own face, but before a mirror you recognize that this is your face because the function of the mirror is to reflect.

Listening to me is just being available to a mirror. Reading me is just being available to a mirror. And what you will recognize as the truth in those words is simply a reflection of your own.

And the knowledgeable people are in difficulty, because they are not clean, so whatsoever you say to them or whatever they read they interpret it. Their mind is constantly making commentary on it.

So what they see in the mirror is not my words but their own commentaries – which have nothing to do with truth.

So, first, it will be difficult for them to recognize.

Secondly, the people who have respectability as knowers – people who have wisdom, people who are saints, sages – to them my words will be a challenge, and they would like to crush those words, to put them aside immediately because there is danger. Their whole respectability is in danger. If I am right, then their whole life and their whole experience is wrong – and very few people are so sincere that they will risk everything for truth. They will risk truth for anything.

But respectability is a great thing.

It happened that one Jewish scholar – and a professor in the university of Jerusalem – was interested in the words of Jesus, particularly in the authority that he was saying them with.

He has heard many people, but this man has a way of his own. No man he has known speaks with such authority.

He was a great scholar, so he could not go to listen to him while he was giving talks, because people will see, and they will think, ”You are such a great scholar, and he is just a carpenter’s son –

uneducated, cannot read, cannot write – and you have come to listen to him?” That was against his ego.

So one night when everybody had gone to sleep he went to Jesus. He woke him up and said,

”Please forgive me. I am a professor in the university, and I am a great scholar of religious matters.

I am a rabbi but I have certainly been impressed by the way you say things, no man has said things like that. But I had listened to you only by passing on the road, moving slowly so that I can hear a little more, but I cannot come to listen to you, because my whole respectability is at stake. Jews will not forgive me, the university will not forgive me.” Jesus said to him, ”In this life nothing is possible. You will have to be reborn.” The Transmission of the Lamp

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He could not understand. He said, ”What do you mean?” Jesus said, ”What I mean is that you will have to drop all your respectability, all your knowledge, if you want to understand me. And this is no way of being a disciple, to come in the middle of the night like a thief. This simply shows your impotence and weakness. So just get lost! Come in the day.

Have some self-respect. Why should you depend on respect from other people? Only people who do not have self-respect depend on other people’s respect.” So the people who know more, knowing nothing much, they are just like donkeys who are carrying great scriptures – but that does not mean that the donkey becomes a rabbi. The donkeys remain donkeys. That load of scriptures is not going to help.

One of the greatest problems in the world is these so-called knowledgeable people. They have the most difficulty to recognize any truth because recognizing any truth means losing much respectability, scholarship, knowledge.

Socrates has two categories. One category he calls knowledge that is ignorant, and the other category he calls ignorance which knows. Beautiful, clear-cut conception. ”Ignorance which knows” means innocence, nothing to lose, nothing to risk – you can open your heart, you can sink deeply into the waters of life without any fear.

And the knowledgeable, those who are ignorant, will not come close to anything that will expose them.

Against truth, the greatest enemy in the world is the knowledgeable person. And the greatest friend is he who knows that he does not know.

Question 6

BELOVED OSHO,

A FRIEND OF MINE AND I ARE HAVING A LITTLE DISAGREEMENT. I SAY THAT A GREAT ENEMY OF ENLIGHTENMENT IS COZINESS, WHILE SHE CONTENDS THAT JET-SET

TRAVELING IS FAR WORSE. CAN YOU ENLIGHTEN US?

One should try to understand that every thing is not to be decided by discussion or argument. There are a few things which depend on people’s types, their likings.

Before you enter into a discussion, you have already accepted one fact – that you both are of the same type and your likings are the same, which almost always is not the case.

If somebody likes Chinese food, and somebody does not like it, there is no question of discussion.

It is simply a question of liking or not liking.

Somebody likes roses, somebody likes some other flower.

This, too, is a question of type and liking. Don’t make it a point of discussion. You will never come to any conclusion.

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If you like coziness, a relaxed stable atmosphere, then a constant changing atmosphere will not suit you.

But there are people who would like constant change. They cannot remain in one place more than few days. They cannot love one person more than few months. Their life is geared in a totally different way.

Now, arguments are not going to change this. And in this case, it is really a little strange that the man likes coziness, and the woman would like to be a gypsy – which is really a very rare phenomenon.

Man is basically a gypsy. It was because of women that you see in the world houses; otherwise, at the most tents. It was the woman who forced the man to live in one place, make a beautiful home and not be a vagabond.

But from the very beginning man has been a hunter. The woman was staying at home, and the man was hunting far and wide, traveling miles; and sometimes the hunting place was no more giving food, they had to move. Hunters had to keep on moving, because the hunted animals went on moving farther from the hunters. It was the woman who invented agriculture – not man. Now you cannot go on dragging your agriculture farm from one place to another place; you are stuck, now you have to be there.

And the woman has reasons to remain in a stabilized place. She is going to become a mother.

Those nine months she is carrying a child, she cannot go on moving from here and there. She is already in trouble.

I don’t think any man would be able to carry a baby in his belly for nine months. He will commit suicide, absolutely certain.

The woman cannot eat well while the child is in the womb; she vomits, she is constantly sick in bed.

And when the child is born, the child is too small – moving from one climate to another, from one place to another, is not going to be good for the child.

So agriculture versus hunting was the basic question, and agriculture won over hunting.

And hunting was ugly, too.

The woman is kinder, more compassionate. Hunting was something ugly, insensitive. The woman is a mother, and she knows that if you have killed a mother, a deer, what will happen to her children?

You have killed a lioness, what will happen to her cubs? The woman has been against hunting.

And when hunting became scarce and difficult, and there were days that you have to starve and then get food, man finally decided for cultivation. But with the cultivation everything changed. Now tents were useless. Houses are more permanent.

And with it, the whole civilization started growing. Then the schools were possible, then the hospitals were possible. Then other productions – manufacturing, everything became possible with cultivation.

But man deep down has remained a hunter. He has not forgotten the joys of hunting. He still wants to be a gypsy.

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But in your question it seems the man wants to be cozy and feels in coziness there will be enlightenment more easily; and the woman wants to be a gypsy, jet-set speed, and she thinks in such a constant whirlwind enlightenment will be easy. No one is wrong, no one is right. It all depends on your personal feeling, type, choice.

Never waste your time arguing upon things which are likings. Simply accept, ”That is your liking and this is my liking, and unfortunately our likings are different.” And close the subject rather than discussing.

And start becoming enlightened!

Right, Geeta?

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CHAPTER 40

In this mood of festivity all rules are put aside 15 June 1986 am in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

IT IS SAID THAT WHEN BUDDHA ACHIEVED ENLIGHTENMENT THE WHOLE UNIVERSE

BECAME BLISSFUL – FLOWERS SHOWERED FROM THE SKY, DEITIES BEGAN TO DANCE

AROUND HIM. INDRA, HIMSELF, THE KING OF ALL THE DEVAS, CAME DOWN WITH FOLDED

PALMS AND SURRENDERED AT BUDDHA’S FEET. TREES BEGAN TO FLOWER OUT OF

SEASON – THE WHOLE EXISTENCE BECAME A CELEBRATION.

ALTHOUGH THE STORY AROUND BUDDHA’S ENLIGHTENMENT IS JUST POETRY, I FEEL

THAT EXISTENCE MUST HAVE ENJOYED, AND STILL REJOICES MUCH MORE IN YOUR

ENLIGHTENMENT. IT SEEMS TO ME THAT IN YOU ALL THE AWAKENED BEINGS OF THE

PAST ARE SHOWERING WISDOM, LOVE AND COMPASSION ON THIS THIRSTY, AGONIZED

PLANET IN A LAST DRAMATIC EFFORT.

OSHO, WHAT HAPPENED WHEN YOU BECAME ENLIGHTENED?

The happening of enlightenment cannot be described in prose. Prose is too mundane. And the happening of enlightenment is too poetic.

It is the ultimate romance in existence.

The problem is how to put the wordless happening into words.

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No trees blossom out of season. No flowers are showered from the sky. No deities dance around the enlightened one. But still, all these are true. It is as if trees blossomed out of season. Remember ‘as if’; as if gods danced around the enlightened one, as if the whole existence became a celebration.

It becomes a celebration, but it is so silent and so peaceful; and it is so far away from language that to say it we have to use fictitious phenomena. In other words, trees should have blossomed out of season – although they did not; flowers should have showered – but they did not.

You have to understand the poetic way of saying that whenever somebody becomes enlightened it is not only his enlightenment – because he has disappeared, that’s why there is enlightenment – it spreads all over existence, it is being felt through every fiber of life.

And with each single individual becoming enlightened, the whole level of consciousness of humanity goes a little higher. Whatever man is today, it is not due to his own effort; the credit goes to those few enlightened people around the world. They can be counted on fingers. But each disappearing, becoming pure light, has given a tremendous push to the whole sleeping humanity towards a better state of consciousness.

Wherever we are, we owe tremendously to people we don’t even know.

But with poetry there is a difficulty. One difficulty is, if you explain it it becomes prose, it loses its poetic quality. Secondly, the believers, the faithful, think that it is not poetry; whatever is said did actually happen, it is history – not fiction but factuality. They get angry if you call it poetry – although poetry is a far higher expression than prose.

And this kind of poetry has been used for all enlightened people around the world.

It happened, the first time I had come to Bombay – it must have been in 1960 – to speak at the birthday celebrations of Mahavira. And Bombay is the stronghold of the Jainas.

I was absolutely unknown to them.

They had two speakers. I was introduced to them by a very eminent person in India, a very simple and humble man; but by chance he was the general manager of Jamnalal Bajaj in Wardha. Jamnalal Bajaj was one of the richest men in India who sacrificed his everything for the freedom struggle. He had made a big guest house, at least five hundred people can stay there at a time, and continually there were conferences for the freedom fighters. And finally he persuaded Mahatma Gandhi also –

who was the leader – to come to Wardha, and he made an ashram for him nearby, outside the city.

And this old man, Chiranjilal Badjatya, was in charge of taking care of all the guests. These guests finally became president of India, governors of all the states, chief ministers, cabinet ministers –

all the great posts after freedom came into the hands of these people, who had been guests in Jamnalal’s guesthouse – and Chiranjilal Badjatya was taking care of them. So he was intimately connected with all India’s well-known leaders, not a single man of any eminence was unknown to him. And they all respected him – because he was an old man, and he served them so lovingly.

Just by chance again, he came across me.

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In Jabalpur there is a very beautiful complex of Jaina temples in the mountains. And the stones in Jabalpur have a speciality – they’re all round. Big stones, huge stones but all round, egg-shaped, which has proved that the earth in Jabalpur has come out of the ocean first. Those big boulders have been rolling in water for millions of years – that is why the roundness.... And not one – millions of boulders. It is a strange mountain. It is not an ordinary mountain, just those boulders upon boulders

– it has its own beauty.

And there was a celebration. I had gone to speak there, and as I was coming out this old man was standing by the side of the road. It was a cold morning. He had a blanket around himself. He simply threw the blanket on the ground and asked me to sit there, but I said, ”Your blanket will get dirty.” He said, ”Don’t be worried about the blanket.”

I said, ”You are old. You may get cold. ”

He said, ”Don’t be worried. You just sit. Just sit with me. And I cannot tell you to sit on bare earth.” He said, ”I have listened to all the great speakers of this country – from the lowest up to the highest, Mahatma Gandhi – but the way you said things, nobody has touched my heart in this way. I have just one request, please don’t refuse an old man.” I said, ”First you tell me what you want.” I had no idea who he was.

He said, ”On a certain date this year I invite you to Bombay. I want to introduce you to prominent people. Otherwise, just as I was unaware of you they will remain unaware.” And Bombay is the real capital of India for intelligentsia, for industrialists; even the politicians from Delhi are under the thumb of the people of Bombay because for elections they need money and all the money is in Bombay.

You will be surprised that Bombay has only a population of ten million – in a country of nine hundred million – but it has half of the wealth of the whole country. Ten million against eight hundred and eighty million people are holding half the wealth of the country. Certainly they have a power.

So he said to me, ”I don’t want these people to miss you.” I said, ”You are inviting so lovingly. I will come. But I don’t know anybody there. Nobody knows me.” He said, ”I will be there, and I will make arrangements that people will recognize you.” And it was hilarious because when I arrived I was standing at the air-conditioned compartment door waiting, and almost fifty people were running from here and there looking. And they will look at me

– somehow convinced that this is the man, and somehow unconvinced. And they will go on. The whole train was emptied. Only I was standing there, and those fifty people who had come to receive me. Now there was nobody else.

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They said, ”Chiranjilal Badjatya, who has invited you here.” I said, ”He is an old man, and his whole life he has lived with people who were all wearing Gandhi caps” – that was the symbol of the freedom fighters – ”So everything else he has described perfectly well, he just added the Gandhi cap.”

And they all will look from down upwards – everything was right, and just the cap was missing – so they will go on, ”This is not the man.”

And Chiranjilal Badjatya had got caught in some traffic so he arrived late, when they had already discovered: ”I don’t wear it and I am the person you are looking for. I know that you are looking for me and you have been running from here and there.” And Chiranjilal came huffing, whuffing, an old man. And he said, ”Listen, I have forgotten one thing.

That Gandhi cap he does not wear. It is just I have seen so many people my whole life wearing Gandhi caps that somehow I imagined or perhaps what happened, just a slip of the tongue, and I told you.”

These people were completely unaware of me, of my ideas or anything. So they were a little suspicious, but because Chiranjilal Badjatya was a very important person they requested me and they invited me.

But they also invited the most famous Jaina monk in Bombay, Chitrabhanu.

And naturally everybody was interested in Chitrabhanu, to listen to him; he was the most prominent Jaina monk in the Bombay area.

So he spoke first. And as he ended and I stood up, people started leaving their seats. An unknown man, who knows, it may be just a sheer waste of time. I had to shout at those people and I told them, ”Just wait for five minutes, and after five minutes you can leave – but not before that. So sit down! Back to your seats!” They had never thought that somebody will do that.

And I said, ”This is absolutely uncivilized. You should listen at least five minutes and then you are free, then you can go. Whoever wants to go will not be prevented, but for five minutes nobody can leave.”

So they all went back to their seats, a little afraid. Seekers are not of this type.

And I started criticizing Chitrabhanu point by point, and after five minutes I asked them, ”If anybody wants to leave now he can leave. After this, nobody will be allowed to leave until I am finished.” Not a single person left because in those five minutes what I had said was enough to convince them that Chitrabhanu is just an idiot.

Because in Mahavira’s story the same kind of poetry comes in different ways, and Chitrabhanu was trying to prove that it is real happening.

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– on dusty roads, if there is a thorn on the road, the thorn immediately moves out of his way because Mahavira has finished all his evil karmas, now existence would like not to give him any pain. So even the thorn is so sensitive that it immediately moves out of the way. And he was trying to prove that these are actual facts.

And I started criticizing him, ”This man, Chitrabhanu, whom you listened to with such respect, is just an idiot.” There was a shock. A few of the people at that meeting are still my sannyasins, and they say that they thought that there was going to be a riot. Chitrabhanu was so much respected by the Jaina community, and this man starts calling him an idiot. And they were not even aware who I am. Certainly I am against Jainism. And I said, ”This man cannot understand the difference between prose and poetry. Poetry has a truth but it is not factual; it is true, but it is not factual. It has a meaning, a significance, which cannot be said in any other way.” Mahavira was the first man to bring non-violence as the basis of a religion – non-killing, not giving any kind of pain or suffering to anybody.

Now existence must respect this man. I don’t think that a thorn will understand Mahavira, even man doesn’t understand, even this Chitrabhanu does not understand – he is worse than the thorn. No thorn has ever moved out of his way.

But this is simply a way of saying that existence respects Mahavira’s sensitivity to such an extent that if it is possible it will remove the thorn from his path.

The intention is there, but the fact is not there. And the fact is meaningless.

The real thing is that the whole existence intends, respects, loves this man’s tremendous contribution to humanity.

Now from a snake bite on the feet milk cannot come out. There are only two possibilities. Either Mahavira is filled with milk – a milk bottle! He has no blood because there was no guarantee that the snake will bite only on a certain place. He could have bitten on any other place, so he must be filled with milk. But milk is a different problem. Soon it becomes curd, and then Mahavira must be stinking of curd! And butter may be oozing out from his pores! It is nonsense to make it a fact.

Or another possibility is, a woman can transform blood into milk, but then she has a certain mechanism in her breast. So the other possibility is that Mahavira has breasts all over his body.

But the truth is that it is poetry, and this idiot does not understand poetry. It is simply a way of saying that the man was so full of love – like a mother – that even though the snake is biting him, he cannot give anything else than milk to it.

And snakes love milk very much.

In India there are snake worshippers. Every year they have a certain day for snakes, and snake charmers bring snakes from all over the country and people bring milk. And snakes drink milk so joyously.

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So I said, ”It is simply poetry, that it is what the snake loves most – milk. Although he gives poison to Mahavira, Mahavira can only give milk to him.” It is not fact. It cannot be a fact.

And I said, ”I challenge this man to prove on what grounds he says it is a fact. I say it is more than fact, it is truth itself. But to say it, you will have to use language in a poetic way, not in the ordinary mundane prose way.”

And when I said to people, ”Now, anybody who wants to leave, stand up and leave immediately

– because after this I will not allow anybody to stand up and disturb the meeting,” there was such silence, nobody left.

I said in my talk to the people that Mahavira is really two persons. Mahavira is not his name,

‘mahavira’ means a great warrior. That’s why he is called ‘Mahavira the Jaina’. ‘Jaina’ means conqueror, one who has fought with all that was wrong in him and conquered, and is victorious.

But he was not always ‘Jaina’. His original name was Vardhamana. That too is significant because

‘vardhamana’ means one who is evolving. In that way everybody is a Vardhamana, evolving to higher states.

But the day he achieved, Vardhamana died and Mahavira was born.

That Chitrabhanu was going mad because of what I was saying to the people – and they were his audience for years, and I was just an intruder. Nobody knew me. And he was trying to find something he could criticize. Seeing this, that I am saying Vardhamana and Mahavira are two persons he immediately stood up and he said, ”This is wrong. Vardhamana and Mahavira are one person.”

I said to the president, ”You keep hold of this man. He’s not in his senses. Again he cannot understand poetry. I am also saying that Vardhamana was his old name, but a day came that the old died and a new life began. To symbolize the new life he was given a new name, Mahavira.

Mahavira is absolutely discontinuous with Vardhamana. So if you can understand poetry then there is no problem, there were two persons – one who was and is no more, and one who was not and is now; but if you don’t understand poetry, it is your problem.” And as I ended up, the president stopped Chitrabhanu and said, ”You are in anger and you don’t understand. The man is saying simple but significant truths.” It became such a problem for Chitrabhanu – because I was continually coming to Bombay. More and more of his people started belonging to me. He even tried – these are non-violent people....

I was coming from Poona and a phone call came, ”Don’t bring him in the car because on the way Chitrabhanu has put a few dangerous people, paid murderers, who can do anything. So we are sending a plane, bring him by plane.” But a few of my people went by car and their cars were stopped. And they looked for me – a gang of eight persons. You cannot believe! On the one hand people talk about non-violence.... His whole life he has been a monk, a learned monk; and then because he cannot cope with me intelligently, he thinks to murder me.

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And I told the meeting on that day that this has happened. Certainly there were people because the cars were checked. And the people who were in the cars could see the type of people who stopped the cars – they put big rocks on the road so there was no way for them to move, they had to stop.

And they were puzzled that I was not there. And I said to these people, ”People like Chitrabhanu

– just because they have a certain scholarship, a certain articulateness – should not be so easily accepted. If he can commit violence, then his celibacy is suspect, then his whole personality is that of a hypocrite.”

And that’s what happened. He escaped with one of the richest men’s girl to New York. Now he is in New York, married to the girl. And New York was chosen because the girl’s parents had a big business in New York. So he is living in all luxury now – against which he was preaching his whole life.

To experience something and just to borrow other people’s words are so distant from each other that one should always be aware whether you are listening to a parrot or a man who has experienced.

