The Invitation

Talks given from 21/08/87 am to 05/09/87 pm

English Discourse series

30 Chapters

Year published: 1988

The Invitation

Chapter #1

Chapter title: Throw the bucket and draw the water

21 August 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive

code:

8708210

ShortTitle:

INVITA01

Audio:

Yes

Video:

Yes

Length:

107

mins

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

CAN YOU SAY WHO YOU ARE?

Maneesha, I am an invitation for all those who are seeking, searching, and have a deep longing in their hearts to find their home.

I am an answer to the question that everybody is, but cannot formulate -- a question that is more a quest than a question, more a thirst than a verbal, mental inquiry; a thirst that one feels in every cell and fiber of his being, but has no way to bring to words and ask.

I am an answer for that question which you cannot ask and you cannot expect that it could be answered.

When I say I am the answer, I don't mean that I can give you the answer... yes, if you are ready, you can take it. I am just like a well, ready for you to throw your bucket and draw the water for yourself. I have it but I cannot reach to you without your efforts.

Only you can reach to me.

It is a strange invitation.

It will take you on a long pilgrimage and it will end only where you already are. You will have to move many steps and on many paths just to come to yourself, because you have gone far away from yourself. You have completely forgotten the way back.

I am a reminder, a remembrance, of the lost home.

As a person I do not exist.

As a person I only appear.

I exist as a presence.

Since the day I came to know myself, the person disappeared. There is only a presence, a very living presence that can quench your thirst, that can fulfill your longing. Hence, in one word I can say I am an invitation, of course just for those who have a deep longing in their hearts that they are missing themselves -- a deep urge, that unless they find themselves, everything else is meaningless. Unless it is your a priori concern, your ultimate concern, such that if it is needed you are even ready to lose everything for it, but you cannot drop it....

There are thousands of desires, but as far as longing is concerned there is only one: to come back home, to find your reality. And in that very finding, you have found all that is of any value -- blissfulness, truth, ecstasy.

Jesus used to say, "If you have eyes to see, see. If you have ears to hear, hear." Of course, he was not talking to the blind and to the deaf. He was talking to people just like you.

Perhaps he was talking just to you, because you are not new.

You are as ancient as the whole existence.

You have always been here.

You may have come across many masters; you may have come close to many buddhas, but you were too much engaged in trivia. You were not aware of your longing.

I am an effort to provoke the dormant in you, to wake up the asleep. The fire is there, but is burning very low because you have never taken any care of it.

My invitation is to make you aflame, and unless you know a life which is luminous and aflame all your knowledge is just a deception. You are gathering it to help you forget that the real knowledge is missing. But however great is your accumulation of the other, the objective, the world, it is not going to become a substitute for your self-knowing. With self-knowing suddenly all darkness disappears, and all separation from existence.

I am an invitation to take a courageous jump into the ocean of life. Lose yourself, because that is the only way to find yourself.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

EACH TIME I SEE YOU, I AM SHOCKED BY YOUR BEAUTY. YOU'VE GOT TO

BE THE MOST GORGEOUS BEING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED!

OSHO, IN WHAT WAY DO YOU EXPERIENCE YOUR OWN BEAUTY?

Jalada, there is no way to experience your own beauty.

All knowledge needs a certain distance between the knower and the known. If the beauty is physical then there are ways to know it -- you can see yourself in a mirror. But if the beauty is coming out of your silence, out of your peace, out of your inner splendor -- it may radiate from your physical being but it does not belong to your physical body, it is not physical -- then there is no way to know it yourself, because it is not reflected in a mirror. You can experience it.

The most important thing to remember is that the beauty that you have seen in me is not my own, it is yours too -- it is everyone's. The bodies may be different, but the inner fire is the same. And when that fire starts radiating from your body, it creates a certain grace, a certain beauty. It is no one's monopoly. It is everybody's intrinsic potentiality.

If you can see my beauty, that's an indication of seeing your own beauty, because I am nothing but a mirror to you. But it often happens... looking in the mirror you may see a beautiful face, and if you are asleep or drunk or half-asleep, half-awake, you may think the mirror is very beautiful. But the mirror is just a mirror; it is only reflecting you.

One drunkard was torturing his wife by continually coming home late. Every night it was a fight. Finally, the wife gave up and she told the man, "You keep the key. Unlock the door from the outside and come in silently. Don't disturb my sleep, and don't create any nuisance so that the neighbors are disturbed. Just come and go to sleep."

The drunkard was very happy. That day he drank as much as he wanted; now there was no question of any problem arising out of it. Then he came home. He tried to be as silent as possible -- opened the door, went into the bathroom to change his clothes, looked into the mirror and said, "My God."

All his face was scratched. Blood was oozing, because he had been in a fight in the pub.

He said, "Right now I have managed perfectly silently, but in the morning the wife is going to discover these scratches and this blood, and that will bring the whole problem again -- the same fight. Somehow I have to hide the scratches; I should at least put some ointment on them."

He looked all around. He could not find anything except his wife's lipstick. He thought it looked like an ointment, and it was very helpful because it covered the scratches, the blood. He was very happy at his success, went to his bed, and there was no quarrel, no fight. It was one of the most beautiful nights of his life!

But in the morning, the wife shouted from the bathroom, "Are you mad or what? You have destroyed my lipstick. Not only that, why have you been painting the mirror?"

He was, poor fellow, trying to put the ointment on his face, but his face was in the mirror.

So in the mirror wherever there were scratches or blood on his face, he did a great job of painting -- the lipstick was finished and the mirror was spoiled.

He could not believe how it could have happened. He said, "I did not want to disturb you so I tried some ointment, and only this thing looked like ointment. I don't know what happened to me, why I have put it on the mirror. I was putting it on my own face!"

In life, what you see shows much about you, not about what you are seeing. The same sunset looks beautiful to one person, and to another, sad. And to another it doesn't matter; he remains indifferent. The sunset is the same. It looks beautiful to the person who is capable of being in tune with it, who is capable of being silent and a mirror to reflect it into his own being; who can drink out of it, its colors, its radiance, its splendor.

The same sunset looks sad not beautiful to somebody else because he is sad; he projects his sadness onto it. And the third person lives in a way which can be called the way of indifference. He never looks at the sunset or the moon or the trees or the flowers or people. He has eyes but he never uses them. He is in such a rush, in such a hurry to reach somewhere he knows not where... just a tension, a constant running after shadows. He does not have time to waste to look at a stupid sunset.

It all depends on you.

If you see the beautiful in me, something beautiful has arisen in you.

Two men were riding on a train for the first time in their lives. One of them had a bunch of bananas. He offered one to his friend and began to peel one for himself. Just then the train entered a tunnel.

"Have you tasted your banana yet?" asked the first man, very alarmed.

"No, I haven't," replied his friend.

"Well, for heaven's sake, don't," said the first man, "I took one bite and went blind."

We are very much enclosed in our own psychology, and we project that psychology all around.

A man of silence finds this whole world is full of silence. Even the sounds only deepen the silence. And a man full of noise never becomes aware of the immense silences in the night. It all depends on you. Your world is nothing but you, projected.

It is a good indication that you feel beauty in me -- don't stop there. It is not an objective experience, something beautiful is growing in you. Notice it, and a day will come you will see everybody beautiful around you, everything beautiful around you.

Only be satisfied when you cannot find anything which is not beautiful. When you have become capable of looking at the beauty of everything that exists and lives, you have reached to a flowering of your own being.

Your question can be looked at very easily from a different point. You say, "Each time I see you, I am shocked by your beauty. You've got to be the most gorgeous being that has ever happened! Osho, in what way do you experience your own beauty?"

There are people who see me as the antichrist. The American government, in conspiracy with fundamentalist Christians, destroyed the commune in America. And now they have raised a memorial in Wasco County where the commune was -- a marble memorial, a memorial saying that they succeeded in getting rid of the antichrist.

It all depends on you what you see.

It always refers to you.

Two small children were standing inside an art gallery because it was raining and they could not find any other shelter. So they entered the gallery. Standing there soaked with water, dripping, one boy looked at a Picasso painting and he said, "My God, we should get away from here! If they catch us they will say we have done it. Some idiot has spoiled everything. We have not touched it, but we are in a position we will not be able to defend."

It is said, that once Picasso's car was stolen. He reported it to the police station, and the people knew him. They said, "It is very sad and sorry. Do you have some details and a description -- number plate, what kind of car?"

He said, "I never looked at the number plate, but I can draw a sketch." So he drew a sketch of his car and the police searched hard. And finally, they caught one horse, one washing machine and the Eiffel Tower!

The Picasso sketch gave them all these ideas -- and it was a sketch of a car! Picasso's way of thinking, way of looking at things, was strange and crazy. He was a great genius, but a little outlandish.

A very rich woman wanted him to make her portrait. He said, "I don't generally do that kind of painting because my fee is so much. Secondly, nobody seems to be satisfied when the portrait is finished. It will be almost one million dollars. If you are ready to pay I can do the portrait."

The woman said, "One million or two million, it doesn't matter, but I want a portrait by you."

So he made the portrait. It took many sittings and the woman became more and more puzzled as she saw the portrait coming up. When the portrait was complete she said,

"Only one question, I want to know where my nose is. Everything is okay, but at least I should know where my nose is. From there I can figure out the eyes, the mouth, my ears -

- that can be the center for finding myself."

Picasso said, "I told you in the very beginning...! Now it is a trouble to find the nose --

who knows where your nose is! I have painted it, that is true, but in so many sittings I can't remember exactly where I have put it. You take it home and contemplate; perhaps you may find it. It is there, that much is certain. It is there, this much I can guarantee because I remember I have painted your nose. But don't harass me! You are paying money for the portrait not for these questions. If you had told me before that you would ask questions I would have refused, because who takes care where your nose is, and in what way does it matter? Somewhere it must be in the portrait. If somebody asks you, you can say, `Just look, you will find it.' Just one thing: if you or somebody else finds it, inform me."

Picasso became one of the great painters. But all his paintings are, to say the least, insane.

He himself was insane; he was pouring his insanity into colors on the canvas -- it was his projection. He was a genius. He could manage to paint, and paint in many original ways.

Naturally, if you cannot find the nose, the portrait is original. What more originality can you expect? He has worked hard but his way of seeing....

I had a professor in my university... I used to listen to him with closed eyes. Finally, he could not resist the temptation. He said, "What is the matter with you? Whenever I talk to you, you close your eyes."

I said, "To talk with you and to see your eyes -- one going this way, one going that way --

makes me dizzy. Sometimes I look to whom you are talking, because you never look at me."

Those eyes were such that when he was talking to you one thing was certain, he would not be looking at you. That's the only way he could look at you: when he was looking somewhere else.

I said, "Either you get your eyes fixed or please forgive me. I want to listen to what you are saying; I don't want to get dizzy."

The way you see the world, the way you see people, the way you see trees... all depends on you.

You live in a world of your own creation.

There are as many worlds as there are people because everyone is living in his own world. No two persons agree about anything. Somebody thinks a woman beautiful, and others laugh at the very idea: "If this woman is beautiful then... finished! Then what can be called ugly?"

So, Jalada, it is perfect for you to see beauty in me, but it is part of your own seeing, it has nothing to do with me. I am just a victim! Today I am beautiful, tomorrow if you are angry at me, then too remember. If you see that this is the antichrist, remember, it is your own idea.

It reminds me that there have been found a few inscriptions contemporary to Jesus' life, which describe him as the ugliest man possible. Not only was he ugly, he was also a hunchback. And his followers have described him as one of the most beautiful men.

Christians never even raised the question: What about those inscriptions? But fortunately, I am no one, neither Christian nor Hindu nor Buddhist, so I can see from a distance.

My feeling is that both descriptions may be right. It looks absurd -- how can both descriptions be right about one man? They are not descriptions of Jesus, they are descriptions of the people who were describing him.

Those who loved him, because of their love they created a beautiful personality. Those who hated him, out of their hate have created an ugly man. And they were not satisfied even with that -- they had to make him a hunchback. They had to reduce his height to four feet six inches; they had to make him a pygmy.

This has to be understood deeply, because then you don't create the illusion and make it objective. You should always remember that whatever you see in the world is your own projection. Yes, there is a state when you are beyond mind and all projections have dropped. Then you see the world as it is. It is just unimaginably beautiful, but that beauty is a totally different kind of beauty, it is not your projection.

The moment you go beyond your mind, you suddenly become a mirror -- then you reflect reality. Within the mind you project reality; you don't reflect. Being with me, meditating for years, something must be getting out of the mind, beyond the mind. And you will be absolutely certain that some transcendence is happening when if not only in me but in everybody you start seeing the beautiful, the authentic, the sincere -- even in those who are not beautiful, who are not sincere, who are not truthful. It doesn't matter; their actions don't constitute their being. Their being is far bigger than their small, tiny, actions.

It is a good indication: you love me. Naturally, you can see something beautiful, but trust in it only when you start seeing that beauty everywhere, when the whole of existence becomes beauty.

The ancient seers of India have described existence in two ways. One way they have called satyam, shivam, sundram. Satyam means truth, shivam means good, sundram means beautiful. This is one expression of the ultimate experience. Another trinity by a few other seers has one thing certainly in common -- satya, the truth. Satchitanand: sat means the truth, chit means consciousness, anand means blissfulness.

Both are right; it is their choice. They could not avoid one thing: truth. If they had a poetic approach, then the good and the beautiful were naturally experienced. If they were of a different disposition, more of a mystic than of a poet, then consciousness and blissfulness became part of their trinity.

It is because of these statements that I say religions born outside of India are very childish. Just see these trinities and compare them with the Christian trinity: God the father, God the son, and the holy ghost.

It is not even comparable to satchitanand: truth, consciousness, bliss or to satyam, shivam, sundram: truth, good, beauty. These seem to be experiences. God, the son and the holy ghost... I don't think anybody has ever experienced them. And the experience would be more like a nightmare!

But it all depends on you. Just as your dreams are yours and show something about your mind, so are your ideas while you are awake. They show something about you, and this is to be remembered by every seeker. This is a turning point. We are easily objective but our reality is subjective. We see things there which are our own projections.

A poet looks around the trees in a different way. He sees many greens, not one green. His sensitivity is so deep that he can make very subtle distinctions in the green of one tree and the green of another tree. You ordinarily simply see that the trees are green, but not even two leaves are exactly the same green. It needs a very sensitive, artistic, poetic, approach -- it depends on you; you live in your own world.

J. Krishnamurti used to say, "You are the world." Once this is understood tremendous changes are possible. You will not throw tantrums at others. You will become more centered, you will become more subjective and introvert. Your world will start losing objects; it will become more of a subjectivity -- and that is your truth.

Once you are centered in your being, beyond mind, then you can see the world as it is.

Only very few people have seen the world as it is. Everybody sees it as his mood, his emotion, as his idea suggests to him.

Jalada, it has to be remembered continuously, that whatever you see, it is your own projection. Unless you start seeing the same everywhere -- in the friend and in the foe --

then your experience has entered into a new realm.

Irving Levensky, a leading dress manufacturer, decided to go on an African safari. After spending six weeks in darkest Africa, he returned to Seventh Avenue. Everyone who worked in his show room gasped when he walked in the door.

Irving, who was six feet tall when he left New York, was now little higher than two feet.

His employees all looked at him and asked, "Mr. Levensky, what happened?"

He replied, "Never, but never, under any circumstances, call a witch doctor a schmuck!"

It is better not to call anything to anybody -- just remain centered in yourself. Look at the world and drop judgments, and you will have such a pure atmosphere around you -- no appreciation, no condemnation, just a pure watchfulness.

This watchfulness, I call meditation.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

SOMETIMES I AM BLESSED BY THIS OVERWHELMING FEELING THAT THIS

COMMUNE IS BECOMING GENTLY ONE BODY, ONE ORGANISM, ONE

HEARTBEAT. AM I DREAMING? AM I ONCE MORE THE USUAL UTOPIAN?

OH, AMORE, PLEASE TELL ME IT IS NOT A DREAM.

Sarjano, it is a dream that is coming true, but it is a dream -- not your dream, but the dream of everybody who is here.

It is impossible to find a man who is not carrying a dream of utopia, of a world which is better, more human, more beautiful, more loving; a world without conflicts, wars, discriminations, a world sensitive, compassionate, understanding. Every human being carries in some corner of his consciousness the dream, and it is not a new phenomenon.

From the very beginning the dream has been present in humanity, and efforts have been made to make a reality of it. Almost all efforts have failed, not because of any intrinsic difficulty, but because of a vast world that surrounds you. Your dreams are not in tune with the vested interests of the world, and they are more powerful -- immensely powerful.

The dreamer is very delicate, very fragile, just like his dream.

It is a communion of dreamers.

We created a dream in America, but the American establishment could not tolerate it, because the dream of human beings living in peace and love as an organic unity is against all politics, against all those who are in power. It is against all the so-called religions, because if you succeed in creating a dream here and making it a reality, who is going to bother about their heaven and hell and God?

Bertrand Russell is right when he says that if people were really happy, religions would disappear. Religions have a vested interest in the misery of people. The people have to be kept miserable; otherwise, what will happen to Christianity, to Hinduism, to Judaism, and millions of priests who are living as parasites because you are miserable? In your misery you need some kind of consolation!

In the first place they make you guilty, and in the second place they ask you to go to the church to confess to the priest. The priest will fine you and will pray for you to God, that you should be forgiven -- it is such a game! And it has been going on for centuries and still man is so asleep that he does not see in what ways he is being manipulated.

No child comes with any feeling of guilt and if you don't teach him guilt, he will never know about it. He will live a natural, uninhibited, beautiful life, but that will destroy the whole profession of the priests. And now the psychoanalysts have also joined in that profession; they are the latest version of the priest.

Just the other day, I was reading that a patient said to the psychoanalyst, "Last night I did not dream." The psychoanalyst was saying, "Tell me about your dreams. Unless I have your dreams I cannot analyze them and I cannot help you."

The psychoanalyst became very angry. He said, "You are very uncooperative. Why did you not dream? Without dreams what can I do? My whole profession, my whole expertise depends on your dreaming. Continue to dream, and unless you cooperate, I am at a loss; I cannot help you."

The psychoanalyst wants you to continue dreaming. That has become his vested interest.

The priest wants you to go on committing sins. The priest will be at a loss if nobody commits any sin.

In a small school, the teacher was telling the children how to go to heaven. And after one hour's continuous effort to make those small boys and girls understand, finally she asked,

"Can anyone tell me, what are the requirements to go to heaven?"

One small boy said, "You have to commit sin."

She said, "What? How have you managed to get this idea in your mind?"

He said, "Without committing sin, how is God going to forgive you? And without forgiveness, nobody can enter into paradise."

The child was saying something immensely significant. The priests, the saints go on teaching: Don't sin. But they don't mean that; remember, they go on saying it because they know the human nature, that you will sin. If they were for a moment made aware that people had decided not to sin, they would be in difficulty. You would have taken their whole profession.

The pope this year declared that anybody who confesses to God directly is committing a grave sin, you have to go through the right channel. Naturally, because if people start confessing to God directly, raising their hands to the sky and saying, "God, I have committed this sin, please forgive me," what will happen to the church? What will happen to the money that goes on flowing into the church because you commit sin?

I have heard....

A bishop was very friendly with a rabbi. They became friends because both were interested in golf. And they had decided that on Sunday after the bishop was finished with the confessionals, they would go to the golf course. The rabbi waited, but it was becoming late. So finally, he came to the church to see what was the matter. He went inside.

In the Catholic church the priest sits behind a small window with a curtain. On the other side stands the man who confesses his sin, and the priest gives him the punishment:

"Donate ten dollars to the church and never do such a thing again," although, deep down he wants him to do it every day. It is natural, because from where is the money going to come?

The rabbi said, "It is becoming late."

The bishop said, "What to do? There is still a long line waiting, but you can be of help.

You just sit here, so I can wash, change my clothes, and get ready. Meanwhile, you do the confessional."

The rabbi said, "But I don't know what confessional is."

The bishop said, "It is very simple. You have just seen that man who raped a woman; I have fined him ten dollars. So just five dollars, ten dollars... fine them and tell them that they will be forgiven, and not to do it again."

The rabbi said, "Okay, I will try."

Of course, on the other side the people were not aware that there had been a change: the bishop was no longer there and the rabbi was sitting there. And one man said, "Father, you have to forgive me, I committed rape twice this week.

The rabbi said, "Son, don't be worried. Just put thirty dollars in the donation box."

The man said, "But last time when I committed rape, you asked only for ten dollars. Is the rate going higher?"

The rabbi said, "Don't be worried my son, ten dollars are in advance. You can commit another rape."

Utopia is what every human heart carries within him, particularly the younger generation, because as you become older you become less and less optimistic. Seeing the reality and its ugliness, seeing that all the powers are against any utopia, any freedom for human heart, any love, they don't want the world to become a paradise, because then they will be out of employment, and nobody is ready to lose his bread and butter.

So as you grow old, you slowly, slowly start thinking that utopias are utopias, and you start compromising with the society. But there are a few crazy people like me who go on dreaming in spite of the society, in spite of the whole world. And howsoever difficult the dream seems to be to materialize, still my heart says there is no harm in making another effort. Perhaps one day, if not in my life, then in the life of future human beings, utopia will become a reality.

When the commune in America was crushed, almost bulldozed criminally, anyone in my place would have dropped the idea -- but I am stubborn! I will go on till my last breath...

or even after that.

Sarjano, what is happening here again is that the dream is becoming true. And we have learned much in the destruction of the commune in America -- it has not been a bad experience. Learning is always good, and learning always comes through failures. The commune had succeeded, almost succeeded.

Here, we will avoid those possibilities of destruction. It is better to continue to dream for a better humanity than to settle into sadness and pessimism. Things are still coming together again. People are returning and they are more experienced now. They know not to have a structure that is capable of being destroyed. Something totally new, a more organic body, not a dictatorial regime; no enforcement of ten to twelve hours' work, but a more joyous, life-affirmative. Each according to his need, each according to his choice.

We are making every effort not to disturb anybody's individuality, not to sacrifice any individual for the commune. On the contrary, make every individual as strong as possible, because that will be the total strength of the commune -- and the seeds have started sprouting.

You are right, Sarjano, when you say, "Sometimes I am blessed by this overwhelming feeling that this commune is becoming gently one body, one organism, one heartbeat. Am I dreaming?" No, it is a reality that is happening.

"Am I once more the usual utopian?" We are making every effort to change the meaning of the word, ùtopia'. The meaning of the word ùtopia' is that which never happens, and we are determined to change the meaning. We are committed to the idea that utopia is that which can happen. Its old definition has to be changed totally. Utopia is the very heart of human beings. A man without dreams for a better humanity is not a man, he is a desert.

"Oh, amore, please tell me it is not a dream." Sarjano, it is both: it is not a dream because the dream is turning into reality, but it is still a dream because much more has to be done.

You should not be satisfied.

This is a dream which goes on growing with new possibilities, with new dimensions. But we are determined to create it, to make it a reality. This is our religion. We are not interested in going to paradise; we are interested in making the paradise come here. It all depends on our love, on our silence, on our peace, on our meditation, and being aware and alert not to fall again into any trap of the vested interests.

Once the tree has become strong, has gained roots in the earth, it will be difficult for anybody to destroy it.

I believe in the earth.

I repeat Zarathustra who said to his disciples, "Never betray the earth." All the religions have betrayed the earth.

The earth is the only reality.

Everything else talked about by religions is only fiction to distract you. We don't want religions which are interested in a future heaven after death. Our interest is here, now --

before death. What is the point of thinking about after death? This has been the routine because people could not succeed to create something beautiful in life. They started postponing it beyond death because nobody knows what happens beyond death; so it was a very good postponement.

I am not for postponing it, not even for tomorrow. Whatever can be done should be done right now.

Don't betray the earth; don't betray the present.

Don't betray your dream; your dream is your very soul.

At a party an elderly bishop tired of social engagements sank wearily into a chair. His hostess rushed up suggesting that he have a cup of tea.

"No tea," grunted the bishop.

"Coffee?"

"No coffee," was the solemn reply.

"Scotch and water?"

"No water."

Sarjano, just avoid Scotch. Just avoid unconsciousness. Water is perfectly good. Be clear in your vision, be conscious in your efforts. The dream is gaining roots and I hope soon we will see the flowers. They are not far away.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

The Invitation

Chapter #2

Chapter title: Get out! get out from your blankets!

21 August 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive

code:

8708215

ShortTitle:

INVITA02

Audio:

Yes

Video:

Yes

Length:

105

mins

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

SHUNRYO SUZUKI, ONE OF THE FIRST ZEN MASTERS TO LIVE AND TEACH

IN THE WEST, WAS ONCE ASKED WHY HE NEVER SPOKE MUCH ABOUT

SATORI, ENLIGHTENMENT. THE MASTER LAUGHED AND ANSWERED, "THE

REASON I DO NOT TALK ABOUT SATORI IS BECAUSE I HAVE NEVER HAD

IT."

COULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT.

David Hey, Zen in the West is in a very strange context. The master you are talking about, Shunryo Suzuki, must have felt immense difficulty to express himself, because Zen has a language of its own. It has a climate different from any other climate that exists on the earth.

To bring Zen to any country is a difficult task. One has to be ready to be misunderstood.

Suzuki's statement seems to be clear, and anybody who will read it will not have any difficulty to understand it. But whatever he will understand will be wrong.

The master was asked, "Why don't you speak about satori?" -- the Japanese word for enlightenment. And he answered the way a Zen master should answer knowing perfectly well he could not be understood, he is bound to be misunderstood. He said, "The reason I do not talk about satori is because I have never had it."

The statement is clear; linguistically there is no problem, there is nothing to be understood in it. Suzuki is saying, "I have never talked about it because I have never had it." Now I will have to give you the whole background, the climate in which the meaning of the same sentence turns into exactly its opposite as you understand it.

Zen has an absolute certainty that no one can have satori or enlightenment; you can have things. You can have money, you can have power, you can have the whole world, but you cannot have enlightenment.

Enlightenment is not a thing; it is not possible to possess it. Those who say they have it, don't have it -- they don't even understand the ABC of it. One becomes enlightened --

that's what Suzuki is saying. There is no distinction between I and enlightenment, so how can I have it? The I disappears completely into enlightenment just like a dewdrop disappearing in the ocean. Can the dewdrop say, "I have the ocean"? The dewdrop is the ocean -- there is no question of having it. This is the first thing to be clearly understood.

Suzuki was an enlightened master; that's why he denied it. If he were not enlightened, but was only a scholar, learned about Zen, he might have felt very embarrassed to deny it. He might rather have lied, and nobody would have been able to detect his lie. He could have said, "I have it, but the experience is inexpressible; it was so simple, that's why I never talk about it." But the man really had it. To really have it means you can't have it; you disappear.

As long as you are, there is no enlightenment.

The moment there is enlightenment, you are not.

You disappear just like darkness disappears when there is light. Darkness cannot possess light; you cannot possess enlightenment.

I don't think, David, that the statement of Suzuki would have been understood by the people who asked the question and who received the right answer. It needs a totally different context to understand.

The Western education is so much of a nourishment to the ego... in fact the Western psychology supports the idea that a person should have a very clear ego -- powerful, aggressive, ambitious; otherwise, one cannot survive in the struggle of existence. To survive, first you have to be, and you have to be not only defensive, because the right way of defense is to offend, to attack... Before anybody else attacks you, you should attack. You should be first, not the second, because to be defensive is already losing the battle.

And because of the Western psychology, the whole educational system supports the idea that a man becomes mature as he attains a more and more crystallized ego. This goes against the experience of all the buddhas, of all the awakened ones. And none of these psychologists or educationalists have any glimpse of what awakening is, of what enlightenment is.

Those who have become enlightened are agreed, without any exception, on the point that the ego has to disappear. It is false, it is created by society; it is not your original face, it is not you.

The false must disappear for the real to be.

So remember these steps: first, the false must disappear for the real to be, and then the real has to disappear into the ultimately real. People are living so far away from their ultimate home -- they are not even real, what to say about the ultimate? For it, they have to first move away from the ego. They have to experience in meditation their own center.

But this is not the end. Meditation is only a beginning of the journey. In the end, the seeker is dissolved in the sought, the knower in the known, the experiencer in the experience. Who is going to have satori? You are absent; you are non-existent when enlightenment explodes. Your absence is an absolute necessity for enlightenment to happen.

Suzuki is absolutely right: "The reason I do not talk about satori is because I have never had it." I am absolutely certain that those who heard him are bound to have thought that he had had no experience of satori. That is simply the meaning of what he is saying.

Unless there was somebody who had experienced egolessness, and finally selflessness, Suzuki was without fail, bound to be misunderstood.

But he was a man of immense daring, of great courage, to introduce Zen to the West. Not many people were impressed. Many certainly entertained Suzuki's statements, his anecdotes from the annals of Zen; they thought them strange jokes. But there were a few who understood not what the man was saying, but the man himself. He turned a few people on; he has the same distinction as Bodhidharma who planted the seeds of Zen in China.

Suzuki can be compared to Bodhidharma. He planted the seeds in the West, and Zen became, in the Western climate and mind, a new fashion. Suzuki was very much disturbed by it. He was not introducing a new fashion, he was introducing a new revolution and a new style of being. But the West understands things only in that way --

every two or three years a new fashion is needed; people become bored with the old.

And Suzuki was received with joy, because he had brought something which no Christian or Jew was even able to comprehend. He attracted many people of the new generation; a few of them remained true to the master to the very end. Many traveled to Japan just because of Suzuki. Hundreds of Zen classics were translated in Western languages because of Suzuki. Now it is possible to talk about Zen and still be understood, and the whole credit goes to a single man, Shunryo Suzuki.

It has never to be forgotten that words don't exist without context. If you forget the context, whatever you will understand is going to be wrong. If you understand the context, it is impossible to misunderstand.

Berkowitz was crossing Washington Avenue on Miami Beach when he was hit by a passing auto. Several passersby picked him up and laid him down on a bench. A kindly, silver-haired lady approached the injured man and asked, "Are you comfortable?"

"Ehhh! I make a living," sighed Berkowitz.

In the Jewish context he could not understand the word `comfortable' in any other sense than in the sense of making a good living. He said, "Yes." He has the accident, but he cannot understand the word `comfortable' in the present context of accident. Perhaps he may be dying, perhaps he is badly hurt, but his context remains as his old mind which thinks only of money, earning.

This has to be remembered while you are studying Zen -- the differences of context.

It is said: To arrive at the truth, the German adds, the Frenchman subtracts, and the Englishman changes the subject!

I have heard...

You can always tell a man's nationality by introducing him to a beautiful woman. An Englishman shakes her hand, a Frenchman kisses her hand, an American asks her for a date, and a Russian wires Moscow for instructions!

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

CAN YOU PLEASE SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN

THE SPIRITUAL QUESTION, "WHO AM I?" AND THE PSYCHOLOGICAL

TRAUMA OF "WHO AM I?"?

Prem Shunyo, it is exactly the difference I was just talking about -- the difference between the ego and the self.

The ego is your false idea of who you are; it is just a fabrication of the mind. It is your own homemade mind-manufactured concept, but it has no corresponding reality to it. It is perfectly good as far as the world is concerned because there, you are dealing with other egos. The moment you go beyond your mind, you also go beyond your ego, and suddenly you realize that you are not what you have always thought yourself to be -- that your reality is totally different, that it does not consist of your body or of your mind, that in fact you don't have any word to express it.

But it is still not the ultimate reality; it is just in between, between the ultimate reality and the ultimate falsehood. It is better than the false, but it is lower than the really real. You are still carrying a certain idea of separation from existence. That separation keeps you unavailable to all the blessings which are your birthright. If you can drop those walls and open yourself to the immensity of reality, you will disappear as a separate entity.

But this is only one side. On the other side you will appear as the eternal, the immense, the vast reality -- the oceanic experience, which is the only experience of enlightenment or liberation.

You have to get rid of the ego first. That is your psychological trauma, or better, your psychological drama. There are religions which have accepted the false ego as the end of all, there is nothing beyond it. That is the religion of all the atheists of different trends, a communist. Or the atheist may not be a communist, but the atheist in any form stops himself at the ego; that is his ultimate reality.

He is the poorest man in the world. All other religions except atheism... because I take atheism also as a sort of religion, a lower form of religion than other religions.

Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedanism, go a step further. They all insist to drop the ego and to recognize your authentic reality, your real self.

But there are religions like Zen which go to the very end of the road. They are not satisfied just by dropping the ego. They are satisfied only when there is nothing left to drop -- even the self is gone -- when the house is absolutely empty, when you can say, "I am not."

This nothingness is creating the space for the ultimate to blossom. It does not come from anywhere else. It has always been there, just cluttered with rotten furniture, with unnecessary things. As you remove all those things and your subjectivity becomes empty

-- just as a room becomes empty as you remove everything from it -- in this emptiness of your subjectivity, blossoms the flower of ultimate experience -- you are no more.

Naturally, you cannot have your old miseries, your old traumas and dramas. You cannot have any connection with your own past; you have abruptly cut yourself away from all that you used to be. Suddenly a new, totally fresh opening... in a way, you disappear. In a way your authentic essence has the first opportunity to come into its full glory, into its absolute splendor.

This is what enlightenment is. It is a negative process: negate the ego, the psychological; negate the self, the spiritual. Go on negating until nothing remains to negate -- and the explosion! Suddenly you have arrived home, with the revelation that you have never been out of your home. You have always been there, your eyes were just focused on objects.

Now all those objects have disappeared. Only a witnessing, pure awareness, has remained. This witnessing is the end of all your misery and all your hell. It is also the beginning of the golden gate -- the doors are open for the first time.

Two white rats were chatting through the bars of their laboratory cages. "Tell me," said the first white rat, "how are you getting along with Dr. Smith?"

"Just fine," replied the second rat. "It took a while, but I have finally got him trained.

Now, whenever I ring the bell, he brings me my dinner."

It is such a strange world. The psychologist, Dr. Smith, must be thinking he is training rats, and the rats are thinking they are training Dr. Smith! The games of the ego... The wife thinks she is training the husband. All wives are training their husbands their whole lives; the husbands are training their wives. It seems life is just to train and to be trained -

- for what?

A woman reached Pablo Picasso. She wanted a portrait; the portrait was made. She was absolutely satisfied. She said, "Just one thing, you have forgotten to put great diamonds around my neck, a great diamond ring, diamond bracelets."

Picasso said, "But you don't have them." She said, "It doesn't matter. I have cancer, and I am not going to survive more than six weeks. And I know my husband is going to marry immediately after I die. He is just waiting for my death, although he goes on saying, `My dear, without you I will not be able to live a single moment.' I know that without me he will not be able to live a single moment. He will immediately find another woman!"

Picasso said, "I don't understand the relationship of what you are saying and the diamonds."

She said, "You don't understand the woman's mind. I want my portrait, after my death, to be seen by the woman who my husband is going to marry. Then she will torture him,

`Where are these diamonds?' I cannot leave him, even if I am dead. He has to be trained, he has to be kept under control." Great idea!

People have forgotten completely to live. Who has time? Everybody is training everybody else, how to be -- and nobody seems to be satisfactory, never.

If one wants to live, one should learn one thing, to accept things as they are, and to accept yourself as you are. Start living. Don't start training for a life sometime in the future. All the misery in the world is created because you have completely forgotten to live; you have become engaged in an activity which has nothing to do with life.

The moment you are married to a man, you start training him to be faithful. Live while he is faithful -- it will not be more than two weeks; two weeks is the human limit! Live as deeply as possible -- perhaps your living and loving deeply may help him to remain faithful the third week also. And never project too much; three weeks is enough.

My own experience is that if you have lived three weeks lovingly, the fourth week will follow. But you start disturbing things from the first moment. Before you start living, training is needed; you spoil the time by training, and a man who could have loved you for at least two weeks becomes bored within two days.

One woman never married. And when she was dying, a friend asked, "Why have you never married? You are so beautiful."

She said, "What is the need? As far as training is concerned I train my dog, and he never learns! Every day I am training and he still comes home late in the night. I have a parrot who tells me everything a husband is expected to say. In the morning he says, "Hello darling!" I have a servant who steals, who continuously lies. What need have I for a husband? Everything is being fulfilled." A husband is needed for these things?

A wife is needed, not to have an experience of intimacy and love, but to make an exhibition of her; just to show around the neighborhood and make everybody jealous that you have such a beautiful woman. Load her with all the ornaments and make everybody jealous of your richness; otherwise, how are you going to show your richness? A wife is a show-window; she shows your achievements, your power. Naturally, you have to train her how to become more social, how to help you in your businesses.

The saying seems to be perfect that behind the success of every great man there is a woman -- in many different senses. Sometimes just to escape from her, one becomes madly engaged in earning money.

When Henry Ford was asked, "Why did you go on earning and earning, when you have earned so much? It was time to enjoy and relax."

He said, "That was not the reason for earning. I was engaged in earning first to escape from my wife, and secondly, I became interested in whether I can earn more or she can spend more." A competition, a lifelong competition!

People get involved in strange dramas. Very few people live authentically -- they just act.

A man is sitting in a cinema, and the wife is continually reminding him how the hero is showing his love so deeply to his wife. Finally, the husband says, "Stop all this nonsense!

You don't know how much he's paid for it! And moreover, it is only acting; it is not reality. I will certainly say he is a good actor."

The wife said, "Perhaps you are not aware that in actual life also they are wife and husband."

He said, "My God! If that is true, then he is the greatest actor I have ever seen; otherwise, even on the stage, to show so much love to your own wife is simply beyond human capacity. He is almost a genius as far as acting is concerned."

People think love is only for actors. It has been noted by psychoanalysts that people are sitting in front of their TV's for hours. An American watches TV six hours per day on average -- that is the average. There may be few maniacs watching nine hours, ten hours, twelve hours. Slowly slowly, watching movies, watching television, watching a football match, watching a tournament, people have simply become observers; they don't love.

Some actor loves -- they simply watch. They don't play; some professional players play --

they watch. They don't do anything; they are glued to their chairs and are just watching everything. But watching and doing are totally different. They feel completely satisfied that they have seen a beautiful film on love. They are completely satisfied that they have seen a great boxing tournament. And they themselves are just onlookers.

It is something of a great calamity that has reduced millions of people to onlookers. And the people who are being watched are actors. They are not in real love, they are being paid for it. They are experts in deceiving people, pretending that what they are doing is real. Their tears are false, their smiles are false, their love is false, their anger is false.

What kind of world have we created? The doers are all acting because they are paid for it, and the remaining nondoing world is simply watching.

You are here to live.

You are here to dance.

You are here to experience life.

Others are doing it for you. On your behalf people are loving, people are playing, people are doing all kinds of things. And what is left for you? -- just to watch. Death will not be able to take much from you -- only your television, because you don't have anything else.

This is the false ego that has created a false life pattern and lifestyle.

Drop everything false.

Be authentic and true; that is the first step. And once you are authentic and true, you will see how beautiful it is. And that will create the longing to go beyond, in search of the ultimate truth, the final statement and the final experience, beyond which nothing else exists.

A famous surgeon went on safari to Africa. When he came back his colleagues asked him how it had been. "Ah, it was very disappointing," he said, "I didn't kill a thing. I would have been better off staying here in the hospital!"

Fifteen minutes after the Titanic sank, Morie and Louis find themselves on the same overturned raft. The water is freezing, sharks are cruising by, and the raft is slowly sinking. "Ah well," said Louis, "it could have been worse."

"Worse? How could it be worse?" screamed Morie.

"Well, we could have bought return tickets!"

People are almost crazy -- a tremendous cleansing is needed -- and most of their insanity is because of their false life; it is not satisfying. False food cannot be nourishment, false water cannot quench your thirst, and false ego cannot give you real life. It is simple arithmetics.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

WHEN YOU SPOKE OF MEANING AND CONTEXT, IT SET BELLS RINGING IN

ME. MEANING, NOT JUST OF WORDS BUT OF EVERYTHING, DEPENDS ON

CONTEXT -- ESPECIALLY MY LIFE. YOU HAVE A VAST CONTEXT, BELOVED

MASTER. WILL YOU PLEASE SPEAK ABOUT YOUR CONTEXT IN THIS PLACE, THIS WORLD, AT THIS TIME? DID YOU CHOOSE IT, OR DID EXISTENCE PUT

YOU HERE KNOWING THAT WHATEVER HUMANITY NEEDS, YOU ARE THE

BEST MAN FOR THE JOB?

Devageet, as far as I am concerned, I have never done anything. Whatever has happened, I cannot take the credit for it. Since the day I came to know my nothingness, things have been happening but I am not the doer. Existence has taken over. I am not even concerned whether what is happening is going to succeed or fail; it is none of my concern. Hence, you cannot call it my "job." I am as much part of existence as the trees, as the moon, as the stars.

The whole functions in an organic way.

Everything is related to everything else.

The smallest blade of grass is connected with the greatest star millions of light years away. All are functioning, and there is nobody who is dictating.

Existence is, in itself, the master.

And whatever happens is spontaneous: nobody orders it, nobody follows. This is the greatest mystery.

Because this mystery could not be understood, people from the very beginning started imagining a God. Their imagination of a God is only their psychological difficulty in accepting this tremendous universe, running spontaneously on its own without any accidents. Not even a traffic policeman -- and millions of stars...!

Just the other day Hasya brought me the news that in California a very new thing has suddenly come into being. During the last week five persons have been shot dead. And this new thing is happening on the streets, because the streets have become so small and the traffic is so great that cars are almost not moving. Roads appear as if they are parking lots.

And people are carrying guns in their cars because they become so annoyed that the man ahead is going so slow and it gets on their nerves. They have been honking their horns, but nothing is moving. Thousands of horns are honking all around. And in the last week five persons parked by the side of the road, took out a gun and shot the man ahead whom they didn't know -- and he was in the same trouble, he was not creating it. The problem was just that the man was ahead. And this is just the beginning. Last week it started, now it will grow. Because when things start, it is very difficult to stop them, particularly in California!

Almost all the races of the world have conceived God. It is simply a psychological problem, it has nothing to do with religion, nothing to do with philosophy. It is simply incomprehensible, it is inconceivable how this immense universe is running without any controller, how it has come into existence without any creator. Just because people could not stretch their imaginations and their logic, they invented... just to console themselves that there is nothing to worry about; otherwise, it would be very difficult even to sleep.

Millions of stars and galaxies are moving, and who knows in the night where the crash is going to happen? Nobody is looking after it all. There is no policeman, there is no court, there is no law -- but strangely, everything is going so smoothly.

Seasons change and the clouds come with rains. Seasons change and new leaves and new flowers... and it has been going on since eternity. Nobody keeps the record. Nobody tells the sun that it is time; there is no alarm clock that goes off exactly in the morning to tell the sun, "Get out! Get out from your blankets!" Things simply are going perfectly right.

In fact, my own denial of God is based on the same reasoning. I say God is not because no God can manage this immense universe. Either it can be intrinsically spontaneous... it cannot be managed from outside. Unless there is some inner coherence, some inner organic unity, no outside controller can go on managing it from eternity to eternity. He will get bored and shoot himself, because what is the purpose? Nobody is going to pay him; nobody even knows his address!

I have heard, a man wrote a letter to God because he needed fifty dollars very urgently.

And not knowing the address, he sent it to: God the Father, c/o The Postmaster -- because the postmaster must know! The postmaster opened the letter. What was the letter, to whom was he supposed to send it -- to God? He read the letter and he felt sorry for the man; he must be in really great trouble. He had described that his mother was dying, and he has no money, no employment, no money for food, no money for medicine. "Just for once, send fifty dollars and I will never ask again."

The postmaster said, "Something should be done because this man should not feel disappointed."

The postmaster himself was not very rich, so he asked all the people in the post office to please contribute something -- forty-five dollars was managed. He said, "Something is better than nothing; only five dollars are missing." He sent forty-five dollars.

The man was very angry. He said to God, "Listen, next time you send, never send through the post office because those people have taken their discount, five dollars."

My own understanding is that it cannot be managed from outside. That is more inconceivable: why should any God take the trouble, and how long can he manage?

Sometimes he will get tired, and sometimes he will be on holiday. What will happen on holidays? And when he is tired or has fallen asleep, what will happen? Roses will stop growing, stars will be going on the wrong path, the sun may start rising from the West --

who will prevent it? -- just for the change, just for one day.

No, from outside it is impossible -- God is absolutely absurd -- nobody can manage existence from the outside. The only possibility is from the inner; it is an organic being.

The moment you forget yourself as a separate being, you become part of it. You have been part of it; you were unnecessarily carrying the idea of being separate and feeling burdened. I have not felt burdened at all about anything. Whatever happens I have not even thought that it could have been otherwise. Why should it be otherwise? Who to complain to? Because I don't have anybody to pray to, I cannot complain either. A deep acceptance, and you have gone beyond misery.

Yes, my context, Devageet is vast -- but it is not my context, it is the context of the whole. It is functioning perfectly well -- nothing ever goes wrong. But if you take yourself separately, then you are unnecessarily becoming burdened. My whole teaching is: drop all the burden on the whole, be free of all burden, and live spontaneously and totally and without any guilt.

There is nobody who can punish you, and there is nobody who can reward you. You are part of the whole; you are not doing it. The whole is doing through you, whether you know it or not. The moment you know that it is the whole which is functioning through you, you become absolutely free of all responsibility.

My colleagues in the university used to say they have never seen a more irresponsible man than me. And they said, "We cannot conceive that a man of your understanding never feels any responsibility for anything." It was difficult for them to understand that to be responsible, first you have to be.

I have left myself far behind, and since then there is no responsibility. Whatever the whole manages through me, the whole must be responsible for it. I don't come in its way.

I don't even think whether it is right or wrong, whether it should be done or not. Who am I to judge? This, I call let-go.

Hymie Goldberg died and went to hell. He immediately started giving orders and bossing everyone around.

"Stop it," said Satan. "One would think you owned the place."

"I do," said Hymie, "my wife gave it to me while I was on earth!"

I don't own anything just because I don't have a wife! I cannot even own hell. Nobody can send me there. I simply go on living moment to moment without bothering about the past, without bothering about the future. Anything that happens, happens, I accept it with absolute gratitude.

Certainly, the context is vast, and for those who will come close to me, for those who have come close to me, that makes understanding me or my life almost impossible; it has become part of the ultimate mystery. Unless you realize the mystery of the whole you cannot have any conception where I am. I am certainly not what appears to be my place, my space.

If you look into my eyes, you can see into the depths which go beyond me.

If you listen to my silences, you will hear the silence of the sky -- it is not mine.

And I would like you also to be in the same space, where you have nothing that you can say is yours, where nothing belongs to you because you belong to the whole.

Just a joke for Devageet; I don't know why it should be said, but that's why I have told you I don't have any reason to do anything -- just this joke wants to be told, and I cannot do anything about it!

Stella and Eunice are in the kitchen preparing vegetables and gossiping on a Friday night when Eunice looks out of the window. She sees her husband, Bernie, coming up the walkway with a bouquet of flowers.

Eunice turns to Stella and says, "Oh, no! He's bringing flowers. That means the whole weekend I will be on my back with my legs up in the air."

Stella replies, "What's the matter? Don't you have a vase?"

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

The Invitation

Chapter #3

Chapter title: Let yourself be a mystery

22 August 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive

code:

8708220

ShortTitle:

INVITA03

Audio:

Yes

Video:

Yes

Length:

103

mins

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

I FEEL WARM LOVE IN YOUR PRESENCE AND NOW I REALIZE THAT WHEN I AM NOT CLOSE TO YOU IT DOES NOT HAPPEN IN THE SAME WAY. IS IT

STILL TRUE THAT TIME AND SPACE DO NOT MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE IN

THE GREAT AFFAIR BETWEEN MASTER AND DISCIPLE?

Deva Suria, it is always true that space and time make no difference in the great love affair between the disciple and the master. It is not sometimes true and sometimes not true; it belongs to the realm of the eternal. But in actual experience, particularly in the beginning, the love of the disciple is still not so pure; it still has expectations. It is not desireless yet; it is polluted by many things.

Because of this pollution of desires, expectations, it appears that space and time make a difference. They don't make any difference as far as love is concerned, but your love is not just love; it has many more things involved in it. Even the expectation of enlightenment is enough to destroy its purity.

The principle is about the pure love -- love that is simply happy for no reason at all, love that has already joined the dance of the master in the heart. Then the master is not outside you; you carry him within yourself, wherever you are. That's why space and time don't make any difference. But if the master is still outside -- an object of love -- then certainly, space will make a difference, time will make a difference. The difference comes in through impurities, and the impurities are such that it is almost unavoidable in the beginning, because you cannot think of the desire for enlightenment as an impurity.

In fact, for you the great love affair between the master and the disciple is happening only because of your longing for enlightenment. Naturally, when you are close you feel more confident. The closer you are, the more you feel the presence of the master. The further you go away, your confidence starts shaking because the master is still only a means to a certain end.

The day Gautam Buddha died... there were ten thousand disciples who always followed him on his long journeys. In that great crowd of disciples, there were people like Sariputta, Maudgalyan, Mahakashyapa, Manjushri, Vimal Kirti, and many more who had already become enlightened, who had already crossed the barrier between the master and the disciple, who had entered into the world of the devotee.

When Gautam Buddha died it was a great shock to everyone -- even to his closest disciple, Ananda; he burst into tears. He was older than Gautam Buddha -- Buddha was eighty-two; Ananda must have been nearabout eighty-five or even more -- he burst out just like a small child whose mother has died. But Manjushri, Vimal Kirti and Sariputta remained utterly silent, as if nothing was happening, or whatever is happening does not matter.

Many disciples were shocked by the coldness of Sariputta and others -- they could not understand. They could understand Ananda bursting into tears; in fact, they thought that Ananda was the most intimate. And Sariputta and Maudgalyan and Mahakashyapa -- they were sitting silently. People asked them, "When Ananda is crying, why are you silent?"

Sariputta said, "Because for me, my master can never die. Death cannot make us apart.

He has only left the body, but he is here; my heart is still feeling -- in fact, feeling more than ever -- his presence."

And the same was the answer of the other enlightened disciples... not a single tear in their eyes. They were not hard, they were not cold. They had simply crossed the barrier between the master and the disciple. Either you can say they had entered into the master's consciousness, or you can say they had allowed the master's consciousness to enter into them. It means the same thing: the two had disappeared; now there was only one.

People's understanding was absolutely wrong that Ananda, who had burst into tears, must have loved the master more. Asked, he said, "I am crying because he was alive, and for forty-two years I have been his most intimate disciple -- intimate in the sense that I was always with him. In these forty-two years not even for a single day was I separate; even in the night I used to sleep in his room, just to be present in case he needed something. I am not crying because I was the most intimate, I am crying because even with such a long physical intimacy I have remained separate from him. Something has remained like a barrier."

Gautam Buddha was not dead yet. He had closed his eyes, and he was relaxing into the eternal. He came back, opened his eyes, and said to Ananda, "Don't be worried. It was my presence and your love towards me that was the barrier, because your love was motivated. You wanted to become enlightened before anybody else, and you were always deep down jealous when other people were coming to their potential, coming to their source.

"Deep down you felt hurt that you were so close and yet others were becoming enlightened who had come after you. You could not rejoice in their enlightenment. You could have rejoiced, you could have celebrated, but your mind was focused on your own enlightenment -- you were too much. And your unconscious continued from the very first day, holding on to the idea that you are a cousin-brother to me, and my elder brother.

"Although, after the first day you never mentioned it, still the psychological memory was there. Consciously, deliberately you became a disciple, but unconsciously you always knew that you were the elder brother; you could not dissolve with me. But don't cry, because the moment I am dead, within twenty-four hours you will become enlightened.

Without my death, you cannot become enlightened."

Ananda still could not console himself. He said, "After twenty-four hours you will not be here. To whom am I to say whether I have become enlightened or not? And I don't know when in the eternity of time I will meet a man like you -- a consciousness so great and so vast."

Buddha said, "Don't be worried; it is going to happen. I was watching continuously. I was myself puzzled why it was not happening to you. You want it too much."

And these are the problems: wanting enlightenment too much, and you will miss it; holding the desire anywhere in your unconscious to achieve it, you will not achieve it.

Relaxing, forgetting all about enlightenment, forgetting all about the future, living in the present, your love will attain to a crystal clear purity, undefiled by any desire, even the greatest desire of enlightenment.

Then you will not feel the distinction between the master and yourself; then you can carry the master within your heart. Then wherever you are, your master is with you. The duality is dropped; the two flames have become one. It is not your flame, it is not the master's flame -- when those two flames become one, they become universal. In separation, you are a disciple and there is a master -- in becoming one, the disciple disappears, the master disappears; what remains is only a pure awareness.

The transformation of love into pure awareness is the alchemy one has to learn by being close to a master. By being close to a master you can enjoy the warmth, his presence, his words, his heartbeat. But as you go far away you will not be able to listen to the same heartbeat; you will be again yourself -- back to zero. You will hear the heartbeat but it will be your own. Close to the master you are overwhelmed.

The secret to learn is to purify your love.

Drop all ambitions.

There is nothing to be achieved.

All that you want is already present in you. The master is not going to give you anything that you don't have. In fact, the master goes on taking away things which you think you have but you don't have. And the master cannot give you, of course, that which you have.

He can only take away all the barriers, all the hindrances, all the obstacles, so only that which is your own, remains behind. In that unpolluted space, the distinction between the master and the disciple is no more. That does not mean that you don't feel grateful to the master. In fact, only after this has happened, you feel for the first time a tremendous gratitude.

Sariputta was going very reluctantly on a message tour. Buddha had asked him to go to his own kingdom -- he was a prince before he became a disciple. Buddha said, "Now it is your responsibility and your compassion to go to your people -- to your father, to your mother, to your whole kingdom. What you have achieved, let them become aware of it. It is their potential too; share it."

He was very reluctant to leave. Buddha said, "What is the reluctance? -- because now I am within you. I am sending you away, knowing perfectly well that you will not feel any distance."

Sariputta said, "Distance is not the question. I can go to the farthest star, still you will be within my heart. The trouble is, here I touch your feet every day. You may be in my heart, but how am I going to touch your feet?"

Gautam Buddha said, "You are an enlightened being. You don't have to touch my feet."

Sariputta said, "Before enlightenment, it was a ritual. Just because every disciple was touching your feet, I was touching also. But now it is no longer a ritual. Now it is authentic gratitude, because without you I don't think I would have attained to myself.

Although it was always within me, I don't think that alone I was able to discover it -- not at least in this life.

"Your compassion, your love, your continuous showering of blessings slowly, slowly removed all that was not me. Now when I touch your feet it is not a ritual, it is a heartfelt nourishment. I feel nourished. The day I miss touching your feet, I feel a great gap. And I know that you are within me."

Buddha said, "Do one thing. All you who have become enlightened will have to learn to be away from me, and yet not away from me. It is true you cannot touch my feet, but from wherever you are just turn towards the side you think I am and bow down to the earth. My body belongs to the earth. If you touch the earth with the same gratitude, you have touched me."

Sariputta went away. And the people of his kingdom could not believe it; he had become such a glory, such a magnificence, such a beauty. All this was miraculous, but their curiosity was that every day -- morning, evening -- he would turn towards the direction where Buddha was dwelling far away, and touch his feet with tremendous gratitude. They said, "You are an enlightened being; you don't have to touch the earth."

He said, "I am not touching the earth. I have learned a new secret, that the body is nothing but earth, that the earth contains not only the feet of my Buddha, my master, but all the buddhas of the past, of the present, of the future. Touching it, I am touching all those who have become awakened and made the path clear for me, showed me the way."

Even when Buddha died, he continued... towards the same direction where Buddha's body was lying at the last moment. He never felt any separation. And it was not only for him, it was the same for all twenty-four disciples who had become enlightened.

Ananda became -- just according to the prediction of Gautam Buddha -- enlightened after twenty-four hours. He in fact did not move from the place. He closed his eyes when Buddha died and remained without eating, without drinking, without sleeping. Those twenty-four hours were the greatest time of his life, a time of transformation from an ignorant being into an awakened soul. He opened his eyes only when the tears had disappeared and a smile had come to his face.

Manjushri was close to him. He said, "What happened? You were crying; you were sitting as if dead, and suddenly you are smiling."

Ananda said, "I am smiling because his prediction proved right. It was the impurity of my love that was the hindrance. And now he is gone, there is no question of feeling like his elder brother, of feeling any attachment. In his funeral pyre, as his body disappeared into the smoke, all my attachments also disappeared."

It is not necessary, Suria, that I have to be on a funeral pyre before you can become enlightened. I can be if you need it. One day I will be, but it will be far more beautiful if the day I am on the funeral pyre, you are without tears. As I disappear from the body you know I have become more involved deeply within you, within the whole existence.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

HELP! I AM FALLING TO PIECES! IS IT JUST MY MONTHLY PREMENSTRUAL

EMOTIONAL TURMOIL? THIS TIME IT FEELS MORE LIKE AN EMOTIONAL

DEEP CLEANING. ALL THESE TEARS AND PAINS SEEM TO REMOVE

SOMETHING OLD TO MAKE SPACE FOR SOMETHING NEW, EVEN THOUGH I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IS IS. I FEEL EXCITED AND SCARED AT THE SAME

TIME, AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO HOLD ON TO ANYMORE.

BELOVED OSHO, WHAT IS HAPPENING?

Nandan, a purification is happening. It has nothing to do with your monthly period. It may be coincidence that both are happening together, but because you have been capable of dropping your miserable relationship, which very few people are capable... Look at Latifa -- old great Om is back! It took me so much trouble to separate them... because both were miserable, but misery is something at least to hold on to. Both must have been feeling very alone without misery.

Misery functions almost like a magnet. People complain about it, but not really to get rid of it; they complain about it just to brag about it. They are really saying, in fact without saying, "Don't think I am alone; I am miserable!" And because misery hurts, they are in a dilemma: if they leave the misery, that means leaving the miserable relationship. Then they feel very lonely, and then they are reminded of the Western proverb -- and nothing is more miserable -- "Something is better than nothing." At least there was something to talk about, to question, to figure out -- and now you are just sitting in your room doing nothing.

Ginsberg returned home from a trip abroad on business to find out that his wife had been unfaithful. Very upset, he interrogated his wife, "Was it that dungheap Goldsberg?"

"No."

"Was it that pile of filth, Levensky?"

"No."

"Was it that swine, Morrie Levy?"

"No."

Finally Ginsberg exploded, "What's the matter with my friends? Not good enough for you?"

People are so attached to misery they are searching and looking for it. Nandan, you are in a beautiful space. Just remember not to miss, that you don't have anything to hold on to --

there is no need. Why should one have something to hold on to? Are you a passenger in a commuter bus, that you have to hold on to something? And even if you want to hold on to something, avoid for the time being, human beings; otherwise, they will start the same old story again.

With great difficulty you have been able to finish a miserable relationship. Rejoice in it.

And as far as holding on is concerned, anything... a teddy bear! And don't laugh, because you know the great bodyworker, Satyarthi? He still holds on to a teddy bear. He cannot go to sleep without his teddy bear. And it is an old dirty teddy bear, an old relationship, ancient friendship, from his very childhood... he has become greasy! He may be wanting to escape, but Satyarthi is holding on and he has strong hands. His art is deep massage, and I think he must be doing that massage to the teddy bear.

An outdoor man who had gone on hunting expeditions all over the world -- always accompanied by his wife at her insistence -- told his troubles to a friend one day.

"Yes sir," said the hunter, "I've taken that woman into the jungles of Africa, the jungles of Borneo, and the jungles of Malaya. The only trouble is, she always finds her way back!"

So Nandan, it is good. Hold on to anything. Keep the doors closed because the old misery may come back, the old miserable fellow will be also in the same space -- what to hold on to? Strange ideas... because I have lived my whole life without holding anything, and I don't see why you cannot.

Just learn to live. It is just a habit; there are people who cannot sleep without their intimate enemy, because it is a ritual. First they have to fight -- a good pillow fight, saying everything dirty that can be said to each other, and then, feeling tired, they fall asleep. Alone, one feels almost lost; one does not know who he is. But there is no need. It is only a question of giving a little time for your consciousness to become acquainted with aloneness.

Once you are aware of the beauty of aloneness, the purity and the ecstasy of it, you will never think to hold on to anything. And a relationship is possible without holding on to each other. Then the relationship also has a beauty. You are not dependent on each other; the other is not a teddy bear; nor should you allow the humiliation of being a teddy bear for him.

You stand as two pillars of a temple, separate but supporting the same roof. Your love is just like the roof: you are both supporting it, but you stand alone, in your beauty, in your silence, in your meditation.

Nandan, you are doing perfectly well. You ask me, "Osho, what is happening?" Nothing is happening, and that's what is needed. This constant desire that something should happen keeps one unconscious: running after shadows, throwing parties, going from here to there, to this person, to that person, for something to happen. But just watch your whole past -- has anything ever happened? One only deludes oneself that things are happening.

Stop deluding yourself.

All is perfectly good.

There is no need for anything to happen.

The moment you relax and you don't desire for any happening, you will be surprised --

millions of things are happening. So many birds are singing, so many trees are blossoming... Just get out of the imprisonment of your own making, and all around things are happening.

The whole of existence is always in a celebration -- participate in it. Dance with the trees, dance under the moon. Just for a few days, avoid human beings -- I am saying just for a few days, just to give you a gap to become acquainted with the nonhuman existence around you. Otherwise, you become so miserable with human beings, you don't have any time, nor do you have a clear eyesight. Everything becomes dismal and dizzy, and you cannot see the tremendous universe all around you, in eternal ecstasy.

Be acquainted with this existence, and after this acquaintance and the bliss that will arise out of it, you can share it with a human being -- and without holding, without any attachment, just being with a human being as if you are with a stranger. You don't know who he is, nor does he know who you are -- and there is any need to know. Let yourself be a mystery and let him be a mystery. It is good if you can have a few moments of joy and celebrate together, but the moment you see that holding starts, beware... you are getting back into the misery again.

It does not matter with whom, holding on is the fundamental cause of all misery. If you can relate without any relationship, just a casual friendship, you will feel grateful. There was no need for it to happen, but still existence has allowed you to be with a stranger for a few hours or a few days. Don't expect too much. That's why I am saying a few hours, a few days -- not even a few weeks. Because the more you expect, the more is the possibility to cling, to hold.

One strange woman from the Philippines... I have never forgotten her; she is a sannyasin.

She told me that after being in so-called relationships and always finding, strangely, that every relationship ends in hell, "I decided not to have any relationship, but only casual meetings with strangers."

She said, "I can tell it to you -- I don't say it to just anybody: In a train I meet somebody. I don't know him; he does not know me -- we enjoy the time together. And then a station comes -- he gets out. And the moments have been beautiful while we were together.

Now, perhaps we will never see each other, but those beautiful moments still go on lingering in the memory."

She said, "Since I learned that, I have been only with strangers. I have not even bothered to find out their names. I remember them only by their faces. And anyway there is no need to remember, because there is no possibility of meeting them again." But I have seen that the woman has a tremendous freedom and a great beauty.

Out of this understanding -- of not creating a relationship but only moments of relatedness, friendship, or better only friendliness; not falling in love but only enjoying love without creating any bonds, without giving promises for tomorrow or taking promises for tomorrow -- just live the moment joyfully. And when tomorrow comes it will also bring its own gifts.

Nandan, whatsoever pains and tears you are passing through are all cleansing. And you can feel it, that something new is happening: "Even though I have no idea what it is."

There is no need to have any idea. Let it happen, because having an idea means again you make it a mind thing. Let it happen; it is a cleansing of the unconscious. And it is good that it is happening in your premenstrual emotional turmoil -- that will clean your body and your mind, both together.

Just wait.... Some stranger is bound to knock on your doors. Never be afraid of strangers, because everybody is a stranger. However long you have lived with a person, you remain strangers. And being with a stranger has a freshness. Never hold him, and never allow him to hold you. Make it clear: "Our meeting is out of freedom; freedom is a greater value to me than love. Because if love destroys freedom, it destroys itself; if love enhances freedom, it enhances itself."

Freedom is our most precious treasure. Don't lose it for anything. And anything that comes out of it as an offshoot -- love, friendliness -- will have a great beauty to it, and will never create any misery; there is no point. The moment you see misery is arising, say goodbye; become strangers again as you have been before.

One thing I have observed which is very difficult for human beings to maintain: either they can love or they can hate, but they cannot remain just strangers neither hating nor loving. Remember, hate is also a relationship. And if you are going to have a relationship then it is better to have love, because in the misery of love there may be a few moments which are beautiful. But in the misery of hate it is all dark night -- no stars, no moon, no light, no possibility of anything; it is poisonous.

These are the secrets to learn: Love, but keep as much apart as the pillars of a temple --

don't come too close. Being at a distance is always good; a fresh breeze can pass between you. Coming too close, the bad body odor, the bad breath... and there are a thousand and one things. Life unnecessarily becomes a continuity from one hell into another. Just the names change, but the reality of misery remains continuous.

My vision of a good world is that people will be individuals, meeting with others, sharing their joy, their love, unconditionally. And not expecting that tomorrow also will be the same -- they will remain aware of the constantly changing existence.

Your love, your friendliness is also going to change. And when it changes don't cling.

Allow it to change. Be like a river, constantly moving; don't become a pond.

All marriages are ponds. They don't go anywhere, they are simply there. Water is evaporating every day and they are becoming more and more dirty. One day there will be only dirt.

The river is constantly flowing, and because it is constantly flowing, it remains always fresh. The freshness is in its flow.

Your life should be like a river.

And you will have to move through many scenes -- why get caught up with one scene?

Why go on reading the same page again and again and again? It is destructive. Once, it is beautiful -- twice, it is dangerous. Keep your eyes fresh, and keep your consciousness available, available in both ways: to allow someone in and to allow someone out, with no hate but only gratitude.

Slowly, slowly... Love is not the ultimate, it is just a training school for learning how to be alone. This togetherness is so painful that finally, even the most retarded learn that to be alone is the secret of being blissful.

Even Niskriya has learned it! He is a silent fellow; he tolerated as long as possible. He has no time for anything except his work, but even to him it became a trouble and finally, he had to get rid of it. Since then, he is looking very happy. I have just been wondering how long he will remain happy. It is possible -- he may remain happy -- he has his camera to hold on to!

So Nandan, you can find something. Anything will do except a human being; these are the most dangerous animals around. Don't get caught up. Unless you are certain that you are capable of getting out of any relatedness, don't enter in.

Keep the door open; don't close it. And keep the future clean without any promises to be fulfilled.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

SINCE I STARTED MEDITATING FOUR YEARS AGO MY LIFE HAS CHANGED

TREMENDOUSLY. CHANGES ARE HAPPENING; IT IS NOT THAT I HAVE AN

INSIGHT AND THEN I START DOING SOMETHING. THIS HAS BEEN A TIME OF

WAITING. THERE IS A FEELING THAT SOMETHING WANTS TO EXPRESS

ITSELF, AND THAT I HAVE TO ALLOW IT. AM I WAITING FOR SOMETHING

TO GROW STRONG ENOUGH OR AM I JUST LAZY? OR AM I WAITING FOR

GODOT?

BELOVED MASTER, THANK YOU FOR YOUR BEING HERE.

Amrit Sagaram, things are growing.

Since you started meditating, much water has gone down the Ganges, and much has changed in your consciousness. But don't ask for more; let existence take its own time.

Remember Ta Hui -- the more you hurry, the more you are delayed. You cannot do anything better than existence is doing already. Simply leave yourself in the hands of existence.

This relaxedness people have misunderstood always as laziness. It is not laziness. It looks like laziness to workaholics who cannot sit down, who have to do something because they are afraid the moment they stop doing something, they will have to know themselves. And that is their fear -- who knows who they are? It is better to avoid the encounter.

Relaxation is to be at ease. Whatever is happening to you is perfectly good.

You say, "Since I started meditating four years ago my life has changed tremendously.

Changes are happening, it is not that I have an insight and then I start doing something.

This has been a time of waiting. There is a feeling that something wants to express itself, and that I have to allow it." That's how it should be. Your mind is worried about what is happening because what is happening is going to take all the functions of mind out of its control. Hence, the mind is creating questions: "Am I waiting for something to grow strong enough or am I just lazy? Or am I waiting for Godot?" You are not waiting for any Godot.

Meditation is simply a waiting for the unknown, for the unpredictable, for the incomprehensible. And the more the waiting is pure, the more grace arises out of it. No hurry, no desiring, no expectations, just waiting and millions of things will happen. In fact, the things that are going to happen to a meditator are so vast you can not conceive of them, you can not have even dreamt of them; they are beyond the capacity of the mind to conceive.

You just wait and let things happen to you -- not according to you, but according to existence itself. Existence has not to be according to you; you have to be in tune with existence, according to existence.

This is the only difference between the non meditator and the meditator. The non-meditator always wants existence according to his ideas, and falls naturally into miserable states, because existence is too big; it cannot follow your ideas, your prayers, your expectations, your demands. The proverb is true that man proposes and God disposes -- but there is no God to dispose. In fact, in the very proposal, you have disposed of it. You have created a failure for yourself because you wanted to succeed.

So there is nothing to expect, nothing to desire. Existence is so abundant that if you are simply waiting it starts showering flowers on you. A life of waiting, without any expectations, is the only religious life I know of.

A Broadway bookie was given a parrot in lieu of cash payment. The bird's vocabulary included choice phrases in English, French, Spanish and German. Sensing a winner, the bookie hauled the bird off to his favorite bar. "Speaks four languages," he said to the bartender, who snorted in disbelief. "Wanna bet this bird can speak four languages?" the bookie challenged.

Annoyed, the bartender finally agreed to a ten-dollar wager. The bookie turned to the parrot and said, "Parlez-vous Francais?" There was no response. On the street the bookie glared at the bird, "You fink!" he exclaimed, "I've got ten bucks riding on you and you clam up on me. I oughta strangle you."

"Don't be a jerk," the parrot replied. "Just think of the odds you'll get tomorrow."

Just wait for tomorrow. My own experience is, every day brings so much that when I think retrospectively I cannot conceive that I could have expected it -- and it always brings in abundance! Existence is so compassionate and so sharing, but only to those who don't demand. Desirelessness is the foundation of all great happenings.

Sagaram, just wait in trust and everything that existence has will be revealed to you.

The Lone Ranger is about to be hanged by rustlers who caught him spying on their camp.

His only hope is Tonto who managed to escape and go for help. As the bandits are putting the noose around the Lone Ranger's neck, he sees three horses approaching at a gallop. Sure enough, as they get closer, he can see that it is Tonto on the first horse, but he can't make out who the other two riders are.

The Lone Ranger finally sees that Tonto is riding with two beautiful naked women. The riders burst into the robbers' camp and Tonto rides up to the Lone Ranger saying,

"Kemosabe, I have returned with the people you asked me to get."

"Tonto, you idiot," says the Lone Ranger, "I told you to go get a posse!"

It is better, Sagaram, not to ask for anything; otherwise, there is always frustration.

Don't ask, and you will be fulfilled.

Just trust silently and wait, and miracles are always happening to the meditators. The greatest miracle is the revelation of the mystery of oneself.

You are perfectly on the right path. Beware of your mind -- it will try to disturb you, to distract you, to create doubts. Just put it aside. This great affair has nothing to do with the mind.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

The Invitation

Chapter #4

Chapter title: Your god is as rich as your consciousness 22 August 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

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Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

GEORGE GURDJIEFF HAS SAID: "YOU ARE IN PRISON. IF YOU WISH TO GET

OUT OF PRISON, THE FIRST THING YOU MUST DO IS REALIZE THAT YOU

ARE IN PRISON. IF YOU THINK YOU ARE FREE, YOU CAN'T ESCAPE."

WHAT ARE THE PRISONS THAT I CALL "HOME"?

Rama Prem, George Gurdjieff is one of the most significant masters of this age.

He is unique in many ways -- nobody has said things in the contemporary world the way Gurdjieff has said them. He is almost like another Bodhidharma or Chuang Tzu, apparently absurd but in reality giving great indications towards the liberation of human consciousness.

You are asking about one of his significant statements. He often used to say, "You are in prison." Sometimes he was even deeper into the reality, and instead of saying, "You are in prison," he would say, "You are the prison." That is more true.

If you wish to get out of prison -- or better to say, if you don't want to be a prison -- the first thing you must do is realize that you are in prison... or you are the prison. This is something to be always remembered as one of the first principles for any seeker of truth.