You have asked me what happened at the time of my enlightenment. Everything that is described in Buddha’s enlightenment. One feels like flowers are showering. One feels a strange fragrance.

One feels as if divine forces are dancing all around. But it is one’s feeling, just a by-product of enlightenment, but it is not factual. And it will be very difficult for you to think of something as truth which is not factual.

Poetry has a truth, but it is not factual.

Art has a truth, but it is not factual.

Facts are mundane things. Only newspapers collect them, and ultimately the same newspapers become history.

Truth is a totally different thing.

Let me explain to you. Jainas have twenty-four masters. If you go in a Jaina temple – and they have the best temples in the world, the most beautiful, the most simple, the most serene, and they have always chosen the mountains so their temples are on high mountains – there you will find twenty-four tirthankaras, statues in white marble or black marble. One thing is bound to strike you, that they all look absolutely alike, there is no difference. Even the priest of the temple cannot tell the difference, who is who. So finally Jainas have decided to make small symbols underneath the statue; for example, underneath Mahavira, because his name is ‘the great warrior’ there is a line, that is his symbol. So each statue has a symbol, and according to the symbol they can say whose statue it is; otherwise they are exactly alike.

Now this cannot be fact. Twenty-four persons spread over thousands of years cannot be exactly the same.

But it is a truth, because these twenty-four persons experienced the same truth, saw the same light, felt the same bliss. To signify that their experience was exactly the same, how you can manage to show it in marble? Marble has its own poetry, and they have managed it perfectly well; their statues The Transmission of the Lamp

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are made exactly the same. That shows now that the body does not matter, the figure of the body does not matter. Now what matters is the inner experience; how to show its similarity? And in stone?

So those twenty-four statues exactly similar have a poetic truth about them.

And whenever anybody becomes enlightened, all these experiences happen. He feels the whole existence celebrating – the trees blossoming out of season, the birds singing although it is not morning. In this mood of festivity, all rules are put aside.

That is the meaning, that in the mood of festivity all rules are put aside.

And the greatest phenomenon in existence is enlightenment, and certainly it should be rejoiced by the whole existence.

But I repeat: remember, it is poetic experience, poetic expression of something which cannot be brought to words. But it exists.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

WHEN I TOLD YOU I SAW YOU EMPTY, YOU SAID, ”EMPTINESS IN YOU IS A ‘REAL’

EXPERIENCE.” YOU SAID THAT TWICE. MY UNDERSTANDING OF THE PROOF OF REALITY

IS THAT IT – THE OBSERVED – REMAINS WITH AWARENESS, WHEREAS IMAGINATION

DISSOLVES.

SEEING YOU EMPTY DID NOT RETURN AND AS MUCH AS I TRY IT WILL NOT RETURN.

AND YET SOMETHING HAS REMAINED WITH ME, SOMETHING WILL NOT LEAVE ME SINCE

SEEING YOU LIKE THAT.

IS THAT REALITY, OSHO?

It is reality, there is just a little confusion – which is natural. I have said that with awareness imagination disappears but the reality remains. You saw me absent or empty and I said this is real.

Then you tried to see me empty again but you forgot one thing, that while you are trying you cannot be aware.

So it is not that my emptiness was your imagination. Just be aware and you will see the emptiness again, but don’t try – because for the first time when it happened you were not trying, you were simply sitting silently here listening, and out of nowhere you felt the emptiness. It will come in the same way, without even knocking on your doors. With effort you cannot bring it.

It is not imagination.

But the other half you have forgotten. In the silence you were aware without any effort, and once you have seen it you started trying to see it again and now it is not coming, hence the confusion.

You think it must have been imagination; it was not.

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But this happens to everybody. Any experience of the beyond first happens without your effort. You were doing something else. You were listening to me, you were not concerned about the beyond, and suddenly a door opens.

And in the day you see the stars. It will leave an impact on you forever. You will never be the same again.

But remember not to make an effort. That is a trouble, that the mind says, ”Such a beautiful experience. Make some effort, do something so that you can find it again.” But any doing is undoing, you will not get it.

You simply forget all about it; just as it has come uninvited, it will come.

And once you know the secret – that these great experiences come uninvited, you cannot pull them down – then whatever happens, you relax into it, you drown yourself in it, and when it is gone you don’t feel that you are missing something. You feel grateful – not a despair that it disappeared. Feel grateful that it appeared to you and you had not asked for it, it came on its own, uninvited; and slowly, slowly you will get the knack of it, that it is not within your power, within your hands. In fact, you, your hands, your effort, are all barriers.

So when sometimes, doing anything, you are so totally absorbed, these tremendous moments will come to you and they will go on changing you; each time they come they will go deeper in you.

One day it happens that the moment comes and never leaves you.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

DOES KNOWLEDGE OF THE ESOTERIC PLAY ANY ROLE ON THE PATH OF AWARENESS?

No. No knowledge – esoteric or otherwise – plays any role on the path except that of hindrance.

Innocence helps, knowledge hinders.

Be a child – full of wonder, without knowing anything.

One Indian saint was very much respected in India. There were only two men in India who were called mahatma. One was Mahatma Gandhi – ‘mahatma’ means ‘the great soul’ – and the second was Mahatma Bhagwandin.

This second man used to stay with me whenever he passed the city I was living in.

I used to go for a morning walk, for a night walk, and he was also very much in love with going for a walk. He was an old man, but immensely knowledgeable; he knew the names of all the trees – Latin names, Greek names – all the flowers. He was almost a walking encyclopedia.

I told him, ”You have wasted your whole life. What is the point of remembering all the names of all the trees in the garden, all the flowers? You are so much concerned with knowledgeability that you The Transmission of the Lamp

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cannot enjoy the beauty. I don’t know any of the names of these trees and I don’t have to – because they don’t talk, I don’t have to call them. What is the point of knowing their names? You are not a botanist. You are not a physician” – because he knew what flower, what leaves can be used for what disease.

I said, ”These things are for experts. You are considered to be a spiritual man, and these things I don’t think belong to spirituality.”

He was very angry. He said, ”Everybody has appreciated my knowledge. In fact, everybody feels awe at my knowledge of things around the world. You are the first person who has insulted me.” I said, ”I have not insulted you. I have simply been trying to make you aware that now you are seventy, soon death will be coming and death will not ask all these names. Death will ask, ‘Can you be aware or not?’”

But at that time he was very angry and he wouldn’t listen.

And after eight years he died. Before he died, just two days before, I passed through his city – he used to stay in Nagpur. So I went to see him, hearing that he is very sick. He was very sick. He had become almost a skeleton. It was sad to see that man. And I said, ”What happened?” He said, ”What you have said that day, it seems it is going to happen. Death is coming. I can hear the footsteps. Life is slipping out of my hands. And please forgive me for my anger. You were right.

All my knowledgeability is of no use. Had I listened to you, even eight years was enough time to meditate, to become aware, and this time I would not have been sad that death is coming, I would have been excited that the greatest experience in life – death – is coming close and I am going to watch it. But I don’t think I can. I will become unconscious. I am already losing my consciousness, I am becoming more and more sleepy.”

I said to him, ”Just try to remember in the next life at least, don’t get too much bothered by unnecessary knowledge – just to impress people. The essential is very small, and if you can understand the essential your life has been that of a glory, a victory.” The Transmission of the Lamp

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The salt of the earth

15 June 1986 pm in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

I HAVE ALWAYS FELT A GREAT LOVE FROM YOU FOR JOHN THE BAPTIST. IT SEEMS THAT

THE MAN WHO IS REGARDED AS THE PROPHET WHO HERALDED THE COMING OF JESUS

WAS OF GREATER STATURE THAN JESUS HIMSELF. WOULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT?

John the Baptist is not much known. He is overshadowed by Jesus Christ and Christianity. He was certainly more powerful and a greater revolutionary than Jesus himself.

It is very unfortunate that Jews won’t talk about him because he was declaring that the old Judaism has come to an end and a new message is just on the way.

This is an old way of saying that he declared that he is preparing the ground for the new messiah.

Symbols change as time changes, but to be more exact and true about the man, it will be better to say that he was preparing the ground for the new message, not the new messiah; and proof for this exists.

I will talk about it.

Jews, out of necessity, have not taken note of John the Baptist. He was declaring the death of the old and the birth of the new, which really the old, the orthodox, the traditional, cannot respect.

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And Christians have ignored him for another reason – because he baptized Jesus, initiated him into religion. Christians don’t want to mention the fact that Jesus had a master because that lowers the status of Jesus in the eyes of Christians – the only begotten son of God need not have any master, he is born a master and he is born with the message. So although it is mentioned – it is just a mention that John the Baptist initiated Jesus.

But it is ugly that they will not talk much about the master of their master. They make so much fuss about the crucifixion of Jesus. Their whole religion depends on the crucifixion of Jesus; if he was not crucified there would have been no Christianity at all. But they don’t talk about the fact that John the Baptist also was beheaded.

Neither do the Jews take any note that the man was murdered. They were happy about it because he was declaring the death of the old.

Nor are the Christians interested in him because he was not a Christian. He initiated Jesus into Judaism, not into Christianity.

And the man must have had a tremendous charisma, that even a man like Jesus felt to become his disciple.

Thousands of people were baptized by John. He must have had a great magic around him, and at the same time he was a very humble man – because he did not declare himself to be the messiah.

That point has to be remembered. A tremendous beauty... he has every characteristic to call himself a messiah. He influenced more people than Jesus.

Jesus was crucified by the Jews because he was talking – talking against their conception of God, saying that he is the only begotten son of God. He was claiming something for which he had no evidence, and he was also claiming that he is the long-awaited messiah. Jews have been waiting for that savior since Moses.

John the Baptist was a charismatic personality. He could have declared himself to be the messiah, to be the only begotten son of God; but he was a humble man. He did not declare anything. On the contrary, he simply said, ”I am making the way for the new messiah to come.” In the Jewish psychology nobody can ever be accepted as the awaited messiah. There is a very fundamental reason for it. Jews have suffered so much.

First they suffered in Egypt in slavery.... Those great pyramids that you see, which even science thinks impossible to make – four thousand years old, such big blocks of stone – it is impossible because powerful enough cranes did not exist, neither do they exist today; and these powerful stones, huge stones, were carried to heights by human beings. Each stone has taken hundreds of lives. Those pyramids were not made by Egyptians, they were made for the Egyptian kings and queens but they were made by Jews under slavery; they carried those stones, with the soldiers on horses whipping them all the time so they don’t feel the burden. And if somebody fell and died, he was immediately replaced by another Jew.

Since those days, Jews have been suffering. Forty years wandering in the desert with Moses to find a place, and finally they settled on Israel – which was called in those days Judea – and immediately The Transmission of the Lamp

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it was invaded by the Romans. And the Romans were not less cruel than the Egyptians, perhaps they were more cruel.

John the Baptist was not killed by the Jews, because he never claimed himself to be a messiah, and they cannot accept anybody as a messiah because that is their only hope. And when people are in great suffering, the hope functions as an immense help but it has to be far away – but not too far away that it becomes beyond reach. It has to remain within reach and yet as you move towards it it also goes on receding. It always remains within your reach but you never attain it.

So Jews have been hoping. Their whole hope has been that the messiah will come, that he will redeem them from all suffering.

Now it is impossible for them to accept anyone as a messiah. First, because nobody can redeem anybody from suffering. So it may look to others that walking on water is a miracle, but the Jews were not waiting for a messiah who walks on water. They had a deep hope for a messiah who would take away all their pain and anguish, all their suffering; not someone who raises one man from the grave – that doesn’t matter. These things don’t make sense because their hope is not fulfilled by them.

Secondly, accepting anybody as the messiah means now there is no hope. This man certainly is a kind of magician – he turns water into wine, walks on water, feeds hundreds of people out of two loaves, raises a man from the dead, cures a few sick people. But if this is the messiah, what about their suffering and anguish, thousands of years old? Now even the hope is finished. The messiah has come, and the messiah has failed.

Rather than see the messiah fail, they would like the messiah to be crucified – because that keeps their hope alive.

Nobody bothered about the psychology of the Jews. They were not cruel people, they are not cruel people. They have not tortured anybody.

Why suddenly did they turn upon Jesus? He was destroying their hope, and that was all that they had – no joy in their life, no freedom in their life, simply a hope that one day all this suffering will end.

This night cannot remain forever; the dawn is going to come, the messiah will come and redeem God’s chosen people, the Jews.

They could not sacrifice that hope. That hope was such a big solace, consolation; that hope was their only future.

And just a carpenter’s son comes and wants to destroy it.

They could not forgive Jesus.

But they were not against John the Baptist, although he declared the end of the old and the beginning of the new, although he declared that he is preparing the path for the new messiah to come.

He was killed by the Romans, particularly Pontius Pilate’s wife. That is a very strange thing. She was a beautiful woman, and Pontius Pilate was a powerful man in the Roman Empire... and politics The Transmission of the Lamp

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works in strange ways. He was so powerful that the king of the Romans was afraid – he was getting old, and when he dies his son has no chances to become the king if Pontius Pilate remains in Rome.

He had such influence on people so he had to be sent far away – in such a graceful way that nobody thinks that he has been simply removed from the path of the king’s son. And when the king orders Pontius Pilate to go.... A powerful man, an intelligent man, and he has a powerful wife.

But the more beautiful a woman is the more egoistic she is.

Man becomes egoistic if he is rich, he becomes egoistic if he has political power in his hands, he becomes egoistic if he has great knowledge, scholarship, he becomes egoistic if he is worshipped as a saint, as a prophet. He has not left the woman any area except beauty to fulfill her ego – a very limited scope, one dimensional.

But because the scope is limited, the ego becomes very strong. A beautiful woman has a stronger ego than any man can have.

Pontius Pilate’s wife heard about John the Baptist – and she has known only men who immediately became interested in her beauty, she has never known a man like John the Baptist. When she went to see John the Baptist, he wouldn’t even look at her, and he simply said, ”Come some other day. I have to see many other people and they have their appointments before you. And here everybody is equal. It doesn’t matter that you are Pontius Pilate’s wife; take an appointment because I have to see thousands of people.” And he did not look at her, and she felt so insulted. She was politically powerful, the first lady of the land, and she was a beautiful lady. She became so angry that she ordered the arrest of John the Baptist through Pontius Pilate.

Pontius Pilate tried to persuade her, ”You don’t know this kind of people. They are not to be overpowered by beauty or power or anything. You should be patient. Go again.” She simply refused. Against his will he has to arrest John the Baptist, and the woman was so much nagging him that she wants to see John the Baptist’s head brought to her on a plate, she will not feel satisfied without it.

It took almost twelve years – because Pontius Pilate did not see any reasonableness in it.

But this is the problem with every husband. Whether the wife is reasonable or not, you cannot logically convince her. And she will go on nagging and torturing you, and finally just to get finished with the matter his head was cut off and was brought on a plate before the lady.

From the jail John the Baptist heard these declarations of Jesus. The declarations I have been criticizing were criticized by his own master too. When he heard that Jesus had been declaring himself as the only begotten son of God – that he is saying to people, ”Those who believe in me shall inherit the kingdom of God and those who don’t believe in me will fall into eternal hell” – when he started declaring such egoistic statements, John the Baptist, who was a humble man, could not believe that any religious man, any sensitive man could utter such statements.

And when Jesus started doing these so-called miracles – which are below the status of an awakened being, street magicians do such things – he sent a message from the jail by one prisoner who was The Transmission of the Lamp

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being released, to ask Jesus a simple question: ”This is from John the Baptist who initiated you; he has a question and the question is, are you really the messiah?” Just a simple question mark, ”Are you really the messiah?”

It contains much. It says, ”What you are saying, what you are doing is not worthy of a messiah.” Christians have not paid much respect to John the Baptist because of his suspicion.

But when a man like John the Baptist suspects, it cannot be meaningless. I can see that his suspicion is right.

The messiah cannot even declare himself a messiah. Those declarations are childish.

Your very being, your presence, your words, your actions, will themselves declare who you are.

You need not declare again and again that you are the only begotten son of God, that you are the messiah, that you are the one for whom the whole Jewish race has been waiting. Repeating these things again and again he makes it clear that he himself is psychologically insecure.

If he is the messiah it does not matter whether anybody believes in it or not. Even if the whole world disbelieves, it will not make any difference, he will still be the messiah. And if he is not, even if the whole world believes he is, he will not be the messiah.

No scripture about John the Baptist survives – about his sayings, statements, about his actions.

There are just these few incidents, but these incidents are enough to give you the quality of the man

– his humbleness, and at the same time his indifference to power, to beauty.

His doubt about his own disciple is very significant. He does not think himself infallible. He has declared that now that Jesus is initiated he has found a man of great charisma and now he can retire – he was getting old, ”Now he will take my place and I will retire.” His trust in a person who has just met him, the first day.... And he retired, went into the wilderness.

His great trust and yet his capacity, when he heard all these things about Jesus in jail, to doubt him.

The doubt is not about Jesus. The doubt is about his own feeling that Jesus will be able to take his place. Perhaps he was wrong.

Just see it in that light. He is saying, ”I am not infallible. Perhaps I was wrong. You were not the right person I have chosen to succeed me.”

Although nothing much is known about the man, just a few incidents, those few incidents make him a very loving individual, a very charismatic individual.

And he is one of those who have been sacrificed for humanity’s sake, but there is nobody even to remember them. And there have been many such people – because they never created an organization. They remained individuals. They shared their insight with people without making any kind of bondage.

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Thousands of people were baptized by John. That’s why he became famous as John the Baptist.

But no organization arose, no religion. He never tried to make any organization to go on preaching his message to the world after him.

There have been many people like that, and they were the very salt of the earth.

There is no need. If existence is capable to create a John the Baptist, it will be able to create other John the Baptists in other names. There is no need to create a dead organization which creates popes, Ayatollah Khomeiniacs, shankaracharyas and all kinds of idiots.

It is better to leave the space only for the authentic ones to appear.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

YEARS AGO A GOOD FRIEND OF MINE COMMITTED SUICIDE. I MET HER IN POONA AND

SHE USED TO TELL ME THINGS WHICH I NEVER UNDERSTOOD – IT WAS ANOTHER

DIMENSION OF THE WORLD. EVERYBODY AVOIDED HER, THEY THOUGHT SHE WAS MAD.

BUT SHE LOVED ME VERY MUCH. AND ONE DAY SHE TOLD ME, ”THERE IS NO REASON

FOR ME TO HANG AROUND. NOW I HAVE GOT A MESSAGE. THERE IS SOMETHING I HAVE TO DO THROUGH THIS BODY. AFTER THIS I WILL FINISH MYSELF.” WHATEVER SHE

DESCRIBED WAS NOTHING I HAVE EXPERIENCED – I DON’T KNOW IF IT WAS TRUE OR NOT, SO I CANNOT SAY THAT SHE WAS LIVING IN HER OWN IMAGINARY WORLD. BUT I NEVER

SAW SOMEONE LIVING SO SINCERELY AND INTENSELY. SHE BECAME MORE AND MORE A NOBODY.

OSHO, EACH TIME WHEN I FEEL YOUR VAST LOVE AND UNDERSTANDING POURING ON

ME, I FEEL SORRY FOR HER. SHE LOVED AND TRUSTED ME VERY MUCH, BUT I COULDN’T

UNDERSTAND HER AT ALL.

Life is not only that which you know, which you feel, which you experience. It is vast. It is so vast it can contain contradictions very easily.

It has many dimensions.

Never condemn anybody as mad because you cannot be certain whether his madness is a higher form of sanity or something which you are incapable of conceiving.

Never judge anybody as imaginative because it is not your business to judge people. It is always helpful to remain non-judgmental.

Experienced people try to understand people – perhaps they are experiencing some other dimension of life, some other aspect of life, and understanding them you will be richer.

Judgment stops you.

You label somebody as mad and then there is no need to understand them.

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Your constant judgmental attitude is nothing but to close yourself into your small world and keep every other possibility of life out of it.

Learn to be open. Learn to be vulnerable. Try to experience putting yourself in the other person’s place.

In this world there are as many worlds as there are people, every person is a world unto himself.

It is not his skin that makes him different from you, it is his inner experience, his ways of looking at things.

Even if a person commits suicide, beware, don’t judge.