The tendency of the human mind is to deny those things which are ugly, to hide those things which he does not want others to know -- to hide in such a way, in such depths of the unconscious that even he himself becomes unaware of them. This way he maintains his superficial personality.

Gurdjieff had a story about it...

There was a magician who used to live in faraway deep forests, and he had many sheep because that was his only food. In those deep forests he was keeping all those sheep just to kill them every day, one by one. Naturally, the sheep were very afraid of the man, and they used to run into the forest being afraid that any day can be their day. Their friends are gone, there is no reliability... tomorrow they may be gone. Out of fear they used to go far away, deep into the forest. And to find them was a tedious job every day.

Finally, the magician did a trick. He hypnotized all the sheep, and told every sheep, "You are an exception; everybody may be killed but you can never be killed. You are no ordinary sheep; you have a divine privilege." To some he said, "You are not sheep at all; you are lions, you are tigers, you are wolves. Only sheep are killed. You need not hide yourself in the forest; that is very embarrassing, because a lion hiding himself in the forest in the fear that he will be killed... only sheep are killed." And in this way, he managed to hypnotize all the sheep in different ways.

He even said to a few sheep, "You are men, human beings, and human beings don't kill each other. You are just like me. Never be afraid and never escape out of fear." Since that day, no sheep escaped and hid in the forest, although they all saw every day that one sheep was being killed, slaughtered. But naturally everybody thought, That must be a sheep; I am a tiger, a lion, a human being. I am special and exceptional, I have a divine privilege.... So many different stories he put in their minds.

Gurdjieff says that unless you realize the first thing -- that you are in prison, that you are the prison -- then there is no hope for freedom. If you already believe that you are free, you are a hypnotized sheep which believes himself to be a lion -- exceptional, there is no need to be afraid -- which even believes he is a human being. He goes on seeing other sheep being killed, and still remains in a hypnotized state, never being aware of his actuality. To be free, if you already know that you are free, there is no problem.

All the religions together, perhaps unintentionally, have created a tremendous hypnotic state. People believe they have immortal souls. I am not saying that they don't have, I am simply saying that they don't know what they are believing. And because they believe they have an immortal soul, they never discover that they already have it. They have been told, "You are the very kingdom of God"... and it is so comfortable and so consoling to believe. But then there is no way to seek and search and find whether your hypothetical belief has any truth in it, or is just a hypnotic trick used by the society to keep you unafraid of death, to keep you unafraid of disease, old age, to keep you unafraid of your loneliness.

Your God may be just a psychological hypnosis. It is not your discovery. That is true --

that much is absolutely true. It has been implanted in your mind, and because you go on believing in it, your belief prevents any adventure in seeking the truth.

Ordinarily, you have been told continually that unless you believe, you will not find. But the truth is just the contrary. Belief is a barrier, it is not a bridge. Those who believe never find, because they never even begin the search; there is no need.

You are in prison and you think you are free.

You are in chains but you think they are ornaments. You are a slave but you have been told that you are humble, that you are simple, that this is the way a religious person should be. You are surrounded by many hypnotic strategies developed by society down the ages. And those hypnotic strategies are the root cause of your ignorance, of your misery, of your unenlightened state.

Hence the first thing to realize is that you are in prison. The moment you recognize that you are in prison, you cannot tolerate the prison. Nobody can tolerate it; it goes against human dignity. You will start finding ways to get out of it. You will start finding people who have already got out of it. You may start seeking and searching outside help beyond the walls, because there are people beyond the walls ready with every kind of help. But they are absolutely helpless if you believe that you are living in absolute freedom.

If you believe this imprisonment is your home, then of course it is absolute nonsense even to think of getting rid of it. The wall that keeps you a prisoner, you think is a protection. Then there is no question of making a hole in the wall and getting out, or finding a ladder, or taking some help from the outside. A rope can be thrown from the outside, a ladder can be arranged from the outside, but this is possible only if the basic thing, that you are in prison, is recognized. George Gurdjieff was consistently insisting,

"This is a basic realization. Without it, there is no progress towards enlightenment. If you think you are free, you can't escape."

"What are the prisons that I call `home'?" Rama Prem, all the so-called homes are nothing but prisons, because they don't give you freedom, they only give you security, safety, and in place they take away your very being, your freedom, your joy, your dance. But certainly they give you security, safety -- and naturally you have to pay for it.

The price that one has to pay is immensely great in comparison to what you get. You have to sell your very soul. But then what is the point of safety and security? You were searching for security and safety for your being, and in the very search you have sold your being. Now you are secure and safe, but what is the point? For whom is the safety and security? It does not serve you, it serves those who have managed to convince you that "If you give your soul, your being, we will take care -- then you need not be worried, then we are responsible for your safety and security."

The moment you give up your responsibility, you give up everything.

Then you are just an empty shell, without any meaning and without any essence. Your homes are nothing but beautiful prisons made by you, decorated by you. You think they are protecting you; they are destroying you. Certainly they protect you from the rains and they protect you from the winds and they protect you from the sun, but for these trivia they destroy you completely. You lose all joy, you lose all freedom, you lose all sense of direction.

You lose the very purpose you are here for.

You get lost in your own home.

You become too much concerned about the furniture and about the decorations, and you forget yourself completely. This forgetfulness is a kind of deep psychological sleep.

Your wife, your husband, your children -- nobody is yours. All are man-made, arbitrary relationships -- even your own children are not your own. They come through you; they don't belong to you. You belong to the past; they belong to the future. There is no connection, there is no relationship; hence, as man has become more and more intelligent there has come a great generation gap.

One great Russian novelist, Turgenev, has written a book -- perhaps his best, his masterpiece -- FATHERS AND SONS. The whole book is about the struggle between the fathers and the sons, because the fathers would like the sons just to be their replicas.

Naturally, they will not allow the sons any freedom. Obedience they expect; they expect their sons to be their carbon copies.

Even God the Father was expecting obedience and nothing else; what to say about ordinary fathers? He was angry because of disobedience, and his anger was too great in comparison to the disobedience. The disobedience was created by him. He provoked it; he created the curiosity in the children, Adam and Eve, to eat from certain trees, by preventing them -- that is the easiest way.

I lived in a place; just next to me was a very beautiful house, with a very big garden and compound, with a big wall surrounding it. And in India, such places are used as urinals.

A good wall... and immediately you feel the urge. And the man was very angry. He was a retired general. He asked me what to do: "It is strange, because there are so many houses, but people go on urinating around my house."

I said, "The reason is that you have not put up any notice."

He said, "What kind of notice?"

I said to him, "Just put a few notices around, all over the wall: Don't Urinate Here."

He said, "That's a good idea!"

He called a painter and wrote all over the wall, with big letters: Don't Urinate Here. And from that day, anybody who passed from that road had to urinate! It was such an invitation; otherwise, one might not have been reminded. But, "Don't Urinate"... and suddenly you feel that this is the right place. And you can see so many marks where people have already urinated. And the boards on the wall certainly show that the owner knows that people urinate here; otherwise, what is the need of putting such boards?

In one of the capital cities of India, Bhopal, I was surprised to know that people have to put small boards even in their sitting rooms -- "Don't Spit Here" -- because that is the only city in India where people spit anywhere. Even in your sitting room, it is common practice. And those boards don't prevent anybody from doing it. When I saw this I told the doctor with whom I was staying, "I have never seen anywhere in India such instructions. And here in your city, in every house... How did it start?"

He said, "I don't know."

I said, "Somebody must have first put up a board; spitting must have come afterwards." It is a temptation.

In the Garden of Eden, so many trees... and God indicated to a particular tree: "This is the tree of knowledge. Never eat the fruit from it." There was no need of any serpent to convince Eve, God convinced her himself; he is the serpent. And then the punishment for it is unbelievable. Even today we are suffering because Adam and Eve disobeyed!

Religions have created all kinds of crimes in the mind of man, just by prohibiting them.

They have also created ideas which prevent man from any search. They say, "Believe" --

and belief is cheap. You don't have to do anything. Gurdjieff had to go to such extents that he started saying to people, "You don't have souls. It is a wrong idea, implanted within you by religions, that everybody has a soul."

He had to say such a thing just to wake you up to search whether it is true or not; otherwise, everybody was perfectly asleep. What is the need to search? You already have it; God is within you! So do other things which, if you don't do, you will not get --

become a president, prime minister, become the richest man in the world, conquer the world -- because these things will not happen on their own. As far as God is concerned you already have him; he is within you, you don't have to go anywhere. Any day, any rainy day when you can't go anywhere to conquer the world, and you don't have anything else to do -- to correct the mechanism of your car, or to open your wall clock, or to open your radio or television even though they are functioning perfectly well, but you don't have anything else to do.... Any day, when you don't have anything to do, you can find God. He is within you, in your pocket.

Gurdjieff is perhaps the only man in the whole of history who insisted against all religions that you don't have a soul -- that a soul has to be created, then you have it. You are not born with it, you are born only with the possibility. If you make a great effort, perhaps you may achieve it. Otherwise most people are born and die; there is no soul that survives.

He was telling a compassionate lie. He was not right, but I cannot say that he was telling the lie for any other reason than compassion. It is true you are born with the soul, but it has become such an accepted fact that you don't even look within yourself. Somebody needs to shatter your idea that you are born with a soul, to tell you that inside you are just empty, hollow. Perhaps this may shake you up, wake you up. Perhaps this may give you the idea to look inside at least one time, whether there is a soul or you have been deceived.

And George Gurdjieff helped more people in this century than anybody else, because he created a great longing:

"Don't die before you have created a soul; otherwise nothing will survive the death.

Crystallize your being so that death cannot destroy it. But you are not born with it, you have to create it."

The idea of all the religions, although true, has not been helpful; it has become a hindrance. Gurdjieff's compassion is great. All the religions were against him, obviously, because that is the one point they all agree on -- that everybody is born with a soul. But Gurdjieff's point is more psychological, and more effective in creating liberation. He says you are just empty, and you will remain empty unless you make the effort, with a determined will, to create a center within you. There is possibility, potential, but you have to make it an actuality.

His insight was great.

And since Gurdjieff, people have forgotten it completely. He was alive just thirty years ago and just within thirty years people have forgotten the great teacher who was compassionate enough even to lie, just to make you shocked; just to create an opening in you so that you can start searching whether what all the religions have been saying has any truth in it or not.

The first thing he says is to realize you are in prison. The first thing that can also be said is, you have to realize that you are not yet. You have to be. You are a seed, but you have to find the right soil, and nobody else can do it for you. If you go on depending on priests and your so-called saints, you will miss this great opportunity that life has given to you.

And one does not know whether a second chance is being given or not. It has to be made emphatically clear to you that there is a possibility -- once missed, you have missed it forever.

Gurdjieff created a great turmoil in a few intelligent people, and he put them to great work in finding themselves. I don't agree with George Gurdjieff as far as his methods are concerned, but as far as this statement is concerned I agree totally. It is simply a psychological fact.

There are people who believe they are intelligent. In fact, it is very difficult to find somebody who believes he is unintelligent. If you can find somebody who believes he is unintelligent, there is a possibility for him to be intelligent. But for all those who already believe they are intelligent, you can't help them. And certainly this whole humanity is not intelligent. Their actions show it, their behavior shows it, their misery shows it -- it shows nothing but their retardedness.

But their belief is that they are geniuses -- life is just not giving them the right opportunities to show their talents; otherwise, they could have been Picasso, or Sartre, or Bertrand Russell, or Martin Buber; there is no problem. It is just because life is preventing them; otherwise, they have everything. It is not so.

Now education is universal, particularly in advanced countries, but even universal education does not create universal geniuses. Everybody is educated but even that does not give you the same talent. Man is living in a kind of half-awake and half-asleep state, and it is very easy to believe that you are great -- great in intelligence, great in beauty, great in everything -- rather than finding greatness, creating greatness, because that will require effort, tremendous effort. And enlightenment is the ultimate intelligence. If you already believe you are intelligent, you have stopped yourself from growing.

Just watch exactly where you are.

Be very impartial about judging yourself.

See exactly, even if it hurts, that you are a slave -- of some political ideology, of some religious theology, of some racial stupidity. Just watch and be very impartial and objective about yourself, and you will find what Gurdjieff calls your prisons. And once you recognize your prisons, it is not difficult to get out, because they are your own creations.

Bernstein died and went to hell. The receptionist asked, "Where do you want to go?"

"Do I have a choice?" asked the surprised Bernstein.

"Certainly! This anteroom is surrounded by closed doors. Just listen at each one and decide which you want to enter."

Bernstein listened at the first door and heard horrible shrieks of agony. He went to the second, then the third -- always hearing screams, cries, and yells. Finally, at the seventh door, he heard nothing but gentle murmuring.

He said quickly, "I'll take this one."

The door was flung open and he was propelled inside. He found himself up to his lower lip in a vast sea of shit. With him were millions of others, standing on tiptoe, muttering,

"Don't make waves! Don't make waves!"

Whatever you have made your life is your own choice. Even in hell you have a choice --

everywhere you have a choice. Your life is your own creation. Once you recognize it, then every change is possible.

Churchill's commentary on man was: "Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on." Man is a very strange animal, strangest of all the animals you see. He goes on believing in things which are not, he goes on believing in things which he has not. He never makes any effort, even in finding one very fundamental thing: who he is, from where he comes, and what is his destiny, where he is going.

People discuss all kinds of things, and people read about all kinds of things, but generally they never bother about themselves. It seems they take themselves for granted, and that's what Gurdjieff wants to stop: Don't take yourself for granted. Look inside, search for who you are, and whether you are or if there is just emptiness and something has to be done to bring the seed to sprout, to take care of the seed so that one day it can blossom.

Sinking uneasily into the depths of the psychiatrist's couch, the patient sighed, "Doctor, I have a problem." He loosened his collar and continued, "I've got one son in Harvard and another at Yale. I've just gifted them with twin Ferraris. I have a townhouse on upper Fifth Avenue, and a summer home at East Hampton, and a sprawling ranch in Venezuela."

"Well," smiled the psychiatrist, obviously impressed, "either I missed something or you really don't have a problem."

"Doc," the harried chap croaked, "I only make seventy-five dollars a week."

Naturally you will have problems! You make seventy-five dollars a week, and you imagine all these things: two Ferraris, two sons -- one in Harvard, one in Yale -- a townhouse, a house in the hills, a big ranch in Venezuela, and seventy-five dollars a week! People create their problems. People are utterly poor in their consciousness, and go on believing that the kingdom of God is within. In your poor consciousness, you can have only a very poor God -- seventy-five dollars a week. Your God is as rich as your consciousness is, because the God is another name for your consciousness.

Question 2

MY BELOVED MASTER,

THANK YOU FOR YOUR IMMENSE LOVE AND COMPASSION FOR ME! OSHO, HOW TO BE AWARE, ESPECIALLY DURING ANGER? THIS FEELING IS SO

STRONG IT COMES ALWAYS LIKE THOUSANDS OF WILD HORSES RUNNING.

I AM REALLY TIRED OF IT! CAN YOU HELP ME, AGAIN?

Prem Ila, you have the simplest problem -- you are making too much out of it. "Like thousands of wild horses running" -- that much anger would have burned you! From where do you bring thousands of wild horses?

I have heard that Mulla Nasruddin was having an interview to be employed on a ship, and there were three officials interviewing. One officer said, "A great cyclone, tidal waves, and the ship is almost sinking... what will you do?"

Mulla said, "No problem. I will do what is technically right -- I will stop the ship and lower down a heavy support."

The other officer said, "But another tidal wave is coming, and the ship is just going to sink. What are you going to do?"

Mulla said, "The same -- I will lower down another heavy support; every ship carries them."

The third officer said, "But another tidal wave..."

And Mulla said, "You are unnecessarily wasting my time. I will do the same -- lower down a heavy support to make the ship stable against the tidal wave."

The first official asked, "From where are you getting all these heavy supports?"

Mulla said, "It is strange. From where are you getting these tidal waves? -- from the same source! If you can imagine, why can't I imagine? You go on bringing as many tidal waves as you want, and I will go on lowering heavier and heavier supports. Anyway, the ship has to be saved. It is not a question from WHERE... you know from where you are bringing those tidal waves."

Prem Ila, anger is a very small thing. If you can just wait and watch, you will not find

"thousands of wild horses." If you can find even a small donkey, that will be enough! Just watch it and it will go, slowly. It will enter from this side and will go out from the other side. You just have to keep a little patience not to ride on it.

Anger, jealousy, envy, greed, competitiveness... all our problems are very small, but our ego magnifies them, makes them as big as it can. The ego cannot do otherwise; its anger has also to be great. By its great anger, and great misery, and great greed, and great ambition it becomes great.

But you are not the ego, you are only a watcher. Just stand by the side and let all the thousands of horses pass -- let us see how long it takes for them to pass. There is no need to be worried. As they come -- they are wild -- they will go. But we don't miss even a small donkey; we immediately jump on it! You don't need thousands of wild horses. Just a small thing, and you are full of anger and fire. You will laugh about it later on, at how stupid you were.

If you can watch, without getting involved, as if it is something on the screen of a movie house or of a TV screen... something is passing; watch it. You are not supposed to do anything to prevent it, to repress it, to destroy it, to pull out a sword and kill it, because from where will you get the sword? -- from the same source as the anger is coming. It is all imagination.

Just watch, and don't do anything -- for or against. And you will be surprised: that which was looking very big, becomes very small. But our habit is to exaggerate.

A small boy comes home running, and tells his mother -- he is not more than three years old -- "Mum, a great lion, roaring loudly, was running after me for miles! But somehow I managed to escape. Many times he came very close. He was just about to attack me when I started running faster."

The mother looked at the boy and said, "Tommy, I have told you a million times not to exaggerate! How can you find a lion in the city... and you have been running for miles?

And where is the lion?"

The boy looked outside the door. He said, "He is standing there. But, to tell you the truth, it is just a small dog -- very small! But when it was running after me, it appeared.... You tell me not to exaggerate, and right now you have been exaggerating that you have told me millions of times."

Our minds are very exaggerating. You have small problems, and if you can stop exaggerating and just see, then by the door a poor small dog is standing. And there is no need to run miles; your life is not in danger.

When anger comes to you, Ila, it is not going to kill you. It has been with you many times before, and you have survived perfectly well. It is the same anger that you have been through before. Just do one thing new -- which you have never done; every time you get involved with it, fighting. This time just watch, as if it does not belong to you, as if it is somebody else's anger. And you are in for a great surprise: it will disappear within seconds. And when anger disappears without any struggle, it leaves behind it a tremendously beautiful and silent and loving state.

The same energy that could have become a fight with the anger is left within you. Pure energy is delight -- I am quoting William Blake: "Energy is delight" -- just energy, without any name, without any adjective.... But you never allow energy to be pure. Either it is anger, or hate, or love, or greed, or desire. It is always involved in something; you never allow it in its purity.

Every time anything arises in you, is a great chance to experience pure energy. Just watch, and the donkey will go. It may raise a little dust, but that dust also settles on its own; you don't have to settle it. You simply wait. Don't move from waiting and watching, and soon you will find yourself surrounded by a pure energy which has not been used in fighting, in repressing, or in being angry.

And energy is certainly delight. Once you know the secret of delight, you will enjoy every emotion; and every emotion arising in you is a great opportunity.

Just watch, and bring a shower of delight on your being. Slowly, slowly all these emotions will disappear; they will not come any more -- they don't come uninvited.

Watchfulness, or alertness, or awareness, or consciousness, are all different names of the same phenomenon: witnessing. That is the key word.

Miss Johnson, the English teacher said, "Today we are going to do definitions. When you define something, you say what it is. Now, Wesley, will you define ùnaware'?"

Wesley replies "It's the last thing I take off at night!"

We are all living in such a situation! The poor boy must have heard ùnderwear'. Nobody is conscious; nobody is listening to what is being said....

A young child was asked by the teacher, "What was the Polack pope's first miracle?"

A little boy said, "He made a lame man blind."

The Communist Party in Russia had a membership drive. The rules were as follows: Any communist who could recruit a new member would no longer have to pay dues. If he got two members he would be permitted to leave the party. And if he recruited three members, he would receive a certificate stating that he had never belonged to the party in the first place.

It is such a strange world. If you are aware, then everywhere miracles are happening. But you don't see miracles because rarely are you aware, very rarely. Most of the time you keep your eyes open; most of the time you don't snore. But that does not mean that you are awake. It simply means that you are pretending to be awake. But deep inside are so many thoughts, so much confusion, so many wild horses, that how can you see anything?

How can you hear anything? So although your eyes are open, they don't see. And although your ears are open, they don't hear.

It is a strange phenomenon that God made eyes in a different way from ears. You cannot close your ears; you can close your eyes. You have eyelids to close, to open, but what about your ears? God never bothered to give little earlids, because he knew you are so much involved in the mind, you don't need them. Your ears are always deaf; you don't hear, or you hear only what you want to hear.

Bedfellows Rule: The one who snores will fall asleep first. Naturally!

I have heard...

A bishop was very angry at a man who was snoring loudly. He caught hold of him later on and told him, "It is not right! While I was giving the sermon, you were snoring."

The man said, "I am sorry. Next time I will take care."

The bishop said, "You have to take care, because there were so many people asleep and you were disturbing them all. I am not worried about my sermon, I am worried about my congregation which was fast asleep. And you were snoring so fast, you might have woken people up. They were having a morning nap after a tiring night, and I don't want to disturb anybody. It is also a great help to me, because I go on repeating the same sermon every Sunday. Otherwise I would have to prepare again and again, and it is unnecessarily tedious. I have been using the same sermon for years -- nobody objects, because nobody has heard it."

You go into any church and you will find people fast asleep; it is a place to sleep, to have a little rest from the worldly affairs, from the world and its tensions. Man is twenty-four hours asleep as far as spirituality is concerned. And in your sleep you see anger and you see greed, and they become so magnified, so big that you get caught into their net very easily.

A man who has a simple art of watchfulness has a golden key. Then it does not matter whether it is anger, or greed, or sensuality, or lust, or infatuation. It may be any kind of disease, it doesn't matter -- the same medicine functions. Just watch, and you will be free of it. And watching, slowly, slowly as the mind becomes more and more contentless, one day mind itself disappears. It cannot remain without anger, without fear, without love, without hate -- all these are absolute necessities for mind to exist.

By watching, you are not only getting rid of anger, you are getting rid of part of the mind.

And slowly, slowly... one day you are suddenly awake -- there is no mind at all. You are just a watcher, a watcher on the hills. That is the most beautiful moment, the most glorious dawn. Only from then your real life begins.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

The Invitation

Chapter #5

Chapter title: To hell with enlightenment!

23 August 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive

code:

8708230

ShortTitle:

INVITA05

Audio:

Yes

Video:

Yes

Length:

99

mins

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

I AM AFRAID -- AFRAID OF ENLIGHTENMENT. WHAT IS BEYOND

ENLIGHTENMENT? WHAT TO DO AFTER THE GOAL OF LIVING IS REACHED?

WHAT DO YOU AIM FOR? IT IS LIKE FALLING INTO A BOTTOMLESS PIT.

YOU FALL -- NO BOTTOM, NO GOAL. THEN WHAT DO YOU AIM FOR? WHAT

IS BEYOND THE GOAL?

Cliff -- obviously it is not my pilot Cliff, because the question does not show the guts of a pilot -- but whoever you are you have raised very significant questions. I am saying questions because there are many. You have condensed them into a very small question.

First you are saying, "I am afraid, afraid of enlightenment." This can be taken as a general state of human mind; otherwise there is no reason why so few people have ever become enlightened. And those who have become enlightened have been shouting for centuries of its joy, its bliss; its ultimate truth, beauty; its eternity and its going beyond death. But the larger part of humanity has not paid any attention to it, naturally. Your question comes from the deepest core of humanity.

It is not only your question, everybody is afraid of enlightenment. And the reason is clear why one is afraid: the fear is of losing yourself. For the same reason people are afraid of love; for the same reason people are afraid of trust; for the same reason they remain enclosed in all kinds of fears, miseries, anxieties and anguish, because at least these feel familiar. And one thing is certain, they don't ask you to be lost. The more painful your life is, the more you are.

Perhaps deep down you desire pain, you desire misery, you desire anguish, because that keeps you clearly defined. You are afraid of the same things for which you also have a longing. On the one hand, there is a longing to go beyond all fears, beyond all anxieties, beyond all suffering. But the problem becomes complex, because being beyond suffering you are also beyond yourself -- you are the suffering. You are the prison, that's why you are afraid to get out of it. On the contrary, you try to console yourself in every way, that

"This is not a prison, this is my home."

So you are living in a dilemma: you want to go into the open sky and open your wings and fly across the sun. But on the other hand, you are afraid you may never be able to find the way back to your cozy, familiar space. Although it is painful you have become accustomed to it; although there is suffering it is like an old friend. The beyond invites you, calls you to take courage. But it also creates a trembling within you, because going out of the cozy circle of your misery and your hell, you know for certain -- you may not be very conscious of it -- that your so-called personality will melt away into the vast ocean, just like an ice block.

The fear is, is there something beyond your personality? You are not aware of it, you have never come across it -- you have never met yourself. You know only the superficial that has been told to you. You don't know on your own authority your essential, your inner. And of course nobody else can say anything about your inner. It is not available for observation; it is not available to be an object. Science cannot find it. Logic feels absolutely inadequate. Reason has not the wings to fly to the inner.

Karl Marx used to say, "I will believe in God only if he is caught in a test tube and scientists unanimously declare that this is God -- after dissection and autopsy to find whether he is really divine." Karl Marx was representative of you all, of the wider humanity; he is saying, "How can I believe in God? Science has no proof for it." And science has no proof either for your self. It can dissect you, it can cut you into as many parts as possible, but it will not find you; it will find only a dead corpse.

Only very recently have geniuses become aware that what we have been doing in physiology, in biology, in medical sciences, is not right. The moment you take blood out of my body and then you test it, it is not the same blood that is flowing in my body. In my body it is alive, it has a life of its own; outside my body it is a dead thing. And you cannot conclude from the analysis of the dead about the living. You can take anything out of the human body, but the moment you take it out, you have taken it out as a dead thing.

In the human body it was an organic, living, breathing, alive part.

A few very sensitive medical surgeons have become aware of the fact that something has to be done about it, because in the medical colleges they go on studying the corpses, skeletons, to decide about living human beings -- there is such a great logical fallacy. But they are also feeling impotent -- how to approach life? All that they know is -- their whole technology, their whole methodology is to know -- the object, and you are not the object. Hence, science is never going to accept your living being -- it is beyond its limits.

Logic cannot accept, reason cannot accept, philosophy cannot accept.

And your fear, on top of it all, is that nobody is there to give you a certainty that beyond your superficial personality there is something more. You will disappear as you are, and you will appear in your authentic reality. This is the fear. People are afraid of coming closer to each other, even in love; they keep each other at arm's length. They want to come closer, but a fear... to be too close, you can be lost.

With love, the problem is not so great -- but going beyond your ordinary self, your accepted face that you have seen in the mirror, that others have told you is very beautiful, or is ugly... All your knowledge about yourself is dependent on others' opinions.

I used to have a very beautiful professor, Professor S.S. Roy. Now he is retired from the Allahabad University as head of the philosophy department. In fact, he was the cause of my going to the university where he was teaching in those days. He insisted. And I could not say no to him; he loved me too much.

One day we discussed... and every day we were discussing a thousand and one things.

Our relationship as student and professor had got lost long before; it had become a very deep friendship. And he loved sharp arguments; he himself was a great logician. And I said the same thing to him, "Your idea of yourself is only a collection of opinions of others; you don't know yourself."

He said, "You will have to prove it."

The next day I went to his wife -- and she was very loving towards me because I was always going to their home. She knew that her husband had never been interested in any student in this way. I had become almost part of the family; I had spent many days there, whenever he wanted. He invited me many times to his home to discuss his doctoral thesis, which had been accepted by Cambridge University -- he was working on the philosophy of Bradley in comparison to Shankara. Late into the nights we would go on discussing.

I told his wife, "Tomorrow I am doing an experiment and you have to help me." She was all willing. It was a small experiment. I told her, "When Professor Roy gets up in the morning, you have to say to him: What is the matter? Could you not sleep? Just hold his hand: Do you have a fever? You look so pale. And write down exactly what he says."

He said, "Who is looking pale? I am perfectly healthy. I have slept well and I don't have any fever. What kind of idea have you got?"

She said, "I was thinking to call the doctor."

He said, "Have you gone mad? When I am saying that I am perfectly okay... if there were fever I would know first. And I have seen my face in the mirror; there is no paleness or anything. Are you kidding or something?" She noted every single word the way he said it.

I had talked with his gardener: "When he comes out to go to the university, just run and hold him, and tell him: You are wobbling, what is the matter? Are you feeling dizzy?

And touching his hand, say: My God, you have fever!"

And to the gardener, he said, "I could not sleep as deeply as I always sleep, and perhaps you are right. I am feeling a little dizzy. But I will go to the doctor." The medical department was very close to the philosophy department. So he said, "I will go."

He used to walk; the distance was almost one mile. Next was the post office, and I had told the postmaster... and they were very close friends, because both were Bengalis. I had told the postmaster, "You be out when he comes by, and just say: Roy, I don't think you should go to the university today; you need rest. You look almost a faded shadow of yourself. You don't look to me... what has happened?"

And to the postmaster he said, "I myself was thinking -- should I go? I have never been absent. I have never taken any holiday, but perhaps I should go and inform the department that it is difficult, and go to the doctor and come back."

Just by his side used to live another professor, of economics, who had a beautiful car.

And I had told him, "Tomorrow you should not come out of your house before Roy has passed the post office. Just watch, and then bring the car, and stop by his side and say to him, What is the matter, man? You come in. I will take you to the doctor, you are not in right condition to walk one mile."

And Roy said, "You are perfectly right. I was wondering that if somebody comes I can ask for a lift. You are so kind. I am feeling dizzy; I could not sleep the whole night. And I have a strange fever that does not show on the body, but I know there is something feverish inside... perhaps a brain fever? I looked in the mirror and my face looks absolutely white." And he had said just the opposite to his wife just five minutes before!

I told the professor of economics, Dr. Sahai, "The whole journey, go on talking about his sickness and tell him that it is old age, and not to be worried: It happens to everybody.

Perhaps brain surgery... but don't be worried, I am here just by your side. I will take care of your family. My feeling is that you need hospitalization."

And Roy said, "Hospitalization? I was thinking just a visit to the doctor will do."

The professor of economics said, "You are not taking the thing seriously. Perhaps you have a brain tumor or something; otherwise, why are you feeling dizzy, wobbly, and a fever which is not showing on your body? On the contrary, your body seems to be cold. It must be something to do with your brain. You have been working too hard on your doctoral thesis. And I have told you there is no need. You have a doctorate; there is no need for another doctorate from Cambridge. You are unnecessarily... and you are now old. You should recognize that there is a time when one can work, and there is a time one should understand how far one is capable of going."

And Roy said, "Perhaps you are right; I should drop that project. It is three-fourths complete -- what a pity that I have to drop it; it is a great thesis."

Nobody had compared Shankara with Bradley, and both are very similar in their vision.

But they were not acquainted with each other. Shankara was fourteen hundred years before Bradley, so there was no possibility for him to know about Bradley. Bradley was just in the beginning of this century, and even he was not aware of Shankara, because he was an original thinker. He was not interested in studying other philosophers; he was more interested to bring out his own ideas.

But they have both come to the same conclusions.

But Roy said, "Perhaps you are right -- I should not put too much strain on myself."

And then I had told the peon in front of the department, who used to sit outside the department to give appointments and other things... he was a strong man. I told him,

"You simply take Professor Roy in your hands. Even if he resists don't worry. I promise you there will be no trouble for you."

He said, "If you promise, then there is no problem. So what do you want?"

I said, "You should force him onto the sofa: Lie down! You are not in a state to walk or to sit, and I am going to call the doctor. And just note down what he says."

And when he forced him there was no resistance. He was very happy, and said to the peon, "I never thought that you were so kind. I needed to rest. Now you bring the doctor."

It was a very small, but very beautiful university -- perhaps the most uniquely situated in the whole of India, on a hill above a vast lake, and so many lotus flowers, and thick, lush greenery all around the university. The doctor came, because he was just next door, and I had told him, "Be ready. Inject him with just pure water. Do all kinds of testing, and tell him, "You are not in a position to do any mental work for at least three months. I hope that the brain tumor will subside by itself if you don't exert yourself. There will be no need for surgery, but one cannot be certain about such things, and I will have to talk to the head surgeon."

And Professor Roy said, "You just bring your car and take me back home." And the head of the department had not yet come, so he told the doctor, "I am not in a position to write; you write that I am not feeling well and I am going back home, and perhaps it will take some time for me to get myself together." He signed the note, and you could see -- his handwriting was very beautiful, but that day his signature was shaky.

Back home, he slept the whole day. He could not eat anything; he said, "I have no appetite." The wife became afraid about what kind of experiment I was doing. He was talking about a brain tumor, and surgery, and three months rest!

And then I went and collected all the notes from everybody in serial number: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven... And I went to Professor Roy. He was under a blanket -- in hot summer! I said, "Just please read these notes."

He said, "I am not in a position..."

I said, "Don't be worried; I am in a position, I can read to you. From the very morning, these are your seven statements."

And when he heard his statements, he said, "You rascal!" He threw away the blanket and he said, "Hell to that brain tumor; I have nothing. I knew from the very beginning that it was a strange conspiracy! But I never thought about you, that you would do such a thing to me. You could have killed me! I have to phone to the head surgeon because he is to come to check me and decide whether I should rest or an immediate operation is needed!"

I said, "No operation is needed; the operation is complete! This is what I wanted to prove to you, that you live by the opinions of others, you are not independent. You can't trust even your own feeling that you are healthy. If so many people repeat something, you go on falling. Just look at your statements."

This is your personality -- this is not your individuality. You cannot do such a thing with an individual who has a groundedness. The fear, Cliff, is because you don't have any experience of your innermost being; all that you know about yourself is what people have said. And these are the people who don't know anything about themselves -- what can they know about you?

Everybody is afraid of enlightenment, because who knows? Once your personality disappears maybe everything disappears. Then what is the point of such an enlightenment? It is better to remain unenlightened -- at least you are. And death may come whenever it may come, but right now you are alive -- why unnecessarily commit a suicide?

Enlightenment appears to your personality as a suicide, and in fact it is a suicide. But the suicide of personality is the beginning of individuality. The death of your personality and ego is the birth of your real authentic being, of your immortality. You will have to gather courage, and remember Michel's Rule for Prospective Mountain Climbers: The mountain gets steeper as you get closer to the top.

So as you come closer to enlightenment -- and that is the greatest mountain -- it gets steeper, and more and more dangerous as you come close to the disappearance of your old personality with which you were so identified.

But I tell you, I have survived. I have lost my personality; that's why I am not at all concerned what people think about me. The whole world is against me, but they don't even create a small stir in me. It does not matter whether they are against or for; it is their business, their problem. I know myself, and I know that what I am doing and what I am trying is intrinsically right. Nobody, just because they are in the majority, can destroy my truth.

Truth has never been the opinion of the majority; it has always been an individual achievement. The majority is interested in crucifying the truth, but it is not ready to accept it.

You can understand the psychology of it all. For two thousand years Christians have been thinking about Jesus and his crucifixion. And I am utterly disappointed with the whole two thousand years' theology, because they have not looked at the psychology of the crucifixion. Why did people crucify Jesus? He had not done any wrong; he has not committed any crime. But the majority was turning against him because he was telling them, "Drop your ego; be humble. Drop your so-called false identity; just be nobody.

Blessed are those who stand last in the line."

He was talking against the ambitious majority. They did not crucify Jesus, they crucified the truth that was hurting them and was making them afraid: if they become impressed by this man, there is a danger. They may lose half the bread in the hope of the whole bread, and there may not be any bread at all. It is better to keep the half and not to lose it in the hope of getting the whole. That is the majority's mind.

You say, "I am afraid -- afraid of enlightenment." It is natural, so don't be serious about it. In a way, it is a good symptom -- at least you have become interested in enlightenment; otherwise, you would not be afraid. Just go into the town and you will not find anybody... ask people, "Are you afraid of enlightenment?" And they will say, "Why should we be afraid?" They have never bothered about it. It is not a problem to them, they have never thought about enlightenment. They will think you are crazy. "Why should we be afraid of enlightenment?"

Just the other day I was looking at a newspaper clipping. It was a statement against me, that the world is coming to an end but I seem to be the only person who is not going to change, who is still talking about enlightenment. As far as I am concerned, I take it as a compliment. When the world is coming to an end, this is the right moment.

Take the risk; anyway it is going to end.

Why not take a chance and become enlightened?

The world is coming to an end -- you will end with it. So now there is no fear: before the world ends, end your personality, and at least you will be saved. The world may end, but you will not end. And the person who has criticized me is right. I will go on insisting. My insistence will become more and more powerful as the end of the world comes near, to make more and more people interested in enlightenment because there is no problem about losing; you can put the fear aside.

The fear is a good symptom -- it means you have become interested in enlightenment and your mind is trembling. You have become interested in the great adventure, the great affair, and your small personality is worried that this is the end. As for the small personality, which consists only of public opinions, it is going to dissolve -- naturally.

It is said that every river before entering the ocean stops for a while and looks back -- a moment of hesitation about what she is going to do. Ahead is the vast ocean, in which she is going to be lost. Back, she had a personality of her own -- her own mountains, valleys, forests. The whole journey, long journey, maybe thousands of years, thousands of miles...

Naturally, it is understandable to hesitate for a moment. But I have never seen any river go backwards. You can hesitate, but you cannot go backwards.

Cliff, you have come to the cliff! You have to take the jump. Only by taking the jump will you prove your mettle.

"What is beyond enlightenment?" First things first! Out of fear you are thinking that it seems enlightenment is bound to happen; now be clear what is going to happen after it --

"What is beyond enlightenment?"

Beyond enlightenment is all -- the whole universe. Beyond enlightenment you are no more a small dewdrop, you are the ocean.

"What to do after the goal of living is reached?" You are not supposed to do anything. I can see all your concerns are very human. You know one thing, that now you cannot avoid enlightenment; you may be afraid, but you have to take the jump. Naturally, you are asking, "What is beyond enlightenment?" And even if something is there -- "What to do after the goal of living is reached?"

You have never thought about what you have done as far as your birth is concerned --

have you done anything? What are you doing as far as your life is concerned? Do you think you are breathing? If it was up to you to breathe, you would have been dead long before; just in anger, or in some love affair, you would forget to breathe. Or in the night, will you sleep or not? Or keep yourself awake just to continue breathing, because if you fall asleep and breathing stops, in the morning who is going to get up? No, breathing you are not doing.

Existence is breathing.

What are you doing as far as your inner structure of life is concerned? Do you digest?

Are you responsible for changing food into blood, into bones, into marrow? These are not your concerns. Your concern ends with the taste buds, and the moment the food is swallowed it goes into the hands of existence; it is no more your concern.

One day try to be continuously aware what is happening in your stomach, and then you will have a good disturbed stomach for at least one week! Your consciousness is not needed, the stomach is doing its work on its own. Your brain consists of seven million cells, and each cell is doing its own function, and you are not needed -- they don't even ask your advice. Has any part of your body stopped you sometime and asked you, "What to do? -- I am at a loss?" They are never at a loss; they are part of the cosmic organism.

They have an inbuilt process; they go on doing their things.

The moment you become enlightened and disappear into the ocean, you will not be asked to do something -- to type, or to dig, or to prepare piesta... or is it pizza! You are not supposed to do anything; you are gone. Now the universal force has taken possession of you. Things will be happening, but they will not be your doing.

"What do you aim for?" You have reached beyond aim. Aim is a concern of the ego. The ego cannot exist without an aim -- some ambition, some desire, some infatuation, something to be achieved tomorrow.

The ego is a tension between today and the future. The moment there is no ego, there is no tension. You simply live in a state of let-go.

Then, wherever the river takes you, wherever the life force takes you, you simply go. It is not your goal; you have become part of the whole. Now whatever is the goal of the whole... and I don't think there is any goal. The whole is perfectly happy in singing and dancing and enjoying; in flowers, in the wind, in the rain, in the sun, in the stars. There is no goal. The whole is perfectly happy just to be, herenow.

If there is no aim, you start thinking it is like falling into a bottomless pit. Then what to do and what to aim for? "What is beyond the goal?" You are really in trouble! You will not be satisfied unless you are enlightened. All these problems: first, "What is the goal?"

Then, "What is beyond the goal?" You want to determine the whole eternity!

Your question should be just about enlightenment. Beyond that, existence takes care.

Who has given you the name, Cliff? -- that's what I have been wondering. Such a dangerous name! Use your intelligence to see that the fear is arising out of the false in you, the fear is not arising out of the real. The real is really deeply challenged by the idea of enlightenment. But be intelligent; otherwise you may listen to the personality and forget to listen to the individuality.

Meditate more, so that your intelligence can become more clear, unclouded, and all fears will disappear. And all other questions are just nonsense; they will also disappear. All that you need is a little more meditation, a little more sharpness of intelligence.

Paddy and Maureen planned to get married, so they went to the doctor for a physical checkup. The doctor then tried to explain sex to them, but Paddy just listened with a dumb expression on his face. So the doctor took Maureen over to the examination table, made her lie down, and then made love to her. "Now do you understand?" said the physician.

"Yes," said Paddy, "but how often do I have to bring her in?"

A great question! Just become enlightened, Cliff! Don't get worried about so many problems. You will be lost in a jungle of a thousand and one problems. And enlightenment is a simple process; it is just becoming your authentic self. And it is so luminous that in its light all darkness disappears, and with the darkness all the doubts, all the questions. And a tremendous insight arises that you are not separate from existence; hence there is no question of goal, no question of direction; no question where you are going, why you are going.

Then just to be part of the whole is so immense and so overwhelming, one feels fulfilled and contented. There is nowhere to go; you have arrived.

The theatrical agent, trying to sell a new strip act to a nightclub manager, was carrying on very excitedly about a girl's unbelievable seventy-two, twenty-six, forty, figure.

"What kind of dance does she do?" the manager inquired, impressed by the description of the girl's figure.

"Well, she doesn't actually dance at all," the agent replied. "She just crawls out onto the stage and tries to stand up!"

With that kind of figure... how can you dance? Even if you can stand up, that's enough!

Let me repeat the figure -- seventy-two, twenty-six, forty!

Cliff, you have come to the right place. Here we are not giving you any goals, any heaven, any paradise. We are not selling any future to you. We are not in any business --

the churches are, the temples are, the synagogues are. I am teaching you that there is no goal and that there is no meaning, but there is great joy, and great love, and great blissfulness. And all that you have to pay for it is to drop your false ego, your false personality.

Become silent. In your silence, all questions will disappear. And the dance will begin, whatever the figure! Because as far as your inner being is concerned, it has no figure; it is just a luminous flame which can dance. It has been eternally there, repressed by you. You are the greatest enemy of yourself. My effort is to turn you into the greatest friend of yourself.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

I FEEL REALLY CONFUSED ABOUT THIS WHOLE ENLIGHTENMENT

BUSINESS. ON THE ONE HAND, YOU SAY, "BE THOROUGHGOING IN YOUR

SEARCH FOR ENLIGHTENMENT." BUT ON THE OTHER HAND, THE VERY

DESIRE TO BECOME ENLIGHTENED PREVENTS IT.

HOW TO SOLVE THIS DILEMMA?

Prem Dipamo, you are saying something significant, but you have to understand that life is not a rational thing; it is very irrational, because it is mysterious.

The contradiction that you see in my statements is not a contradiction. It appears like contradiction, something inconsistent, but I will try to explain to you that there is no contradiction at all. But you will come across in my statements many times the same things, and the reason is that you have never gone beyond the ordinary mind and its consistency. I remember Oscar Wilde as saying, "Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative." A little imagination is needed to understand that the contradictory is complementary.

For example, before I take your question... Some examples are needed from your ordinary life experience; otherwise you will never be able to understand it.

Can you deliberately make any effort to sleep? When sleep is not coming, what are you supposed to do? Thousands of tricks have been suggested; nothing works. People say to drink a glass of hot milk. You can drink, but the hot milk will make you even more awake. People have been told to take a bath, but a good bath will make you more fresh, and less sleepy. People have been told to jog, to jump... all kinds of things; nothing helps.

Sleep comes only when you completely forget about it. You just lie down, and you don't try in any way to bring sleep in; it is not in your power. You have to completely forget everything, and it comes. It comes only when you are not desiring it.

Now there are two problems: first you have to desire; otherwise, why should you go to sleep? You have to have a certain need, a desire, a longing for sleep; otherwise why...?

So in the beginning a desire is needed, but in the final stage the very desire becomes the disturbance. So first you have to desire, and then you have to forget all about it. This is how sleep comes.

Your question is, "I feel really confused about this whole enlightenment business." It is a confusing business, but those who can manage to pass through it become the most unconfused people in the world.

"On the one hand, you say, `Be thoroughgoing in your search for enlightenment.'" Yes, it is true. First I have to create a longing for enlightenment; otherwise, enlightenment is non-existent on your laundry list. Nobody wants enlightenment; people are wanting all kinds of things, but enlightenment is a very rare variety. Only very unique people even become interested in it. So first I have to insist: "Be thoroughgoing in your search for enlightenment."

First I have to create the desire, the longing, the passion, so strong that you drop all other small things and put your total energy into the search for enlightenment. Once you have done this, half of the process is complete.

Then begins the other half: "But on the other hand, the very desire to become enlightened prevents it." When you have been very thoroughgoing in your desiring, in your search, you will not find enlightenment. The more you search, the more you will be frustrated, because it is not something outside you that you can find. It is not something that you have to travel to, it is something within you.

So when you have become thoroughly a seeker, a searcher -- frustrated, so utterly in a state of defeatism that you have lost everything else; you staked everything else for enlightenment, and there seems to be no sign anywhere -- then you have been thoroughgoing. Unless you are thoroughgoing, you will come to this frustration because you will know that you are not thoroughgoing -- perhaps that's why you are missing.

So first be thoroughgoing. Your total energy should be involved in the search; then comes frustration. At that moment the master says, "Now you have done enough search.

Now drop all searching; just sit silently." And you can sit silently only if you have been running so long and you are tired, your mind is tired. And when the master says, "Now, sit down silently. Doing nothing the spring comes, and the grass grows by itself -- no desire, no demand," there is no contradiction -- this is the whole process.

Half the process is to bring your whole energy into the search, and the second part is to make you sit down and drop the whole search. And suddenly it is there because it is your innermost core -- no search is needed. But without this thoroughgoing search, you would not have been able to sit down silently. To make you sit down silently, you have to be made to run for miles.

Only when you are utterly tired and frustrated, then you can drop even the idea of finding enlightenment. Then you are utterly silent. You have forgotten about property, money, possessions, power, prestige, long before, because you staked everything for enlightenment. Now, the only thing to be dropped that you still have is the desire for enlightenment -- that is the last desire to be dropped. But first it has to be created.

This is the trouble that is creating confusion in you: if you don't desire, how are you going to drop it? You have to desire so totally that you can drop it totally too.

And this is the mystery of enlightenment...

Ask, do everything that is possible, and then finally -- tired, exhausted -- you need to relax; you even let go of the idea of enlightenment, it is all futile. In this silence, when there is no desire stirring your mind, you suddenly find you are the enlightened one.

That enlightenment was not somewhere else, it was within you. But it needed utter silence, no desire. How to create this state of no desire?

I used to stay in a house with a friend; he had a child -- very charming, but very active, constantly asking questions, constantly doing this and that, too full of energy. He was the first child. The mother was tired, the father was tired; the child was able to tire anybody.

He started doing his exercise on me too, but I said, "Listen, I have a certain condition."

He said, "What is the condition?"

"That I only answer any question if you fulfill the condition."

He said, "I am ready."

I said, "You just go around the block seven times as fast as you can. And don't try to deceive me, because I know exactly whether you have been deceiving or not. When you come back I will see if you are perspiring... perhaps tears have come to your eyes. Then I will answer."

He said, "Okay."

He went round the block. It was a big house, and for this little boy, seven rounds were too many. When he came back he simply fell down. I said, "Rest a little, and then you can ask."

He said, "I have forgotten all questions. Just don't harass me; just let me rest."

I said, "That's perfectly okay."

He fell asleep. His mother came; she said, "This is strange. He tires us all. What did you do? He is fast asleep."

I said, "I have my own ways of making people enlightened!" I have learned a secret: first exhaust the energy which has become their infatuation, their greed, their ego, their lust for power, and all kinds of things. First exhaust it."

So first I teach a thoroughgoing search. And once you have been around the block seven times, and tears are coming to your eyes, and you have not found enlightenment, I will say to you, "Just rest a little; then we can discuss enlightenment."

And you will say, "I don't want even to discuss this business of enlightenment; I am utterly tired." Just rest, and in that very rest, you become aware of your inner flame. So there is no contradiction, it is simply the strategy.

Unless you are exhausted you will remain interested in something or other. When you are exhausted all your interest disappears; all that you want is to be silent, at ease, relaxed --

and that is the moment when enlightenment happens. It is not an object to be found; it is a realization of a silent being.

That's how it happened to Gautam Buddha. For six years he was thoroughgoing in his search; perhaps nobody has been so thoroughgoing. He did everything that anybody suggested. He fasted for months; he became almost a skeleton. There exists a statue of the days when he was fasting -- he was fasting under a master. The fast was a special way where you have to reduce to smaller quantities every day.

Unless you come to one grain of rice as your whole food for twenty-four hours -- and he had come to one grain of rice, just one single grain... if you see that statue you will be surprised how thoroughgoing he was. All flesh has disappeared; you can see all his bones. His whole skeleton is simply covered by the skin. You can see that he has exhausted every possibility; if he goes a little further he will be dead.

That very day, when he had come to the point of one grain of rice a day, he had gone to take a bath in the River Niranjana. It is a small river; I have been to the place. But even in that small river, he was so weak that the current of the river was more powerful. I have been there; the current is almost nonexistent. But in his situation it must have been so much that he could not gather energy enough. Energy comes from your food, and for months he had been cutting down on food. Now he had come to the last point -- his whole reservoir.... That's what your flesh is. So when you fast, in the beginning your weight goes down by two pounds per day.

Addressing a conference of vegetarians, I told them that fasting is a kind of cannibalism.

They were very shocked -- fasting, and I am calling it cannibalism? I said, "It is cannibalism because where do those two pounds disappear to? You have eaten them; you have used your own meat. Because you are not eating meat you think you are not using meat, but it is your own, and inside." Just in the sheer activity of living, one pound, two pounds, is gone. After seven days your activities become less; then you lose one pound per week.

Gautam Buddha must have come to the point where there was nothing to lose; he was just bones. And the statue is tremendously significant. It is a bronze statue showing every bone. You can count all the ribs; they are just covered with dried skin, because the skin also needs nourishment. He could not get out of the river; he was so weak that he was hanging on to a root, just to protect himself from the current of the river.

At that moment, hanging on to the root of a tree, he came to think, I have become so weak that I cannot even cross a small river... And in India, the world is thought to be a great ocean -- bhavsagar, the ocean of being -- and you have to cross it. Only then will you become enlightened. He thought, It is beyond me, this enlightenment business. I cannot cross this poor River Niranjana; how can I cross the ocean of being? -- I am finished. I dropped all desires; today I drop the desire for enlightenment too. I don't have any energy for any desire.

That night he slept without any desire. He had no idea what he was going to do tomorrow morning. For six years he was so much involved in searching for enlightenment, but now he had no energy even to think what he was going to do tomorrow morning. He slept one of the deepest sleeps of his life -- no desires, no dreams, no thought. And when in the morning he opened his eyes, the last star was disappearing. It was still a little dark, a little before the sun would be rising. As the last star was disappearing, he simply watched it disappearing -- utter silence all around. And suddenly he became aware of his own light.

He heard for the first time the still small voice that there is no need to search anywhere: You are it.

But without those six years of thoroughgoing search this moment would not have arrived.

Do you see that there is any contradiction? Contradiction only appears; deep down there is a great coherence. You can say both things. That's why there are two divisions of Buddhists: one says enlightenment happened because of six years of thoroughgoing search, and the other one says enlightenment happened because he dropped even the desire for enlightenment.

But as far as I am concerned, I don't belong to any sect, to any religion, to any party; hence, I can see clearly without any prejudice that both the schools are only half right.

Those six years of thoroughgoing search created the space to be silent -- so silent that even interest in enlightenment is no longer there. That's why enlightenment happened.

He became aware of his own inner being. All outside search has disappeared; hence, the one hundred and eighty degree turn. His consciousness turns inwards, because there is no goal outside, there is no way, and there is nothing to be done.

Your question is significant, Dipamo, but remember: there is no contradiction; both are essential parts of a single process. But first start with thoroughgoing search. Don't from the very beginning think that if it has to be dropped, why not drop it from the very beginning? -- you cannot. First you have to have it.

Then why at all desire from the very beginning? -- because you will be desiring other things. The problem is first to give you a great desire for enlightenment, so all other desires become combined into a single, one-pointed goal. And then when you get frustrated... because you are bound to get frustrated, nobody can find enlightenment with thoroughgoing search. But by thoroughgoing search one finds frustration -- such utter frustration that one becomes silent. One wants just to rest, not to do anything. Even if enlightenment knocks on the door, one is not interested. One has no energy even to open the door.

In that moment, your inner flame is seen for the first time. And this seeing of the light inside you is the ultimate experience.

It is the most beautiful, and the most glorious, the greatest splendor there is.

Enlightenment as such is already there.

You are a buddha, but you are not aware of it. How to make you aware of it? Down the ages, this has been the way, and I don't see there is any other possibility. You will become aware of it only in utter silence. But the utter silence, a state of no-mind, a pure space, needs all your desires to be exhausted -- so it is a device.

Gather all your desires, make your life one-pointed towards enlightenment -- and I assure you, you will not find it! But without this, nobody has found it either.

One day when you get frustrated, you say, "To hell with enlightenment!" That is the day the miracle is going to happen. It happens always only in that moment.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

The Invitation

Chapter #6

Chapter title: You don't have to become a mountain climber 24 August 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

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ShortTitle:

INVITA06

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Length:

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Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

SITTING WITH YOU IN DISCOURSE AND HEARING YOU TALK ABOUT

ENLIGHTENMENT AND SILENCE, I FEEL IMMENSELY BLESSED, SOMETIMES

ALMOST TOUCHING THIS SPACE OF COMING HOME, AND SILENCE COMES

TO MY MIND.

BUT AS SOON AS YOU LEAVE THROUGH THE DOOR AND THE MUSIC STOPS, IMMEDIATELY THE CHATTERING INSIDE STARTS AGAIN. FOR ME IT IS

MUCH MORE DIFFICULT TO BECOME SILENT WHEN I AM MEDITATING

ALONE, BUT SO EASY IN YOUR PRESENCE.

IS THIS NATURAL IN THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN A MASTER AND A DISCIPLE?

Deva Anuragini, it is very natural. Being in the presence of a master, silence happens on its own accord. Just as in the deep Himalayas, where the snow is eternal and the silence almost ancient... just sitting there under a tree, you start feeling, falling in tune with the immensity that surrounds you.

To be in the presence of the master is even more deep-going. Because what is the meaning of being in the presence of the master? It is being with someone you love, someone you trust; someone with whom you are ready to go into the unknown. Being in this climate, you forget your trivial matters; and forgetting comes easy, not by your effort.

The master is silent and silence is contagious.

His heart slowly slowly brings you also into a synchronicity. You start beating with his heart, in the same rhythm.

This is a beautiful experience in itself, but it is only a lesson on the path; it simply gives you a glimpse. Silence has to come to you in your aloneness, then it is your own.

Otherwise, silence in the Himalayas belongs to the Himalayas; you are simply overwhelmed. And the silence in the presence of the master belongs to the master; you are simply touched. That's why, as soon as you are left alone to yourself, your old mind is back; it has just been waiting by the side. It comes with a vengeance.

You have to understand one thing: that the presence of the master simply gives you an indication that you are capable of silence, that mind is not your master. That it is not an impossibility; that you can have a little taste of it. Whilst being alone, remember it: that the mind is just a servant mechanism.

Watch it; it is very ancient, and your silence is very new. Your silence is almost like a roseflower and your chattering mind is like a rock, very ancient, very old. It can crush the roseflower at any moment unless you are aware, unless you learn one lesson -- that mind may go on, yakkety-yak, chattering, but you should not become part of it.

Certainly you are not the mind, just as you are not the body. You are within the body, within the mind, but your center is separate from the cyclone. It has a totally different quality to it. Silence, stillness is just natural to it; it is its flowering.

We have got mixed up. Being too close to the mind, working twenty-four hours with the mechanism, you have forgotten the distinction.

Just this much has happened, that you have forgotten something which is very essential.

The original root from which the word `sin' comes, means forgetfulness. To me this is the only sin. All else are just mistakes which can be corrected. And once this sin is dropped, many other mistakes, fallacies, will disappear on their own accord.

A simple strategy is needed; I call it meditation. You can call it anything -- awareness, alertness, remembering, watchfulness; the names don't matter. What matters is that you should be able not to get into the chattering of the mind. Just be a watcher. Don't participate. Just stand aside and see. Don't even try to stop its chattering, because even in stopping it you have lost your watchfulness. You have become a participant -- unfriendly, but still you have become a participant in the process.

This is a very simple phenomenon once you see the point that you can stand aside and let the mind go. Don't judge what is going on in the mind as right or wrong. Don't evaluate, just remain an indifferent watcher. The mind is almost like the traffic on the road. It is none of your concern to think about everybody who is passing on the road; it is just a habit.

You may have heard about a great English linguist, Dr. Johnson, whose dictionary is still used. He had got into the habit, while going for a walk, of touching every electric pole. If by some chance, he would forget to touch and then remember, he would go back. He could not go ahead without touching it because he would feel something is missing. He became so identified with the habit that no friend liked to go with him, even for a morning walk, because it looked so stupid...

"I am standing in the middle of the road and you have gone back to touch an electric pole? Why do you do that?"

And he said, "That's the question: Why do I do it? But if I don't do it, it seems something is missing."

Your mind and your getting involved with it, are not very different. You have to learn to disidentify yourself.

See the mind working.

Be watchful.

But don't make any judgment, either to stop it, or to help it, or to prevent it. In no other sense should you move from your indifference.

You will be surprised: a miracle is waiting for you. The moment you are completely indifferent, standing by the side, the traffic on the road slows down. Less thoughts are coming; bigger gaps between thoughts are happening. And those bigger gaps will give you such a beautiful peace, such silence.

So two things are happening: the mind is slowing down and gaps of silence are enriching you, nourishing you, making you stronger to become disidentified. You have learnt the secret; now the key is in your hand. Watching, finally one comes to a point when one thought leaves and another thought does not come for hours. One is simply watching and the road is empty.

This silence is yours.

The silence in my presence, or in the Himalayas, or in a silent deep forest is not yours.

You are simply overwhelmed by something so great that your small mind simply stops.

But it is not much of a gain, you should not become habituated to it; otherwise, whenever you want to be silent you have to come close to me. That has become a dependence.

No real master would like his disciples to be dependent on him. The whole effort of an authentic master is to make you independent, to make you a master. How long are you going to remain a disciple?

But it is all in your hands. I can give you the glimpses at the most. But those glimpses are keys; you should learn something from them. One thing is certain, you are capable of being silent. A second thing is certain, that your mind stops. Now the only thing to get hold of is how to do it on your own so that wherever you are, you are surrounded by silence and all its beauties and blessings.

There is a rule called Finagle's Eighth Rule: Teamwork is essential; it allows you to blame someone else.

Don't blame me for your silence -- take responsibility. Even when you are here, I may be the triggering point but the silence is yours. I may have been a catalytic agent, but the silence is yours.

After acquiring enough money from handouts, an inhabitant of the Bowery decided to take his refreshment at one of Wall Street's better drinking establishments.

A financial tycoon seated next to him was visibly appalled at the appearance and odor of the down-and-outer -- so much so, that he turned to the man and pointedly said, "

`Cleanliness is next to godliness' -- John Wesley."

His words were ignored by the bum.

A few minutes later, the financier again intoned loudly, " `Cleanliness is next to godliness' -- John Wesley!" Still he was ignored.

Finally, the visibly irritated financier shouted in the man's face, " `Cleanliness is next to godliness' -- John Wesley!"

To which the skid row bum calmly replied, "`Screw you' -- Tennessee Williams."

The poor fellow must have been holding himself as much as he could. But an old habit...

finally, he could not manage; it was too much. He forgot completely where he was and that he had to behave in a mannerly way.

Your mind has collected all kinds of rubbish -- it is a bum. And whenever you are sitting alone, you don't have anything to do, the mind has every opportunity to exhibit all its accumulations. And it is because you become interested in it, remember: being DISinterested in it is also a kind of interest; being against it is also a kind of friendship. It is a love-hate relationship. You wanted to be silent, but just your wanting won't help.

Even if you shout to it, "Stop! Don't go on chattering," it is not going to listen.

In fact, the only way mind has ever become silent is whenever you are utterly indifferent

-- as if it is not your mind and it does not matter whether it chatters or not. When your indifference is so deep that it does not matter if it chatters... Let him chatter.

If the mind stops chattering, don't start patting your back. Just remain calm and quiet, alert and watchful... and mind has always stopped. Meditation has never failed if you have followed the right rule.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

WHEN I HEARD YOU TELLING THE STORY OF BUDDHA SENDING

SARIPUTTA BACK TO HIS KINGDOM, THIS SUDDEN FEAR AROSE: IF I GOT

ENLIGHTENED, YOU WOULDN'T SEND ME BACK TO TEXAS, WOULD YOU?

Sarito, it seems you are from Texas. Nobody has ever heard that any Texan has become enlightened, so it is a very faraway possibility. Texan and enlightened? -- it has never been heard!

Moreover, if by being a sannyasin you have dropped the idea of these stupid divisions of nations, states, races, religions, and you have become simply a human being, an inhabitant of this whole beautiful planet, you may become enlightened. But certainly I will not send you to Texas, because there is a famous rule of Mars: An expert is anyone from out of town. In Texas nobody is going to hear you. I will send you somewhere else.

But I will send you, certainly, so beware of enlightenment. If you don't want to go, don't become enlightened!

But I think it is worth going. It is worth going anywhere, because once you are enlightened, you need to share it. You have to go to those who are still groping in the dark. With enlightenment necessarily comes a deep feeling of compassion. The people may not listen to you; the people may even feel irritated and annoyed by you; the people may even be condemnatory of you, but still you will have a deep compassion.

Whatever they are doing is bound to be -- they are ignorant. You have also been ignorant and you have also behaved in the same patterns. Now you are out of darkness, you can understand: those who are in darkness are going to behave accordingly. But they need help -- in spite of themselves they need help.

And by giving help to those who are living in unawareness, in unconsciousness, your own enlightenment will become richer. It will grow new dimensions to it. So it is not only helping them; you are also being helped immensely. Sharing what you have, you will have more of it.

Existence is never in favor of hoarders, of misers.

Existence believes in abundance.

Otherwise what is the need of so many flowers? -- just a few chosen flowers, lotuses, roses, would have been enough. What is the need of millions of flowers? There are hundreds of scientists, continually discovering new species of flowers... and there are still places where man has not reached.

I know a place in the Himalayas where there is a flower valley. I have looked down into it, but it seems nobody has ever descended there. The mountain is so steep that it seems almost impossible to get down to the valley; it is thousands of feet deep. And the flowers look so rare, with such rare colors; I have not seen those flowers anywhere else.

I have inquired of experts, but they say nobody wants to get into trouble. If somehow one could reach down there, then coming back is out of the question. People have looked, they have photographed. They have enlarged the photographs, and they were amazed that these flowers don't belong to any species that we know. And this may not be the only place like this.

We have thought up to now that Everest is the highest peak of the Himalayas. But just a few days ago the Chinese discovered a new peak which is higher than Everest. It is a Himalayan peak, but in the whole past nobody had even thought that there was anything higher than Everest. And there are thousands of places in the Himalayas which have never been reached by human beings. They all grow strange flowers, with a strange perfume.

Existence is very abundant. And if you want to be part of existence -- and that's what enlightenment is, becoming part of the whole -- you cannot be a miser. You will have to reach people. They will prevent you, because the blind person does not want to hear about light. It hurts him because it makes him feel again that he is blind. He would love to know that there is no light, that it is only a fiction and there are no people who have eyes; these are just very cunning people. The blind man will be very respectful to the person who declares, "There is no light and there are no eyes and you are a perfect being.

You need not feel humiliated that you are lacking something."

But this is the trouble. If you talk to the blind man about light, he is going to be angry with you because you are hurting him. But without hurting him you cannot help him. You cannot take him to a physician; you cannot help him to be cured. You cannot give him the world of light and colors and beauties.

Eighty percent of life consists of eyes; a blind man lives only twenty percent. This is the ordinary blindness. The unenlightened perhaps does not see at all in the spiritual sense.

Enlightenment brings one hundred percent a new light, a new life, and a new laughter to your being.

Sarito, you yourself would like to go to Texas, although Texas is not the right place. But if you become enlightened, don't be worried -- you can find people here who are unenlightened; help them. Why be concerned about Texas? And in Texas nobody is going to listen to you. You have heard the rule: An expert is anyone from out of town.

In Hindustani there is a similar proverb: The drums which are very distant -- it seems almost an echo -- they are the most beautiful drums.

In ancient Hebrew there is a proverb; Jesus has quoted it: A prophet is never respected by his own people.

In fact, instead of respecting, they crucify their own prophet. It is always good to reach to strangers because they will be able, at least just out of courtesy, to listen to you. If you go to your own people who have known you as blind, they cannot believe that now you have become enlightened.

I will not send you anywhere -- you will ask to be sent somewhere, to help someone. I am saying it out of my own experience. After enlightenment, I could have rested and not bothered unnecessarily about people from whom I can get only condemnation. They are not crucifying me because it is a little out of date. They are not assassinating me because they have learned one thing: once you assassinate an enlightened man, the assassination becomes the cause of a tremendous tradition. The people who were never interested in the man become immediately interested -- "Why have you assassinated him?" If Jesus had not been crucified there would have been no Christianity, no possibility at all.

So the fools have also learned something: condemn, say all kinds of lies against people you would like to crucify, but don't crucify. You have done it once, and you are still suffering. Two thousand years have passed, and Christianity goes on growing. Jews can never forgive themselves that they did such a stupid act as crucifying Jesus; otherwise, how many followers had he? -- twelve uneducated apostles, villagers, fishermen... not a single rabbi, not a single learned professor, not a single man belonging to the higher society.

And these twelve beggars who had gathered around Jesus had nothing to do with religion.

Their whole interest was, "He is the only begotten son of God"; if they go on clinging to him, there is a possibility for them to enter into paradise!

On the last night when Jesus is about to be caught, you can see their desire. They are not worried about his being caught; they are not worried about the rumors that he will be crucified, they are worried: "Lord, in paradise of course you will have the second place to God, but what will be the order for us? Who will be the third? Who will be the fourth?" --

a poor lot, greedy, not concerned with religion at all. Their concern is that in this life they have suffered much; they have been poor, uneducated. At least now there is a chance to hang around the only begotten son of God. And when on the last judgment day he chooses the people who are to be taken into heaven, of course those twelve apostles will be the first; they are making it guaranteed. At the last moment they are asking such nonsense.

Gautam Buddha also asked his disciples, "Do you have something to ask?" And he had ten thousand disciples, but they all simply remained silent.

They said, "You have said so much, and we have not practiced even that. Don't make us feel ashamed. In this last moment of your life we would like you to relax and be silent.

We don't have any question; we don't want to disturb you at all." This was a totally different kind of assembly; they were concerned for their master that his death should be silent and peaceful. He had done so much.

But Jesus had a different kind of gang. They were all interested in how to enter into paradise; Jesus was just the right person to hang around. If somebody had proved that he was not the only begotten son of God they would have been the first to escape. Then why unnecessarily waste your time? Just go back and catch fish, or farm your fields, or go to your orchards. Don't waste time unnecessarily -- you are poor already.

The moment you become enlightened, a tremendous desire will arise in you to share it with all and sundry.

A wealthy, ninety-five-year-old multimillionaire is meeting with his financial adviser.

The adviser is very excited and tells the old man, "I just found out about an investment I can make for you which will double your money in just five years!"

"Five years? Are you kidding?" exclaims the old man. "At my age, I don't even buy green bananas."

Who knows? By the time they are ripe, you may not be here. Experience teaches a few things. My experience is that once you are enlightened, you are so full, just like a rain cloud, you want to shower. Yes, even in Texas!

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

TO SIT WITH YOU IS LIKE DRINKING FROM A MOUNTAIN STREAM. MY

OWN ATTEMPTS AT MEDITATION AND MOMENTS OF LOVE BRING, AT THE

MOST, CITY WATER. HOW CAN I FIND YOUR CLARITY AND SILENCE IN ME?

About silence and clarity, Shantamo, we will discuss later. First be sure that the city water is not from Poona -- it is polluted!

It is true; you have given a good comparison. You say, "To sit with you is like drinking from a mountain stream. My own attempts at meditation and moments of love bring, at the most, city water.

"How can I find your clarity and silence in me?"

There is no qualitative difference between the water in a mountain stream and the unpolluted water coming from your tap -- there is no qualitative difference. If you have tasted, the difference will be in richness. The stream water is cool, fresh, always new. It is coming from melted snows from the high mountain.

All that you have to know is that even if you have started to taste the ordinary city water, you are on the right way. To reach the mountain stream, you will have to raise your consciousness to that height. You don't have to become a mountain climber, you have to become a consciousness climber.

There are schools in the world where mountain climbing is taught; in this school, we teach you how to climb higher in your consciousness, because that is the only real height.

And you have it within you -- the highest possibility of consciousness. It is just that you have not worked, or not even seen upwards to your own height. You are involved in so much trivia that you don't have time, just a little time for clarifying your own consciousness. You go on postponing. Small and ordinary things you don't postpone, but all that is higher, all that is really valuable, you go on postponing.

In Hindu scriptures they have divided life into four parts. And at the time they divided life into four parts, the highest age of man was not more than forty. Their division in the scriptures is that up to twenty-five years you should be a celibate and a student; up to fifty, which was very rare, you should be a householder, raise children, run businesses, earn money, fulfill desires, ambitions -- be worldly, in a single word. Up to seventy-five years, you start by and by, slowly slowly, to get out of your trivial, ordinary life; after seventy-five you become a sannyasin. Great strategy! Neither will you live nor will you ever become a sannyasin.

This is a way of postponement, very cleverly done -- a good division, to postpone any effort of raising your consciousness.

It is not strange that the VEDAS, which define this way of how life should be... Those VEDAS are written by hundreds of learned people -- not a single one was an enlightened soul. Even the so-called seers of the VEDAS not only have their married wives, but also have purchased women from the marketplace -- because women were still sold.

Now what kind of seers were these people, who could purchase a woman like a commodity? And what respect could they have towards a commodity? Women were auctioned; hence, in Sanskrit, for `wife' there are two words -- people have forgotten the distinction. One is patni; patni means your married wife. Another is vadhu; vadhu means your purchased woman. You can use her as a wife, but her children will not be able to inherit anything from you because she is not your legal wife.

Even the so-called seers living in the forests were doing all such things. I don't think any of them... I have looked very closely into each sentence in the VEDAS. I could not see that any one of them had reached to the heights of Gautam Buddha. In fact, ninety-eight percent seem to be very stupid people, very ordinary.

Artie Finkelstein was advised by his doctor that he had a very rare disease, and the only remedy was a daily glass of fresh mother's milk. Artie finally found a young lady who was willing to sell her milk, and Artie sat down and nursed on her breast.

After about five minutes, the woman looked at him and breathlessly asked, "Is there anything else you would like?"

"Well," said Artie, "Er... maybe a cookie?"

Idiots are idiots! And the more aged they become, the more idiotic they become. Even small children seem to be more clear, more crystal clear than your so-called old idiots.

"I had tea in a Jewish house yesterday," said little Sadie.

"How did you know it was a Jewish house?" asked her mother.

"Well, because they had a fork in the sugar bowl!" replied Sadie. Even small children...

Murphy has his Sixth Rule: It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.

And they are all around....

Raising your consciousness is not something that you have to plan, that you have to carefully work out; it is a simple phenomenon.

The Fourth Workshop Principle says: The more carefully you plan a project, the more confusion there is when something goes wrong.

It is always better to remain simple, and my teaching is very simple. In just one word I have summed up the whole of religiousness: Be alert of your thoughts, and they will die of their own accord. And as less and less thoughts are there, you become more and more weightless; you start rising high, without any effort.

Soon you will be able to taste the fresh mountain stream. It is your own consciousness at its best.

Shantamo, you are asking, "How can I find your clarity and silence in me?" Just drop all that is rubbish; just look at the whole furniture of your mind. Perhaps you are carrying unnecessary things -- how many of your thoughts are really of any use? Just sit down one day and write. Close your door and lock it, so there is no fear and you can be authentic.

Just write down exactly whatever arises in the mind. Don't edit; don't add anything to make it look beautiful. Don't be worried that it looks as if some madman is writing it; nobody is looking at you. Just a ten minute exercise of writing exactly everything that is within you -- neither adding anything nor taking anything out -- and then read it aloud so that you can hear also that this is your mind. It is a madhouse. So many voices: irrelevant, relevant, meaningless, not at all related to anything, and they are all running around. But you have allowed them, you have nourished them, just by being not alert.

There is a small anecdote in Gautam Buddha's life...

A great king, Prasenjita, has come to listen to his discourse. Of course, it is his capital, his kingdom; he is sitting in front and while Gautam Buddha is speaking, he is continuously moving his big toe.

Finally, Buddha stopped and asked Prasenjita, "Do you know that your big toe is moving constantly?" He immediately stopped. Buddha said, "Don't stop. Let it move, but be aware that it is moving."

But he said, "There is no need."

"Then why was it moving? It is your toe, and you are not aware of it."

This is our state of unawareness. You are doing all kinds of things, most of them without being conscious. Why are you doing them? Smoking a cigarette -- have you ever bothered about why you are doing it? When fresh air is available you are making your breathing dirty with nicotine, poison, smelly, destroying your lungs -- and paying for it!

Many governments have decided that on every packet of cigarettes there should be some statement saying that it is harmful to your health. The manufacturers were very angry, and they tried to prevent this from being done, because this would destroy their business -

- and it is a big business. But medical science was absolutely insistent that it should be written. Then it is the individual's responsibility. He has read it, and still he is smoking; then he is taking his own responsibility.

It was thought that the cigarette business would fall down, that very few people will be so stupid as to read it and still smoke. This is the state of humanity; the business has not disappeared. There are more factories, and there are more cigarettes, and there are more smokers. And it is not that they don't know how to read. The doctor goes on saying, the wife goes on saying, the friends go on saying, "Stop, it is destroying your lungs. It is cutting your life; it is dangerous; even cancer is possible through it." But it makes no difference.

That's why I say humanity is living in a deeply unconscious state. If you are conscious, just a little bit conscious, your life pattern will start changing. You will drop many things which you were doing, and you will start many things which you were postponing.

The day you start being alert and aware, you have taken a great step towards the heights of your own being. And it will not be long, if you persist, to reach to the fresh mountain stream water. Otherwise your whole life remains polluted, remains without any adventure, without any song, without any music, without any clarity.

It is your birthright to have clarity and silence. And if you don't have them, it simply means you have not tried to find what are your hidden qualities, what is your hidden splendor. You have been living outside the house, just in the porch. You never enter into the house; you don't know the treasures that are in the house.

People don't feel that they are lost, because they don't care at all about themselves. Rune's Rule is: If you don't care where you are, you aren't lost! Obviously, if you don't care then wherever you are it is perfectly good.

Create a little care about yourself.

Life is very precious; don't waste it carelessly.

Just a little care, and tremendous is the benefit. Because as you start being careful, alertness will come automatically. Consciousness will start growing in you; your actions will reflect your clarity, your silence, your beauty, your grace.

And I am not asking of you something superhuman; it is just your human right. But nobody else can give it to you, you will have to claim it. It is not in the hands of governments to declare it in their constitutions -- that won't help.

You have to do a little work upon yourself. Every man has to be a little artistic in finding and creating his own being, giving it beauty and grace, intelligence.

But people go on living so stupidly... the only reason seems to be that they find everybody else is also living the same way, so perhaps that is the right way; the majority cannot be wrong!

A man had gone to picnic with his wife, and the wife stopped at a place near a pond with beautiful trees, and said, "This seems to be the right spot."

The man said, "Certainly. Fifty million mosquitoes cannot be wrong!"

Truth is not a question of majority; truth has always been a finding of the individual. The majority has always lived in lies, in fictions, in fabricated ideas, which are consoling.

Truth needs a little effort on your part to drop all that is false, fictitious, superstitious, given to you by your parents and by your society. And immediately you will find your intelligence is becoming sharper.

Just rely on your own intelligence and you will find clarity. And just to have intelligence is to have such a treasure -- just to look at things without any prejudice, without any preconceived idea. Slowly, slowly clarity grows... but give it an opportunity.

It was the first day of the new term at Princeton, and a black freshman was learning his way around the campus. Stopping a distinguished looking upperclassman he inquired,

"Say, can you tell me where the library is at?"

"My good fellow," came the reply, "at Princeton we do not end our sentences with a preposition."

"All right," said the freshman, "can you tell me where the library is at, asshole?"

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

The Invitation

Chapter #7

Chapter title: Even donkeys are not worried

24 August 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive

code:

8708245

ShortTitle:

INVITA07

Audio:

Yes

Video:

Yes

Length:

101

mins

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

HOW ARE ONE-POINTEDNESS, CONCENTRATION AND MEDITATION

RELATED TO EACH OTHER?

Prem Dinesh, one-pointedness, concentration and meditation are not related to each other at all. This is one of the confusions prevalent all over the world.

One-pointedness is another name for concentration, but meditation is just the opposite of concentration. But in most of the books, in most of the dictionaries, and by the so-called teachers, they are used as if they are synonymous.

Concentration simply means one-pointedness. It is something of the mind. Mind can be a chaos, a crowd. Mind can be many voices, many directions. Mind can be a crossroads.

Ordinarily, that's what mind is, a crowd.

But if the mind is a chaos, you cannot think rationally, you cannot think scientifically. To think rationally and scientifically, you have to be concentrated on the object of your study. Whatever the object is, the one thing necessary is that you are pouring your whole mental energy onto that object. Only with this much force is there a possibility to know the objective truth; hence, concentration is the method of all sciences.

But meditation is totally different. First, meditation is not of the mind. It is neither one-pointed mind nor many-pointed mind; it is simply not mind. Meditation is going beyond, beyond mind and its boundaries. They cannot be related; they are opposite to each other.

Concentration is mind and meditation is no-mind.

The West, particularly, has not known meditation. It has remained confined to concentration -- hence all scientific progress, technology -- but it has not known the inner science of silence, peace, of being a light unto oneself.

One-pointedness can reveal the secrets of the outside world. Meditation reveals the secrets of your own subjectivity. It can be said, concentration is objective and meditation is subjective. Concentration moves outwards; meditation moves inwards. Concentration is going far away from yourself. Meditation is coming home to your innermost center.

Mind, reason, logic, all point towards the outer -- to them, the inner does not exist at all.

But this is a fundamental law of the inner reality that nothing is ever accomplished in the inner world by a reasonable man. It is an irrational, or better to say suprarational approach -- to know oneself you don't need mind, you need utter silence. Mind is always concerned with some thing or many things. There are thoughts and thoughts, ripples upon ripples -- the lake of the mind is never ripple-less.

Your inner being can be reflected only in a mirror without any ripples. No mind --

absolute silence of all thoughts, absence of the mind completely -- becomes the mirror without any ripples, without even a single fluttering of thought. And suddenly, the explosion: you have become aware for the first time of your own being.

Up to now, you have known things of the world; now you know the knower. That's exactly what Socrates means when he says: Know thyself. Because without knowing thyself -- I want to add to the Socratic advice -- you cannot be yourself. Knowing thyself is a step to being thyself, and unless you are yourself, you can never feel at ease. You can never feel contented; you can never feel fulfilled; you can never feel at home in existence.

Some discomfort, some misery... you are not exactly aware what, but a constant feeling that something essential is missing; that you have everything and yet something which can make everything meaningful is absent. Your palace is full of all the treasures of the world but you are empty. Your kingdom is big but you are absent. This is the situation of the modern man; hence, the constant feeling of meaninglessness, anxiety, anguish, angst.

Modern mind is the most troubled mind that has ever existed for the simple reason that man has come of age. A buffalo is not disturbed about the meaning of life -- the grass is his meaning of life; more than that all is useless. The trees are not interested in the meaning of life; just a good shower and a rich soil and a beautiful sun and life is a tremendous joy. No tree is an atheist; no tree ever doubts. Except for man, doubt does not exist in existence. Except for man, nobody looks worried. Even donkeys are not worried.

They look so relaxed, so philosophically at ease. They have no fear of death, no fear of the unknown, no concern for the tomorrow.

It is only man and his intelligence that has given him a very difficult life, a constant torture. You try to forget it in a thousand and one ways, but it goes on coming back again and again. And this will continue until your last breath unless you know something of meditation, unless you know how to turn inwards, how to have a look at your own interiority.

And suddenly, all meaninglessness disappears.

On a very high level, you are again as at ease as the trees. At a very high consciousness, you are as relaxed as the whole of existence. But your relaxation has a beauty to it -- it is conscious, it is alert. It knows that it is. It knows that while the whole of existence is asleep, it is awake.

What is the point of a beautiful sunrise if you are asleep? What is the beauty of a rose if you are asleep? Mind is your sleep, concentrated or not. Meditation is your awakening.

The moment you awake, sleep disappears and with it all the dreams, all the projections, all expectations, all desires. Suddenly you are in a state of desirelessness, non-ambition, unfathomable silence. And only in this silence, blossoms flower in your being. Only in this silence the lotuses open their petals.

Remember that any teacher who says to you that concentration is meditation is committing a great crime. Not knowing that he is misleading you, and misleading you on such a fundamental subject, he is far more dangerous than somebody who can kill you.

He is killing you far more significantly and deeply. He is destroying your consciousness; he is destroying your very possibility to open the doors of all the mysteries that you are.

Albert Camus has one beautiful statement to remember: "The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth." Naturally, when mind is not there, no-mind cannot be a rational concept. It is absurd. It cannot say anything reasonably -- where it is, what it is, what it signifies. It can only indicate mystically -- hence all the parables of the world. The mystics could not say in a logical way what they have experienced. They went around telling stories, parables, which can be understood on two levels: one of the mind and one of the no-mind.

That is the beauty of a parable. You can understand it just like any other story, but it was not meant to be just another story; it was meant to give you some hint, some hidden hint towards that for which mind is absolutely inadequate. I will give you a few examples.

A blind man is brought to Gautam Buddha. The blind man is not an ordinary man, he is a great logician. And his whole village is tired of his logic. They are very annoyed and irritated by the blind man, because he refuses to believe that light exists. And he requires of the whole village that if they say light exists, they have to give him proof: "I can touch things; let me touch your light. I can taste things; let me taste your light. I can smell things; at least let me smell your light. I can hear things; beat the light so I can hear the sound. Do something. These are the only four senses I have."

Light is neither available to the nose nor to the ears; neither to the mouth, nor to the hands. Unless you have eyes, there is no way to prove that light exists.

Gautam Buddha said to the people, "You have brought him to a wrong man. You have all given all kinds of proofs, and you have not been successful. What can I do? Take him to my personal physician. He is just sitting behind me. He is the greatest physician of our time; perhaps he can cure the blind man's eyes. He does not need any argument, he needs treatment. He does not need any evidence, logical proof about light; he simply needs eyes. Then there will not be any question or any doubt or any asking for evidence."

He was given to the physician. It took six months for him to cure that man from his blindness. The day he saw light he cried and went from house to house in the village to offer an apology, "Forgive me. Although I was being rational and logical I had no idea that unless you have eyes, you cannot be given any proof that cannot be rejected by you, argued against." Although the whole world knows that light exists, the whole world cannot make a single blind man convinced of it.

Your consciousness is not available to the mind. Your mind is not the right vehicle to know yourself. Unless you have a new eye -- what in the East we have called the third eye, symbolically.... These two eyes open outwards. Just as a symbol, the third eye opens inwards. The two eyes are for the duality of the world, the one eye is for the singleness of your being.

As you start looking inwards, you are amazed: you were ignoring yourself, and that was the trouble. That was why you were in misery, anxiety, suffering. You were trying everything to remove the misery, but it was caused by your unawareness, by your unconsciousness, by your ignorance of your own being. That was the cause. And unless that cause is removed, you will never have a taste of blissfulness, of ecstasy, of immortality, of the divineness of existence.

The pretty young thing came slamming into her apartment after a blind date and announced to her roommate, "Boy, what a character! I had to slap his face three times this evening!"

The roommate inquired eagerly, "What did he do?"

"Nothing," muttered the girl. "I slapped him to see if he was awake!"

But nobody is awake. Spiritually, we are all asleep. Meditation is a way of awakening.

Concentration has nothing to do with meditation. But you have been told by Christians, by Hindus, by Mohammedans, by all your so-called organized religions to concentrate on God; concentrate on a certain mantra; concentrate on the statue of a Buddha, but concentrate. And remember, whether you concentrate on a hypothetical God which nobody has ever seen, nobody has ever met, for which no proof, no evidence exists anywhere.... You can go on concentrating on an empty hypothesis, that is not going to reveal you to yourself.

Concentrate on a statue which is man-made, manufactured by you; you can go on concentrating but you will not find anything to transform your being. Or concentrate on scriptures, mantras, chantings... but all those efforts are an exercise in utter futility.

Go beyond the mind -- and the way beyond the mind is very simple -- just become a watcher of the mind, because watching immediately separates you from the thing you watch. You are watching a movie; one thing is certain, you are not an actor in the movie.

Watching the road and the crowd passing by, one thing is certain; you are standing by the side, you are not on the road in the crowd.

Whatever you watch, you are not.

The moment you start watching the mind, a tremendous experience happens -- a recognition that you are not the mind. Just this small recognition that "I am not the mind"

is the beginning of no-mind. You have transcended the crowd, the voices, the chaos of the mind; you have moved into the silences of the heart.

Here is your home, your eternal being.

Here is your deathless, essential existence.

Knowing this has never been transcended by anything more blissful, more ecstatic.

You may have heard about Segal's Law: A man with one watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.

Mind is not only two, it is many. A man with mind is not sure of anything. He is doubtful about everything; he is unsure about everything. And a life of doubt and unsureness is not a life; you don't have any roots anywhere. And without roots you cannot have flowers, and you cannot become fruitful. Your life will remain barren, a desert where nothing grows.

Two women in a train were engaged in an argument. At last, one of them called the conductor. "If this window is open," she declared, "I will catch cold and will probably die."

"If the window is shut," the other announced, "I shall suffocate."

The two glared at each other. The conductor was at a loss, but he welcomed the words of a man who sat near. These were, "First, open the window; that will kill one. Next, shut it; that will kill the other. Then we can have peace."

That is what you have to do with your mind if you want peace, peace that passeth all understanding.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

I HAVE TRIED TO WRITE QUESTIONS TO YOU, BUT IT IS IMPOSSIBLE. WHEN

YOU WERE IN SILENCE, I BECAME AWARE THAT YOUR SILENCE IS AN

INVITATION FOR MEDITATION. IT IS PURE CELEBRATION; IT IS NOT A BURDEN OR A DUTY OR A BOTHER. IT IS A COMING CLOSER TO YOU; IT IS

JOY.

MY HEART IS OVERWHELMED TO SIT AT YOUR FEET. IN DEEP LOVE I SAY,

"THANK YOU, OSHO FOR THIS INVITATION."

Divyam Sakar, there are no questions which are really of any significance, because questions are asked by the mind. And the mind cannot find any answer.

The answer is in the death of the mind.

All questions are in the mind and the answer is beyond it; hence, if you are intelligent, you will find it very difficult to write a question. People who go on writing questions are not really alert to the fact that these questions cannot be answered. Yes, you can be shown a way where you can find an answer, but nobody else can answer your question; just like nobody else can breathe for you, and nobody else can drink for you, and nobody else can eat for you. You will have to do these things yourself.

It is good that you felt it was impossible to write questions. It is impossible because the mind cannot even have any idea of the right question, because to know the right question is to know the right answer. If you can recognize the right question, it is not so far away to recognize the right answer. A mind that can recognize the right question is certainly capable of recognizing the right answer. But all your questions are wrong.

There are millions of questions and there is only one answer. Questions are very complex and the answer is very simple. The questions have created so many great philosophies in the world, so many great systems of thought, systems of belief, great traditions of religion. But none of them have come to the answer that fulfills, to the answer that dispels all the questions, because the answer is your being, very being.

The answer is not to be found in any scripture, nor can it be given by any teacher. Those who know never answer your question; they simply destroy your question. They make you aware of a quest, not of a question. Their invitation is for a quest, not for a question, because only a quest can lead you finally to the space where you find not a verbal answer, but an existential answer -- yourself.

A man stepped into a very crowded bus. After a while he took out his glass eye, threw it up in the air, then put it back in again.

Then, minutes later he again took out his eye, threw it up in the air, then put it back in again. The lady next to him was horrified.

"What are you doing?" she cried.

"I'm just trying to see if there is any room up front."

With a glass eye! Your questions are just like that. And the more you would have tried, the more you would have found that it is impossible -- there is no question which is of any worth.

But then you suddenly fell upon something for which you were not looking. Because I was in silence, you thought perhaps that was my message to you -- to be silent. And this invitation for silence became your meditation.

Now you can say to me, "It is pure celebration. It is not a burden or a duty or a bother -- it is a coming closer to you; it is joy.

"My heart is overwhelmed to sit at your feet. In deep love, I say, `Thank you, Osho, for this invitation.'"

Remember Fetridge's Law: Important things that are supposed to happen do not happen, especially when people are looking for them.

When you are not looking for anything, a certain silence descends on you. And in that silence things start happening that were never happening before when you were looking for them.

It is a very mysterious life.

It does not follow your ordinary arithmetic.

When you are running too much after silence, and peace, and meditation and enlightenment you simply get tired, bored, exasperated. It is never found that way. You cannot find anything of value while you are running. And naturally, your mind says: Run a little faster, you are not running fast enough. And the faster you run, the more tense you are, the more your eyes are blurred, the more dust you gather. You don't know where you are running because you don't know which direction the truth is.

It is not in running after it, it is in sitting silently. And while you are perfectly a pool of peace, truth arises within you. You never reach truth; it is always truth that reaches you.

But you must be at your home, and mostly you are never at your home.

I have heard about two men, great friends, who were talking to each other. And one said,

"Boy, last night was the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. I had gone fishing and caught such great fish that even to carry one alone, by myself, was so tiring; it was such a burden. The fish was so long you wouldn't believe it. And not one, I caught so many fish. The whole night I have been carrying them, just carrying them."

The second man said, "This is nothing, you don't know what happened to me last night. I dreamt that on my one side is Sophia Loren -- in my bed, under my blanket. I said,`My God!' because I looked at the other side and I saw Marilyn Monroe. It was such a juicy night."

The first man who had been catching fish the whole night said, "You idiot. Why did you not call me?" The second man said, "I did call, but your wife said you had gone fishing."

People are never at home. Truth comes many times and knocks at the door, but your wife says you have gone fishing.

You are always gone somewhere.

Sitting silently you are at home.

And truth is not something that comes from outside, it arises out of the intensity of your silence. In fact, the intensity of your silence, a great silence crystallized, is truth.

Truth is not something other than silence.

A small silence becomes the door to greater silences, and finally, the silence itself becomes so condensed -- Gurdjieff used to call it the crystallization -- you find yourself.

In that very finding you have found the truth. Then life is a sheer joy, a song, a dance, a celebration.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

COULD YOU SAY SOMETHING TO ME ABOUT FEAR? WHAT IS FEAR? WILL

MEDITATION HELP ME OVERCOME MY FEAR OF DEATH? WHY AM I AFRAID

TO LET GO INTO SOMETHING MORE POWERFUL THAN ME?

Prem Subuk, you have asked many questions in a single small question, and all are significant, significant for any seeker.

First, you are asking about fear. There are many fears, but fundamentally they are only offshoots of one fear, branches of one tree. The name of the tree is death. You may not be aware that this fear is concerned with death, but every fear is concerned with death. Fear is only a shadow. It may not be apparent if you are afraid of going bankrupt, but you are really afraid of being without money and becoming more vulnerable to death. People go on holding money as a protection, although they know perfectly well that there is no way to protect yourself against death. But still, something has to be done. At least it keeps you busy, and keeping yourself busy is a kind of unconsciousness, is a kind of drug.

Hence, just as there are alcoholics, there are workaholics. They keep themselves continuously involved in some work; they cannot leave working. Holidays are fearful; they cannot sit silently. They may start reading the same newspapers they have read three times already that morning. They want to remain engaged, because it keeps a curtain between themselves and death. But reduced to its essentials, the only fear is of death.

It is significant to realize that all other fears are only offshoots, because then something can be done if you know the very roots. If death is the basic and the fundamental fear, then only one thing can make you fearless, and that is an experience within you of a deathless consciousness. Nothing else -- no money, no power, no prestige -- nothing can be an insurance against death except a deep meditation... which reveals to you that your body will die, your mind will die, but you are beyond the body-mind structure. Your essential core, your essential life source has been here before you and will remain after you. It has changed through many forms; it has evolved through many forms. But it has never disappeared, from the very beginning -- if there has been any beginning. And it will never disappear to the very end, if there is any end... because I don't believe in any beginning and in any end.

Existence is beginningless and endless.

It has always been here and you have always been here. Forms may have been different; forms have been different even in this life.

The first day you got into your mother's womb, you were not bigger than the full-point on your question mark. If a photograph is shown to you, you will not recognize that this is you. And in fact, even before that...

Two persons were arguing about how far back they could go, how far back they could remember. One could remember his childhood nearabout three years of age. The other said, "That is nothing. I remember the day my mother and father went to a picnic. When we went to the picnic, I was in the father. When we came back from the picnic I was in my mother!"

Will you recognize yourself as you were when you were in your father? A picture can be shown to you; it can be enlarged so that you can see it with your bare eyes, but you will not recognize it. But it is the same life form, the same life source that is throbbing in you right now.

You are changing every day. When you were just born, just one day old, that also you will not be able to recognize. You will say, "My god, this is me?" Everything will change; you will become old, youth will be gone. Childhood has been lost long before, and death will come. But it will come only to the form, not to the essence. And what has been changing all along your life was only the form.

Just the other day I looked at Chitten. I said, "My god, what has happened to this poor man?" Later on, I tried to find out if he has become a punk or what; he used to be a sane sannyasin. But nothing has happened to him, just to his hair, to his beard. He is the same; he is still sane.

Your form is changing every moment. And death is nothing but a change, a vital change, a little bigger change, a quicker change. From childhood to youth... you don't recognize when childhood left you and you became young. From youth to old age... things go so gradually that you never recognize at what date, on what day, in what year, youth left you. The change is very gradual and slow.

Death is a quantum jump from one body, from one form into another form. But it is not an end to you.

You were never born and you never die.

You are always here.

Forms come and go and the river of life continues.

Unless you experience this, the fear of death will not leave you. You are asking, "Will meditation help me overcome my fear of death?" There is no other way. Only meditation... and only meditation can help.

I can say, all the scriptures can say, but that will not help; still a doubt may remain. Who knows, these people may have been lying, or these people may have been deceived themselves. Or these people may have been deceived by other literature, by other teachers. And if a doubt remains, the fear will be there.

Meditation brings you face to face with the reality.

Once you know on your own what life is, you never bother about death.

There are beautiful stories about people of meditation, how joyfully, how jokingly they have taken their death. One great master, before dying asked his disciples, "You know me perfectly well, that I have lived always in my own way. I want to die also in my own way. Just suggest some unique idea."

The disciples said, "This old man has tortured us his whole life. Now, what original idea about death...? People are afraid of death, and this fellow is asking for some original idea of how to die."

Somebody suggested to sit dying in a lotus posture. Somebody else said, "This is not new, people have died sitting in a lotus posture."

Then the old man said, "Reject it! Find something absolutely original, and be quick because my time is running out."

Somebody suggested to die standing. People usually die lying down on their beds. That is the most dangerous place, because ninety-nine percent of people die on their beds.

Beware of the bed! In the night when your wife has gone to sleep, slip down and sleep on the floor. Move into the bathroom, but don't be on the bed. That is the place where death has found ninety-nine percent of its victims. Avoid it!

Somebody said, "This is a little new, but it is not absolutely original because I have heard about a master dying standing -- just one man, but it is still imitating."

Then somebody said, "Then do one thing. Stand on your head; do a headstand -- we have never heard that anybody has done that."

It is very difficult. Even to fall asleep standing on your head is very difficult, because so much blood is running to the head it keeps you awake. Dying is much more difficult. In the night you keep your head on a pillow, so that less blood is reaching the head; otherwise, the blood flow keeps your brain cells awake.

Intellectual people need two pillows, three pillows. Then with great difficulty they can stop the rush of the thoughts. Now standing on the head, so much blood, because of gravitation, goes to the brain that it won't let it fall asleep. Dying will be much more difficult because death is a deeper form of sleep.

But the old man said, "I like that idea. Just be certain that nobody has done it."

All his disciples said, "It is true; nobody has ever done it. You can do it and feel happy that you are dying in an original way, in your own style."

And the old man stood on his head and died.

Then all the disciples became very disturbed. What to do now? They had known about people dying on a bed: you give them a bath, you change their clothes, you take them to the funeral pyre. But what to do with this fellow? -- he is standing on his head. Nobody has died this way, so nobody knows actually what should be done, from where to start.

Somebody suggested his sister. His older sister was also a great master; she lived in a nearby monastery. It was better to call her before taking any action than later on to be condemned for something that you should not have done.

They called the sister and asked, "What are we supposed to do? He has died standing on his head."

The sister said, "He has always been nasty." She was also a great meditator. She came close and told the old man, "Stop all this mischievousness! At least at the time of death, don't be ridiculous. Behave!" And she pushed him so he fell, poor man, laughing.

The disciples said, "This is strange. This old woman is also something."

And she went back, telling him, "Go to the bed and die, just as it is supposed to be done.

Just do it properly. I am not going to come again. And you fellows, don't be worried.

Whatever way he wants to die, let him die. Just drag him to the funeral pyre."

The disciples said, "It was good we called; he was still alive."

Naturally, it is very difficult to die standing on your head. The poor man tried hard, but could not manage. And finally, because in the East it is not right to disobey elders, he lay down on the bed and died.

Then before dying he said, "This time I am really dying; you can start your ritual."

Still they watched, pinched, took every care because this man was strange. "We thought that he had died before, and who knows, he may still be playing a joke. Death is a joke?

We had been always so afraid...." They pinched, but found he was really dead.

Another master before dying told his disciples, "Listen, I have already taken a bath and I have changed my clothes, fresh, new, so you need not... after I am dead, don't try to deceive me. You are my disciples, you have to follow my order. After my death, no bath, no changing of clothes. I have already done it for you."

They said, "Yes, we are all witnesses."

He said, "Then remember, nobody should interfere."

They knew their master; he was such a man that if you interfered, he might open his eyes.

He had been beating them his whole life, and they did not want him to beat them again, even after death.

So, they simply followed. And what had he done? -- he had played the last joke. As the fire caught his body -- he had hidden firecrackers inside his clothes; that's why he did not want them to change his clothes -- firecrackers started exploding beautifully all around.

And people started laughing; they had never seen such a death.

But the disciples said, "He was a man who could laugh at death because he knew there is no death."

Meditation is the only way to discover your deathlessness.

Then all fear disappears. All other fears also disappear, because they were just offshoots, branches -- maybe gone far away from the roots, but still they were connected with the roots.

Finally you are asking, Subuk, "Why am I afraid to let go into something more powerful than me?" It is the same fear. All fear, all is the same. You are afraid of going into something more powerful than you because a dewdrop dropping into the ocean is bound to disappear; it is death to the dewdrop. The more powerful will absorb you; hence, the fear.

But if you know that your life is the greatest power in existence, there is nothing more powerful than it, not even nuclear weapons can absorb it... once you become certain about it, then the dewdrop knows it is not his disappearance in the ocean, it is the ocean disappearing in the dewdrop. It is the dewdrop becoming as vast as the ocean. It is not disappearance; it is becoming infinite, unbounded.

After Brezhnev's death, the central committee of the Communist Party met to choose his successor. After his unanimous election as general secretary, Uri Andropov, the former chief of the secret police announced: "Very well, comrades, now that you have voted, you may lower your arms and come away from the wall."

This was voting! Naturally, it was unanimous.

Death is such a fear. But if you have just a small glimpse of your own being then even in the Soviet Union death does not happen.

When khrushchev came to power, addressing the first meeting of the Community Party, he condemned Joseph Stalin as strongly as possible. He said, "At least one million Russians have been killed after the revolution by a single man, Joseph Stalin. Thousands are in madhouses; thousands are in jails; thousands are forcibly hospitalized and thousands have been sent to Siberia for their whole lives. They cannot return to Russia, and life in Siberia must be the hardest in the whole world, just to survive."

One man from the back of the meeting said, "Comrade khrushchev, you have been a central committee leader with Joseph Stalin your whole life. Why did you not say it before?" There was great silence.

khrushchev said, "Whoever has asked the question, the question is significant. I am going to answer, but you first please stand up." Nobody stood. khrushchev called three times,

"Stand up, so I can at least see your face." But nobody stood, and nobody repeated the question. khrushchev said, "Do you know why I was silent, why you are silent? You know that if you stand up, you will disappear. I knew that if I said anything against Joseph Stalin, I would not see another sunrise again."

Death is such a fear. Even to Joseph Stalin, who was so powerful, death was such a fear that he never allowed his wife to sleep in the same room. Who knows? -- in the night she may make an effort to take his life. Yes, she is his wife, but just being a wife does not mean anything. Everybody is a stranger in this world, and just by going to a registry office you can't become known to each other. He never allowed anybody to be friendly with him. In his whole life nobody ever put their hand on his shoulder. That was not possible. He always kept people far away, following the old rule of Machiavelli, that the most dangerous people to those who are in power are those who are closest.

The vice president is the most dangerous to the president. Because he is so close, the temptation is easy to push this man away in some way and capture the power yourself.

These powerful people like Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin or Benito Mussolini are as much afraid of death as anybody else; all their power makes no difference. Only very few people like Gautam Buddha or Bodhidharma or Chuang Tzu have been able to go beyond the fear of death.

You can go beyond....

It is within your power and it is your right.

But you will have to make the small effort of moving from mind to no-mind.

A joke for you to remember at the time of your death...

It seems there was a captain in the KGB, whose stupid son had great difficulty understanding the concepts of the party, the motherland, the unions, and the people.

The captain told the boy to think of his father as the party, his mother as the motherland, his grandmother as the unions, and himself as the people.

Still, the boy did not understand. In a rage the father locked the boy in a wardrobe in the parental bedroom.

That night the boy was still in the wardrobe when the father began to make love to the mother. The boy, watching through the wardrobe keyhole, said, "Now I understand: The party rapes the motherland while the unions sleep and the people have to stand and suffer."

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

The Invitation

Chapter #8

Chapter title: Only unripe mangoes are safe

25 August 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive

code:

8708250

ShortTitle:

INVITA08

Audio:

Yes

Video:

Yes

Length:

117

mins

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

IN THE STORY OF THE BUDDHA TWICE SWATTING AN INSECT FROM HIS

HEAD, HOW DID HE KNOW THAT HE WAS NOT AWARE THE FIRST TIME, AND HOW CAN HE HAVE NOT BEEN AWARE? I ASK BECAUSE, ALTHOUGH I AM PERCEIVING MYSELF TO BE GRADUALLY MORE AWARE, YET I

CANNOT IDENTIFY WHO IS THE PERCEIVER. THE WORST THING IS THAT

THE MIND TAKES THE OPPORTUNITY OF RELATIVE SILENCE TO ENTER A HALL OF MIRRORS WITH WATCHERS WATCHING WATCHERS, WHO ARE

WATCHING WATCHERS WHO ARE NOT WATCHERS.

BELOVED OSHO, COULD YOU ILLUMINATE OR ELIMINATE ME?

Rashid, both the things are the same: to illuminate you, or to eliminate you. They are two aspects of the same experience.

Without your elimination, illumination is not possible.

You are the only barrier to your own realization.

You have raised a question which has tortured humanity, particularly the intellectual part of humanity, for centuries. In logic it is called infinite regression. But existence is not logical if you remember that, then the problem disappears. If you think that existence is logical, then the problem becomes insoluble.

It is apparently true that you can watch the mind but somebody else behind you can watch you, the watcher. But you can go on and on; there is always somebody behind who is watching. In logic it is an absurd situation.

In simpler terms it is something like God creating the world. Who created God, because without creating, nothing can exist? That was the premise on which God was supposed.

How can this whole existence be there without a God creating it? But it creates the same problem: How can God be there without being created? Where are you going to end?

Your alphabet will end... A-God is created by B, and B is created by C, and soon you will come to X, Y, Z; and after Z there is nothing except jazz music. The whole long pilgrimage of logic ends in something illogical.

The very logical people have never supposed the first God because it is the beginning of a trouble which will never end, and you will get more and more into mud.

But in existence things are different. As far as God is concerned, I cannot say anything --

I have traveled my whole being, and I have not found him anywhere. And all the religions insist that he is within you. I don't know about the without -- it is a vast universe; he may be hiding somewhere -- but as far as my own consciousness is concerned, I am absolutely aware there is no God. And if it is not within my consciousness, it cannot be in any other consciousness either, because the quality of consciousness is the same. Just as the light is the same whether it is in a small candle flame, or in the big sun, or in the faraway stars -- the quality is the same.

You can watch the mind because you are not the mind.

That is the whole reason to watch it:

To become aware that you are separate.

Existentially, no problem arises because you cannot watch this watcher. You have come to the very end of the rope; in the very first step you have completed the journey.

Logically, you can manage to create the problem. Watcher one watches the mind; watcher two watches the watcher number one... and then go on ad absurdum. Don't make it a puzzle. That will be risking your own possibility of becoming aware.

It is not a logical conclusion.

Logic has no dominance over existence.

There is only one watcher; you cannot go behind it. If you can go behind it, then it was not the watcher, it was part of the mind -- mind was befooling you. A part of the mind can watch the other part. But if you have become completely unidentified with the mind and you are simply a watcher -- not a thinker, not part of the mind in any way -- you have come to the end of the rope in the very beginning. There is no beyond it; however you try, you will not be able to go beyond it, you will always remain the same watcher.

It is the experience of the meditators -- they have all tried -- that perhaps behind the watcher, they may find some other watcher. But the watcher as a word creates the problem. It is not watcher, it is really watching. It is a process; it is complete in itself.

You cannot jump out of it and watch it. You are it, so you cannot go behind yourself.

It is possible to watch the mind because you are not the mind, so you can step back and have a look at the mind. And this stepping back and having a look at the mind, is the greatest transformation that can happen to man. Freed from mind, you are freed from all that was binding, imprisoning, enslaving -- your miseries, your sufferings, your desires, your fears.

The watcher has no disease; the watcher is simply a mirror, reflecting. And the miracle of the process is that the more you become clearly distinct from the mind, the mind starts disappearing. That is the elimination.

Mind exists with your support; it has no source of nourishment other than your support.

And the support you can give to the mind is of identity; you have to become one with the mind. Then mind as a parasite goes on living. But the moment you are separate from the mind, the parasite dies. You can see it disappearing just like smoke, into thin air. Only watching remains.

You cannot watch it, you are it.

You know it, but you don't watch it; you feel it, but you don't watch it; you live it, but you don't watch it, because you cannot go behind it. It will be still the same watcher.

It is good that existence is not logical; otherwise there would have been no buddhas, no awakened people. There would have been number one, number two, number three...

There are unending numbers, and the whole process would become tedious. But the process does not exist; it is only mind that can create the problem and can stop you from going into existential experience.

So to eliminate you is the only way, Rashid. To illuminate you, to make you enlightened, the only way is to kill you, to kill you as an identity with the mind.

As the mind is left -- like a snake leaves its old skin and slips out of it -- you have done the whole pilgrimage from darkness to light, from the finite to the infinite, from death to deathlessness.

You are asking, "In the story of the Buddha twice swatting an insect from his head, how did he know that he was not aware the first time?" When you have a headache, how do you know? Can you prove you have an headache? It is impossible. That does not mean that headaches don't exist.

One of my teachers, a very beautiful man, an old Mohammedan and a very colorful man... he never married. Once I asked him, "Why did you never marry?"

He said, "I cannot afford my clothes, my beautiful house, and a wife too. Either I can afford a wife... but then there is no house. And I love to have a new suit of clothes every day. He had three hundred and sixty-five suits, so his choice of the same dress came only once in a year, and by that time people had almost forgotten that dress. He lived a very colorful life and was a very loving man.

Before beginning a class, as the school opened, he always introduced himself with the words, "There are a few things you have to remember with me: I don't believe in headaches, in stomachaches, and things like that. Unless you can prove something, don't say anything; just sit and do the work. Don't ask for a holiday because you have a headache."

He was very logical. Either prove... but how to prove a headache? I was wondering what to do with this man, because he is blocking all the avenues to escape from school! And I was rarely in the school; I always had something: a headache or a stomachache -- which are very beautiful escapes; you don't have to prove them, you have just to say and you are freed. It was going to be difficult with this man -- but I found a way. He had created a mental problem; mind could not solve it. But existence is always available to help you.

Just in front of his small bungalow there were two beautiful mango trees. The mangoes were not ripe yet. Mangoes have to be taken away from the trees before they are ripe because the moment they are ripe, the parrots know before you know. And parrots love mangoes; in hundreds they come. Only an unripe mango is safe! And they were really very big mangoes.

I climbed the tree... because every evening he used to go for a walk. With his colorfulness, beautiful dress, a beautiful staff in his hand, with a beautiful cap... every day everything was new; he even had three hundred and sixty-five beautiful staffs, to go with each suit of clothes. I saw him going out and then I climbed the tree. He used to come back when the sun had almost set, but still there was not absolute darkness; there was still light. When he came under the tree, I hit him with a big mango. An unripe mango hits almost like a rock and he said, "Awk!"

I said to him, "Stop the noise. You will have to prove that you have some pain, some ache in your head."

"You come down first," he said. "Why did you do that?"

I said, "It is in answer to your introduction today. It was the first day of your class. I am a student and I need as many holidays as I want. A headache is one of the best excuses, or a stomachache, and you have blocked those doors. You say, `You can have a holiday if you show me your fever; I can check it. If you have a wound, I can check it. If you have broken your leg, I can check it. But headaches and stomachaches, and like things, I don't believe, so never ask for a holiday.'"

I said, "Now, can you prove that your head is hurting? I know it must be hurting; you know it is hurting, but can you prove it?"

He looked at me and he said, "Listen. It is a compromise with you. You need not say that you have a headache because that will give the idea to others. You simply raise your hand. If you raise your hand I will give you the day free."

I said, "There is no problem. You could have said that before. You could have saved your head from being unnecessarily hit by a mango."

The other students were very troubled, because whenever I would raise my hand, he would tell me to go home and rest. The students thought, What is the communication? A few others tried raising their hands and he asked, "What do you mean by raising your hand?"

They said, "We don't know. But why do you allow one student when he raises his hand?

And he raises it almost every day!"

Because the students were continually asking me what was the secret, I said, "That is not possible for me to say, because that is a commitment between me and him. And he is keeping his promise so I will keep my promise."

If you start thinking about this special question of how Buddha became aware of the insect he removed unconsciously by waving his hand... How do you become aware of your headache? How do you become aware of the headache that you had yesterday?

Right now maybe, but about yesterday's? -- you may be imagining. Do you have any proof that yesterday you really had what you are talking about today? But you know and everybody else knows, because a headache is a common experience.

Awareness, watchfulness, is not a common experience. It can be common; it should be common because that is the only possibility for the liberation of human consciousness.

But don't make it a mind problem; otherwise, it will become like the famous puzzle of Bertrand Russell.

I have told you the puzzle...

Once in England, a great mathematician, Godel, was writing a great treatise on mathematics, on the foundations of mathematics. And his assumption was that there is no problem that cannot be solved by mathematics. He had worked almost thirty years for that great book; it was very comprehensive.

Bertrand Russell was also working in collaboration with another mathematician, Whitehead, on a book -- PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA, the fundamental principles of mathematics -- which would be all-inclusive; there would not be any need for any other book as far as mathematics is concerned.

Both of the mathematicians were of the same caliber, of the same genius. Godel was almost completing his treatise, because he was an older man than Bertrand Russell. It was almost a thousand pages of complicated argument to prove mathematics is the fundamental science and the only science which has no flaw.

Just at that time, when he was going to give it to the publisher, Godel received a letter from Bertrand Russell. Bertrand Russell had himself received a letter, from the librarian of the British Museum -- he had received a few letters. The British Museum was ordered by the government to compile catalogs of all the libraries of England. So they ordered all the libraries to compile catalogs of all their books. And they should compile two catalogs; one they should keep in the library and the other they should send to the British Museum.

Then the British Museum would compile a final catalog in which all the books of the country, including the British Museum, would be included. They would make two catalogs: one would remain in the British Museum and one would go to the Ministry of Education from where the order had come.

A few librarians became puzzled about something like your question. When they compiled the catalogs, one remained with them and one was going to the British Museum. Now the problem was whether to put that catalog also in the catalog -- because it was a book in the library -- or to leave it out. Both seemed to be not right. How can you put the catalog itself in it? And not to put it in means you are leaving one book in the library without being cataloged.

So they wrote questions to the librarian of the British Museum. He himself was puzzled by the same problem: whether to put the final catalog also in the catalog... which looks absurd because a catalog is for other books, not for itself. But there was this final catalog in the British Museum which remained uncataloged, so rather than sending it to the Ministry of Education, he sent the question to Bertrand Russell, knowing that he was a great mathematician. And he was a great mathematician, so great that I don't think anybody reads his book. The book is so complicated that just to prove that two plus two is four, he devoted two hundred and fifty big pages. All the complicated arguments... you cannot even think to write one page about the simple subject, two plus two is four.

But when he received the letter from the librarian, Bertrand Russell was puzzled. What to do? Just then he remembered: Old Godel thinks that everything can be solved by mathematics. It is better to send it to him.

He sent him the puzzle, saying "What do you suggest? According to you, every problem can be solved and it is a mathematical problem."

Godel thought over it, but could not find the way. And because he could not find the way, he did not publish his book. He said, "If I cannot solve a simple puzzle, on what grounds can I claim that mathematics is capable of solving every problem?"

You are saying: one can become aware, and one can become aware of one's awareness.

Or one can become aware of one's unawareness and then can become aware of one's awareness of unawareness -- but where it will lead?

In existence there are no problems.

Mathematics is only an extension of logic. If the question had come to me and not to Bertrand Russell, I would have simply said, "A catalog is not a book." And it is finished.

You are required to compile a catalog of books in your library and a catalog is not a book. That's all that is needed: a definition. A catalog is simply a catalog of other books, but the catalog itself is not a book because it deals with no subject; neither is it philosophy, nor is it logic, nor is it mathematics, nor is it physics. It has no subject matter; hence it is not a book. So there is no question of including it. Once you think of including it, the problem is arising because you have not defined what a catalog is.

Neither Bertrand Russell nor Godel thought of the possibility of defining it as a catalog, not as a book. That would have solved the whole thing. But they were more interested in the puzzle and the possibility of its mathematical solution.

Awareness to me is not a puzzle.

It is not even part of any philosophy.

It is an existential experience.

Just become aware of the mind and then try to become aware of awareness, and you will fail. If you can become aware of your awareness, that will prove that the first awareness was not awareness, it was part of the mind. Once you are aware you have come to the dead-end. Your journey is complete.

You say, "... although I am perceiving myself to be gradually more aware, yet I cannot identify who is the perceiver." You cannot. It is not in the nature of it to know the ultimate. You can be the ultimate, but you cannot be the knower of the ultimate; otherwise, there will be a division between the knower and the ultimate.

The ultimate is the situation where knowing and knower dissolve into each other and become one, where the knower is the known. In J. Krishnamurti's words, "Meditation is when the observer is the observed." All distinctions disappear.

So remember Bucy's Law: Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.

One needs to be a little unreasonable too. It brings great joy and spice in your life, being a little unreasonable. A reasonable man is simply flat.

And existence is not reasonable at all; it is simply there without any reason. If it were not there you could not have complained. If it is there you cannot explain why it is there. It is simply there.

Irving Levensky was asked by his wife to buy a chicken for Saturday night dinner. He bought the chicken and was on his way home when he remembered that he didn't have his house key and his wife would not be home for hours.

He decided to pass the time by going to a movie. In order to get into the cinema, he stuffed the chicken into his trousers.

He sat down and began watching the movie. It fascinated him so that he didn't notice the chicken sticking its head through the fly of his pants.

Two women were sitting next to him, and one of them nudged the other. "Look," she said, "look at that thing there sticking out of the man's pants."

The other replied, "If you've seen one, you've seen them all."

The first one said, "Yes, but this one is eating my popcorn."

Existence is very absurd.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

HOW CAN WE KEEP THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GATHERING OF REBELS AND

SEEKERS WHO EVER EXISTED ON THE EARTH FROM BECOMING AN

ESTABLISHED SOCIETY?

Prem Dipamo, the authentic rebellious man has no such problem; he never becomes part of any establishment.

There was a very unexpected experience in the communist revolution in Russia. When the revolution happened, that was in 1917, a great uneasiness was felt in the revolutionaries. The topmost revolutionaries, Lenin, Trotsky, and their colleagues, were all in a strange situation, and one man, Joseph Stalin, took advantage of their puzzled state.

Stalin was not a revolutionary, he was one of the great establishment makers. Just to create the establishment -- because the country was in a chaos after the revolution; there was no order, no law -- the idea of the revolutionaries was to have individuals as free as possible, teach them to be responsible so there would be no need of law and no need of the law-establishing agencies of the police, the court, the judges.

Lenin was also of the opinion that marriage should disappear, because it is one of the fundamental establishments. All other establishments use it as their foundation. But when they were not in power, it was easy to think such things; when they came into power, then the real problems were there.

Leaving individuals free, society was becoming full of crime. Responsibility was not arising, because responsibility is not just an idea -- unless one is alert enough, meditative enough, silent enough, to take all the responsibility of his life and not to disturb, not to interfere with anybody else's life, it is very difficult.

It is well known, but not well established, that Lenin, the head organizer of the revolution, was poisoned by the secretary of the party, Joseph Stalin. But the poison was given very slowly, over a long period of time of two years. Krupskaya, Lenin's wife, has written that it was absolutely certain that he was being poisoned because she was not allowed to change the doctor -- the doctor was appointed by Joseph Stalin, was in his service. He was not treating Lenin, he was simply poisoning him slowly.

Krupskaya could see -- she was an intelligent woman -- that instead of getting well, he was getting worse. The more the treatment, the more he was drowning -- something was wrong. Why this insistence that the doctor should not be changed when the doctor is not succeeding in curing him? It was a natural question that the doctor should be changed.

Trotsky was the foreign minister in the new government of the revolutionaries, but he was as authentic a revolutionary as Lenin. He wanted no ranks in the army -- somebody lower, somebody higher. Everybody should be equal: "We are creating a society of equality; at least the government should give proof to the society that the people who belong to government are equal in rank."

But the generals were not ready to be equal with ordinary soldiers. It is a childish game in the world, but even childish games are played by your oldest people. Just having a few colored stripes on your coat makes people feel very special; one color more added and they rejoice. It seems children are growing old certainly, but they are not growing up; they are not becoming intelligent.

So all the generals of the armies were against Trotsky, and Joseph Stalin was naturally in conspiracy with all the generals. They were all agreeing with him because he was going to keep them on as great generals, marshals, colonels, all the categories. He was going to give them more power.

So naturally they conspired with Joseph Stalin, and Trotsky had to run away, out of the Soviet Union -- and he was the defense minister; he was the head of all the armies. And he was also the foreign minister, because he was the most educated, most intelligent person of all the revolutionaries. Lenin was a great organizer, but was not a great intellectual or a great orator. He was number two, in that sense, to Trotsky.

Joseph Stalin's professional murderers followed Trotsky. He was killed in Mexico, and killed very brutally with a hammer on his head, and in a very strange situation. He was writing the biography of Joseph Stalin... because Stalin was destroying the whole revolution; he was not a revolutionary.

Trotsky has written a tremendously insightful, very big, biography. He was completing the last page, and as he had put the final full stop -- that was the moment; it is just a coincidence that he was looking at the last line, finishing it -- the hammer came down on his head, and his head was broken into pieces.

His blood is splashed all over the last page of his hand-written biography. It is still in a museum in Mexico, on exhibition. It is one of the great biographies, and written by an enemy. Trotsky and Stalin were enemies, enemies in the sense that Joseph Stalin was never a revolutionary. All he wanted deep down was to replace the czar and become a czar himself -- and he became it. He became the worst czar that has ever existed.

In Russian history the worst czar was Ivan the Terrible, but he was nothing compared to Stalin. He poisoned Lenin, he killed Trotsky, and he went on killing other great revolutionaries. He was satisfied only when all the great revolutionaries who were responsible for the revolution were finished. He replaced them with people who wanted law and order, and society and organization. He created the greatest establishment ever created, and with such strength that the whole country became a concentration camp.

It is very difficult for rebels and seekers to remain rebels and seekers. They will be rebellious even if the revolution has happened. Any revolution is bound to create another kind of establishment, and the authentic rebellious man will again revolt, revolt against the revolution he himself has created but had never thought would become an establishment. The authentic rebel never becomes part of any establishment.

The problem is that the rebels are very few, and the retarded masses are so many that unless every individual is a rebel, an establishment is bound to follow. The rebel is bound to fight against his own revolution, which is turning into a new establishment. Up to now no revolution has been able to succeed because the moment it succeeds it starts becoming another establishment. The people who had power change, but the people who come in their place are more powerful. And it is more difficult to change them, because they know all the strategies that they have used in changing powerful people. So they will not allow any of those strategies.

For seventy years in Russia there has not been a single rebel, because you cannot just become a rebel in a single moment. To be rebellious needs a certain understanding, a certain alertness, a certain unprejudiced mind. Russia is the only country in the world where revolution is impossible, and this is a very strange situation. It is the country where revolution succeeded on a great scale. But the moment it became a success, suddenly the water turned into ice; it became the establishment. And the rebels who are authentic cannot be tolerated anymore by the same group who changed the whole society.

Stalin was afraid of Trotsky, he was afraid of Lenin. They had to be finished because they were people who would risk everything, but would not drop their rebelliousness; they would not become a new establishment.

What you are asking for, Dipamo, is a society where everybody is so aware that no law is needed; where everybody is so peaceful that no police are needed; where everybody is so loving that rape and murder and heinous crimes become impossible; where everybody is unrepressed, uninhibited; where everyone has lived his life according to nature. There will be no need of any establishment; government will only be a functional entity like the post office, or railway trains.

Who cares who is the postmaster general? Have you ever heard? No speech, no photograph is ever published in the newspapers about who is the postmaster general. He is managing a great complex, but it is only functional.

Governments should be functional, they are servants of the people. But through the establishment, through power, they become the masters of the people. And very retarded people, when they become masters, destroy all that is delicate, all that is beautiful, all that is great.

But you can be a rebel even in a society which wants you to be part of the establishment.

Don't compromise. Even life itself is a lesser value than your individuality and your rebelliousness.

Your rebelliousness is your very spirit.

You are truly a man only when you are rebellious, when you can say no to anything that goes against freedom, that goes against man's dignity. When you are ready to go to the gallows without any grudge, because you are sacrificing yourself for something far greater and more beautiful -- for freedom, for individuality, for expression, for creativity; you are sowing seeds for future generations -- you will not be sad. You will be immensely happy that you have not been forced to become a slave; that rather than being enslaved, you preferred the gallows.

Unless in this society a person is ready to choose crucifixion rather than consolations, medals, and Nobel Prizes... only such a man can be a rebel and can be truly spiritual. We hope that one day there will be a society where everybody will be so rebellious.

But rebellion does not mean reaction or destruction; rebellion means your highest flowering of consciousness. Unless rebellion brings enlightenment to you, you cannot save it; you will have to compromise. And to compromise is to lose your self-respect, is to lose your dignity as a man.

Up to now the society has lived under a false idea that people are free. Nobody is free; there are a thousand and one ways to enslave you. Only very rarely have a few people risked everything and remained individuals even at the risk of death -- but they are the very salt of the earth. They are the people who have maintained humanity's evolution.

Evolution depends on only a very few people; they can be counted on your ten fingers.

Others live a life of middle-class comfort, and for that comfort they sell their souls in the marketplace.

Dipamo, you are asking, "How can we keep the most beautiful gathering of rebels and seekers who ever existed on the earth from becoming an established society?" If people are really rebels, not just because of their minds but because of their meditation, then there is no problem. With Gautam Buddha there were ten thousand meditators; there was no establishment. Nobody was higher, nobody was lower; nobody had to be ordered.

Even Gautam Buddha has never ordered anyone to do a single thing; he simply shared his vision. It is up to you whether to participate in that vision or not. That is going to be your decision, and that is going to be your responsibility.

Freedom brings responsibility.

Those ten thousand people around Gautam Buddha lived a rebellious life; they renounced society. People think that all the religions of the world have renounced society for the same reasons; that is wrong. Except Gautam Buddha, all other religions have renounced the world to gain something in the other world. It is not renunciation; it is pure business, almost a lottery, because here you lose very small things, and there you get a millionfold reward in paradise.

Here you lose a woman who is just a pain in the neck; there you get hundreds of beautiful young women who always remain young, who don't perspire, who don't use deodorants, who have a natural perfume arising out of their bodies; their age is fixed, they have not gone beyond sixteen. For millions of years they are just sixteen. It is perfectly good to renounce a wife here who is nothing but a trouble, in the hope of getting beautiful women there.

I have heard that when Muktananda died, one of his disciples was so devoted to him that he could not live another day -- the next day he also died. Naturally, the first thing was to look around for where his great master Muktananda was.

He was very much ashamed to see that he was lying down under a beautiful tree --

flowers were showering from the tree and Muktananda was lying down naked with a beautiful woman. As he came closer he said, "My God. He was always against pleasures, but perhaps this must be a reward for his great celibacy." Coming closer he saw that it was nobody other than the great film actress, Marilyn Monroe. He fell to the feet of his master and said, "My master, I always knew you would be greatly rewarded."

Monroe said, "You idiot! You don't understand anything. I am not his reward; he is my punishment!"

But people are hoping. Only Gautam Buddha has not given a hope for the future life to his disciples. He has given them the whole kingdom of the present, not of the future. And their renunciation of the world is not against the world. He is the only one who has renounced the world, and his followers have renounced the world, not against the world but against the establishment of the society. They have created a gathering of rebels with no order, with no system except their own consciousness, their own conscience.

He was working on those people to be deeply meditative. Then there is no need of any establishment. You always do the right thing; you cannot, even if you want to, do the wrong thing. You don't need any supervision, you don't need somebody to keep you within the law. Once you have learned the law of love, then all other laws are of no use to you.

Gautam Buddha pulled them out of society for the simple reason that in society they will have to compromise; their consciousness is not so strong that they can remain without compromise.

I don't want my people to leave the world, because twenty-five centuries have passed since Buddha, and it is time that people should be strong enough in their awareness so they can remain in the society without compromising. Although it is far more difficult, it is a great challenge to live in society and not be part of it, to live in society but not allow society to live in you.

That's my special contribution to the religious experience and to the rebellious human beings. In the past they used to escape out of the establishment, but that shows cowardliness, fear. Be in the society and live according to your own consciousness, whatsoever the consequences. It is better to suffer those consequences than to escape and show your fearfulness, because fear cannot allow you to rise to your ultimate height. The society can be used as a fire test of whether your rebellion is just a mind game or it is a spiritual growth. Those who are rebellious because of their spiritual growth don't have to fear that they will become part of established society.

Moishe Finkelstein, a tailor from a small Ukrainian village, applies for membership of the Russian Communist Party in Kiev.

"Who was Karl Marx?" asks the Commissar.

"Never heard of him," replies Moishe.

"Who was Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin?"

"Never met him," answers Moishe.

"Who was Vladimir Ilyich Lenin?"

"Can't say I recall the name," replies Moishe.

"Mr. Finkelstein, are you taking us for idiots?" asked the irritated Commissar.

"No," replies Moishe, "Do you know Irving Levensky?"

"Never heard of him," replied the Commissar.

"So, do you know Bernie Heikleman?" Moishe asked again.

"No," was the reply.

"So you know Hymie Goldberg?" Moishe asked again.

"I don't know who you are talking about," replied the irritated Commissar.

"Well," says Finkelstein, "that's how it is -- you have your friends; I have mine!"

And this is how the compromise goes on happening in everybody's life....

The out-of-work actor came home to find his house in a shambles. Lamps were knocked over in the living room, drapes were torn, and in the bedroom the bedspread was ripped and the sheets torn. On the bed lay his wife, badly beaten and bruised, sobbing her heart out.

"What happened? Who did this to you?" raged the actor.

"I... I fought as long as I could, but he was too strong," wailed the wife. "He... he..."

"Who?" rasped the actor. "Tell me and I'll find him and tear him limb from limb."

"It was your agent," said the wife. "He came while you were out."

"My agent?" the actor brightened. "Tell me, quickly, does he have a part for me?"

He has forgotten everything. Out of employment, you cannot fight with your agent.

In life, you go on compromising without knowing, not only with the society but even with your family. Even the people you love demand compromise. Nobody likes the individual; everybody wants to overpower you, to dominate you.

The husband wants to dominate the wife; the wife in her own ways tries to dominate the husband. The parents dominate the children; the children also in their own way dominate the parents. It is a constant struggle going on in multiple ways, where nobody is allowed to be just himself, where to be oneself is a crime.

But to accept the challenge and to remain yourself, in spite of all the odds, is a great joy.

To keep your individuality intact, undamaged, in a society where everybody is trying to dominate you... I don't think it is good to escape from such a society. In the Himalayas, in deep forests, you may think you are yourself -- but that is a false notion, because there is no context in which you can put it to the test.

The society is every moment a test.

And here, to be just yourself, not out of arrogance, not out of your egoistic feelings...

Those people who are arrogant will have to compromise, because there are more arrogant people. Those who are egoists will find sooner or later somebody else who can crush them.

There are different kinds of powers. People slowly, slowly learn not to stand erect, but they start crawling on the ground. In this society, to remain erect and yourself -- without arrogance, without ego, but just out of your silence, just out of your awareness -- is a tremendous experience and experiment.

I have lived life the way I wanted; it was difficult but it was immensely rewarding. It gave me the feeling that although society may be powerful, if you have guts no power can enslave you. They can kill you, they can destroy you, but they cannot enslave you.

And to be destroyed is not undignified; to be killed is not against your individuality, against your dignity, against your pride. In fact, these sacrifices will make you more and more authentically yourself.

Deep down, if you are a meditator, you know your body can be taken away but your being cannot even be touched -- your immortality is sure. Hence, I am adding to rebelliousness a new phenomenon. There have been meditators, but they escaped from the society, and there have been rebellious people who were destroyed by the society. I am bringing two very great qualities together that the world has not known before: the meeting of rebelliousness and meditativeness, the meeting of rebelliousness and religiousness. To me, rebelliousness and religiousness are two sides of the same coin.

There is no need to be afraid because there is nothing that can be destroyed in you. And that which can be destroyed will be destroyed whether you are in the Himalayas, or hiding in the monasteries. The body is going to be destroyed, so there is no need on the part of the body, on the part of the mind, to be ready to be enslaved. This happens because you are not aware of anything more than the body-mind structure. My effort is to make you aware of your immortality.

Once you have tasted the very source of your life which is eternal, then nothing can make you do things which are not in tune with your own being. You will say yes only when you feel that this yes is not the yes of a slave but a man of freedom. You will say no if you see that saying yes will be only falling into slavery. But this is possible only if you become aware of your being.

The old rebels were only intellectually rebellious. My rebel has to be spiritually rebellious, and that makes a tremendous difference. The intellectual rebellion is superficial and can be purchased, but the spiritual rebellion is not a commodity in the market; you have transcended the world.

I don't want you to escape the world, I want you to transcend the world -- living in it, going through all the fire because you know nothing can destroy you. This certainty can create a gathering of rebels without any establishment.

And if any functional kind of mechanism is needed, that is not a problem. Where there are so many people, something functional will be needed, But remember it is functional, it does not give you any status. A prime minister or a president of a country are nothing more than functional entities; they have a utility but they don't have any status.

Real status comes only from your realization of yourself, not by sitting on a golden throne. If people bow down to you, remember they are bowing down to the throne, not to you. Tomorrow somebody else will be there. Yesterday there was somebody else and people were bowing down.

I have heard it happened in Jagannathpuri...

It is one of the Hindu religious cities, and it has a great chariot, very ancient, dedicated to God. Jagannath means God, the lord of the world. Once every year, the chariot goes through the streets and millions of people gather. Once it happened that a dog was going ahead of the chariot, and thousands of people were falling on the ground, touching the earth. And the dog said, "Great, I must be someone very special!"

Millions of people, but all your presidents and all your prime ministers are in the same position as the dog. People are respectful towards them, not because of them -- once they are out of power, nobody even remembers them.

Before the Russian revolution, the prime minister of Russia was Kerensky, one of the great powerful men in the world, because Russia is one-sixth of the whole world; it is one of the greatest countries. Kerensky was so powerful, but the revolution disturbed everything. The whole family of the czar was killed. Not even a six-month-old baby was left. Kerensky escaped, and for almost fifty years nobody heard anything about him. In the beginning, for three or four years, people thought, What has happened? But then the people forgot.

In 1960, Kerensky died in New York; he had been running a grocery store for all these years. He lived long, he was a hundred years old when he died, but he had changed his identity. And running a grocery store... nobody even bothered who he was.

These so-called powerful people don't have any power. There is only one power, and that comes from within.

Any power that comes from outside is not yours.

As it has come, it will be taken away. So if you are intelligent you will not think yourself anybody special; you are just functional.

In a society of greater consciousness, more intelligence, government will become just a small functional order, it will not be an enslaving mechanism. On the contrary, it will help individuals to become more sharp in their intelligence, deeper in their meditation, and flowering in their enlightenment with great grace.

Only this kind of evolution in consciousness, which is going to happen... Perhaps we are born in the right age when the transformation is going to happen, because the situation is such that either the whole of humanity will die, or it will have to change. And I don't think anybody wants to die.

The only alternative is to be more conscious, more alert, more alive, more loving -- and create a new world with a new man, bring a new dawn to humanity.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

The Invitation

Chapter #9

Chapter title: Who is this man osho?

25 August 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive

code:

8708255

ShortTitle:

INVITA09

Audio:

Yes

Video:

Yes

Length:

74

mins

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

MY FRIEND, CHINTAN, IS JUST STARTING SIX MONTHS OF HEAVY

CHEMOTHERAPY. YOU HAVE ALREADY SENT HIM SUCH BEAUTIFUL

MESSAGES FOR HIS MEDITATION WHILE PASSING THROUGH THIS.

NOW, OSHO, DO YOU HAVE SOME JOKES FOR HIM TOO?

Prem Garima, Chintan is certainly passing through a difficult stage, but everybody has to finally pass through the difficult stage of death.

Only a meditator is capable of passing through it as if it is a joke. He can pass through it laughing and singing, because he knows that the fire cannot burn and the death cannot destroy him.

There is no sword that can cut him.

He belongs to the eternal life.

Once a small glimpse of the eternity is achieved, there is no life which can be destroyed by anything. It can be removed from one form into another, but death cannot do more than that -- just the changing of the house.

To the non-meditator death is the end, to the meditator, a beginning. It is a new beginning, a fresh beginning, freed from the old rotten body, the old mind. It is a resurrection; every death is a resurrection. But if you don't know it, you will die unconsciously without experiencing the beauty of resurrection.

If you can die consciously, death is only a door into a new life on a higher plane. But to die consciously, one has to live consciously. You cannot manage to die consciously without a long, meditative, conscious life. Only a conscious life is rewarded with a conscious death -- it is a reward, but only to the conscious man. To the unconscious man, it is the end to all his efforts, ambitions, desires. There is only darkness ahead, not a single light and no possibilities left.

Death simply takes away the whole future.

Naturally, the unconscious man is immensely afraid and deeply trembling, knowing that death is coming closer every day. Since your birth the only thing that has been certain is death; everything else is uncertain and accidental. Only death is not accidental; it is an absolute certainty. There is no way to avoid it or dodge it. It will catch hold of you in the right moment at the right place.

I have always loved the beautiful Sufi story...

A king dreams in the night that a dark shadow is putting her hand on his shoulder. He looks back. He is horrified. It is just a dark shadow, but the shadow speaks and says,

"There is no need to be worried. I have just come to inform you -- it is not routine; you are a great king; it is an exception -- otherwise I never come to inform anybody. I come without any information."

The king said, "But who are you?"

The dark shadow laughed and said, "I am your death, and be prepared. Tomorrow, as the sun will be setting, I am going to come to you."

Naturally, this nightmare woke him up. Even after he was awake, knowing well that it was only a dream, he was trembling and perspiring. And his heart was beating so loudly he could hear it himself. He immediately called the council of all his wise men, and particularly the royal astrologers, prophets, and told them the dream. He asked them the meaning of it -- is it true that death is going to happen? The astrologers may be able to figure it out.

The wise men, the philosophers, the astrologers, the prophets, all started arguing about the dream. Perhaps it was the first dream analysis! But they could not come to any conclusion, just as they cannot come to any conclusion today. All the dream analysts, the so-called psychoanalysts, differ in their interpretations. You take the same dream to all and you will get different conclusions about the dream. You will be more confused than ever.

And so was the situation of the king from the middle of the night till the morning; he became more and more confused because everybody was saying something different.

And when the sun started rising, the old man who used to serve the king... He was not only a servant, he had helped the king from his very childhood. He had taken care of him, because his mother had died and his father had appointed the man to take care of the child because he was his most trustworthy bodyguard. So the king respected him almost like his father.

The old man said, whispered in his ear, "These great thinkers and philosophers and astrologers have argued for centuries and they have never come to any conclusion; do you think they will come to any conclusion within twelve hours? Forget it; that is not possible. These are the people who know only how to argue; they never come to any conclusion. They argue well but the question is not the beauty of the argument, the question is what is the conclusion of all your philosophies? There is no conclusion at all.

No two philosophers agree with each other."

The king asked him, "Then what do you propose?"

He said, "My understanding is let them discuss; there is no harm. But you take our fastest horse and get away as far as possible from the palace. It is dangerous to be at this place, for at least the coming twelve hours. After the sun has set, you can start turning back, but not before that." It looked practical. The old man said, "These people can go on arguing; there is no need to stop them. If they come to any conclusion, I will follow you immediately. The best way is towards Damascus, another capital of another kingdom. So I will know where to find you, to give you their conclusion. I will come behind you."

The king was convinced by the old man. He left all those great philosophers discussing, and slipped quietly out of the palace with the best horse he had. The whole day the horse was running as fast as possible. They did not stop to eat or even to drink water. It was not a time to think of water or food. And the horse seemed to be in a certain understanding that it was a very critical moment for his master.

They reached near Damascus, just outside the city, as the sun was setting. They stopped in a mango grove and as he was tying the horse to a tree, he patted it and he said, "You prove to be a great friend. You have never run so fast before; you must have understood my situation. And we have come hundreds of miles away."

As the sun was setting he immediately felt the same hand on his shoulder from behind.

The shadow was there and said, "I also have to thank your horse. I was worried whether you would be able to reach this place at the right time or not. That's why I had come to inform you. This is the place destined for your death, and your horse has brought you right on time."

Whether you run or you stay it doesn't matter death comes. Death has started coming closer to you from the very moment you were born. In what form it comes does not matter.

Bertrand Russell has said that if there were no death in the world, there would have been no religion. He has some great insight there: without death, who was going to bother about meditation? Without death, who was going to bother to know about the secret mysteries of life? One would have remained always concerned with the mundane and the worldly. Who would have turned inwards? There would have been no Gautam Buddha.

So death is not just a calamity, it is a blessing in disguise. If you can understand, if you have this much intelligence -- that after birth, death is approaching every moment closer -

- you will not lose your time in trivia. Your priority will be to know what this life is before it ends: Who is living in me? What force? For every intelligent man and woman this is the priority. Everything else is secondary to knowing oneself.

Once you know yourself, there is no death.

Death was only in your ignorance.

In your meditative consciousness, death disappears just as darkness disappears when there is light brought in. Meditation brings the light in, and death is found to be the greatest fiction. It appears only from the outside that somebody is dying. From the inside nobody has ever died, and that is where your life source is.

Chintan is taking his death very joyously, very peacefully. He will die consciously. He is giving every indication that death cannot make him unconscious, cannot knock him unconscious. He will retain his consciousness, and he will have a laugh as he will be dying, because the whole world is living in an illusion.

Life is neither born nor dies.

It has been before birth; it will be after death. Birth and death both are small episodes in the eternal stream of consciousness and light.

Garima, you are asking for some jokes for him....

Giovanni bumps into his friend Alfredo on the streets of Rome, and notices that his friend is looking very depressed.

"How was your holiday in-a Miami Beach?" he asks.

"Mama mia," replies Alfredo. "It was-a terrible. I go-a to Miami and check into-a bigg-a hotel. In-a the morning I go down to eat-a breakfast. I tell-a the waitress, Ì wanna two pissis-a toast.' She bring only one piss. I tell-a her, Ì want two piss.' She say, `Go to the toilet.'

"I say, `You no understand, I wanna two piss on-a the plate.'

"She say, `You better no piss on da plate, you sonna va bitch.' I don't even know the lady and she call me sonna va bitch!

"Later I go eat at the bigga restaurant. The waitress brings me a spoon and knife but no fock. I tell-a her, Ì wanna fock.' She tell me, Èveryone wanna fuck.'

"I tell her, `You no understand. I wanna fock on-a da table.'

"She say, `You better not fuck on-a table, you sonna va bitch.'

"So I go back to my room in-a hotel and there is no shits on-a my bed. I call the manager and tell-a him, Ì wanna shit.' He tell me to go to the toilet. I say, `You not understand. I wanna shit on my bed.'

"He say, `You better not shit on-a bed, you sonna va bitch.'

"I go to the check-out desk and the man at the desk say, `Happy Holidays, Peace to you.'

"I say, `Piss on you too, you sonna va bitch, I gonna go back to Italy.'"

Just tell Chintan: Avoid Italy and go anywhere else.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

YOU SAY EVERYBODY IS BEAUTIFUL. CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE BEAUTY

OF RONALD REAGAN?

Prem Samarpan, everybody is certainly beautiful. When I say this, I mean potentially, I do not mean actually. If actually everybody was beautiful, this world would have been a paradise.

Potentially everybody is beautiful -- yes, even Ronald Reagan. But the actuality is what matters. Actually, he is the ugliest man today, Adolf Hitler number one. Kaddafi has called him "Adolf Hitler number two." I made a statement that Kaddafi should correct his statement. He is not Adolf Hitler number two, he is Adolf Hitler number one. The real, poor Adolf Hitler, has become number two.

Adolf Hitler had very little power. Ronald Reagan has millions of times more power, and he is as fascist and as fanatical as any Adolf Hitler. This is the actuality.

Everybody is beautiful but everybody does not prove to be beautiful, because very few people attain to their potential; they go astray. They don't grow to be what they were born to be. They grow in an insane society and naturally, learn the whole art of being insane.

Because here, whoever is more insane will be the winner.

The sane person will stand out of the race. And the insane will not take any note --

whatever happens to him or to others, and whatever the cost, he is going to be on the top.

Your presidents and your prime ministers are your most insane people. Their right place is in madhouses, but they are ruling the whole world. In three thousand years they have managed five thousand wars. And the insanity has gone on growing; it has not been stable. Today it has reached its peak, and Ronald Reagan is standing on almost an Everest of nuclear weapons, ready to destroy the whole of life on this beautiful planet.