Vincent van Gogh, one of the greatest painters of the contemporary world, committed suicide at the age of thirty-three, and before committing suicide he was one year in a madhouse because his friends and family – particularly his younger brother – were very much concerned that he can go mad, he can do anything.

In a certain part of France, I think Arles, where the sun shines the hottest and the brightest, for one year he was painting all possible positions of the sun – a whole series of paintings, just sun, the whole day from morning to evening. And doctors thought that too much sun has driven him crazy.

But in the madhouse also he continued to paint, and the problem is that in the madhouse the paintings he has done are the best out of all the paintings that he has done before and after. In that one year in the madhouse he has done his best paintings.

And people were afraid he was going mad – because his paintings were becoming a little bizarre.

Nobody could understand what they are, what is their meaning.

One of his paintings – a copy of it – I saw just a few days ago. A little while ago modern physics has come to find that many of the stars that you see in the sky are spirals, although you don’t see them as spirals. And he has painted, in one of his paintings, stars as spirals. And every critic thought that he is mad because stars are not spirals. Van Gogh said, ”What can I do? Whenever I want to paint a star, my whole being says it is a spiral.”

After one hundred years science has come to the conclusion that they are really spirals.

Now what to make of it? Was that man mad, or was that man one hundred years ahead of his time?

Was that man mad, or did he have a certain insight which others don’t have, and even now don’t have? Even the scientists who have found it have found it only through the latest developments in instruments; they don’t see them as spirals, it is through the instruments they have discovered it.

Perhaps he had a consciousness totally different from the ordinary man.

One thing is certain; a sannyasin, a seeker of truth, should not be judgmental. He should allow everybody to be himself without making in his mind any kind of idea whether it is right or wrong.

After the madhouse Vincent van Gogh painted his last painting, again about the sun. And he wrote a small letter to his brother, ”My work is completed. I was painting a series of all the positions of The Transmission of the Lamp

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the sun. Only one painting has remained incomplete because you forced me into the madhouse and they prevented me from painting the sun because they thought it was the sun that has driven me crazy. Now I am released, I have painted the painting, completed it. My work is finished. I am absolutely feeling fulfilled. Now there is no need of this body; hence, I commit suicide.” Who can say that this suicide is wrong or right? Who has the authority to say that?

Millions of people are living uselessly and nobody says to them, ”What are you living for?” I used to know a retired professor who, once in a while, met me on the road in the morning when I was going for a morning walk. And he would ask only one thing, thousands of times. Whenever we met, he would say, ”Listen” – and he was a retired professor of philosophy, a well-known man, who had written many books – ”just tell me one thing. I don’t find any reason for going on living. Can you help me?”

I used to ask him, ”If you don’t find any reason for going on living then why do you live?” He said, ”That is the difficulty. I don’t find any reason for committing suicide either. I am in such a dilemma and nobody seems to help me. People think I am going crazy, and for the first time I am feeling very clear – that there is no reason for me to die either. You help me any way!” I said, ”If I help you to commit suicide I will be committing a crime; you will be gone but I will be in jail. So it is very difficult to help you in that way. As far as living is concerned, I also don’t see, for you, any point in living – because you are retired, you don’t have a wife, you don’t have children, you don’t have friends; you are old enough, living alone in a cold house, no coziness, no love, no warmth, nobody to take care of you. You have become too weak, you cannot do anything on your own. You have to eat the rotten food from a hotel. Your eyes are weak, you cannot read any more, you cannot write any more. So you are creating a dilemma for me too.

”You certainly don’t have any reason to live. And as far as committing suicide, I don’t know what happens after suicide so I cannot say whether there will be any reason, whether things will be bettered or will become worse. So you can just forgive me, but don’t harass me about this question.

You can ask me anything else you want.”

He said, ”I don’t want to ask you anything else. This is the only question.” And finally he committed suicide.

And he wrote a letter to me. In his letter he said, ”I am writing it to you because I don’t think anybody else will be able to understand it. They all will judge it but nobody will understand it. I tried hard to find any reason to live, I could not; and life was becoming more and more difficult, it was almost dragging. I had not found yet any reason to commit suicide, but at least one thing was in favor of suicide and that was that it will be at least a new experience, not the old rotten everyday. For years I have been moving in a wheel. At least something new – better or worse, whatever it is – but something new.”

I cannot say he did anything wrong.

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In fact, I have been in favor of euthanasia, that people after a certain age, if they feel that they don’t have any reason to live, should not be forced to commit suicide, but they should be provided in nursing homes or hospitals with at least one month of rest, a peaceful atmosphere and a help to meditation, care of their body by the doctors. And one month’s time so their friends can meet them, faraway people can come and see them, and they can learn how to be silent, how to be peaceful, how to die with awareness. That is not suicide.

Only one religion, Jainism, has accepted it for almost ten thousand years. They call it santhara. They don’t call it suicide. Santhara simply means a man has become ripe; just as a fruit becomes ripe and falls from a tree, a man has become ripe, has no need to live in the world. He has experienced all that the world provides and now to go on living seems to be unnecessarily troublesome for himself and for others.

He should be allowed to leave his body.

That is the only spiritual philosophy which gives euthanasia a validity.

And I also feel it is valid. It should be man’s birthright – but not that a young man wants to die because his girlfriend has gone with somebody else. That will not be enough for euthanasia. That simply means he has to find another girlfriend.

When there is no reason, no complaint, no grudge, no grumbling, if one is not against life, one simply finds that all that has to be lived has been lived – now what are you doing here?

Up to now society has been forcing such people to commit suicide, which is ugly.

And the

responsibility is of the society because the society does not provide proper means for a man to have a beautiful death.

I am in favor of beautifying everything – death included.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

WHEN YOU SAID THAT THERE ARE NO GHOSTS, IT IS ONLY MAN’S FEAR, I THOUGHT,

”WELL, THAT’S THAT; THERE ARE NO GHOSTS. OSHO SAYS SO.” I WAS HAPPY TO BELIEVE YOU AND PUT THE MATTER ASIDE, COMFORTED THAT I KNEW

SOMETHING FOR SURE. BUT THIS IS BELIEF. YOU HAVE TOLD US NOT TO BELIEVE

BLINDLY. AND MY EXPERIENCE WITH GHOSTS IS NOT CONNECTED WITH FEAR BUT WITH

FRIENDLINESS. I FEEL I AM NOW IN A PREDICAMENT. I HAVE PULLED A NAIL OUT OF YOUR

NEEM TREE. PLEASE HELP!

Chetana, if you have friendly experiences of ghosts then ghosts exist. Friends are such a valuable thing that even if ghosts need to exist for friendship, they have to be allowed to exist! If you are having friendly relationships, that’s great.

Just Milarepa has to be afraid now.

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Do you think Milarepa is a ghost? Poor Milarepa, he is a real man.

And if you have other ghosts as friends then he should be alert.

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Reality is far richer than imagination

16 June 1986 am in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

IN RESPONSE TO ANANDO’S QUESTION THE OTHER EVENING ABOUT YOUR PLACE IN

HISTORY, YOU TOLD US TO FORGET HISTORY AND HISTORIANS, TO SIMPLY LET THEM

DO THEIR THING. BUT SO MUCH OF VALUE IS CONTAINED IN YOUR BOOKS WHICH IS

BEING MADE AVAILABLE TO CONTEMPORARY PEOPLE, AND WHICH COULD BE PART OF

A RECORD OF A WHOLE DIFFERENT DIMENSION FROM THAT WHICH IS CONVENTIONALLY

REGARDED AS HISTORY.

A NEW RECORD COULD BE COMPILED OF THE REAL HISTORY: THE EVOLUTION OF MAN’S

CONSCIOUSNESS BEGINNING WITH PRIMEVAL MAN AND THE FIRST HINTS OF MAN’S

AWARENESS OF HIMSELF, TAKING IN ALL THOSE WHO HAVE BECOME AWAKENED, ALL

MYSTICAL SCRIPTURES AND DOCUMENTS, AND CULMINATING IN YOU AND YOUR WORK.

OF ALL THE MASTERS, YOU HAVE THE MOST ECLECTIC AND COMPREHENSIVE RECORD

OF YOUR OWN EVOLUTION IN CONSCIOUSNESS – FROM THOSE DAYS IMMEDIATELY

FOLLOWING YOUR ENLIGHTENMENT, YOUR DAYS OF TRAVELLING AROUND INDIA, TO

BOMBAY, POONA, OREGON, AND NOW, THE WORLD TOUR.

IN ADDITION, THE QUESTIONS YOU PROVOKE IN US, YOUR DISCIPLES, OUTLINE THE

PROCESS OF OUR GROWING CONSCIOUSNESS, AND ARE, IN THEMSELVES, ANOTHER

UNIQUE ASPECT OF YOUR WORK.

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OSHO, WE HAVE ALREADY FORGIVEN YOU FOR NOT ALLOWING US TO FORGET YOU. WE, YOUR EDITORS, JUST WANT TO ENSURE THAT YOUR WORDS AND THE FRAGRANCE THAT

YOU ARE HAUNT PEOPLE FOR GENERATIONS TO COME AND DRIVE THEM TOTALLY SANE!

That is your problem.

Next question.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

THERE IS A STORY OF A DISCIPLE WHO COMES TO SEE HIS MASTER AND ASKS HIM

WHETHER MAN IS FREE.

THE MASTER TELLS HIS DISCIPLE TO STAND UP AND TO LIFT ONE OF HIS FEET OFF THE

GROUND. THE DISCIPLE, STANDING ON ONE LEG – AND THE OTHER ONE IN THE AIR –

UNDERSTANDS LESS THAN BEFORE.

NOW THE MASTER ASKS HIM TO ALSO LIFT THE OTHER FOOT OFF THE GROUND.

OSHO, CAN YOU SPEAK ON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FREEDOM FOR AND FREEDOM

FROM?

Freedom from is ordinary, mundane. Man has always tried to be free from things. It is not creative.

It is the negative aspect of freedom.

Freedom for is creativity. You have a certain vision that you would like to materialize and you want freedom for it.

Freedom from is always from the past, and freedom for is always for the future.

Freedom for is a spiritual dimension because you are moving into the unknown and perhaps, one day, into the unknowable. It will give you wings.

Freedom from, at the most, can take away your handcuffs. It is not necessarily beneficial – and the whole of history is a proof of it. People have never thought of the second freedom that I am insisting on; they have only thought of the first – because they don’t have the insight to see the second. The first is visible: chains on their feet, handcuffs on their hands. They want to be free from them, but then what? What are you going to do with your hands? You may even repent that you asked for freedom from.

It happened in the castle of the Bastille – I have told you – in the French Revolution it was the most famous French prison, it was reserved only for those who were sentenced to live in jail for their whole lives. So one entered the Bastille alive but never came out alive – only the dead bodies came out.

And when they put on the handcuffs, the chains, they locked them and threw the keys in a well which was inside the Bastille – because they were not needed. Those locks would not be opened again so what would be their use?

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There were more than five thousand people. What is the use of keeping five thousand peoples’ keys and maintaining them unnecessarily?

Once they have entered their dark cells, they have entered them forever.

The French revolutionaries necessarily thought that the first thing that had to be done was to free the people from the Bastille.

It is inhuman to put somebody for any act whatsoever into prison in a dark cell just to wait for his death which might come fifty years afterwards, sixty years afterwards. Sixty years of waiting is an immense torture to the soul. It is not punishment, it is vengeance, revenge, because these people disobeyed the law. There is no balance between their acts and the punishment.

The revolutionaries opened the doors, they dragged people out from their dark cells. And they were surprised. Those people were not ready to get out of their cells.

You can understand. A person who has lived for sixty years in darkness – the sun is too much for him. He does not want to come out into the light. His eyes have become too delicate. And what is the point? He is now eighty. When he entered he was twenty. His whole life has been in this darkness. This darkness has become his home.

And they wanted to make them free. They broke their chains, their handcuffs – because there were no keys. But the prisoners were very resistant. They did not want to go out of the prison. They said,

”You don’t understand our condition. A man who has been sixty years in this position, what will he do outside? Who will provide him food? Here food is given, and he can rest in his peaceful, dark cell. He knows he is almost dead. Outside he will not be able to find his wife – what has happened to her, his parents will have died, his friends will have died or may have completely forgotten him.

”And nobody is going to give him a job. A man who has been for sixty years out of work, who is going to give him a job? – and a man from the Bastille, where the most dangerous criminals were kept?

Just the name of Bastille will be enough to have him refused from any job. Why are you forcing us?

Where will we sleep? We don’t have any houses. We have almost forgotten where we used to live

– somebody else must be living there. Our houses, our families, our friends, our whole world has changed so much in sixty years; we will not be able to make it. Don’t torture us more. We have been tortured enough.”

And in what they were saying there was reasonableness.

But revolutionaries are stubborn people; they won’t listen. They forced them out of the Bastille, but by that night almost everybody had come back. They said, ”Give us food because we are hungry.” A few came in the middle of the night and they said, ”Give us our chains back because we cannot sleep without them. We have slept for fifty, sixty years with handcuffs, with chains on our legs, in darkness. They have become almost part of our bodies, we cannot sleep without them. You return our chains – and we want our cells. We were perfectly happy. Don’t force your revolution on us. We are poor people. You can do your revolution somewhere else.” The revolutionaries were shocked.

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But the incident shows that freedom from is not necessarily a blessing.

You can see all over the world; countries have become free from the British Empire, from the Spanish Empire, from the Portuguese Empire – but their situation is far worse than it was when they were slaves. At least in their slavery they had become accustomed to it, they had dropped ambitions, they had accepted their situation as their destiny.

Freedom from slavery simply creates chaos.

My whole family was involved in India’s freedom struggle. They had all been to jail. Their education was disturbed. Nobody could pass the university because before they could pass the examination they were caught – somebody was three years in jail, somebody was four years in jail. And then it was too late to start again, and they had become bona fide revolutionaries. In jail they contacted all the leaders of revolution; then their whole lives were devoted to revolution.

I was small but I used to argue with my father, with my uncles: ”I can understand that slavery is ugly, it dehumanizes you, humiliates you, it degrades you from the prestige of being a human being; it should be fought against. But my point is, what will you do when you are free? Freedom from is clear, and I am not against it. What I want to know and understand clearly is what you are going to do with your freedom.

”You know how to live in slavery. Do you know how to live in freedom? You know a certain order has to be maintained in slavery; otherwise you will be crushed, killed, shot. Do you know that in freedom it will be your responsibility to maintain the order? Nobody will be killing you and nobody else will be responsible for it – you have to be responsible for it. Have you asked your leaders what this freedom is for?”

And I never received any answer. They said, ”Right now we are so involved in getting rid of slavery; we will take care of freedom later on.”

I said, ”This is not a scientific attitude. If you are demolishing the old house, if you are intelligent you should at least prepare a map for the new house. The best would be that you prepare the new house before you demolish the old. Otherwise you will be without a house and then you will suffer –

because it is better to be in the old house than to be without a house.” In my family, great leaders of the Indian revolution used to stay with us – and this was my constant argument with them. And I have never found a single leader of the Indian revolution who had the answer to what they were going to do with freedom.

Freedom came. Hindus and Mohammedans killed each other in millions. They had been kept from killing each other by the British forces; the forces were removed – and there were riots all over India.

Everybody’s life was in danger. Whole towns were burning; whole trains were burning, and people were not allowed to get out of the trains.

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The country was divided into two parts – they had never thought about it. In the whole country there was chaos. And the people who came to power had a certain expertise and that expertise was in burning the bridges, in burning the jails, in killing the people who were enslaving the country.

This expertise has nothing to do with building up a new country. But these were the leaders in the revolution; naturally they came to power. They had fought, they had won, and the power came into their hands. And it was in the wrong hands.

No revolutionary should be given the power – because he knows how to sabotage, but he does not know how to create; he only knows how to destroy. He should be honored, respected, given gold medals and everything, but don’t give him power.

You will have to find people who can be creative – but these will be the people who have not participated in revolution.

It is a very delicate matter.

Because the creative people were concerned with their creativity, they were not interested in who rules. Somebody must rule, but whether it is the Britishers, or whether it is the Indians doesn’t matter to them. They were concerned with pouring their energy into their creative work, so they were not in the revolutionary ranks.

Now, the revolutionaries will not allow them to have the power. In fact, they are the renegades.

These are the people who never participated in revolution, and you are giving power to them?

So every revolution has failed in the world up to now, and for the simple reason that the people who make the revolution have one kind of expertise and the people who can make a country, create a country, create responsibility in people, are a different lot. They don’t participate in destruction, murder. But they cannot get to the power. Power goes into the hands of those who have been fighting.

So, naturally, every revolution is intrinsically bound to fail.

Unless what I am saying is understood clearly.... There are two parts in revolution, from and for; and there should be two kinds of revolutionaries: those who are working for the first – that is freedom from – and those who will work when the work of the first is finished, for freedom for.

But it is difficult to manage. Who will manage it? Everybody is full of lust for power.

When the revolutionaries are victorious, the power is theirs; they cannot give it to anybody else. And the country will be in chaos. In every dimension it will fall lower and lower every day.

That’s why I don’t teach you revolution; I teach you rebellion.

Revolution is of the crowd; rebellion is of the individual.

The individual changes himself. He does not care about the power structure; he simply manages to change his being, gives birth to a new man in himself.

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And if the whole country is rebellious.... The most wonderful thing about it is this: in rebellion both kinds of revolutionaries can participate, because in rebellion much has to be destroyed and much has to be created. Things have to be destroyed in order to create, so it has an appeal for both –

those who are interested in destruction and those who are interested in creativity.

It is not a crowd phenomenon. It is your own individuality.

And if millions of people go through rebellion, then the power of countries, nations is going to be in the hands of these people – rebels.

Only in rebellion can revolution succeed; otherwise, revolution has a split personality.

Rebellion is one, single.

And remember this: in rebellion, destructiveness and creativity go hand in hand together, supporting each other. They are not separate processes. Once you make them separate – as they are in revolution – you will repeat the story.

The story in the question is not complete.

It is a beautiful mystic story. A man comes to a master to ask how much man is independent, free.

Is he totally free, or is there a limitation? Is there something like fate, kismet, destiny, a God who makes a limitation beyond which you cannot be free?

The mystic answered in his own way – not logically but existentially. He said, ”Stand up.” The man must have felt this was a stupid kind of answer, ”I am asking a simple question and he is asking me to stand up.” But he said, ”Let us see what happens.” He stood.

And the mystic said, ”Now, raise one of your legs up.” The man, by this time, must have been thinking he had come to a mad man; what has this to do with freedom, independence? But now that he has come... and there must have been a crowd of the disciples... and the mystic was so respected; not to follow him would be disrespectful, and there was no harm.

So he took away one of his legs from the earth, so one foot was in the air and he was standing on one foot.

And then the master said, ”That’s perfectly good. Just one thing more. Now take the other foot up also.”

That is impossible.

The man said, ”You are asking something impossible. I have taken my right foot up. Now I cannot take my left foot up.”

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The master said, ”But you were free. In the beginning you could have taken the left foot up. There was no binding. You were completely free to choose whether to take the left foot up or the right foot up. I had not said anything. You decided. You took the right foot up. In your very decision you made it impossible for the left foot to be lifted up. Don’t bother about fate, kismet, God. Just think of simple things.”

Any act that you do prevents you from doing some other act that goes against it. So every act is a limitation.

In the story it is so clear. In life it is not so clear because you can’t see one foot on the earth and one foot in the air. But each act, each decision is a limitation.

You are totally free before deciding, but once you have decided, your very decision, your very choice brings in a limitation. Nobody else is imposing the decision; it is the nature of things – you cannot do contradictory things together simultaneously. And it is good you cannot; otherwise... you are already in chaos... you would be in greater chaos if you were allowed to do contradictory things together.

You would go mad.

This is simply an existential safety measure.

Basically you are totally free to choose, but once you choose, your very choice brings a limitation.

If you want to remain totally free, then don’t choose. That’s where the teaching of choiceless awareness comes in. Why the insistence of the great masters just to be aware and not to choose?

Because the moment you choose, you have lost your total freedom, you are left with only a part. But if you remain choiceless, your freedom remains total.