Hence, I have to make this strange statement: I love him; I respect him as a human being if he comes back to sanity... but he is going more and more insane and senile. Retarded, he has always been. It would have been perfectly good if he had remained in Hollywood as a cowboy actor. But when he became the president, he started behaving in the same way as if he was acting in a cowboy film.

It is real life; it is not a film, but he has not been able to assimilate the fact.

When he became the president, he came to the White House with his only friend, a chimpanzee. Now, if you cannot find any friendship in human beings and you find friendship with a chimpanzee, it shows something about you. It also shows something about the chimpanzee -- that he is an intelligent fellow.

On the first day they had both gone for a walk on the beach. An old drunkard watched these two fellows. He could not believe it and he could not resist the temptation either.

He went close to them and said, "Mr. President, it does not look right to have a chimpanzee as your friend. It is humiliating to the whole of America."

And as Ronald Reagan was going to say something, the drunkard said, "You shut up -- I am talking to Mr. President."

This man Ronald Reagan has gone completely astray, and he is now the most powerful man. In the hands of a great insane person is so much power that you are living moment to moment in tremendous risk. He can blow up the whole earth just by pushing a button, and I don't think that he will hesitate to do it.

His fanatical and fascist mind is capable of doing any idiotic thing. He has behaved with me, with my people, with the commune -- a group of meditators in a desert, just five thousand people in a vast desert of one hundred and twenty-six square miles, far away from any American town, at least twenty miles away from any town... He became so much interested in destroying the commune -- which had not done any harm to him, or to his country -- just because he could not tolerate a peaceful commune, joyous and happy and celebrating.

Hundreds of news media people and visitors from all over America had started coming to see what was happening: how in five years we had transformed the desert into a beautiful oasis. My garden alone had three hundred peacocks, and the commune had almost two or three thousand deer. It was such a dream come true.

As the news started spreading in America, Ronald Reagan began to fear that people would ask: If these people can turn even a desert into an oasis and can live so beautifully and so peacefully, with no court, with no law, with no government, why should the richest country of the world not live as peacefully and as joyously and as lovingly?

Why should there be thirty million beggars on the street in America? And we had absorbed a few hundred beggars into our commune. Those beggars could not believe it when we behaved with them on equal terms. They wrote letters to me saying, "For the first time we have recognized that we are also human beings. You have given us dignity and respect; otherwise, we had been treated almost like dogs, stray dogs."

Ronald Reagan and his government became absolutely antagonistic for the simple reason that we were so successful in creating a utopia. He could not tolerate us; he destroyed the commune. He had the power; he arrested me for no reason. He fined me sixty lakh rupees for no crime, and after that I was deported from America and the commune was crushed.

Now, where there were five thousand people living, and where every year on festival days for one month, there used to be twenty thousand sannyasins -- a great festival of love and joy and meditation and silence and creativity...

After I was out of America, his own U.S. attorney gave a statement in a press conference that they had no evidence against me of any crime; hence, they could not send me to jail.

Moreover, they did not want to make me a martyr. That shows their deep desire -- they wanted to kill me, but they prevented themselves because that may have strengthened the sannyas movement around the world. Thirdly, he said, "Our priority was just to destroy the commune and not allow Osho into America for fifteen years."

I was not thinking that they would continue their harassment, but even today that harassment continues. They have forced all the governments of the world to pass laws so that I cannot enter -- not only America, but any country in Europe. Now this is absolutely criminal. Wherever I was, he forced that government to deport me.

Just the other day I found out that one archbishop of Greece has been caught at the Paris airport, hiding a large amount of heroin in his religious paraphernalia. I was deported from Greece and I was just a tourist. I was going to be there for only two weeks more; I had already been there two weeks. I was deported on the demand of the archbishop, the highest authority of the Greek Orthodox church, on the grounds that my presence in Greece will destroy its tradition, will destroy its religion, will destroy its morality.

I could not believe that we are living in the twentieth century. I had not even left my house, the compound. And if a religion, a morality, a church, twenty centuries old --

because the Greek church is the oldest church as far as Christianity is concerned -- can be destroyed by a tourist in two weeks' time, is it worth saving?

But the force behind was Ronald Reagan. In Uruguay I was given a one-year resident's permit. The president was interested in me. He had been reading my books and he was very happy that I had come to Uruguay. That would open the door of Uruguay to international visitors, sannyasins. It is a poor country and it would be an economic help to the country. It is a beautiful country, a small country.

But as I was given the one-year resident's permit, immediately, special agents from Ronald Reagan arrived. And Ronald Reagan himself phoned the president of Uruguay, saying, "Osho has to be deported within thirty-six hours. You have a choice: If you want to keep him in Uruguay, you can, but then you have to return all the money that has been given to you as loans in the past; that comes to billions of dollars. And the money that you are going to get in the coming two years, which also comes to billions of dollars, will be canceled. You can choose."

The secretary to the president of Uruguay told me, "I have seen for the first time, tears in the eyes of the president, and he said, Òsho's coming to Uruguay at least has made one thing clear to us, that we are living in an illusion that we are independent. We are not even free to accept a guest in our country. Now America is blackmailing us. They know that we cannot pay all the loans; we don't have... and we cannot afford to have the future loans withdrawn because all of our plans for the coming five years will have to be dropped. Our whole economy will collapse.'"

He agreed, "I will send Osho away, although it is against our legal court and against the constitution of Uruguay. Once you give a man one year's residence, unless he commits some heinous crime -- murder, rape, or something of that category -- you cannot take away his residential status. But I am ready to commit something against the constitution.

I will send him; I will persuade him to leave by himself."

But Ronald Reagan insisted, "No, he has to be deported; he has not to be persuaded to leave."

The president of Uruguay begged him that this was going too far: "In the first place he has every right to stay, because he has not committed any sin. He never goes out of his house. Secondly, to deport him what cause will we show?"

President Ronald Reagan was stubborn. "That is not our problem, but he has to be deported."

The president of Uruguay tried. He sent a messenger to me, "Shift your jet plane from the international airport to a small airport nearby. And leave from there, because the American Embassy is watching the international airport. There will be no need for us to deport you."

But American detectives must have been watching the president; they must have been watching me also. Before I reached the small airport, the American ambassador was there ahead of us and he had phoned the president to send all the officials with all the necessary documents for deportation: "Without deportation he cannot be allowed to leave the country."

I was deported. I had to be stopped for two hours at that small airport, and for no reason.

But they have made my passport a historical document. I had been deported from twenty-one countries without any reason -- against the constitutions of twenty-one countries.

Reagan's idea has been to close the whole world to me and then force the Indian government -- which he is doing continuously -- to allow no sannyasins to reach me. I have been informed by my friends from Washington that the attorney general said, "Our whole effort will be to completely silence Osho."

One reporter asked, "What do you mean by silence? Do you mean that he should be assassinated?"

The attorney general said, "No, we don't mean that, but it will almost be assassination."

The strategy is that no other country allows me to enter. My country of course cannot deport me, but it can prevent people from reaching me.

Many television companies have written saying, "We are continuously being refused. We are asking to come to Poona; they immediately refuse, and they don't give any reason why."

Newspapers have been refused permission to reach me. Thousands of sannyasins from all over the world have been refused visas. Somehow thousands have already got their visas, because now I have taken away the orange robe, the mala -- so they cannot figure out whether the person is a sannyasin or not.

I am not a serious man, so I have told my sannyasins, "If they ask you, simply ask, Who is this man Osho? Do you want us to go to him? Where is Poona? We were never thinking of going but you seem to be interested..." Although many people have got visas, some have been turned back from Bombay airport and from Calcutta airport, back to their countries. This is because, the American government has given the Indian government a whole list of the people who were living in the commune. They are asking continuously, that every sannyasin who is here should give the police commissioner his full address and how long he is going to be here, so that, even if you have reached me one time, the next time you cannot. We have not given any names; we have asked them, "On what grounds are you asking? If you are asking one religious institution, you should ask all the religious institutions of the country to keep a record of anybody who comes there and make a report every day. And if you want, you can open an office in front of the ashram, and anybody who comes you can take his name. That is your business; that is not our business. It is not our concern and it is against our philosophy and religion to discriminate between people of different countries or different races, or different colors. And we will not do anything against our own thinking."

So they are at a loss what to do, because if they do anything against the constitution we are going to fight. But Ronald Reagan goes on insisting. The American Embassy goes on insisting to the Indian government to prevent people from reaching here. Twice, the American Embassy has been here to watch how many people there are around the ashram. And now the police commissioner has asked US, "Why does the American Embassy come again and again to the ashram? This is strange."

They should ask the American Embassy. How do we know? And why should we bother?

If all the embassies of the world start coming it is perfectly good. We are not doing anything criminal here.

But this man Reagan has lost his humanity.

Prem Samarpan you say everybody is beautiful -- but everybody does not actualize his beauty, does not actualize his consciousness. Everybody is capable of enlightenment, but that does not mean that Ronald Reagan is enlightened. Everybody is beautiful, but that does not mean that when you see a beautiful cobra, you should not avoid it. Even if you are enlightened, please avoid it! Appreciate the beauty, but avoid it.

What is the difference between a dead snake lying in the road and a dead politician lying in the road? Whom will you avoid first? If Ronald Reagan is lying dead on the road and a dead snake is lying on the road, I suggest, although both are beautiful, that you avoid Ronald Reagan first! Politicians cannot be trusted whether they are really dead or not.

And if you see a politician and a snake lying dead, you will also see one thing: there will be skid marks in front of the snake, not in front of the politician.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

WHAT IS THE HIDDEN MYSTERY IN THE SILENCE BETWEEN THE PAGES IN

FRONT OF YOU?

Prem Maharaj, all that I want to say to you is in my gaps. I use the words only to create gaps. So when I am simply looking at the pages, I am giving you a chance to receive the message which cannot be said in words, which can only be relayed, transferred, in utter silence.

There is an ancient proverb: "People will believe anything, if you whisper it." Particularly if you want the women to hear anything, whisper it! But I go one step further. If you really want to express the truth, don't say anything about it, just leave the gap. Let people hear without your saying anything. That's the only way truth has always been transferred

-- from one silent heart to another silent heart.

In utter silence is the only possibility to meet, to merge, to share.

A joke for you Prem Maharaj. The purpose of the joke is not the joke. The purpose is the laughter that follows, because in that laughter your thinking stops. In that laughter, you are no more mind. And after the laughter, just a very small gap and I can reach to the deepest core of your being.

An Englishman, a Frenchman, and a Russian were arguing about the nationality of Adam and Eve.

"They must have been English," the Englishman offered. "After all, only a gentleman would share his last apple with a lady."

"They surely were French," the Frenchman asserted. "They were so hopelessly in love."

"They could only have been Russian," declared the Russian. "Who else would walk around naked, have but one apple to eat between them, and think they were in paradise?"

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

The Invitation

Chapter #10

Chapter title: The only romance that knows no divorce

26 August 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive

code:

8708260

ShortTitle:

INVITA10

Audio:

Yes

Video:

Yes

Length:

113

mins

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

OVER THE LAST FEW MONTHS I HAVE BEEN GOING THROUGH AN

AMAZING PROCESS OF LETTING GO OF MY ATTACHMENTS, OF CLEARING

THE WAY FOR MY HEART TO EXPAND TO YOU, THE DIVINE.

THANK YOU, OSHO, FOR SHOWERING ME WITH SO MUCH LOVE. AM I WORTHY OF SO MUCH?

Prem Neera, everybody is worthy of much more, much more than he is receiving. But the responsibility of not receiving more is yours.

People live a closed life. They keep all their doors and windows of the heart completely shut. It happens because of a natural phenomenon that the child is so small and so helpless, and so dependent and is always in fear; everybody is bigger and more powerful.

His experience of fear in the very beginning starts the process of closing the heart.

Fear is a closing process.

Love is just the opposite, the opening process. Unfortunately, the way humanity has lived, it has lived in fear. Even if it loves, it is out of fear. And a love out of fear is absolutely false. It is better to be loveless -- because at least it will go on hurting you to the point that you will have to change -- than to have a substitute false love which consoles you, deceives you and keeps you where you are, a closed being.

The child is told by the parents to love them; it is almost an order. Love cannot be ordered. If through an order something resembling love happens it is false, and deep inside there is hate because nobody wants to be ordered, manipulated. But every parent is manipulating his own children: I am your mother -- love me!

What is so great in being your mother? What is so great in being your father? If there is something great, the child will start loving you and then there will be a totally different world. The child will learn to love on his own, not because you have ordered but because of the way you are.

Love arises out of deep respect and gratitude, seeing your beauty and grandeur, seeing your unconditional love which asks nothing in response, not even love. If the parents can shower the child with love without asking for any response from him, the response will come. And this response will have an authenticity; it will come from the opening of the heart. The child will know that there is no reason to fear. These are not the people to be afraid of; you can open, and this is the beginning of a totally different life. Once you have learned that, the open heart is not only capable of receiving love from your parents, it is also capable of receiving love from the whole existence.

The whole secret is a simple thing -- the opening of the heart. But what actually has been happening is that neither of the parents loves each other. The husband loves because he is a husband; he is supposed to love. The wife loves under submission, because she has been enslaved through marriage; she has to love.

When there is some compulsoriness, the beauty of love disappears and the reality of love changes completely to its opposite. Husband and wife love each other and hate each other too, simultaneously. They hate because they have to love under compulsion, under the rules of society, convention, law. The husband can demand love; the wife can demand love, but it is a demanding love; in subtle ways they demand, not directly.

As the husband comes home... the wife was perfectly okay listening to the radio, looking at the television, singing to herself, and as the husband comes, she immediately lies down and suddenly, the headache!

The story is that Adam was constantly bothering God: first, he was alone and he had no idea that there was something missing in his life. But then he saw a bull doing something to a cow. And he ran to God and said, "What is happening? What is that bull doing to the cow?"

And God said,"You don't bother me again and again. I have told you, the bull is loving the cow." And all the animals and the birds... and Adam was again and again asking.

Finally, God became tired and told him, "I will give you a wife also."

And the next day, in the morning, Adam ran after God and said, "Just a minute, please, what is a headache?"

The first night, the very first night of humanity's beginning, and the headache is the first problem that arises -- the wife had a headache.

These are ways of manipulating. When your wife has a headache, naturally you have to be loving. This is not a time to quarrel or fight or to argue or tell her things that she has done wrong. Some other time -- this is not the time; she is already suffering. The headache is a way to ask for your sympathy, but it is not love. The man will show sympathy; and sympathy is ugly in comparison to love. Always remember: all these qualities are relative.

Sympathy is good in comparison to antipathy, but sympathy is very poor and ugly in comparison to love.

You have heard about Albert Einstein's law of relativity. Somebody has reduced it to a simple maxim: the theory of relativity says that it all depends on which side of the toilet door you are. If you are inside time is going fast, and if you are outside time is going slow. It is the same time, just the door is creating the whole trouble.

Love is something that can blossom in its beauty only when unasked, when it is not demanded. When it comes on its own, even unconsciously, it has tremendous beauty. The moment you demand, it may come because the wife is dependent on you... and in certain ways, the husband is dependent on the wife. Love happens between two independent people not between two slaves of each other. And the poor children are brought up by these two persons who themselves don't know the secret of the opening of the heart.

Naturally, they start from the very beginning. The mother goes on saying, "He is your daddy, smile!" as if these things can be ordered. Smile... and the poor child has to smile.

Now what is there in this dodo you call daddy that the poor child has to smile? And the poor child does not understand what this fellow has done that he has to smile. But he has to smile; that smile becomes, naturally, a Jimmy Carter smile, absolutely false. The child starts becoming a politician; he smiles because he knows that way he is appreciated, thought to be a beautiful child. If he does not smile, he is thought to be unworthy, and nobody wants to be condemned as unworthy. That's how, slowly, the child starts learning false things: false smiles, false love, false respect.

In a more conscious and authentic world, the husband and the wife should first learn how to remain independent and yet allow love to pass through. They should not come too close. Kahlil Gibran is right when he says to the lovers, "You should stand like the pillars of a temple -- far apart, yet supporting the same roof." Your love should be supported by you, but you should leave enough gap for each to have his own individual territory, his own individual space, his own individuality.

You should not trespass on each other. But what to say of trespassing? Husbands and wives become detectives, FBI agents -- against each other. They are continuously looking out of the corners of their eyes: What is happening? This is not love. This is domination; this is pure animal sexuality. A child is born out of this situation, and unfortunately has to be brought up by these people. They themselves don't know what love is; they missed the train. Now they will train the child to miss the train. And this goes on from generation to generation.

Just the other day, there was a question from Veena -- how to open the heart? It is just like somebody asking how to open the eyes. If you were forced from the very beginning and ordered to open the eyes, perhaps you would have retaliated by closing them. That would have been your assertiveness, your individuality, and you may have forgotten completely how to open the eyes. Now, do you think there can be some training to open the heart, some discipline, some technique? That will be another mistake. You can pretend that your heart is open. That's all that will happen by your discipline and training and technique.

What is needed is a deep understanding of why the heart is closed. There is no need to be worried about opening it. Just knowing why it is closed, you will come upon all those fears that have closed it. Now those fears are not there, but once you have closed the doors and the windows, they have remained closed.

Now nobody is forcing you; now you are grown up enough. You can assert yourself; you can be an individual. You can say to your father, "If you are lovable, I will love, but not because you are my father." You can say to your mother, "Create the quality of lovableness and I will love you -- not only I, but others also will love you -- but not because you are my mother."

Love is not a rational thing. It is not a syllogism: she is your mother; hence you have to love her. Wherever any kind of compulsoriness comes in, love is very delicate and disappears.

Everybody is much more worthy than he can even dream of, to receive love, to share love, to rejoice in making love your very life.

Birth is not in your hands, neither is death in your hands. Between birth and death only one thing is in your hands, and that is love. And unfortunately, that which was your only freedom is not available to everybody.

Prem Neera, you are saying, "Am I worthy of so much?" You are worthy of much more.

Just learn to be receptive, just learn to be humble, just learn to be simple, just learn to be trusting. Even if the whole world deceives you, still trust, because that is their problem if they are deceptive; it is not your problem.

What happens? A single man deceives you and you start distrusting the whole of humanity. Do you see the absurdity of it? Even if the whole of humanity deceives you, I say to you, still trust -- because trust is much more valuable; it has an intrinsic value. It does not depend on whether people are trustworthy or not. And if you can trust in spite of their untrustworthiness, you may create a revolution in their hearts also, because they are also as human as you are.

They are also victims of the same society and the same pattern as you are. You are fortunate if you have opened one window. You are fortunate if by accident a door has been flung open. You are fortunate not to be part of the closed humanity.

Now, this little opening has to be made bigger. In fact, a moment has to come in the life of love when all the windows and doors disappear; not only that, but all the walls disappear also.

You are just under the open sky, under the stars and you will be showered from all directions, all dimensions, with so much immense love and blissfulness that you cannot believe why it is happening to you.

It is the only miracle in the world. Walking on water is not a miracle; it is just a stupidity.

Turning water into wine is not a miracle; it is a crime. The only miracle I am aware of is a completely, totally open heart. No situation, no condition can close it.

Meditation will help you. Meditation is almost a golden key, a master key which opens many doors. It can open the door of love too. As you become silent, as you become peaceful, as you become aware of your life force, as you become aware there is no death, fear disappears. And with the disappearance of the fear -- from the very roots -- now there is no point in keeping your heart closed. You can open your heart to friend and foe, to those who are familiar and to those who are strangers. And you will receive gifts which you had not ever imagined.

You are saying, Neera, "Over the last few months, I have been going through an amazing process of letting go of my attachments." It is an amazing process, but it is the process I have been telling everybody my whole life; that your attachment is a barrier, it is not a bridge.

Your attachment keeps you unaware of your own great potential. The more you become attached to things, to people, the more you become a slave. Attachment is another beautiful name of spiritual slavery. A man who is attached to money is a slave.

I used to know a man...

I have never come across another of the same quality of attachment. He was so money mad that even if you had a one hundred rupee note, he would say, "Just let me touch it."

And he would touch it as if he was touching his beloved, with such romance. It was impossible to give him money and to get it back. I inquired about him from all the people who knew him. They said, "He has never returned anybody's money. And people feel full of pity. Nobody is angry about it. They just think he is insane, obsessed with money."

Walking on the street on a fullmoon night, he suddenly picked up something and then threw it away and said, "If I meet this man I will kill him. The son of a bitch spits mucous as if it is a rupee; it shines in the light."

Such was his madness. He had a small cloth shop, and for a few months I used to live just by the side of his shop in a small house. I was puzzled to watch the whole show that went on in his shop. There were people whom he knew would ask for things on credit. He would immediately give me a sign and then hide in the back of the shop in the bathroom.

He always avoided one old woman in particular. And I had to tell her, "He is not here."

But one day I said to her, "What is the matter? Whenever you come you never find him here."

She said, "There is nothing the matter. He is afraid of me because he owes me money.

And naturally, I will purchase things and I will tell him, `Deduct it from the money you owe.'"

I said, "If that is what is the matter, then he is hiding in the bathroom."

She said, "Really."

I said, "You go in."

She said, "Well it does not look right."

I said, "You go in and open the door."

So she went and opened the door. He came running out. He was very angry with me. I said, "If I had known that this was the reason, I would have never deceived that woman that you are not in the shop. You owe money to her?"

He said, "I owe money to everybody. In this whole area, nobody can say that I don't owe money to them. But you know me; I cannot return money once I get it. It is almost like a heart attack to give the money back."

It is verging on insanity. All attachments although different in degree, are a kind of putting yourself down and making something so important that people are ready to die for money; people are ready to die for power. People are ready to do anything to fulfill their ambition. All these attachments destroy your worthiness. They take away all that is beautiful and valuable in you. You become smaller than the things you are attached to and infatuated with.

A man who has no attachment has tremendous freedom; he has nothing to lose. And if everything is lost, he will not look back even a single time.

I have told you the story of Diogenes...

He used to live naked. He is the only man in the Western world who can be compared to Mahavira in India. Both were contemporaries; both lived naked. Both had immensely beautiful bodies and were very strong people.

Diogenes was going to the river. He used to carry only a begging bowl. Mahavira did not use any begging bowl because everything that you become used to creates a subtle, psychological slavery.

Mahavira used to make a cup with his hands to drink or to take food. But Diogenes, like all old renunciates, used to carry a begging bowl. He was running towards the river; he was so thirsty and it was hot. And just then he saw a dog running by his side. The dog jumped ahead of him in the river and started drinking.

Diogenes felt very much offended, but he also felt deeply grateful to the dog.... he has shown him that a begging bowl is not needed! You can drink water without it, why carry it unnecessarily? "If a dog can manage to live without a begging bowl, I am a man; I can manage." First, he threw away the begging bowl, and he said, "That was my only possession -- and I was thinking that I had overcome all attachment, but throwing that bowl, I knew that now I had become really free. Otherwise, I used to keep an eye out in case somebody might steal the begging bowl."

It was a beautiful bowl presented to him by a king and beautifully carved. In the night also he used to touch the begging bowl once or twice to see that it was still there. He said,

"Since the moment the dog taught me the lesson, I have felt such freedom, and such a burden has been relieved from my heart."

If this is the situation with a begging bowl, what will be the situation of people who are possessed of so many things, so possessive that things become their only life? And remember, the moment you become attached to a person, the person is no more a person.

You have changed the person into a commodity, into a thing. Only things can be possessed.

If a husband possesses the wife, he has reduced her into a thing, and the wife can never forgive him. If the wife possesses the husband, she has committed the greatest sin by reducing a human being into a commodity. Only things can be possessed, not conscious human beings.

But you possess even your children. You say, "This is my child." You should be more aware. You should say, "This child has come through me. I have been the passage, but he does not belong to me. He belongs to existence." If this insight settles in you, then you will not try to make the child a carbon copy of you.

What can you teach the child? All that you know is of the past; it is dead, it is gone, it will never come back. And the child has to live in a future about which you don't have any understanding. There is no possibility for you to know the future. Prepare the child for the unknown; prepare the child to be adventurous. Prepare the child to learn to live dangerously, because the more safety and security you ask, the more you are enclosed in a prison of your own making. A prisoner cannot be a lover.

Only freedom knows the fragrance of love.

Only freedom knows your immense worthiness. And that does not give you any ego, any arrogance. It makes you really more humble than ever -- you don't deserve it; still existence out of its abundance has given you so much. You learn for the first time the sense of gratitude, gratefulness.

To me, gratitude is the only prayer. Nothing has to be said, just a feeling of gratefulness.

But people are full of complaints not gratitude.

Veena has just asked how to open the heart because she had written a letter which was ugly, and now she has written another letter. She thinks she has improved upon the first one, but the basic points are still there. She used to live in this house and, to make a bigger library, seventeen people from the house have been moved into other houses in the campus; the whole campus is one. She was never grateful that she was in the house, but she is complaining very seriously that she has been moved from the house. She is not worried that sixteen other people have also gone.

Those sixteen have written letters of thankfulness, that they are grateful that they lived in the house with me, and they are grateful that they have been chosen to make a place for the library. They are immensely happy and thankful. Only she is complaining, asking why she has been moved to another house. She is living with her boyfriend in the room; she knows that we don't have enough space for people...

We are trying to find more and more places, and within two or three months, you all will have places in the ashram. But just my name, and the price of any house goes up three times. So it is a little difficult, but I know you are living in difficulties outside. The same flat that was rented for seventeen hundred rupees per month before our coming back to Poona is now being given to sannyasins for eight thousand rupees per month. Prices have gone seven, eight times higher.

But Veena will not feel grateful that she is in the ashram. She will not think that thousands of sannyasins are living outside, paying too much, eight or ten times more than the market price.

Two thousand sannyasins are living outside, and she is demanding that she wants a separate room to herself. That means a separate room for her lover and a separate room for herself, perfectly aware that we don't have a space.

Demanding, and when your demand is not possible at this moment to fulfill, you become closed; you become angry. She has been angry, so angry that I was puzzled. Whenever I would come, she was sitting with folded hands, but she would never open her eyes. She is perfectly aware that if I see her eyes, I will immediately see what is going on in her. To avoid that... she was keeping her eyes closed, and I knew that she was boiling within.

Rather than feeling grateful that you are part of a commune where everybody loves you, everybody respects each other, where there is no hierarchy, where there is nobody higher and nobody lower, that you are living in a totally new world, a miniature experiment...

she is concerned about stupid things. That's how the mind functions, and then it becomes closed. And when it is closed then she is angry that I am not loving towards her.

My love is available, just as the light of the sun is available. You just have to open your eyes. My love cannot be addressed to particular people, because love to me, cannot be a relationship.

I am love.

I can share with you.

I am sharing every moment.

Those who are capable of receiving it will receive it, as much as they are capable -- and their capacity depends on the opening of their hearts. But an angry heart or a fearful heart cannot be open.

It is simply a question of understanding. You don't have to force your heart open; that won't help. You have simply to understand. It is just like you were putting two plus two is equal to five. Now no training is needed, just a simple understanding that you have been counting wrong -- finished. Start counting two plus two is four. Don't ask what to do with five, how to get rid of five.

Life is mostly a question of understanding. So just understand and pay attention to whatever life has given to you. Are you worthy of it? We are not worthy of anything....

intelligence, love, life itself; we are not worthy. If you had not been given life, you could not have registered any complaint in the complaint office: why have I not been given life when everybody else -- Tom, Dick, Harry, everybody else -- is given life?" No, there would have been no possibility.

Life is given to you. Capacity to grow is given to you. Every opportunity to come to your ultimate peak of consciousness is given to you. A heart that can blossom in love is given to you. Just feel grateful to life, and as you will feel grateful, you will become more and more worthy, and more and more humble -- no grudge, no complaint.

This is exactly the state of a religious man. It does not need you to belong to any organized religion for you to become religious.

Religiousness is your gratefulness towards existence.

Such beautiful trees, such infinite sky, so many stars and you have not paid for anything.

This immense universe is given to you with all its beauty, sunrises, sunsets, and all the flowers and beautiful people. Just watch and you will be aware that so much is already given, but you are taking it for granted. You have never looked at it as a gift from existence without your asking, without your demanding.

Once you start seeing all that has already been given, your heart will be full of gratitude.

And that gratitude will open all the doors, all the windows. Existence is bridged by only one thing and that is gratefulness. Then miracles start happening to you. Then mysteries go on opening their doors to you. The more humble, the more simple, the more grateful, the more worthy you become -- and your worthiness has no limits.

Isaac Asimov has made a beautiful statement: "God loves all men, but is enchanted by none."

Existence loves everybody -- and a man who has disappeared as an ego, as a personality, is nothing but a vehicle to existence. He does not love; he is love. I would like to remind you about Oscar Wilde. He says, "To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance."

If you will see what miracles are happening around you, within you, you will respect yourself too, you will love yourself too. If the whole existence loves you, you will love yourself. And that is the only romance that knows no divorce. But it is not arrogant, it is not egoistic. That has to be remembered, because ego is a closing factor.

Arrogance divides you from existence.

To be nobody is the greatest achievement in the world. But we are living in a very insane world -- and when I say insane world, I only mean the insane humanity -- it goes on demanding and it has no gratitude for anything. Everybody thinks that he is very worthy; life is just not giving the right opportunities. One should understand in a different way.

Whatever is given, you don't even deserve that. There is no right to demand; everything is given out of abundance, not because of your right.

A woman went to her psychiatrist and said, "Doctor, I want to talk to you about my husband. He thinks he is a refrigerator."

"That's not so bad,"said the doctor, "it is a rather harmless complex."

"Well, maybe," replied the lady, "but he sleeps with his mouth open and the light keeps me awake."

We are living in such a world where you never see that you are mad. Everybody is throwing all their garbage on other people. The woman thinks that the husband is insane, and in actuality, she is insane. She believes that he is a refrigerator, and the problem is not that he is a refrigerator -- he can go to hell -- the problem is he sleeps with an open mouth and the light keeps her awake the whole night!

Always remember -- whenever you start condemning anything, remember always --

whenever you are going to complain against existence: have you made a list of what has been given to you by existence?

No! Nobody has any idea even that anything has been given. But if any small thing is missing you make so much fuss about it; that shows your insanity.

The same person is utterly blissful just because so much is available, and without asking.

He has never asked for this wonderful world and he has been given it. And he has not even thanked the universe.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

ALL THESE YEARS WITH YOU IN THE COMMUNE I DID WHAT I WAS TOLD.

NOW, IT SEEMS, IT IS ALL UP TO ME... BUT... WHO AM I TO KNOW WHAT TO

DO? BY THE WAY, I'M GERMAN.

Siegfried Deven, even without your saying I would have known you are a German!

All the dictators in the world are created by us because we want somebody else to tell us what to do. There is a very subtle reason for it: when you are told by somebody else what to do, you don't have any responsibility for whether it is right or wrong. You are free of responsibility; you don't have to think about it; you don't have to be worried about it. The whole responsibility goes to the person who is giving you the orders to do something.

People like Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin or Ronald Reagan are not just there in their powerful positions because of any quality of theirs. They are there because millions of people want to be told what to do -- without anybody dictating to them they are at a loss.

We create the dictators.

Adolf Hitler was almost crazy, but a nation, one of the most intelligent nations in the world which has created a great tradition of philosophers, thinkers, theologians of the first rate... Even in this century Germany has produced people like Martin Heidegger, who is perhaps this century's greatest philosopher -- but he was also a follower of Adolf Hitler.

It seems almost incomprehensible that a man of the qualities of Martin Heidegger... I have looked into all the philosophers of the world; Martin Heidegger seems to have such a genius, such a great originality in approaching things from absolutely new directions --

but he was a follower of Adolf Hitler; he supported him. I was wondering what could be the reason -- and the whole nation supported that madman. The reason is that nobody wants to have any responsibility. But the moment you lose your responsibility -- you think it is a burden, somebody else takes it -- you also lose your individuality, you also lose your freedom.

Your responsibility is not separate from your freedom, your individuality. Once you drop your responsibility on somebody else's shoulders, you have reduced yourself into a nonentity. Of course, now nobody will blame you if something goes wrong, but you have lost your soul.

People condemn the dictators, but nobody thinks what the psychology is, how dictators are created, who creates them? We are the people who create them, and we create them in the hope that they will take the responsibility. But we are not aware that with the responsibility goes our freedom, goes our individuality, goes democracy, goes freedom of thinking or expression -- everything.

We have lost our soul the moment we put our responsibility into somebody else's hands.

And there are people who enjoy to dominate, to dictate; these are insane people.

So it is a strange situation. People want to be unburdened of responsibility, and of course there are a few people who are ready to take all the responsibilities, because they are also taking all your freedom. They are taking all your rights, your very individuality; they are people whose only will is for power. They have a different kind of insanity, but it seems to be very fitting. There seems to be a certain synchronicity between the people who want to get rid of responsibility without knowing that they are getting rid of their very soul, and the other insane people, who love only one thing, power.

In the commune, you were happy... because I was not at all involved in the commune; I was in silence and isolation. And naturally, a clique took all the responsibility, and you were very happy to work twelve hours, fourteen hours a day. Even God became tired in six days. You were working seven days. You had no other time, even to think about yourself. Why did you love it? There is some psychological background to be understood...

You loved it because it helped you to forget yourself. You loved it because it helped you to be so occupied from the morning till night and then falling asleep... never finding a small gap of time just to see that your life is slipping by and you have not done anything even to be introduced to it. Death is going to knock any day on your doors, but you are not prepared -- all these worries had no time, because you were so tired. But you were happy.

Here, nobody is dictating to you.

It was all contrary to me, because I was in isolation and silence; I was not interfering in anything. The moment I started speaking, the clique that had become the dictators all escaped from the commune. They knew it perfectly that I would disturb the whole dictatorship. That dictatorship could not be continued; it was destroying people, killing them, killing their very spirituality. The whole clique disappeared immediately as I started speaking, the moment they saw that I had come into the commune, and I would not tolerate the kinds of structures that they had maintained.

I want you to be meditative; I want you to have some time to relax; I want you to have some time to think about the vital problems of life, and to do something about them.

And we have all the arrangements for meditations, for group therapies, for counseling, for all kinds of possibilities that can help you to become a spiritual giant.

The work is needed because you need food, you need clothes. So, it is good working five hours -- and that should also not be too tight. Here we are not going to create an army to conquer the world. We are creating a commune of individuals with their own spirituality, unhindered, uninterfered with. We want them to cleanse their minds, sharpen their intelligence and enter into the deepest center of their being. Those four, five hours' work is just to keep you alive so that you can meditate, so that you can realize one day a consciousness full of light, full of joy.

Here nobody is going to tell you, Deven, what to do. I want you to find what you can do the best, what you would like to do; that which you can enjoy, which will not be a burden, which will not be imposed on you, which will be your own creativity.

I want your work also to be part of your spiritual growth; not against it, but for it. But that can come only from your own spontaneity. You have to take the responsibility on yourself.

I want individuals to be absolutely free, responsible, alert, aware, neither allowing anybody to dictate to them; nor allowing themselves to dictate to anybody. It has to be a beautiful communion. It is not based on any dictatorial ideology. It is based, basically, on ultimate freedom.

And if freedom is the ultimate goal then it should be your first step too, because only the first step will lead you to the last step. It is not possible that your whole life you are just a beast of burden, doing things that people tell you to do and then suddenly one day you will become enlightened. That is not possible.

You will have to take all the responsibility for what you are doing. And you will have to grow in your consciousness and awareness so that only the right flows through your actions, so that whatever you do beautifies the commune, helps people.

This is a gathering, not a crowd; it is a brotherhood, not a factory. Here, every individual has an equal opportunity to grow into whatsoever he wants to grow. And my whole effort is that you should not be interfered with. Naturally, you will find it difficult, but don't be stuck to your Germanhood; that is a kind of disease.

The world has suffered two world wars because of Germans. Don't be too much concerned that you may go wrong. It is always good to go wrong sometimes. Just don't go wrong again on the same point -- do something else, some new wrong. Always be in search of some novelty. Mistakes are absolutely needed for learning, but one should not commit the same mistake again.

And everybody has to be aware of it: nobody is responsible for you. And you don't have to ask anybody's permission. Even if you commit something wrong there is a famous law, Steward's Law: It is easier to be forgiven than to get permission.

And remember another law; it is dangerous, so never follow it: It is called Jacob's Law: To err is human. To blame it on someone else is even more human.

Don't do it, ever. To err is human and to accept your responsibility is the dignity of a human being. Don't go on thinking what to do -- do something! Parkinson's Law is: Delay is the deadliest form of denial.

Don't delay. Do something that seems appropriate in the situation and congenial to your spirit. And it is not that you have to go on doing continuously; doing is not the goal of life. Being is the goal of life. Doing is only to support your survival so that you can find your being. So don't wait for somebody else to tell you.

But all these centuries that man has passed through, this has been the case -- always looking to the politicians, looking to the priest; looking to neurotic-type people who proclaim themselves prophets, the son of God, messengers of God... People who don't want to take any responsibility immediately fall into their trap.

All your prophets, and all your messengers of God are so ordinary. Your holy scriptures are not even worthy to be called great literature; it is third class journalism, nothing much more. And they are bringing laws and rules and regulations for you and people have accepted all kinds of nonsense just in order not to seek and search themselves.

To avoid search, to avoid seeking, people have even avoided thinking -- somebody should do the job for them! The people who have been giving you your moral codes, your ethics, your life styles are the people who remind me of another law, Maud's Law: A conclusion is the place where you get tired of thinking. All the conclusions that your prophets have given to you are nothing but where they got tired of thinking.

Just the other night, I was looking at a beautiful story. I became interested because it was saying why Moses and all his Jews, his followers, went on wandering in the desert for forty years. So I became interested because it seemed the man was going to give some idea why. The idea suggested was that they had lost a quarter so they looked all over the desert; it took forty years. Nobody knows whether they found the quarter or not; I don't think so.

The people you have been following are great people, great in their neuroses. This rule will explain it to you. Woop's Rule for Drinking -- they have given you ideas for everything: I always drink standing up because it is much easier to sit down when I get drunk standing up, than it is to get standing up when I get drunk sitting down.

Avoid these thinkers. They have dictated to humanity for long enough. Now, stand up on your own two legs. Remember that you are alone, there is no God, there are no messengers, and there is no dictator. You have to be decisive about your own life. It is your life and you have to live it according to your own style. Only then you can make your life a celebration; otherwise it is burdened with so many rules and regulations that you cannot dance with that much burden.

Deven, I think a few jokes may do for you. My only fear is that you are a German and whether you will get them or not, because they say that when you tell a joke to an Englishman, he laughs twice; once, just to be polite, and then in the middle of the night when he gets it. A German laughs only once, because everybody else is laughing. And if you tell a joke to a Jew, he will not laugh at all. On the contrary, he will say to you that it is an old joke and, moreover, you are telling it all wrong.

But I think being here with me for so long, you may have started getting, if not the whole joke, something of it...!

A priest and a drunken bus driver arrived at the pearly gates where they met St. Peter. "I am the village priest and would like to be admitted to heaven," said the priest.

"And I am the village bus driver and I want to come in too," said the drunk.

"Okay," said St. Peter. "You, Mr. Priest, will have to wait over there for a few years, but you Mr. Bus Driver, you can go right in."

"But wait a minute," said the priest, "I preached every Sunday in church and taught people how to pray and be good. He is nothing but a drunkard."

"Listen," said St. Peter, "when you preached everybody slept. But when he drove, everybody prayed like crazy."

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

The Invitation

Chapter #11

Chapter title: Just be happy that your hat is back

26 August 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive

code:

8708265

ShortTitle:

INVITA11

Audio:

Yes

Video:

Yes

Length:

99

mins

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

AM I COMING OR GOING?

Anand Surendra, the coming and going are happening simultaneously. Each moment you are dying, and each moment you are resurrecting. Each moment goes on becoming past, and past is nothing but another name of the dead. Each moment goes on bringing the future in, and the future is life. The small present moment is simply a moment of transition where death and life meet.

So your question is not so simple as you may have thought, nor is it an ordinary question.

It is concerned with our very existence; this is the way life is happening to us every moment. But we are unaware that something goes on dying in us and something goes on coming fresh and new. We are not aware -- and all this transition happens within you, within your very heart.

But because we are not aware even of the heart, we are not even aware of our interiority.

Our whole lives we are outside of ourselves -- always somewhere else, but never at the center of our being. If even for a single moment you are at the center, you will see that coming and going are happening simultaneously, that life and death are meeting each moment.

To know this is of tremendous importance. That means it will change your whole perspective -- you will not think of death as somewhere far away in the future. And you will not be afraid of it because it is happening every moment. What we usually call death is not death but simply that life stops coming in; the body is no longer worth living. Life starts looking for some other vehicle, some other medium to express itself. Death has always been coming, but because life was not going you continued to live. With every breath, you inhale life and you exhale death.

Have you ever thought about whether any man in this whole millennium has ever died during inhalation? Can anybody manage to die with inhalation?

Death will always be at one with exhalation.

Inhalation is the continuation of being alive.

If you see this, then death is not somewhere far away. There is no need to fear; it is every moment with you, just like a shadow. By knowing it you will never try to postpone living, because you cannot be certain whether in the next moment life will be coming back or not; there is no guarantee. And it is not unfortunate that there is no guarantee; it keeps you more alert, more watchful, and it keeps you more in tune with the present moment.

If things were guaranteed you might not be able to live life with surprises, with mysteries; then life and death would be simply mechanical happenings and you would be just a machine. Your always being available to life and to death makes you a living being; you are not a machine. And to be mechanical in your behavior is to reduce yourself from your dignity. That which is going, say goodbye to it, and that which is coming, welcome it with deep love and deep gratitude.

But most of the people have chosen not to live. Of course they cannot choose not to die; that is beyond them. But they can choose not to live, by living in a lukewarm way. Most of the people have given their living into others' hands; others are living on their behalf.

Slade's Law says: If you have a difficult task, give it to a lazy man; he will always find an easier way to do it.

And life is certainly one of the most simple and at the same time, complex phenomena.

People have distributed it: others are living for them; they are living for others. Parents are living for children. I have always felt amazed when somebody has said to me, "I am living for my wife," or "I am living for my husband," or "I am living for my children."

Nobody can live for anybody else. This is a simple mind trick to befool you; you can live only for yourself. Life on behalf of somebody else is just not possible.

That's why there are millions of people in the world, but the quantity of life is very small.

Five billion human beings, and the life is almost non-existent: there is no song, no dance; there is no joy, no love. On the contrary, people are putting their whole energy into creating more destructive forces. Anybody watching from another planet is bound to think that the planet earth has gone crazy. But it is not new, this craziness is very ancient; it has always been so.

One of the great thinkers, and a scientific thinker, Arthur Koestler, is of the opinion --

very firm opinion -- that from the very beginning something has gone wrong as far as the human mind is concerned. And unless that wrong is corrected, people are going to continue fighting, destroying each other -- any excuse is enough and people are ready to kill. My own feeling is that people are ready to kill because they don't know how to live.

If they know how to live, they will respect life, they will have a reverence for life, and killing will become impossible. War will be an impossibility for any intelligent human beings.

Our wars prove nothing else except our stupidity. What are we proving by war? Whom are we trying to conquer? It is our earth and it is one. All demarcations and lines are drawn by us; they are not on the map.

When the first Russian astronaut, Yuri Gagarin, came back from the moon -- he was the first man to have such a close look at the moon, and the first man to have such a faraway look at the earth -- he said he was amazed that in that moment he could not conceive some part of the earth as the Soviet Union, some part America, some part India, some part China; there were no parts. And the whole earth is as luminous as the moon -- it needs only distance to see the luminosity, because the sun's rays are being reflected back.

If you look from the moon, the earth looks like the moon and the moon looks like the earth. The moon does not shine on the moon. It is in our eyes from far away that the reflected rays of the sun give the light to the moon. Yuri Gagarin was not aware before this that a miracle was going to happen: the moon becomes just like the earth, and the earth becomes luminous. The earth is eight times bigger than the moon and so its light is also eight times greater. It is tremendous. It is unimaginable.

When he came back to Moscow, the people asked him, "What was the first idea in your mind when you saw the earth from the moon?"

He said, "You will have to forgive me -- I forgot completely that I am a Russian. I simply said, Àh, my beautiful earth.' Those were the first words that came into my mind."

To see a simple fact, one has to go that far? It is our beautiful earth. It belongs to no race, to no nation; it belongs to us all. But rather than using our life energies and forces, our intelligence, for rejoicing, we are working hard in manufacturing death. It seems the only function of life is to manufacture death; it is utterly absurd.

This planet has the capacity to become a paradise, but it is up to us. The poor mountains cannot do anything; the poor trees can dance in the sun, in the rain, but they cannot do anything more than that. It is man alone who can transform the whole atmosphere from death orientation to life affirmation.

And to me, the man who is life affirmative is authentically religious, not the people who go to the churches every Sunday, or the people who go to the mosques, or the people who go to the synagogues. Those people are deceiving themselves by purchasing religion very cheaply, without risking anything, without transforming themselves. They have managed to create beautiful toys to play with: statues of God, scriptures descended from heaven, messengers and prophets imagined by us... because we love the very idea that God cares and sends messengers to us.

We have believed in those messengers because of our ego. We have believed in God because of our ego: that God created man, and God created man in his own image, and God created man as the ultimate creation. After that he did not create. This is his last signature of his creativity; since that he has retired.

To me, it has a totally different meaning. Man has believed that he is created by God because that gives him a feeling of great ego: "I am no ordinary person, but a creation of God." But to me, the very idea of God is ugly, and the idea that he created man makes man just a puppet. The idea that you are created by somebody -- manufactured, maybe handmade -- takes away all dignity and all pride and all self-respect. Then you cannot have any soul of your own. Then you are certainly a mechanism and nothing more.

And moreover, you are in the hands of a whimsical God. In the first place, why did he remain silent for eternity and not create you? According to Christianity, he created man exactly four thousand and four years before Jesus Christ. I presume it must have been Monday, the first of January; that is a logical conclusion. He cannot create you on any other day, because before the creation there cannot be any calendar. So whichever day he created you was the first of January, and the first year of Our Lord!

That reminds me: One Jewish astrologer was very famous and well known for his accurate predictions. Adolf Hitler, although reluctant -- but knowing perfectly well that the man had predicted things which had come to pass, which did happen -- finally agreed to allow him to read his destiny, because his destiny was the destiny of the nation. In his eyes, his destiny was the destiny of the whole world -- and not just for one year; his idea was to have a one-thousand-year rule over the whole of humanity.

The Jewish astrologer came, studied the stars when Adolf Hitler was born, looked into his books and said, "Only one thing is certain: you will die on a Jewish holiday."

Adolf Hitler said, "It is a strange prediction; what do you mean by it? Which holiday?"

The astrologer said, "That's not certain. Only this much is certain, and this is certain because any day you die will become a Jewish holiday!"

In the same way, any day God created the world must have been the first of January; there is no other way.

And just six thousand years ago... What about before that? That's why I call him whimsical. This whimsical God remains silent for eternity -- never created anything --

and in just six days he created the whole world. And since then nothing is known about him. On the seventh day he rested -- okay, allowed. But one has to come back to the office on Monday! He never came back to the office. And moreover, it is dangerous if he returns to the office; what will he do? Now, the only thing left is to destroy. And a God who creates the world without any reason is also capable of destroying it without any reason. Neither do you have any answer to your question why you have been created, nor will you have time to ask why you have been destroyed. Because once you are destroyed, you are destroyed. Who is going to ask?

The whole idea of God creating man has taken away the beauty of life, the joy of life; it has turned you into mechanisms. I want to take God away from your life, so that you can feel yourself for the first time independent, free, not as a created puppet but as an eternal source of life. Only then you can rejoice.

The world looks so sad, so Christian. It is not only Jesus Christ who is sad. He can be forgiven; he is a poor fellow on the cross. You don't expect that he should smile and say hello to you! But he represents almost everybody -- not only the Christians but everybody looks as if he is on the cross, the invisible cross... so serious.

Perhaps Jesus was right that everybody has to carry his cross on his shoulder. Why in the first place should everybody carry the cross? Can't you find anything else to carry? I cannot accept the idea. Nobody should carry the cross, either for yourself or for anybody else. You should not carry the cross at all. There are beautiful things to carry: you can carry a guitar. And if you like very heavy things, you can carry very heavy things: an old big-sized piano, but something beautiful, something that is worthy of an intelligent man -

- not a cross.

I see the whole humanity drowned in a sea of sadness, and the reason is that you have been conditioned to be sad. Your religions don't want you to sing and to laugh and to dance, because people who laugh and sing and dance are fundamentally of independent character. They have a certain uniqueness and individuality of their own. They are not slaves, and they will not agree to be slaves whatever the consequence. And this world only wants you to work for some vested interests, and work hard; it does not want you to waste your time in meditating, or playing on the guitar, or dancing under the stars. The vested interests will not like this idea. They would like you to be serious, sad, so that you can be enslaved easily, so that you can be purchased easily, so that you can be exploited easily.

Just think for a moment of the whole world laughing, dancing, singing -- just for one hour. All kinds of slaveries will disappear, and all nations will disappear, and all religions will disappear. Naturally, the presidents and the prime ministers and the popes and ayatollahs will look very shocked. What is happening? And they will join sooner or later, because what is the point of standing amongst the whole humanity dancing and enjoying?

And nobody even asking why, what has happened -- nobody has time, everybody is enjoying. Soon you will see the pope also in the crowd, because looking from the outside at the rejoicing people will be so awkward, so embarrassing. There is every possibility that if Jesus were alive he would come down from the cross and start dancing, forget all about the cross and Christianity!

Who cares about God? -- only miserable people. Who goes to the churches? -- only people who are close to death, old people afraid of coldness and aloneness and darkness and the grave. And one never knows how long they will have to wait in the grave before the last judgment day comes. It is going to be a long, long wait in the grave, where you cannot even move; dancing is out of the question!

On the last judgment day I can guarantee you there is going to be no judgment, because there will be billions and billions of people: all those people who have been lying in the graves for centuries, all of you, and all the people of the future up till the last judgment day comes. The crowd is going to be so big that it is almost impossible... And remember, half of the crowd will be women; there will be so much chattering and so much searching

-- everybody is looking for his husband or his wife. I don't think that there is any possibility, particularly on that day, of any judgment. The whole idea is nonsense. In one day...! And why should these poor people wait in their graves?

So when people come close to their graves, when they feel that their one foot is in the grave, they put their other foot in the church! Who knows, maybe all these stories that have been told in the church are true, and anyway there is no harm -- why take the chance?

Before I was deported from Greece, the archbishop of Greece threatened the government that if I am not immediately deported, he is going to dynamite and set fire to my house.

And all the people who are in there with me, he is going to burn them alive. This is the representative of Jesus who says, "Love your enemy" -- I am not even a friend -- and

"Love your neighbor." He has forgotten to say, "Love the tourist."

These people are religious heads! And why was the archbishop so troubled by me?

Because in the garden of the beautiful house by the sea where I was the guest of a famous film director of Greece... It is an ancient, beautiful house, renovated, with a big garden, and under a tree I used to sit and talk to the people. And people gathered from all over the world who had not seen me for almost a year, or two years, or five years. I was close so they all had come. We were not doing any harm to anybody; we were simply singing, dancing. There was music; I was answering their questions.

What was troubling the archbishop? -- because he must have been troubled very much; otherwise nobody threatens to burn somebody alive.

The joy... people are dancing, people are loving to each other, there is nothing but rejoicing -- no prayer, no Jesus Christ, no cross. He became afraid: "This is going to destroy our younger generation."

I came to know from friends that ninety-four percent of Greeks are registered as Christians, but only four percent of the people ever go to the churches -- out of ninety-four percent! And who are the four percent? I inquired how many people this particular archbishop has in his congregation. A woman who is my sannyasin simply laughed and said, "I was worried that you would ask that question; it is very awkward. Only six old women are his whole congregation." And he was threatening for fifteen days continuously that he would bring a protest against me. I was waiting; we were all waiting to enjoy the protest. We would have welcomed them with music and dance, but they never came.

Finally I asked, "What is the matter? Every day it is being postponed."

And they said, "You don't understand his situation. He goes on making these threats, but he cannot bring a protest because who will come? -- six old women, and one old archbishop! Seven in all; it will look hilarious."

But he managed to make the government afraid, because the government depends on votes, and ninety-four percent of the people are Christian. Their archbishop has to be listened to. They may not go to the church, but still, their conditioned minds are the same.

Against the law, against the constitution, I was deported. I was arrested immediately. And they were so afraid; the government was so much afraid. I was asleep when the police came to arrest me, and my people said to them, "Come, sit down and have tea and we will wake him up."

But they said, "We are not going to wait a single minute."

And they rushed and started throwing rocks at the windows, beautiful windows of that house. John had come to wake me, and when I woke up I could not understand what was happening on the first floor. I was sleeping on the other floor.

The police had dynamite also. It almost looked as if the house was being dynamited, because they were throwing big rocks and destroying beautiful glass windows; it was so noisy. I could not see the point. I asked the man who took me into police custody, "What is the point of it all?"

He said, "I don't understand myself." The government just seemed to be absolutely afraid of the threat that the archbishop was going to burn twenty-five people who were living in my house.

I said, "For fifteen days he has continuously been threatening to bring a protest against me; that has not happened. Can't you see that a man who cannot bring a protest can neither have the guts, nor the support? Who will carry all that dynamite... those six old women?"

Even the police were sad, and they could not believe it: "We have not even seen your people in the city; they never come out. They are just enjoying themselves in the garden of your house."

Just by the side of the window at the police station where I was sitting, two women police officers were standing to prevent sannyasins from reaching me. Sannyasins had come and surrounded the whole police station, and they started dancing and singing. Now it is not criminal to dance and sing, but the police officers said to me, "Stop your people; they are dancing and singing."

I said, "Dancing and singing -- is that against any law?"

The officer said, "It is not against any law but it is making us very frightened."

Those two policewomen who were standing just by the window, to watch the window, allowed the sannyasins one by one to come and to talk to me. And finally they said to me,

"We are sorry that this is happening in this country, in this century. We hope that you will come again."

The policewomen told me, "The people of the island where you are staying are inquiring what they should do, because everybody has felt so wounded and hurt by the behavior of the government and the archbishop."

I sent the message: "Tell them they all should come to the airport to show the archbishop just who can protest against whom!" And when I came to the airport, there were almost three thousand people; the whole airport was full of people. It was a small island; perhaps everybody from the island had come except those six women!

Religions have lost their grip over man, but not over man's unconscious. Consciously, people can see the point; it is so simple: this kind of behavior is not only inhuman, it is according to their own religion absolutely against Jesus Christ, against THE HOLY

BIBLE. But their unconscious is beyond their own power; they could not go to the archbishop to stop him, to say, "You are humiliating us, you are humiliating Jesus Christ, and your behavior is against Christianity."

Nor could the government say to the archbishop, "You should resign; you should not be in such a post. To an innocent person who has not done anything, your behavior, your constant threat -- and ugly threats, that you will burn twenty-five people alive -- is not gentlemanly, to say nothing about it not being Christian." But neither the government seems to have courage, nor the people. It is as if man has lost all his guts.

I have been around the world and my experience is that over the centuries religions have been castrating humanity; they have been destroying all your courage, all your dignity.

You have become so accustomed to being a slave that you cannot revolt. And that's what is needed, urgently needed, that the whole of humanity revolts against all limits and boundaries, prisons and chains.

I came across a statement of Karl Marx; I don't agree with him, but with this statement it is impossible to disagree. He says that all the religions have put flowers on your chains.

So you see only the flowers, you don't see the chains.

Throw away all the flowers and throw away all the chains. Only then will you be able to have a heart of your own, an individuality, and existence can become full of laughter. We are not here to be unnecessarily miserable, but it seems we are trained, so well trained to be miserable that even if there is an opportunity we will miss it.

In Bali there is an old saying: If you are happy you can always learn to dance. But basically man is not happy. He is so unhappy that just to forget his unhappiness he goes on drinking alcoholic beverages, uses drugs -- marijuana, hashish and opium -- just to forget, at least for a few hours, his miserable state.

And there is no reason at all to be miserable. In fact, misery should be very exceptional; happiness should be simply natural. You should not ask anybody, "Why are you looking happy?" But this is the situation. If you are looking happy and smiling and enjoying yourself, everybody will look, stare at you, as if something has gone wrong: What has happened to this poor fellow? Why is he smiling and enjoying? -- there seems to be no reason. And somebody is bound to ask, "What is the matter?" Some policeman is going to come asking, "Why are you creating this crowd in the traffic? Why are you smiling?

Why are you dancing?"

Is it necessary to show some cause to be healthy and happy? But nobody asks anybody who is miserable; nobody even stops to look at him. To be miserable is accepted as our natural state. There is no need to inquire about any cause, about any reason. If you think about it, you will not believe to what an insane state man has fallen.

A doctor calls his patient to give him the results of his tests. "I have some bad news and some worse news," says the doctor. "The bad news is that you have only twenty-four hours to live."

"Ah, no!" says the patient, "What could possibly be worse than that?"

The doctor answers, "I have been trying to reach you since yesterday!"

Man cannot fall into a worse state. But he has fallen; he has forgotten the laughter every child is born with; he has lost his way to health and wholeness.

The door opens right this very moment -- always herenow, where life and death are continuously meeting. You have chosen death orientation because it was in the interests of those who are in power, and you have forgotten that life is passing by while you are being drowned in sadness.

Once Confucius was asked by a disciple how to be happy, how to be blissful. Confucius said, "You are asking a strange question; these things are natural. No rose asks how to be a rose." As far as sadness and misery are concerned, you will have enough time in your grave; then you can be miserable to your heart's content. But while you are alive, be totally alive. Out of this totality and intensity will arise happiness, and a happy man certainly learns to dance. I agree with the old Bali proverb.

We want the whole of humanity to be happy, and to be dancing, and to be singing. Then this whole planet becomes mature, evolves in consciousness. A sad man, a miserable man, cannot have a very sharp consciousness; his consciousness is dim, dull, heavy, dark.

Only when you laugh heartily, suddenly like a flash all darkness disappears.

In your laughter you are your authentic self.

In your sadness you have covered your original face with a fake identity that the society expects of you. Nobody wants you to be so happy that you start dancing in the street.

Nobody wants you to have a hearty laughter; otherwise the neighbors will start knocking on your walls, "Stop. Misery is okay; laughter is a disturbance." Miserable people cannot tolerate anybody who is not miserable.

The only crime of people like Socrates was that they were immensely happy people, and their happiness created immense envy in the great masses which are living in misery. The masses could not tolerate such happy people; they have to be destroyed because they provoke inside you a possibility of revolt, and you are afraid of that revolt.

Once a man falls in love with rebellion, he is on the right path.

An old Russian story...

The people of Chelm were terrible worriers; they even worried about how much they worried. So the mayor and the rabbi appointed Ira the candlemaker to do all the worrying for the people of Chelm. And for this he would earn four rubles a week.

The scheme did not work because Ira went home to Ruth and said, "Wonderful, I have got four rubles a week; we have nothing to worry about!" Naturally, he was thrown out from his employment -- that was the reason that he was going to get four rubles a week, so that he could worry for the whole town. But he forgot completely... just the joy of having four rubles a week for nothing. Naturally, he said, "Now there is nothing to worry about." But that's how he lost his job!

Paddy was feeling under the weather, so he went to see his doctor. "I just can't find any cause for your illness," said the physician. "Frankly, I think it is due to drinking."

"In that case," replied Paddy, getting up to leave, "I will come back when you are sober!"

"All right," said the psychiatrist, "tell me why you hate your sister so much."

"But I don't have a sister," said Hymie Goldberg.

"Look," said the psychiatrist, "if you want me to help you, you have got to cooperate!

You can't say that you don't have a sister."

His psychoanalysis can't start if you don't have a sister! And certainly, your cooperation is needed. This is the world; it can't be worse.

Question 2

BELOVED MASTER,

PLEASE, HOW CAN I FALL INTO A DEEP ACCEPTANCE OF, "I DON'T KNOW"?

I DON'T KNOW. MY GOD! I DON'T KNOW MYSELF! I AM SEARCHING...!

Prem Anna, there is no need to fall into a deep acceptance of "I don't know." Either you know or you don't know. There is no question of acceptance. If you know, it is perfectly good; if you don't know, it is even better! Why are you making a problem out of it? If you don't know, it is perfectly okay I think, with everybody here... no objection! It is the most beautiful state.

Not knowing is the ultimate state of wisdom.

Socrates said in his last statement, "I know nothing." And he had to say this because the Oracle of Delphi had declared that Socrates was the wisest man in the whole world. The people who heard the Oracle rushed towards Socrates just to inform him, "The Oracle of Delphi has declared you the wisest man in the world." And Socrates said, "I am sorry to disagree, because I know nothing."

The people were shocked; they were thinking that they were bringing good news. They went back and asked the Oracle, "What is the matter? You declare Socrates the wisest man in the world, and when we inform him, he says, Ì know nothing.' There must have been some mistake."

And the Oracle said, "I have declared him the wisest man because he knows nothing; he has become an innocent child, clear and pure."

Knowledge is a kind of disturbance in your innocence. It is a burden, it does not help you; it simply makes you more and more puzzled, worried -- doubts arise. And you think gathering more and more knowledge is going to help? It does not help; It simply makes you more tense. What ultimately helps is dropping all knowledge. But if in the very beginning you feel, "I don't know," you are blessed -- enjoy it.

It is not a question of acceptance, because acceptance does not mean enjoying it. You may +accept something with reluctance; you may accept it because there is nothing else to do. No, rejoice in your not knowing; make it innocence. Don't say, "not knowing,"

because that is a negative idea. That's why it has become a problem how to accept it. Call it innocence and there will be no problem of acceptance. You will rejoice it, you will dance it, you will sing it.

Prem Anna, have you heard this?

Hymie Goldberg, who only weighs seventy pounds, goes to Texas on business. He checks into a hotel which is fifty storeys high, and is shown into a suite the size of a ballroom. Overwhelmed, he goes down to the bar and is served a drink that is so big it takes both hands to lift. "Everything is big in Texas, pal," says the bartender. When his dinner arrives, the plate is the size of his dining room table at home. "Hey pal, everything is big in Texas," says the waiter.

Finally, overcome by all this, Hymie decides it is time to go and try out his super-king-size bed, but he loses his way in the hotel's vast corridors. Opening the door of a darkened room, Hymie falls into the swimming pool with a great splash. When he comes to the surface, he begins to shriek, "Don't flush it!!! Don't flush it!!!"

Naturally he was thinking that this must be a toilet, everything is so big.

Prem Anna, just enjoy life. And you can enjoy life more when you know nothing. The more you know, the less is the possibility of enjoying life. I have never seen knowledgeable people even laughing; it is below them. Laughter is one of the greatest qualities of the evolved intelligence of humanity, because except man, nobody else laughs in the whole of existence. And to think laughter below you is to forget that it is the highest peak of consciousness.

A man was drowning in a river and was shouting for help, saying, "I can't swim, I can't swim!"

"So what?" shouted back a drunk from the bank, "I can't play the piano, but I'm not shouting about it!"

Wishing to surprise her husband with a new wig she had just bought, the wife put it on and strolled unannounced into his office. "Do you think you could find a place in your life for a woman like me?" she asked sexily.

"Not a chance," he replied, "you remind me too much of my wife!"

So, Prem Anna, don't be worried about your ignorance, just learn to call it innocence.

Always use right words, words which are life affirmative, which don't condemn you.

Then the idea of how to accept it does not arise. And if you have to accept something, you cannot rejoice about it; it can be only out of compulsion, out of necessity. I don't want anybody to live a life of compulsion or a life of necessity. One should live a life of abundance, a life of innocence, a life out of freedom of the heart. Innocence is a great quality; don't call it ignorance.

The priest has just finished his sermon on charity, and so passes his hat around for donations. The hat goes around the whole congregation and then comes back to him as empty as when he sent it out.

The priest looks inside, then shrugs and looks up to heaven and says, "Thank you Lord for small mercies. At least I got my hat back!"

In such situations, rejoice! There is no point in complaining or making a fuss about it; just be happy that your hat is back!

As far as I am concerned, innocence has not to be accepted, it has to be relished, danced, rejoiced -- it is a blessing.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

The Invitation

Chapter #12

Chapter title: A meditator needs no personal guidance

27 August 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

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ShortTitle:

INVITA12

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Video:

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Length:

110

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Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

I HAVE BEEN YOUR SANNYASIN FOR SEVEN YEARS AND I AM UNABLE TO

EXPRESS MY GRATITUDE, AS IT GAVE MY LIFE DIRECTION AND JOY AND

GRACE AND MORE.

NOW, BEING HERE FOR ONLY ONE WEEK, I REALIZE THAT I HAVE ALWAYS

HAD A NEED FOR PERSONAL GUIDANCE FROM SOMEBODY TUNING INTO

ME AND MY QUESTIONS. THIS STRONG NEED WAS ONLY REINFORCED

DURING A COUNSELING SESSION TODAY, HERE.

BELOVED MASTER, WOULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT?

Satyam Robert, the way you are growing in silence, in your meditations, in your grace, and the way the gratitude is coming to you, you don't need any personal guidance. You need to be more and more open to the impersonal existence. The idea of personal guidance is mind's old habit to become dependent on someone; and I am struggling hard against your habits.

The whole existence is available to guide you -- and you are now in a position to be in direct contact with the universe. As your gratitude deepens, as your grace becomes more and more clear, as your silence becomes more and more rooted in you -- it is the universe itself which takes you into its own hands. Those hands are invisible, but they are there; you are not orphans in the universe. You are immensely needed and loved, you are just not aware of it.

My own suggestion is to drop the idea of personal guidance, because anybody will try to guide you according to his mind, according to his ideas of how you should be. That's what all the teachers of the world have been doing: imposing their idea, their image on people who are searching and seeking guidance. It is one of the most dangerous games to play, because in it you are always the loser. If the teacher succeeds in imposing certain directions, certain patterns, disciplines, according to me it is not guidance; it is misguidance. Because nobody knows your unique self -- only you can know it. And you have to grow according to your nature, not according to anybody's guidance.

To me, to be natural, to be spontaneous is enough. All guides have been misguides. And you can see it: the whole universe of humanity is living in tremendous misguidance.

Otherwise why should there be so much insanity? Why there should be so much misery, so much agony and spiritual suffering? The reason is that nobody has been allowed to be just himself, his natural being.

Your so-called religions don't trust nature; they trust in holy scriptures; they trust in dead words spoken thousands of years before by people we do not know. Whether they knew anything, or they were just creating fictions... unless you know, you can never be certain.

But they are molding you according to patterns created in the past. This process of molding people into Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, Buddhists, goes against the very basic human right; it does not allow you to be your natural self. And unless you are yourself, you cannot be happy.

Just think, if there were teachers teaching roses that they have to become lotuses...

Fortunately, roses don't care about teachers and religions and churches. But just think for a moment: if people were there who were telling the roses to be lotuses, the marigolds to be roses, what would be the ultimate outcome of it?

Roses would try to become lotuses, which they can never become; it is not their self-nature. They can only be roses, beautiful, immensely graceful, fragrant. But if this idea of being somebody other than what their nature is, is imposed on them, two things will happen: they will never become lotuses, but their whole energy will be wasted in trying to become lotuses. And the second thing is they will not be roses either, because from where will they find the energy to be roses? That whole energy is making an effort for the impossible.

Actually the same has happened with humanity. Everybody is giving you an idea; everybody is ready to tell you how you should be.

All "shoulds" and all "should nots" have to be abandoned. You simply have to listen to your own inner voice. And wherever it leads, just go without bothering whether people think it is right or wrong.

If you can become just your own self, if you can blossom into your intrinsic nature, then only you will have blissfulness -- a peace which cannot be expressed in words, and a certain poetry to your being; a certain dance to your being, because you will be in tune with existence. To be in tune with yourself is the only way to be in tune with existence.

Nobody needs personal guidance, because all personal guidance is a beautiful name for dependence on somebody and he is going to distort you.

I don't give you any discipline -- I don't tell you, you should be this or that. I simply say you should become silent, so that you can listen to your still, small voice. That is your real guide; the guide is within you. I know hundreds of psychoanalysts, psychologists, so-called counselors. They are burdened with all kinds of problems, but they have just learned the technique, either from education or from the libraries. And they go on advising -- to advise is so simple. In their own lives they are not what they are advising.

If you watch the life, as I have watched very closely the life of people like Sigmund Freud -- the topmost counselors in the world: Karl Gustav Jung, Alfred Adler, Assagioli -

- I have been simply shocked to see that these people have become the guides to millions of people.

I remember one small incident...

Wilhelm Reich, as a young psychoanalyst, was deeply interested to meet Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. He had read in the universities and he was a genius, perhaps of a far greater quality than Sigmund Freud himself. Sigmund Freud was in his old age, just the last years, and this Wilhelm Reich was asking again and again for an appointment. Finally he got the appointment. And the way Sigmund Freud treated him is so inhuman, just because he was a young man, fresh from the university.

He had come with some significant questions, and he had created in his own mind a great image of Sigmund Freud, naturally. He asked, "I have come from far away to inquire a few things: One, you insist that unless a man is psychoanalyzed, completely psychoanalyzed, he will never be out of confusion and misery. Can you show me a man who has been completely analyzed, so I can just meet him and see what a completely clear man would be like? I have read about it, but I don't have any personal experience of meeting somebody who is beyond confusion and is pure clarity."

Sigmund Freud became angry, and he said, "What kind of nonsense... psychoanalysis is not a simple thing. It takes decades for anybody to become completely psychoanalyzed."

Reich was shocked, but he said, "You have been working your whole life. Have you psychoanalyzed any person completely, so that I can go and see the person? Because other than that there is no proof that what you are saying has any significance as far as science is concerned." And seeing Sigmund Freud getting angry... because Sigmund Freud was not accustomed to such questions, he was surrounded with cronies, yea-sayers.

Whatever nonsense he would say, they would say that it was a great truth. Seeing Sigmund Freud getting so angry, Reich said, "Drop that subject. I want to know whether you have been psychoanalyzed totally or not." And Sigmund Freud had to tell him, "Get out! And never again try to come to me; you don't know how to behave."

The reality is that all his life Sigmund Freud was being asked by his colleagues again and again, "Just as you psychoanalyze us, now we know the technique, why don't you get psychoanalyzed, by any of us you choose? We would like to have a look into your inner world of dreams, imaginations, desires, to see whether what you claim to be absolute clarity, peace, integrity is there inside you or not?"

He refused continuously; he never allowed himself to be psychoanalyzed, and he is the founder of psychoanalysis. Why was he so afraid to be psychoanalyzed? He knew perfectly well that it is easy to advise others, but it is difficult to transform yourself. He was suffering from ordinary human problems, the same tensions, the same misery, the same repressions, the same inhibitions, the same taboos. And he was afraid to open up his dream world because that would show things which would be a proof that although he was the founder, he himself was not what he was trying for the whole of humanity to be.

The same is the situation today. Psychoanalysts themselves once in a while go to another psychoanalyst to be psychoanalyzed, because they have become too burdened with problems. It is such a stupid game.

If Gautam Buddha says anything about meditation it is his own experience, not just a theoretical, intellectual formulation. If he says something about the inner light, he has seen it. If he says it is possible to go beyond mind, he has gone beyond mind, only then he says it. And the people who watched him for forty-two years continuously never found any flaw, never found him at any time angry, at any time miserable, at any time sad. One cannot pretend for forty-two years continuously; one needs holidays! Even to pretend for a few hours to be what you are not is such a tension and such a burden that you are going to drop it and expose yourself at the slightest excuse.

This is the difference between the Western psychoanalytic movement and the Eastern movement for meditation.

I have told you a Sufi story...

A woman was very much impressed by a Sufi mystic, and she was very worried about her only son. She was living for him; the father was dead. That boy was her life, and she wanted him to become something.

The boy was too attached to eating sweets and all kinds of junk. She tried hard; everybody, the teachers, the priests all tried, but the boy was absolutely indifferent to their advice; he continued to eat sweets.

He was the only son, so finally the mother would relax and would give him what he wanted; otherwise, he would remain hungry. But he would not eat anything that he did not want to eat; he would eat only things that he wanted to eat. And those were things which were not healthy, which were not nourishing, which could create problems later in his life.