So there is only one thing which is totally free and that is choiceless awareness. Everything else is limited.

You love a woman – she is beautiful but very poor. You love riches – there is another woman who is very rich but ugly, disgusting. Now you have to choose. And whatever you choose, you will suffer.

If you choose the beautiful girl, she is poor; and you will always repent that you missed all those riches unnecessarily – because the beauty after a few days’ acquaintance is taken for granted, you don’t see it. And what will you do with beauty? You cannot purchase a car, you cannot purchase a house, you cannot purchase anything. Now beat your head with your beauty – what you will do?

So the mind starts thinking that the choice was wrong.

But if you choose the disgusting, ugly woman, you would have all that money can purchase: a palace, servants, all gadgets, but you will have to tolerate that woman – not only tolerate but to say

”I love you.” And you cannot even hate her, she is so disgusting; even to hate, one needs somebody who is not disgusting – because hate is a relationship. And you cannot enjoy those cars and the palace and the garden, because the disgusting face of that woman will be constantly following you.

And she knows that you have not married her, you have married her riches. So she is going to treat you like a servant, not like a lover. And this is the truth: you have not loved her. Then you will start thinking it would have been better to have a poor house, ordinary food – at least the woman was beautiful, you would have enjoyed her. You have been an idiot to choose this.

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Whatever you choose you will repent because the other will remain and haunt you.

If one needs absolute freedom then choiceless awareness is the only thing.

And when I say instead of revolution go for rebellion, I am bringing you closer to a complete whole.

In revolution you are bound to be divided, either from something or for something. You cannot have both together because they need different expertise.

But in rebellion both qualities are combined together.

When a sculptor makes a statue he is doing both; he is cutting the stone – destroying the stone as it was – and he is, by destroying the stone, creating a beautiful statue that was not there before.

Destruction and creation go together, they are not divided.

Rebellion is whole.

Revolution is half-half – and that is the danger of revolution. The word is beautiful, but down the centuries it has got connected with a split mind.

And I am against all kinds of splits because they will drive you schizophrenic.

Now all the countries which have become free from slavery are going into an agony which is inconceivable. They had never been in such agony when they were slaves, and they had been slaves for three hundred, four hundred years. In three hundred, four hundred years, they never encountered such agony; and just in thirty, forty years they have gone into such hell that they wonder, ”Why were we fighting for freedom? If this is freedom then slavery was far better.” Slavery is never better. It is just that these people don’t know that they have chosen half of the freedom; and the other half can be completed, but not by the same people who have done the revolution. The other half will need a totally different kind of intelligence, wisdom. And those are not the people who will murder and throw bombs and burn trains and police stations and post offices –

those are not the people.

In my family, only my grandfather was against sending my uncles to universities. It was my father who somehow managed to send them to the university. My grandfather was saying, ”You don’t know.

I understand these boys. You will be sending them to the university and they will end up in jail –

such is the atmosphere.”

Most of the revolution was done by students, young people. Knowing nothing of life – they had not experienced anything – but they had energy, they had vitality; they were young, and they had this romantic idea of being free. They did everything – making bombs and throwing bombs and killing governor-generals and governors. They did everything.

And when they came out of jail, they suddenly found they had all the power and they had no skill to use it. They had no intelligence either – what to do with it? They pretended they enjoyed a euphoria, and the country also enjoyed euphoria for a moment – now our own people are in power! – but soon they started fighting with each other.

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For forty years in India they have been simply fighting with each other. Nobody bothers about the country and nobody bothers to risk his own neck because to tackle any problem of the country he will have to go against the traditions of the country.

I have talked to two prime ministers – Lalbahadur Shastri and Indira Gandhi – and the answer was the same: ”Whatever you say is right, but who is going to get into trouble? We cannot say these things to the public. Birth control we cannot say because once you say birth control, the whole country goes against you, saying that you are destroying the morality of the country; then all religious people start thinking that this man should not be in power, he is dangerous.” And Indira even tried, and because she tried she was thrown out of power. For three years she was harassed in every possible way.

What can you do? If the problems are connected with the traditions and the old conditionings of the mind.... The politician is enjoying his power and he is fighting for his own power – so that he remains powerful, so that he starts moving upwards.

I am reminded of a very funny situation.

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was the first prime minister after the freedom came, and he was visiting a Commonwealth conference in London. In his cabinet the second man was Maulana Azad. Thinking that since the prime minister is out of the country, and he is second... he must start acting as prime minister. Now there is no such thing in the world as an acting prime minister. If the president goes out, then the vice-president functions as the acting president. But the president is in the country, the head of the country is there. Prime ministers, wherever they go, are prime ministers and there is no need for anybody else to be acting prime minister.

And Maulana Azad, an old man, very much respected... that’s why he is called Maulana. ‘Maulana’

means a great wise man. He was a Mohammedan – but so childish that he immediately put the flag on the car of the prime minister and started sitting in the prime minister’s office, acting as prime minister.

And when Jawaharlal Nehru heard in London that Maulana Azad was doing that, he informed him,

”You do not know that there is never any acting prime minister. Only the head of the state, if he is out of the country, is replaced for the time being by the vice-head. But the prime minister is not the head of the country. He is the most powerful man, but he’s not the nominal head, so don’t do this foolish thing.”

Jawaharlal phoned him and said, ”Stop this nonsense. If somebody comes to know it, they will laugh that these people want to create a country so big – a sub-continent – and they are only children.” Revolution has the trouble – and I think it will always have – that one kind of people will do it and power will come into their hands... and it is just human, lust for power, will for power. They will not want it to be given to anybody else. But that is exactly what is needed to be done. Now people have to be found who are wise enough – creative, intelligent – who can help the country in all possible ways by bringing new technology, new methods of agriculture; who can introduce new industries in the country; who can open the doors of the country for the whole world to put their money in, as the country has cheap labor.

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India can produce anything. It needs money, and the money is there around the world – and the people who have money, they don’t know what to do with it. It needs new industries. It can create any kind of thing, it just needs money, experts. And the labor is so cheap that it competes in the whole world.

That’s how Japan has come first. The per capita income is even higher now than in America. But Japan is handicapped with a trouble – it has not land enough. A small land... now it cannot grow more industries, the land is not there, the people are not there. India has enough land and millions of people. Only the right man is needed to be in power and then freedom from can be transformed into freedom for. The country can enjoy a tremendous growth in all directions.

But just the opposite is happening. The country is falling every day, deteriorating. And it will go on deteriorating and nobody will point out the simple fact that the wrong people are in power.

Just give them honor, give them prizes, give them awards, great certificates written in golden letters that they can put in their houses – but don’t give them power.

Seeing the disastrous situation of all revolutions, I started thinking of rebellion – which is individual; and the individual can be capable of synthesizing the destructive and the creative forces together in his choiceless awareness.

And if many people go through this rebellion – which is not against anybody, it is just against your own conditioning – and bring forth a new man within you, the problem is not difficult.

Revolution should become out of date.

Rebellion is the word for the future.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

DOES IT REALLY MATTER THAT I CAN’T DISTINGUISH IMAGINATION FROM REALITY?

IF I CAN BE AWARE THAT ”I AM”, IS THIS NOT ENOUGH?

It is certainly enough. It does not matter. There is no need to make any effort to discriminate between imagination and reality. You simply remain aware of yourself.

And whatever is imagination will slowly disappear, and whatever is real will remain.

It is again from Chetana.

But remember, your friendship with ghosts.... Those ghosts will disappear. Because you cannot discriminate between who is a ghost and who is a real person, there may be fear that perhaps you are thinking that this is a real person – and he disappears. But that much risk has to be taken.

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In the commune Milarepa used to disappear. That was because of your awareness of yourself. Then you can’t find where he is.

So if you are not afraid, then there is no problem. You simply remain aware of yourself. And I have never been teaching discrimination.

Imagination is that which disappears.

Reality is that which remains.

So you have to see. If Milarepa disappears, then he was a ghost. If he remains, then he is a reality.

In life many things which you enjoy are imaginary; that’s why people don’t want to let them disappear.

In life there is not much reality, so you don’t know what joys reality will bring. But one has to go into it. It is a gamble.

Only one thing I can say – that you will not be a loser. Reality is far richer than imagination.

I have told you the story of Mulla Nasruddin. One night, in the middle of the night, he nudged his wife and whispered, ”Just bring my glasses.”

He said, ”Don’t ask. Just bring them. I will explain everything later on. This time don’t disturb me.” She said, ”Okay,” and brought the glasses.

He put the glasses on, closed his eyes, started saying, ”Okay, okay. I am ready for ninety-nine.” The wife said, ”What is he doing?”

Then he said, ”Okay, I am ready for ninety-eight. But where are you? Ninety-seven?” The wife said, ”Are you mad or what? What are you doing?” He said, ”I was having such a beautiful dream. An angel was giving rupees. I have never seen such a miserly angel. He started with one rupee. I said, ‘What do you think I am? A beggar? One rupee, no.’ With great trouble and struggle I brought him up to ninety-nine. And I said, ‘Listen, it doesn’t look right – ninety-nine. Why not make it one hundred?’

”He said, ‘Okay, I will make it one hundred.’

”I was so joyous that I woke up, and I thought that I would get my glasses to see whether those notes were real or imaginary – because he was giving... a miser who starts with one rupee and is ready for one hundred....

”But when I put on the glasses, he was not there. I tried hard; ‘Come on, I am ready for ninety-nine, ninety-eight.’ I even went down to one rupee... because even a rupee from an angel is a blessing.

But that goddamned fellow did not appear at all!” Small children sometimes wake up and start crying and weeping and asking for something they just had that now somebody has taken away. They were simply dreaming of something, and now that The Transmission of the Lamp

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they are awake, the thing has disappeared. They cannot make any distinction between dreaming and reality.

As you grow mature, you become more aware of the difference between imagination and reality.

But if you really become fully aware of yourself, imagination simply disappears, because it is a spiritual awakening. Now no dreaming is possible and only the reality remains, and that reality is tremendously fulfilling. One never feels any loss when imagination is gone.

Question 4

BELOVED OSHO,

MANEESHA HAS HER EDITING, BUT I’M TRYING HARD; I CAN’T SEEM TO FIND A GOOD

REASON MYSELF FOR NOT BECOMING ENLIGHTENED.

CAN YOU HELP ME?

I will do my best so that you don’t become enlightened – although that is not my work, but just a favor.

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CHAPTER 43

The monkey is dead

16 June 1986 pm in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BEING ONESELF AND BEING EGOLESS?

There is no difference between being oneself and being egoless. The difference is only in the expression. If you see it from the negative standpoint, egolessness will be the expression because ego disappears.

If you see it from the positive standpoint then being oneself will be the expression.

They are just two ways of saying the same thing, but they are not two things so there is no distinction.

And always remember that every experience can be expressed in two ways and they appear so different that it seems as if there are two things. And great thinkers have been quarreling about it, great philosophies have arisen out of the insistence that these are two things.

For example, Mahavira prefers to express it in the positive way, being oneself. Gautam Buddha prefers the negative way, egolessness. Both have their merits and demerits.

When you say ”being oneself” there is a danger that you may mistake your ego for your being. Being oneself may become your egoistic standpoint. That is dangerous.

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On the other hand, describing the experience as egolessness has no challenge in it, no excitement in it. It is emptiness, nothingness, negativity. Very few people will be attracted towards the negative.

The negative expression may close the doors for them. But the negative way has a beauty in that it will not allow in any way – from the front door or from the back door – the possibility of the ego.

So for the ignorant people, it is better to describe it as egolessness because they are accustomed to their ignorance.

But for those who know, being oneself does not mean ego; being oneself means egolessness, but it is only for those who know.

My own approach is that egolessness is the way to reach the experience of being oneself. So they don’t appear two, and both are combined, and the merits of both are together.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

YOU SPOKE THE OTHER MORNING IN RESPONSE TO A QUESTION, ABOUT THE NEED

FOR ENERGY TO BE EXPRESSED SEXUALLY; UNTIL THAT POINT, IF ONE SIMPLY TRIES

TO DIVERT THE ENERGY INTO SPIRITUALITY IT WILL CREATE A BLOCK.

ON ANOTHER OCCASION YOU SPOKE OF RAMAKRISHNA AND HOW HE WOULD MEDITATE

ON HIS WIFE’S NAKED BODY WHENEVER HE FELT SEXUALITY ARISING. WAS HE ALREADY

ENLIGHTENED, OR WAS HE SIMPLY IN A STAGE OF CONSCIOUSNESS NOT COMPARABLE

TO THE STATE THAT WAS ASKED ABOUT THE OTHER MORNING?

He was not enlightened, and whatever he was doing was a subtle way of repression. You do it by looking at a pornographic magazine – that looks ugly. He was doing it looking at his own wife, who was a beautiful woman. That doesn’t seem to be ugly, but it is living pornography.

And Ramakrishna was not enlightened at that point, and he became more and more repressed.

That repression was coming into his mad dances before the god, singing for hours – that was simply expressing energy that he had been repressing.

He became enlightened only in the end when he came in contact with a master. The name of the master was Totapuri. After that he never worshipped his wife in her naked form, after that he never worshipped even the mother goddess of the temple in which he was the priest, after that he became a totally different man – all worshipping, all singing, all dancing disappeared. He became utterly silent, peaceful, but tremendously radiant, playful, blissful.

The meeting with the master changed his whole life.

The followers of Ramakrishna don’t give much space in their books, in their biographies of Ramakrishna, to the meeting of Totapuri and Ramakrishna – because after that, Ramakrishna was such a different man that the ordinary religious man will not find any appeal in him. He finds great appeal in the old Ramakrishna – in his devotional songs and dances and rituals before the goddess, and his whole life of a devotee.

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Ramakrishna was fortunate to find a master, but he was not fortunate enough to find disciples.

And the meeting with the master happened in the very last days of his life.

So the followers of Ramakrishna go on thinking about the old Ramakrishna who was unenlightened; and the disciples who started the Ramakrishna mission, they also talk about the long life of Ramakrishna, his teachings, his devotion. But nobody mentions that the real Ramakrishna was born after Totapuri’s meeting, in fact they want to avoid that fact.

I have been in contact with his disciples. They feel a little embarrassed that Ramakrishna had to be a disciple to a master, that only then he became enlightened. They simply don’t want that part. They would like Ramakrishna himself to be the origin, the source of a new tradition – the Ramakrishna order.

And in Bengal there a thousands of sannyasins who belong to the Ramakrishna order, and there are many more who are not monks but who are deeply devoted to Ramakrishna – but they are all concerned with the WRONG Ramakrishna. And whenever I said this they were very much shocked.

In the beginning they used to call me to speak at their conferences, and when I started focusing on this point they stopped inviting me – because I was destroying their whole joy. They were not people who wanted to sit silently doing nothing, and the spring comes and the grass grows by itself. They wanted chanting, ritual, dancing, an image of God, a belief in God.

And Ramakrishna, before he became enlightened, had believed in all these things; but before he died he dropped everything. That small period is the only important period in his life.

But that is very empty, utterly silent. It is only for those who are seekers of silence, serenity, truth.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

AS I WAS WRITING TODAY, I REALIZED THAT ALL MY QUESTIONS COME TO THE SAME

POINT: IS THIS REALLY ME? IS THIS AUTHENTIC? IS THIS MY TRUTH? THE REAL BURNING

QUESTION IS: WHO AM I? SOMETIMES I FEEL THAT I AM NEVER GOING TO KNOW IF THIS

MIND CONTINUES TO CREATE BARRIERS OF NONSENSE. AT OTHER TIMES I DO FEEL THAT

I AM COMING CLOSER. I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT MY QUESTION IS, BUT COULD YOU

PLEASE ANSWER IT?

I know, and you know too, what your question is. I know the answer. You also know the answer. But my answer will only become a belief in you. I would rather like to help you to find the answer within yourself – that will be authentic.

You want to know who you are. This is the basic question everybody wants to know.

And the barrier is not big. The barrier is not great. You have just not tried what I have been continually telling you to try – watch your thoughts whenever you have time, or whenever you are doing something then watch the doing, watch the doer.

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The whole point is that your capacity to watch should increase. You will become more and more a clear watcher, and the thoughts will disappear.

Thoughts are very poor. They don’t have their own life. You give them life because you don’t watch them. If you watch them, they start disappearing – because the life of thoughts is your identifying with them. You think, ”These are my thoughts.” They are not your thoughts, not a single thought is yours. Only watchfulness is yours. All thoughts come to you from outside.

If you simply remain watchful, just as they come they will go, and slowly, slowly they will come less and less. They don’t like to come uninvited. They don’t like to come when you don’t welcome them.

And when your whole energy is centered in watching, there is no energy left for thoughts to move on the screen of your mind, they simply stop.

And the moment thoughts are not there, the answer is. That answer will not come in words, the answer will come as an experience.

Question 4

BELOVED OSHO,

A NURSE, WORKING IN A HOSPITAL WITH SMALL DISABLED AND BACKWARD CHILDREN, TOLD ME OF THE FOLLOWING CASE WHICH SHE HAD TO TAKE CARE OF.

THERE WAS A SMALL BOY ABOUT FOUR YEARS OLD WHO WAS CONFINED IN A BED –

NOT ONLY WITH COT SIDES BUT WITH BARS ACROSS THE TOP TOO – LIKE A CAGE. HE

WAS VERY SMALL FOR HIS AGE, UNABLE TO SPEAK OR WALK OR EVEN TO SIT. HE WAS

FAIR-SKINNED AND WAS COVERED ALL OVER HIS BODY WITH LONG, DARK BROWN HAIR, AND WAS ALWAYS HANGING BY HIS HANDS AND FEET FROM THE ROOF OF HIS CAGE, MAKING SOUNDS LIKE A MONKEY. HE REFUSED ALL KINDS OF DIFFERENT FOODS EXCEPT

BANANAS – HE ATE NOTHING ELSE; HOWEVER, HE WAS A VERY HAPPY AND FRIENDLY

CHILD. EARLY MAN LOOKED SIMILAR TO MONKEYS, AND MODERN MAN OFTEN BEHAVES

LIKE A MONKEY. WOULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT ON THIS?

The behavior of a monkey is the behavior of a frantic mind jumping from here to there, from this branch to that branch, never stable, never able to sit silently even for a few moments, always doing something, always going somewhere, continuous in activity – meaningless or meaningful, relevant or irrelevant.

Charles Darwin’s theory may be right or wrong; most probably it is wrong – because for thousands of years we have been seeing no monkey come down from the trees and start walking like a man.

And why did only a small bunch of monkeys change into man and the remaining monkeys stay as monkeys for millions of years? Did it not dawn in their minds that their cousins , their brothers, their sisters, their in-laws have progressed so much and they are still hanging in the trees?

That’s why I say most probably Darwin’s theory is not right, not factually right; but psychologically it seems to have some validity.

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Man’s mind is a monkey. If you watch your mind you can see. It is never quiet. The most difficult thing for it is not to do anything.

But a few men have managed to get out of this monkey mind and have been able to remain inactive as long as they wanted.

In the East for centuries all the mystics have agreed on one point: that if the mind can remain silent for forty-eight minutes non-stop you are free of its grip. Then you can eat as many bananas as you want! You will not go bananas. But for forty-eight seconds the mind cannot remain still, what to say about forty-eight minutes!

And this is the whole work of a spiritual seeker, to change the monkey mind and bring it into a state of stillness. Perhaps that is the last stage of evolution.

There are stones which have life, though it is very dormant – because they grow. Then there are trees which have life – and recent research says they have sensitivity too. Then there are animals of thousands of species. They have a certain kind of intelligence also. And then man is there. He has more intelligence than anybody else in the known world.

If he can use this intelligence to help the monkey to be still, to relax, then the supermind comes into being and you have a clarity that was never before, a clarity that makes you aware of yourself and aware of existence that surrounds you, and fills you with tremendous gratitude.

Otherwise, Darwin may not be factually right but psychologically he is right. Looking at man, anybody could have predicted that somehow he is related to the monkeys.

When I used to travel in India for many years continually I was almost always on the train, on the plane, in the car, just traveling, moving. The train was the only place for me to rest. Once I got out of the train there was no possibility of rest – five, six meetings per day, colleges, universities, conferences, friends, journalists, press conferences. It was impossible. The only place for me to rest was the railway train. After twenty years continually traveling I could not sleep because the whole noise of the train and its wheels and the people coming and going and railway stations and hawkers and people shouting and all that – was missing. You will be surprised to know that I had to record it on a tape recorder, so when I go to bed they will put on the tape recorder and just listening to it I will go into a perfect sleep. Then they will remove the tape recorder. Otherwise it was difficult, I will toss and turn. Twenty years is a long time, and it became such a habit.

Mostly I was in an air-conditioned coupe for only two people, and because I was so tired I had no desire to talk to the other person or to answer his questions.

One day in Amritsar I entered the train. And the man was looking out of the window. Thousands of people had come to see me off. So he was getting very curious. As I went in, he touched my feet. I said, ”Just sit down. You are too curious. This is my name. This is my father’s name. I have so many brothers, so many sisters, one sister has died. My father has so many brothers, so many sisters, both his sisters have died. My grandfather...”

He said, ”But I am not asking these things.”

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I said, ”You will ask. Rather than wasting time, I am simply giving you all information possible so that after that just forgive me, forget me, and let me rest, don’t ask anything. I give you five minutes, you can ask me anything you want.”

He said, ”I don’t want. You are a strange person. I have never seen such a person. I have not said anything. You give me your name, your brothers, your sisters, your father, your uncle, your aunts, their children, your grandfather.”

I said, ”So you are satisfied?”

He said, ”I am satisfied, perfectly satisfied.”

So I said, ”That’s okay. Now I am going to rest. No questions any more.” But that man was boiling. These were not the questions he was interested in. He wanted to know what these people had come for, and what is my teaching; but now he has said that he was perfectly satisfied and we had settled that there would be no more questions.

And I rested and looked at him and I could see his trouble. He will open his box, look into it and close it and put it back; open a book, look into it and then put it down again – just to do something.

He will go into the bathroom, and just come out. And I knew that he was not doing anything – even in the bathroom he was unnecessarily going in and coming out. And I simply sat there watching him, and that made him more mad because he knew that I am seeing him and whatever he is doing is stupid, there is no need for it. Again he is opening his suitcase for no reason. He will start reading the newspaper he had read from the morning – and it was evening. He must have been reading a morning newspaper the whole day, and again he will see and close it and put it aside because he has read it.

Finally he said, ”Call the servant and ask where the conductor is. I want to change this room.” The servant said, ”But what is the trouble in this room? You will not find such a silent room anywhere.” He said, ”That is the trouble. This man has completely silenced me. I cannot speak in words. And it is driving me crazy; I am going into the bathroom and there I have nothing to do, and I come back again, and open the suitcase, but I don’t have any reason to open it. And this man is strange.

He is simply sitting there and looking at me. If he was not looking, it would be okay; but just with his watching and my stupid behavior, I simply want to go into some other room.” He said, ”Let the conductor come.”

The conductor came and he said, ”What is the trouble? – because rooms are full; we can ask somebody to exchange the place.”

I said, ”There is no problem. I can exchange. I can sit on his seat, he can sit on my seat.” The conductor said, ”So simple. The solution is right now here. Why are you worried? Just change the seat.”

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He said, ”You don’t understand anything. This man is the trouble, and it will not make any difference, from that seat he will create trouble.”

The conductor said, ”This man has been traveling for years, and I know him. He has not created trouble for anyone.”

He said, ”How to explain? He is not doing anything. He has simply stopped asking anything, and without asking, without a little chit-chat, a little conversation, I am getting crazy. And his watching is driving me nuts, and now this – he will be sitting on my seat, I will be sitting on his seat – this makes no difference.”

The conductor said, ”This is beyond me. I don’t understand.” He asked me, ”Do you understand?” I said, ”I don’t understand, because this man is a very good man and he has not done any nuisance.

He simply does a few innocent things – opens his suitcase, closes his suitcase, for no reason. But it is his suitcase, he can open it as many times as he wants, I am not going to prevent. I know he is opening it uselessly, but it is his suitcase. He goes to the bathroom; there is no problem for me, he can go as many times as he wants. He can read the same newspaper as many times as he wants.

He can open the book and close the book. He can do all these exercises that he is doing. I have no objection. Why is he so much worried?”

But the man simply packed all his luggage and got out and said to the conductor, ”You have to find me some place; otherwise I can go even to the first class, no need for air conditioning, because to live with this man for twenty-four hours” – the journey was twenty-four hours – ”I will not be reaching home alive; my heart is beating so fast. And this is true – that he has not done anything except tell me his name, his father’s name....”

The conductor said, ”But this is harmless. He was simply introducing.” But he wouldn’t enter the room. He escaped. He said, ”Wherever I can get into the train I will, but I cannot enter into his room.”

I said, ”That is very good. That is all I wanted. Now I can rest. And don’t send anybody else in this room because the same will happen.”

The conductor said, ”This is.... You have not done anything and this man is out of the compartment, and he has paid for the air-conditioned class.”

Man is very frantic, he just goes on doing something or other – arranging the furniture again and again in the room, putting things from here and there even though they are not needed that way –

but he cannot simply sit silently. And that is the only thing to learn, just not being on the tree does not make any difference.

Sit silently.

Only a man in deep meditation goes beyond monkeyhood, for the first time becomes really human.

Question

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BELOVED OSHO,

TEN YEARS AGO WHEN I FIRST STRUGGLED THROUGH DYNAMIC, IT WAS SO

OUTRAGEOUS THAT I EXPECTED IMMEDIATE RESULTS IN THE FORM OF AMAZING, PSYCHEDELIC, SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCES. I HAD ALMOST GIVEN UP AND WAS ABOUT TO

ASK FOR MY MONEY BACK ON THE THIRD DAY, WHEN LO AND BEHOLD, STARS EXPLODED

BEFORE MY EYES! ”MY GOD, IT REALLY WORKS,” I THOUGHT, AND WONDERED IF I NEED

BOTHER TO FINISH THE TEN-DAY COURSE, OR IF THAT WAS IT. WHEN I REMOVED MY

BLINDFOLD, I REALIZED THAT THIS – MY FIRST AND LAST GREAT SPIRITUAL HAPPENING –

WAS SIMPLY THE RESULT OF A TOO-TIGHT ELASTIC ON MY BLINDFOLD. I HAVE ONLY NOW

REALIZED THAT SOMEWHERE BETWEEN THEN AND NOW I HAVE STOPPED EXPECTING

THE UNIVERSE TO EXPLODE OVER MY HEAD AT ANY MINUTE. IT IS SO EXQUISITE JUST TO

SIT AT YOUR FEET, AND MELT AND SOAR... VERY, VERY QUIETLY. IS THIS JUST A SYMPTOM

OF MIDDLE AGE?

No, it is not a symptom of middle age. It is a symptom of maturity, a symptom of deep understanding.

Spirituality is not something exotic, some outrageous experience, some psychedelic explosion of colors and stars.

Spirituality is a very innocent state of consciousness where nothing happens, just time comes to a standstill, all desires are gone, there is no longing, no ambition. This very moment becomes all.

And this is not a symptom of middle age.

The word ‘middle age’ is derogatory.

On the spiritual path nobody ever comes across it. On the contrary, one becomes a child – reborn, simple, trusting, eyes full of wonder. Every small thing – flowers, butterflies, birds – is a mystery.

You are surrounded with the miraculous in your pure innocence and joy. It is not excitement. It is a very silent and peaceful joy. It is not feverish. There is a dance in it, but it is invisible. You can feel it deep at the very center of your being, but there is no movement.

So what is happening now is the right thing, just allow it – don’t condemn it by calling it middle age.

It is the return of your childhood. You are being born again, it is a rebirth.

Question 5

BELOVED OSHO,

THE OTHER DAY I WAS IN A BLACK HOLE; THERE WAS ONLY GREAT HOLLOWNESS – NO

WAY TO GET OUT. I SAID TO MYSELF, ”GO TO YOUR BED AND JUST BE WITH IT.” I WENT TO

MY ROOM AND LAY ON MY BED, AND I DEEPLY FELT THAT I WANTED TO DIE. AT THE SAME

MOMENT SUDDENLY THE BED BROKE AND I HIT MY HEAD ON THE WALL. I WAS THROWN

TO THE FLOOR.

OSHO, DID YOU DO THAT? IT HURT ME, BUT THE BLACK HOLE WAS GONE!

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Naturally. Who else would do it? If somebody else had done it then your head would not have hit and the black hole would not have gone. Your bed may have broken, you may have fallen on the floor, but you would have been in an even bigger black hole. If the black hole is gone, then it must be me – there is no doubt about it.

Question 6

BELOVED OSHO,

FOR MORE THAN TWO MONTHS YOU HAVE NOT BEEN OUT OF THIS HOUSE, AND YOU

SEEM TO ENJOY SO MUCH WHAT I WOULD CALL A BORING LIFE.

OSHO, WHAT MAKES IT SO HARD FOR US – AND SOMETIMES SO SCARY – TO FACE THOSE

FEELINGS OF EMPTINESS, HOLLOWNESS, LONELINESS? IS THE DESIRE FOR EXCITEMENT

JUST TO HIDE THIS EMPTINESS?

Avesh, if one is happy with oneself, centered, there is no need to go anywhere because you cannot find any place better than your own inner being. All the restaurants, the movie houses, the casinos, are visited by very poor people, who have lost contact with themselves. They don’t know that they have a space within themselves which is the most beautiful and the most delicious.

Certainly anybody looking at me will think that this must be a boring life. I can live in my room for lives. I don’t see any point of going anywhere – because what you are seeking I have found, and I have found it within myself. And you will go on seeking everywhere in the world and you will not find it.

To you, certainly it will seem that if you were to live in one room you will feel bored; but as far as I am concerned, even the idea of going out has not arisen in me. I simply enjoy myself so deeply and so greatly that I cannot conceive that there can be any place which can make me more than what I am.

I have been around the world. I have been in millions of houses and hotels and... but it doesn’t matter, I am always myself wherever I am. And because I am blissful wherever I am, the place becomes blissful for me.

In Crete one Greek journalist was asking me – because he had seen me in Poona, he had seen me in Oregon, and now he was interviewing me in Crete – ”Osho, how do you manage always to find a paradise?”

I said, ”It is not a question of finding a paradise. It is a question of carrying it within yourself so wherever you are it is there. And if you don’t have it within you, you cannot find it anywhere else.

There is only one place where it exists and it is within you. It has no concern with houses, no concern with places. And if you get bored, that simply means you were hoping to find it here and you have not found it so you are bored, so you are thinking to go somewhere else to find it. There you don’t find it so you again get bored, and life starts becoming more and more boring. As you become older it becomes sheer boredom because slowly you start realizing that paradise does not exist anywhere. And the miracle is: all this time you have been carrying it within yourself. You can The Transmission of the Lamp

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go to the moon, but you will not go within yourself; you cannot believe it, ‘Within me and paradise?

Impossible!’

”You have been conditioned to hate yourself, to condemn yourself, to reject yourself. ‘Within me?

And paradise?’”

So from the outset, rejection. You never go in.

Just give it a little try. I am not preventing you... if you have found your paradise, still you can go to the restaurants, there is no harm; still you can go to the movie houses, still you can go to the casinos, there is no harm. But you will not feel bored anywhere.

In America in the jail, every jailer in five jails continually, sooner or later was puzzled that I was taking things with such ease. And they asked me, ”You don’t seem to be disturbed. It seems clearly that the government wants to humiliate you but you are not humiliated, you are perfectly enjoying it.” I said, ”It does not matter. I am myself wherever I am – in jail or in a palace. I don’t change. My inner space remains the same. Nobody can humiliate me. Nobody can make me miserable.” In fact, just the reverse happened. When I left the first jail – where I lived the longest – there were tears in the eyes of the jailer. And he said, ”We will miss you. I would like you to remain with us. You have changed the whole flavor of the jail.”

I was in the hospital section, and most of the time I was sitting in the nurse’s room or the doctor’s room. And all the authorities of the jail were coming and asking questions. And the head nurse told me, ”This has never happened. These big people, great authorities, they never come. Once in a month for a visit they come for two minutes. And now six times a day the jailer comes, the doctor comes, everybody comes, everybody has their spiritual problems, and you have made it a school.” One nurse was very much interested because she had done an M.A. in philosophy, and she said,

”This is my first chance to talk with someone who will understand my problems. I cannot talk to anybody in this jail. After doing my M.A. I joined and became a nurse here. I can neither say what I know, nor can I say what my questions are. You are the first person.” She will not even take her off-days, she will continue to come.

And they were so happy that for three days continuously I have been with them... they will always remember. And they were cutting my photos from newspapers and taking my signature and the date to keep as a memory.

But I said, ”Do you do this with other prisoners?” They said, ”We cannot conceive of you as a prisoner. We can only conceive of you as our guest.” The question is not where you are. The question is whether you know yourself or not. If you know, then every place is paradise. If you don’t know, then every place is hell and sooner or later boredom is bound to arise.

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So by changing places you cannot escape boredom, it will follow you like a shadow. It is by changing your consciousness that you can get rid of all possibility of boredom.

It is your question that reminded me that yes, for two months I have not been out. I had not even thought about it. I simply come to see you and rejoice with you, and then go and remain in my room

– just myself. I don’t have to open boxes and open books. The monkey is dead.

Question 7

BELOVED OSHO,

WHY DO PEOPLE BUG OUR TELEPHONES EVERYWHERE WE GO? ARE THEY LOOKING

FOR SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE ON THE CHEAP?

Certainly. Let them have it. We have nothing to hide. They can come and be here and enjoy, but poor people! – they feel embarrassed to come so they bug.

So whenever you are phoning just put in a few spiritual things for the buggers!

Question 8

BELOVED OSHO,

TO HAVE A HOT LOVER IS SOMETHING, BUT TO HAVE A HOT MASTER IS REALLY

SOMETHING ELSE! WHAT DO YOU SAY?

It is a very difficult question. Geeta understood it. It is something else, because hot masters have never been there. It is a totally new experience. Hot lovers have always been there, but hot lovers get cold very soon. You cannot depend on them.

But a hot master is a hot master.

In fact I have to keep myself continuously air conditioned!

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CHAPTER 44

The very perfume of love

17 June 1986 am in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

EVERY TIME YOU TALK ABOUT TRANSFORMING PASSION INTO COMPASSION, SOMETHING

IN MY HEART GETS TRIGGERED; BUT STILL, I DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT IT MEANS.

COULD YOU EXPLAIN IT TO ME AGAIN?

The energy called passion is always addressed towards someone. It is possessive, and because it is possessive it is ugly. To transform passion into compassion means that your energy for love is not addressed to anybody in particular; it is simply your fragrance, it is simply your presence, it is simply the way you are. It is not directed, not one-dimensional. It is radiation, so whoever comes close will feel your love – and it is non-possessive.

The possessive love is a contradiction in terms because possessiveness means you are reducing the other person into a thing. Only things can be possessed, not persons. Only things can be owned, not persons.

The person’s essential quality that differentiates him from things is his freedom; and possession, ownership, destroys freedom.

So on the one hand you think you are loving a person; on the other hand, you are destroying his very essence.

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Compassion is releasing love from the clutches of possessiveness. Then love is just a soft glow, undirected, unaddressed. You simply shower it because you are so full of it, but it is not a question of just thinking.

Passion has to go through the whole process of meditation to become compassion. Meditation will take away all possessiveness, ownership, jealousy, and will leave only the pure essence, the very perfume of love.

Only a man deeply rooted in meditation can have compassion.

So when I say change your passion into compassion, I am saying let your energy be purified through meditation from all that is garbage in it. Let it become simply a fragrance available to all. Then it does not destroy anybody’s freedom but enhances it, and the moment your love enhances somebody’s freedom love becomes spiritual.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

I HAVE BEEN FEELING MORE AND MORE ASHAMED OF BEING AN AMERICAN AFTER

SEEING THE DISGRACEFUL WAY YOU WERE TREATED THERE.

AND IT SEEMS THE SYMBIOTIC ECONOMIC RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN THE USA AND

OTHER GOVERNMENTS MAKE IT VERY DIFFICULT EVEN FOR OTHER NATIONS TO ACT

INDEPENDENTLY TOWARDS YOU.

IT HAS BECOME A CONFLICT FOR ME TO EVEN PARTICIPATE IN THE ECONOMY OF THE

U.S. AND ENJOY ITS BENEFITS, KNOWING THAT THE TAXES I PAY HELP TO KEEP IT IN THE

BUSINESS OF VIOLATING HUMAN RIGHTS ALL OVER THE WORLD.

CAN YOU COMMENT ON WHETHER IT IS EVEN POSSIBLE TO ”RENDER UNTO CAESAR

WHAT IS CAESAR’S” AND STILL MAINTAIN SOME INTEGRITY AND SELF RESPECT? I FEEL

LIKE SUCH A HYPOCRITE GOING ABOUT MY BUSINESS AS USUAL, BUT IF I OPEN MY

MOUTH THERE IS USUALLY TROUBLE.

I cannot say to you to render unto Caesar what belongs to him because nothing belongs to him, and your so-called Caesars are just great robbers – so big that the law cannot catch hold of them.

All your political leaders are criminals, but they are the ones who determine the law of the country and they are the ones who punish the small robbers.

One never thinks of how all these royal families and royal blood came into existence. Nature does not produce royal families separately, neither is there any such thing as royal blood. There are different kinds of blood, but there is not any category for royal blood. What is today a royal family was once a robber’s gang, a mafia; it possessed land, it killed people, it possessed people, and slowly, slowly there was no need for them to remain robbers. They had got enough, and they were respected out of fear.

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In the long history slowly, slowly they settled as royal families. Their blood became special.

And still even in the twentieth century things have not changed. Just as kings and queens have come from robbers’ generations, the politicians are coming from other sources of criminality.

So I cannot say to you that Caesar has to have rendered what belongs to him. Nothing belongs to him and nothing has to be rendered to him.

That has been the old compromising attitude – why get into trouble, give to the Caesar what belongs to him, and in return he gives you safety, security.

If you are really disturbed and feeling sincerely that there is something criminal in it, then move to something which is not taxable. For example, cultivation in many countries is not taxable.

It will not give you so much money, and it will make you have to work hard just to earn your bread, but you will have a great blissfulness and peace, integrity and individuality. You are producing, you are creative, you are helping yourself and you are helping others; but you are not helping the criminals.

And in every nation there are things which are not taxable.

People should start moving towards those things which are not taxable. That will weaken the powers of criminal politicians.

To exist in this world without compromising is certainly getting into trouble, but it is worth it. It is immensely valuable. We need people who are ready to get into trouble but they will not compromise; these are the real salt of the earth – humanity can be proud of them.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

THERE SEEM TO BE CONNECTED STAGES THROUGH WHICH MAN HAS PASSED – FROM

TRIBE TO FAMILY TO COMMUNE, FROM MAGICO-RELIGIONS TO PSEUDO-RELIGIONS

TO THE RELIGIONLESS RELIGION, AND FROM NOMADIC HUNTER-GATHERER TO THE

AGRICULTURALIST, AND NOW TO THE EXISTENTIAL GYPSY.

ARE THESE TRENDS REALLY CONNECTED?

They are connected. They are like rungs of a ladder. For example, in the beginning it was impossible for man to cultivate. He had no idea that cultivation is possible. He had seen animals eating animals, that gave him the first idea of hunting – that this is the only way to get food. There was some example.

But you cannot go on hunting forever. As human population became bigger and bigger and the population of the poor hunted animals started shrinking – because they were being killed – man had to find some other way to survive.

It is always only in a very deep crisis that man finds something new.

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Then he looked at trees, their fruits, and the wild growth of vegetation. And there was no other way so they tried it, and it worked. And just watching, they found that they need not depend on nature; otherwise, again they will destroy. They can cultivate.

They saw fruits falling on the earth and sprouts coming up. It is just by watching they learned cultivation.

It is connected and overlapping.

Hunting continues, but now it has become a game.

Man does not depend on it.

There are

professional killers who have started cultivating animals; just the way you cultivate fruits or wheat they cultivate animals, and bring meat for you. The whole earth still remains meat-eating.