The Sufi mystic had come wandering into the village, and the woman thought it was a good chance. That man has such a tremendous and powerful aura around him, perhaps he may be able to change this stupid boy's mind. She took the boy... she had been taking him to anybody who could help; it had become almost a routine thing. The boy went there very reluctantly, very resistant; it had become almost a question of his own self-respect.

When the woman told the Sufi master about the situation, he said, "You will have to forgive me. Right now I cannot say a single word to this beautiful boy. I am old, I am seventy years, but it will take at least two weeks for me to be able to say something to him."

The woman could not believe him. Anybody, any idiot was ready to advise. And a great mystic followed by many many people, says to the boy, "You will have to forgive me; you came and I cannot advise you right now. You will have to give me two weeks at least."

The boy for the first time dropped his reluctance, his resistance. For the first time he was respected, he was accepted as a dignified human being; he was not condemned out of hand. And the old man was really concerned, he wanted to give him some advice which would be of importance; he needed at least two weeks' time. The mother was absolutely shocked, could not believe that this great mystic cannot advise a small boy right now on such a trivial matter. But what to do? They had to wait two weeks.

After two weeks she came again. This time the boy came very joyously. In fact, he was very eager about how fast the days were moving, and he was counting because he wanted to see the mystic again. "He is a totally different man from all other men you have taken me to." The woman was surprised because the boy was always resistant, reluctant. He went against his will, was forced to go -- and this time he is so eager! He cannot wait for two weeks; those two weeks look like two years.

Finally the day came, and in the early morning the boy took a shower, changed his clothes, got ready. The mother said, "What is the hurry?"

He said, "I want to see the man. He is the only man that I have felt respects others."

Otherwise, advising others is a kind of humiliation; it is saying: I know and you do not know. I am the guide and you are the guided. I am the teacher and you are the taught. It is enjoying a certain egotism at the cost of humiliating the other person.

They went, and the woman first asked, "Before I ask about the boy, I want to know why it took two weeks for you -- is it such a great philosophical problem?"

The mystic said, "If it were a philosophical problem I would have answered immediately; it is an existential problem. I am seventy years old; he is just seven years old. I have lived ten times more than the boy, still I love to eat sweets. And as long as I myself eat sweets I cannot say anything. These two weeks I tried not to eat sweets, and to see what happens.

My advice will depend on my own experience, not just on the common opinion that sweets are bad. They may be bad, but if I cannot drop them at seventy years of age, to expect a small boy to drop them... I cannot advise that."

The boy was immensely impressed. A man at this age tortured himself for two weeks?

And he said to the boy, "My son, it is very difficult. I managed to drop sweets, and I have managed now for the rest of my life -- but to advise you I feel a little shaky. You are so young. To drop sweets if you love them will be arduous, and to impose this idea on you I will be almost being violent and violating your individual right. So all that I can say is, it is good and it is healthy, but it is very difficult. It is a challenge. You can choose whether you are ready to take the challenge. I have dropped them for the rest of my life; only now have I the authority to say to you that you can also drop. But it is certainly a difficult thing. Are you ready for a challenge, an adventure?"

The boy said, "I drop them right now, and for my whole life. If you can drop them, why can't I drop them? And you are so old; I am so young. You are getting weaker; I am getting stronger. I can take the challenge; you don't feel worried about it."

The mother could not believe what is happening: it is a miracle. The boy is persuading the old man, "I will be able."

The old man said, "My feeling is, you should also think about it for two weeks, try..."

The boy said, "No. I am dropping them right now in your presence, with your blessings."

The people you go to for personal counseling are in the same boat in which you are; they have the same problems. Here, I have all kinds of psychotherapists, and they are good at their work technically. They know how to help people, but they don't know how to help themselves. They write their problems to me, and they are the same problems for which they are known to be good counselors, good therapists. To know something technically is one thing, and to know something existentially, experientially, is another thing.

As far as you are concerned, you are already moving on the right path. These are good symptoms that you are feeling a sense of direction, joy, grace, and more; these are indications that you are on the right path -- you don't need any personal counseling. You need to be yourself more and more, more integrated, more natural, more spontaneous.

You have found the path, now anybody else can disturb it. It is possible that you may go to a counselor who has not even grown as much as you, but he is very knowledgeable.

His expertise is great; he can talk about things and distract you from the path.

A meditator needs no personal guidance. A meditator, on the contrary, needs only one thing: the atmosphere of meditation. He needs other meditators; he needs to be surrounded by other meditators. Because whatever goes on happening within us is not only within us, it affects people who are close by. In this communion people are at different stages of meditation. To meditate with these people, just to sit silently with these people, and you will be pulled more and more towards your own intrinsic potentiality.

I don't want you to become somebody else, a Gautam Buddha or a Jesus Christ. I want you to become just yourself, anonymous, nobody special, but blissful. And you are already on the right path. You have taken a few steps; now just go on moving, trusting yourself, and on each step your confidence will become deeper.

Never ask for advice, because everybody is so unique and so different that there has never been any person like you before, nor is there going to be another person like you again. So really, no guidelines for you exist. But existence is greatly compassionate. It has given you the whole program of your life in a seed form. If you don't ask anybody, and just silently listen to your own heart and go on following it, you will reach the space where you can feel at home; where suddenly you realize who you are, where suddenly you feel a synchronicity with the whole existence.

All that is natural, the trees, the clouds, the mountains, the oceans, with all of them you will find a certain harmony. You will not find harmony with machines, big and great computers, factories, automobiles, railway trains. You may not find any harmony... there is no question, because these are heartless, lifeless things. They don't know how to sing; they don't know how to dance. Have you seen any computer dancing? Have you heard of any computer falling in love with a woman computer? Only machines will be left out.

With all that is natural and all that grows, all that blossoms, all that moves and breathes, all that has a heartbeat, you will find a tremendous harmony. Your heartbeat will be merging and melting into the universal heartbeat -- no personal counseling.

I am not a counselor. Never even for a single moment in my life have I thought that somebody should be according to my ideas. I share my ideas, I share my experiences --

not so that you should become a certain ideal; I share with you as fellow travelers. It may harmonize with you. You may find that it comes suddenly to your awareness that this is very natural for you; that you were not aware of it, you have become aware. But it is not my idea then. It is your own idea of which you have not been aware. I share my ideas with you, not to make you into certain prototypes, but to give you an insight into your own nature.

I know myself, I know my nature; I know that all my well-wishers, my parents, my teachers, my professors, my friends, have tried their hardest to make me something else.

And I am immensely grateful to existence that I never listened to anybody; I simply went on following my own inner voice. Whether it leads me into hell or into heaven I have not cared, because my feeling is that if my nature leads me into hell then perhaps that is the place where I belong. In heaven I will be an outsider, I will feel unfit.

Wherever my nature leads is the place that can give me the feeling of joy and the feeling that life has tremendous meaning, that it has great splendor; that it is a miracle just to breathe in and breathe out; that nothing can be more perfect if you reach to the climax of your own nature.

Avoid advisers -- because they are so available all around that whether you ask their advice or not they will give it. People love to give advice; it has a certain joy. People would love to create their own carbon copies, and they will feel very happy that they are the original and everybody is just at the most a true copy.

You have your own originality.

It is better to remember it always.

Never go against your inner feelings.

Very few people in the world have come to the flowering, and the reason is that very few people have been rebellious enough against the so-called advisers. Very few people have dared to find their path and have not followed the superhighway where everybody is going. But those are the few people who have helped humanity, its whole evolution, its whole intelligence. Just take away those few people and man will be back to where Darwin thinks he started growing to be a human being.

The crowd must have laughed at that time also. When a monkey came down from the trees and stood on the ground on his two feet, the whole crowd of monkeys must have laughed, giggled: "Look at that character! Look at that fool who is going against tradition, against our forefathers, against our religion, against our race." But they must have condemned that monkey who rebelled against the whole culture of the monkeys, their civilization; they must have said, "You have fallen down." Naturally, he has fallen down from the trees. And as time passed, he must have become weaker. Monkeys are far stronger than you are; they have to be, they are doing continuous exercise jumping from one tree to another. You have to do something else; you cannot do that kind of jumping now. You are not capable; your body has changed completely.

But the first monkey who came down must have been a genius, must have wanted to explore life on his own rather than with the crowd and the mob. Other monkeys are still hanging on the trees -- they are traditional people! They believe in their ancestors, they believe in their golden past and they don't want to change. To change, one needs courage

-- and to be alone, and to make your path. And make your path by walking it; don't look for a ready-made path. It may have served somebody else but it was not made for you.

If one remembers some self-respect and dignity of his own being, then there is no need of anybody to teach you, to help you. You are born as a complete being, with all the potential. You just have to work on your potential and you will find the goal.

Leo Tolstoy is reported to have said -- and before I quote him, I have to give you the background....

He had the most miserable life possible. He was born in a super-rich family, a distant cousin to the royalty. He himself was a count; his wife was a countess. Both families were within the ten topmost families of Russia, but he was utterly miserable. He could not manage to live his life with his family, with his wife, and the reason was simply that both were of totally different natures. The wife could not even look at him. To him the way he was behaving was saintly. He used rotten clothes the way beggars do, old secondhand shoes, and lived in a way only a beggar is supposed to live. Naturally, the wife could not tolerate him. She has lived like a queen, and she was one of the richest women in Russia.

But Leo Tolstoy was a Gandhian, you will be surprised to know. Although Gandhi came later, in the last days of Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi and he had written a few letters to each other. And Mahatma Gandhi declared that he has been under three masters; one is Leo Tolstoy, another is Henry Thoreau, and the third is a Jaina monk, Shrimad Rajchandra. These three people impressed Mahatma Gandhi.

Mahatma Gandhi was working in South Africa but he was very much impressed by the lifestyle of Leo Tolstoy. His wife was so angry that they were not even talking to each other. Talking meant always a fight. They had different natures. Tolstoy was trying hard to make his wife live a simple life, the life of poverty because, "blessed are the poor." He was a fanatical follower of Jesus Christ. Literally, he was living a poor life -- and the wife was feeling absolute repugnance. She wanted him to live like a prince, as he really was.

They quarreled their whole lives, both trying to make the other be according to his ideas, or her ideas. This is an extreme case, but this is the story of all families: nobody is allowed to be himself -- people go on manipulating.

Maneesha is writing a book about her experiences with me. Just the other day I heard that her mother from Melbourne, Australia, has written a very angry letter, "First you made me condemned by the Christian society here in Melbourne, and now you are trying to write a book, I hear. That means you would expose it to the whole world, and particularly in Melbourne where I will have to suffer."

And it is not any exception. Devageet has received a letter from his mother saying, "Stop writing the book," because he is also writing a book. Now these poor mothers are in great anxiety. What are these people going to write about them? -- that must be a deep fear.

Secondly, they will expose that Christianity is no longer relevant, that something new, something basically discontinuous with the past is needed. And that's what sannyas is. So they must be afraid of the crowd, of the church, of the congregation, of the priest; what they will say: "Look what your son has done," or "Look what your daughter has done.

You did not bring them up rightly; they have gone astray."

Everybody is concerned that everybody else should not go astray. And what do they mean by astray? You should not go in a different direction than they are going. And you know their whole life is misery, you know their whole mind is full of anxiety and agony; you have never seen them joyous. You have never felt a deep harmoniousness with your own parents. And they have tried in every way -- in your helplessness, because every child is helpless -- to force you onto the way that they think is right.

But their whole life proves that they are not right. If their life was a life of joy and songs and celebrations, the children would have followed without any punishment, without any harassment, without any torture. And now Maneesha and Devageet are not small children; they have their lives, they have their lifestyle and they want to share it with the whole world. Why should their mothers be so concerned? What is the fear?

Leo Tolstoy says, "All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." I cannot agree with him; I would rather change the whole statement to the contrary: All unhappy families resemble one another, but each happy family is happy in its own way.

And the same is true about individuals: All unhappy individuals resemble each other; only happy individuals have a uniqueness. Happiness, growing towards blissfulness, makes you unique in a world which is full of misery.

Always remember, the whole effort of psychoanalysis and other therapies, and other so-called wise men is nothing but to help you remain normal, to help you remain part of the crowd. The moment you try to become an individual you will be condemned, because five billion people cannot be wrong -- although they are suffering in hell. But the number is never decisive about truth.

Ralph Waldo Emerson has made a statement: "To be great is to be misunderstood."

I knew one very beautiful man...

There were only two men in India who were respected so highly as to be called Mahatma; Mahatma means the great soul. One was Mahatma Gandhi and another was Mahatma Bhagwandin. I was very much interested in Mahatma Bhagwandin, just as he was very loving towards me. I was a small child when we became friends, because he had stayed with my family. He had come to deliver some lectures in the town, and we used to go for morning walks together. By and by, we forgot completely that he is very ancient, old. We started arguing and discussing.

It was just by coincidence that he was on his deathbed in Nagpur and I was coming from Wardha, from a lecture tour. Somebody in the train told me, "Mahatma Bhagwandin is very very sick, and there seems to be no possibility that he will survive more than a week." So I stopped at Nagpur and went to see him.

He was almost dead; he had become absolutely like a skeleton. He opened his eyes and he took my hand in his hand, and he said, "I am worried about you, that you will be misunderstood your whole life. There is still time for you to agree with the masses, whether they are right or wrong." And he was saying it out of compassion. He said,

"Because I have suffered my whole life, and I have been condemned, I don't want you to be condemned."

I said, "Do you want me to be a hypocrite and respectable? Do you want me to be something other than my nature allows me?"

He said, "I knew you would argue, and I know that you are right. It is just a fatherly feeling; I have suffered my whole life because I always was in favor of unpopular movements, unpopular ideologies... and you are far more dangerous, you are against everybody."

I said, "I have to be against everybody. I have to be just myself. And anybody who wants to pull me in some other direction is not my friend." I said, "I understand your love, but you should also understand my situation. I would rather be condemned by the whole world than go against my nature. Because who cares about the world? They cannot bring me the truth; they cannot bring me the meaning; they cannot bring me the significance.

What can they give to me? -- respectability, honor? And what am I going to do with respectability and honor? Those are all bogus words used to cheat people. I simply want to be nobody; I am going to stick to myself. And this is my promise to you as you are dying. Remember my words even when you are dead, that I will..."

He said, "I knew you wouldn't listen. And I am happy that you are absolutely determined." He had tears of joy in his eyes -- not of sadness, joy. He said, "If you had agreed with me, I would have felt very sad that the world has lost another individual. But you don't agree with me, even when you see I am dying. In such a situation anybody will say, just to be polite, `Yes, whatever you say I will do.' Even in such a situation you are not ready to accept. I can die joyfully because I have loved you and I have watched how you are growing -- of course with a concern that you will be condemned by religions, by governments, by masses."

But what about all your psychotherapists, your leaders, your teachers, your universities --

what is their function? Their function is to keep you within the fold; to keep you just a sheep amongst the crowd of sheep and never allow you to be yourself. They are all angry with me for telling this to young people who have not yet died -- because people mostly die nearabout thirty years of age, that is average. And then they are buried when they are seventy. That is almost forty years that people live a posthumous life; they have died long before.

The day you decide that it is better to be a hypocrite and just do whatever everybody else is doing and not be different, you have died -- you have committed suicide.

My whole teaching is:

Don't commit spiritual suicide.

You don't need anybody else to guide you, because whoever guides you will guide you wrongly. He cannot know your nature and he cannot look into your future. He has no eyes, and there is no possibility. How can you see in a seed the flowers that will come one day years after? All that can be done is that the seed should be given a right soil --

not right advice. Not that you have to be a lotus, or you have to be a rose.

Care should be taken that the seed is not destroyed, that when small leaves start growing out of it, they are not destroyed. That's the function of the master: not to guide you but just to protect you when you need protection, when you are so fragile, so new. Just growing, the new leaves coming out of the earth, entering into an unknown world where strong winds blow, heavy rain falls, there is every possibility that you may be destroyed.

The function of the master is not to lead you. The function of the master is to help you, to protect you, but only to the moment when you can stand on your own. Then slowly, slowly detach himself from you so that you can dance alone in the sky under the stars in your full glory.

Johannes Wolfgang von Goethe has made a beautiful statement: "All theory, dear friend is grey. But the golden tree of actual life springs ever green."

Avoid theories; they are all grey.

Let the dead people discuss theories.

The living have something more golden, something more alive. They have to love; they have to meditate. They have to become enlightened before death knocks on their doors.

Also remember that life is not the way it is lived in California! California is almost a vast crazy place where people are going from one master to another master, just like any fashion. Just as they change their toothpaste, they change their masters. Just as they change their soaps, they change their teachers, their counselors, their psychoanalysts.

Oscar Wilde used to say, "Fashion is a form of ugliness, so intolerable that we have to change it every six months." There is no need.

Just the other day, I received a letter from a sannyasin saying that he is going to a teacher; has he my blessings?... can he go? People are in a strange situation; they want to ride on many boats. They are creating their life in such a way that it will be a disaster. If you are growing well... and he writes that his meditation is going well, he is starting to see things that have so far been only words. Now at this fragile moment, going to somebody is dangerous. But if I say, "Don't go," I interfere. And I would not like to interfere, even if you are going wrong.

So I have informed him: I cannot bless because I don't know to whom you are going, but you are intelligent enough. If you feel that the person is going in some way to nourish your growth, which is going perfectly right even according to you -- you are feeling that you are absolutely on the right path, that misery is disappearing, that suffering is disappearing, that you are no more worried; that a kind of playfulness, weightlessness is arising -- if you are aware of all this... Remember, that if anybody can be of nourishment, it is perfectly good to go.

But in fact, there is no need to go anywhere, you are going so right. Go more deeply into it, rather than going sideways.

Go straight like an arrow.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SILENCE AND

BLISSFULNESS? IS SILENCE ALL THAT IS NEEDED? DOES EVERYTHING

ELSE FOLLOW?

Prem Samarpan, there is no relationship between silence and blissfulness; they are two names of the same thing.

Silence is blissfulness, not in the dictionaries, but in actual experience. And I don't see that in actual experience it can be different to different people. As you become silent, you cannot be worried, you cannot be tense; you cannot be miserable, you cannot be noisy, you cannot be chattering continuously. Otherwise, how can you be silent?

And when all these stupid activities are gone, silence simply clears the ground for blissfulness to be discovered. They are almost the same phenomenon because they happen simultaneously. As you become silent, a certain sweetness, a certain fragrance, a certain beatitude spontaneously arises in you.

But your silence should not be a repressed stillness; you should not be silent by force. If you are silent by force, if you have repressed your mind then rather than doing meditation you are doing gymnastics, fighting with the mind. It is possible you can force the mind to be silent, but then there will be no blissfulness. There will be just emptiness and a silence of the graveyard, not the silence of the garden; something empty, not something overflowing.

The silence that comes out of meditation is not an empty experience, it is very positive --

it is overflowingly positive. And what is there to overflow in silence except blissfulness?

So, please check. If your silence is not bringing blissfulness then you are trying to have a wrong kind of silence -- blissfulness is the criterion -- then stop doing what you are trying to do.

In meditation, silence comes on its own accord. You simply go on watching the mind without any control, without any repression, and silence comes suddenly just like a breeze, and with the silence, the fragrance of the flowers -- that is your blissfulness; it is your own fragrance which you were not capable of knowing because there was so much noise.

The mind was creating so much fuss, thoughts were creating so many dark clouds, emotions and moods, it had become a thick barrier between you and your real self. When the barrier is removed, it is as if you have removed a rock which was preventing a stream, a fountain.

And the moment you remove the rock, suddenly the fountain bursts forth in a great dance of joy. Your blissfulness is not something that comes from outside, it springs from within you. Just the rock of your mind -- thoughts, miseries -- has to be removed. It is not that you have to repress it, because by repressing it you will be repressing the fountain behind it too.

So the question can arise, Samarpan, if your silence is a wrong kind of silence. You are asking, "Is silence all that is needed?" Yes, absolutely yes. Silence is all that is needed, and everything else follows on its own accord.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

The Invitation

Chapter #13

Chapter title: Three tickets for titsburg

27 August 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive

code:

8708275

ShortTitle:

INVITA13

Audio:

Yes

Video:

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Length:

101

mins

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

LATELY, I FEEL THAT THE LONGING INSIDE TO GO BEYOND THE MIND

AND EXPERIENCE SOMETHING MORE IS GROWING. IT SEEMS LIKE SUCH A LONG PROCESS -- DOES IT HAVE TO TAKE A LONG TIME?

Atit Yama, the longing to go beyond the mind is the only longing worthwhile. All that man desires and hopes for is utterly meaningless. In success, in failure, in every possible way it leads you nowhere.

It is not only that you feel the pain in failure -- the pain and the defeat and the agony.

Those who succeed also feel the same pain in a different way, perhaps more deeply than those who have failed, because they have succeeded in what they wanted and yet their inner being is as dark and as empty as ever. They have everything on the outside and nothing inside. In fact, all that they have succeeded in attaining, in achieving, becomes a contrast and shows their inner emptiness more clearly than those who have failed to attain.

It is just as if you write with white chalk on a white wall: it doesn't show. You have to write it on a blackboard and then it shows clearly. The emptiness, meaninglessness shows more clearly on the blackboard of success than it shows on the mind and its screen of failure. In failure there is still hope; in success there is no hope. You have already arrived, and your arrival is the death of all your hoping.

It is a very strange experience that the only successful lovers are those who never meet, are never allowed to meet by the society, by the parents, by the situations. They are the only successful lovers; the world remembers them for centuries. But once the lovers meet, then all hope and all romance from life simply evaporates.

There is one longing amongst all longings, and that is the longing to go beyond mind. But there is a contradiction in this longing, because all longing belongs to the mind: how can the mind long, desire, to go beyond itself? So the longing to go beyond mind has not to be understood in the same way as any other desire, any other ambition.

In fact to call it longing is not right. It is an understanding more than a desire. It is an understanding of the agony and the pain of mind that makes one feel it is better to go beyond. It is not something in the faraway future as a goal, but something that has to be allowed to happen right now.

If you can see what mind has done to you and what it is continuously doing to you, how much misery and how much suffering it goes on creating, then the very understanding of the misery of mind is enough to go beyond. You don't ask how to go beyond, you simply cannot remain in the mind. You are in the mind because you are not clear that your misery is caused by the mind. You go on throwing the responsibility on something or other.

Jean-Paul Sartre has said -- and when a man like Sartre says something it is significant; his statement has become immensely famous: "The other is hell." In an ordinary way it appears to be right, because you always suffer because of others: your wife deserts you; your husband does not love you; your children are turning into hippies. It is always the others who are creating misery; otherwise you would be in paradise.

In this ordinary sense his statement has meaning, and that's why it has become so famous and so important. But deep down it is rooted in ignorance.

The other is not hell, the other is only a mirror.

The other only reflects your mind, your face.

sI have heard an ancient parable...

A woman who was very ugly was against mirrors. She was so much against mirrors that she did not allow any mirror in her own home. Her antagonism was so deep that if she saw a mirror in somebody else's house the first thing she did was to break the mirror. And people asked, "What is the matter, why have you broken the mirror?"

She said, "The mirror makes me ugly; otherwise I am perfectly well. If there was no mirror, I would not have been ugly."

The same is the situation when Jean-Paul Sartre says that the other is hell. It is you, it is your mind. And because Sartre goes on depending on this understanding, a man of his caliber and genius never transcends mind, never even thinks of it. It is unfortunate that such beautiful people with such sharp intelligence remain unaware of a simple fact that in your relationships it is your mind that is reflected. In your misery it is your mind; in your jealousy it is your mind; in your hate it is your mind; in your lust for power it is your mind.

Once you see the multidimensional capacity of the mind to create hell for you, the very understanding takes you out of it. You don't have to long, you don't have to desire; you don't have to do anything else other than understand the mind.

Yama, you are saying to me, "I feel that the longing inside to go beyond the mind and experience something more is growing." Superficially, anybody will say that a spiritual desire has taken possession of you, but I am going to be a little hard on you.

First, the feeling is part of the mind, the longing is part of the mind, to have some experience is a desire of the mind... and to have something even more is the very nature of mind. It can be reduced to a simple statement: Mind always asks for more. It may be money or it may be meditation, it doesn't matter -- mind goes on asking for more.

Even if you get God himself, the mind will still ask the same thing: something more.

What are you going to do with this God? Now you are stuck forever. Just think of yourself getting stuck with God forever! The mind may even suggest to you, "It is better to lose this fellow rather than to remain stuck with him; either get something more... or even less will do, but a change is absolutely needed."

Mind is a continuous thirst for more.

It never finds fulfillment.

So you have to understand one thing, that this longing should not be part of the mind.

This desire to experience something more should not be mind deceiving you in the name of religion, in the name of spirituality.

The only way to avoid the mind and its deceptions -- and they are very subtle -- the only way is to drop these words: `longing', èxperience', `more'. Rather try to understand the mind, what it is. Look into every nook and corner of the mind, from where all desires arise, all longings arise, from where all passions arise. Just look into this source of all your life.

With the very understanding that the mind is the hell, you will find yourself beyond it; you will not have to go beyond it.

It is almost like when you find your house is on fire. When you see it on fire, you don't think and contemplate what to do. You don't consult holy scriptures for right instructions.

You simply jump out of the house -- whether it is a door or a window it doesn't matter; whether you are properly dressed or not it doesn't matter. You know a great crowd is waiting, but if you are in your bathroom and suddenly find the house is on fire, you will jump out of the window naked. You will forget to take even the towel with you. It is not a time to think of all these trivia and the crowd is not going to be angry with you, even in Poona. Even the police commissioner is not going to take any action against you. In such a situation ordinary laws don't apply.

The transcendence from mind has happened only to a very few people in the world. And the reason is that most people get deceived by the mind. The mind itself starts asking for transcendence, for going beyond, for searching the truth, and you forget that these are subtle devices of the mind to take you astray from one single thing: that is a deep understanding of mind itself.

Neither transcendence is needed nor going beyond is needed nor any spiritual experience is needed. What is needed is a total understanding of your mind and its structure and its functioning. And that very understanding, without any effort on your part, will become the transcendence, will take you beyond, will give you the experience that mind was only dreaming about and deceiving you.

Your question is certainly arising from the mind, because the next thing it says is: "It seems like such a long process." Understanding is not a long process. Understanding is immediate. You come across a snake on the road -- understanding does not take a long time. You simply jump out of the way without even thinking what you are doing.

In my childhood, in front of the house in which I used to live were only shops. On my side of the road there were residential houses, but on the opposite side there were only shops. So after nine o'clock at night the shops on the other side of the road were closed and it became utterly dark -at that time electricity had not come to my village -- and we used to frighten people, people who were very strong, particularly those who bragged so much about their strength.

Just nearby there was a gymnasium, the most famous in the area, where people were body-building, and they had champions. And we were very small but we knew that whether you are a champion or a great wrestler, it does not matter. We used to purchase paper snakes from the market and we would put them on the other side of the road attached with a thin black thread held in our hands, while we sat in our house. Nobody in the house was concerned that we were doing anything; we were simply sitting, just holding the thread and watching for the right person.

Whenever we would see some great wrestler coming we would start pulling our thread slowly. And as the snake came on the road the scene was worth seeing. The wrestler would forget everything: he was carrying a lamp in his hand, the lamp would fall down and the wrestler would run so fast -- sometimes he would fall down.

And a crowd would gather, "What has happened?"

And he would say, "There was such a great snake."

The people said, "This is strange, every night the snake appears."

One day they tried to look for the snake, "It has to be found because some day somebody is going to be killed by the snake." And they found a paper snake, they found the thread, and they found me hiding behind my grandfather's bed! Seeing that something difficult is happening, I simply put the thread around my grandfather's leg; he was asleep. The crowd woke him up -- I also was with the crowd, asking, "What you are doing?"

He said, "I was asleep. What is the matter? Who has put this thread around my leg?"

And the crowd also saw that he had been fast asleep and that somebody else was behind the game. And this snake appears every day after nine o'clock, and it has made people so afraid that many people have stopped going out of their houses after nine o'clock.

And they said to my grandfather, "Be watchful next time; just remain alert and watch who is doing this trick."

My grandfather knew who must be doing it. But I was with the crowd saying, "You have to be a little alert." And when everybody was gone he said, "You rascal! You are doing this. I have seen you in the daytime with that snake and that thread... but this is too much, that you put it around my leg."

I said, "There was no other way. There was nobody else except you. I was hiding behind you when I saw that I was going to be caught and I said, "It is good, because nobody can find fault with a sleeping old man. So you have to forgive me, but it was such an urgent situation."

When you come across a snake, whether it is paper or made of rubber or plastic or dead does not matter. It does not take any time to freak out; it is not a process. You say it is a long process, "such a long process -- does it have to take a long time?"

Somebody has sent me the Ashram's Law of Shortcut: The shortest distance between two points is always under construction.

It is very difficult to find any shortcut here... but there is no need either if you follow rightly my understanding, my approach. Time is not involved at all; neither is any kind of distance.

This very moment you can look at your mind, and you can see all that your mind contains. And that will be enough just to be finished with it. It is not a question of time; it is not a question of effort. It is only a question of clear understanding.

That's what we don't do. We fight with anger, we fight with jealousy, we fight with everything, but fighting never helps because it takes time. And fighting shows one thing absolutely: that you don't understand that by fighting you cannot go beyond mind.

Fighting is simply one part of mind fighting with another part. It is like making both my hands fight with each other. Do you think any hand is going to win? It depends on me; I can make the right hand win or I can change the idea and make the left hand win. But I know perfectly well that it is within my power: both hands are mine.

Any conflict in your mind, any split in your mind is just a game. You have become two teams, football teams or... And you can go on playing the game and you can enjoy that you are on a spiritual pilgrimage, that you are a great seeker -- but you are just playing football. And you are playing for both sides; there is no question of any victory, no question of any defeat.

That's what so-called religious people have been doing and are still doing. Their rituals, their prayers, their austerities certainly take time. And not only do they take time, they never arrive anywhere, they remain the same persons. Maybe they have repressed their sexuality, but the sexuality is there. Repressed, it becomes more dangerous because it becomes more deep-rooted in your unconscious, from where it will create a thousand and one perversions.

I have heard that three rabbis were standing on the railway station. They were going somewhere, obviously. And finally the youngest one said, "Now it seems the train is going to come and I should get the tickets."

So he went to the window and saw a beautiful woman working on her register. The young rabbi said to the woman, "Lady, how much will it cost for Titsburgh?" He forgot that he is going to Pittsburgh.

The woman was very angry, and said, "You are a religious man..." The rabbi felt very ashamed. He came back and told the other rabbis, "You can purchase the ticket because I am feeling very nervous, and in my nervousness I have said something wrong."

They said, "But tell us what you have said wrong."

He said, "I cannot repeat it. And don't make me feel more guilty; I am feeling very bad."

So the second rabbi, more elderly than the first, said, "I'm going. What kind of nervousness is this? Just purchasing the ticket..." And the moment he saw those beautiful tits he forgot everything -- his old age, his austerities, his rituals, his prayers; all were forgotten. And of course, because he was older he committed more mistakes because his unconscious and his repression were greater. He said, "Just give me three tickets for Titsburgh and the change you can give me in nipples."

The woman was outraged. She said, "You rascals! You are pretending to be rabbis? The first one came and now you have come, and you are worse than the first."

And the second rabbi came back trembling. Then the oldest rabbi said, "What is the matter with you idiots? Just purchasing a ticket... What happens on the window?"

The second one said, "You go and see yourself. Something goes wrong. I was not thinking that I can do such a stupid thing, but it simply came out."

The old rabbi said, "That window seems to be mysterious. But let me try." And of course he was a very strict disciplinarian, a perfectionist, and the oldest of all. He kept himself very alert seeing that two persons have failed and something is wrong there. He saw the tits but he understood immediately, Okay, so this is the problem: Pittsburgh must be becoming Titsburgh!

He took the right approach and said, "Lady, how much will it be for Pittsburgh?"

The lady said, "You are really a religious person. Those two fellows are so ungentlemanly. They should not be accepted as rabbis."

The rabbi said, "You are right. I will put them right, but I'm going to put you right too!

You are not dressed properly. And remember, when you die Saint Finger on the gate of heaven will show his peter at you!"

The old man became angry...

But you cannot get away from the repressed; it is going to come in some way or other.

Now Saint Peter becomes Saint Finger, and the poor finger becomes peter.

Perversions are the only achievement of the repressed approach of all your religions. It has created a very perverted humanity. I will not say to you to do something to transcend mind -- I will say to you: the only scientific approach is to understand. First understand mind, which is your reality. Why be in such a hurry of going beyond it without understanding it? Understand it and the very understanding is transcendence. The moment you have understood your mind you are beyond it. You will find yourself beyond it within a split second; it won't take any more time. It is not a process, it is a quantum leap.

My effort is to continuously emphasize that meditation is nothing but watching the mind, understanding the mind, seeing all its subtle and cunning ways. And once you have become perfectly aware of all its conscious, subconscious and unconscious layers you are already out of it. In your very watching you have gone beyond. And beyond the mind there is no desire for more, because beyond the mind you go on growing more and more into infinity. There is no need to desire, it happens spontaneously.

So the first thing is an understanding of the mind and the second thing is to rejoice in spontaneous growth.

The young nun rushed into the mother superior's office and exclaimed, "We have got a fresh case of syphilis in the convent!" The mother superior looked up and said, "Thank God. I'm sick to death of red wine!"

It is a little difficult. The nun has reported to the superior mother that they have received a fresh case of syphilis. And the superior mother said, "Thank God. I'm sick to death of red wine. Always red wine, red wine... At least something fresh has come."

A doctor received an urgent phone call. "Doctor," said the voice. "My wife swallowed my fountain pen two hours ago."

"Why did not you phone me sooner?" asked the doctor.

"I have been using my pencil up to now," replied the husband, "but the lead has broken and I don't have a sharpener."

Life is so ridiculous and so hilarious, that if you just try to understand your mind, you will have a great laugh at yourself and what you have been doing.

Once one of the girlfriends of Pablo Picasso said, "If my boyfriend would ever meet a woman on the street who looked like the women in his paintings he would fall over in a dead faint."

But Picasso is not aware what he is painting. The girlfriend is saying, "If some day on the road he meets the women he paints, he will forget all painting; he will faint and fall over on the road." But Picasso is not aware that all his paintings are nightmarish. And he has been working so hard on those paintings all his life. And he was a genius, but he must be absolutely unconscious of what he is doing.

What are you doing? What goes on in your mind? What kinds of paintings do you make?

What kinds of dreams come to you? What things make you jealous? What things make you infatuated? Just watch. You have been given, free of charge by your biology, a whole television set which needs no change of any batteries or any electricity; it runs continuously from the cradle to the grave. And who knows it may be running even in the grave.

Brain surgeons have become aware of the fact that the brain can be taken out from your skull and put into a mechanical head. All that it needs is oxygen and blood for everything to run through the mechanical head exactly as it used to run in your head on your body.

Your brain continues to function. It does not know that the man has changed. It goes on dreaming, it goes on thinking; it goes on making plans, it goes on being jealous.

Brain surgeons have been very shocked that the brain does not need you at all; it goes on by itself. And it is very frightening that a brain without a body, just mechanically supported for its nourishment is perfectly well and it goes on doing the same old exercises.

You are being used by your brain almost like a mechanical support, nothing much more.

This brain certainly has to be transcended, but to transcend it you are not to fall into the trap of taking any support from the same brain. If you take any support from it, you will never be able to get out of its trap. The only way not to take support is just to watch, wait and see all its functions. And you will feel immensely relieved immediately, because it has nothing to do with you, it is just a biocomputer.

And this understanding that "I am separate" is the transcendence, is what you mean by going beyond.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

IN MY FIRST FEW MONTHS HERE, WHILE MEDITATING, A FEW TIMES I CAME ACROSS A VERY INTENSE SPACE WHERE IT WAS AS IF TIME HAD

STOPPED. BUT NOW IT DOES NOT HAPPEN, AND I CAN FEEL THAT THERE IS

SOME EXPECTANCE IN ME, THOUGH I REMEMBER THAT THE SPACE ONLY

CAME WHEN I WAS NOT LOOKING FOR IT. EVEN THOUGH I FEEL SO GOOD

WHILE MEDITATING -- ESPECIALLY IN YOUR PRESENCE -- SO FULL AND

RICH INSIDE, I WONDER WHERE THOSE SPACES WENT AND HOW I CAN GET

BACK TO THE INNOCENCE OF NON-EXPECTANCE.

Shivam Suvarna, your question almost answers itself. But perhaps you have managed the answer only intellectually. Your question seems to be real, but it also implies the answer.

The answer seems to be your intellectual understanding of the situation.

I will read the question to make it clear to you, because that clarity will change everything.

"In my first few months here, while meditating, a few times I came across a very intense space where it was as if time had stopped. But now it does not happen, and I can feel that there is some expectance in me..."

That expectance is preventing it. And it seems that intellectually you understand it. You say, "... though I remember that the space only came when I was not looking for it. Even though I feel so good while meditating -- especially in your presence -- so full and rich inside, I wonder where those spaces went and how I can get back to the innocence of non-expectance."

Any method -- that's what you are asking for: How can I get back into that innocence of non-expectance? Any method, whatever its nature, will make things more complicated, because you will be doing it to get into a space which comes only when you are not expecting it. Intellectually you seem to have understood the fact that it was only when you were not expecting it, it came suddenly. And now there is a subtle expectance and you are wanting to know how to get into that state again.

You simply forget all about those spaces. You are feeling good in meditations, why bother about a space where it seemed as if time has stopped? What are you going to get out of it? And moreover, it was only "as if." Even if time had really stopped, what is the gain? Perhaps the battery of your quartz watch was finished... time stopped. There is no other time except in your watches.

A man charged into a jewelry shop, slammed his fist angrily on the counter, removed a wrist watch from his pocket and shook it under the nose of the saleswoman. "Damn it!

You said this watch would last me a lifetime," he roared.

"Yeah," said the woman, "but you looked pretty sick the day you got it."

Don't be bothered about time stopping, great spaces happening. Feel good because you are feeling rich and full inside. Enjoy this fullness; enjoy this richness. Become so much involved in it that perhaps you will find again that time stops, that again that space opens up, far bigger, far more deep, far more intense, because it will be the second time.

But you have to be involved in some rich experience so deeply that there is no need for it.

These things happen only when you don't need them. They follow the same law as banking: If you need money, no bank is going to give you any; if you don't need money, every bank is going to persuade you to have some. They are willing to give you as much money as you want for as long time as you want. Bankers seem to understand this wonderful working of existence. When someone needs something don't give, because it will be lost; it will never be returned. When somebody has so much money that he does not want anything -- he can open a bank himself -- then all the banks are ready to lend on lower interest rates.

Perhaps existence follows the same law. The more you run after something the less is the possibility of your getting it. The moment you stop, and you drop the very idea, suddenly you have got it.

And you can forget those spaces only if you can create another dimension of richness, affluence, blissfulness -- and that is opening up through your meditation so there is no need to worry. And worrying, you will not be a winner. Those spaces came by themselves. Let them come when they come. When they come enjoy them, when they don't come don't even look back, don't even think about them.

This is something very essential to learn on the path; otherwise, you will get stuck on every point. Whenever something beautiful happens, it will always happen without your knowing.

Unexpectedly the guest comes.

But you feel so good that you start expecting. Now you are going against the law. The guest has come only because you were not expecting, and now you are expecting -- not only expecting, but deep down demanding. And existence is very shy, it won't come. Get involved in something deeper and richer in another dimension. And that is happening for you, so there is no problem. You are not empty, you are feeling full and rich. Feel more rich and more full. Go deeper into meditation and you will forget those spaces, because your meditation will bring greater spaces, greater richness, greater experiences. And then suddenly, one day you will find not the same spaces that you had found, better ones; it is always getting better. On the path of meditation it is always getting better.

So never ask for anything to be repeated, because that way you will be a loser. Something better was going to happen and you were asking for something less. That past space had happened when you were not so deep in meditation. Now you are deep in meditation, you have earned more. You have become more worthy. At that time you were not feeling so rich and so full. Now you are feeling so rich and so full, you need not worry. Something greater will happen.

But if you go on asking and hoping for those same spaces, you will be preventing those spaces because existence never repeats. And you will be preventing better spaces because you are not looking for the future; you are looking backwards at the past.

There is no technique to forget. You are asking for a technique, how to become again innocent and be non-expecting. By any technique whatsoever it is not possible. It is possible to get better spaces. Why should you hanker for those old, rotten, already experienced? -- They are secondhand. Why not wait for fresher and deeper and more nourishing, more ecstatic experiences which are waiting ahead on the path? But, if you go on looking backwards, you are stuck.

Don't get stuck with anything.

Howsoever beautiful it is, there is a possibility of something better ahead.

I have always told a Sufi story...

An old man, a woodcutter, was so old, but still he had to go to chop wood in the forest and bring it back. He was just able to afford food one time a day, and he was in his old age. And when the woodcutter used to go in the forest, a Sufi mystic was always sitting on the way, under a tree, the same tree. He always used to touch the feet of the mystic, and the mystic used to laugh.

Finally, one day he could not contain his curiosity. He said, "I touch your feet twice every day, going into the forest and coming back from the forest. And it is strange, you always laugh -- Why? I am a poor man, uneducated, but this much I can understand: I am paying respect to you, and you are laughing. This does not seem to be appropriate."

The old man said, "I'm laughing because you are an idiot. Where you have been chopping wood, just a little ahead there is a copper mine. And with the same effort that you make in one day to get enough wood for your one meal, with the same effort you can get enough copper for two meals every day for seven days. Six days you can rest; one day you can work. I have been laughing because it is strange that a man has been coming this way his whole life and he never goes a little more. He always gets stuck with the same trees. And just ahead of those trees..."

The next day the man went a little ahead and he was surprised. He was very happy. He came and he touched the feet of the master and said, "I am sorry that I could not understand your laughter."

Then he used to come only once a week. But the master started laughing again. So he said, "What is the matter, why have you started laughing again?"

The master said, "You seem to be such a sticking guy. Just ahead of that mine there is a silver mine. Can't you imagine anything? Can't you see that there is so much ahead?"

He said, "I never thought about it. But you are strange also. You know -- why don't you tell me?"

And the master said, "There are a few things one should find for oneself; that helps your intelligence to grow. I had to say because my time is finished. And I cannot just wait anymore for you to discover. So just today go a little further and find a silver mine."

He found a silver mine. Now it was needed only to come once a month. But he got stuck there. And the master said, "I have never seen such a fellow. Don't you know that there exists gold too?"

He said, "Where?"

"Just a little ahead. And it seems that unless you are forced, you will not move," said the master.

That day he went a little ahead and found a big gold mine. He said, "My God, my whole life I could have carried so much gold I would have become almost a king! And that mystic is such a strange fellow. He knows everything and he never said anything to me."

But that day he thought "Now I have to make one effort on my own. Perhaps there is something more ahead."

And there was. There was a diamond mine. He said, "My God! So many diamonds. And that mystic knows everything? And he thinks I am an idiot! Now I think he is an idiot. He knows, and he goes on sitting under the tree doing nothing, just waiting for people to give something to him. And his disciples beg and bring food to him, and he knows all this.

And he thinks that I'm the idiot. Today I am going to tell him, `You are an idiot. What are you doing sitting here, knowing all that perfectly well. I am an ignorant man and I don't know what is ahead, but you know.'"

So he came back. With great courage he showed the diamonds and the mystic laughed.

He said, "That's good. But don't get stuck."

He said, "But what can be ahead of it?"

The mystic said, "Ahead of it? I am; otherwise why am I sitting here? I have something more valuable than diamonds. So when you are finished with your diamonds you come and sit under my feet. It is my last days and I would like to share with you something more than diamonds. But you had to pass through these stages; otherwise you would not have understood that this poor fellow, who depends on people's food, who is just a beggar, can have something inside him which is far more valuable than the whole diamond mine."

The old woodcutter dropped the diamonds there and he said, "I am finished. If that is the case then I am not going to leave you."

The old man said, "You can sit also. There is enough space under the tree. And it is beautiful and very shadowy. And my people bring food enough, so it will be enough for both."

The woodcutter said... he was an ignorant man, not a thinker, not a philosopher, not religious; he has never thought much, he has never dreamt; if he was brought to a psychoanalyst, the psychoanalyst will refuse him because he will not be cooperating. If he will ask him, "Tell me about your dreams," he will say, "I don't have any dreams."

Then the psychoanalyst cannot do anything. Without dreams he cannot help anybody.

He sat by the side of the saint. And as the night grew deeper, the silence and everything became quiet and calm. He also became quiet and calm and suddenly, he started feeling the vibration of the mysterious man. He could not see anything, but his heart was dancing. He could not say anything, but his whole being was for the first time in a state of joy. He has never known anything except misery, poverty and suffering.

Early in the morning, before he could even say thanks to the saint, the saint died. But he had left behind him another saint. When the followers of the old saint came they could not believe. The old man is dead but a new fellow is sitting by his side with the same vibe.

Those followers have tasted the joy and the peace of the old man. That's why they used to come from a faraway town to bring his food. Just to be with him for a few minutes was enough. It kept them running twenty-four hours, celebrating life. They could not believe that the old man has played such a game with them. He is gone but he has left a representative. They offered his food to the woodcutter and the woodcutter became the saint. Nothing was said, nobody declared that he was the successor, but he proved to be a far greater saint, because he was an ignorant man, and suddenly silence turned all his ignorance into innocence.

All that you need is to forget always what happens, and remember always there is much more. There is no need to long for it because it always happens whenever you are right.

Whenever you are in a right tuning you hear the music from the beyond. And whenever you are in a right space the whole existence celebrates with you.

There is no technique to forget, just a simple understanding. If a woodcutter can go ahead, why can't you go a little deeper into your meditation? That memory of a beautiful experience is holding you back. Forget all about it. It is not worth remembering because much more is there.

Keep yourself available for much more. On this path there is no poverty, there is always more and more richness.

On this path you don't become finally a beggar, you become an emperor.

The plane hit a storm and was going up and down and sideways. A little old lady was getting very nervous and suddenly she shouted, "Everybody on the plane pray!"

A Scotsman sitting next to her said, "I don't know how to pray."

"Well, do something religious!" the old lady cried.

So he got up, took off his hat and started making a collection.

That's the only thing he knows that is religion.

Don't just wait for those spaces, there are greater religious spaces ahead. Don't get stuck with prayers.

"Before sending you to the chair," said the judge to Moishe Finkelstein, "is there a last request you would like to make?"

"Yes, judge," said Moishe, "I would like to have a look at my wife first, then I will feel more like dying."

People have strange fixations. Don't bother about what happened in the past. What is happening right now is so beautiful, is it not? Then why create any disturbance. Just go deeper into it.

That which is available will open new skies and many, many spaces. And then you will wonder how foolish it was to expect your kindergarten experiences. Those were just little glimpses of the unknown. The whole unknown is still waiting for you to experience it.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

The Invitation

Chapter #14

Chapter title: Silence is the right soil

28 August 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive

code:

8708280

ShortTitle:

INVITA14

Audio:

Yes

Video:

Yes

Length:

100

mins

Question 1

MY BELOVED MASTER,

I REALIZED THAT IT IS EASIER TO BECOME SILENT WHILE LISTENING TO

YOU THAN IN ANY OTHER MEDITATION. WHEN YOU STOP TALKING

EVERYTHING SEEMS TO STOP FOR A MOMENT AND I GET A GLIMPSE OF

WHAT MEDITATION CAN BE! THESE ARE THE MOST PRECIOUS MOMENTS

FOR ME! OSHO, WHY IS IT EASIER TO BECOME SILENT IN YOUR PRESENCE?

Dhyan Sandesh, the question you have raised is significant not only to you, but to many more who are not fortunate enough to be in my presence, but who will be reading these words or listening or seeing this on the video screen all over the world.

The question arises almost for everyone, that the way I talk is a little strange. No speaker in the world talks like me -- technically it is wrong; it takes almost double the time! But those speakers have a different purpose -- my purpose is absolutely different from theirs.

They speak because they are prepared for it; they are simply repeating something that they have rehearsed. Secondly, they are speaking to impose a certain ideology, a certain idea on you. Thirdly, to them speaking is an art -- they go on refining it.

As far as I am concerned, I am not what they call a speaker or an orator. It is not an art to me or a technique; technically I go on becoming worse every day! But our purposes are totally different. I don't want to impress you in order to manipulate you. I don't speak for any goal to be achieved through convincing you. I don't speak to convert you into a Christian, into a Hindu or a Mohammedan, into a theist or an atheist -- these are not my concerns.

My speaking is really one of my devices for meditation. Speaking has never been used this way: I speak not to give you a message, but to stop your mind functioning.

I speak nothing prepared -- I don't know myself what is going to be the next word; hence I never commit any mistake. One commits a mistake if one is prepared. I never forget anything, because one forgets if one has been remembering it. So I speak with a freedom that perhaps nobody has ever spoken with.

I am not concerned whether I am consistent, because that is not the purpose. A man who wants to convince you and manipulate you through his speaking has to be consistent, has to be logical, has to be rational, to overpower your reason. He wants to dominate through words.

One of the very famous books of Dale Carnegie is about speaking and influencing people as an art -- it has been sold second only to THE HOLY BIBLE -- but I will fail his examinations. He used to run a course in America to train missionaries, to train professors, and to train orators. I will fail on all counts. First, I have no motivation to convert you; I have no desire anywhere to impress you. And I don't remember what I have said yesterday, so I cannot bother about being consistent -- that is too much worry. I can easily contradict myself, because I am not trying to have a communication with your intellectual, rational mind.

My purpose is so unique -- I am using words just to create silent gaps. The words are not important so I can say anything contradictory, anything absurd, anything unrelated, because my purpose is just to create gaps. The words are secondary; the silences between those words are primary. This is simply a device to give you a glimpse of meditation.

And once you know that it is possible for you, you have traveled far in the direction of your own being.

Most of the people in the world don't think that it is possible for mind to be silent.

Because they don't think it is possible, they don't try. How to give people a taste of meditation was my basic reason to speak, so I can go on speaking eternally -- it does not matter what I am saying. All that matters is that I give you a few chances to be silent, which you find difficult on your own in the beginning.

I cannot force you to be silent, but I can create a device in which spontaneously you are bound to be silent. I am speaking, and in the middle of a sentence, when you were expecting another word to follow, nothing follows but a silent gap. And your mind was looking to listen, and waiting for something to follow, and does not want to miss it --

naturally it becomes silent. What can the poor mind do? If it was well known at what points I will be silent, if it was declared to you that on such and such points I will be silent, then you could manage to think -- you would not be silent. Then you know: "This is the point where he is going to be silent, now I can have a little chit-chat with myself."

But because it comes absolutely suddenly.... I don't know myself why at certain points I stop.

Anything like this, in any orator in the world, will be condemned, because an orator stopping again and again means he is not well prepared, he has not done the homework. It means that his memory is not reliable, that he cannot find, sometimes, what word to use.

But because it is not oratory, I am not concerned about the people who will be condemning me -- I am concerned with you.

And it is not only here, but far away... anywhere in the world where people will be listening to the video or to the audio, they will come to the same silence. My success is not to convince you, my success is to give you a real taste so that you can become confident that meditation is not a fiction, that the state of no-mind is not just a philosophical idea, that it is a reality; that you are capable of it, and that it does not need any special qualifications.

You may be a sinner, you may be a saint -- it does not matter. If the sinner can become silent, he will attain to the same consciousness as the saint.

Existence is not so miserly as religions have been teaching you. Existence is not like the KGB or FBI -- watching everybody to see what you are doing, whether you are going to the movie with your own wife or with somebody else's wife. Existence is not interested at all. The problem of whether the wife is yours or not is just a man-created problem. In existence, there is nothing like marriage. Whether you are stealing money, taking it out from somebody's safe or from your own, existence does not and cannot make the difference. You are taking out the money from the safe -- that is a fact -- but to whom the safe belongs, that is absolutely of no concern to existence.

Once George Bernard Shaw was asked, "Can a man live his life so lazily, just keeping his hands in his pockets and enjoying?" George Bernard Shaw said, "Yes, just the pocket should be somebody else's!"

Keeping your hands in your own pockets, you cannot survive! And the fact is that almost everybody has his hand in somebody else's pocket. And that fellow may have his hand in somebody else's pocket, so he cannot stop you because by stopping you, he will be stopped. So he has to accept it, and if he has his hands in a richer pocket, he does not care about you. Go on doing whatsoever you are doing, just don't create a disturbance.

Existence has no morality as such -- it is amoral. For existence there is nothing wrong and nothing right. Only one thing is right -- your being alert and conscious. Then you are blissful.

It is very strange that no religion has defined `right' as being blissful, or defined `virtue'

as being blissful. And they were in a difficulty to define it exactly as I am defining it because their concern was that in the world, the people they think are sinners look happier than the people they think are saints -- the saints look absolutely unhappy. And if they say that blissfulness is the criterion, whether you are right in tune with existence or not, this will destroy their whole superstructure. The saints will look like sinners and the sinners will look like saints.

But this is my criterion because I don't care about the scriptures, I don't care about the prophets, I don't care about the past -- that was their business and their problem. I have my own eyes to see, why should I depend on anybody else's eyes? And I have my own consciousness to be aware, why should I be dependent on Gautam Buddha, or Bodhidharma, or Jesus Christ? They were not dependent on me. Obviously, there is no spoken or unspoken agreement. They lived their lives according to their own understanding and insight; I am to live my life according to my understanding and my insight.

My effort here to speak to you is to give you a chance to see that you are as capable of becoming a no-mind as any Gautam Buddha -- that it is not a special quality given to a few people, that it is not a talent. Everybody cannot be a painter, and everybody cannot be a poet -- those are talents. Everybody cannot be a genius -- those are given qualities from birth. But everybody can be enlightened -- that is the only thing about which communism is right. And strangely enough, that is the only thing communism denies.

Enlightenment is the only thing, the only experience where everybody is equal -- equally capable. And it does not depend on your acts, it does not depend on your prayers, it does not depend on whether you believe in God or not. It depends only on one thing and that is a little taste, and suddenly you become confident that you are capable of it. My speaking is just to give you confidence. So I can tell a story, I can tell a joke -- absolutely unrelated!

Every intellectual will condemn me, saying, "What kind of speech is this?" But he has not understood my purpose; it is not a speech, it is not a lecture. It is simply a device to bring confidence to you and to your heart that you can be silent. The more you become confident, the more you will be able. Without my speaking you will start finding devices yourself. For example, you can go on listening to the birds, and they suddenly stop, and they suddenly start. Listen... there is no reason why this crow should make noises and then stop -- it is just giving you a chance.... You can find them, once you know -- even in the marketplace where there is so much noise, everything is going on, crazy.

Just the other day I came to know that in Greece the government was very much worried about the taxi drivers because they were not following any rules, any regulations of traffic. Their taxis were going anywhere they wanted, against the red light! Finally they decided to specially train the taxi drivers for a week, and they announced three big awards to the perfect taxi driver.

For first place, they could not find anyone; the police were searching for someone to give the prize to, but they could not find anyone. In fact, the moment they found one taxi driver who was behaving exactly the way he should on the road -- the moment they tried to stop him to give him the first prize, he became afraid seeing the police, and he ran against the red light and spoiled the whole game! He did not think that they would give a prize; he must have thought that he was bound for trouble -- he did not care. Just in front of the police, just a moment before he was going to be the first award winner he ran against the light.

In seven days' time they could not find anyone. They could not find a taxi driver to give him the prize, because the moment the taxi driver saw the police standing there, he became even more crazy. The seven days' experience showed that the police and its presence had been making taxi drivers more nervous, and they were getting the whole traffic into a mess.

I don't follow any rules. I have read books; for example, I mentioned Dale Carnegie, HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE, but my whole life I have been doing just the opposite: how to influence people and create enemies. And I have been successful in that!

Your question is, Sandesh, "I realize that it is easier to become silent while listening to you." The reason is that you are attentive; your mind is still because you want to listen to me. When I stop, your mind cannot start quickly, and before it starts, I start again! I am watching you! I give you only this much gap, so you cannot start your taxi again; otherwise you will run against the red light, and create more chaos.

So my speaking is not oratory; it is not a doctrine that I am preaching to you. It is simply an arbitrary device to give you a taste of what silence is, and to make you confident that it is not a talent -- that it does not belong to any specially-qualified people, that it does not belong to long austerities, that it does not belong to those who call themselves virtuous. It belongs to all, without any conditions; you just have to become aware of it. And that's my whole purpose in speaking to you.

Once you are certain that you can be silent, then your whole focus will change. It is not a question of discipline, it is not a question of being prayerful, it is not a question of believing in God and all kinds of nonsense. It is a question of feeling your own possibility, and once you have known the possibility and become confident about it, the whole religion in your vision will have a different color.

It is a question of silence and consciousness and blissfulness -- it has nothing to do with sins and virtues and confessions. Existence does not bother about your sins -- what sin can you commit? What punishment should be given to poor human beings? Religions have been giving, for small things, eternal hell. One has to be a little just also.

Bertrand Russell has counted all the sins that he has committed, and all the sins that he has thought to commit but he has not committed, and all the sins that he has committed in his dreams. He has given the whole list and has asked the Christian theologians... and he has remained unanswered for more than half a century. Now he is dead; fifty years he waited for the answer. He was asking, "These are all that can be counted as sins: these things I have committed, these things I have only thought, these things I have only dreamt. How much punishment can be given to me on these grounds? The strictest judge cannot give me four and a half years of jail, and Christianity is going to throw me into eternal hellfire!"

To be punished for eternity you need another eternity to commit sins; otherwise it will not be just. In his book, WHY I AM NOT A CHRISTIAN -- he was born a Christian, but as he became aware of the stupidness of the whole Christian theology, he wrote the book

-- he has asked these questions but none of his questions have been answered. The only answer was that his book was banned by the pope. It was put on the pope's blacklist, which is published every year for the Catholics, saying that "You should not read these books."

I am fortunate, my books are also on the list. In the Middle Ages the pope used to burn these books; now it is difficult. But he can at least prevent Catholics, at least old Catholics who are afraid of death and who are coming close to it. It is difficult for him to burn the books; it is difficult for him to prevent even the new Catholic generation. In fact, just by his order that this book should not be read, it becomes more attractive.

The only answer that Bertrand Russell got was that his book was put on the blacklist and his name was put on the blacklist: "This book certainly, and any other book by this man should not be read by Catholics because he can disturb your belief. He is an agent of the devil" -- this is the answer.

He has asked very pertinent questions. He says that on the one hand, Jesus says, "Love your enemies"; he goes even to the point of saying, "Love your neighbors"... which is of course more difficult, because enemies are far away but the neighbors are always sitting on your back.

But Jesus himself threw the moneychangers out single-handedly. He was so enraged that he turned their tables and he threw them out of the temple of the Jews. What authority did he have? And what happened to the love? His authority was only his imagination saying,

"I am the son of God and you are spoiling the place of my father by making business here." And those people were really helpful. Poor people could get money on interest from the temple, and the temple was taking less interest than any other moneylenders outside. It was really to protect the poor from the moneylenders.

And the temple needed some money to run. It was a big temple, hundreds of rabbis; it was the very center of their Jewish life. Throwing those people out of the temple just on the idea, on the assumption, for which he has no proof, that he is the son of God. And he behaved with such anger, such arrogance. Bertrand Russell wants to know -- what happened to his preachings?

Jesus comes hungry with his followers to a village, and the villagers are against them; they refuse, they don't give them shelter. Hungry and tired, he comes across a tree and he curses the tree because there are no fruits on it. It was not the season. What can the poor tree do? And the trees are not expected to fulfill your demands. His cursing the tree shows that he was a very angry man, blindly angry. And Bertrand Russell has classified all these things, and asked for the answers, but nobody has answered a single point.

My own understanding and experience is that the idea of sin, the idea of virtue, the idea of reward, the idea of punishment, heaven and hell, are simply ideas to exploit you, to keep you under control. It is a psychological bondage, because I don't see any point....

My own experience is that if you can be silent, and if you can transcend mind and your consciousness can grow, it does not matter what you are doing; your actions are not counted at all, only your consciousness.

Actions are very small things, but up to now all the religions have been counting your actions, not your consciousness. They have been training you how to act rightly, and what has to be avoided. But nobody was saying that unless your consciousness rises you will not be authentically religious.

And it was a surprise to me that as you become silent, as you become conscious, more alert, your actions start changing -- but not vice versa. You can change your actions, but that will not make you more conscious. You become more conscious, and your actions will change -- that's absolutely simple and scientific. You were doing something stupid; as you become more alert and more conscious, you cannot do it.

It is not a question of reward or punishment. It is simply your consciousness, your silence, your peace, which makes you look so far away and so deep into everything that you do. You cannot do harm to anybody; you cannot be violent, you cannot be angry, you cannot be greedy, you cannot be ambitious. Your consciousness has given you so much blissfulness... what can greed give you except anxieties? What can ambition give you? --

just a continuous struggle to reach high on some ladder.

One very successful man, perhaps the richest man of that time, was asked, "What have you learned from your life, because from poverty you have become the richest man in the world?" He said, "What have I learned? I have learned only one thing -- climbing the ladder. That is my only experience. I have reached to the highest rung of the ladder, and now I look stupid! Where else to go?"

As your consciousness becomes more settled, all your life patterns change. What religions have called sin will disappear from your life, and what they have called virtue will automatically flow from your being, from your actions. But they have been doing just vice versa: first change the acts... It is as if you are in a dark house, and you are stumbling over furniture and over things, and you are told that unless you stop stumbling, light is not possible.

What I am saying is, bring light in and stumbling will disappear, because when there is light why should you stumble over things? Every time you stumble, every time you hit your head on the wall, it hurts. It is a punishment in itself -- a wrong act is a punishment in itself; there is nobody recording your acts. And every beautiful action is a reward unto itself. But first bring light in your life.

Meditation is an effort to bring light and to bring joy and to bring silence and to bring blissfulness, and out of this beautiful world of meditation it is impossible for you to do anything wrong.

So I have changed it completely. Religions were insisting on action; my insistence is on consciousness, and consciousness can grow only in silence. Silence is the right soil for consciousness. When you are noisy you cannot be very alert and conscious. When you are conscious and alert, you cannot be noisy -- they cannot co-exist.

So my speaking, my talking should not be categorized with any other kind of oratory; it is a device for meditation to bring confidence in you which has been taken away by religions. Instead of confidence, they have given you guilt which pulls you down and keeps you sad. Once you become confident that great things are available to you, you will not feel inferior, you will not feel guilty -- you will feel blessed. You will feel that existence has prepared you to be one of the peaks of consciousness. But you have not been going accordingly; you have been following the priests who have destroyed your dignity and your pride.

Sandesh, you say, "I realized that it is easier to become silent while listening to you than in any other meditation," because in those other meditations you are alone. It will take a little time to gain confidence -- that's why I am speaking morning and evening, almost for thirty years continuously. Perhaps two or three times in these thirty years, I have stopped because I was not feeling well; otherwise I have continued to speak.

Every morning and evening I want to give you the confidence that you are losing in your meditations. When you are meditating, of course it is you who are meditating; your mind goes on with its old habit. And many people who have not been given the confidence have turned back. They try meditation for a few days and it becomes a failure and a sadness that it doesn't happen. And they start thinking, "Perhaps my evil acts of the past life" -- which the religions have forced in your mind -- "or perhaps my belief in God is not total; something is wrong with me."

I want you to be absolutely certain that nothing is wrong with anybody; all wrongs have been fed into you.

Religions have not been helpful in creating a better humanity. They have only destroyed all that was beautiful in man; they have stopped its growth, they have cut the very roots.

Man has remained a pygmy in the world of consciousness.

I have changed the whole focus. I don't say to you that you have to do this, you have not to do that, that this is sin and this is virtue. I say only, simply be alert and conscious and silent and blissful, and everything else will follow. Alone, it will take a little time for you.

As your confidence becomes more and more solid, then alone also you will be able to be silent.

With me, to be silent is easier because of one other reason -- I am silent; even while I am speaking I am silent. My innermost being is not involved at all. What I am saying to you is not a disturbance or a burden or a tension to me; I am as relaxed as one can be.

Speaking or not speaking does not make any difference to me.

Naturally, this kind of state is infectious. Seeing me, being here in my presence, looking into my eyes... even watching my hands, you can feel that they are the gestures of a silent man. Slowly, slowly you become infected, contagious; moreover, around a silent man there is a certain energy field created.

You can try one beautiful experiment: just put some sand on a plate and then when somebody is playing music, put your plate with the sand on top of it. You will be surprised to see that every sound makes a change in the pattern of the sand on the plate. It goes on changing with every sound. Classical music will put all the sand in a very silent, very harmonious state; it will create a pattern of harmony. The same sand, the same plate and any stupid kind of modern music -- from jazz to the skinheads -- and you will be surprised that your sand is in a chaos. It loses all harmony, it loses all peacefulness, and patterns are created which show immediately to anybody disharmony, discord.

A man of silence moves with a certain field of energy around him, and if you are receptive, his vibe starts touching your heart.

Have you noticed? A husband and wife, if they have really been in love, non-possessive, non-jealous -- and if they have helped each other to remain individuals and they have deep respect for each other -- living a long life, for fifty years together, you will be surprised to know... it is a well-known fact noticed down the ages that they start looking almost the same. Their voices, their eyes, their faces, their gestures... they become so harmonious with each other.

Certainly, between a master and disciple the phenomenon is a millionfold greater, because there is no conflict at all. And particularly with a man like me -- I am not in any way forcing you to be disciples, and I will not prevent anybody from leaving me. I welcome you when you are here; if you leave, my welcome remains the same. My love does not change. You can go away, you can even betray me, but my love remains the same. There is no contract between me and you; you are here out of your freedom, any moment you can go. I am here out of my freedom; you don't bind me.

In this state of freedom the master and disciple can come closest, and naturally energy flows from the higher to the lower. It is just like water coming from a mountaintop towards the valley.

Lao Tzu has actually called his philosophy of life "the watercourse way." When the master and disciple are so deeply in tune, because they are not in any bondage, both are meeting out of their freedom -- and an authentic master never thinks himself higher than the disciple, although the authentic disciple can conceive of the master as higher than anything -- energy flows slowly to the depths of your being. Meditation becomes almost a by-product; silence happens on its own accord. Your heart itself starts dancing with the master.

I was reading a statement of Walt Whitman, the only American I have any respect for. He says, "I celebrate myself, and sing myself." I agree on this point -- every master celebrates himself and sings himself. Anybody who is interested joins the dance. And slowly, slowly there is no master, no disciple, but only the dance, only the celebration.

But this is only half of the statement; the other half I don't agree with. That's where he shows his Christian roots: "And what I assume, you shall assume." That disturbs the whole thing. Again it has come to the same point -- "What I believe you should believe, what I assume you should assume." Then there comes a subtle domination. No, on that point I cannot agree.

I would have loved to agree with everything that Walt Whitman says, but I cannot go against reality. It is enough -- "I celebrate myself and sing myself" -- and if you rejoice in it, you join. It is not a question that you have to assume what I assume, that you have to believe what I believe, that you have in any way to be dependent on me. You are participating because you love the dance, you are participating because you love to celebrate; you are participating because for the first time you have come across a man who takes life as a celebration not as a burden or a punishment.

It is enough that you enjoy the song of the master. Your enjoyment will bring you closer.

It is enough that you enjoy the dance; it will make you dance. It is enough that you love the celebration, the very idea that life is celebration. And then slowly, slowly there is a melting and a merging. A time comes when it is difficult to find who is the master and who is the disciple.

Masters and disciples, if they have lived long enough in tune with each other, become almost alike -- without any effort of trying to become alike, because that would be forced and that would be false and that would be hypocrisy. Just dancing together, sitting together, being silent together, a merging is bound to happen.

Sandesh, you say, "When you stop talking, everything seems to stop for a moment and I get a glimpse of what meditation can be." You have forgotten to note one thing. What you have noted is right, that you get a glimpse of what meditation can be. You have forgotten to note that you are capable of having such silent moments, that you see that meditation is not something impossible, that it is not only for any exceptional category of people, that it is available to everybody. You have pointed out one thing absolutely correctly, but you have forgotten to see that you are also capable of being silent, which is very important to remember.

Because I cannot go on speaking the whole day to keep you in meditative moments, I want you to become responsible. Accepting that you are capable of being silent will help you when you are meditating alone. Knowing your capacity... and one comes to know one's capacity only when one experiences it. There is no other way.

You are saying, "These are the most precious moments for me. Osho, why is it easier to become silent in your presence?" In my presence you forget your own ego, you forget yourself. The emphasis should be not on me, the emphasis should be on you, on the fact that in my presence you love me, you respect me, you trust me, so you put aside your defense measures -- your ego is your defense measure.

Pay more attention to it, to why you become silent. Don't make me wholly responsible for your silence, because that will create a difficulty for you. Alone, what are you going to do? Then it becomes a kind of addiction, and I don't want you to be addicted to me. I don't want to be a drug to you.

The so-called masters and teachers of the religions of the whole world -- I have come across almost all kinds and all categories of teachers -- want their disciples to be addicted to them, to be dependent on them. That is their power trip. I don't have any power trip. I love you, whether you are with me or not with me.

I want you to be independent and confident that you can attain these precious moments on your own.

If you can attain them with me, there is no reason why you cannot attain them without me, because I am not the cause. You have to understand what is happening: listening to me, you put your mind aside. Listening to the ocean, or listening to the thundering of the clouds, or listening to the rain falling heavily, just put your ego aside, because there is no need... The ocean is not going to attack you, the rain is not going to attack you, the trees are not going to attack you -- there is no need of any defense. To be vulnerable to life as such, to existence as such, you will be getting these moments continuously -- soon it will become your very life.

If you ask me, I have almost forgotten the taste of misery; and because I have forgotten the taste of misery and suffering and anxiety, I have also slowly been forgetting the taste of joy, blissfulness, ecstasy -- they have become natural. Just as a healthy man does not feel continuously that he is healthy, only sick people become interested in health. The moment that you have become healthy... coming out of your sickness, you will feel health but when it becomes your natural experience of every day, every moment, you don't have any contrast of sickness to compare it with.

You don't know your head unless you have a headache -- have you observed it? Do you become aware of your head? You become aware of your head only when you have a headache. A headache gives you the idea -- people who have not experienced headaches, don't know what it is to have a healthy head without any headaches.

All our experiences depend on their opposites. If you cannot taste the bitter, you cannot taste anything sweet either -- they go together. If you cannot see darkness, you cannot see light. And if you are continuously in one state, you start forgetting about it.

That's what I call going beyond enlightenment -- the day you start forgetting that you are enlightened, the day it becomes just the natural course of your life, ordinary, nothing special. The way you breathe, the way your heart beats, the way your blood runs in the body, enlightenment also becomes part of your being. You forget all about it.

When you ask the question, I am reminded that yes, there is an experience called enlightenment. But when I am sitting alone I never remember that I am enlightened, that would be crazy! It has become such a natural, ordinary experience.

First go beyond mind. Then go beyond enlightenment too. Don't get stuck anywhere until you are simply an ordinary part of the existence, with the trees, with the birds, with the animals, with the rivers, with the mountains. You feel a deep harmony -- no superiority, no inferiority.

Gautam Buddha had some glimpses of going beyond enlightenment. He mentioned it, that there is a possibility of going beyond enlightenment. He did not say that he had gone beyond it, but he recognizes the fact that there should be a state when you forget all about enlightenment. You have been so healthy, you have forgotten all about health; only then have you come home. Finally even enlightenment is a barrier -- the last barrier.

Now a joke for you, not related to anything! I am grateful to you that you allow me to say anything that I want; you don't object....

Grandpa Goldstein got drunk one night and no one could find him. They looked everywhere -- behind the barn, in the hay shed, but no Grandpa. Finally, Bernie heard the pigs snorting and went to check. There was Grandpa Goldstein lying in the mud with an old sow, stroking her belly.

"Gee, honey," Bernie heard him mutter, "I have been sleeping with you for forty-nine years and this is the first time I have noticed your nightgown has two rows of buttons!"

... I think this much meditation for this morning will do!