Just a small fraction in India and a few individuals outside India have dropped completely that ugly, insensitive way of living.

And if the whole humanity decides to drop it, it will immediately find new ways.

The whole ocean is available. The ocean has its own vegetation, which is very nourishing. The way we cultivate the earth the ocean can be cultivated.

Everything is connected as steps to a higher step.

There was no family in the beginning, only tribes, so you could not say who was the father of the boy. Only the mother was known. So there are countries where the father’s name is not asked when you are filling a form for something, but the mother’s name is asked still.

For example, Mohammedans don’t believe that Mary became pregnant by a holy ghost. To anybody who is not a Christian it looks a stupid idea.

But one thing is certain, that Joseph is not the father of Jesus Christ, and to cover up the whole thing the holy ghost has been brought into the story.

Mohammedans don’t believe in the virgin birth. So when they speak about Jesus, they say ”Jesus Ibn Mariam” – Jesus, the son of Mariam, not the son of Joseph.

It was the situation all over the world. People knew only their mothers.

In the UPANISHADS there is a tremendously beautiful story which shows how a real saint responds.

I lived for almost twenty years in Jabalpur in India. It must be a very old city because its name is derived from a great sage, Jabali, and this story is concerned with Jabali.

One young man wanted to study under Jabali, but only Brahmins could study. And the problem with the young man was that his mother was so poor that she never got married and she worked in many people’s houses, and she was so beautiful that many men took advantage of her poverty. So when Satyakam became a young man he said, ”I want to go to some great sage to study.” The Transmission of the Lamp

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The mother said, ”It is going to be difficult because only Brahmins are accepted, and I cannot be certain that your father was a Brahmin. I don’t know who your father was. So you can go, and when the master asks you about your name, you tell your name, tell my name, and say that you are my son. And certainly he will be surprised because the mother’s name is not usually mentioned. And he will ask, ‘Who is your father?’ Tell him exactly what I have told you.” So when Satyakam went to ask Jabali, he said ”My mother was very beautiful but very poor. She could not get married, and many people took advantage of her poverty so she does not know who my father is. And she sent me to tell you exactly the truth. Now it is up to you to accept or reject me.” The whole congregation of the disciples fell silent.

Jabali said, ”One who can say such a truth must be a Brahmin. You are allowed. Only a Brahmin can have this much courage, to say ‘I don’t know who my father is. I know only the name of my mother.’”

And Satyakam became a great sage in his own right. Because Jabali had accepted him, there was no question of anybody being skeptical.

The reason that he had given is tremendously beautiful. He has said it is possible that a Brahmin may be untrue, but it is not possible that a truthful man can be anything else but a Brahmin.

The society has passed through a tribal maternal state to the joint family, where all the brothers were living together – their children, their wives, their uncles, their father; and it was economical because only few people could work and the whole family could be supported.

But then the population went on growing and the joint family had to disperse.

So first the tribe was divided into joint families. The tribe was a big phenomenon. Then the joint family was cut into unitary families with only father, mother and his children.

And now the situation has come when even that family cannot be supported – it is too costly, uneconomical, unpsychological.

Hence the commune, which will be many things – freedom from marriage, which has become a psychological burden; freedom from the responsibilities of parenthood; freedom from the nuisance of the children; freedom for the children from the parents’ dictatorial and monopolistic attitude, because they will belong to the commune. And because the commune will not be cut into fixed units but will be a mobile phenomenon, it will be more alive, more joyful. Whenever people get stuck they can separate. There is no need for anybody to ask either for marriage or for divorce; the only thing they have to ask is about children because now the responsibility is on the commune.

Unless the commune allows, they cannot produce children.

That will help the whole world immensely to reduce its population – not only to reduce its population but to bring only the children who are needed. The unnecessary, the mediocre, the idiots, are a burden. The whole consciousness of the society can be raised.

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Sooner or later children are going to be produced outside the mother’s womb; because that is a great wastage – for nine months the woman is absolutely incapable of doing anything. That is why in the whole history although half the people on the earth have been women they could not produce anything, they could not create anything, they could not be geniuses from their side. And they had to become slaves to man because they had to depend on man.

Children can be produced in the scientific lab far more perfectly. They will be more healthy with less defects. We can give them whatever we want – what kind of color, what kind of hair, what length of life, what kind of health, what kind of mind. Everything is now in the hands of man.

So the children should be the commune’s responsibility and the commune will take care of it by means of the scientific lab.

It looks strange just because it is new.

Everything new looks strange.

When the first train started from the London station, just an eight mile run, nobody was ready to sit in it even for free. Lunch was also served free. Because all the churches were sermonizing for months that God never made the train and this is the devil’s invention. And they were telling people,

”You can sit in it. It can start, but what guarantee is there that it will stop?” – Naturally it has never stopped before because it has never started – ”Once you are in it, you are gone forever. It is not going to stop. It is a devil’s trick.”

Only very courageous people – atheists, agnostics, scientists – came to sit in it, and they were also feeling very nervous because they were taking a risk. Their families were persuading them not to do it because of what might happen to them if the train does not stop.

But the train went. It stopped. It came back. Now nobody bothers about the train. Nobody bothers whether it was created by God or not.

For centuries man has been very proud, ”This is my child” – whether he is an idiot or not does not matter, he is proud that he has given birth to a child.

In the coming world the man will be proud, the woman will be proud, that they have given to their child the best sperm and the best egg. Neither the egg is of the woman nor the sperm is of the man, but a new pride – ”we have given the best sperm and the best egg to our child.” Just now it looks absurd – ”in what way is he your child?” But to look at it in a more scientific, rational way, it is not the question that your sperm has any speciality or your egg has any speciality. And when you are giving birth to a child, you should find the best egg and the best sperm. This should be a simple arithmetic – when you can have a genius as a child then why create one of the crowd?

Humanity has to go on progressing.

All these are links. Just as from tribes came the family, from the family the commune, finally from the commune will come the universal gypsy.

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Why remain confined to one place when the whole universe is yours? When you can be in the mountains sometimes, and you can be in the ocean sometimes, and you can be on the earth sometimes, why remain confined? Why remain closed? Why not make yourself available to all that is possible?”

And tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, the planets will be available. Some day the stars will be available. Before that happens, man has to become a universal gypsy; only then will people be available to go to the moon, to go to Mars.

There was a time that nobody left his own village.

In India I have seen people who have never left their village, who have not seen a railway train –

who have been born in that village and will die in that village. That village is their whole world. It cannot be very rich. It is bound to be very poor.

Then people started moving, finding new continents, new countries. And just three hundred years ago, Columbus found America.

The stars are not very far; man has just to change his structure of thinking to the idea that living means becoming richer, experiencing more and more.

And certainly there are planets where life has evolved up to the level of humanity or perhaps even further, and contact with them will bring a revolution to humanity too.

We have brothers and sisters all over the universe, and we are not aware of them. And they must have learned different skills to live in a different climate, in a different atmosphere. Much can be learned.

And man can mature with this learning.

And if Albert Einstein is right – and most probably he is right – that if we can find vehicles of the same speed as light then man will not age; he will leave this planet when he is thirty years old, he will come back after fifty years, sixty years, and all his friends would either have died or would be almost on their deathbed, but he will be still thirty years old. At that speed aging stops.

And when a man like Albert Einstein gives a hypothesis you cannot simply reject it – because all his other hypotheses which were rejected in the beginning had to be accepted by and by. It took time, but they had to be accepted.

And when I say man can become a universal gypsy, he can become almost immortal. He need not grow old. And then his experience, his knowledge... everything goes on growing and he remains as young as ever.

Today it may seem impossible, but nothing is really impossible. Some way can be found and will be found – because once an idea has taken shape, it is only a question of time before it becomes a reality.

Question 4

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BELOVED OSHO,

ALL OF US HAVE MISSED IN PAST LIVES; OTHERWISE WE WOULDN’T BE HAVING THE

WONDERFUL EXPERIENCE OF SITTING AT YOUR FEET INSTEAD OF BEING DISSOLVED

INTO THE WHOLE FOREVER.

THE OTHER NIGHT YOU SAID THAT MY CONSTANT LONGING IS A PROOF THAT I AM

CARRYING A SEED FROM MY PAST LIFE, AND THAT I SHOULDN’T MISS THIS LIFE BUT LET

THE SEED SPROUT AND DIE CONSCIOUSLY SO THAT I CAN WORK ON IN THE NEXT LIFE

– EVEN WITHOUT A MASTER. YOU HAVE ALREADY EXCLUDED MANEESHA AND MILAREPA FROM DISAPPEARING. AM I ALSO DOOMED TO GO ROUND AGAIN?

Premda, it all depends on you. If you want to do another round, it is very easy. You have done many rounds before – millions, because since the beginning we have been here doing rounds, circling.

But if you are satisfied that enough rounding has been done and it is time now to stop, that too is not difficult. Nature is very simple, and it gives you total freedom – you just have to be decisive.

To stop the round, you will have to drop many things – your desires, your ambitions, aspirations, greed, ego – the laundry list is long. But if you can do without laundry, you can stop any moment the wheel of life and death.

It was necessary that you should go through all these rounds to bring you to the realization that now it is enough and you should stop, because there is another world that begins with stopping – another universe, desireless, passionless, full of love, full of joy, just absolute in every sense. Nothing can be more than that.

So by stopping you are not losing anything, just stopping the sorry-go-round. People call it merry-go-round. I have always been puzzled why they call it merry-go-round. Nobody seems.... So I have made my own word, ‘sorry-go-round’.

And if you see the suffering and the anguish of it all, that very seeing will stop it and then begins a totally new world of which only a few indications can be given, and those indications are not descriptions of its entirety. They are just arrows pointing. It is infinite, it is eternal, it knows no sadness, no sorrow.

And everything depends on a single thing: your decision.

And my whole effort is somehow to stop your sorry-go-round, but you insist that you want just one time more – as if you have not been on the same trip millions of times – just one time more.

Try to understand your life as it is, and there will be no problem. The stopping will come on its own accord.

Maneesha will also stop, she has just to finish her editing. She has got into a trouble because unless I stop speaking she cannot finish her editing – and I am not going to stop! But the work that I have given her will help her more than anything to stop. She may not stop because she has to finish the work – which will help millions of people to stop, but the words that she continually has to come across are bound to penetrate her more than anybody else.

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So don’t feel jealous of Maneesha.

Milarepa is already on the verge of stopping. Chetana already thinks he is a ghost! Just one thing is wrong, that ghosts are never known to play on the guitar.

Everything is possible in this universe. So we can take his guitar any moment and he can disappear.

But while I am speaking he has to play on the guitar.

But you all are going to disappear, this way or that.

So by the way, Milarepa, you keep hold of your guitar as hard as possible. Whatever happens, don’t leave it. Chetana may try to take the guitar – ”Nothing doing,” tell her, ”this is the only thing. I am holding the wheel; otherwise it is going to stop.” But a guitar can be dropped any moment, there is no problem; or you can pass it on to somebody else who still wants to have a few rounds.

Take life playfully. Take the stopping of life also playfully. There is nothing to be serious about. And once a person learns to take everything playfully then nothing is going to prevent him. He is going to disappear into the universe, into godliness.

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I am the only challenge

17 June 1986 pm in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

THE VATICAN HAS JUST ISSUED A STATEMENT IN WHICH THE POPE SUGGESTS THAT

CULTS, SECTS AND ”NEW RELIGIONS” SHOULD BE SEEN AS A CHALLENGE TO CHURCH

AND SOCIETY.

THE STATEMENT SAYS THAT DEPROGRAMMING OF CULT MEMBERS IS MISGUIDED. THE

VATICAN MADE THE STATEMENT AFTER CONSULTING CATHOLIC EXPERTS IN SEVENTY-FIVE COUNTRIES. HAVE YOU ANY COMMENT?

Christianity is dying so fast that every effort is being made to somehow keep it alive. No effort is going to succeed, for the simple reason that the whole Christian attitude, the religion and its philosophy, are so out of date that it is impossible to convince intelligent people to have faith in them any more.

Just in England the church attendance has fallen to five percent. Ninety-five percent of people are no more going to the church – and the same is the situation all over the world.

Thinking that perhaps psychology and new trends in psychological schools may be of help, Christianity has been trying for twenty years to imbibe as much psychology as possible, giving it a color of Christianity. The latest effort was deprogramming.

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This was a desperate effort – because young people are joining new movements, new religions –

and it is for the first time in history that parents are kidnapping their own children, and forcing them into psychiatric homes to be deprogrammed.

It is possible to deprogram a person very easily. And they were very happy because they were succeeding in bringing the sheep which has gone farther away from the fold back into the fold.

But then a new problem arose, and that was: the people who were deprogrammed, for them religion became only a question of programming, it lost the value of being a faith. You can again deprogram the person and he becomes a Hindu; you can again deprogram him and he becomes a communist

– so programming and deprogramming became a psychological game. It destroyed the seriousness of the so-called religions: that it was not something of inner realization, it was only a question of conditioning the mind.

The people who were deprogrammed left the new movements, but they never became at ease with Christianity. Now they know what it is all about: it is simply a program. If somebody else kidnaps them and pays the fees to some psychiatrist he can program them into any religion, into any philosophy, into any dogma.

So it is simply a mind game. All talk of spirituality and religion is simply nonsense.

But people like Pope the Polack have no understanding of their own.

This was a simple fact which could have been seen in the very beginning – that if you can change a person’s idea by a certain strategy, the same strategy can be used to change the idea that you have put into his mind.

In communist countries they have been using deprogramming for almost half a century.

In the Korean war, American soldiers who were caught by the communists were all deprogrammed.

They returned – the war ended – but they could not fit again into their society. And you will be surprised to know that within ten years after the war, thousands of veterans – soldiers who had come from Korea – had committed suicide in America, for the simple reason that they were in a limbo. The communists programmed them heavily for communism, and it was not a question of a few days – for years they were in the hands of communists. They cleaned them of all Christianity, all democracy, all capitalism – ”these are all nonsense, the real thing is communism, dictatorship of the proletariat” – and when they came back, naturally they could not fit with American society; and nobody bothered about them – what had been done to their minds. It was so difficult to live in America for them because everything that they were seeing around them was wrong. Now they have brought a mind that has been conditioned, and nobody was aware of it.

It was such a torture that the only way out was to commit suicide, and no American leader – political or religious – even bothered to talk about it: ”What is the reason that these people are committing suicide? They should be happy that they are back home.” Now the pope is consulting experts from seventy-five countries... it is not his own insight, it is not his own understanding. It is these experts who first suggested deprogramming. Now seeing the The Transmission of the Lamp

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results.... It does not help, it simply creates a confusion in the mind of the person – a part of him still remains with the new movement he joined out of his own choice, and a part is what you have forced on him, and he cannot forgive you; you have been violent with him.

And many deprogrammed people again join the movements, and you cannot deprogram them a second time, because they know all the tricks that you did before.

These are the same experts who had suggested that people who are leaving Christianity and moving into new movements, can be turned back very easily. Now they see that they cannot be turned back so easily. Even if you force them back, they are never the same person. Their minds become mixed – and they know that they have been kidnapped, they know that they have been forced. They cannot forgive their parents, they cannot forgive the programmer; they cannot forgive the church; they cannot forgive the religion – because violence has been done against them. Their basic human right has been violated. Either they will have to join some movement or they will remain in this confused state.

And the greater danger that Christianity created was for itself: the people who had not moved into new movements, who had not been reconditioned, became aware that it is only a game of programming. You can program a person into any kind of thing; it is just to put certain ideas into his mind-computer, and there are ways and methods by which this can be done.

You have taken away the profundity of religion itself. That’s why the pope has issued the order that nobody should be deprogrammed.

This could have been seen from the very beginning.

Anybody who understands the ABC of

psychology could have seen it.

Now to say that new religions should be accepted as a challenge.... What has Christianity got to offer to humanity? If it had anything these people would not have moved into all kinds of things that are superficial, sometimes even stupid – but still they are more exciting than the dullness of Christianity, than the boring dogmas, the illogical concepts for which your heart never says yes and you are being forced to say yes.

It is just to cover up the stupidities that they have done in twenty years of deprogramming. Something has to be said to them, ”Now what will you be doing? If not deprogramming, then what else? Take it as a challenge.”

But are they alive to take it as a challenge? Have they any validity to take it as a challenge? About all their fundamentals all that they can offer is ”believe in it.” But the new humanity wants evidence, proof, rationality, a scientific approach.

Challenge is possible if you can provide a scientific approach, but in scientific approach they will be in trouble.

Then virgin birth becomes difficult to prove, then resurrection becomes difficult to prove, then a man walking on water becomes difficult to prove. These things can only be taken on faith. If they want a challenge, and accept the challenge, then they will have to learn the language of science, the language of reason – not of belief.

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And I don’t see any possibility that Christianity can offer anything. It is doomed to die. The sooner it dies, the better – because it will free millions of people to think on their own, to search on their own. It will create a great revolution, the death of Christianity, because it is the biggest religion in the world, and it will not only be the death of Christianity, it will be the beginning of the death of other religions too. When the big brother dies, the others are going to follow.

In India when somebody dies his eldest son goes through an unnecessary torture – his head is shaved; his mustache, beard, everything is shaved. I have been asking Hindu scholars what is the reason for it. They said, ”We don’t know, but this has been happening for centuries. The eldest son has to shave all his hair.”

I was talking to a shankaracharya and I asked him. He said, ”I don’t know but there must be something in it. What do you think?”

I said, ”My thinking is that this shaving of the head is the signal to the eldest son that now it is his turn. ‘Get ready! Your father is dead. Now you are in the front of the queue. Next your name is going to be called. This is the beginning!’”

He said, ”From where did you get this idea?”

I said, ”From nowhere.

It is simply...

you can see it, that the moment the father dies every responsibility comes to the eldest son; he becomes the head of the family. And certainly he is the next to follow. And whoever invented this strategy of shaving his head was doing a great service to make it known to the whole city that now this fellow is going to pop off any moment. And to this fellow also it was made clear that he should start getting ready, it is only a question of time. He has come to the first place in the queue.”

Christianity’s death, to me, is very significant.

Just the Catholics are seven hundred and fifty million in number – half of humanity is Christian. It will be a tremendous freedom. The pope is asking his followers to accept the challenge, but he himself is such a coward he cannot accept the challenge.

I have not come across a single Christian bishop or cardinal who was able to accept any challenge, for the simple reason that their basic philosophy is based on faith, on acceptance, on belief. And the person who is challenging you is not going to accept it as belief – you have to give evidence, you have to give proof, you have to provide eye witnesses for God.

They don’t have even arguments. And the arguments Christians have given are all childish, retarded.

Anybody can destroy them without much effort.

But it has tremendous meaning that their experts from seventy-five countries are saying that deprogramming should be stopped. It means you cannot force man any more the way that has always been successful up to now. Times have changed and man has come to a certain maturity.

Now he wants freedom to choose his way of life. He does not want anybody else to decide it; he wants to decide it himself, because that is the first step of declaring one’s individuality.

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If the pope really means that it is a challenge, then he should not prevent the Italian government from giving me entry into Italy. Sixty-five prominent figures in Italy, internationally known people who have contributed in different dimensions, have protested, ”Why is he not being allowed to enter?” The government has not said no, and it is now almost six months since I applied for an entry visa –

just to be a tourist there.

And I have my people in Italy. They go on saying to our sannyasins there, ”Yes, we will give it; it is coming.” For six months every day, they say ”tomorrow.” But the pope is heavy on the government.

If he really means challenge then let us begin it from the Vatican itself.

I accept the challenge, and I am ready for a public discussion – open discussion – on every Christian dogma, and to prove it absolutely meaningless, nonsense and absurd.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

I RECENTLY READ ABOUT AN AMERICAN WOMAN WHO CLAIMS TO BE POSSESSED BY A THIRTY-FIVE-THOUSAND-YEAR-OLD BEING FROM ATLANTIS CALLED RAMTHA.

THE WOMAN DISPENSES MYSTICAL MESSAGES FROM RAMTHA VIA SATELLITE TV, IN CONCERT HALLS, AND ON THOUSANDS OF AUDIO TAPES. PEOPLE PAY UP TO

FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS A SEAT TO HEAR THE THIRTY-FIVE-THOUSAND-YEAR-OLD

OUTPOURINGS WHICH, JUST BY COINCIDENCE, SEEM TO BE BASED ON A FAIR AMOUNT

OF MODERN, SELF-HELP THERAPY.

I KNOW YOU SAY TO TRUST EXISTENCE, BUT I CANNOT HELP BUT BE SKEPTICAL. CAN

YOU HELP ME?

Anando has brought me the news about this woman. In America, any idiotic thing has an appeal, and the more you have to pay for it, the more appeal it has.

In other countries you pay more if the thing is more valuable. In America, it is just the reverse: if you have to pay more then the thing becomes more valuable.

That woman – I have not heard it before – not only says that she is a thirty-five-thousand-year old ancient being from the lost continents of Lemuria and Atlantis, she also says that she is the reincarnation of the Hindu god Rama. In fact, she has concocted the name Ramtha from Rama.

And whatever she is saying there is nothing new in it.

In the article that Anando has brought to me she has criticized me also. She has said that the moment her books are published, Osho’s books will simply disappear from the market, nobody will read them.

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One thing is certain – that she is reading them! And perhaps most of her outpourings are from those books. Otherwise out of thousands of books why has she chosen only my name? It cannot be just an accident. She must be reading those books, she must be using the material from those books, and now she has to prove that those books are not right – because of the inner fear that she has stolen from them.

It is very significant that there are many writers around the world who are stealing words, sentences, paragraphs, whole ideas from the books – not mentioning my name because then they won’t look original; but they are afraid that somebody may find out that these are from my books so they have to do one thing more: they have to condemn me in some way, to balance. ”This man cannot be stealing from Osho, he is against him.” So they do both: they condemn, they criticize, and they steal.

I don’t know this woman, but one thing is certain: she is reading my books. She is stealing from those books, she is afraid of those books, she would like those books to disappear from the market.

Otherwise why mention it? I am nobody. Why bother about me?

And in America it has been now a long tradition. There are always people who are from Atlantis, Lemuria, Tibet – saying things which are written in ordinary literature. You have just to go to a library and look and you will find every sentence that they are saying is stolen; it is not from Lemuria, it is from the public library of the town.

But people don’t read. They listen to all this garbage and they pay for it. And there is psychology in it; if you pay four hundred and fifty dollars just to sit in audience, when she goes in a trance and starts talking.... And not only that, if you are listening to her and seeing her on your television in your home, you have to pay two hundred dollars....

When people pay that much money, they themselves are caught in a difficulty. If they say it is all nonsense then they have been an idiot to pay. They have to go home and say, ”It is just far out.

Four hundred and fifty dollars is nothing. Any amount of money is nothing. What she is saying is so valuable.”

This was the case with EST. Werner Erhardt was charging people two hundred and fifty dollars

– and insulting them, not allowing them to go to the bathroom. The whole day the session was continuing, they were not allowed to eat, and they were in every way humiliated – and they had paid two hundred dollars for it. They could not leave in the middle of the session because they had paid two hundred dollars. They wanted to see the whole thing – perhaps in the end something comes out – and something came out: many of the people will piss sitting there in the hall! And if you have been holding your bladder for the whole day and then you cannot hold it any longer – in spite of you it starts coming out – it is such a great relief that one has a taste of let-go! And people loved it because it was an experience. It was an experience!

And they will tell their friends, ”It is miraculous. I felt so relieved, all tension gone. Every fiber of my being relaxed.” And just word of mouth – Werner Erhardt was not advertising at all – just word of mouth.

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And nobody wants to go outside and say that it was simply stupid and we have been befooled and conned.

But the trick was significant – because nobody has ever done it before. You can do it alone, although it will be difficult. But there are three hundred people and the bathroom is locked and one person is standing there not to allow anybody; you can leave, but you cannot go to the bathroom.

So the whole strategy is that your mind, your thoughts, all will stop. Your whole thing was how to keep control of your bladder, your whole life was in the bladder. And naturally, it was a great concentration.

But there is a limit. After a certain limit you cannot manage it. And when one person relaxed, at first he felt a little embarrassed, but the relaxation was so great that people started standing up and telling, ”I have got it – the experience!” And then others followed. When they saw that others are doing it here in the hall and getting the experience, and they are like idiots holding it... so most of the crowd got it! And they spread the message to their friends, ”You should go. You should not miss.” And certainly it was a relaxation after such a tense day; humiliation on the one side – shouting, making you look stupid, retarded; making you confess that you are stupid, that you are retarded,

”Say exactly what you feel but you never say! Be truthful, be sincere!” And all the time you are holding your bladder. The whole trick of EST was contained in the bladder.

Now, many people have pissed, got the experience, and the whole movement is gone! Now nobody wants to piss for two hundred dollars!

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

WHEN I READ THE FIRST BOOK I HAD EVER READ OF YOURS, COME FOLLOW ME, AND I CAME TO THE STORY OF BODHIDHARMA WHO WAS STARING AT THE WALL, I COLLAPSED IN GREAT LAUGHTER FOR ALMOST AN HOUR. THE FOLLOWING NIGHT I HAD

AN EXTRAORDINARY DREAM BECAUSE I DREAMED IN WORDS – WHICH I HAD NEVER

DONE BEFORE. IT WAS A FOUR-SECOND DREAM:

AN OLD MAN ASKED A YOUNG MAN, ”IS?”

THE YOUNG MAN ANSWERED, ”YES.”

THE OLD MAN ASKED, ”WHAT?”

THE YOUNG MAN SAID, ”NOTHING.”

PLEASE COMMENT.

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picture of ‘nothing’... and a picture of ‘yes’? That’s why you saw the first dream in your life in words

– because the book that you were reading was concerned with these words. It was concerned with isness.

The old man said, ”Is?” Perhaps he is the master...

And the young man, perhaps the disciple, said, ”Yes.” But the old man asked, ”What?” He wanted to be certain whether the young man has understood

”is?” or has just said ”yes” rationally. If it was only a rational answer ”yes,” things would have been different. That is why he is asking, ”What?”

And the young man said, ”Nothing.” Because isness is at the same time nothingness. It is both together. In fact, it is one thing, just two names of one thing.

You dreamed really a golden dream, which summarizes my whole message, that you should come to feel isness as nothingness; and there is nothing else, nothing more to realize or to know; you have known all. It was truly, authentically, a very insightful dream – too close to reality to call it a dream.

You must have been impressed so much by the book that it went directly to your very heart.

But this has to become your whole life. This dream has to become your reality.

Question 4

BELOVED OSHO,

SHRIVATSA GOSWAMI, THE SO-CALLED SPIRITUAL MASTER OF THE INTERNATIONAL

SOCIETY OF KRISHNA CONSCIOUSNESS, THE HARE KRISHNAS, HAS RECENTLY STATED

THAT YOU ARE ”VERY LOW CLASS, NOT TO BE COUNTED AS A RELIGION, AN OUTRIGHT

SCOUNDREL.”

DO YOU HAVE ANY WORDS FOR THIS SAINT?

I don’t know Shrivatsa Goswami. It is very strange that a scoundrel knows nothing of the saint and the saint knows about the scoundrel. He thinks he is criticizing me; he is wrong.

I have never said that I am holier than others, higher than others. I am really the last.

I could have agreed with Jesus if he had just changed his statement a little bit. He says, ”Blessed are those who are the last because they shall inherit the kingdom of God.” I have criticized it. I would not have criticized it if he had said, ”Blessed are the last for they are in the kingdom of God.” My criticism is that he is putting the kingdom of God in the future and consoling the people who are in misery here. His statement is more a consolation than a truth. ”Blessed are those who are the last because they are in the kingdom of God this very moment” – I would have agreed with this wholeheartedly.

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Shrivatsa Goswami said that I am low class. I would like to say to him that I am the lowest of the low.

He says I am not worth considering. Then why is he considering me? I am simply surprised. These people are in some way haunted by me. I have never heard his name before.

I used to know his master, Swami Prabhupada, who created the movement of Hare Krishna. He was one of the greatest idiots, and had a great talent for attracting idiots. If you want to find a gathering of idiots you can find it in the Hare Krishna movement.

This man – if he has become the successor – must have proved to the master that he is the greatest idiot amongst the other idiots.

And one thing I want to tell him is that it is better to be a scoundrel than to be an idiot. To be a scoundrel needs some intelligence.

And when I say that these people are a collection of idiots, I don’t say it without reason.

His name is Govats Goswami. ‘Govats’ means the son of a cow, and ‘Goswami’ means the husband of a cow. Now only an idiot can give such a name, and only an idiot can carry that name.

And these people drink every day... because they are absolute fanatics; just as in Christian cults there are fundamentalist Christians, there are the Witnesses of Jehovah – Hare Krishna belongs to the same category.

The devotees of Krishna in India don’t call heaven by the same name as anyone else. Buddha calls it nirvana, Hindus call it moksha, Jainas call it kaivalya – beautiful names; kaivalya means absolute aloneness, moksha means freedom, nirvana means nothingness. But the followers of Krishna call their heaven golok, cowland. Krishna seems to be the ancientmost cowboy; and they drink every day a certain thing they call panchamrit, five elixirs; and it is made of five things coming out of the cow – the urine of the cow, the cow dung, the milk, the curd, the butter. They mix all five every day and they drink it, and this is five elixirs; and those who drink these five elixirs are certain to reach to golok. I don’t know why one should want to go to golok. What are you going to do there?

So when I say these people are idiots, I have reasons to say so. Only idiots can think that cow dung and urine of the cow are something spiritual, and they will transform your consciousness. They have not transformed the cow. How they are going to transform human consciousness? And what is the point? Even if your consciousness is transformed and you reach to golok it was better here; at least you were human beings.

And I don’t think it a criticism when he calls me a scoundrel. I am. It is a compliment.

To all the religions I will appear as a scoundrel because I am destroying them so mercilessly. Nobody has been so hard – knowing that they have the same weaknesses as other religions, everybody was silent about other religions’ weaknesses. Because I don’t have any religion I don’t have any fear. I can expose everybody. They don’t have anything to criticize me with, they can only call me names.

In another report Anando has showed me, he has called me a charlatan. In this report he calls me a scoundrel. But one thing is certain, that he is more interested in me than in his own great idiot who created the Hare Krishna movement, Prabhupada. He should talk about him, not about me.

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They will talk about me and they will say that I am not worth considering. And they can’t see the contradiction – so clear, in the same statement, that I am following them wherever they are, disturbing their sleep, cutting their roots, and they have nothing to defend.

I have criticized Krishna. That’s why they are angry. Prabhupada was very angry, because I had called him a dodo. But he was a dodo.

He was teaching those people celibacy which necessarily brings sexual perversion. He was teaching these people begging. He was teaching these people that you need not do anything except repeat continuously ”Hare Krishna, Hare Rama”.

This is a sure way of destroying anybody’s intelligence. These are the methods of programming.

Now if somebody thinks that this is enough to transform your consciousness, that whatever you are doing you go on chanting inside, loudly or silently, ”Hare Krishna, Hare Rama”, dancing in the street,

”Hare Krishna, Hare Rama” – because only these two words will be continuously hammered. All your subtle cells, your whole system of mind, will be spoiled. It is not made only for two words. It will not be used, and unused those delicate cells start dying.

So first the idiots get attracted, and if by chance somebody has some little intelligence, then these methods will destroy it.

These people are continuously chanting – not knowing that repetition of a single word or a single mantra is going to kill your intelligence.

Intelligence needs to be sharpened in new areas, new dimensions. It has to move into the unknown.

”Hare Krishna, Hare Rama” – it becomes stuck there.

Prabhupada was angry because he could not answer my criticism of Krishna. If he was honest, and if these people are honest – this Goswami – then they will call Shri Krishna the greatest scoundrel ever. He forcibly collected sixteen thousand women as his wives, without marrying them – and they were all married, they had children, they had husbands... but he was powerful, fascist. Any woman he liked was immediately taken to his palace, without any consideration of what will happen to the children. Sixteen thousand women! No other man in the whole of history has been so ugly.

And he was the cause of the greatest war in India, the great Indian war, Mahabharata. He forced Arjuna, his friend and disciple, to fight the war – and it was almost at a similar time as we are living in today, the same critical moment; the war was going to be very dangerous because the whole world was divided in two parts, and both the parts were ready to fight and destroy each other; whoever will be the winner will find only corpses and corpses all around the kingdom. Arjuna could see it. Anybody could have seen it, that this is a very stupid kind of thing – because they had all the scientific means to destroy people on a great scale.

There are suspicions in scholars’ minds that perhaps they had come to know atomic energy. Their few weapons look like atomic weapons.

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everybody is dead, even sitting on the golden throne I would be ashamed, I would feel so guilty that I might commit suicide.”

But Krishna forced him, argued, rationalized, explained, and finally – the ugliest argument that religions use – he said to him that, ”It is God’s will, and if you go against it you are going against God. Don’t play God. If God wants the war, let it happen!” Bringing God into the argument is always cunning. It means you don’t allow the other person any chance. He would have to say, ”I don’t believe in your God”... but he is also conditioned like you in God. If it is God’s will, then Arjuna unwillingly fought the war. And what he envisaged happened –

millions of people died, and then for years disease spread all over the country and it broke down the very spine of the land. India never could become again the same beautiful country with the same joy, the same forest universities of the seers, the same synthetic vision of body, mind and soul, of matter and spirit; it could never come to those beautiful days again. It went on falling into poverty, into repression, into all kinds of ugly things. And it goes on falling. It is now five thousand years; it is still suffering from this man Krishna.

And chanting his name you will reach to golok?...

And these are the cults the pope thinks are a challenge.

I am the only challenge. These cults are not a challenge. What challenge will these cults make? –

because they are as idiotic as the pope’s Christianity is.

What new movements are there? They are all fanatic, stupid – anybody can see their stupidity. They are not a challenge.

But the pope is such a coward he cannot even mention my name directly. I am the only challenge, because I can see that all these movements have nothing to challenge with because they are in the same boat, with the same kind of beliefs – if not in Christ then in Krishna; if not in Krishna then in Rama. But the base is rotten, and the philosophy is just rubbish.

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Energy moves better when it is warmer

18 June 1986 am in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

YOU ONCE SAID SOMETHING LIKE WHEN WE TAKE SANNYAS IT IS EITHER TOO EARLY OR

TOO LATE.

I HAVE OFTEN WONDERED WHAT YOU MEANT BY THIS. WOULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT?

Man is so unconscious that he does not know what he is doing, or for what he is doing it, or when the right time to do it is – so perhaps someone takes sannyas too early. It is just accidental. He comes into the influence of a group of sannyasins, reads some books or listens to my world and feels that he is ready.

A few people take sannyas too late. That too is accidental. It is sheer chance that they did not come across sannyasins, my message, earlier.

It is a very rare coincidence that a person takes sannyas exactly at the right moment in his life for the simple reason that man is not conscious.

The right moment comes and passes by, and he is lost in his dreams, in his ambitions, in his desires.

But my statement simply describes a factuality.

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As far as you are concerned, it does not matter.

I would like to say to you that whenever you take sannyas it is the right moment. You are helpless as far as your unconsciousness is concerned, you cannot do anything about it, so you cannot be held responsible for being early or late. And even those who take it at the right moment, that too is coincidental.

So all the three persons are taking sannyas accidentally. So basically it makes no difference.

And the real thing is not the right moment. The real thing is your right determination, your right decisiveness, your right commitment.

My statement may look contradictory. It is not. Only the contexts are different.

There was in India a great sage, Eknath – not of the ordinary run, unique. He used to sleep in the temple made for Shiva. And the king had gone to visit him. The king was sent to him by his own master – because he was too argumentative, too rational, too much in the mind, and the master was tired. And finally he said, ”If anything is going to happen to you in this life it can happen only through Eknath. You go to Eknath.”

The king agreed, out of curiosity, but he was suspicious, ”If my own master cannot make me a convinced seeker of truth, who is this guy Eknath? I have never heard about him. What is he is going to do to me?” But it was worth it. He went early in the morning – it must have been nine o’clock. Hindu brahmins wake up at five o’clock in the morning or even earlier, but not later than that; and the saints, the holy ones, get up near about three in the morning.

Eknath was fast asleep at nine o’clock. The king was shocked. What kind of saint is he? And this was not all; when he went closer he said, ”My God, is this a saint or a devil?” – because he was putting his feet on the statue of Shiva, just as a footrest. He said, ”My master must have gone mad to send me to this man. Although I am not convinced of the existence of God, even I cannot touch the statue of God with my feet. I am afraid.... Who knows? After all, God may exist. Why take unnecessary trouble upon yourself? But this man is something!” And when Eknath woke up the king said, ”I have been sent by my master.” Eknath laughed and he said, ”While I am alive there is nobody else who is a master.” This was very insulting to the king.

He said, ”You seem to be an insane person. In the first place you are sleeping up to nine, in the temple, resting your feet on the statue of Shiva, and now you are saying that there can be nobody else master while you are alive.”

He said, ”Yes. Tell that to your master; otherwise why has he sent you to me? These are just pygmy teachers pretending to be masters, and as far as my sleeping up to nine and my feet on the statue of Shiva, remember one thing: wherever I put my feet there is God, so what does it matter?

God is everywhere, so why not find a comfortable place? And my waking up at nine – remember, any people who say that saints wake up before sunrise are just mediocre minds. I say to you that whenever the saint wakes up, that is sunrise.”

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Strange statements, but very true – true in depth, true in intensity. Whenever a saint wakes up, that is sunrise; his waking is far more important than your ordinary sun rising up every day – a mechanical phenomenon. My waking is not a mechanical phenomenon, and I am a free man – I will wake up when I want to, and I will go to sleep when I want to. I act according to my consciousness, my awareness. I don’t follow any discipline. I don’t have any rules for my life. My life is my only discipline.

Therefore I say unto you that whenever you become a sannyasin that is the right moment.

So don’t be bothered about the statement that a few people come to sannyas earlier, a few people come later, very few people come at the right time.

Remember, whenever you become a sannyasin you make that time the right time. So don’t feel that you have missed anything.

A sannyasin never misses anything in life. Once a sannyasin, he forgets missing, he simply goes on gaining more dimensions, more riches – riches of all kinds, more awareness, more love, more compassion, more beauty, more grace. Who cares for chronological time? Who bothers to look at the calendar and then take sannyas?

And it is not possible in the first place. So let me repeat: whenever you take sannyas, that is sunrise.

In India we have a proverb, that the man who has lost the way to his home, who has gone astray

– even if he does not come home until evening he should not be called lost. Whoever coined the proverb must have been a man of great wisdom. The real point is not that he went astray. The real point is that he has come back. Going astray is ordinary, and in a way essential for coming back.

Forgetting the way home is an absolute necessity for finding the home. So even if you have come in the evening of your life to sannyas you have not missed anything, you have come home.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

SINCE WE HAVE BEEN SINGING AND DANCING IN OUR SEATS FOR THE PAST DISCOURSES, I HAVE FOUND WITNESSING SO MUCH EASIER AND DEEPER. IT’S ALMOST DIFFICULT NOT

TO WITNESS BECAUSE EVERYTHING IS SO BRIGHT AND CLEAR. THIS MAKES ME WONDER

HOW MONKS WHO DO VIPASSANA CAN KEEP IT UP, NOT HAVING A MASTER TO DANCE

WITH. CAN YOU PLEASE COMMENT?

The traditional method of vipassana is a very cold, dull and dead way, and because it is cold it takes a longer time – perhaps a few lives to become awakened.

But because all the religions of the world have praised coldness in their saints, in their seekers, searchers, they have all delayed progress, delayed the evolution of consciousness.

Energy moves better when it is warmer.

This is one of my contributions, which will be condemned by all the religions – the religions of the cold. I teach you a religion of warmth, love, singing, dancing, music. These are all tremendously helpful to make you alert, wakeful.

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Sitting in a cave – a dark cave in a mountain alone – people have been dozing in the name of vipassana. They can doze, it is their life. I am not in any way going to interfere. They have chosen it. They will doze their way towards enlightenment, however long it takes.