The Invitation

Chapter #15

Chapter title: Kissing is absurd to the eskimos

28 August 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive

code:

8708285

ShortTitle:

INVITA15

Audio:

Yes

Video:

Yes

Length:

104

mins

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

MODEST THOUGH MY EXPERIENCE OF AWARENESS IS, WHEN IT IS

HAPPENING I FEEL INTOXICATED. IT IS A FAR MORE SUBTLE, BUT HEADIER

DRUNKENNESS THAN ANYTHING THAT MAKES ONE UNCONSCIOUS.

IS THIS A CASE OF ILLUSION OR A CASE OF DIVINE WINE?

Maneesha, awareness and divine intoxication are contradictory only in language but not in experience. In experience they are synonymous. But the divine intoxication is not at all similar to ordinary intoxication. It is not unconsciousness -- it is too much consciousness.

You become so small, and the whole ocean of consciousness... you start drowning in it.

Particularly in the beginning it feels as if you are becoming drunk. But the difference is clear: you remain aware that you are drunk. The ordinary drunkenness is unconscious; you are not aware that you are drunk. And that is a very fundamental difference.

You can be intoxicated just by too much consciousness because you cannot contain it. It starts overflowing; it is bigger than you. And in the beginning it is so sudden and so much that you feel almost without any control over yourself. That's why the idea of drunkenness arises.

Because in intense awareness you start forgetting your ordinary mind -- your so-called ego, your mundane worries, your trivia of worldly matters -- there is a certain similarity with intoxication. The whole infatuation with intoxicants has remained down the ages, although all the religions, all the governments, all the masters, all the teachers, all the moralists, all the puritans -- everybody has been against intoxicants. But they have not been able to prevent humanity from becoming more and more infatuated with newer drugs.

Older drugs are there in their place; new drugs are being continuously added -- now man can manufacture synthetic drugs, certainly far more unconsciousness-creating than any drugs found in nature. One is surprised to know why, when everybody has been against, they have not been able to prevent it. The reason is very simple, and not far away to find.

It is too obvious; perhaps that's why one feels in a state of ignorance about the cause, about the reason.

Man's life has remained miserable, so miserable that he wants to forget it, at least for a few hours, just to have a little rest. And all the religions and all the governments and all the so-called social servants have not been able to alleviate misery from human life. But without removing the cause, they have been forcing man not to drink alcohol, not to take marijuana. It was absolutely certain that they were going to fail. The cause has to be removed, not the symptom. The symptom will go on its own accord; just remove the cause.

And when in intense awareness you suddenly forget all your worries, miseries, suffering, tensions, it appears similar -- that's why one feels as if one is divinely intoxicated.

Divinely because you have not taken any intoxicant, but there is a tremendous difference too, not to be forgotten: that you are aware.

Any ordinary drug makes you simply unconscious. Meditation brings awareness, but awareness is such a big phenomenon that you are bound to be drowned. And in the beginning the experience is so much, so intense, that you are almost erased, as if you have disappeared. But it is not illusion. It is not any kind of hallucination.

And to call it divine wine is just being poetic. It is pure awareness which does the same work that is expected by people through intoxicating drugs. Intoxicating drugs remove symptoms; awareness removes the very cause. Drugs simply give you a few hours of forgetfulness, and again the misery is there -- and with a vengeance, because it has to wait for six hours; it becomes more intense.

Awareness cuts the very root of being miserable, in anxiety, in anguish. And because it cuts the very roots, after you have come down from the heights of awareness you don't find misery -- you find a peace, a silence, a very mild sweetness and a very subtle fragrance, left behind the tide, the tidal wave that had come and overtaken you.

It is perfectly beautiful. There is nothing illusory in it. It is absolutely existential. It has nothing to do with intoxicants. Only in appearance, in the beginning, you will feel as if you are intoxicated.

Irving Levinsky was walking around New York City thinking how crowded and impossible city life was becoming. When he saw a man lying in the gutter Irving walked over and said to him, "Are you sick, can I help you?"

"No, it is okay," said the man. "I have found a parking space so I have sent my wife out to buy a car."

Intoxication is one thing: this kind of thing is not possible through awareness. Through awareness you can feel in the beginning things which look strange -- happy for no reason at all, smiling or laughing for no reason at all. And it becomes a vicious circle: when you laugh then you see that "This is stupid, why I am laughing?" Then you laugh more and then it becomes difficult to stop. Just seeing yourself laugh without any reason it appears as if you have gone mad, because you have never understood, never experienced that being joyous, laughing, is natural and healthy.

It does not need to have any cause. Sadness, seriousness are parts of a psychologically sick man -- they need causes. So when you are feeling happy, don't start asking, "Why am I happy?" When you are feeling sad ask why you are sad. But strangely, it has become conventional to our minds that when we are sad we accept it as if it is our nature. And when we are joyous even we are surprised; deep inside we even start worrying: "What is happening to me?"

Just this morning I quoted Walt Whitman, and he says, "I am the celebration, I am the song." It is one of his most beautiful poems, in which he sings the song of himself:

"There is no reason. It is my nature to be a celebration, to be a song, to be a festival." It is just healthy. It is just to be yourself.

While Walt Whitman was alive he was very much condemned, just because he was so happy for no reason at all -- just because he could dance alone, sing, not for anybody else but just for himself, or just as if he was the song, he was the celebration itself. Christian seriousness could not understand him. The ordinary humanity thought him either mad or drunk. But he was not drunk and he was not mad; he was one of the most intelligent men America has ever produced.

Intelligence is a celebration.

It is a festival of lights and it is a long series, a chain of songs, joys, festivities. It is only the unintelligent who remain sad and do nothing to remove it. It is the unintelligent who accept sadness, misery, suffering, behind beautiful names: fate, kismet, luck -- all these words are nonsense. But these words help people to remain miserable.

The man of awareness gets out of all that is unnatural and certainly finds sources of juice within himself. The mystics of the East have even defined God as raso vai saha; "he is just juice." There is no word in English to translate exactly the depth and the meaning of the word ras -- juice is a literal translation.

When you are happy for no reason at all you find a certain juiciness inside you -- you are not dry. Your saints cannot dance, they are so dry. You can dance only if you are full of juice. And the mystics who defined God as raso vai saha had a tremendous insight. They are removing the God of the theologians, the God of the philosophers, the God of the so-called religions. They are creating a totally new concept of God with which I can agree: It is the juice of life.

It is the celebration of life.

It is the festivity of life.

It is the flower and the fragrance.

But people are living, even in their ordinary wakefulness, a kind of sleepy life. The whole of humanity seems to be under a spell, as if they are all walking in hypnosis, as if they are all suffering from somnambulism.

You may have heard about sleepwalkers who get up in the middle of the night and without waking, with open eyes, without stumbling, reach directly to the kitchen, find the fridge, open it, eat anything to their heart's content, and in the day they are dieting! And the doctor is puzzled and they themselves are puzzled -- "What is the matter? The more I diet the more my weight is going up."

And there are almost ten percent of people capable of somnambulism. They can walk in their sleep, they can do things, and in the morning they will be disturbed: "Who has done this?" And not just ordinary people; there are cases on record of very great geniuses.

Madame Curie, one of the first women ever to receive a Nobel Prize, was struggling for three years to solve a mathematical problem, and was becoming almost hopeless. Every angle, every dimension, every process she tried, but she was not reaching the right conclusion.

Tired one night, working on the same problem, she fell asleep. When she woke up it was almost morning. She had slept three, four hours just on the table, her head on the papers on which she was working to find the conclusion. And she could not believe her eyes: in her own handwriting the conclusion was written. There was no process, but the conclusion was there.

She could not believe it, because she had been working to find this very same conclusion... and all the ways she had tried, she had reached somewhere else but never to this point. And certainly nobody else could do it, because the door was locked, her husband was not at home and the servant did not even understand arithmetic. Looking carefully, she found it was her own handwriting -- not very accurate, because it had been written in sleep.

And then she closed her eyes and tried to remember whether there had been any dream, and she found that she had dreamt that she was working on the problem, had found the conclusion, and she was writing it -- she remembered it. And then she remembered the whole process.

Now, when she was writing the answer she must have been writing with open eyes. She was a somnambulist, and this was a sudden discovery. Then it was found that many times she had been wandering through the house asleep.

And to disturb anybody who is walking or doing something in his sleep is very shocking.

The person may get a heart attack, because he cannot believe what he is doing, how it happened to be.

In New York a case happened...

One man every night in his sleep, in the middle of the night, used to jump from his building to the terrace of another building, almost ninety-storey-high buildings -- if he were to fall from there it would be impossible to find his pieces. And the jump was really long; even professional jumpers in the Olympics would have refused, seeing the gap between the buildings. Just a little less, one step less, one inch less, and you are gone.

But people became aware of it, and every night it became a show. A crowd used to gather at the exact time when the man would appear on his terrace, would jump to the other terrace, and would jump back. People would watch it with awe, not believing in their eyes.

Slowly the crowd became bigger. When it was small they remained silent; when the crowd became bigger it was difficult to keep it silent. One night when he was jumping, the crowd, new people, simply cheered him, and he woke up in the middle of his jump.

And you can conclude what happened: he fell from ninety storeys, just in front of the crowd, shattered into pieces. He himself could not believe what was happening. And he had done it so many times....

A wife begins to get a little concerned because her husband has not arrived home on time from his regular Saturday afternoon golf game. As the hours pass she becomes more and more worried, until at eight o'clock the husband finally pulls into the driveway.

"What happened?" says the wife. "You should have been home hours ago."

"Fred had a heart attack at the second hole," replies the husband.

"Oh, that's terrible," says the wife. "But why are you so late?"

"Well," replies the husband, "for the next sixteen holes it was hit the ball and drag Fred, hit the ball and drag Fred."

Do you think these people are awake? They may not be called somnambulists, but they cannot be called conscious, they cannot be called really awake. The poor fellow had a heart attack, he has died! Now it was time to stop the game, but the game cannot be stopped and naturally, it was a difficult job to drag the dead man and then to play the hole and then again drag...

If you watch your life and the life of people around you, you will find a thousand and one cases where people are thinking that they are aware and alert, but they are not. Their action does not show alertness or awareness.

While crossing the railway lines one day, Paddy was hit by a train and badly injured. He spent six months in hospital but was finally released. While he was walking home he saw a toy train set in a shop window. He rushed inside, picked up a hammer and started smashing the toy train to pieces. The shopkeeper came running over, shouting, "Hey, what the hell are you doing?"

"It is okay," replied Paddy, "it is dead now. But you have to kill these things before they grow up and get really dangerous."

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

I AM ALWAYS TOUCHED WHEN YOU SPEAK OF EACH OF US HAVING A UNIQUE INDIVIDUALITY, BUT I THINK I AM OFTEN CONFUSING

PERSONALITY WITH INDIVIDUALITY. IS THIS INDIVIDUALITY SOMETHING

GENETIC, UNIQUE TO EACH INCARNATION, OR IS IT THE ESSENCE WHICH

MOVES WITH US THROUGH INCARNATIONS?

BELOVED OSHO, CAN YOU SAY SOMETHING WHICH WILL HELP US COME

TO KNOW OUR INDIVIDUALITY?

Prem Prartho, it is not only you but almost everybody who misunderstands the difference between personality and individuality. Most people live their whole lives thinking that their personality is their individuality.

The distinction is very subtle. Personality is that which is given to you by the society, culture, civilization, education; in other words, by others -- people are giving you their opinion about you and you are collecting those opinions. Those opinions are creating your personality.

You must have observed very small children whose personalities are not yet developed. It takes time; for at least three to four years the child remains more of an individual than he may perhaps ever be again. He is authentic, sincere. He does not take any note of others'

opinions.

It is because of this that if you want to remember your past you can go back only up to a certain moment -- and that moment will be the age of either four years or three years, at the most three years. After that there is a complete blank. You have been here during those three years, but you don't remember anything. You were nine months in your mother's womb -- you don't remember anything at all.

The reason you cannot now remember these three years is because you had no personality. It is the personality which accumulates opinions of others and creates a false identity, a certain idea of "Who I am." You don't know exactly who you are, because to know who you are you will have to dig deep within yourself through the whole rubbish that has accumulated in the name of personality. You will have to become a child again.

That's what is meant when Jesus says, "Unless you are born again you cannot understand what I'm saying." And it was said to a rabbi, well learned, a man named Nicodemus. He was a professor in the Jewish university of Israel. He wanted to meet this charismatic young man -- so courageous... hiding behind crowds, Nicodemus had heard Jesus many times. He himself was a professor but he had never heard anybody speak the way Jesus was speaking, with such authority. He was not quoting the scriptures, he was simply quoting his own experience -- hence the authority.

Nicodemus became interested but he was not courageous enough to come to Jesus in the daytime, because if others see, what they will think? Jesus was uneducated, a carpenter's son -- perhaps what you call an illegitimate son, because virgins cannot give birth to legitimate sons. And he had no acquaintance with the ancient traditions of Judaism but he was speaking like a born prophet.

Once in the middle of the night when there was nobody else and all his followers had gone to sleep and Jesus was doing his last prayer, Nicodemus came in darkness and said,

"Forgive me. I am not a courageous man, I am a coward. I wanted to meet you many times but in the crowd, before the crowd, I could not gather courage. So I have come in the middle of the night, but I had to come. Please forgive me for disturbing you."

Jesus did not ask Nicodemus what was his question, what was his inquiry. On the contrary, he simply said, "Unless you are born again, you will not understand me."

What does he mean by "born again"? He means unless you become a child again, unless you put your whole personality aside. Individuality to individuality, there is a possibility of a communion. With your personality standing in between -- you are a great professor, you are a learned scholar, you are a famous man; all these troubles are standing in between -- it is impossible to reach you. You will misunderstand me, you will distort me, you will interpret me, you will make whatever you want to make out of my statements."

And what Jesus is saying is my own experience -- continuously being misunderstood by people who are expected to be intelligent. It is strange but it is not only happening with me, it has always happened. If truth is not misunderstood then there is something wrong with the truth. If a man is not misunderstood then that man has nothing significant to say.

What you know about yourself is your personality. You know that you have a certain name -- are you aware you had come in the world without a name? You have a certain education, a certain qualification -- you know you were not born a doctor or an engineer or a professor. These are things added to you. Your degrees, your name, your fame... all these things are added to you.

But this is what you are. As far as you are concerned, if all these things are taken away from you what will you be? Just a zero.... A plain slate, all writing has been removed.

Your personality is all that you know about yourself -- I am making it absolutely simple so that you can be alert -- and your individuality is that which you don't know and you are.

Meditation is an effort to get rid of personality and to reach to your living sources of life, your individuality, your flame, that you have brought from your mother's womb -- and that you had before your birth, even before you entered the womb of the mother. You have had your individuality since eternity. It is your essential consciousness which is covered with so many layers of so many lives that it is lost completely and you have forgotten the way how to reach back to it.

And every life goes on adding more and more layers of dust around your essential life.

That essential life is immortal; your personality is mortal.

Your personality is dependent on other people; hence you are always afraid of other people. A famous man can become nobody if people change their minds. And people change their minds so easily. There is not much difficulty in it.

Who is Richard Nixon now? Do you ever hear anything about poor Nixon? He has lost his personality; by losing his presidency he has lost all. Now he is living almost anonymously, as a nobody.

It happened in Napoleon Bonaparte's life...

He was defeated only once -- all his life he had been winning. The battle in which he got defeated by the English general Wellington was a very cunning one. Wellington was not of the same caliber as Napoleon Bonaparte... but he had brought seventy cats in front of his army. His whole army was wondering -- what is the matter? Why these seventy cats?

It was a secret that Wellington had come to know from his detectives that in his childhood, when Napoleon Bonaparte was almost a six-month-old baby, a wild cat had jumped on him -- almost playfully; it didn't harm him, but it left a deep fear in the small child's mind.

It became the first impact on his personality, it became his foundation. Everything else came afterwards. He could fight barehanded with a lion or with a tiger with no fear -- the man was immensely courageous. But in front of a cat he simply lost all his nerve. It was beyond his powers to remain himself; his very foundation of personality slipped. And it was beyond him because it was deep in his unconscious, so he could not do anything; he had no idea even.

Only a woman who had been taking care of him, his nurse, was aware of it. But out of fear she had not told anybody, because it was her fault. She had left Napoleon, this little baby six months old, in the garden, and had gone to meet her boyfriend just behind the bushes. So it was her fault.

She never told anybody but somehow -- perhaps she may have told the boyfriend --

Wellington's detectives found out.

Wellington was afraid that there was not much possibility of his victory against Bonaparte, because he was continuously winning. And this was going to be a decisive moment: if England was defeated then there was nobody else who could defeat Bonaparte. So every effort was made to find out some weakness in his personality.

One thing must be said in favor of Wellington. He may not be a great general -- he was not -- but he was certainly a better psychologist than a general. Before going to the war front he looked into the personality structure and he came to know that Bonaparte was not afraid of anything except a cat. That's why he brought seventy cats -- not only one --

not to take any chances.

All along the front of his army there were cats. There was no possibility that Wellington is allowing Napoleon Bonaparte not to see the cats. And the moment Bonaparte saw the cats -- not only one but seventy -- it was suddenly as if all his power slipped out of him.

He became so nervous that he told his assistant general, "You take charge. I cannot be in the front; I will be in the back. You arrange the battle, I am no more in my senses."

The assistant general could not understand what had happened. But it was clear that Napoleon Bonaparte had gone pale, looked almost as if he were dying. Something very essential had simply gone out of him. This was the battle in which he lost -- it was not the victory of Wellington, it was the victory of cats against a six-month-old baby Napoleon.

He was imprisoned on the small island of Saint Helena. Of course he was given all the facilities that should be given to a great man of his caliber, and because he was having almost a nervous breakdown he was given a doctor, a nurse, a beautiful house... and he was not imprisoned like any prisoner, he was just kept on the island. The island was vacated completely. Only he was there, a few guards were there, the doctor was there. He was allowed to move on the island, on the beach, to swim; he was given every facility, knowing that he was passing through a tremendous personality crisis.

One day as he was going to the ocean, to the beach, a woman who must have been taking care of the horses of the guards, was coming from the other direction, carrying a big load of grass. It was a small footpath; the doctor was with him and the doctor shouted to the woman, "Move out of the way! You don't understand who is coming -- he is Napoleon Bonaparte!"

But that woman was an uneducated woman. She had never heard of Napoleon Bonaparte or why she should move.

Napoleon Bonaparte said to the doctor, "You are wrong. The time is gone when mountains used to move just with my orders. Now it is better I should move out of the way of a poor woman who is just carrying grass for the horses. You forget all about the Napoleon Bonaparte I once was. I am no longer that man."

He was saying a very essential truth. He had lost his personality. He died very soon after.

Only one thing could have revived him: not medicine but meditation, if somebody had made him aware that "What you have lost was not yours at all. You have still got your essential being and there is no need to be worried. What you have lost was false and what is real is still within you." But one has to be aware of it.

You are too much identified with the false, the personality -- that's the meaning of the word; it comes from the Greek persona, and `persona' means a mask. In Greek theater actors used to wear masks; the sound was theirs but the face was not theirs. Sona means sound -- sound coming through a mask. You don't know who is behind it. The only real thing is the sound that is coming out; anything else that you are seeing is just false.

But with you things have become far worse; even the sound is not yours. That too has been a training, a discipline. You have been corrected continuously by your parents, by your teachers -- how to speak, how to sit.

I was being shown around a Christian theological college where they train missionaries.

It is the biggest institution in Asia for training Christian missionaries and ministers and priests and bishops.

I was surprised... I had to stand outside the door with the vice-chancellor who was showing me around. A professor was teaching the students, when you are delivering a sermon in the church, how you should stand, how you should look at the audience, where you should speak loudly and where you should speak almost in a whisper, where you should raise your hand, what gesture should be used at a particular point, where you should beat on the table...

I was horrified. I could not believe that this is religion. I said to the vice-chancellor, "If this is making Christian missionaries who are going to convert people into Christians..." I asked him, "Do you think Jesus had gone through any college, through all these gestures and training and voice? He was an uneducated carpenter's son. There were no theological colleges at that time, particularly no Christian colleges. And still none of your missionaries -- and you have millions of missionaries around the world -- speaks the way Jesus spoke."

The authority was not out of training. It was not out of personality; that is the difference.

That's why I said to him, "Although there have been hundreds of popes in these two thousand years, none of them has been crucified because none of them spoke with that authority. None of them spoke with that poetry, none of them spoke so dangerously --

and they all represented Jesus! I will not accept anybody as a representative unless he is crucified."

I said, "You teach these missionaries to carry a small cross, folding. They should always keep it with themselves and when Jesus is crucified, unfold the cross, stand with their hands on the cross, look upward the way Jesus looked... that is the last and the real thing."

The vice-chancellor said, "You are making a joke of our religion."

I said, "I am not making a joke, you are making a joke by teaching all these people. You are not even allowing them their own voices -- voice training programs, voice test!" And your voice can be changed, its pitch, its vibration can be checked and you can be trained how to change it, how to bring a new quality to it, more forceful or more peaceful, more musical.

And they had a department where they were testing people's voices, training their voices.

They were even giving them hints about where they should raise their hands. Now, that hand is going to be false -- it is personality.

Jesus also had raised his hand at that point but that was individuality. It was not a training. Nobody had told him -- it was spontaneous, it was coming from his own inner being.

So remember: whatever you have learned from others is not you. That is your persona, and you have to find your innocence again. You have to find your essence before people started putting layers on you, before people started civilizing you, making you more cultured, more educated.

You say, Prartho, "I am always touched when you speak of each of us having a unique individuality, but I think I am often confusing personality with individuality."

Not often, Prartho -- always. Because once you know your individuality you will never again get confused. Once you have seen the real, how can you think of the false as real?

Once you know the real, the false has disappeared from your consciousness completely.

So whatever you are thinking of as individuality and personality are both personalities.

One may be deeper, more unconscious, more rooted so that you cannot recognize that it is false; one may be superficial, a fresh layer, so you can recognize it as false. But both are personalities.

The moment you know your individuality you are finished forever, in a single blow, with all that is false. Suddenly you have no name, no fame, no religion, no nation. Suddenly you are just a pure consciousness, just a human being -- not even your body, not your mind, not your heart, but just a pure source of life.

That source of life goes on transmigrating from one form into another. Once you discover it your journey is coming to an end. Totally discovered, you are enlightened. Then there is not going to be any more birth for you, any more imprisonment into a body, into a personality -- you have attained to freedom.

Individuality is freedom.

That's why it touches you; even the word uttered goes deep inside you like an arrow.

And the individuality is bound to be unique. The personality is created by the society, so it wants everybody to be almost similar -- the same dress, the same haircut, the same mannerism, etiquette.

For example if you meet somebody here and you start rubbing noses with him, you will be thought mad because that is not part of the culture here. But when Eskimos for the first time saw Christian missionaries kissing each other, they said, "These idiots! They think they will teach us religion, and they are so dirty; they don't even understand the ABC of hygiene. They are mixing saliva with each other, and they think they are showing love!"

Kissing is absurd to the Eskimos; they have never kissed in their whole history. And seen from their viewpoint it seems they are right: kissing mouth to mouth is really dirty. Just think of it, what you are doing -- exchanging millions of germs. This you call love? You are giving your diseases to the person you love and that person is giving his diseases to you, and you both are in love? A great exchange is happening in the name of love!

I favor the Eskimos, they are hygienic. Rubbing noses is very clean -- noses are the cleanest and coolest part of your face. And it is possible that because of the spread of AIDS, the whole world will have to follow the Eskimos sooner or later. Kissing is going to be prohibited by law -- not for moral reasons but just for scientific reasons.

Even shaking hands is not very scientific. The Hindu way of welcoming each other with folded hands is absolutely right. Not for any religious reasons, just for purely hygienic, scientific reasons, because the virus could pass even through a handshake. It can pass through perspiration; it is possible for the virus to pass through anything coming out of your body -- saliva or perspiration. And people's hands are perspiring. It is dangerous.

Now I have been brought pictures from American magazines, from European magazines, of police with gloves on their hands because they were preventing a protest march of gay people. Now to touch the gay people is dangerous. But who knows who is gay? Popes have been gay, presidents have been gay, prime ministers have been gay, great philosophers have been gay. You would be surprised if you knew the list of great gay people... Socrates was gay. Just now I told you about Walt Whitman -- he was gay. There have been hundreds of poets and painters, writers, novelists, world-famous people, and they were gay.

It is better to fold your hands and keep away. Whoever invented the folding of hands must have been a very alert person.

For different reasons these things have come into existence. Shaking hands has not come out of love; neither has folded hands come out of love. These have both come out of showing the other, "I am not carrying any weapons. You can accept me as your friend -- I am not your enemy." When both hands are there you can see that the other person is not...

Even shaking with the right hand is enough because if a weapon has to be carried it will be carried in the right hand, unless you happen to be a leftist!

These welcoming signs, their origin is not very beautiful, it is ugly. It is just a test that the other person is not your enemy, that you can trust he will not attack you. Both are showing that they can trust each other.

Slowly, slowly the origin of things is always forgotten and then you think this is something great. Folding the hands or shaking hands -- they are really, in a way, ugly.

They show suspicion, they show distrust. But in every culture there is bound to be some kind of gesture. And everybody is brought up in a certain culture, in a certain atmosphere.

He learns those gestures.

It happened that when Japanese sannyasins started coming here I was in trouble in the beginning because they have absolutely different gestures. Nobody else has the same gestures in the whole world. How have they managed to have such gestures? For example saying yes, everybody in the world except the Japanese moves his head up and down.

The Japanese move their heads sideways. Everywhere else that means no, but not in Japan. In Japan it means yes.

So when I used to talk with them I was at a loss. I am asking, "Are you meditating?" and they are saying, "No."

"Why have you come? You are wearing a mala, are you a sannyasin?" And they are saying, "No."

"Then why are you wearing the mala?"

Finally one sannyasin who understood a little bit of English told me, "You are not understanding those poor fellows. They don't understand you. In Japan for `yes' you have to move your head sideways and for `no' up and down."

I said, "It is very difficult. How have you managed because the whole world is in agreement about that?"

There must have been some deep reason why the Japanese developed a certain gesture so different from everybody else.

But all that you know, the way you behave, is learned from others, is taught by others.

This is all your personality. The personality cannot be unique, it is social. Individuality is not social, it is existential. In existence everything is unique; every tree is unique, every flower is unique, every star is unique.

Existence believes in uniqueness.

Society is always fearful of uniqueness.

It does not like anybody to be unique. The unique seems to be a stranger. Society wants uniformity, not uniqueness. You should eat the same things they are eating; you should use the clothes they are using; you should not try to show that you are separate from the crowd. The crowd never forgives anybody who looks like an outsider, a stranger. It tries in every way immediately to force you to become part of the society. Then people feel at ease.

But you are destroyed; your individuality is sacrificed for the satisfaction of the crowd; hence, when you hear me talking about unique individuality something deep inside you is stirred. Something that is your real being needs some help, needs some support, needs some invitation to come up and throw away the personality.

Your being a Hindu or a Jain or a Buddhist or a Christian or a Jew are all personalities --

throw them away. And then you are just all one, pure human beings. And in that purity you will find uniqueness because every flame will have its own shape, will have its own light, will have its own fire. Every flower of your being will have different fragrances.

And if some day a better humanity arrives on the earth and this old rotten humanity disappears there will be variety, and variety will be respected and loved. Variety makes life more rich. If everybody is a unique individual we will have a world tremendously rich, because everybody will be showing his own talents, his own genius in his own way, in his own style. Nobody will be a carbon copy of anybody else. Everybody will be original.

And there is no other way, Prartho, except meditation to discover your individuality.

During the hotel-room shortage Bernie was given a room with two beds and told that they would have to rent the other bed to someone else. He was in bed reading when the other occupant, Shirley was shown in. Shirley was a beautiful blond.

She glanced at Bernie and started slowly to undress, exposing everything to her best advantage. When she was finally nude Shirley posed for some time in front of the mirror, first this way and then that.

Finally, she got in bed and leaning over as near as she could, whispered, "How would you like to come in my bed?"

"No, thanks," croaked Bernie, I've already come in mine!"

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

The Invitation

Chapter #16

Chapter title: Drowned in spaghetti

29 August 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive

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8708290

ShortTitle:

INVITA16

Audio:

Yes

Video:

Yes

Length:

95

mins

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

"THERE IS SO MUCH MAGNIFICENCE IN THE OCEAN... WAVES ARE COMING

IN, WAVES ARE COMING IN...." AND ONCE AGAIN I SEEM TO BE

DESPERATELY RUNNING FOR DRY LAND! MY SWEET OSHO, HOW ABOUT

YET ANOTHER INTENSIVE LESSON ON DROWNING?

Radha, when the invitation of the ocean comes don't run away from it.

The ocean is the very beginning of life, not only metaphorically, but factually. We are from the ocean, physically. And we are from a vaster ocean, invisible to the bare eyes, spiritual. And when the invitation comes, running towards dry land is running towards your own grave.

Only the graveyard is outside the ocean.

Life is in being oceanic.

William James has given this word, òceanic' to the world. The ocean has always been there, but once in a while a man of insight gives it a totally new dimension. He is the first man to use the word òceanic' in the sense of vastness, infinity, eternity, immortality. It is always there; waves upon waves go on coming. Just as in the ordinary ocean, so in the ocean of consciousness: waves upon waves, unending joy, unending dawns, unending celebration.

Why should you think of running? But it is not rare; almost everybody thinks of running away from the ocean, from anything that is bigger than you, because the fear is you will be overwhelmed, you will disappear.

You don't need any lesson in drowning; the ocean will do the whole work. You simply don't run. You simply go on sitting silently and let the ocean take you over. Don't be worried that this is going to be your death. That is the fear that comes to every mind the moment it is close to the infinite. It is a very small, very tiny thing. It has made its own cozy life, although it is dark and miserable, poor, spiritually poor.

But it seems to be safe in a way, that you are not being overwhelmed by something bigger than you. And unless a man learns how to be overwhelmed, he will miss everything that is of value. He will miss love; he will run away from love, because love is bigger than you and very overwhelming. Such a person will run away from truth. Lies are good; they are smaller than you. They are your own creation; how can they be bigger than you? But truth is not your creation; in fact, you come from the sources of truth.

Naturally, the fear arises when you come across truth.

Silence is overwhelming; all noise is yours.

Silence belongs to existence.

With a noisy mind, chattering day in, day out, you are comfortable. And you have become identified with this small mind, this small personality, which you are not in reality. But you can know only if you allow yourself to be drowned in love, in truth, in silence, in an ecstasy that knows no beginning, no end. There is no other way to know yourself, other than drowning yourself in the very source of your life and the very goal of your life. People would like to have a little sample before they drown. It is not a marketplace; truth cannot be given to you in small pieces as samples, nor can love.

Mulla Nasruddin wanted to learn how to swim. He approached the teacher who used to teach children to swim; the teacher was very willing. He said, "It is not difficult. In a day you will know it."

In fact, everybody is born with an intrinsic capacity to swim. It is only a remembrance that is needed. So, it is not really something new added to you, but something that you were not aware of, but was always part of your being. The child in the mother's womb swims, floats in water. And the water has the same constituents, chemicals, salt as the ocean. This fact has given scientists the idea that life must have been born first in the ocean. It is still born in the ocean: a pregnant woman starts eating more salty things, because she has to keep the balance of exactly the same amount of chemicals that make up the oceanic water.

There is no way to give you a sample of life; either you live or you don't live. So Mulla's teacher said, "Don't be worried, to swim is a very minor thing -- you can see that small children are learning..."

Mulla was a little afraid. He said, "I can see small children learning, but I am not a small child." And out of nervousness and fear he slipped on the stone steps before he could enter the river. He fell down and he got up and started running without saying a single word to the teacher.

The teacher said, "Mulla Nasruddin, what happened?"

He said, "It is enough. I will first learn to swim and then I will come close to the water; otherwise, I am not going to take the risk."

But how are you going to learn swimming on your bed? You can throw your hands and your legs around. It may give you some fracture or something, but it will not give you the art of swimming. Only water has that capacity to revive in you a hidden secret which you already know.

One Japanese professor has been trying to teach children. First he started to teach twelve-month-old children how to swim. It was great news; nobody had ever thought that a twelve-month-old baby could swim. Then he went on reducing: ten-month-old, nine-month-old, six-month-old... now he is working on three-month-old babies. And his next step is that the first-day-born baby should be put immediately into a small lukewarm tub and allowed to swim, because he already knows intrinsically and just needs the opportunity.

Millions of people don't know how to swim because they have never been given the opportunity; otherwise, it is too beautiful an experience to miss. To be in the water, is to be back in your very life-giving original source. It can revive you; it can give you a freshness and rejuvenation.

Radha, you are doing just like Mulla Nasruddin -- running for the dry land. That is running for your grave because only graves are dry. The whole life is oceanic. You don't need to learn how to drown. You have just to learn not to escape, not to run away, and everything will be done by the oceanic feelings of silence, love, truth, meditation. They will drown you. It is not that when floods come, houses start learning how to drown; they simply drown.

And your dry land is not very dry...!

If Radha runs toward dry land, that would be Italy. It is one of the juiciest places on the earth, and very slippery -- so much piesta! It has made every Italian greasy. They don't need any other kind of lubrication; their whole being is full of lubrication. Where will you find dry land in Italy? In Italy it is absolutely difficult.

One woman has just gathered a ten-thousand membership for the Radical Party of Italy.

She is a beautiful woman, an actress, well known. She allowed herself to sit in a square in Rome, and anybody who wanted to touch her breasts or kiss her had to enroll as a member of the Radical Party.

Now, in Italy, instead of ten thousand she has enrolled fifteen thousand. And she fought the election for membership of parliament by sitting absolutely naked in a convertible car. She went around her constituency... you can play with her body the way you want, but remember, you have to vote for her. And naturally, people enjoyed it immensely; she got more votes than anybody else. All great politicians and leaders are left far behind.

The speaker of the parliament had to declare, "I will allow this lady in parliament if she promises that she will not do tricks like this here in parliament house, because that will be an insult to the great house of the representatives of the country." She has not promised.

And I think there is no provision in any constitution of any country, that you cannot be naked in parliament.

You can do all kinds of things. Nobody has ever thought that these things have to be written into the constitution. Now, perhaps in Italy they will have to make some amendments, because in the first reception given to her by the Radical Party, she did another great thing that perhaps only in Italy is possible. She came naked and started pissing on the front line of the gathering. Those were the most important people, and the whole crowd clapped and laughed. This is a dry land? Nobody thought that she would do such a thing. Nakedness was okay; they had become accustomed to this. Now they are all wondering what she is going to do next.

Radha, just learn to be silently available for whenever a tidal wave of existence comes to drown you. It is not your death; it is your real life. You were dead before it. These tidal waves of love and truth and beauty and celebration will give you authentic life, life as it should be. And I know you so well that you cannot find any home anywhere else.

Wherever you are, you will feel thirsty for me.

And remember...

I am not going to be here forever, so don't escape from the ocean.

Look...

The ocean has started raining and is sending messages through the winds, through the dance of the trees. Accept the invitation of something greater than you, that makes you great.

The old proverb says: "A man is known by the company he keeps." Never keep company with smaller things, because they make you small. Keep company with vast experiences -

- they make you great. They bring you to your ultimate splendor and glory.

One thing I can promise to you -- if you want to try it you can try -- run for the dry land and I am coming with you!

In Italy sannyasins are collecting thousands of signatures against the Italian government's order that I cannot enter Italy. They even wanted me to become the president of the Radical Party. I refused. I said, "This is not radicalism what you are doing; this is sheer stupidity. It may create a little nuisance, but it is not going to transform man." They wanted me to become the president, because then they have more weight to put over the government. Their constitution allows that they can choose the president from anywhere in the world. The secretary will be an Italian and he is the real head. The president will be a formal head. But I refused. I said, "Your Radical Party is not radical enough for me. It is more on the ridiculous side."

But, Radha, if you go there, I am coming. I have always felt a soft spot for Italians. I don't know why. I have not even tasted spaghetti, and I will never taste it; just the name makes me afraid.

If people start finding a dry land in Italy, then the ocean has to fall. It is not the ocean that is coming to you, it is me -- and you are afraid of me. You have long been associated with me and now the spring is close and the hesitancy and the fear... What will the unknown bring to you?

I informed you to come into Lao Tzu and work in the library. You became frightened, because to be too close to me is dangerous. You have chosen to continue to work in the kitchen making spaghetti. You know that spaghetti is a protection; I will not come to that side. There is no need to go to Italy. Just here if you can go on making spaghetti -- even if I smell it that is enough -- I will not come close to that place. That is the only security from the ocean. There is no need to learn how to drown or how to swim, just remain drowned in spaghetti. That will keep me away.

But you cannot escape. You have crossed that line a long time ago. I know my people who have crossed the line from where they cannot return. And I know my people who have still not reached that line.

Just yesterday I heard about one sannyasin who has said that he agrees with me sixty percent. Agreeing sixty percent actually means the difference between his agreement of sixty percent and disagreement of forty-nine percent is only eleven percent. Now this person can escape any moment.

But Radha, I don't think you agree with me sixty percent. And I have never asked anybody how much you agree with me. Either you are with me or you are not with me.

There is no question of agreement, because I am not teaching you any doctrine that you have to believe. Whether you believe sixty percent, seventy percent or fifty percent, you believe.

I am simply making my own meditation available to you in different ways, through groups, through therapies, through meditation, through talking to you. You have not to agree or disagree; those are childish things. Either you have to experience me, and that is going to be a hundred percent, or you have not to open to me, and that is going to be a hundred percent. Either you open or you don't.

Radha, that time has passed; you cannot close yourself to me. Wherever you are you will remain open. And now I am not going anywhere, for the simple reason that without going physically I can reach to my people if they are open to me. Even if physically I reach those who are not open to me it is pointless. Even if you go you will be coming back, because the moment you leave me you will start thinking again to come. So don't do unnecessary exercises.

You have come, you have been one of my oldest sannyasins who has never for a moment thought that they can be against me. But the fear is natural: the closer you come, the more you will feel afraid. So when you are coming closer, come fast, faster than your fear.

An Eskimo proverb is: On thin ice one should run fast. Everybody who is around me is on thin ice. Don't stand there! Run fast! Your speed has to be faster than the breaking of the thin layer of ice. And according to your weight, Radha, you have to run really fast.

Anyway you want to run, why run for a dry land? Run towards me. I have been calling you all, inviting you, persuading you, slapping you to wake up because you go on falling asleep. Just two or three days ago I had to slap Veena because she was falling asleep.

Now she looks awake.

A little six-year-old girl came to the kitchen and asked, "Mommy, can I have babies?"

"No, of course not, dear," her mother replied.

The little girl turned around and ran back outside shouting, "Okay boys, same game, same game."

For many lives you have been playing the same game of running from the ocean for dry land. This time try a new game of running towards the ocean, towards the overwhelming.

Running away is cowardly. Running towards the ocean, the overwhelming is living dangerously. And only one who lives dangerously, lives; others simply vegetate.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

ARE THERE TWO KINDS OF MEMORIES, A FACTUAL MEMORY, AND A SPIRITUAL MEMORY? IF YES, IS THERE A CONNECTION BETWEEN THEM?

Premrajo, there are two kinds of memories, but they are not a factual memory and a spiritual memory. They are a factual memory and a psychological memory.

There is nothing like a spiritual memory. Your being, your spirit, has no past and no future; it is always in the present. It has no memories and it has no imaginations, no dreams. It is pure existence, uncontaminated by the dead past that is no more, and by the future that is not yet. But there are two kinds of memory: the factual memory and the psychological memory. And the difference between the two has to be understood because it is of great significance for you all.

A factual memory keeps you only a watcher; you are not involved in it. For example, you remember that yesterday somebody insulted you... If you simply remember that somebody insulted you, it is factual. But if you still are angry, you still want to take revenge, you are still waiting for some opportunity to insult the person, then it is psychological memory.

I have only factual memories. I am not involved in any way emotionally with those memories. They have happened, but I don't have any psychological reaction attached to them.

As you become more and more a meditator, your psychological memory will start disappearing, but the factual memory will become very clear, because now your energy is not divided. The psychological memory was creating a kind of darkness around the fact.

You were not detached; you were not a faraway observer. You were too much attached to it -- for or against does not matter.

As you become more and more a witness of your mind, a disidentification arises with the mind and all its contents. Your memory will become very clear, crystal clear, because now there is no fog of your emotions and reactions around it. You can meet a man who has insulted you as if he has never insulted you, although you know factually that he has insulted you. But because you are not affected by his insult you know that it is his problem. You have not taken the insult, you have not accepted it. Now he is absolutely free to say something, whether he says it or not. He can keep it in his mind; it is his problem. You have not become part of his problem and anxiety.

It happened one night that a man could not sleep...

He was tossing and turning. His wife said, "What is the matter?"

He said, "The problem is that tomorrow morning I***** have to give back a million-dollar loan and I don't have a single dollar to give back. Tomorrow morning I will go bankrupt. How can I sleep?"

She said, "Who has given you the loan?"

The husband said, "It is nobody other than my friend who lives just in front of our house."

The woman opened the window and called, "Fred, Fred."

In the middle of the night, Fred jumped out of his bed and answered, "What is the matter?" He opened his door.

She said, "My husband has not a single dollar to give you tomorrow morning. Now you worry and let him sleep."

It is so simple once you are not psychologically attached to it. Fred was perfectly well, asleep, perhaps happily asleep thinking that tomorrow morning he is going to get one million dollars. Now, there is no possibility of any sleep. What has happened? Nothing has happened; just a statement from the woman, but now it is a psychological problem.

She has shifted the problem. She told her husband, "Now you rest. You were afraid to be exposed. I have exposed you. You were worried what people will think. Now let him worry how he is going to find one million dollars."

A factual memory is perfectly mechanical. It is just like the memory of a computer. But a psychological memory is your identification.

I have heard about a very strange case in a psychology conference...

An old, well-respected, world-honored psychologist is reading his paper, but he is finding it very difficult. He is perspiring, although it is an air-conditioned hall. He has read thousands of papers, so he is not a new man afraid of the audience, and most of them are his students. He is so old, eighty years old.

But something is strange that he cannot manage to concentrate on his paper. Just in the front row is a beautiful lady; she is also a psychologist, his own student. And by her side is one of his colleagues, old colleagues, of the same age. They both have been students of Sigmund Freud and they have lived almost twenty years together under the same master.

That other old fellow is playing with the breasts of the young woman psychologist. Now it has nothing to do with the psychologist. He is neither the old man who is playing with the breasts nor is he the woman who has the breasts. But the disturbing factor is that the woman is absolutely unaffected; she is listening to the paper.

This is creating trouble in his mind. What is the matter? The woman could have stopped him, but rather than stopping him, she is absolutely quiet about it as if nothing is happening. And the old man is enjoying tremendously. This is affecting the speaker who is standing in front. He cannot concentrate, because between his paragraphs, he has to look and see whether that thing has stopped or not.

The whole conference is worried about what has happened to him? This is not the way he has ever read, and it is a very important discovery that he has made about man's mind, but his presentation seems to be very strange. Finally, he finished without waiting for the people to ask questions, which was part of everybody's paper. When you bring some new theory you have to satisfy other people working on the same ground that what you have found is valid. He did not wait for that; he simply stepped down, almost stumbled, and asked the young lady, "Why are you not stopping this dirty old man?"

She said, "It is not my problem; it is his problem. I am not losing anything. And if he is enjoying it in his old age, let him. Perhaps he has missed his mother's breast -- before he wanted to leave it he was taken away. Perhaps his mother died early and he had to live on bottled milk. There can be a thousand and one reasons. Perhaps his wife's breasts are not worth playing with. But it is not my problem; I am perfectly at ease, without any disturbance. If he is feeling some satisfaction in his old age, let him."

It looks strange, but it makes the difference between the factual and the psychological.

The factual is there, but the woman is certainly beyond getting identified. She has certainly understood a few fundamentals of life. Both the two old men who are colleagues are disturbed. The one who is playing with her breast must be afraid if anybody is looking at him what they will think. He cannot be without worry of being caught red-handed. And if the woman starts shouting and stands up... He is a well-respected man, and this will be very humiliating.

The other fellow is not at all concerned with the thing -- could have remained just a watcher; it is not his business -- but he becomes psychologically involved although there is no need because factually he is out of it. You can become involved in things in which you don't have to get involved. Involvement has become people's habit. And if you get involved in other people's problems, then what about your own problems; how can you remain detached?

One old psychoanalyst and his young assistant were coming down the elevator after finishing their work for that day; it was already late. They should have finished three hours before, but the patients went on and on telling their dreams. It had been a very tiring day, and the young man was getting tired every day, so tired that he was thinking of dropping out of this business. Although the profession is the most highly paid profession in the world he was thinking of doing anything else -- this was torture.

But he was wondering that the old man, his teacher and now his colleague, does not seem to have any worry. So on the elevator -- finding him in seclusion, nobody else was there to hear -- he said, "I wanted to ask, Professor, one thing. You never get tired, you are old; I get so tired with all kinds of rubbish and nonsense. The whole day listening, listening, listening; I cannot sleep in the night. Those patients torture me -- even in the night they become my nightmares. The whole day I am tired and in the morning I get up utterly tired. I am thinking that this profession is going to finish me. What about you, I wondered. You look as fresh by the evening when we are returning as when you come into the office in the morning to start the work."

The old man said, "You don't know the secret. Who listens?" And he showed him from his pocket two earplugs. He said, "This is the protection. Once the patient is on the couch

-- and Sigmund Freud has very cleverly arranged that the patient cannot see the psychoanalyst; he sits behind the couch -- the moment the patient has started, I immediately take my plugs, close my eyes and just sit silently. It is such a meditation. It is so beautiful. He is paying for my meditation. Otherwise, I would have been dead long ago. I wanted to tell you myself, but I was waiting for you to ask. Never tell it to anybody else; particularly the patients should not become aware that they are not being listened to

-- and the problems are almost the same."

The whole psychoanalytic process is that the person who goes on talking about his worries, concerns, anxieties, just by talking feels relieved. It is not a question that you have to listen to it; if he could talk to a wall that would do the same as psychoanalysis.

But it is difficult to talk to a wall; you look a little weird talking to yourself. The more highly you have to pay, the quicker you get better, because then you start bringing up all the rubbish quickly. If you pay cheap fees then you go slowly -- first layer, second layer, third layer, and there are so many layers of crap. And you don't want to expose yourself so quickly. But when you are paying too much, you don't want to waste so much money and you immediately come to the basic layer.

The question is not that the psychoanalyst should listen to you; the question is that you should believe that he is listening to you. That is what helps you. If the psychoanalyst listens to you, he may become psychologically involved. Then it is tiring; then he may carry it over into the night: he wants to sleep, but what he has been listening to and thinking about is not complete yet, so he has to go on thinking. Unless his whole mind is satisfied, everything is complete, sleep will not come.

But there is no spiritual memory. When you pass from one life to another life, two things go with you: your spiritual being and your psychological memory. Your factual memory is left behind. Your factual memory is part of the brain, and your psychological memory is your mind, and you have to learn the distinction between brain and mind.

Mind is created by the identification of your being with the brain. It is an epiphenomenon; it has no existential reality. The brain has an existential reality. It is a biocomputer, a perfectly good mechanism. But when your being becomes attached to the brain, a third entity comes into being which is the epiphenomenon. It comes only out of identification. That is why all the great masters have been insisting on disidentifying yourself with whatever goes on in your brain.

This is the way to dissolve the mind; otherwise, this fog of the mind will follow your spirit wherever you go. That is why it is possible to remember about your past lives. But the remembrance is only psychological, it is not factual. So you cannot depend on its really being true. It may be; it may not be.

Because you make so much fuss about small things psychologically, your remembrance will carry that exaggeration. The fact is no longer there, and there is no way to find out how longer you have exaggerated it. So people who remember their past lives either as an accident, a freak of nature, or through certain techniques which take you back into your past life, should not depend on what they remember. It is psychological impressions which may be correct or which may contain some fact, factuality, but they cannot be absolutely right.

I have studied many cases because they happen more in India than anywhere else. In other countries where Christianity is predominant, Islam is predominant or Judaism is predominant, the very conditioning prevents people from remembering their past lives.

But in India, all the three religions agree only on one point, reincarnation. So there is no conditioning against remembering your past life.

Whatever nature creates as a barrier is so that you don't go crazy; one life is enough. If you remember two or three lives and you have been passing through hundreds of lives, you are going to be crazy. One life is enough to make you insane -- one wife is enough!

When you remember hundreds of lives, you will remember wives too, and all the torture that you have gone through. And all the failures and all the humiliations, all the diseases, sicknesses, and all those deaths and the pain... it will be unbearable.

Hence, the natural process is that after each life it is as if a door closes. And it does not allow the past life's memory to infiltrate into your life. But sometimes, there may be some accident, there may be some freak of nature or if somebody is himself trying to break the barrier, then there are techniques to break it.

The man who invented the techniques for breaking the barrier is Mahavira. He calls his technique jati-samaran, memories of your past lives. And his technique is absolutely perfect. But I don't suggest that anybody goes into it, because you have to settle this life and that is enough. All that is only psychological impressions.

Studying people, I was wondering how they remember things which cannot be true.

Nobody remembers that he was ordinary and he is ordinary right now. Everybody remembers that he was Alexander the Great, he was Nadirshar, he was the Emperor Ashoka. I have never come across any single person who remembers that he was nobody, just a shoemaker or a cloth merchant; nobody remembers. And certainly, what they are remembering is their psychological desire of that life; it has nothing to do with any factuality. They wanted to be Alexander the Great and they could not.

But that desire, that longing, that repressed idea has come with their minds. And now, they remember as if they WERE Alexander the Great. And right now they are just a shoemaker. It is against evolution. If you were a great man -- good or bad -- you will have moved directly more into that dimension. Either you would have become even worse -- if you were a Tamerlane or Genghis Khan or Nadirshar, then you may become something worse -- or remembering that you have been wrong in those lives, you may have risen in consciousness; you have become a wise man, a nonviolent man, a man of purity, innocence .

But that doesn't seem to be the problem. You are just very ordinary. That shows your past has not been extraordinary. But their memory is very certain and they don't forget it. The easiest way to lead anybody into his past lives without breaking the barrier... because I don't like to break anybody's barrier; it is dangerous. It is opening a flood of so many memories you may not be able to contain them in your head; you may burst forth; you may start doing things which nobody has ever expected; you will not be in your own control.

So the methods of Mahavira are perfectly right, but dangerous. And I don't propose that anybody uses any kind of method that breaks the barrier. Without breaking the barrier the past can be remembered, and that is through hypnosis. You can be made unconscious. In your unconsciousness you can be taken back slowly: first, to the moment of your birth in this life which you don't remember consciously; then, to the day you got impregnated which you don't remember; then, slowly backwards to your death in the past life.

Naturally, if that comes first, it will be like reading a book from the back.

First, you will be dead, then you will become the old man, then you will become the young man. First your children will be born and then you will get married. The whole story will be going backwards. The beauty in unconsciousness through hypnosis is that you will not remember anything. When you wake up the hypnotist will know and he can tell you that this is what you remember of your past life. But it will not disturb you, because you don't remember; your conscious mind remains without being flooded.

To check whether the man was really getting into his past life or just imagining, dreaming, I have hypnotized the same person a hundred times. He comes always to the same memory. Certainly, it is not imagination. Certainly, it is not dreaming. It is very difficult to dream the same dream again. And he is unconscious, so he cannot manipulate.

He comes back to the same point again.

Now scientists, particularly brain surgeons, have discovered seven hundred centers in your brain which contain all your life. And the strangest phenomenon that they discovered, and could not believe in the beginning, but had to believe because there is no other way, is that those seven hundred centers each control one aspect. For example, one controls your sex. Ordinarily, you think that the genitals is where sex is. It is not the genitals; it is in your brain from where your genitals are just offshoots. Your hands are controlled by the brain, your legs, everything; your tongue, your eyes, everything is controlled from the brain. And if you touch with an electrode -- a very thin needle with electricity running through it -- if you touch a center, suddenly the man starts doing things. For example: if you touch his dream center, even if he is awake he starts talking as if he is in the dream. You take away the electrode and he stops talking. The great surprise was that if you put the needle again on the same center, the man does not start talking from the point where he has stopped. He starts the dream again from the very beginning.

It seems there is an automatic reversal process. You have to reverse a tape, but your brain reverses immediately. When you put the needle on the dream center again it starts from A B C, not from the point where it has stopped. If you take the needle away again, it reverses so quickly that no time is lost. Put the needle back and it starts from A B C

again. If the man was saying, "I am Alexander the Great..." -- if you have touched his past life memory center and he was saying, "I am Alexander the Great," and if you take the needle away and put it back again, he will again start with, "I am Alexander the Great."

Your brain contains all the memories, psychological memories of your past lives. But the more you meditate, the more you go on erasing all psychological memories. Begin first from this life, then slowly, slowly your meditation gets deeper and the past life's memories are also removed, erased. And a man with no psychological memory at all is the man we call enlightened. I am trying to give you different dimensions of enlightenment.

Just a joke after a serious matter in which you had to contain your laughter. It has no concern with the question; it concerns you. So my tapes, my videos, my books should be read with the idea clearly that I am not concerned what I am saying, I am more concerned to whom I am saying, and why I am saying.

My concern is not theoretical.

It is absolutely practical.

So just to erase the seriousness which I know... past lives, new information, psychological memories, spiritual memories, factual memory. These are not the things that are going to help you have a good laugh. This is none of those memories....

"Mommy," asked little Sadie, "does everyone have their legs up in the air when they go to heaven?"

"No," the mother replied. "Where did you get such a silly idea?"

"Well, I just came from the bedroom. The maid had her legs up in the air and was screaming, `God, I'm coming. God, I'm coming.' But daddy was on top of her and he would not let her go."

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

The Invitation

Chapter #17

Chapter title: G-d

29 August 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive

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8708295

ShortTitle:

INVITA17

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Yes

Video:

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Length:

119

mins

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

DOES PSYCHOLOGICAL THERAPY HELP TO GO BEYOND THE MIND?

Vijen, psychological therapy can help you to understand the mind, but it cannot lead you beyond the mind.

Only one thing leads you beyond the mind and that is meditation. Meditation has nothing to do with psychotherapy, but psychotherapy can create a ground by giving you a better understanding of your mind to go into meditation. It cannot lead you directly into the transcendental, but it can be a help, just the way you prepare a garden. First, you prepare the soil, but that is not the garden. And just preparing the ground, removing the weeds, the grass, any wild growth, stones, roots, still it is not the garden -- this much psychotherapy can do.

Now you will have to put seeds, give nourishment to those seeds, care and love and protection. And slowly, slowly the bare ground will start becoming greener. One day there will be flowers and fruits.

Psychotherapy is only a cleansing process, but it is like all cleansing processes. You have to clean your house every day; it is not as if once you have cleaned it you have cleaned it forever. Within twenty-four hours again dust gathers. You have to take a bath every day, or twice; otherwise you will start getting dirty.

Psychotherapy is good as a cleaning method, but it does not go beyond that. And if you remain addicted to psychotherapies you will have to clean yourself again and again. You will have a better understanding of the mind but just that much is not enough to create the world of the beyond. For that, seeds of meditation, awareness, watchfulness are absolutely necessary.

And once you have gone beyond the mind, psychotherapy becomes meaningless. Going beyond the mind simply means you have realized your own being. Now mind is left far behind. Going beyond the mind also means that now mind is going to function as a servant and you are the master. So whenever you need to, you can use it. Right now the situation is just the reverse. You are not the master, and the mind uses you. The mind is almost blind and it directs your life and sooner or later you are going to fall into a ditch.

All minds lead finally to misery, to suffering.

Meditation is the only possibility for creating a space where blessings shower.

I am not against psychotherapies. I am simply telling you they can be used as a foothold to jump into meditation. You can jump into meditation directly too, but you will find it a little difficult because you don't have a clean mind and a clean understanding. The mind will put every weight on you and drag you backwards. Psychotherapy is instrumental, helpful, but alone it is meaningless. I am using psychotherapy in this commune as a means towards meditation, as a help, as a preparation.

But in the West psychotherapy is used as an end to itself; hence psychotherapy in the West is not of much use. Unless it becomes a stepping-stone for meditation, you are moving in a circle. Every day you will have to clean. Once in a while you will have to go to a psychotherapist. People become addicted because it gives you a clean feeling, but that clean feeling remains only for a few days; again you have gathered all the rubbish.

Psychoanalysts ordinarily give their patients two sessions per week, for years, ten years, fifteen years, and still nobody is beyond the mind. After fifteen years of psychoanalysis one simply becomes addicted to psychoanalysis; now it has become a necessity. If you don't go twice a week to a psychoanalyst you gather too much tension, too much dust, you feel too dirty, too heavy. Now you have created a new problem. Psychology rather than giving you freedom has given you new chains. It is as addictive as any alcohol or any drug. Nothing is wrong in it; in itself it is helpful and beautiful, but you should use it for something better.

Psychoanalysis is good but the good is the enemy of the best. You should not get addicted to the good. You should use the good as a stepping-stone for the best; otherwise it turns into an enemy.

Even psychoanalysts are very embarrassed by the fact that there is not a single man in the whole world who has been perfectly psychoanalyzed. And I am amazed at their stupidity.

Hoping that some day some man will be perfectly psychoanalyzed is exactly like hoping that some day some house will be perfectly clean and there will be no need to clean it again. It is absolutely absurd. The house will need cleaning continually, because as time passes dirt gathers.

Even the cleanest mirror needs cleaning once in a while because dirt gathers on it, vapor gathers on it; it does not reflect clearly, it starts reflecting distortions. There will never be any man perfectly psychoanalyzed, because the process in itself is only of cleaning. Can you get your clothes cleaned forever, perfectly cleaned? They will again become ready to go into the laundry. So the people who are going continuously into psychotherapies are going into a kind of laundry, dry cleaning. It is good, but good is not enough.

Vijen, in a sense it can help if you use it as a means and you don't forget that it is not all.

In another sense it can be a disturbance, a barrier, if you think that this is all and there is nothing else beyond it.

That's what is happening in the West. Psychotherapists think this is the ultimate, but they have not produced a single buddha. Even their founders, Freud or Jung or Adler are not awakened people. They are living in the same misery, in the same suffering as you are living. They are full of fear. They don't know anything about death, that it is a fiction.

They have not experienced their own being. They are just scratching on the surface. Mind is your surface; your being is in the center. How much you clean your surface does not matter, it is not going to lead you to the center. If you can use psychotherapy as a means it is good. If you think it is the end it is the enemy of your transcendence. It all depends on your intelligence.

A Jew asks his rabbi, "I have two problems. I have asked my boss a dozen times already, but he is determined to fire me at the end of the month."

"And what is the other problem?" asks the rabbi.

"Ah well, my wife does not get pregnant, although she stays home and prays all day,"

answers the Jew.

"You are doing it wrong," suggests the rabbi. "Next time you stay at home to pray and send your wife to ask the boss."

Three months later the happy Jew thanks the rabbi: "Your help has worked! The boss has rehired me and my wife is pregnant!"

The rabbi was certainly a great psychoanalyst and did help the poor fellow. If you need this kind of help then psychotherapy is good, but don't ask for more.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

I FEEL I CAN RELAX MORE AND MORE DEEPLY INTO MYSELF. YET, AT THE

PERIPHERY, THERE IS AN UNASSERTIVENESS, A TREMBLING THAT CAN

CLOUD THE BLISSFULNESS OF LIFE.

BELOVED MASTER, DOES MY EGO NEED NOURISHMENT?

My God! Prem Rajya, I wonder whether you have been listening to me. Every day, morning and evening, I'm telling you to drop the ego and you are asking me a great question: "Beloved master, does my ego need nourishment?"

And you are also saying, "I feel I can relax more and more deeply into myself. Yet, at the periphery, there is an unassertiveness, a trembling that can cloud the blissfulness of life.

Does my ego need nourishment?"

That will destroy whatever relaxation you have, and that will stop your growth going inwards. It will make your trembling more strong and the cloud that is covering the blissfulness of your life will become darker. Nourishment of the ego is against your authentic being; it cannot help you in any way. It can only destroy you -- destroy you as you are destined to be by your nature.

Ego is a false mask; it will hide your original face. Don't ask for its nourishment. In fact, cut off all nourishment to it. Let it die. The death of the ego will be the beginning of your real life. The more the ego becomes strong, the less is the possibility of any realization of yourself.

Little Ernie was taking a walk in the park with his father, when suddenly a bee settled on a rock in front of them. Just for spite, Ernie picked up a piece of wood and smashed the bee, whereupon his father said, "That was very cruel, Ernie, and for being cruel you will get no honey for a year."

Later, Ernie deliberately stepped on a butterfly. "And for that, young man," said his father, "you will get no butter for a year."

When they returned home, Ernie's mother was fixing the dinner. Just as they entered the kitchen, she saw a cockroach and immediately crushed it. Ernie looked at his father mischievously and said, "Will you tell her, Dad, or shall I?"

Your question really makes me wonder how you have been listening. And perhaps this is the state of many of you. You listen to what you want to listen, not what is being said.

You go on continuously interpreting according to your old prejudices. Your mind is continuously interfering; it does not allow what is being said to reach to your heart. What reaches to you is something else, distorted, disfigured, maybe so distorted that it is almost the opposite of what has been said.

One has to learn very earnestly the art of listening. It is a difficult art, and the greatest difficulty is that everybody thinks he knows it. Just because you can hear, you think you can also listen. And these are two differing things, so different that unless you start listening you will never know the difference.

In the dictionaries they mean the same thing, but in actual life hearing is only because you have ears. Listening happens when just behind your ears there is no noisy mind but a silent, receptive alertness. If there is a continuously chattering mind behind the ears you only seem to listen. Then there are going to be misunderstandings.

I myself was very shocked when I came to know that psychologists have discovered that the mind does not allow ninety-eight percent of information to reach you. It only allows two percent; ninety-eight percent is simply rejected in many different ways. Either it gives it a new color, a new meaning, or it misses it deliberately, takes it into a different context where the meaning changes. But the distortion percentage is ninety-eight percent.

The two percent it allows without distorting, because it agrees with its old structure.

So it listens only to itself. Those two percent are agreeable to the mind and so it immediately allows them in without creating obstructions, without creating arguments, doubts, misinterpretations. And language is vulnerable; each word can mean many things.

The mind has the capacity to choose any meaning it wants, any meaning that fits with it.

The art of listening is based on silence in the mind, so that the mind does not interfere, it simply allows whatever is coming to you. I am not saying you have to agree with it.

Listening does not mean that you have to agree with it, neither does it mean that you have to disagree with it. The art of listening is just pure listening, factual, undistorted. And once you have listened then comes the point whether you agree or not, but the first thing is to listen.

If you listen to something which is true there is no question of disagreement. If it is untrue, naturally you have to disagree with it. But your agreement or disagreement should come not from the prejudiced mind, but from the unprejudiced heart. Listening is from the heart, and hearing is from the mind, it is very superficial. And because the heart is deeper, any word that enters you first has to encounter the mind. Before it reaches the heart, the mind has done many things with it.

A man is standing at the bar and another guy walks up to him and says, "Are you Joe Smith?"

The man says, "Yes."

The guy says, "Were you in Chicago a few weeks ago?"

Joe says, "Just a minute," and takes out his notebook, turns some pages, and then says,

"Yes, I was in Chicago a few weeks ago."

The guy says, "Were you in room two one three?"

Joe looks in his notebook and says, "Yes."

The guy says, "Did you meet Mrs. Wentworth in room two one four?"

Joe looks in his notebook and says, "Yes."

The guy says, "Tell me, did you make love to Mrs. Wentworth?"

Joe scans his notebook again and says, "Yes, I made love to Mrs. Wentworth."

The guy says, "Well, I'm Mr. Wentworth and I don't like it."

Again Joe looks in his notebook and says, "You know, that's funny. I did not like it either."

This is what you call hearing. He agrees perfectly, but he hears only what he wants to hear; he understands what he wants to understand.

And this is almost our everyday situation. At least here with me, you have to change this pattern, you have to be utterly silent because things are being said to you which can bring a transformation in your whole life. Here you are not learning geography or history or philosophy; here you are learning the very art, the alchemy of transformation. It is not collecting knowledge and information and becoming more knowledgeable.

The effort here is just the opposite: to make you less knowledgeable and more innocent, to the final point where you can say, "I don't know anything." Just like a newly born child, you are pure consciousness, unscratched, unspoiled. This is the state of a sage, of a wise man. His life has a completion. From childhood he began and he moved the whole circle of life. Back he has come again to the same point that he has left in his childhood, the pure consciousness which knows nothing but reflects everything. He is capable of understanding everything exactly as it is without any distortion because he has no prejudices to distort. The state of the sage has no preconceived ideas to mix and to mess and to disfigure.

There is a story in the life of Lao Tzu. I have loved it very much...

He used to go for a morning walk deep in the mountains very early before the sunrise when it was dark and there were still stars in the sky. And he used to go to the peak from where the sunrise was the most beautiful. And he would stand there sometimes for hours, just watching the sunrise, listening to the birds, seeing the trees dancing with joy and life, opening their flowers, releasing their fragrance. And then he would come back.

One of his neighbors used to come with him. And he knew that Lao Tzu did not want to talk at all, because that would be a disturbance in his deep communion with nature. He had told him, "If you don't use any words not even hello, you can come. Silently you can join me, silently you can follow me, silently we come back; there is no need to say even goodbye. Words have to be completely dropped if you want to come with me."

The neighbor loved it all. He had never thought that things can be so beautiful because he had never seen the world with such a silent peaceful mind, and with such a beautiful man who must be vibrating his silence and his blissfulness to the neighbor. Because they had been doing it for years now, the neighbor had completely forgotten that it was a strange type of morning walk.

People go, and they talk and they discuss and they argue. They don't look at the trees, they don't look at the disappearing stars, they don't look at the rising sun. They are so much involved with their minds that who is there to look at all the beauty, all the joy of existence, the life again coming back from its sleep as the sun has set the day before.

There is everywhere celebration, in the trees, in the flowers, in the birds.

The man was immensely grateful to Lao Tzu that he allowed him to be with him for so many years. Lao Tzu said, "But I had implored you not to use language. Why are you using language today after so many years?"

He said, "A problem has arisen. A guest is staying with me and he also wants to come tomorrow."

Lao Tzu said, "The condition you have to tell him. He should remember that nothing has to be said on the way, then he can come."

And the guest thought, It is a strange condition. Not a single word, not even hello, not even a goodbye when departing...!

But his host said, "He is a very different kind of man and he will not relax the condition.

So please forget all your etiquette and mannerisms. Simply come with me, remain just like a shadow, and the experience is tremendous."

The experience was tremendous. When they reached to the highest peak from where they could see the sun rising just underneath, deep down in the valley, he forgot the condition; it was so beautiful. He had never seen such a thing, not even in a dream. He was so overwhelmed that he said to Lao Tzu, "It is so beautiful."

Lao Tzu looked at the host. Suddenly the guest remembered that words are not to be used. Nothing was said. But as they reached home Lao Tzu told his neighbor, "From tomorrow don't come."

He said, "But you are punishing me too much, and I have not spoken a single word. This guest is new; he does not know you. And he has also not said much, just that it is a beautiful sunrise."

Lao Tzu said, "You say it was just a little? That fellow is very talkative. Although he was not saying I could hear his chattering mind. All the way he was chattering: This is beautiful, that is beautiful, and finally, he asserted. Does he think that we can't understand beauty, that he has to tell us? I was present; you were present; he was present. We were watching the same sunrise; what was the need to say anything? No, he is too talkative.

And because you brought him, and you disturbed my morning, from tomorrow nobody comes with me."

The neighbor finally persuaded him and he allowed him back after a week, but told him,

"Never ask if any guests can come. They don't know how to be silent; they are too new. I have never felt any difficulty with you, because not only do you not say anything, you don't think anything."

Thinking and speaking are not basically different. In front of a silent man, whether you think or speak it is the same. Thinking is talking with yourself inside. People don't hear it because they are engaged within themselves; they don't hear even when you talk to them.

How can they hear your inner chattering. But a man like Lao Tzu, in the deepest meditativeness, is able to catch your chattering almost like whispering. Even that much is a disturbance and you will not be able to listen to what is being said.

Gautam Buddha used to initiate people, and the first thing was for two years not to use language at all. Naturally, two years is a long period, and if you don't use language, slowly slowly your inner chattering also stops because it is getting no more nourishment from outside. How long can you continue playing football on your own? You need a partner. Slowly, slowly you become fed up repeating the same things, because what new information will you be getting? You have repeated the old information many times.

I have heard...

People were waiting in the waiting room of a railway station. The train was late. A man was sitting on an easy chair and everybody was interested in watching the man.

Sometimes he will giggle, sometimes he will even laugh loudly, sometimes he will throw something away. Everybody was silently watching and wondering what he is doing.

Sometimes he will make a bad face as if something bitter has come into his mouth, and sometimes he will smile so sweetly.

Finally they could not contain themselves. The train was getting later and later and that man was weighing heavier and heavier on their minds. One of them gathered courage and went to the gentleman and asked, "You have to forgive us, but everybody in the waiting room is interested to know what you are doing?"

He said, "Doing? I'm not doing anything. I'm just telling jokes to myself."

They said, "That makes sense why you sometimes giggle and sometimes laugh. But why do you sometimes throw something and make a bad face?"

He says, "When I hear some old joke I throw it away."

Now if you are telling jokes to yourself, all are old. From where are you getting new jokes? And how long will you deceive yourself? If for two years you have to sit silently just telling jokes to yourself, by the time two years have passed everything is old. You will be throwing with both the hands, and not a single giggle!

After initiating anybody into sannyas the first thing Gautam Buddha used to say was,

"Now for two years be completely silent. Do not use language. If you want water then show the symbol; just be dumb. Act dumb, as if you cannot speak, so you are showing that you need water or you need food. You can point to your stomach when you are feeling hungry. Use symbols as if you cannot speak."

Two years were a long time, but after two years people were so calm and quiet, so radiant, so full of energy. Your constant chattering is destroying your energy. So Buddha used to remind them, "Now your two years are over, you can use language just if it is necessary. But now you are capable of listening to what I am saying."

But many of his disciples even after two years did not use any language. The silence of being dumb... and symbols were working perfectly well. They have survived the two years just by making symbols, the very essential. You cannot talk philosophy in symbols; you cannot argue for or against God just by symbols. You can ask for water, you can ask for food, you can ask for shelter; you can say that you are feeling feverish or you are feeling cold or you are feeling too hot -- just small day-to-day things which can be counted on your ten fingers.

Only then do you become capable of listening; otherwise you only hear. And if you are capable of listening there is nothing left for you to do. In that silence you will be able to see without any argumentation within you what is right and what is not right. The right immediately makes you so joyful and the wrong immediately makes you sad and aloof. It is a totally different kind of differentiation than mental talk: "This is right; this is wrong."

On what grounds can your mind say, "This is right"? It is your prejudice; it is your preconceived idea.

But the heart has no preconceived ideas. It simply sees clearly. It has eyes but no ideas. It has a clarity but no prejudices. With that clarity it can see where the door is and where the wall is. It does not have to think about it. Only a blind man thinks, Where is the door?

Only a blind man starts finding the door with his walking stick. You don't do that; you don't even think about the door. If you want to go out, you know, you see. There is no need of thinking, you simply go out of the door.

It is not because you are not thinking that first you will try to go through the wall, and then you think about where the door is. And after a logical syllogism you decide, "This must be the door." This kind of process does not take place when you have eyes. Silence becomes your eyes. Silence becomes your criterion of what is right and what is not right.

And the decision that comes out of silence transforms you. You don't have to do anything.

Mahavira, another contemporary of Gautam Buddha, a man of the same height of consciousness as Gautam Buddha, has made two divisions of people who attain to truth.

One division he used to call the shravakar. It means one who is capable of listening.

Shravan means listening, and shravakar means the listener, one who is capable of listening in the sense I have defined listening; one who need not do anything else, just listening will be enough.

If you have a master with you, a man who knows, then listening is enough. If you don't have a master with you naturally listening will not help. Then you have to be a sadhu. So these are the two categories who travel towards truth. The sadhu means the monk. He has to follow certain disciplines; he has to perform certain austerities, fasting, praying, chanting, the reading of the scriptures. He has to do a thousand and one things which for the listener are not needed.