But when there is music and your whole body is thrilling, and when there is song, although you are sitting, in a subtle sense there is a dance in you. You cannot remain unconscious, you have to become more watchful.

I want vipassana to be a warmer path; then it becomes a very short cut. I would like you to sing and dance and play on instruments – that will take you away from the mundane world, the day-to-day world. I would like you to love, I would like you to laugh.

The society has repressed everything; even when you laugh it is halfhearted because it is thought to be not gentlemanly. To laugh wholeheartedly looks a little rustic. But if you laugh totally, then the laughter will be coming from your hara, just below the navel, two inches below the navel, and that is the source of your life, that’s where your center of life is.

You should learn laughing through Geeta. She is Japanese and she knows how to laugh from the hara and then it is like bells ringing in a temple. It is only Geeta who makes me laugh; otherwise I somehow manage seriousness.

Whenever you are total in anything you will feel more watchful, more alert, more awakened, more fresh, more alive.

I am all for life. Your so-called religions are all against life, they are anti-life. Naturally they have to be as cold as a corpse.

I would like my sannyasins to be living totally and multi-dimensionally, even in small things – bringing their whole being to a focus. And if you can start living moment to moment in different ways – but always total – vipassana will happen to you more easily than you can conceive because you have never seen anything happening so easily, without effort, on its own accord. You can force yourself to sit in silence and remain awake. I don’t teach that kind of vipassana. I teach a vipassana that follows you like a shadow, as a by-product of your total living.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

THE FORTY DAYS AND FORTY NIGHTS THAT JESUS SPENT IN THE WILDERNESS – DID HE

MEDITATE? – HE NEVER MENTIONS MEDITATION IF HE HAD KNOWN OF IT.

JUST WHAT DID HE GET UP TO OUT THERE?

He did not meditate. If he could have meditated the shape of things in the world would have been different. What he did in those forty days and forty nights was prayer. Prayer to a god which he knows not. No one knows whether he exists or not.

Millions of people have been praying and the sky remains utterly indifferent; no answer, no response.

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The whole ideology of Jesus and Christianity is based on fiction. It is a religious fiction. The same is true about all the religions which are religions of prayer.

There are two kinds of religions in the world: religions of prayer and religions of meditation.

The religions of prayer are fictitious because they begin from the very beginning with a belief in a god. Belief is not knowing, and belief cannot destroy your doubt. At the most it can repress, it can cover up your doubt, but underneath the belief you are always suspecting whether your belief is true or not. Doubt dies on its own accord when you know something; then there is no question of doubt.

Belief carries doubt with it.

And to make the belief system strong, prayer is the method. First the god is bogus – you create the god out of your fear, it is a phobia, and then you start praying to that god which is your own creation.

The BIBLE says God created man in his own image. Just looking at this statement, it does not need much intelligence to see the utter stupidity of it. The man that you know, is this man the image of God? And if this is the image of God, you cannot expect anything better from God. No, the statement is not right, and is not in any way respectful towards God either. It is disrespectful, condemnatory. It is as if somebody says, ”Man created buffaloes in his own image.” God created man in his own image? This is his reflection – all these jealousies, all these miseries, all these despairs, anguish, anxieties, wars, murders, rapes? The list is infinite. This is the image of God, this is his reflection in the mirror?

So firstly, the statement is very disrespectful and irreligious.

Secondly, it is untrue. The truth is that man created God in his own image. God has not created man, it is man who has created God. That’s why there are hundreds of gods in the world – because different people created different kinds of god, according to their own idea. A Chinese god will not appeal to anybody else, and nobody else’s idea of God will appeal to the Chinese because they are a different race of man with differences which are very clear-cut. They don’t grow thick beards or mustaches – the beard, maybe you can count one dozen hairs, more than that is simply wild. They are the civilized people of the world, according to themselves. Their god also has those one dozen hairs in his beard. Hindu gods don’t have any beard, don’t have any mustache. No religion born in India – Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism.... It seems that Hindu gods started shaving from the very beginning. It seems first they created the razor. It is all nonsense that first there was the word and God was with the word and God was the word – nonsense! There was first a razor! And God was with the razor, and God was shaving himself, finding nobody else to shave.

I enquired of Hindu scholars, ”Why do your gods not have beards or mustaches?” And it is not one god, it is all the gods – and India has the biggest number of gods, thirty-three million. That was exactly the population of India when these gods were being developed. Why be miserly and why create a monopolistic god? Why make a god like Adolf Hitler? They create a very democratic situation – everybody can have his own god.

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is not the limit. By the end of this century India will have the greatest population in the whole world.

China will be left far behind.

China’s estimate for the end of the century is one point two billion.

India’s estimate is one point eight billion.

But all these gods in one thing are similar, they are without mustache, without beard. What is the problem? This can happen only if they are missing some hormones. It happens once in a while that you will find a man who has no beard, no mustache, and it does not grow and there is no need for him to use a razor. He is missing particular hormones which are needed for the growth of the beard and the mustache.

Nobody has answered my question, why these people are all shaved; but the reason, I feel on my own, is that India does not want its gods to grow old. They have to remain so young that even beard and mustache have not yet started growing. And they are stuck there. That is the Hindu idea.

In their heaven they have apsaras, air hostesses. They don’t allow their air hostesses in heaven to grow beyond the age of sixteen. Millions of years have passed and they are still sixteen.

Naturally their gods are not more than eighteen at the most. And it has to be so; otherwise it will look very ugly. They will all become dirty old men, and the young girls... and they are millions of years old, and the gap, the generation gap will be really so big, unimaginable.

But the Christian God or the Jewish God is an old man, not a young man, with a beard, ancient, because the old is gold. The older a person is the more wise he is. Nobody can be older than God, remember. That’s why he prevented Adam and Eve from eating from two trees, the tree of knowledge and the tree of eternal life. Why prevent them? Because if they eat the fruit of the tree of eternal life they may start becoming older than God himself. He does not want anybody to be older than him because he wants to be at the top.

These are different conceptions of different people, and they have created their god according to their own image; and the foolishness is they are sitting before a mirror with folded hands praying to the reflection of their own face and hoping that they are doing something religious, something spiritual.

They should be treated psychologically. Prayer is addressed to a fictitious god; hence, it has no value in reality.

Meditation is a totally different affair.

Jesus had no idea of meditation.

The West, unfortunately, has missed the dimension of meditation, and it has missed because of Judaism, Christianity, Islam – which have dominated the Western sphere and forced people to pray.

In fact, there has been a condemnation in the West – particularly by the Western religious people –

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does not need any prayer. Meditation is simply sitting in deep silence so that you can sink to your very center, it is sinking within yourself. It has nothing to do with anybody else.

So those who do not understand can call it selfish.

But meditation leads you to your own reality.

Prayer is only leading to your own reflection, which is futile – talking to your own reflection. It is not going to help you in any way. It may give you a good ego – ”God really looks like me, he must have created man in his own image.”

So the people of prayer are bound to become egoists, arrogant, holier-than-thou – that will be their attitude continually.

The meditator becomes humble. He does not feel holier-than-thou. As he reaches to his center he becomes more peaceful, more blissful, more harmonious with existence. He loses all problems, all questions. He knows. Now there is no question of doubt.

The religions of prayer begin with belief.

The religions of meditation don’t begin with belief but end in an absolute certain knowing. But the knowing has to be differentiated from knowledge. They don’t become knowledgeable. They simply know that the whole existence is divine. Their knowing is innocent, not knowledgeable. Their knowing makes them humble – because they can see everybody has the same center; we are different only on the periphery, but at the center we are one.

You can see many points.

The religions of prayer have been fighting, killing, burning people alive, in the name of religion –

forcing people at the point of a gun or a sword to be converted to their religion.

The religions of meditation have not done anything like that, and there is a great balance.

The prayer religions have been creating religious wars, crusades, jihads. Their whole history is full of blood. They have not made man better, they have made him worse.

Religions of meditation have not had a single war. They have not even tried to convert anybody for the simple reason that there is no point; the other person is as divine as they are, he is just asleep and it is his right to sleep as long as he wants, and whenever he wants to wake up he will wake up.

Being awake themselves, they have found tremendous treasures of blissfulness, of ecstasy. They would like to share it, so they go on sharing it but there is no question of conversion.

Jainism, Buddhism, Taoism – these three religions are the religions of meditation. Their history is simply clean, no bloodshed.

Judaism, Christianity, Islam are the religions of prayer. Their whole history is full of blood and so ugly that to call it religious and to call these people religious looks like a mockery.

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Only one religion, Hinduism, is left. Hinduism is a totally strange phenomenon, different from both the religions I have described. Hinduism is many religions together, it is not one religion. So you cannot characterize Hinduism with other religions which have a certain personality. Hinduism is a chaos. There are hundreds of religions under the umbrella of Hinduism, different from each other.

Even the word ‘Hinduism’ was not given by Hindus themselves.

There was no name in India. People were free to follow whatsoever they wanted to follow. That’s why hundreds of small paths, having their own uniqueness, developed. There was no singular name for the whole complex, it was a crowd; but as India was invaded, the invaders gave it a name. And by coincidence, when you enter India you have to pass one of the biggest rivers of India, Sindhu, and the first invaders had no letter for ‘s’, the closest letter was ‘h’. So ‘Sindhu’ became ‘Hindu’ and they called the people who lived beyond the Hindu river ‘Hindus’. They had to call them something

– these people who are living beyond the Hindu river.

And you will be surprised that from ‘Hindu’ the word traveled to other tribes, became ‘Indu’, became

‘India’; but it is the same Sindhu river which created all these names – Hindu, Indu, India.

Otherwise, India was totally a free country. Everybody was accepted, whatever he was doing and whatever he wanted to do. It was his right.

But now, slowly, slowly, in these two thousand years, even Hindus have started thinking of themselves as one fold, but they are in continuous difficulty because they have contradictory religions within themselves. So nobody can say what Hinduism is; one sect will define it in one way, another sect in another way, and the third sect in a third way. And there are so many sects and all have equal value, so that Hinduism has no definition. From godless people to people who believe in god, all are in the fold – under the same umbrella.

But looking at it as a whole, not thinking much of the inner contradictions, Hinduism will also be one of the religions of prayer. It cannot be one of the religions of meditation.

There are a few sects in Hinduism which have meditated, but they are in a minority. For example, yoga. The founder of yoga, Patanjali, was really a daring man. Five thousand years ago, in his yoga sutras, he says something which even the contemporary man has not the guts to say. He says,

”God is a hypothesis. It is not a reality. If you enjoy prayer, then the hypothesis of God is needed; otherwise to whom are you going to address it?”

People like Patanjali are also under the same umbrella. They should be taken out. They belong really to Taoism, Jainism, Buddhism – the religions of meditation.

Taoism, Buddhism, Jainism – they don’t believe in any god. They don’t believe in anything. They believe only in one thing – and that, too, hypothetically. You know you are. You feel you are. You cannot deny it because even your denial will prove that you are. If you say, ”I am not” that will be simply a proof that you are, because who is denying?

It is just as if you are in your house, and somebody knocks on the door and you say, ”I am not in the house. I have gone out to the market. Come some other time.” Do you think the man is going to believe you?

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He will simply say, ”This is hilarious. You are inside the house and you are saying, ‘I have gone out to the market.’ Open the doors.”

You cannot deny yourself. This is the only fact in existence which is undeniable – everything else can be denied. It is possible that you may be all just a dream. It is possible that I may be to you just a dream.

It is not certain. But one thing you cannot deny – you can deny the dream, but you cannot deny the dreamer. You can say that it was a dream, but you cannot say that ”I was not.” Even in a dream your existence is absolutely necessary; otherwise, how will the dream happen?

So the only thing in the religions of meditation is ”I am.” And now the question is to discover who I am.

Meditation is only a methodology to discover who I am. It is purely scientific.

Jesus was not doing meditation. He was praying, praying to the Jewish God – who is not a very good or nice fellow. In all the gods of the world, he is the worst. And it is not that I am saying it, he himself says it. In Talmud he says it: ”Remember that I am not a nice God; I am terrible, I am very jealous, I am revengeful. If you go against me, you will be thrown into hell. I am not your uncle!”

– Because uncles are nice people, more than fathers. He makes it clear, ”You have to be afraid of me.” And it is fear that will make you religious.

In India Mahatma Gandhi used to pray every morning, every evening, and after prayer he will give a small speech. One of his sons was my friend. Gandhi had died; Ramdas, who was taking care of the ashram where Gandhi used to live, became interested in me. He was a man of really very sharp intelligence. He became interested in me because I started criticizing Gandhi. And it was very strange that all the Gandhians became my enemies, and Gandhi’s own son became my friend.

He invited me to be with him. He said one thing to me, ”When I heard about your statement in the newspapers, I read it, that Gandhi after his every prayer meeting used to say, ‘I am not afraid of anybody except God,’ and we have been listening to this from our very childhood,” Ramdas told me,

”but we had never thought about it. And when you criticized it we realized that to be afraid of God simply means your religiousness is out of fear – it is not out of love.” If I was in the place of Mahatma Gandhi I could say, ”I can be afraid of everybody but I cannot be afraid of God” – because to be afraid of God destroys the whole basis of being religious.

But fear has been the base of all the religions of prayer.

The Talmud declaration of God that ”I am terrible” is just to help you to pray, not to go astray, to obey, not to be a rebel.

And Jesus was not a rebel, as many understand him to be. He was born a Jew, he lived as a Jew, he died as a Jew. In fact, he had never heard the word ‘Christian’. He had never known that he would be known to the world as Jesus Christ.

‘Christ’ is from the Greek, and he knew not even Hebrew. He used only his own local language, Aramaic. He was uneducated. Hebrew was of the educated people, scholarly people – rabbis. He used only the local villagers’ language, Aramaic.

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In those forty days he was praying. And what can you pray for? Whenever you pray you are always begging; prayer is, deep down, begging. On the one hand it is begging for something, on the other hand it is impressing God that you are great, you are the greatest of the great.

On the cross Jesus was waiting just as everybody else was waiting, expecting that some miracle is going to happen. Nothing happened. And after a few hours, when nothing happened, he looked many times up into the sky, hoping that angels will be coming with their harps playing on the white clouds. Not even a white cloud appeared. Finally he had a breakdown and he shouted at God,

”Have you forsaken me?”

Naturally a man who had lived his whole life fanatically with belief, who had risked his life, and was hanging on the cross – and God is absolutely absent – it is natural that he should ask ”have you forsaken me?” A doubt has entered into his mind. Doubt was always there, hidden behind a belief system.

If he had been a meditator, things would have been totally different. He would not have declared that he is the only begotten son of God. He would not have declared that he is the messiah the Jews have been awaiting for centuries. He would not have declared that he has come to redeem humanity, that he is a savior. These are impossible statements from a man of meditation.

A man of meditation knows there is no God. He knows there is godliness, a quality but not a person; not like a flower but like a fragrance. And godliness is all over, you just have to be alert and awakened at the center of your being.

And there is no question of the only begotten son, and the meditator knows that nobody can save you except yourself because nobody can enter into your center. That is your privilege and your privacy. You can be killed, but nobody can touch your innermost being, for good or for bad.

A meditator cannot say, ”I can save you,” or ”I can save the whole humanity,” or ”I am the savior.” A meditator cannot say, ”I am a messiah, a messenger” because there is no God who is sending messiahs and messengers.

A meditator can do only one thing. He can make himself available to you with all his joy, with all his grace, with all his dance, with all his beauty. He can remind you in a certain way that the same reality lies asleep within you. He can only become a pointer. He can show the finger pointing to the moon, he cannot take you to the moon.

If Jesus had meditated, there would have been no crucifixion, and without crucifixion the world would have been saved from Christianity.

That’s why I say that he did not meditate and he has left the world in the hands of Christians who have done every crime against humanity and who are still doing every crime against humanity.

Meditation cannot be violent. Even to convince you is not possible for the meditator. He can only communicate. He can only commune with you in a deep friendship and love, ”I have found something. Perhaps you can find it too. Just look within.” He can tell you how he has looked within himself and how he has found the very source of life.

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But he is not a prophet. He does not claim any speciality, he does not claim that he is higher than you. He simply says he is as ordinary as you are, with just a little difference – that he has opened his eyes and you are still snoring.

Question 4

BELOVED OSHO,

WHAT IS THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THESE TWO: THE TRINITY OF THE FATHER, THE

SON AND THE HOLY GHOST; AND THE BODY, THE MIND AND THE WITNESS. OR IS THE

HOLY GHOST JUST ANOTHER OLD GHOST?

There is no trinity the way Christians conceive it. The father, the son, the holy ghost – in fact, the whole idea is anti-feminine, it is against women.

In the divine trinity there is no place for any woman. There is a place for a ghost, and I don’t think that he is holy because this is the guy who made poor Mary pregnant, and if he is holy then every rapist is holy. This is the most unholy ghost, but there is a place for him.

And what kind of family – father, son and holy ghost? Where is the mother?

No, the woman cannot be accepted as part of God.

This is the conspiracy.

Otherwise it would have been far better: God the father, God the mother, God the son; it would have looked more contemporary, a beautiful family, using birth control – because centuries have passed and only one son.

And the pope and Mother Teresa and all these people go on around the world teaching people against birth control and their God has been practicing it for millions of years. They cannot see a simple fact. But it is ugly simply because there is no place for woman. The whole idea is fiction, but even in fiction the woman has equal rights to man but she has been denied.

Even Jesus behaved very rudely with his mother. Once he was speaking in a crowd and somebody shouted from outside, ”Jesus, your mother has come to see you and she is here. When you are finished, come out of the crowd.”

And Jesus said, before the crowd, ”Tell that woman” – he could not even call her his mother – ”Tell that woman that I have only my father, who is in heaven. I don’t have any relationship on the earth with any man or with any woman.” Simply ugly.

But almost all the religions have been doing this to the women of the earth.

The other trinity, the trinity of meditation, is certainly a reality – body, mind and the witness.

Body is nature, body is part of the earth.

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Mind is part of the society, of the whole human heritage.

And the watcher is your own individuality.

This is a real trinity. There is no question of man or woman because the witness is neither man nor woman. The body will go back to nature as you become awakened, mind will disperse back to the society as you become awakened, and the witness will go back to what I call the godliness that surrounds the whole existence.

But the Christian trinity is ugly. You can create a trinity for meditators which is far more real and far more useful.

The body has to be taken care of, has to be respected, has to be loved. It is your home.

The mind has to be cleaned from any rubbish, from any dust that may have gathered during millions of years of journey, and the moment you have cleaned the mind you will find the hidden reality of your being, the witness.

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Document Outline

- 1 The animals must all be laughing

- 2 A whole glass of water

- 3 True balance

- 4 Spreading a net of perfume

- 5 The very foundation for one world

- 6 Pure consciousness has never gone mad

- 7 The caravan became bigger and bigger

- 8 Change is the law of life

- 9 Get in tune with the essence

- 10 When the heart is ready the guest comes

- 11 Footprints in the sky

- 12 Laughter is the highest spiritual quality

- 13 Boots, flesh, marrow, and...,

- 14 The greatest surgery possible

- 15 : There are times when you need the open sky

- 16 When it is ripe, the heart opens

- 17 If you live totally, once is enough

- 18 You just have to gather courage

- 19 Don't miss the head

- 20 The revenge of the pygmies

- 21 Spice in buddha's pot

- 22 Man has suffered enough

- 23 Nothing but a dead skeleton

- 24 Souls are not male or female

- 25 Bravo, America!

- 26 Cut the social crap completely

- 27 Go on, go on!

- 28 Unless your feet are holy...

- 29 Just like ripe fruit

- 30 This chair is empty

- 31 I am an adamant optimist

- 32 Water into wine is not the real miracle

- 33 I need your intelligence, not your surrender

- 34 Truth cannot be humiliated

- 35 Worship may be a worse crucifixion

- 36 And if the song bursts forth...

- 37 There is no power which is higher than love

- 38 Base humanity into golden humanity

- 39 Donkeys carrying great scriptures

- 40 In this mood of festivity all rules are put aside

- 41 The salt of the earth

- 42 Reality is far richer than imagination

- 43 The monkey is dead

- 44 The very perfume of love

- 45 I am the only challenge

- 46 Energy moves better when it is warmer