The art of listening is the simplest method of transformation.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

YOU DON'T EXIST AS A PERSON AND YET YOU ARE THE BEING THAT I LOVE MOST. YOU KNOW NOTHING AND YET I PUT ALL MY QUESTIONS AT

YOUR FEET. YOU ARE JUST SILENCE AND YET I CAN ONLY SING YOUR

SONG. YOU HAVE NO NAME AND YET I'M HELPLESS IN CRYING YOUR

NAME. YOU TELL US EVERY DAY THE INEXPRESSIBLE CANNOT BE SAID, AND YET I CAN'T HELP BUT TRY AGAIN AND AGAIN.

YOU KNOW MY GRATITUDE AND YET I CANNOT RESIST TO TOUCH YOUR

FEET AND WHISPER THANK YOU, OSHO. EVEN MORE TODAY, BECAUSE

YOU FREE ME FROM SAYING NO TO YOU.

BUT NOW I HAVE A QUESTION:

SEEING HOW PAINFUL IT IS TO SAY NO TO YOU, HOW CAN I EVER DARE TO

ASK YOU ANYTHING?

Sarjano, you are asking: "Now I have a question: Seeing how painful it is to say no to you, how can I ever dare to ask you anything?"

It is very natural to say yes when you love, just as it is natural to say no when you don't love. But there is still a deeper layer where you love so much that you can even say no.

Your love gives you that power. Your love does not make you a slave, particularly as far as I am concerned.

You can say yes out of fear. Then your yes has no value. Your yes is valuable only when it comes out of your love. The value is not in your yes; the value is in your love. If you can understand this then you can understand another thing also: if your no comes out of your love, it has the same value as your yes, because the value is neither of yes nor of no; the value is of your love. Love is absolutely capable of saying yes or no, because love knows no fear.

Love trusts so much that it can say no without any difficulty. Saying yes is very natural, but there may be times when you have to say no. But the no is coming from a loving heart without any disrespect, on the contrary, with great respect. You respect so much that you know that your no will not be taken as a disrespectful or negative attitude.

Love gives freedom.

Love is freedom.

So you need not be worried that you cannot ask for anything. Always remember that you are free to say yes or no to me. I am not your enslaver; I am not your jailer. Not in any sense is there a bondage between me and you. All that exists is freedom and the love that freedom brings.

In this freedom and loving atmosphere everything is acceptable: your yes is acceptable; your no is acceptable. And unless this is possible, your love is not deep enough.

What you have said in your whole question is more a statement and very truthful, honest and sincere. There was only one question in the end that I have answered, but I would like to discuss your statement. I am not answering it because there is no question in it. I am discussing it so that it can become clear to all those who are present here. Because one day everybody has to come to this state from where Sarjano is speaking.

He is saying, "You don't exist as a person, and yet you are the being that I love most."

It is not only true about me. Anybody who does not exist as a person, but only as a presence, will be loved more than anyone else. Simply because he does not exist as a person, he attracts, provokes, invites your love. His absence is a tremendously powerful magnet. His absence is not emptiness; his absence is overflowingly positive. The person is not there, but the presence is intensely there. And what is the difference between the person and the presence? -- the same difference as there is between the flower and its fragrance. The flower is a person, the fragrance is only a presence. You cannot catch hold of it, yet you can be overwhelmed by it.

A person has boundaries, limits. And one who has limits cannot give you unlimited freedom. He himself is not unlimited. Only a person who has died as an ego and has resurrected only as a pure being, a presence, has no boundaries. Obviously he is capable of giving you freedom; in fact, he cannot give you anything else. He has no boundaries.

He can also give you a world without boundaries. And naturally, you will love such a presence more than you can love any person.

A person is a very small thing.

A presence is a vast sky full of stars.

"You know nothing and yet I put all my questions at your feet." I know nothing, it is true.

And only a man who knows nothing is innocent. Knowledge corrupts because it gives you prejudices, it makes you mechanical. If you ask a question to a knowledgeable man he will not answer your question directly, he will simply repeat some dead, ready-made formula. He knows; his answer will come from his knowledge.

My answer will come from my innocence; hence, my answer will be a direct response to your question. A learned man cannot respond to you -- he appears to answer you, but the answer is ready-made; it is not a fresh, spontaneous response. It is a prerecorded answer; it does not pay any attention to you. The answer would have been the same even if it was asked by somebody other than Sarjano.

But my answer will be different to each person, even though the question is the same, because I am responding each time not only to the question, but more basically to the questioner. The questioner is the context. The question is symbolic only. I have to answer the questioner more. The question is only an excuse, so my answers will be different although your question may be the same. It creates great difficulty to so-called scholars.

One professor of Bhagalpur University has been doing research for his doctorate on my thoughts almost for seven years, and he becomes more and more confused. He has inquired several times, "Which answer is right? Because for the same question you have given so many answers. You have created such trouble for the scholars who will be working on your work when you are gone."

That's the way scholars work. They never work on living people, they work on dead people. They will work on Kabir, they will work on Gautam Buddha; they will work on Raidas, Meera, whom they condemned when they were alive. Raidas was a shoemaker and in India a shoemaker is not supposed to be a saint. But what to do if a shoemaker becomes a saint? He was ignored, condemned. No brahmin could go to him to ask a question.

Kabir used to live in Varanasi, which is the Jerusalem of Hindus or the Mecca of Hindus.

It is their ancientmost city and perhaps it is the most ancientmost city in the world. All Hindu learned scholars belong to Varanasi. And Kabir lived in Varanasi but he was not a brahmin. In fact, by his profession he was a weaver. And weavers belong to the fourth class of the sudras, untouchables. But only by profession was he a weaver; by his birth nobody knows whether he was Hindu or Mohammedan, because their parents... certainly he was illegitimate, as people call children if they are not out of marriage.

According to me there are no illegitimate children; there are only illegitimate parents.

And when I say illegitimate parents I don't mean those who are not married, but those who give birth to children without any love. Marriage is a formal thing. Love is the reality, the substantial reality. Any child which is born out of a formal marriage without any love, I call those parents illegitimate.

Perhaps Kabir was born out of a pair who were not married. Out of fear of the society they left the child on the banks of the Ganges. A Hindu monk, certainly a great sage, Ramananda, had gone to the Ganges early in the morning in darkness. And the little baby who was to become Kabir was lying down on the steps of the Ganges. And as Ramananda passed by, the little baby just took his feet in his hand. Now Ramananda could not leave the child touching the feet of the master although it was going to be a condemnation for Ramananda, as to where he got the child -- most probably it is his own child and illegitimate!

Persons like Ramananda don't care at all about the crowd and their opinions. The child has caught his feet and he could not leave the child there, knowing perfectly well that some parents have left him. He brought the child to his monastery. He was a famous Hindu monk and had thousands of disciples and they were all against him: "What are you doing unnecessarily taking a condemnation? Give the child to us; we will leave it there or we will leave it in some orphanage."

Ramananda said, "It is not that there is any question. The child has touched my feet, and I cannot refuse anybody who is ready to surrender himself."

They said, "You are getting into unnecessary trouble. The child knows nothing; it is just accidental. You must have been passing by and he caught hold of anything. It was not addressed specially to you, Ì am your disciple.'"

But Ramananda said, "You don't understand. I know this child, not to whom he belongs in this life, but on his hand is written Kabir.

Kabir is a Mohammedan name which means God; it is one of the names of God. In Mohammedanism there are one hundred names of God. One of those one hundred names is Kabir. So certainly the child seems to be born either out of a father who is Mohammedan or a mother who is Mohammedan or perhaps both are Mohammedan, but it does not matter.

Ramananda said, "I can look into the past life of the child. He has been my child, my disciple before too. It was not accidental that he caught my feet. He simply reminded me,

`Your poor disciple...'"

People said, "You are getting into unnecessary trouble. Nobody is going to believe these stories. And you will be unnecessarily thought immoral, characterless."

Ramananda said, "That doesn't matter."

He raised the child and his prediction became true. Because he said, "One day this child will be a greater man than me. I will be remembered only because of Kabir."

And it is true. Ramananda would have been forgotten. There have been many Ramanandas, many Hindu saints whose names have been forgotten. But Kabir proved to be such a great man that obviously while Kabir is remembered you cannot forget Ramananda.

But because Kabir was not a brahmin, and certainly he was illegitimate in the eyes of the society, brahmins, the higher cast people, were not even ready to go to listen to him. They heard him secondhand. They wanted to know everything about him because the people who were going to him were changing so miraculously. He was one of the highest categories of consciousnesses. The same category as Gautam Buddha or Lao Tzu or Mahavira.

You reminded me of him by saying, "You know nothing and yet I put all my questions at your feet." Knowing that I know nothing, if you still put your questions at my feet, you are sure to find the answer. It won't come from me, it will arise within your own being, out of your humbleness. Just because you have put your questions at my feet shows immense trust, an innocence. And your trust will not go unfulfilled.

"You are just silence and yet I can only sing your song." It is true. I am just silence, but I am not a dead silence, I am not the silence of a cemetery. I am the silence of the mountains, the silence of the deep forests. My silence and my song are not different. My silence is a song; it has a music of its own. It has a dance too of its own. So you are right, Sarjano.

"You have no name and yet I'm helpless in crying your name." Knowing that I have no name, if you cry my name in your helplessness you will be helped, because you are not calling me in ignorance, just believing in my name. You know perfectly well that I don't have any name. But one has to address some name -- it is arbitrary. Namelessness is the reality but you cannot point a finger towards nothingness, towards silence; you cannot pinpoint. Still it is our human weakness, we have to use names.

Silence has no name but we have called it silence. Existence has no name but we have called it existence. Enlightenment has no name but we have given it a name. It is our human weakness and frailty. But if we are aware of the fact that we are calling the nameless, then there is no problem, any name will do.

I told you Mohammedans have one hundred names for God. I must remind you that in fact they have only ninety-nine names. One name they have left as nameless. That is the real name. Unfortunately the language is incapable, but they have done well. They say,

"God has one hundred names," and then they give the list. The list has only ninety-nine. I have asked many Mohammedan scholars, "How do you explain this? Is there some mistake, some error? Either the man counted wrongly or he has forgotten one name."

And not a single Mohammedan scholar could give me the right explanation because learning is very poor.

And when I said to them, "I have my own experience. I am not a Mohammedan, but I can give you the answer: The reality is the man has done it deliberately. Whoever has written these ninety-nine names knows perfectly well that one name is missing. But that is the true name which cannot be pronounced; hence he has left it. The number one hundred is given, but the name is not written. So the man was neither counting wrongly nor has he forgotten it."

When Jews write God they never use the O in the spelling. They use G-D, because the real essence, the very center is not capable to be pronounced. They have found a beautiful way; they leave out the O. And in a sense the English O is also exactly the same as the English zero. You can take it in both the senses, that God's real name can only be zero, nothingness, what Gautam Buddha called shunyam, zero; he has exactly called it zero.

It is perfectly right if you know that I don't have any name and still you call my name in your helplessness; you are not committing any wrong.

"And yet I'm helpless in crying your name. You tell us every day the inexpressible cannot be said, and yet I can't help..." Nobody can help. The inexpressible cannot be said, but yet every effort has to be made to say it, knowing perfectly well every effort is going to fail, but just making the effort is significant. Whether it succeeds or fails, that is secondary.

You make the effort knowing that it is inexpressible, yet you tried. You tried and you gave ninety-nine names, but finally you accepted your defeat that no name can be given.

But a number can be given at least: the number one hundred. It is beautiful that the man gave the number at least. Just as the English O in God can also be interpreted, in fact should be interpreted, as zero which is God's name. And that has been dropped because it is not possible for human lips to utter it. The number one hundred has also tremendous meaning. One meaning is that the inexpressible is perfect; one hundred is a perfect number. There have been different mystical ways but all have failed. But that failure is not something to be taken in sadness. That failure also shows that although we have not been able to express his name, we have caught hold of the nameless. We will not be able to count him but we have counted everything and only he remains uncounted; that is a way of counting.

"And yet I can't help but try again and again. You know my gratitude and yet I cannot resist to touch your feet and whisper Thank you, Osho."

It is true for every seeker past, present, future, that nobody can show gratitude to existence but still one has to say something. Not that that saying expresses the real experience of gratitude, but at least symbolically it gives you a certain satisfaction. You cannot express it in its totality, but you can give it a symbolic name.

In fact what do we know, even about small things? You call a roseflower red, but what do you know about red? If it was called yellow what difference would it make?

One of the great philosophers of the contemporary world, G.E. Moore, has asked the question, "What do you mean by yellow?" And all that you can do is take him to yellow flowers, marigolds, and show him that this is yellow. And he said, "That's what I am trying to tell you. Even a small and mundane ordinary thing like yellow is inexpressible; it can only be shown. And you ask, `What is good? What is beauty? What is God? What is consciousness?'"

You don't understand that these things also can only be indicated. They can be shown. I can take your hand in my hand and show you the path. I can give you the direction where you will find consciousness. But I cannot express it; I cannot give you any explanation right now without your own experience. And if you have experience you don't need any explanation.

Sarjano, lastly you are saying, "Even more today, because you free me from saying no to you. But now I have a question: Seeing how painful it is to say no to you, how can I ever dare to ask you anything?"

There is no question, no problem at all. You can say yes to me, and you can say no to me with the same love, with the same trust, and I will understand your love. I don't care about your words. I will know your heart and I will know the depths of your being.

Yes and no are just trivia.

Sarjano, you have made people serious, and I hate seriousness; hence this joke...

The psychiatrist had been working with the patient, a sex maniac, for many months.

Finally, things had reached a point where the doctor thought that only hypnosis may help the unfortunate patient. The doctor swung a pendulum in front of the man's face and said, as the hypnotists do, "I want you to imagine that this is a big old clock pendulum, ticking away, and soon you will be asleep. Ding-dong sleep. Ding-dong sleep."

The patient lay still for a moment and then jumped up, shouting excitedly, "Doctor, it works! It works! My ding-dong is asleep!"

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

The Invitation

Chapter #18

Chapter title: A good laugh is the greatest prayer

30 August 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive

code:

8708300

ShortTitle:

INVITA18

Audio:

Yes

Video:

Yes

Length:

122

mins

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

YOU OFTEN TALK TO US ABOUT GRACE.

IT SEEMS TO BE SUCH A BEAUTIFUL WORD BUT MY UNDERSTANDING OF

ITS MEANING FEELS LIMITED. I KNOW THAT IT IS SOMETHING YOU HAVE.

COULD YOU SPEAK SOME MORE ABOUT IT?

Deva Anupo, grace is one of the great mysteries of life. It is not something physical, not psychological but something spiritual. It is not within your power to create it. Any created grace will be false, phony.

Grace comes as a flowering of your being.

The moment your meditation reaches to the deepest core, to the very center of the cyclone, a tremendous silence, peace and blissfulness arise within you. Grace is the total effect of all these qualities: silence, peace, love, compassion, blissfulness, ecstasy. When these things arise in you, their flame, their fire starts radiating from your physical body.

They are so much they start overflowing. That overflowing of your inner ecstasy is what can be defined as grace.

So it is possible a man or a woman may not be beautiful physically, but when grace arises their physical beauty or their physical absence of beauty is completely changed.

Whatever their physique is, is overwhelmed by something inner which is far more powerful.

It is just like a lamp: the flame is inside; what you see outside the glass of the lamp is the radiation. The glass may be beautiful; the glass may not be very beautiful. The glass may be made of crystal; the glass may be made in India. Once the inner flame is lit you don't see the glass, you see the light. When the inner flame is not lit you will see the glass because there is nothing else to see. Then you will differentiate between a beautiful man and an ugly man, a beautiful woman or a homely woman. Just to avoid the word ùgly'

they have found a beautiful word, `homely'.

But these distinctions remain only if the inner light is still dormant. Once the inner light comes radiating through the body, you don't see the body, you see a beautiful radiance, a beautiful aura surrounding the person. That is grace.

Grace transforms your physical body completely, because nobody can see now exactly what your physical body is. The grace is so stunning, every gesture becomes so beautiful.

Your eyes radiate a totally new silence. They open to such great depths that they become almost unfathomable. Your words are not just language, something more is added to them. A fragrance, a beauty, a music, even your prose sounds like poetry. Ordinary words start having an extraordinary effect because your inner experience gives them authority.

Before, they were empty, just used cartridges, they had nothing in them. Now they are still the same words; the container is the same, but the content is a new addition to it.

Now the content radiates through the words, and you can see it in many ways.

Gautam Buddha was born on the boundary line of India and Nepal. Now Nepalese are not known for much beauty. They are part of the Mongolian race. Their size is small, their faces don't show the beauty that you will find in Kashmir. But Gautam Buddha's statues are in a way not factual.

I don't believe that such a beautiful man was born on the border of India and Nepal. I have been over the whole territory of Nepal and I have never come across anything resembling this beauty. Perhaps Gautam Buddha was also just an ordinary Nepalese, but why have the statues been made so beautiful? The artists, the sculptors were not seeing only the physical frame of Gautam Buddha, they were also seeing a tremendously powerful aura around him that was making him so beautiful. And it would have been wrong to make his statues as he would have looked before enlightenment. So those statues are all made after his enlightenment.

Almost the same has happened with Jesus. There has been an inscription found in the rocks near Galilee that describes Jesus Christ as an ugly man, extraordinarily ugly. If you had seen him he was repulsive. His height in that inscription is only four feet five inches and on top of it all, he is described as a hunchback. Now you cannot call such a man beautiful. But all the statues and the descriptions by the disciples in the gospels do not mention that he was a pygmy, four feet five inches high, that he was ugly and repulsive, that he was a hunchback. They describe him as poetically, as aesthetically as possible.

And I am absolutely certain that they are not making it up. It is not their desire to present Jesus Christ their master to the world as beautiful. They have seen his beauty, but that beauty is not the ordinary beauty; that beauty is of grace.

From the other side also you can see that you can sometimes find very beautiful people, physically -- if you look they are tremendously beautiful -- but if you are living close enough to them you will find their ugliness starts coming out of their physical structure.

Their physical structure may be like Cleopatra, but Cleopatra to me was not a beautiful woman. She may have had the form of a beautiful body but her intentions and her state of consciousness were very ugly. She cannot have any grace; she was selling her body to anybody, just to remain the queen of Egypt. She was not using the army to fight, she was using her own body. And great generals like Anthony were caught into her trap. She was using her beauty for ugly ends. She could not have grace.

So it is possible that a man or a woman may be physically beautiful, but if his inner being is full of darkness that darkness will show. There is no way for her to cover that darkness by any kind of makeup. In ordinary photographs she will look beautiful. But in Russia one scientist photographer, Kirlian, has developed very sensitive films that also take the photograph of your aura. They not only take your physical frame, but the light that surrounds you, that surrounds every living being, even the trees.

Even the leaves have an aura of their own. And that aura makes such a difference. If a man has grace he will have a tremendously beautiful aura, so stunning to the eyes that you will forget about his physical body whether it was beautiful or not.

Christians have not been able to explain the inscription and the discrepancy with the gospels because they don't seem to understand the law of grace. Kirlian is the first man as far as science is concerned who has changed the whole approach. He takes photographs of the aura; his photographs are not only of you, but the subtle light that is radiating from you. There are people who have almost no aura. Their bodies may be beautiful but their personalities will be ugly. Their intentions and ambitions and their desires will be of a very low character.

Kirlian has photographed people -- simple people, innocent people, gardeners, farmers, fishermen -- with no desire to become the president of a country, no desire to become a prime minister, not even in dreams. It is enough for them if they can survive. They have nothing, but still in the evening they will play on their flutes, they will dance, they will sing. They have beautiful auras in the photographs of Kirlian. He has opened doors of a new dimension which has not been much taken care of because it is of no use for warmongers.

As your death approaches your aura starts shrinking. It means your life is gathering itself at the center from where it can leave condensed -- the way you close your shop.

He has been puzzled by many things. For example: you have five fingers on the hand and even if one finger is cut off in an accident, in a Kirlian photograph there are still five fingers. The one that is no longer there still shows its aura; the aura is still there even though the physical part is gone. There will be a difference, because the physical fingers which are still there will show a substance in the middle of the aura. But that one finger which is missing will show simply a photograph of the aura; there will be no inner substance. It is nonsubstantial, but still the aura is there.

Working deeply on it, he has given such a great contribution to medical science, but nobody seems to use it. No government is interested in life; all governments are in the service of death. Seventy-five percent of national incomes are wasted on the armies and arms. People are living only on twenty-five percent of all income.

Just the other day I was reading a calculation of a scientist who says this is the highest peak of production in the world ever. We can feed more people than there are on the earth. There is no need for anybody to die through starvation. Science has provided every possible technology, but no politician, no political party is interested in it; no government is interested in it. Their interest seems to be very insane.

If it was in my power, I would put all the presidents and all the prime ministers into madhouses. That is the right place where they belong. They are sick people; in fact, only a sick psychology can be ambitious. A healthy psychology is not ambitious -- you are happy as you are, so there is no need for you to become a president of the country. Then will you be happy? No president is happy, because happiness has nothing to do with your post, with your money, with your power. It has something to do with your inner change, inner transformation.

Kirlian has found that six months before a person is going to die his aura starts shrinking.

If care is taken, that man can avoid death for a few more years. In the same way he has found that before a disease shows itself on the body, six months before, he can guarantee that his disease is going to come, although medically there is no way to check on him.

The only way is when the disease comes. Before the disease happens a different kind of darkness starts to appear on that part. And different diseases have different kinds of colors.

If Kirlian becomes part of the authoritative medical world there is no need for people first to fall sick and then to be cured. Their disease can be prevented even before they have become aware of it. Six months is enough time to cure it and to check by Kirlian photography whether it is curing or not.

In the East for centuries there has been the idea that six months before your death, you stop seeing the tip of your nose because your eyes start turning upwards. A dead man's eyes are turned completely upwards; you can only see the white. That's why in every country, immediately a dead man's eyes are closed, so nobody else becomes afraid; nobody gets an unnecessarily fearful impression. Because if you meet a man with completely white eyes, no black, you are going to freak out. Perhaps you may get paralyzed then and there and fall down.

But it takes six months for the eyes slowly to turn up. Because they are turning up, the person cannot see the tip of his own nose. What Kirlian is saying has confirmed that old proverb to be absolutely right, that the time is six months. And it is not only true about men, but about leaves, about birds, about animals. And on leaves, his work is tremendous.

One of my sannyasins sent me a thesis just a few days ago. Listening to me he became interested and he worked a whole doctoral thesis on the auras of the leaves. Before a leaf starts dying you cannot see: it is still green; it is still alive. There is no way to say that it is going to die soon, fall and disappear. But through Kirlian photography other leaves which are going to live show a bigger aura, and the leaf that is going to die within six months'

time starts showing a smaller aura. The day it will die it will not show any aura, as if the whole light of life has become condensed inside. Now it does not radiate. It is ready to leave this form of life for another form.

But man can be immensely helped. If Kirlian photography is used on a wider scale there is no need of so many hospitals, so many doctors; there is no need of so much surgery, so many medicines. And this is the problem: It is the establishment which is preventing Kirlian photography from becoming part of medical science because it will make many surgeons, almost all surgeons obsolete, unemployed. It will throw all the doctors on to the streets. All the great manufacturers of medicine will be out of business and bankrupt.

These are the problems because the establishment goes on preventing. Nobody thinks of man as such; everybody thinks about his own interest, money, power, investment. There are many inventions lying down in government warehouses. Governments purchase them, and then don't bring them onto the market, because the people who are supporting those governments with money will be affected.

A few days ago I told you about one Japanese scientist who has been in Hiroshima for one year. He risked his life. He allowed himself to be open to the radiation that has still there. But it is lessening every day; the quantity is smaller, but the radiation is there. And his thesis was saying that radiation from atomic explosions or nuclear weapons can be used for creative purposes. The first immense experience was that although he is sixty-five and has been living one year in Hiroshima -- ordinarily it was expected that he would die of radiation -- now he looks nearabout the age of forty-five. He is sixty-five. He has become younger, he has lost twenty years, and he has become stronger.

He has created a few things, and because I have talked about him -- he must have heard my tape or seen the video; perhaps I am the only man who has taken an interest in him.

He is coming on the tenth of September. And he has sent me nearabout twenty thousand dollars' worth of inventions that he has made... a belt with uranium inside it which radiates in very minute doses.... And he has been experimenting that if you keep that belt on your body for one year it will give you tremendous energy, youth, long life; many diseases that you would have suffered from, now you will not.

He has also sent a small soap-like thing. That too is covered... You have to keep it in your bathtub and within ten to twenty minutes the bathtub starts almost functioning as a hot springwater. It becomes hot, and just resting in that water is enough to keep you healthy and there is no question of you developing any diseases.

He has also sent a small bottle of which you have to take just two drops in water. For ten minutes it keeps the water radiating and after ten minutes it changes the whole quality of the water. It becomes sweeter, tasteful and immensely energy-giving.

One of the most significant war material producers in America is Lockheed. He has informed me that they wanted the sole copyright of the belt and all that he has invented.

Whatsoever price he wants Lockheed was ready to offer him, but he refused. And he did well because Lockheed would have used them for destructive purposes. They would not have come on to the market for ordinary people.

With modern science this has become a problem that any invention, any discovery needs so much money and so much mechanism that only governments or very big firms like Lockheed or IBM or people like these can afford to produce them. A scientist alone cannot work; he does not have the right instruments which are too costly.

But he was surprised that at least there is one man who supports him. I have proposed that all the scientists of the world should make a world academy of scientists without any question of nation or race. And they will make it their fundamental constitution that they will function only for peace purposes. They will function only to help man live longer, live better, live more peacefully, live more beautifully; live without disease, without old age, live more intelligently. They are not going to work for any government, communist or capitalist, Russian or American, to destroy this planet.

The same has been the case with Kirlian. His discovery is now almost fifty years old, but no government, no medical institution has given much attention to him. And he has given you one of the great secrets. He can prevent all kinds of diseases happening.

The grace is your aura, and as your inner being becomes more silent your aura becomes more radiant. And just as Kirlian's photography has been able to catch the aura which your ordinary eyes cannot see, a disciple in love and trust starts seeing things which an ordinary observer, outsider, will not be able to see. He starts seeing a grace; he starts hearing the music. He starts feeling a certain fragrance arising from the man, who is centered in his being, who is no longer a personality but has become innocent individuality; whose connection is no longer with the society but existence itself.

His life is of love; he is love. That radiance of love and peace and silence is all part of his grace. That's why I said the word `grace' has tremendous meaning because all that meditation gives you can be put together in one word, and that is `grace'.

But don't create a desire for it; don't long for it. It comes if your meditation goes deep.

You cannot do anything with grace directly, you can only wait. Your waiting has to become so deep, so trustful, that grace will come when the time comes. Just as the trees go on waiting for the spring -- when it comes, it comes. They are not running after spring; they are not making any speed. They are not creating any action movement: "Why does spring come only once a year... why not twice, and why does it not remain always?" The whole world is silently waiting. Except man there is no impatience anywhere.

Impatience makes you ugly.

Impatience is a disturbance in your meditation. Learn to wait. Be patient and trust that existence will give you whatever you are ready for. All that you have to do is to go on deeper in meditation, beyond mind into silence. No thoughts, no emotions, no moods, just a silent watchfulness and waiting for whatever existence finds you ready for.

Grace comes, but it comes without a whisper. You suddenly find it. You feel it within.

You feel it in your movements; you feel it in your sleep; you feel it in your speech --

everywhere you are engulfed. But the only thing that is needed on your part is a deep waitfulness. Meditation will create watchfulness and you have to learn the art of waiting.

Philosophical Phyllis said she has learned three discouraging things about men. One, they go to war and kill each other when, if only they would be patient, they would die a natural death. Two, they climb trees and knock down apples when, if only they would be patient, the apples would fall to the ground. Three, they pursue women when, if only they would be patient, women would pursue them.

One has to learn the art of waiting and then millions of things will happen to you which never happen to impatient people.

A man fell out of a tenth-storey window. He's lying on the ground with a big crowd around him. A cop walks over and says, "What happened?"

The guy says, "I don't know, I just got here."

You have also just got here. Be a little patient, then you will start experiencing things.

In a school in one of Chicago's poorer districts, a questionnaire was sent home with a girl pupil requesting information regarding the number of brothers and sisters, her father's occupation, et cetera.

The next day she returned with a scrap of paper on which was written the following: There are eighteen children in my family. My father can also do plumbing and carpentry work.

Just wait. People are engaged so much. Now think of that man: eighteen children and still he can do plumbing and carpentry work.

Give a little time to yourself and in the end you will find that is the only time you have really lived. Even if you can just give one hour out of twenty-four hours to yourself, to your meditation, to your silence -- just being, not doing anything, just waiting and learning to wait. In the end of your life you will be surprised that your twenty-three hours have gone to waste. Only that one hour, whatever you have gained in that one hour is still with you and is going with you; even death cannot take it away.

Just one hour can give you immense peace, silence, blissfulness, and slowly, slowly the aura of grace will arise around you.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

CAN YOU TALK A BIT MORE ABOUT ACCEPTANCE?

Chintan, I understand your question....

Chintan is on the verge of death. The doctors have told him that he cannot survive more than two months, and almost one month has passed. He had inquired of me when the doctors had said he has some canceric growth which was not operable, and was growing fast. Naturally, he was shocked. A young man who has not seen life yet, has not yet lived, just in the middle... naturally he was very shocked.

He wrote to me and I told him, "There is no need to be shocked. You are fortunate because you know the exact time when your life will be finished. Others are not so fortunate; they don't know. Their life may be terminated tomorrow. Because you know exactly that within two months you are going to die, live these two months as intensely and as joyfully and as meditatively as possible. You cannot postpone. Others can postpone because they are not aware when they are going to die. You are in a good situation because you cannot postpone. You have to do everything now."

He understood and he has been very happy, very joyous, meditating, dancing, singing.

And his friends have written to me, "We could not believe such a change. His doctors are in wonder; they have never seen anybody taking his death so beautifully, so lightly."

His question needed this context for you to understand, when he says, "Can you talk a bit more about acceptance?"

Human languages are very poor. The word àcceptance' has a hidden reluctance. You may not have looked into the word, but when you say, "accept it," there is a hidden reluctance, a kind of compulsoriness, because there is nothing else to do. So why make fuss a about it -- accept it.

This kind of acceptance is not true and authentic. I would say, enjoy it. Unless your acceptance is enjoyment, unless your acceptance is wholehearted -- without any reluctance, not out of any compulsion, not out of a particular situation but out of your understanding...

Acceptance becomes a beautiful experience if it is at the same time enjoyment. You are not accepting under the pressure of circumstances; you are accepting on your own accord, with joy, with a deep welcome. Then only you understand what acceptance can do to your being. In a single moment it can change you, transform you from an ordinary human being into an awakened human being.

But don't accept reluctantly. That is deceiving yourself because deep down you don't want to accept. Just after two months you are going to die? And naturally, when somebody said, accept it, what else to do? There is nothing. The doctors are doing the chemotherapy -- they are doing everything that is possible. But they know that nothing is going to help; the cancer has gone beyond the limits of their cure.

Seeing the situation you can accept it, but there will be a negativity inside you. You are accepting because nothing else can be done. If there was some possibility to try you would not accept it. I don't call this authentic acceptance. Authentic acceptance has no negative tone in it, no reluctance, no resistance, no compulsiveness. It is not because of the pressure of things and situations and our helplessness. Don't accept out of helplessness; accept out of your strength.

Two months are so much to live. One can live as intensely and totally in one second as people live in their whole life. But their living is very thin, spread all over a long time.

That does not mean that they are the fortunate ones, because authentic living needs great intensity and great totality, not a thin layer. A lukewarm survival is not living. But if you know that the next moment you are going to die you will drop everything that you were involved in, and the only priority will be to know yourself.

Before death comes at least be aware who you are. You don't have time to postpone.

It happened that one man used to come to a mystic Eknath for many years. He was a devotee but there was a doubt in his mind that was continuously pinching him. And because there were always many disciples he could not ask. So one day he came very early, before sunrise. Eknath was just coming out of the river. He had taken a bath before his morning meditation in the temple. He reached Eknath and said, "Forgive me for disturbing you at this time, but I have been carrying a question my whole life." And he was a young man, healthy, strong; he said, "And I cannot dissolve it, it continues. It is a disturbance between me and you."

Eknath said, "What is the problem?"

He said, "The problem is that I have seen you for many years, but I have never seen you sad. I have never seen you angry, I have never seen you jealous; I have never seen you in any negative state of mind. You are always smiling and always joyous and relaxed as if there is no worry in the world, no problem in the world. You don't seem to be concerned even about death. You take it so lightly.

"And the problem is that a doubt arises in me whether you are an actor or you are really enlightened? One can manage to act smiling, always showing joyousness, taking everything lightly, never seriously. Is it just a discipline? Have you trained yourself for it? Or is it something that has happened to you -- it is not your doing but a natural, spontaneous understanding that has arisen out of your meditations? That question has been bothering me, because one man can manage to pretend. You see actors in films and you know they are the most miserable lot in the world, but in the film they look so joyous, so happy, so loving, so peaceful, so courageous. If this is possible to do in a film or in a drama, then why is it not possible to do in real life? You need just a little control not to show your real feelings but always to go on acting."

Eknath said, "Wait a minute. Before I answer your question I should not forget something that I wanted to tell you. I have been forgetting for three days, and it is important; so first I will tell you that thing and then I will answer your question. Just three or four days ago I happened to look at your hand, and I was very shocked. Your lifeline is finished; just such a small fraction has remained so that you may be able to live seven days at the most.

On the seventh day as the sun will be setting you will be dying. This I have been forgetting and this too is as important as your question. Now we can discuss your question."

The man stood up. He said, "I don't have any question and I don't have any time to discuss. If death is coming within seven days why should I worry whether you are real or unreal. That is your business; it is not my problem."

The man started going down the steps. There were many steps to the temple, and Eknath watched him. Just five minutes ago he had come so strong, so young, and now he was going just like an old man, wobbling, taking the support of the railing that he had never taken before, afraid to fall. And when he reached home he simply went to bed directly, even though it was not the time, it was morning -- he had just got up from the bed. He collected the whole family and told them what Eknath had said.

It was inconceivable that Eknath will lie; there is no point in lying. So there was crying and weeping, and that man stopped eating. What is the point now when you are not going to live?

But a strange thing started happening as he became settled with the idea that death is coming and nothing can be done. "Why not use this time for the meditation that I have been postponing for many years? Eknath goes on saying every day to meditate, put your energy into discovering yourself, and I have been postponing it, because what is the hurry? I am a young man and these things, meditation and knowing yourself belong to the old people when they have nothing else to do. Anyway they are out of work, retired. That is the right time to meditate and find out who you are. Right now you have to find out many other things -- money, power, prestige, respectability. This is not the time to waste in finding yourself. That you can do at any moment when you will not be of any use in life, and life will reject you by retiring you."

It is strange that everywhere when people are retired, their colleagues gather together just to say goodbye to them, and they always give them a pocket watch. That I cannot believe... what is the idea? But now I know. They give them a pocket watch as, "Not much time is left to remind you, but now, do the essential things that you have been postponing."

The man lay down, started watching his mind for the first time and became utterly silent within two or three days. But the whole family and other relatives and friends from far away arrived. They were even more disturbed. Death is coming; that is a shock. And what has happened to this man? He does not open his eyes; he does not eat; he does not take any interest. This was a time to meet the family, the friends, because who knows when you will ever meet these people again; there is not much chance.

But he is not interested in anything. He did not even allow them to call a physician. By the fourth day they could not believe that he was looking so beautiful, so graceful, so silent. His whole bedroom almost had the same quality which exists around a man of silence or which exists in a living temple, where not only statues are, but some living master is also present.

People came with great words prepared, dialogues which one needs to say, because it is very embarrassing to come to a man who is going to die. What to say to him? You cannot talk about movies, you cannot talk about politics, you cannot talk about football games, you cannot talk about boxing. What is there to talk about? It is very embarrassing if somebody is dying and you have to leave. Then one prepares a dialogue to console him,

"Don't be worried; everybody dies. It is not that it is happening only to you. And then there is God: you have been a virtuous man, and your heaven is absolutely guaranteed."

One has to prepare things like that because now the worldly things that one gossips with each other are of no point. But as they entered, even this dialogue was not possible, the man was so silent. On the seventh day he opened his eyes and asked his family, "How much time is left for the sun to set?"

Reading this story I remember why that pocket watch is given to people: so they don't even need to ask anybody else; just look at your pocket watch and be finished. Never present a pocket watch to anybody, because that simply means that you have taken it for granted that this man is gone. The pocket watch is the last present.

And the people said, "The sun is just about to set within a few minutes." And he was showing such grace, such joy, such blissfulness, that the family could not believe the metamorphosis that these seven days have been. They all knew he was an ordinary man.

The wife knew, the father knew, the brothers knew that he had nothing special, but in seven days he has gone far beyond them.

Exactly as the sun was setting they all started crying and weeping. And he was saying to them, "Be quiet. There is nothing to worry about."

At that moment Eknath arrived. The whole family touched his feet and told him, "Save him. Can you do anything?"

Eknath said, "With death there is no possibility. Just let me see him."

So they all respectfully moved and gave way to Eknath. The man was sitting silently with closed eyes, looking almost like a marble statue of Gautam Buddha... in just seven days, and he was an ordinary person. Eknath called his name and said, "I have come to see you and to tell you that it was only a device. You are not going to die. You have a lifeline that is very long. You will live almost as much as you have lived. You have lived only half the lifeline, so there are many years to live. This was a way to answer your question."

The man said, "My God. I never thought that this is a way to answer my question."

Eknath said, "There was no other way. Whatever I would have said to you, you would have remained with doubts. A man who can pretend for years to be happy can also lie that he is enlightened. I wanted to give you some experience of it, that it is not acting.

And these seven days have given you the experience. Have you received the answer or not?"

The man stood up, jumped out of the bed -- for seven days he had not left the bed at all --

touched the feet of Eknath and said, "Your compassion is great. Unless your compassion was so great, you would not have lied. But you have answered my question. Now there is no doubt at all. And I cannot see that any doubt in the future is possible. I have known the space in which you are living."

Eknath said, "It does not matter whether you are going to die after seven days or seventy years. Once you become aware that you are going to die, it does not matter when."

The awareness of death makes you live life as totally, as joyously as possible. Death is not your enemy. In fact, it is an invitation for you to live intensely, totally, to squeeze every drop of juice from every moment. Death is a tremendous challenge and invitation.

Without death there would not have been any Gautam Buddha, any Jesus, any Lao Tzu, any Tilopa. There would not have been any Kabir, any Raidas, any Mansoor, any Sarmad.

It is death and its awareness that makes you live as totally, as deeply, as consciously as possible. Before death knocks on your doors you should be able to see the eternal life within you. Then there is no death; death is a fiction. It is a reality only to those who have not lived, not lived in its completeness, in its entirety.

For those who have lived there is no death.

It is only a change -- just changing the house.

I am reminded...

One night a thief entered into Mulla Nasruddin's house, and Mulla Nasruddin was trying to sleep. He had only one blanket, so half was used as a bed and half to cover himself.

But sleep was not coming because the mosquitoes were so interested in keeping him awake. They are great teachers who are continuously making an effort that you should not fall asleep. Their whole teaching is awareness. I always thought that these mosquitoes seem to be old masters trying their old teaching. Now they cannot speak, but they can manage to keep you awake.

So Mulla was turning and tossing, and then suddenly, he saw a thief entering. It was a dark night and the door was open. The thief was amazed. He hardly figured out that some man is sleeping; the house seems to be completely empty and all doors are open -- a great opportunity. So he entered inside the house and went on going to the innermost room, not being aware that he is being followed by Mulla Nasruddin.

Suddenly Mulla stumbled on something so the thief became aware. Mulla said, "Don't be worried. I have been living in this house for thirty years; and I have not found anything up to now. But perhaps with your expertise... we can both try to find something. Fifty-fifty?"

The thief could not believe it. What kind of man is this? It is his own house. The thief became a little afraid; this man seems to be either mad or very dangerous. And Mulla said, "Don't be worried. If you are not agreeing on fifty-fifty, you can have sixty, I can have forty -- or whatever you want. I have wasted thirty years searching and searching and I have not found anything. So whatever you want me to give, even five percent commission will do. You try. And I have brought a candle."

He lit the candle and he said, "Because it is dark it will be difficult for you. So I will keep the candle and you search."

The thief said, "I have also been stealing for the same time, thirty years, but I have never met a man like you. You amaze me."

But there was nothing at all, so they went around the whole house. They could not find anything. Finally the thief said, "You are right, there is nothing to find."

As he was going out -- he had been into other houses before and he had left all the things that he has stolen from other houses outside the house -- Mulla went with him, threw his blanket also in the pile. The thief said, "What are you doing?"

He said, "Nothing. I am coming with you, just changing houses."

The man said, "This is an unnecessary trouble and this man seems to be a little crazy." He said, "You can take your blanket."

He said, "No. Either fifty-fifty..."

But he said, "I have stolen these things from other houses."

He said, "That does not matter... otherwise the police station. Fifty-fifty? This is my only business. I keep my house open and the thieves come; they do the business."

The man said, "You seem to be the greatest thief in the world. You never go out; thieves come by themselves."

He said, "It has been happening. But if you want I am prepared to come with you, because what is there in this house?"

The man became so afraid of Mulla because he could not put him into any category. He said, "You can keep everything, just leave me... And I will never come back."

Mulla said, "As you wish, but I was always thinking of changing my house. You will also get the blanket and the whole treasure that you have stolen from other houses, and me who can advise you. You are just amateur. You may have been stealing for thirty years, but you don't know much. I don't go anywhere and thieves come by themselves and fifty-fifty, sometimes even more, sometimes a hundred percent. Because I am always happy to change the house and they are afraid to take me to their house."

The man who knows himself knows death as only changing the house. Acceptance is not the right word, but there is no other word; this is the difficulty.

I would say, Chintan, rejoice!

Make all these days a celebration.

And if you can make all these days a celebration, your death will be found to be a fiction.

These days of celebration and meditation and silence and joy and love will create in you the capacity to die consciously. And one who dies consciously knows that death is nothing but changing the house. And it is always for a better house because life always goes upwards; it is an evolutionary process.

I was really shocked by the American government particularly, Ronald Reagan's government. They have prohibited the universities and colleges and schools to teach Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Books on the theory of evolution have been burned or removed from all libraries, because this theory of evolution goes against the Christian idea of creation. You may not immediately get the difference, but the difference is there.

God created everything so there is no question of any evolution. He created monkeys as monkeys, and he created men as men -- not that the monkeys have evolved into man; there is no evolution. God has made the world perfect. Evolution is possible only if things are imperfect.

This fundamentalist, fascist, fanatical idea of Ronald Reagan has been imposed on the whole of America, and nobody is protesting that it is against the constitution of America.

It is against democracy; it is against freedom of expression. The American constitution makes it clear that religion should not interfere with people's lives, particularly via government powers: the government should be neutral. But this is not neutrality.

And to stop the whole of America knowing anything about Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution is dangerous, because it means you cannot evolve. You are what you are. It is dangerous. I am not saying whether Charles Darwin is right or wrong; that is not my business. I am saying that the idea of evolution should not be taken away from people's minds. In fact, they should be made more aware that for thousands of years we are not evolving -- we should evolve.

And now outside we have got everything. Evolution should take on a different dimension, an inner evolution. But to destroy the whole idea...! Ronald Reagan has done much harm to America, but this is his greatest harm, because this will mean that if the idea of evolution completely disappears from peoples' minds, then wherever they are, God wants them to be there: in misery, in suffering, in anguish, in angst. But that's what God wants, and there is no possibility of evolution.

I don't support the particulars of Charles Darwin, but I support the essential fact that evolution has been happening, because we have seen man becoming a Gautam Buddha. I don't agree that monkeys have become men. And even if they have, it does not bother me; it is perfectly good.

My concern is for the future, not for the past. I want man to evolve. It does not matter whether monkeys evolve into men or not, but man can evolve into superman, into new man. But that evolution will happen only through deep meditation, watchfulness, waiting and accepting life with joy, and accepting death with joy, with no reluctance, without any pressure, but from your innermost feeling.

Everything that is, is beautiful.

It can be more beautiful -- there is no limit to evolution. Particularly for consciousness there is no limit; it can go even beyond Gautam Buddha, beyond Bodhidharma, beyond all the great awakened people of the past, because consciousness has no limits. It is as vast as the sky, as the whole universe.

Chintan, accept with joy and dance and song.

Just a little joke so that you go from here not with serious faces. This temple believes in laughter and I want everybody who comes here to go laughing. Even on the way, when he remembers -- a little giggle. In the night, in the middle of the night, then he remembers

-- a good laugh.

A good laugh is the greatest prayer.

A little boy on a picnic strays away from his family and suddenly realizes he is lost and night is falling. After running around and shouting for a while he becomes very frightened and kneels down to pray with uplifted hands.

"Dear Lord," he says, "please help me to find my mummy and daddy and I promise I won't hit my sister anymore."

Just then a bird flies overhead and shits right into his outstretched hands. The boy examines it, looks up to heaven and says, "Lord, don't give me this shit, I really am lost."

Everybody is really lost. Very few people have reached their home. But your pilgrimage of finding your home should not be serious and sad and heavy; it should be of laughter and song and dance. If you can find your home dancing, laughing, it is true finding. By sadness and seriousness you are bound to find some graveyard, not your home.

We need people who are seekers but not serious. That kind of seeking, serious and sad, has not led man anywhere.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

The Invitation

Chapter #19

Chapter title: Pick up the roses and avoid the thorns

30 August 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive

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8708305

ShortTitle:

INVITA19

Audio:

Yes

Video:

Yes

Length:

85

mins

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

WHEN YOU WERE RESPONDING TO SARJANO'S QUESTION, I HEARD YOU

SAY THAT A DISCIPLE CAN SAY NO TO THE MASTER IF THE LOVE IS DEEP

ENOUGH.

I CAN UNDERSTAND YOUR SAYING NO TO US OUT OF YOUR LOVE, BUT

NOT THE OTHER WAY ROUND.

DO YOU MEAN THAT THE DISCIPLE MUST HAVE THE FREEDOM TO SAY NO

BUT IN FACT WOULD NEVER WISH TO OR NEED TO? FROM MY

EXPERIENCE, WHEN I HAVE SAID NO TO YOU I HAVE DENIED MYSELF AND

THEN SUFFERED THE CONSEQUENCES.

HOW CAN THERE BE ANY SITUATION IN WHICH THE DEVOTEE WOULD SAY

NO TO THE MASTER?

Maneesha, the question you have asked raises many questions: questions about love, questions about freedom, questions about the master and disciple and their relationship.

Life appears to be very simple but as you go deeper into it, it becomes more and more complex. And the ultimate complexity is that life consists of contradictions. If you understand, those contradictions become complementaries. If you don't understand those contradictions become opposites.

But in the ultimate organic unity there is enough space for both yes and no. It will not be ultimate organic unity if there is only space for yes, if there is space only for light, if there is space only for love, and not their opposites.

Our mind looks at things in categories of opposition, but mind is not the ultimate decisive factor. The ultimate decisive factor is a state of no-mind. In a state of no-mind everything is possible. The incomprehensible is also possible; the impossible is also possible.

Apparently you are right, that the disciple cannot say no; how can the disciple say no to the master? In what situations? It has been the tradition that no has always been taken as negative. With me, things have a far deeper meaning and significance. No is not necessarily negative and yes is not necessarily positive. You can say yes out of fear, then it is negative. You can say no out of love. You love so much that you are not worried even to say no. The no becomes affirmative; it is no longer negative.

As far as I am concerned, I am not part of any old category of masters. I am a new beginning in the sense that the old master demanded surrender. I don't demand anything from you, because to me surrender is a subtle spiritual slavery. Of course, with a master the surrender feels beautiful but even if slavery is decorated with flowers I cannot be deceived by it.

I want my people to be individuals living in freedom. If they love me it is out of their freedom, not out of fear, not out of desire, not out of some longing for achievement. The old disciple was surrendering himself because he wanted to be enlightened. The master was being used as a means. I don't allow myself to be used as a means. That is ugly.

The old master was using the disciples for his own egoistic ends. The masters in the past used to brag about how many disciples they had. The number of the disciples decided the greatness of the master. The master was also dependent in a certain sense on the disciples. It is something to be understood that you cannot make anybody dependent without yourself becoming dependent too. And the same is true if you are independent, you would love to make everybody independent. Because independent individuality has such beauty and grace, such joy, such freedom to fly in the sky with no boundaries and no chains, with no conditions, no expectations, that a master would love his disciples to be ultimately free, free even of himself.

Zarathustra has said to his disciples: "Beware of me." That small statement contains great meaning, because a disciple can renounce everything to be one with the master, to come closer and closer to the master; he can even sacrifice himself. But in this sacrificing he will enjoy a certain unburdening, because now he is no longer responsible. The whole responsibility is on the shoulders of the master. The disciple has become a sheep and the master has become the shepherd. Now the shepherd will take care.

One can think in this way that the sheep has attained a certain freedom -- freedom from responsibility. But becoming a sheep, even if you become free, your freedom has no meaning. It is fear; it is irresponsibility. In a deeper sense you have lost yourself to gain something. It is not out of love that you have surrendered to the master; out of love there is no surrender, there is no need.

Love is a far bigger phenomenon than any surrender. Surrender is of the mind and surrender is an effort. Love is of the heart and it is not an effort. You suddenly find yourself in love with someone. Even if you try to be in love with someone you cannot succeed. No effort is going to be successful. Love comes just like the spring comes, and when love comes it brings many flowers.

There have been two kinds of masters. The majority of the masters in the past demanded surrender, total surrender. It was a kind of spiritual slavery. The master was enjoying a great ego, and the disciple was enjoying a great unburdening from all responsibilities.

Now the master is going to save him. Now the master is his salvation, liberation, enlightenment. All that he could do he has surrendered himself. He has become an absolute yes.

To me this kind of relationship was not healthy, something was basically wrong. Because of this situation in the past one man stands separate from the whole crowd of masters, and that is J. Krishnamurti. He denied he was a master and he refused to accept anybody as a disciple; this was another extreme. The other masters were demanding absolute surrender. J. Krishnamurti has lived with masters who have asked absolute surrender from him, and as he became more and more mature he saw the whole game: the master enjoys the ego, the disciple enjoys irresponsibility. But neither the master is a true master nor the disciple is a true disciple; both are exploiting each other.

There is no question of love when there is exploitation. Krishnamurti refused to be master of anyone and he refused to allow anyone to think that he is a disciple. He has taken a great step but he has moved to the very extreme. And always remember: if one extreme is wrong the other extreme cannot be right. The right is always somewhere exactly in the middle, the golden mean. Only in the middle is there balance, and only in the middle, exactly in the middle, is there transcendence of the polarities, of the opposites.

My position is exactly in the middle. I don't ask any surrender from you; hence, I am not on the old track. I don't deny you the beauty of being a disciple. I don't insult you; I don't reject you. I accept your love, but I will not accept your surrender. In accepting your love and your disciplehood I am your master, but there is no relationship of surrender.

I am not here to erase your individuality.

I am here just to erase your ego.

That does not need any surrender, it needs a deep meditative understanding on your part.

I can give you love, I can share my own understanding with you, but there is no condition attached to it. My joy will be to see you as a growing individual in total freedom. And in total freedom, yes is as much possible as no.

I can understand Maneesha's problem, that no is very difficult, more difficult to a master who does not ask surrender. No becomes more difficult because the master allows it. If the master does not allow no, he is repressing something in you, and his not allowing no does not destroy the possibility of no in you. On the contrary, the master himself is afraid that if you are not prevented, you can say no.

The yes from you is meaningless if you are not free to say no. Your yes has meaning only because you are absolutely free to say no. It does not mean that you have to say no. It does not mean that there will be a situation where you have to say no. In fact it will become more and more impossible for you to say no.

To say no is easy when you are prevented, prohibited. Then, it becomes a question of your individuality; it becomes a question of your spiritual freedom. And certainly anybody who has any dignity is bound to find situations where he would like to say no. If he does not say it he is behaving as a hypocrite. He is not saying no because he is afraid to lose the love of the master and to lose the possibility of getting higher states of consciousness.

But this is business, this is cunningness. And there should not exist any business or any cunningness between the master and the disciple.

Krishnamurti has moved to the very extreme: no master, no disciple. But that created an absurd situation, for his whole life, and he lived long, ninety years. He started being a teacher at the age of fifteen, and he wrote his first book AT THE FEET OF THE

MASTER at the age of fifteen. It was so early that later on he could not even remember whether he had written it or not. It appeared as if in a dream, far away, just an echo.

From the age of fifteen to the age of ninety, almost seventy-five years continuously -- no master has been teaching so long. Gautam Buddha was teaching for only forty-two years; so was Mahavira. Jesus taught for only three years, because at the age of thirty-three he was crucified; he started his teaching career at the age of thirty. Perhaps Krishnamurti is the only person who has been a teacher for seventy-five years.

But the question is that his situation is very absurd. If he does not accept himself to be master and he does not accept you as disciples, then what is he doing for seventy-five years? Running around and around all over the world what is he doing... to whom he is talking?

The word `disciple' does not mean anything else other than a learner; that is its original meaning. If he is not talking to people who are ready to learn, then what is the point of talking? And if Krishnamurti is not a master, from where does he get the authority to talk, to say anything to anybody? He goes on denying that he is a master, and everybody knows he is a master. And he goes on saying, "You are not the disciples," and everybody who listens to him, learns from him, feels a certain disciplehood.

Both are denying actualities. Out of fear that they may not get trapped into the past relationship of master and disciple. This whole seventy-five years of J. Krishnamurti are full of fear, the fear of the past heritage, centuries of master and disciple relationship, because it has become a spiritual slavery. The disciple could not say no. Rather than allowing the disciple to say no he simple denied that there is a disciple. It is not a great revolution; it is just a reaction, moving from one extreme wrong situation to another wrong situation, another extreme.

I am standing exactly in the middle. I can see both the extremes, the right and the left.

And I can see that both are half, incomplete. Both are not going to help anybody to attain to spiritual freedom. The first because it insists on surrendering, and the second because it simply denies that you are a disciple. And Krishnamurti goes on teaching for seventy-five years continuously, and becomes angry when the listeners don't listen rightly.

You will be surprised to know that Krishnamurti used to become very angry at times when he saw somebody listening to him for fifty years and still he has not understood anything. He would just look at the people and beat his head -- it was absolutely natural. I will not say that it was unnatural, but he created the situation. In the very first place he denied disciplehood, and then he wants them to understand him.

I accept the status of a master and the status of a disciple. There is nothing wrong in it if the master and disciple are not exploiting each other. If the disciple is not using the master as a means to enlightenment, liberation, and the master is not using the disciple for his own aggrandizement, for his own ego-fulfillment. I want disciples and masters to stand side by side in deep love, with no question of any surrender, with no expectation from the master that you have always to say yes.

My own experience is the more you are prohibited from doing something the more there is a desire to do it. Prohibition is a kind of provocation.

I don't prohibit you.

It does not disturb me or my individuality if you say no. On this point Maneesha is right, that whenever she has said no, she has suffered the consequences. But that is up to you --

not my expectation. It is going to be your understanding that when you say no, you have taken yourself as if you are wiser; you will suffer the consequences.

I have not said to Sarjano, "You will not suffer the consequences of your no." But it will not be from me: not that I will be annoyed, not that I will be irritated, not that I will be angry. It is perfectly okay with me whether you say yes or no. But for yourself there is going to be a difference. Yes means you are listening and following what I am saying. No means you are deciding for yourselves. As far as I am concerned you are absolutely free to decide for yourself, but then you have to be ready for the consequences also.

Freedom brings responsibility.

That's the meaning I continuously repeat, and I know you don't understand. Everybody likes freedom and nobody likes responsibility, but they come in the same package; you cannot separate them. I give you freedom AND I give you responsibility. You cannot complain about me, because you are always free to say no. You cannot say that I have inhibited you, because I have not asked that you say yes whether you want or not. You cannot blame me.

This is absolutely true, that whenever you will say yes, you will find a peace, a silence.

And whenever you will say no, you will find a deep burden on your heart, almost a wound. But you are creating that wound. And I will not prevent you, because I know that preventing provokes people to do the same thing that is being prevented.

A famous Tibetan story...

A man was serving an old master continuously, bringing food, bringing water from the well, massaging his feet. And the old man used to say, "Why are you wasting your time?"

because the old man understood perfectly that there must be some desire.

Finally, one day the man said, "I am serving you because I want to learn some miracle, just one miracle."

The old man said, "But I don't know any miracle. You have unnecessarily wasted your time. You should find somebody else who knows about miracles."

But the man said, "I have been told that you always deny that you know any miracles, and you go on continuously performing miracles. I have been told, `Don't listen. Go on serving him. One day he will tell you some secret, but only when he finds you are ripe.'

Perhaps I am not ripe yet."

After a few days the old man saw that this man is still unnecessarily working. "Somebody has put the idea in his mind that I perform miracles. Perhaps miracles happen, but they happen on their own. I am not the performer."

With people of great consciousness things happen just on their own. Just as when the sun rises birds sing; it is not that the sun is performing a miracle. Flowers open their petals, not that the sun is performing a miracle, just the presence of the sun and things start happening. The presence of a very conscious awakened man is enough for many flowers to open, for many birds to sing.

The old man said, "It seems you will not leave me unless I tell you the secret."

The man said, "That's true."

So he said, "I will tell you the secret. I wrote a small mantra, the Tibetan mantra om mani padme hum."

Om means the eternal sound of existence. Diamond in the lotus, mani padme hum: mani means diamond, padme means lotus. It means the eternal sound and the diamond in the lotus. It expresses the meaning of enlightenment: the eternal music all around, the beauty of the lotus, and inside the lotus the light of a diamond. In a small mantra they have condensed the whole experience of enlightenment.

So the old man said, "Take this mantra and repeat it five times, just five times. First take a bath, change your clothes to fresh clothes, close your door, sit alone and repeat the mantra five times. Then you will be able to do any miracle you want to do."

The man rushed, he did not even show his gratitude or even say just a Thank You. He simply rushed down the steps of the temple. When he was just in the middle the old man shouted, "Wait, I have forgotten one thing. While you are repeating the mantra remember one thing: don't think of any monkey."

The man said, "Why should I think of a monkey? I have never thought of it in my whole life!"

The old man said, "That's okay, just remember that. No monkey allowed at all. If the monkey comes in you have to repeat the mantra five times again."

The man said, "But why should the monkey come?"

The old man said, "I don't know. I have told you the secret. This is the secret my master has told me."

But he could not even get down the steps before he started thinking about monkeys. He said, "My God, I have not started the mantra yet and monkeys are coming." He will close his eyes and there were monkeys and monkeys, giggling, making faces at him. He said,

"It is a strange mantra. I have not started yet."

He reached home crowded with monkeys. Wherever he will look, he could see only a monkey. He went inside, took a bath, but it was no use. Even in the bathroom, inside the bathroom with the door closed, monkeys were sitting all around. He said, "That old man is such an idiot. If this monkey was the trouble he should not have mentioned it.

Elephants are not coming, camels are not coming, lions are not coming; nobody is coming except the monkey."

Then he sat in a lotus posture with closed eyes but it was useless. The monkeys were nudging him; the monkeys were sitting; it was a congregation of monkeys all around. He was very worried. His wife passed, and he looked and sometimes it looked as if she is a monkey and sometimes she looked..."No, no, she is my wife." His father passed. And sometimes he looked like an old monkey, and sometimes he looked like the father. The man said, "I'm going mad."

Five times was too much. Even to complete the mantra om mani padme hum, just those four words, and there were so many monkeys. The whole night he tried hard. He took a bath many times. He thought perhaps the clothes are not as fresh as they should be, so in the middle of the night, in the cold winter, he stood naked. Now there was no question of dirty clothes or anything. But the monkeys were sitting in lotus posture all around. He started shouting at them and they laughed.

By the morning he was almost mad. He said, "That old man is tricky. For years I served him. Finally he gave me the secret and managed to destroy the secret by keeping the monkey with it."

He went back to the old man, returned the mantra and he said, "Keep it with you because those monkeys..."

The old man said, "You said they never come to you."

He said, "I have not dreamt or seen or even thought about a single monkey in my whole life. There are millions of animals I have not thought about; there is no need. If you had not said the word I would have been able to perform miracles but now it is impossible."

The master said, "What can I do? That monkey comes with the mantra. Without the monkey the mantra is useless. Unless you can avoid the monkeys you cannot perform miracles."

He said, "I have forgotten all miracles. I just pray that you take your mantra and relieve me of the monkeys, because I am afraid that the mantra is gone but the monkeys may not go. And I have small children and a wife and an old father. I have to take care of them. I cannot go on fighting with these monkeys the whole day and night."

The old man said, "Once you have left the mantra with me they will not come. They are very religious people."

The man went. And he was surprised, he looked all around, no monkey. When he reached home, the wife looked like the wife, the father looked like the father and the children looked like the children. He said, "It is strange." He took a bath, the bathroom was empty.

The mantra was short. He said, "Although I have returned his written mantra, I have been repeating it the whole night, so I have remembered it. There is no harm... now I can repeat it."

The moment he started one monkey appeared just as he said Om. And a few monkeys were around saying Om. He dropped the whole idea. He said, "I should go to my shop and look at my business. This idea of performing miracles is not for me."

If I say to you, "Never say no to me," you will find many many times the desire to say no; hence I give you absolute freedom. It is up to you to say yes or to say no. You are to decide your own destiny. I can only help you, suggest to you, show you the way. But you can say, "I don't want to go" -- I cannot force you. You can accept my understanding.

You can reject it, and in your rejection I don't think that there is less love. That's why I said if you deeply love me you will not be worried by saying no. But I have not mentioned anything that will happen to you.

By saying no you are relieving me from responsibility. You are taking the responsibility into your own hands. Now if things go wrong you cannot complain about me. When you say yes and things go right I cannot brag about it. The yes is yours; the no is yours; the consequence will be yours.

I love you enough -- hence I give you total freedom. If you love yourself enough, you will be aware what no can do to you and what yes can do to you.

I teach you awareness and then leave you. A man of awareness will not try to go through the walls, he will find the door. A man of awareness will pick up roses and will avoid the thorns.

I give you freedom, and in giving you freedom I feel absolutely free. I don't have any burden of solving, saving, liberating humanity. I don't have any burden at all. I am absolutely weightless. I am not a savior, not a messiah, not a messenger.

I have chosen a third category. Just as Krishnamurti is alone on the extreme left, I am alone in the middle. And Krishnamurti is reacting against the tradition. I am not reacting, I am simply acting out of understanding. I can see where the old pattern went wrong. I will not do just the opposite because just the opposite will also go wrong. I am doing something exactly in the middle.

So I don't deny your discipleship. I don't deny it because I respect you. I love you. I cannot say I am not a master because I know, I have experienced, I can share it with you.

Then it is up to you to say yes or no.

Maneesha is right. So as a footnote remember her, that no will bring its own consequences. It is not that I will punish you, your no will punish you itself. Yes will bring its own rewards. It is not that I will reward you; yes brings its own rewards.

Between me and you there is no relationship other than of love. But it is good that Maneesha has raised the question; otherwise, there was a possibility that many may have misunderstood.

The concerned doctor is trying to convince the patient that he is overweight. "Now just step on the scales," says the doctor. "There... you see? Now look at this chart and compare your weight with the average weight for your height. You are way overweight."

"No, I am not," says the patient. "I am just six inches too short."

It is a very difficult world -- misunderstanding is possible everywhere.

The matronly woman was alone in the house watching her favorite television program when her husband burst through the front door, stalked into the bedroom without saying a word, and began packing his suitcase.

"Where are you going?" she demanded.

"I resigned from the firm today. I'm sick and tired of you, and I'm going to Australia. I'm told that the young ladies there will gladly pay five dollars a night for the services of a good man, and I intend to live off the earnings from my lovemaking."

He then continued to pack. Suddenly his wife pulled her suitcase from the closet and began packing her own clothing. "And where do you think you are going?" he demanded.

"To Australia," she laughed. "I want to see how you are going to live on ten dollars a month."

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

WHENEVER ANY EMOTIONS GET TRIGGERED, MY ATTEMPTS AT

WATCHING USUALLY RESULT IN MIND TRIPS, UNLESS I DO SOMETHING

LIKE RUN AROUND BUDDHA HALL A COUPLE OF TIMES FIRST.

I FEEL THAT IF I COULD TURN ALL THIS ENERGY IN, INSTEAD OF OUT, GREAT THINGS COULD HAPPEN.

WHILE YOU TALK TO US ABOUT WATCHING, IT FEELS SO SIMPLE. AND

BASKING IN YOUR SILENCE, I WONDER HOW IT CAN BE A PROBLEM.

BELOVED MASTER, WHAT AM I MISSING, OR AM I TOO IMPATIENT?

Prashanto, the first thing is to remember that the exact purpose of Buddha Hall is what you are doing.

Go on running as long as you don't fall down. Fall down on the ground not by any effort, but just let it happen by running continuously. The time will come when you will fall down. Then rest there and you will find immense peace and great silence which you have never known.

This is exactly the purpose of Dynamic Meditation: to exhaust your energy, so the mind has no more supply of energy to create thoughts and dreams and imaginations. So you are using the Buddha Hall perfectly correctly for the first time, knowing that that is the purpose of it.

I have never told anybody, because then from tomorrow you will see there will be two big crowds running.

Exhaust the outgoing energy and suddenly you will find you are in. To go in, you don't need any energy, you are there. The outgoing energy has to be exhausted, so you cannot go out. As far as going in is concerned that is a wrong idea; nobody goes in. How can you go in? That's where you are! You can go out -- that's okay.

So go to Buddha Hall and run as much as you can. Don't stop in the middle thinking that it is too tiring. Go on, go on, let the body according to its own wisdom fall down. Don't act, don't try to deceive, because you are deceiving yourself. And if you can allow the body to go on running till it falls, then lie down there on the ground, and you would be surprised that you have never known such peace, such silence, such deep meditation.

Gautam Buddha himself... If you go to Bodhgaya where he became enlightened -- that's why the name of the city has become Bodhgaya. Gaya must have been the name of the town but when Gautam Buddha became enlightened, bodh means enlightenment, so the city of Gaya became Bodhgaya. There is a temple in his memory made almost two thousand years ago and there is the tree under which he used to sit.

If you go to Bodhgaya you will still find what I have described to you by the side of the temple and nearly two hundred stones in a line. For one hour Gautam Buddha used to sit and meditate, and for one hour he used to walk on those stones and meditate. When he became tired of walking he would sit; when he became tired of sitting he would walk.

This way he exhausted his outgoing energy.

One day he found there is no energy at all for any outgoing. He remained in. And this remaining in revealed to him his luminous being, his ultimate consciousness.

In language it is a problem; we say, go in. You cannot go in, because if you go in, then that "in" will also be out. You can only go out; you cannot go in.

In, you are. What do you mean by "in"? It is not the inside of your house; it is where you are. There you don't need going, all that you need is that you don't have any energy to go out, so naturally you remain still and silent and in. Suddenly there is an explosion of light and bliss and ecstasy.

So you have found a beautiful meditation, Prashanto. Continue, and you will find many more from tomorrow on the way. Don't chitchat with anybody. The moment you enter the path by the side of Buddha Hall forget that anybody else exists in the world: you and the road, till you fall down. Then in a day you can achieve something which you may not be able to achieve in one year's Dynamic Meditation. This is the ultimate dynamic meditation!

I have not told people but you have found it, so now I have to recognize it.

Just remember one thing, that you are not to stop by yourself. Because if you stop you will miss the point, you will always stop before the energy is finished. That's why I'm saying go on and on and on till you cannot go on, and you fall. Don't pretend to fall, because those are all deceptions that you can detect yourself. You know perfectly well when you are pretending to fall and when you are really falling.

So don't misunderstand me. The real thing will happen only when automatically you find yourself falling. You are just a watcher, not a doer. And a tremendous experience is possible.

The father was having a heart-to-heart talk with his son before the boy's marriage.

"Son," he said, "I have two bits of advice for you before you get married. First, you must tell your wife, right from the start, that you insist on spending one night each week out with the boys."

"And what," asked the son, "is the second bit of advice?"

His father smiled and said, "Don't waste it on the boys."

Hymie Goldberg goes for his weekly visit to the doctor and says, "Doc, I snore so loudly that I keep myself awake. What can I do?"

The doctor rolls his eyes and says, "Why don't you try sleeping in another room?"

So Prashanto, just get exactly what I am saying.

A Jew and an Irishman were fishing in separate boats some distance apart. The Irishman got a bite and was so nervous that he fell out of the boat. He sank twice, and as he was coming up the second time, the Jew rowed over and called out: "Mister, can I have your boat if you don't come up again?"

People have their own understanding. Just get exactly what I have told you, and when something happens report to me, because everybody will be waiting, "What happened to Prashanto?" And tomorrow everybody will be watching! I have made you a hero within a second.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

The Invitation

Chapter #20

Chapter title: Those third rate politicians, those dwellers of the gutter 31 August 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive

code:

8708310

ShortTitle:

INVITA20

Audio:

Yes

Video:

Yes

Length:

89

mins

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

IN CANADA, WHERE I LIVE, I HAVE BEEN ASKED TO PARTICIPATE IN

NATIONAL POLITICS. SHOULD I REFRAIN, GIVEN THE STATE OF POLITICS

IN THE WEST, OR SHOULD I ACCEPT AND USE THE EXPERIENCE AS

ANOTHER DIMENSION OF MY PROCESS?

Rupananda, it is well known what I think about politics, but I will not say anything to you, this way or that.

My whole approach to my people is that of freedom. You have to act out of your own intelligence. You don't have to depend on my advice.

I go on giving you my experiences, my attitudes, but there is no compulsion that you have to follow them. You are not my followers, you are my friends.

I cannot impose my ideas on someone I love; I give you absolute freedom to do whatsoever your intelligence, your meditativeness allows you. And I don't think you will go wrong.

Just don't be attracted by ambition, don't be attracted by power, because those infatuations are destructive. And the people who become attracted by things like money, power, prestige, miss one thing: that is life.

Balzar has a law about it: Life is what happens to you while you are making other plans.

A politician has no life, he is always making other plans, and meanwhile life goes on slipping by. But still, it is going to be your choice.

I never want to be remembered by you as someone who forced, manipulated, dominated you according to his ideas. I can share everything with you, but the final decision has to be yours, because that's how one matures. If you feel like going into politics, just think what you can contribute, or you will also become part of the whole dirty game that goes on in the name of politics.

You are asking me, "Should I get into the gutter?" I will not prevent you. If you enjoy it is perfectly okay with me! But always remember, don't take part in anything unless you are ready so that you can improve it, you can give it some refinement -- not only about action, but also about talk. Cogglin's Law is: Don't talk unless you can improve the silence. It is a tremendously beautiful statement: Don't talk unless you can improve the silence -- very insightful.

Don't go into politics unless you can improve humanity and you can improve people's humbleness... not getting into a competitive will to power, because that kind of thing happens only when you are feeling empty inside. I have never heard of any politician becoming enlightened -- that will be a contradiction in terms -- nor vice versa, have I ever heard of any enlightened man being a politician.

You think you will be exploring a new dimension through the gutter? Through the gutter you will get into a deeper gutter, a bigger gutter, the main gutter. It is not a dimension; it is simply falling from your intelligence, it is not maturity. A certain retardedness is absolutely necessary in politics. If you feel you qualify...! You have to be continuously lying, you have to be promising things which you know perfectly well you cannot deliver.

Just the other night I was reading about a rabbi who wrote a letter to a friend, but a very strange letter. He wrote a small paragraph and then left almost the whole page, and signed underneath. That is not the way people write a letter. When you write a letter, you sign underneath it... this much gap. The man was also puzzled when he received the letter. He inquired of him, "What is the reason for leaving such a big gap between the letter and the signature?"

He said, "It says in the scriptures, `Keep yourself as far away from lies as possible.'"

But still, if you like there is no problem; there are many sannyasins in the same gutter in different countries. A certain cruelty, inhumanity, cunningness are the basic requirements for you to become a politician. So I am worried whether you have all these prerequisite conditions. Innocence is of no use; that will bring failure. Silence is of no use, truthfulness is of no use, to be sharply intelligent is no use. And remember one thing: politics gives you power, but it gives you power by making you a beggar. All politicians are beggars, whether they may be presidents or prime ministers.

Every five years, and they are standing on your door with their begging bowl. They are, in fact, servants of the people. At least they have to pretend after each five years. For five years they can believe they are masters, but they cannot befool anybody of intelligence.

And this reminds me that the people from whom you are going to beg for votes are ignorant, prejudiced, are not contemporaries. They belong to past centuries, many centuries back; they are superstitious. If you want to have their votes, you have to fall to their standard; they are not going to rise to your standard.

To be a politician is a tragedy. But still, if you want to make your life a tragedy I have no objection. The whole politics around the world misses anything significant for the future.

It is too much concerned with trivia, small, ugly conflicts. It is not interested in reality to improve the destiny of humanity, to give new dreams to people, to bring more poetry into their lives. On the contrary, it destroys their dreams, it destroys their hopes; it destroys their trust in other human beings, because they have been continuously cheated by the politicians, exploited.

Oscar Wilde has said, "A map of the world that does not include utopia is not worth glancing at." But no politician can remain successfully in politics with a utopian mind; he has to be practical, pragmatic. He has to forget fundamental things, that through wrong means you can never reach the right end. Only the right means justify the rightness of your ends. But no politician can manage to follow right means towards right ends. He may talk about right ends, right values, but all his means will be wrong, and through wrong means you never reach to right ends; they don't connect.

You have to be mean. You have to be destructive. If needed, you have to commit all kinds of crime. If you can do all these things, only then you can become a politician. It is an absolutely foolish and absurd game, and particularly for a sannyasin who is searching for higher values, who is looking for inner reality -- who is thinking of beauty, truth, good. Politics is just the opposite. A sannyasin is trying to find his authentic being, and the politician has to create a false personality according to what people need.

A politician has to say things which he does not mean but which satisfy people. He can never speak his mind; in fact, people who have gone deep in understanding the psychology of politics, say in politics mind is not needed at all. We don't see any politician functioning in a way that shows his genius. There have been millions of geniuses, nobody was attracted towards politics, only very mediocre people. In a way they represent the unintelligent, unevolved masses. They are the representatives of the slaves.

I have heard...

A great politician's brain surgery was being done. When the surgeons opened his brain they saw so much rubbish and garbage that they thought it is better to take the whole mind out of the skull and clean it; they have never seen anything so dirty. So they left the politician in anesthesia, so he was not aware, and they went into another room.

Meanwhile, the politician came out of anesthesia, was resting on the bed, when a man came rushing and shouted, "What are you doing here? You have been chosen as the president."

He said, "My God! What am I doing here?" -- and got up.

The surgeons looked from the other room, and said, "Hey! Where are you going? Your brain is here; we are cleaning it!"

The man said, "Now I don't need it! Clean it well and keep it. When I am no longer the president of the country I may need it, but right now there is no problem."

What use is a mind to the president?

Presidents are chosen who have no minds of their own, so they can simply function as rubber stamps.

Politics is a strange world, but if you want to have some taste of the ugliest part of human beings, you can go into politics. Just remember one thing: going in is easy, getting out will be very difficult, almost impossible. It is getting into deep imprisonment by your own desires. But there are people who are jailbirds; they like prison. I have known many politicians; I have not seen anything worthwhile in their lives. They have staked everything just to be in power. And what will these people do with power? They will create more wars, they will create more weapons, they will create more possibilities for a global suicide.

These are my ideas about politics, but these are my ideas, you don't have to follow them.

If you are feeling a certain urge for power, go into it. Of course I cannot bless you. I will feel sad and sorry for your going in a wrong direction, but I cannot prevent you either, because any interference in your life is against my whole approach. So please, meditate over it.

Go around Buddha Hall; you will find Prashanto there, either enlightened or dead! That is far better than going into politics.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

I HAVE BEEN IN SOME LONG RELATIONSHIPS FOR MANY YEARS. WHEN I HEAR YOU TALKING ABOUT JEALOUSY AND FIGHTING AND ALL THESE

PASSIONATE THINGS IN RELATIONSHIPS, I BECOME REALLY SHAKY, BECAUSE IT SEEMS I NEVER EXPERIENCE THESE THINGS REALLY

STRONGLY. LAST NIGHT I GOT VERY SAD ABOUT IT, AND THE QUESTION

CAME UP WHETHER I EVER REALLY LOVED SOMEBODY, WHETHER I REALLY DID LET GO AND LOSE CONTROL.

BELOVED MASTER, DO LOVE AND HATE, FIGHTING AND HARMONY, COOLNESS AND PASSION REALLY ALWAYS BELONG TOGETHER?

Anand Vimlan, there are always exceptions. My feeling about you is that you are being sad unnecessarily. Life allows exceptions: very rarely you will find a couple who is not in a love-hate relationship but simply in love. Naturally, this kind of love will have a certain coolness about it, it cannot be hot.

To make it hot, you have to bring the opposite in; then fighting and quarreling and arguing gives a certain excitement to your energies. And when tired of fighting and arguing, you again move -- the pendulum goes on moving between love and hate. When your pendulum moves towards love, you feel strong love because of the contrast. It depends on your likings: people like hotdogs! Dogs are enough, but they want hot dogs!

Your love is of a silent type, peaceful. There are rivers which are mountainous, falling from mountains as waterfalls into the valleys; there is much going on. And there are rivers which flow in the valleys silently, so silent that you cannot see that they are flowing. But I don't think that you have to be sad about it; it is a higher quality of love which is cool, without any excitement, without any heat.

Don't you love ice cream... a cool breeze, a silent house; no pillow fighting, no plates being broken? I know it brings a little spice in life when pillows are going like missiles in the air, but that kind of spice...? That kind of excitement is stupid.

A love that can be cool, and without a hot passion, is a higher quality. Every love should become of that quality.

An ancient seer of this country has made a very strange statement. For centuries in this part of the world, when people get married they go to some master, to some wise man to have his blessings; that is conventional. That is more important than the marriage done by the priest. The blessings of a wise man or an enlightened man, if you can find one, will not be just words. He will shower you with all his love, with all his grace, with all his flowers of silence and peace.

One of the ancient seers of the UPANISHADS has a very strange blessing for couples who come to him: "I bless you, that you will have ten children, and finally the husband will become your eleventh child." It looks absurd -- what kind of blessing is this? But I feel that the man had a great insight.

The growth of love should finally be so cool, so passionless that the husband becomes almost a child to the wife, because a woman is intrinsically a mother. In real love, the woman functions as a mother, even to the husband. How they can hate? But it rarely happens, and as the world has gone farther and farther away from their own selves and silence and peace and coolness, their life as husband and wife has also gone in the same way.

So when I am talking, I am talking not about the exceptions -- now, people like you are exceptions -- I am talking about the general rule. But it is good that you ask the question; it makes my answer complete. I have talked about the majority; now, I am talking about a very small minority in the world -- they are the true lovers. Their love knows no friction, but only deep understanding of each other. So don't be worried about what I have been saying about the majority, about the world at large. You don't have to follow; you are perfectly going right.

Bennett's Accidental Discovery says: First, most auto accidents are caused by people with driver's licenses, so I tore up my license. Secondly, according to the latest statistics, most auto accidents happen within eight miles of your own home, so I moved.

Don't be stupid about these statistics, and about these accidents. Just watch your own inner feeling. If you are feeling happy with your cool and silent, without-any-conflict love, you need not start being childish, immature. You don't have to follow others.

The people who are fighting with their spouses are really very repressed people; their repression is great. All the religions and all the cultures and all the educational institutions are repressing people, teaching them to repress sex. Repressed sex is very poisonous, because then it will not be satisfied with one woman or with one man. That is really the cause of fight, the cause of all jealousies, the cause of making spouses into KGB agents. They are watching each move of the other person.

The husband cannot even look at a beautiful woman passing by if the wife is with him, because even looking at her is going to cause immense trouble at home. It is strange. If you love your wife and your wife loves you, and you see a beautiful flower or a beautiful face or a beautiful moon, there is no difference. But because of repressedness, the wife knows the husband would like to have as many women as possible; she has to be on guard. And because the husband knows his repression, he is aware that wife is also repressed in the same way.

I have heard about a big computer they have invented in New York which answers your questions. A boy went and asked, "Can you tell me where my father is?"

And the computer said, "Your father has gone fishing."

The boy laughed. He said, "This is absolutely wrong. My father has been dead for three years."

The computer laughed and said, "My son, that was the husband of your mother who died three years ago. Your father has gone fishing!"

But this goes on happening because for thousands of years so much sexuality is repressed that it is not possible to be satisfied with one woman, with one man. There is no basic difference, and the moment you put the light off any woman is the same, any man is the same. Small details may be different, but the repressed desire is discontented. A humanity without any sexual repression will not have this kind of relationship which is continuously nagging, fighting, harassing each other.

This is the greatest psychological problem facing humanity: how to get rid of the repression that religions have planted in everybody's unconscious. It has gone so deep in the bones, in the blood, in the marrow, that one existentialist philosopher has said, "I would like to make love to all the women of the earth; still, I cannot say I would be satisfied." He is saying something true, sincerely true. And he is saying something not only about himself, he is saying it about all human beings, men and women both.

But this is madness. You don't say, "I will not feel satisfied unless I have eaten apples from every tree of the world." That kind of statement will not be relevant at all. But the existentialist philosopher's statement has a relevance; he is saying something true. That does not mean that he does not love, but his love is not capable to remove the deep-rooted, repressed sexuality; it is not enough. He wants more, and he wants change.

These are the reasons of conflict. You are fortunate if your life has been moving like a silent river without any unnecessary conflict, friction; otherwise there are everyday scenes, and this continues all your life.

I have heard that ninety-year-old Herbie, who tried to seduce a fifteen-year-old girl was arrested for assault with a dead weapon!

It is saddening. Ninety years old and you are not beyond sex, you are not beyond childish things; it is because of repression.

Man has to be completely released from all kinds of inhibitions and repressions, and love will become a very silent and cool affair.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

PASSING THROUGH THE GATE OF THIS MANDIR FOR THE FIRST TIME IN

EIGHT YEARS, I FELT A KIND OF FRAGRANCE WHICH HAS STAYED WITH

ME EVER SINCE. IS IT POSSIBLE TO TAKE THIS FRAGRANCE WITH ME

WHEN I LEAVE?

OH, BELOVED MASTER, IT IS SO BEAUTIFUL, AND I AM SO GRATEFUL TO

SPEND THIS TIME WITH YOU, EVEN IF I CANNOT TAKE THIS FRAGRANCE

WITH ME.

Prem Maharaj, the fragrance that you have felt in this temple of seekers is not something that you can leave behind. This fragrance contains love, meditativeness, silence, trust, life-affirmative values, a song of gratitude, a dance with the trees and with the stars...

This fragrance is an experience of a totally new atmosphere that does not exist in the outside world. If you meditate, you will become the same temple. Then, wherever you go the fragrance will go with you like a shadow; even others will feel it.

It is not the first time that such a question has come to me. The moment they enter the gate many people have felt suddenly, as if they are entering into another world -- the air is different, the vibe is different -- as if they have come home. And there is bound to be a certain fragrance, because so many people are meditating, and slowly, slowly their inner-being flowers are opening. The whole purpose of all these people to be here is absolutely different from any gathering anywhere outside in the world.

These are the people who are in search of the essential, existential life source. They are at different stages of evolution in consciousness, but they are all radiating something of higher stages. So when you enter the temple, you will find the air is different, the trees are different, the people are different. And if you also become a meditator, as I know you are becoming, this fragrance will start coming from within your own being. Even others may feel it wherever you go.

I want my sannyasins... I have taken away the clothes which made them distinct; I have taken away their malas. But still people feel that they look a little different from others; still the airport officers catch hold of them! In Indian embassies when they go for a tourist visa, they immediately get the idea that they are going to Poona; Poona has become synonymous with my name. And many sannyasins have wondered -- they are not wearing the orange, they are not wearing the mala -- how they have become suddenly suspicious?

A sannyasin will have a certain fragrance, a certain style, a certain way which is subtle; it may not be very apparent to the eyes, but it can be detected.

I would like you to be known as separate from the crowds, not by your clothes not by anything outer, but just by your very being -- your silence, your peace, your love, your eyes.

Every gesture of you should declare that you are a sannyasin.

One day the pope gets a phone call from God. God says to him, "Since you have been such a good pope, I wanted you to be the first to know."

"The first to know what?" asks the pope.

God says, "I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that from now on, the world will have only one religion."

"That's wonderful," says the pope. "Now everyone will be at peace, and everyone will get along with one another -- that's great. But what is the bad news?"

"In a few days," says God, "you will be receiving a phone call from Ma Anando in Poona!"

That one religiousness is not going to be Catholic or Christian. That one religiousness is going to be this fragrance, Prem Maharaj, that you have been feeling here. Once our people are ready, they will go on spreading it all over the world; it needs it tremendously.

Just remember one thing: Never be miserly. Share your experiences here with me your silences of the heart, your flowering of the being. Go on sharing the song that you have heard here, that music that is all around you.

Sometimes I feel sad for a few people. One old sannyasin, Kabir, wrote a letter to me, saying "Osho, I want to share what has happened to me in all these years living with you.

But can I talk about you without mentioning your name?" This cowardliness should be dropped.

I want you not to be sheep, but lions.

I want you to roar about the experience, because the world is so deaf that unless you roar they won't pay any attention. And the moment you mention my name, even if they are dead, they will wake up! Without my name, they will feel goody-goody, and you will feel very goody-goody. But only with my name, will you be able to judge whether those people have any intelligence, any awareness, any understanding, or whether they are just mediocre people with prejudiced minds.

Share without being miserable, without being miserly, and share with authority. You have nothing to lose.

It is a tremendous challenge to change this whole earth into a paradise, but you will not be able to do that if you are cowardly or miserly. There are many sannyasins who remain silent and don't share just out of the fear that they may be condemned: "You have also fallen from the traditional religion, from the convention," they simply remain quiet.

That's not right; that is not compassionate. That is cruel. If you know something, share it for two reasons, because the humanity needs it, and the second reason is that the more you share, the more you will have of it.

MacTavish, O'Rourke and Hymie Goldberg were mourning the loss of a mutual friend.

MacTavish said, "As you well know, my friends, I am a thrifty Scottish soul. But there is a legend in my family that if one places a wee bit of money in the casket so that it may be buried with the body, it will ease the way into the next world. For the sake of our friend, I will place ten dollars in the casket with him." And with a flourish, he released a ten dollar bill and let it flutter onto the dear departed's breast.

O'Rourke had no intention of being outdone. "Well," he said, "this strikes me as near superstition, but I will also contribute that sum." And a second ten dollar bill joined the first on the dead man's breast.

Goldberg said at once, "Do you think I won't join in this kind deed?" And whipping out his check book, he quickly made out a check for thirty dollars, placed it on the dead man's breast and took the two ten dollar bills as change!

Don't be that miserly. Share with your full heart, because it is not only for the benefit of the other, it is also for the benefit of your own being. The more you share, the more open you will become. Your sharing is not a loss. In the ordinary world of economics, if you give things to people, you lose them.

I have heard...

A man stopped his car by the side of a beggar. He was in a good mood; he had won a lottery. He was surprised by the beggar, because his clothes were very costly, although very old and dirty and rotten, and his face also looked cultured, educated. But life had been hard -- it seems he belonged to a very good family, and some calamity had happened. He stopped his car; he was in a good mood, took out a ten rupee note and gave it to the beggar, and the beggar laughed.

The man said, "Why are you laughing?"

The beggar said, "I am laughing because this is the way I finished all my money, my whole heritage that my father has left. I also used to have a beautiful car, but I was giving to everybody -- whoever needed. I laughed, because if this is the way you are also going, soon you will be standing by my side."

In ordinary economics, when you give things you lose. But in the spiritual world laws change. There, if you DON'T give you lose: if you keep your doors and windows closed, your blissfulness, your silence, all become stale. But if you go on sharing, fresh waters will be coming from the eternal sources of life, and your blissfulness will remain always fresh and fragrant. And it will go on growing wider and wider.

As far as I am concerned this is the only real charity, to share your innermost treasure with people, familiar or strangers, and to turn their eyes also inwards. Because seeing your treasure, they will be reminded of their own treasures. Experiencing your fragrance, you will be putting them on the search of how they can also be so fresh, so fragrant, so graceful. From where can they get this beauty that does not belong to the world, this music without instruments, and this poetic atmosphere without words?

Sharing with people is putting them on the right way: in search. And if they know what happens to the real seeker, they will not go on any wrong path.

The Indian constitution says three things are charitable: giving to the poor, making hospitals for the sick, opening schools for the uneducated. It is a shame that this should be the only kind of charity mentioned in the constitution of a country which knows far higher realms of charity. The constitution was written by people who had no idea -- they were politicians. They could not conceive that there can be some higher charity.

To me these are good but not great. The constitution would have been far richer if it had mentioned sharing your spiritual experiences with those who are poor in spiritual experiences.

I have been fighting for years with the Indian government. They are not ready to believe that this institution is a charitable institution, and they cannot understand that there are deeper treasures, higher consciousnesses, and those who don't have them -- they are poor.

Sharing your spirituality, sharing your meditation, sharing your love at least should have been mentioned in the constitution, particularly of a country which has been for centuries the land which has attracted seekers from all over the world. But this constitution was not written by seers or enlightened people, but by those third-rate politicians, those dwellers of the gutter. They cannot see anything more than the fragrance they feel in the gutter; that is the only fragrance they know of.

I would like you not to be bothered by constitutions and other things. You have to understand the higher economics: share so that you can have more.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

The Invitation

Chapter #21

Chapter title: To know oneself and to be oneself

31 August 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive

code:

8708315

ShortTitle:

INVITA21

Audio:

Yes

Video:

Yes

Length:

87

mins

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

CAN YOU PLEASE SPEAK ON DISCIPLINE AND MEDITATION?

Niten, it is a very strange question because every day, morning and evening, I am speaking on discipline and meditation. If anybody reads your question, he will think that for the first time I have to speak on discipline and meditation! Where have you been for so long?

You remind me of two old friends; they meet on a street in Leningrad...

"How is life treating you," asks one.

"Just great," replies the other.

The first one looks at him dubiously and says, "Have you been reading the papers?"

"Of course," replies the other, "how else would I know!"

People know about their own lives by reading newspapers, and I have been telling you every day about meditation and nothing else, and you are asking...!

Okay...

A little old Jewish lady sits down on a plane next to a big Norwegian. She keeps staring and staring at him. Finally she turns to him and says, "Pardon me, are you Jewish?"

"No," he replies. A few minutes go by and she looks at him again and says, "You can tell me -- you are Jewish, aren't you?"

He answers, "Definitely not."

She keeps studying him, and says again, "I can tell you are Jewish!"

In order to get her to stop annoying him, the gentleman says, "Okay, I am Jewish."

She looks at him and shakes her head back and forth and says, "Really, you don't look it!"

I am wondering from where to begin! Niten, meditation is the only contribution the East has made to humanity. The West has made many contributions, thousands of scientific inventions, immense progress in medicine, unbelievable discoveries in all the dimensions in life. But still, a single contribution of the East is far more valuable than all the contributions of the West.

The West has become rich; it has all the technology to be rich. The East has become poor, immensely poor, because it has not looked for anything else except for one thing, and that is one's own inner being. Its richness is something which cannot be seen, but it has known the highest peaks of bliss, the greatest depths of silence. It has known the eternity of life; it has known the most beautiful flowering of love, compassion, joy. Its whole genius has been devoted to a single search -- you can call it ecstasy.

Meditation is only a technique to reach to the ecstatic state, to the state of divine intoxication. It is a simple technique, but the mind makes it very complex. Mind has to make it very complex and difficult, because both cannot exist together.

Meditation is the death of the mind.

Naturally, mind resists every effort for meditation. And if you go on without listening to the mind... It is clever and cunning enough to give you false directions and call them meditation.

Just today I was informed about one of the people who has been for many years a disciple of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. He is now here meditating, but he continues his master Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's meditation too.

What Maharishi Mahesh Yogi calls transcendental meditation is neither transcendental nor meditation. It is a mind trick. Just one thing is missing in it -- I have been telling you about the monkey -- and the person who is here should remember it! Transcendental meditation works only if you don't remember the monkey. So from tomorrow morning, be careful! The slightest remembrance of the monkey, and transcendental meditation is meaningless.

In fact, after eighteen years being with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and doing his transcendental meditation, what is the need to come here? But mind is so cunning that he is consoling himself that perhaps it is his master, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who has sent him here. But why should he send you here? I don't consider that he knows anything at all about meditation. What Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is teaching in the name of meditation has been known for centuries in the East by almost everybody that it is a psychological trick. It is not harmful. On the contrary, it can give you a little rest; it can give you a good feeling as if you have taken a shower. But it is not meditation, because it cannot take you beyond the mind.

Any effort made by the mind cannot take you beyond the mind. This is a very fundamental rule to remember. The so-called transcendental meditation is just an example. There are many of the same kind prevalent all over the East, but they don't bring enlightenment. They don't bring awakened consciousness and that is the only criterion to decide whether they are right or not. A tree is known by its fruits, and a technique is known by what it achieves.

Transcendental meditation is representative of all the meditations which mind has suggested to you; it is a cunning way to take you astray. Mind remains safe, not only safe, but becomes stronger. All these techniques are of concentration. You concentrate on some word, holy word -- the name of God, or any mantra -- and you repeat it as fast as you can, just inside your mind. The faster you can do it the better; the speed helps two things. The mantra or the name of God -- even your own name will do; it has nothing to do with God -- any meaningless word will do because the technique depends on something else. It depends on fast repetition, so fast that there are no gaps left in between.

Because there are no gaps, thoughts cannot arise; thoughts need a little space.

This is one thing: that you go on repeating a word faster and faster, and as you go on doing it for years, you really become an expert. So one thing it does is that it does not give a chance for any idea to enter into your mind. The second, more fundamental thing it does is that it creates tremendous boredom. Obviously, anything continuously repeated is going to create boredom, and boredom is the basis of auto-hypnosis.

When you become bored, you start falling into a sleep, which is not exactly sleep because it is deliberately created; hence it has a different name -- hypnosis. Hypnosis means sleep, with a difference, that it is deliberate.

Sleep comes naturally -- on its own, spontaneously. Hypnosis is deliberate sleep -- you create a situation in which it is bound to happen. This deliberate sleep is immensely healthy, and even ten or fifteen minutes in a hypnotic state gives you a good relaxation which hours of ordinary sleep cannot give. And when you come out of it, you will feel very fresh.

I absolutely agree that if you are doing it only for this purpose -- relaxation, a freshness comes, but it never takes you beyond the mind. How can it take you beyond the mind, because mind itself is repeating? By repetition, it does not need to think; repetition itself becomes a substitute for thoughts. And by repetition it falls into a deep sleep -- dreamless sleep, which gives you immense freshness, rejuvenation.

Naturally, you can be deceived that this is meditation -- you can go on doing it your whole life. It is healthy, it is good, it is nourishing, but it is not meditation.

Meditation starts by being separate from the mind, by being a witness. That is the only way of separating yourself from anything. If you are looking at the light, naturally one thing is certain, you are not the light, you are the one who is looking at it. If you are watching the flowers, one thing is certain, you are not the flower, you are the watcher.

Watching is the key of meditation:

Watch your mind.

Don't do anything -- no repetition of mantra, no repetition of the name of God -- just watch whatever the mind is doing. Don't disturb it, don't prevent it, don't repress it; don't do anything at all on your part. You just be a watcher, and the miracle of watching is meditation. As you watch, slowly, slowly mind becomes empty of thoughts; but you are not falling asleep, you are becoming more alert, more aware.

As the mind becomes completely empty, your whole energy becomes a flame of awakening. This flame is the result of meditation. So you can say meditation is another name of watching, witnessing, observing -- without any judgment, without any evaluation. Just by watching, you immediately get out of the mind.

The watcher is never part of the mind and as the watcher becomes more and more rooted and strong, the distance between the watcher and the mind goes on becoming longer and longer. Soon the mind is so far away that you can hardly feel that it exists... just an echo in faraway valleys. And ultimately, even those echoes disappear. This disappearance of the mind is without your effort, without your using any force against the mind -- just letting it die its own death.

Once mind is absolutely silent, absolutely gone, you cannot find it anywhere. You become for the first time aware of yourself because the same energy that was involved in the mind, finding no mind, turns upon itself. Remember: energy is a constant movement.

We say things are objects, and perhaps you have never thought why we call things objects. They are objects because they hinder your energy, your consciousness. They object; they are obstacles. But when there is no object, all thoughts, emotions, moods, everything, has disappeared. You are in utter silence, in nothingness -- rather in nothingness; the whole energy starts turning upon itself. This returning energy to the source brings immense delight.

Just the other day, I quoted William Blake, "energy is delight." That man, although he is not a mystic, must have found some glimpse of meditation. When meditation comes back to its own source, it explodes in immense delight.

This delight in its ultimate state is enlightenment.

Anything that helps you to go through this process of meditation is discipline: perhaps taking a good bath, being clean and cool; sitting in a relaxed posture with eyes closed, neither hungry nor overloaded; sitting in a posture which is most relaxing... having a look at the whole body, every part and whether there is any tension. If there is any tension, then change the posture and bring the body into a relaxed state.

In the East it has been found, and found rightly, that the lotus posture -- the way you must have seen the statues of Buddha; that is called the lotus posture... It has been a discovery of thousands of years that that is the most relaxed state of the body. But for Westerners who are not accustomed to sitting on the ground, the lotus posture is a nightmare! So avoid it, because it takes almost six months to learn the lotus posture; it is not necessary.

If you are accustomed to sitting on a chair, you can find a way, a posture, a chair made in a certain way that helps your body to relax all its tensions. It does not matter whether you are sitting in the chair or in the lotus posture or lying down on the bed. Sitting is preferable because it will prevent you from falling asleep.

The lotus posture was chosen for many reasons. If one can manage it without torturing himself, then it is the best, but it is not a necessity. It is certainly the best situation in which you can enter into watchfulness. The legs are crossed, the hands are crossed, the spine is straight; it gives many significant supports to being watchful. First, in this position, gravitation has the least effect on the body because your spine is straight. So the gravitation can effect a very small portion. When you are lying down, gravitation effects your whole body. That's why for sleeping, lying down is the best posture. Gravitation pulls the whole body, and because of its pull, the body loses all tensions. Secondly, when you are lying down, if the purpose is to sleep then you should use a pillow because the less blood reaches to your mind, the less the mind will be active. The less blood reaches to the mind, the more possibility to fall asleep.

A lotus posture is a great combination. It has the least effect of gravitation, and because the spine is straight a lesser amount of blood reaches to the mind, so mind cannot function. In that posture you cannot fall asleep easily. And if you have learned the posture from your very birth, it becomes so natural. The crossing of the legs, the crossing of the hands have a significance. Your body energy moves in a circle; the circle is not broken anywhere in a lotus posture. Both your hands... one hand gives the energy to the other hand; your one foot gives energy to the other foot -- and the energy goes on moving in a circle. You become a circle of your bio-energy.

Many things are of much help. Your energy is not being released so you don't get tired.

Your blood is reaching in a lesser amount so the mind does not function too much. You are sitting in such a position -- your legs are locked, your hands are locked and your spine is straight -- sleep is difficult. These are just supports; they are not essential.

It is not that one who cannot sit in a lotus posture cannot meditate, meditation will be a little difficult but the lotus posture is only helpful, not absolutely needed. And for the people from colder countries where sitting on the ground is not possible -- their bodies for centuries; their parents and their parents' parents from Adam and Eve... Have you seen any picture of Adam and Eve sitting in a lotus posture? In fact, it would have been very good for them, because sitting in lotus posture they could sit naked and yet nobody would have been very much aware of their nakedness. That's how the Jaina monks sit, always in lotus posture. You cannot see their genitals. Their legs are crossed, their hands are crossed; this functions almost as a protection for their nakedness.

But if for centuries people have never sat, then it will unnecessarily create trouble; your body structure has taken a certain mode. It is better to follow the body and its wisdom: use a chair. The whole thing is you should be comfortable so that the body does not draw your attention. That's why tension has to be avoided, because if you have a headache then it will be difficult to meditate. Again and again, your attention will go to the headache. If your leg is hurting, or if there is any slight tension anywhere in the body, it immediately alarms you. It is natural and it is part of the body's wisdom.

If it does not alarm you then there is danger: a snake may be biting you, and you may go on sitting; your clothes may catch fire, your body may be burning, and you may not be aware of it. So the body immediately alarms wherever there is any trouble. That's the reason to create a relaxed position in which the body need not alarm you, because every alarm will be a disturbance in your meditation.

So the first thing of discipline is a relaxed body and closed eyes, because if you have open eyes, then so many things are moving around, they can be a disturbance. It is perfectly right for the beginners to use a blindfold, so that you are completely inside, because it is your eyes, your senses that take you outside. Eyes take eighty percent of all your outgoing contact -- eighty percent is through the eyes, so close the eyes.

For the beginners, it is good if they can use earplugs. Close the ears so no noise from the outside disturbs you. It is only for the beginners; all the precautions are for the beginners.

And then just watch your mind as if the mind is nothing but a traffic of thoughts or a film

-- a movie passing on the TV screen. You are just a neutral observer.

This is the discipline. And if this discipline is complete, watching comes very easily, and watching is meditation. Through watchfulness mind disappears, thoughts disappear. And that moment is the most blessed moment: when you are fully awake and there is not a single thought, just a silent sky of your inner being.

This is the moment when energy turns inwards; the turning-in is sudden, abrupt. And as the energy turns inwards, it brings immense delight, orgasmic delight. Suddenly your awareness becomes so rich because the energy is nourishment to your awareness. The energy coming back creates almost a flame of your being. You see all around pure light, silence -- utter silence, and an immense centering.

You are now at your very center.

At the right moment, when you are exactly centered -- the explosion. That explosion, we call enlightenment. This enlightenment brings you all the treasures of the inner world, the whole splendor. It is the only miracle in the world: to know oneself and to be oneself, and to know that one is deathless, one is beyond the body, beyond the mind; one is just pure consciousness.

So the discipline is just a support, the essential thing is witnessing, watching -- that is meditation. But in the name of meditation, there are hundreds of so-called teachers who go on exploiting people. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi became well known in the West, because the West was not aware that in the East, even the villagers are doing the so-called transcendental meditation. Everybody chanting, repeating the name of God -- it is an enjoyable exercise. I am not against it; it is perfectly good, but don't call it meditation and don't call it transcendental. Those are wrong words for it.

It is hypnotic auto-suggestion and nothing more. It will never give you the light that Kabir talks of, "As if thousands of suns have arisen all around." It will not give you what Rumi calls as if the whole sky is showering flowers, and the whole being is filled with perfume, unearthly, not of this world."

It will not give you the ecstasy that Patanjali, the founder of Yoga, continuously insists on in his yoga sutras. He says that samadhi, ecstasy is very similar to sleep with only one difference that it is alert. If sleep can be awake, if sleep can be full of awareness, then it is samadhi, it is ecstasy. It will never give you the buddha nature. It gives you ordinary mental rest -- physical relaxation; hence, I am not against it.

Whatever Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and other people like him are doing is good, but they are calling something meditation which is not. That's where they are leading people astray. If they had remained sincere and authentic and told people that this will give you mental health, physical health, a more relaxed life, a more peaceful existence, it was right. But once they started calling it transcendental meditation they have raised a very trivial thing to an ultimate significance which it cannot fulfill. People have been in transcendental meditation for years, and in the East, for thousands of years. But that has not become their self-knowing, and that has not made them Gautam Buddhas.

If you want to understand exactly what meditation is Gautam Buddha is the first man to come to its right, exact definition -- that is witnessing. Learn from Gautam Buddha witnessing, and learn from Patanjali the discipline that can be helpful for meditation. This way, yoga and mediation can become a synthesis. Yoga is a discipline, just an outer support -- immensely helpful but not absolutely needed. And Gautam Buddha has given to the world the very fundamental and the most essential thing: witnessing as meditation.

Niten, your question will not be solved until you start on the path a little bit; otherwise, you will ask again, "What is meditation?" Just my explaining it to you is not enough; you will have to move on the path.

Hymie and Becky Goldberg are about to take their first flight on an airliner. Hymie spends a while enjoying his comfortable, reclining seat and watching the pretty stewardess walking up and down the aisle. Next he looks out of the window and says excitedly, "Becky, look at those people down there, they look like ants."

Becky leans over, has a look and then says, "They are ants, you idiot... we haven't left the ground yet!"

Hymie Goldberg was so interested in watching the pretty girls going up and down the aisle, he had completely forgotten that the airplane was still standing -- it had not moved!

So looking at the ants, he thought they must be people from such a height.

That's why you meditate with closed eyes!

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

HOW YOU TALK ABOUT THE SAME OLD THINGS DAY AFTER DAY AND YET

PRODUCE A NEW REVELATION WITH EACH SENTENCE IS TO ME THE

GREATEST MIRACLE IN EXISTENCE. WOULD YOU CARE TO COMMENT, PLEASE?

Veena, it is very simple. First, because I have nothing to say, so I am free to say anything.

I don't know what is going to be my next sentence; hence, it is not a burden or a trouble; it is spontaneous. I am not an orator who has to practice and rehearse. I love people, and I love to share my experience with them. I don't remember the past; hence, it is very difficult for me to repeat it. And because I look more at the questioner than his question...

and all questioners are different; their questions may be almost the same. Looking at the questioner, my answer changes, I respond to the person. I don't have any doctrine to preach, so I don't have to be consistent. I enjoy absolute freedom.

In the past history of mankind, only poets have been given a certain license that they can use a little bit of freedom not to bother about the grammar and the language and the rules and the regulations. They had to be given that much license, otherwise they could not have poetry. That is the difference between prose and poetry: prose has to follow rules, regulations, grammar, linguistics; poetry has a certain freedom. I am even using prose with absolute license, because I don't see there is any reason to follow any limits.

All that I know is if what I am feeling is conveyed to you, whether it is right grammar or wrong grammar, whether it is the right word or the wrong word, is irrelevant. If I have conveyed my joy, my love, my peace, my blissfulness to you, any word is right. And because I have so much overflowing experience of my being I can go on for a millennium talking about it -- from different aspects, different angles, different directions; it will remain inexhaustible.

You have heard speakers, orators; I don't belong to their category. I simply enjoy gossiping! It is not a gospel -- I am not serious about it. Seriousness to me is psychologically sick. Healthy people will not enjoy gospels; they are boring. And you can see in any church you will find people asleep. The Sunday sermon is a good morning nap; people go to the church for that good morning nap... no disturbance. And the sermon is almost the same, it helps sleep.

I have heard that one great preacher was very much disturbed. He was a very learned rabbi. His trouble was that an old millionaire, who had contributed the most to the synagogue, used to sit just in front of him and sleep and snore loudly. It was not a trouble that he was snoring, it was a trouble because his snore disturbed other sleepers! And his snore kept many other sleepers awake. That disturbed the preacher because that meant every Sunday you have to bring a new sermon -- people are awake.

It is a good agreement between preachers and their congregation, that the congregation will sleep and the preacher will preach. He can go on preaching the same thing every time. There is not much to preach either. In all the four gospels, it is only one story repeated four times, the same incidents reported by four journalists! And not very educated either! So what can the poor preachers do? What can the rabbis do?

I have been looking through the TALMUD, and it is so tiring that anybody who suffers from sleeplessness, I suggest the TALMUD -- you can just manage two or three pages! It is so much nonsense, and on that nonsense rabbis go on interpreting, interpretations upon interpretations. And the original is basic rubbish. I have always suspected because the namèrabbi' seems to be so close tòrubbish' that there must have been some past connection between rubbish and rabbi!

But somehow the rabbi had to stop that old man -- and he found a way. He used to come with his grandchildren -- a little boy, sometimes a little girl -- but he always used to bring a little child with him. The rabbi one day took the child aside and said, "Listen, my boy, if you can keep your grandpa awake, particularly when he starts snoring -- you can nudge him -- I will give you four annas."

The boy said, "Settled!"

And the next sermon day it was really great; the boy did not allow the old man to snore.

The moment he would snore, the boy would nudge him.

The old man was amazed, "What has happened?" The boy had never done such a thing before... always sitting silently. Outside he asked, "What is the matter?"

The boy said, "Nothing is the matter. I am getting four annas to keep you awake, because your snoring is disturbing the whole congregation."

"Who is giving you four annas?" the old man asked. "I will give you eight annas if you sit silently and don't disturb my snoring." The boy said, "That's perfectly good -- agreed!"

Next time the rabbi looked again and again at the boy, and the boy started looking downwards, and the old man was snoring. And the rabbi said, "What is the matter?" He many times made the indication, but the boy would not look at him at all. He continued to look downward. After the sermon the rabbi took the boy aside, and said, "You seem to be very cunning. Have you forgotten?"

He said, "No, the old man is giving me eight annas not to disturb him."

The rabbi said, "I will give you one rupee."

He said, "That's perfectly good -- promised."

Next time he again started nudging the old man. The old man said, "Have you forgotten?"

The boy said, "I have not forgotten. Now the rabbi is giving me one rupee, and business is business!"

A true Jew!

I don't know what is going to come through me. I am almost a vehicle, I have left myself almost completely in the hands of existence. So whatever existence wants to convey to you, I am available. That's why I went on stopping many times because it is not in my hands, it is in the hands of existence. If something goes on flowing, it is okay -- and if it is nothing, I wait. I wait for existence to pick up the last thread.

Veena, you say that it is the greatest miracle in existence. I can agree with you. I myself feel it, that either I am mad -- because for thirty years I have been continuously speaking, nonstop... Now I am speaking much less; otherwise five lectures per day had been my usual routine from morning till late night. Naturally, I thought either I am mad or it is a miracle. There are only two possibilities; I am happy with either!

A Soviet citizen who was visiting the West was besieged by many questions from persons wanting to know more about communism.

"You mean to tell me," asked a curious host, "that by being a communist, you share everything?"

"Yes," came the reply.

"You mean," the host continued, "if you had two houses you would give me one?"

"Of course."

"And if you had two cars, you would give me one?"

"Certainly," replied the Russian.

"And if you had two stoves, or televisions, or refrigerators you would give me one of each?"

"Naturally," said the Russian.

"And if," the host went on, "you had two shirts, you would give me one?"

"No," replied the communist emphatically.

"Why not?"

"Because I have two shirts!"

Veena, I simply enjoy talking, just as I enjoy silence. I have to keep some balance. Most of the time I am silent, and then naturally, I have to take a little holiday from silence.

Then I talk to my heart's content. I do only two things: I talk to you, and then I go to sleep! In the morning I wake up, I talk to you, and then I go to sleep. My twenty-four hours are divided into two things: talking and sleeping!

My sleep is my silence, my ecstasy, my samadhi. My talking is my sharing with you what I have found in my sleep!

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

The Invitation

Chapter #22

Chapter title: A sannyasin is never retired

1 September 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive

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ShortTitle:

INVITA22

Audio:

Yes

Video:

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Length:

110

mins

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

THIS QUESTION IS ASKED BY A TREMBLING HEART, WRITTEN BY A TREMBLING HAND. MY GRATITUDE FEELS SO INADEQUATE FOR YOUR

GIFT. WHY DO I FEEL SO UNWORTHY OF YOU?

Veet Vidhan, there are certain symptoms of falling in love. One of them is a feeling of unworthiness, because love is so vast, and you are so small. You cannot earn love, it comes on its own accord; suddenly it starts showering on you.

Naturally, because you have not earned it, you cannot feel worthy of it. As love deepens, the feeling of unworthiness deepens. If a person in love does not feel it, that means the love is superficial, and the man has too big an ego. Only in that situation -- when your ego is too big, and your love is a superficial affair, not the great affair Ta Hui was talking about...

Before the great affair of love, it is absolutely necessary and inevitable, that one should feel unworthy. Nothing is wrong in it; it is exactly as it should be. Out of this unworthiness, slowly, slowly transformation happens. I can predict it will happen to you too, because your feeling of unworthiness is not just an intellectual question. Intellect never asks such questions; ego does not allow such questions; mind is not capable of asking such questions.

Mind and ego and intellect -- they all take it for granted whatever happens in their lives is not enough. They are worthy for more; hence the question cannot arise from those sources. The only source that remains is the heart, which is always true and always sincere. And once the heart starts feeling unworthy, it does not give a sadness to you but a gratefulness. Slowly, slowly unworthiness turns into gratitude: you are not worthy of something and it has been showering on you; you cannot even understand why existence has chosen you.

One of Gautam Buddha's disciples, Manjushri, became enlightened sitting under a tree.

The moment he became enlightened, suddenly flowers from the tree started showering on him. Those who were around, they could not believe what is happening. There was not any strong wind. There is no reason why so many flowers go on showering on Manjushri.

He was sitting silently with closed eyes; perhaps he was not even aware.

They reported to Gautam Buddha. He looked where Manjushri was sitting under a tree, and he said, "He has become what his destiny was; he has come to his flowering. And not only is his inner being full of joy, even the tree is celebrating."

These kinds of stories for centuries had been taken as metaphors, poetry, beautiful anecdotes. But now we can say they are factually possible on scientific grounds. Trees are very sensitive, more sensitive than you are. They join you in your celebration; they join you in your mourning. Of course, you are not aware, but now scientists have found ways to figure it out. They have made a small instrument like a cardiogram, which is attached to the tree, and the cardiogram starts working, making the graph of the tree's sensitivity.

When the tree is at ease, relaxed, the cardiogram makes the graph very symmetrical. If a woodcutter comes with his axe, with the idea to cut the tree... He has not started cutting and he has not even said that he is going to cut the tree, but if he has the idea, the tree is even sensitive to the idea. And suddenly the graph starts trembling just like your heart trembles... writing, your hand is trembling. The whole tree starts trembling deep down, and it can be caught on the graph. The graph is no longer symmetrical; it goes crazy.

Not only is it that the tree which has to be cut becomes aware of your thought, your thought creates a vibration around you which a simple heart can catch hold of. Other trees surrounding the tree -- friends and companions which have been together for years, have joined in sadness when there was no rain, have joined when the rain comes and brings great joy and blessings. They have passed through many falls and seen themselves standing naked against the sky, and have seen many springs together when great foliage comes and when flowers start blossoming. A certain communion, a certain friendliness has arisen in them.

So it has been found that the tree which is going to be cut starts trembling, catches the thought. But other trees nearby also start trembling... just the idea that one of their old friends is going to be destroyed. Strangely enough, scientists have been shocked that it means trees are more sensitive than human beings: you don't know what thought is going on in the person who is sitting by your side; every mind is broadcasting its thoughts all around, and you are catching them but you are not aware.

They have tried bringing the same woodcutter again, but with no idea of cutting the tree.

He comes with his axe, the graph continues exactly the same, symmetrical, showing that the tree is not worried because there is no idea in the woodcutter's mind -- and the other trees also stop trembling. And when the gardener is brought who has nourished those trees, cared for them, has loved them, in lonely moments has even talked with them... I had a gardener, an old man, a very beautiful man -- and he was not just professionally a gardener, he loved trees. I have seen him, when there was nobody and he thought nobody was watching him; I have seen him talk to the trees.

Once I caught hold of him, because he was continuously winning every year; almost five years he was with me and every year he was winning the corporation prize for bringing the biggest roses. I asked him, "What is the matter; you talk with trees?" He said, "I love them, I feel them. I can

tell you, but not anybody else, because I trust you will understand, that it is not one-sided; they also answer in some way or other. I have not been winning these prizes because I am a great gardener."

The city was big, and there were many millionaires in the city. They had great gardens and many gardeners. And they were all puzzled because they were all trying to win the prize, but this old man went on winning.

He said, "It is just my talking to the trees, saying, `Don't forget in the right time to give me the biggest flower. It is a question of my prestige and your prestiges.'" And he said to me, "It has never failed. Those other gardeners are doing hard work with more manure, more chemicals. They are doing everything that the art of gardening will suggest, but this is beyond the art of gardening."

As the gardener is brought, all the trees feel so immensely happy that the symmetrical graph becomes almost a dance. Just as it has become crazy out of fear, so out of love it again becomes not the ordinary silent tree, but showing a tremendous joy as if the tree is jumping, dancing. And you can see the difference between the graphs. When the tree is afraid, the graph will show you that these lines are coming out of fear. And when the tree has suddenly seen the gardener who has taken care and grown it like his own children, the graph dances. And you can see in the graph that it is not out of worry, but out of a gratitude and out of a welcome -- a friend has come. And other trees also do the same.

Man is capable of receiving immense joy if he only learns how to be grateful. So you are on the right path, Vidhan. But don't go on thinking in terms that you are unworthy, because that has to be transformed into gratitude. It is certain, nobody is worthy. What have you done to be alive? What have you done to have such beautiful eyes? What have you done to have this potentiality of becoming a Gautam Buddha? You have not done anything; it is just coming out of the abundance of existence. Existence has so much that it has to share out of sheer necessity to unburden itself; it is overflowing. And if people remain thirsty, it is their own fault.

There is an ancient saying in India that you can remain thirsty standing on the bank of a river. Unless you learn how to bow down, fill your hands with water, the river is not going to jump towards you. It is available; just a little humbleness on your part, a little receptivity on your part, and you can quench your thirst.

Everything that is great in life is abundantly available; just don't shrink in your unworthiness. It is a beautiful first step to experience it, but then for what are we worthy?

Neither for life, nor for love, nor for this beautiful body -- we are not worthy for anything; we have just taken all this for granted. This is the irreligious mind.

I don't call a man irreligious who does not believe in God. I don't call a man irreligious who does not go to the temples or churches. I don't call a man irreligious if he denies heaven and hell and all that nonsense. But I call a man irreligious if he does not feel unworthy of all that he has received and is receiving every moment. With every breath, with every heartbeat life is continuously giving you. The same life is capable of giving you immense blissfulness, of which you cannot even have an idea unless you have tasted it.

Just change your unworthiness into gratefulness, into thankfulness. And to me, this kind of gratitude is the only true prayer. You don't have to say anything -- just the feeling of gratefulness that I don't deserve, I don't see why so much has been given to me and so much goes on showering on me. What can I do except be grateful?

This gratefulness should sink deep in your consciousness, in your very fibers and cells of body. You will simply become gratefulness, then it is prayer. And the things that are called prayer are just false. Millions of temples and churches and synagogues, and millions of people continuously praying... but their prayers are false because they are always asking for something. They are never thanking for what they have already received.

In their prayers if you look, you will find the beggar, the ungrateful beggar. And you will also find in all the prayers of all the religions -- I have looked as deeply as possible into every religion -- there is a certain complaint that things are not as they should be: "Others are getting more; I am not getting that much." These are not prayers, they are simply wasting their time. They have not even come to understand the meaning of prayer.

It is not in the words, it is prayerfulness. And prayerfulness means only one thing, and only one thing, gratefulness -- a gratitude that goes on sinking deep into your being for everything: for trees being green, for rain coming down to quench the thirst of the earth.

And when the first rains come, the sweet smell coming from the earth is earth's gratitude.

And the trees becoming green, and bringing millions of flowers, that is earth's thankfulness, that is earth's prayer. That's how you should be; that's how your prayer should be -- nothing but a gratefulness.

Slowly, slowly man goes on forgetting what complaint is, what grudge is. As he becomes more attuned with gratefulness, he forgets completely that he has to ask for something.

Things are coming without his asking. He has just to keep his doors open and the guest comes. He has just to wait, and wait lovingly, prayerfully.

I am giving you the meaning of prayer in a way no religion has ever given it to humanity; their prayers are so childish, stupid. A gratefulness will make you more and more capable of receiving gifts.

The so-called religions that have overruled man's mind for centuries are mostly fictions. I have come across Albert Camus' very strange but beautiful and true statement: "If God did not exist, we would have to invent him" -- otherwise, to whom are you going to complain? on whose shoulders are you going to throw all your responsibilities? with whom are you going to be angry? who is going to be your security, safety...?

Camus is saying something very important when he says that if God did not exist we would have to invent him, and if God did exist, we would have to abolish him. If God did exist why would we have to abolish him? -- because it would be intolerable. To be so grateful to him would look like humiliation: you are unworthy and he goes on giving to you -- you could not forgive him; he is insulting you, he is making you aware of your unworthiness.

I have a friend who was at a time education minister. He used to come to me once in a while, and one day he told me something that he would not have told anybody: "I have thought many times to bring it to your notice, but then I stopped myself. But there is a limit, I have to tell it to you." He was born a poor man, and he was adopted by a rich man, a very rich man, who had no children. So he suddenly rose from poverty to be a super-rich man.

He started giving money to his relatives who were poor, because he himself belonged to a poor family; his relatives were poor, his friends were poor. And now he had so much, and he had got it without any effort, and he was in a position to help everybody. He really helped all his relatives, his father, his brother, his sisters, his friends, and he made all of them very rich. I was aware of the fact.

He told me "The problem is, I have been so generous to everybody who was even faraway connected -- a faraway cousin, or just an acquaintance -- but if I saw that they were in trouble, I gave them as much as they wanted; I gave them more. Now they are all flourishing, they are all rich. But one thing strange is that they don't feel obliged towards me! On the contrary, most of them never come to see me or meet me; in fact, they avoid me. It hurts me very much, that I have done so much... and what kind of ungrateful people are these?"

I said, "You don't understand the deeper psychology behind it. You have given them, but you don't know that the giver always insults the person he is giving. In the very giving you have become higher and the person who has received has become lower. If you are an understanding man, you will see this is actually what happens. I want to ask you one thing: Have you ever accepted any help from them?"

He said, "I don't need it -- why should I accept their help?"

I said, "That's where you are humiliating them, insulting them. What is wrong? -- small things. If you just phone a friend whom you have helped, who is now rich, has a factory of his own, cars of his own... if you just ask him, `Send two cars; I need them very much.'

You may not need, you have enough cars! Just let those cars come, and after an hour send them back. You don't need, but let that man feel that he can also give something to you, that he is not always on the receiving end. He is sometimes on the giving side also.

"Or you can tell some friend, Ìn your garden I saw such beautiful roses. Can you send me a dozen roses today?' And he will be immensely happy to send those dozen roses. It doesn't cost him much, but he will start forgiving you, and he will start being grateful to you."

The man said, "Perhaps you are right. I have never, never asked anybody for anything, because I don't need. And I never thought that just giving to somebody, and always giving and never taking..."

"Anything, anything without any value... a few flowers or just calling the person and saying, Ì am feeling very lonely. Can you come and be with me for breakfast or for the lunch? -- I will be immensely grateful.' You would have helped those people to regain their dignity. You have given them money but you have made them beggars, and nobody can forgive you, this is utterly inhuman."

And he said, "I understand, but I will not be able to do it; it is against my ego."

I said, "That is then absolutely clear why they are avoiding you: they know that you are giving to them, not because they are poor but because you are rich. You are not concerned with their problems and worries and difficulties. You are just exploiting their misery, their suffering, their poverty for your own ego fulfillment; Ì have been a great help.' And you are bragging continuously... How can they forgive you?"

That's what Albert Camus means when he says that if God did exist and was available to humanity, we should have to abolish him because it would become intolerable: he goes on giving and he will not ask for anything from you because he has everything -- the whole belongs to him! He would take away all your dignity. You can forgive somebody for anything, but you cannot forgive anybody who destroys your dignity as a human being, who takes away your pride.

Fortunately, there is no God, and particularly for you. There are people who believe in God: deep down they are angry with him. They may pray and they may show their respect, but deep down they think, "Why is my wife suffering from cancer? If God is compassionate, then where is his compassion? I have been praying for years, why am I poor? The people who never pray and never come to the church or the temple or the synagogue are rich! I am honest and I am trying to be as sincere as human frailty will permit, but I remain poor, a failure, a nobody... and the people who are mean and cunning and can do anything to achieve power and money -- they are successful. The priests go on saying that God is just. Where is your justice?"

These things go on remaining in your unconscious -- you may not say them because they may make God very angry. In fact, in the TALMUD, the Jewish God says exactly the words, "I am a very angry God. I never forgive; never take me for granted." A very beautiful sentence is: "I am not your uncle, remember." That is very Jewish, but their God is a Jew, you cannot do anything about it. He is reminding you, "I am not your uncle, so don't expect any niceness from me. I am your father."

You know there is a difference between the father and the uncle: uncles are always friendly; fathers are authoritarian, powerful people; you belong to them. It is very rare to see a son and a father being friendly, trusting each other, telling each other their innermost thoughts and feelings. But you will always find people immensely friendly with their uncles. They will not say things to just anybody which they can say to their uncles; some different quality exists.

Such a God is not only Jewish, such a God is the God of all primitive people. In all primitive, holy scriptures he is very angry. If he was available in the world, Albert Camus is right, we would have to kill him. It would become intolerable -- his interference in everything, his commandments for everything, and his anger, and his violence, and his torture; his blackmailing that he will throw you into hellfire for eternity if you don't listen to him. And if you are obedient, in other words if you are just a slave, you will have all the joys of paradise. Such a God would not be tolerable, particularly to those who have some pride of being individuals. It will be easier to finish him.

In fact, Sigmund Freud sometimes comes to very great insights; he was certainly a genius. But unfortunately these people never came in contact with any meditation; otherwise they would have given the world tremendous contributions. Still, because of their genius they had glimpses and insights. One of his insights, which may not be factual is certainly psychological. The psychological is far more significant to understand than the factual, because the factual is ordinary, outside you; the psychological is within you and controls you.

Freud says that people worship God as father because some time in the beginning they must have killed some dominant father, somebody who was too dictatorial. It is a well-known fact that many kings have been killed by their sons because the king was going on and on living. And the son was becoming old and it seemed that he was not going to live to be a king; the only possibility was the death of the father. Many kings have imprisoned their fathers and taken over the throne, because they saw that there seemed to be no possibility of his natural death -- at least while there was time to enjoy being a king!

What would be the point when you are seventy-five or eighty when your father dies and you succeed? Within a year or two you would be gone too.

There is a possibility factually, but there is no historical record of it; hence, historians have rejected the insight. But I am not a historian and I think history is simply bunk! My concern with God is for psychological reasons.

Sigmund Freud says that because somewhere in the past man had to kill the father he felt the guilt of what he had done. And out of that guilt he started worshipping the ancestors, the fathers, the elderly people, the old people. All this respect has arisen out of a guilt which has settled in the human heart. Man started inventing a God as father, raising temples in his memory, statues, priests praying, worshipers worshipping.

Behind this whole scene and drama of religion, Sigmund Freud finds only one single fact and that is: somewhere in the past man has behaved so badly with his father -- perhaps murdered -- that he cannot forgive him. So the only way is to pray, make God your father, the creator of the world. All these hypotheses... It was a very original insight.

A man who has no guilt will not go to a church, will not go to a confessional in a Catholic church. For what? -- unless one enjoys talking about so-called sins...!

I have heard...

One woman was coming every Sunday to the confessional, and confessing the same sin that she had been raped. The bishop said, "That is not your sin, you don't have to confess it -- let the person who has raped you."

She said, "But I enjoyed it! That's why I have to confess it. I pretended to resist, but deep down I enjoyed."

The priest said, "Even if you enjoyed it, you have been forgiven. You have donated to the charity box, and I have prayed for you to God. And this is the third time... who is this man? Is he the same man raping again and again every week?"

She said, "I have to confess, he has raped me only once, and because I enjoyed it he did not bother to rape me again. He looked embarrassed... what is the point? In fact, he must have felt he had been raped, tricked. So I go into places where he hangs around; the moment he sees me, he escapes."

But the priest said, "If it has happened only once then what is the point every week to come to the confession?"

She said, "I enjoy the idea and to tell you in detail. It is nothing to me -- ten dollars I can give as a punishment, and you can pray for my sin. But I enjoy even describing it."

My own feeling is that the number of people who confess in the Catholic church, most of them have not committed those sins. They simply enjoy the idea, "I raped a woman."

Perhaps they want to rape a woman, but it is a difficult job. But to confess is very simple, just ten dollars. And for ten dollars, enjoying the idea that I raped the woman... At least the priest is convinced and he will convince God too.

Sigmund Freud seems to me to be psychologically right; otherwise there would be no temples, no churches, no mosques, no gods. Man needed someone to pray to, needed someone to complain to, needed someone to throw all responsibility onto. But if he was available in the world, just in the M.G. market, he would have been killed -- and particularly in Poona.

You will be surprised to know that this M.G. Road is named after Mahatma Gandhi; M.G. is short for Mahatma Gandhi Road -- and Poona has killed, assassinated Mahatma Gandhi! The day a Poona-ite assassinated Mahatma Gandhi sweets were distributed and there was celebration. And now they are calling their main market M.G. market. This is the guilt that somehow has to be erased, so they have raised the statue to Mahatma Gandhi. Strange... you kill the man and then you raise the statue.

You must have seen on the hills, just nearby the bridge, there is one beautiful bungalow where Mahatma Gandhi used to stay. The people to whom that bungalow belongs used to come to listen to me in Bombay. And when I was moving to Poona, I said to those people, "That bungalow is empty and that will be the best place for the ashram because of the hills around; the road goes round and round -- and the whole hill part belongs to the bungalow. For the ashram it will be perfect, and whatever your price...

They said, "It is not a question of price, it is because Mahatma Gandhi used to stay there, so we have made it a memorial." Now it is a Mahatma Gandhi memorial -- there is a statue, there is a memorial.

Just by the other side of the river there is one palace, Aga Khan Palace, where the British government used to imprison Mahatma Gandhi, as a special concession, because it is not a jail; it is a palace, it was used for Mahatma Gandhi. Whenever the government wanted to put him in jail the palace was used, and he was free to move in the gardens. He was provided with his secretaries, with his wife; he continued to function just as if he was outside. In fact, he was in a better position; outside he used to live in small huts because poverty was his philosophy. Here he was living in the Aga Khan's Palace, one of the most beautiful buildings in Poona, with a vast garden.

His wife died while he was in prison in the Aga Khan Palace. His wife's samadhi is in the Aga Khan Palace, so now the Aga Khan Palace has also become part of a memorial.

Because Mahatma Gandhi was imprisoned there and his wife died there... And it was a group of Hindu chauvinists of Poona who killed him. And now they are trying to somehow erase the guilt feeling -- making memorials, making statues, giving names to the streets.

Sigmund Freud is right in my understanding that man must have behaved badly in the past with their elders, particularly the fathers. And there is a possibility that fathers may have been killed, because they were holding all the power -- and all the power included all the beautiful women of the clan. The sons were young, they needed beautiful women; the father was old but he was holding all the beautiful women: unless he dies, there is no possibility for the young people to have those beautiful women, they were that old man's property.

Psychologists have been trying to find the same pattern in monkeys. If you see monkeys sitting on a tree, you will be surprised to know that on top is the oldest monkey, the most powerful monkey. He is the president! Nobody else will be allowed to sit on the top of the trees; that is a question of prestige and power. And around him are all the beautiful females. He is old but even the youngest females first have to be under his control. Then underneath that are other elders, and underneath that are the young people.

Naturally, there is every possibility -- and it happens -- that the older monkey is killed by the younger monkey because he is taking away their whole life. He has lived enough and he goes on living -- and he is holding all the power. There is a deep will to power in everybody, and particularly the power over the females. Nobody can even look at those females while the old man is alive. They don't have any other money and treasure and kingdoms; their only property is the females. On this point of the females, many old monkeys are killed.

Perhaps this discovery by the scientists led to the insight of Sigmund Freud that one day men killed their fathers -- had to kill, had to remove them, otherwise they wouldn't allow you to live at all.

If God did exist, it is absolutely certain he would have been assassinated -- it would have become absolutely intolerable. But fortunately, he does not exist so nobody can assassinate him. But unfortunately, people have created a hypothetical God which neither you can assassinate nor you can communicate with. It is a simple hypothesis, but still it helps people to get rid of their guilt.

The priest is the beneficiary; he keeps the hypothesis alive. He fights for the hypothesis, because all that comes to God as offerings to erase the guilt of people reaches the priest.

So the priest's whole work is to make more and more people guilty. This is a business and a very subtle structure: make people guilty about everything, every pleasure.

In Jainism, even to eat food tastefully is a sin; you should not eat tastefully. You can eat, but don't take the taste, don't enjoy it. That is possible only if your taste buds are operated on; otherwise it is not possible. Your tongue and your taste buds... and they are not many, they can be removed very easily. Then you won't taste anything. But that is not the idea.

The idea is that because of those taste buds you will have to taste and then you will feel guilty. And once you are guilty, you are in the hands of the priest.

Now sex is not in your hands. Feeling good and happy with a restful night is natural, but Jainism condemns it. Jaina monks should eat only one time a day, and that too, standing because being comfortably seated you can eat more; standing you will get tired yourself.

And it looks so embarrassing -- a crowd, and you are standing, and you have to take your food in your hands.

The Jaina monk is not allowed to have anything as his possession. So how much can you take in your hands? -- and you cannot take twice. So they are hungry. To think of food or to think of women or to think of any pleasure is a sin -- even to think, even to dream. And I cannot conceive that a Jaina monk can avoid dreaming about food, or that so-called celibates -- Jaina, Catholics, Buddhists, Hindus -- can avoid dreaming about women?

And the priests say that whether you dream or you actually act it does not matter: even to dream about good food is as sinful as actually eating it because the question is of your mentality; to dream about a beautiful woman is as sinful as having a beautiful woman.

All the religious priests for thousands of years have been managing to find all those areas where you are weak, where nature can be condemned. And you cannot do anything because it is a natural thing, so naturally, you will feel guilty.

Guilt is the whole foundation of your religions.

The priest needs you to be guilty, and because of guilt you need God -- who is going to forgive you? What are your prayers? "Forgive us, we are sinners and your compassion is great. Forgive us father." And there is nobody to listen to you!

Because God is just a hypothesis, assassination is not possible. You cannot find him anywhere. Albert Camus is right: if God did not exist, we would have to invent him.

That's what we have done, we have invented him. If God did exist we would have to abolish him. The existential problem is what I have told you, the feeling that I am unworthy.

It is true:

Nobody is worthy.

We have received everything for no reason at all.

Being grateful to existence is the only authentic religion, and it does not need to have an adjective to it -- Christian or Hindu or Mohammedan. It is simply gratefulness.

Vidhan, you are on the right track; just don't get stuck at unworthiness, that is one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is gratefulness. This is the negative side; that is the positive side.

Remember, always to go with the affirmative, the positive, and you will never go astray.

The ultimate affirmation comes the day when you explode into light, into joy, into bliss, into song, into dance. All that will create more and more gratefulness in you.

You will become just a prayer.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

THE OTHER MORNING, WHEN YOU MENTIONED ABOUT A POCKET WATCH

BEING THE LAST PRESENT FOR PEOPLE WHO RETIRE, I WAS AMAZED, BECAUSE WHEN YOU LEFT FOR AMERICA I WAS AT MY VILLAGE, AND I RECEIVED BY MAIL A UNIQUE PRESENT FROM YOU -- A VERY BEAUTIFUL

SEIKO POCKET WATCH! I WAS DELIGHTED BY THIS RARE GIFT, BUT

TODAY I FEEL A BIT SHAKY!

BELOVED OSHO, COULD YOU PLEASE TELL ME SOMETHING ABOUT THE

SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS GIFT?

Sardar Gurudayal Singh, I remember the pocket watch that I have sent you. I have been giving watches to hundreds of my sannyasins. The significance is simple, so you need not be worried by what I said yesterday.

It was not a retirement gift; a sannyasins is never retired! He becomes enlightened, but retirement is not possible neither before enlightenment nor after enlightenment.

Retirement does not exist in the world of a sannyasin, so you can drop your fear and worry; it was not a retirement gift. I have been giving watches to many people because my whole message is: be watchful!

So don't misunderstand me...

A man in New York for the weekend, struck up a conversation with a young lady in the bar. After a few drinks he suggested that they buy a bottle and go to his room; she agreed.

When the girl began taking off her clothes, the man asked, "Say, how old are you?"

"Thirteen," she replied.

"Thirteen? Good Lord," said the man. "Get your clothes back on and get out of here."

At the door the girl paused and said, "Superstitious, eh?"

In America, the number thirteen is very superstitious! You will find in hotels that after the twelfth storey comes the fourteenth. The thirteenth storey does not exist at all because nobody is ready to stay on the thirteenth floor.

I have seen one book: a man had done great research work proving that this superstition of the number thirteen is not just superstition, it has a scientific background. I was very much amazed so I went through the book. It was sheer nonsense what he had done. He had collected the number of accidents which had happened on the thirteenth date, the number of people who died on the thirteenth, the number of people who got cancer on the thirteenth... all kinds of calamities that happened on the thirteenth. He had collected such a list that anybody would be greatly impressed that certainly this number thirteen is dangerous.

I wrote a letter to the man saying, "Unless you do the same research for the eleventh and for the twelfth -- just two dates will do, one before thirteenth... and find out what happens on the twelfth, what happens on the eleventh, all the calamities... And unless you find that more accidents happen on the thirteenth than on the twelfth or eleventh, that more people die on the thirteenth than on any other date, your thesis is just nonsense. This way you can prove any date dangerous, because people are dying on every date, every day. There is no quota given for dates."

I received a letter saying that the man had died; unfortunately he died on the eleventh!

One of his friends replied that the man himself had missed the thirteenth. But in America that superstition is very prevalent. People don't want the number thirteen on their car; they avoid the number thirteen in every way. In the army you won't find a soldier whose number is thirteen.

Sardar Gurudayal Singh, that retirement watch is also a superstition, but it is possible that whoever invented it first may have had some idea similar to me, that now a man is retiring, life is in a way finished. It is good to give him a watch because the days are few, time will be rushing by faster than ever. So it will be helpful to keep him alert, watchful.

Time is not money, time is life, and to give a watch... Now it has become superstition nobody bothers what is the meaning. Nobody knows either the people who are giving or the person who is receiving... but just a golden pocket watch.

But when I have given watches -- and I go on giving -- that does not mean that you are retired. That does not mean that your days are finished, "Just count the hours on your watch."

It means: Be watchful, be aware and alert.

Every moment is full of danger and full of ecstasy. If you can use it for awareness and watchfulness, it becomes a great ecstasy, the juiciest experience of life. But if you are not aware, some moment, some day, you are going to die...

Don't die before destroying your ego.

Let the ego die first so that you can realize your real immortal being.

I have given it to you, Gurudayal, just to be watchful, because one can get into any trouble -- particularly a man like Gurudayal.

A few days ago somebody came to me to inform me that Sardar Gurudayal Singh was going to marry Mukta. I said, "I am telling enough jokes, and he is trying to be a practical joke!" And Mukta is also great! She has found poor Sardar Gurudayal Singh. He is a rare man, a happy man, but to find him for marriage...! And he is such a fellow he will not say no. He has known life in many colors: he has been in the army, he has fought in the wars; he has been my bodyguard for many years, and he is of a simple and innocent heart. If somebody approaches him for marriage at this age, he will say okay.

Somehow I have persuaded Mukta not to do such a thing, because he is living a free life.

He has divorced his wife long, long ago; he has not a single worry in the world. He is one of my most profound sannyasins -- poor, but immensely rich because he can laugh more beautifully than anybody else. I don't have to know where he is sitting. When he starts laughing I know because his laughter, even in his old age, comes louder than anybody else's.

No need to worry about that watch! Just be watchful; don't get into any trouble. Now, getting married to Mukta... You will be in trouble; she will be in trouble. She is enjoying fully. She has divorced her husband long ago; you have divorced your wife -- both are free. But I must say that Mukta has an eye to find a real man!

Two jokes for Sardar Gurudayal Singh...

"You will be poor and unhappy until you are forty," said the fortune-teller to her customer.

"Then what?" asked the worried customer.

"Well, by then you will be used to it," the fortune-teller replied!

A man approaching retirement went along to see the company doctor for one final checkup. To his horror the doctor said, "I don't know quite how to put this, but your heart is on its last legs and you have only got six months to live."

"Is there nothing I can do?" asked the shocked man.

"Well," said the doctor, "you can give up alcohol, and cut out smoking. Don't eat rich foods, no dancing, and don't even think about sex!"

"And this will make me live longer?" the man asked hopefully.

"No," replied the doctor, "it will just seem longer!"

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

The Invitation

Chapter #23

Chapter title: What kind of vehicle are you using

1 September 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive

code:

8709015

ShortTitle:

INVITA23

Audio:

Yes

Video:

Yes

Length:

101

mins

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

HEARING YOU SPEAK THE OTHER MORNING, IT FINALLY CAME TO MY

CONSCIOUSNESS THAT I AM SEXUALLY REPRESSED.

I CAN'T REMEMBER BEING SEXUALLY REPRESSED BEFORE THE AIDS

SCARE STARTED. ALSO, BEING REJECTED SEXUALLY BY A BOYFRIEND

HAS CONTRIBUTED; ALTHOUGH I SHARE THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THAT --

OR TRY TO.

I CAN REMEMBER A TIME WHEN, WITH NO BOYFRIENDS, I WOULD FEEL

MY SEXUAL ENERGY AND YET IT WOULD NEED NO OUTLET. IT WOULD

STAY IN MY BODY AND I WOULD FEEL ORGASMIC ALL OVER.

BUT NOW I FEEL IMPRISONED BY REPRESSED SEX AND NEED YOUR

GUIDANCE.

Prem Shunyo, you are simply confused. You are not sexually repressed. You are simply an English lady. It seems you had forgotten it.

Just a few days ago a drunkard was arrested in France. He was making love to a dead woman on the beach. When asked, he said, "I thought she is English."

Don't be worried about repression. And moreover you are coming to the age when everybody feels disturbed, particularly women from the West. Middle age is a troublesome and anguish-creating state.

A few things for you to contemplate...

First, one has to recognize that one is getting into middle age.

Middle age is when you still believe you will feel better in the morning.

Middle age is when you want to see how long your car will last instead of how fast it will go.

Middle age is when you are home on Saturday night, the telephone rings and you hope it is not for you.

Middle age is when you change from stud to dud.

Middle age is when you stop criticizing the older generation and start criticizing the younger one.

These are just symptoms I am telling you, so..!

Shunyo, people who have been here with me for almost ten or twelve years cannot be sexually repressed. That is my whole condemnation all over the world; you can call it my reputation. And asking me a question about sexual repression is just destroying my reputation!

Two men sitting in a bar were commiserating about married life. "I know a man," says one, "who has been married for thirty years and he spends every evening at home."

"That's what I call love," says the other.

"Oh, really?" replied the first, "the doctor called it paralysis."

It all depends how you take it.

You are not sexually repressed. You suddenly remembered that you are an English lady...

where are you?... what are you doing here?

A commissar was visiting a collective farm to check on the season's crops. "How are the potatoes?" he inquired.

"The potatoes are so plentiful," a farmer replied, "that if we put them end to end they will touch the feet of God."

"How can that be?" blurted the commissar, "there is no God."

"Well," the farmer answered, "there are no potatoes either."

Shunyo, all that has happened is that that crazy Milarepa has escaped from you. But don't be worried; he is crazy enough, he will come back.

You can rely on me, I will see to it that the poor fellow comes back. He will roam about in the ashram a few days. You enjoy the freedom, and don't be worried; he cannot get lost. Finally he is going to come to you.

This has been going on for years. I have been watching it, I have never said anything to you. It is not something new. Hundreds of times he must have left you and he has come back. He is a very tame fellow. You have just to give him enough rope, so that he can enjoy the idea that he is free.

There is nothing to worry about. You simply enjoy a few days of peace and silence, and paralysis.

It is very rare to find time to be alone, to be oneself. It is fortunate to find some people who once in a while escape, before they get caught somewhere else. And he has proved so reliable that many times I was thinking, now he is lost -- and I see him back again.

You just have to learn patience. And by the way, it is a good excuse to learn patience, waiting and trusting that he will come. Suddenly, one night he will start knocking on your door.

I don't think that there is any other woman who can tolerate him long enough except Prem Shunyo -- she is almost immune to Milarepa.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

FOR TEN YEARS I HAVE THOUGHT THAT WHEN YOU SAID THERE IS NO

TIME-SPACE SEPARATION BETWEEN THE MASTER AND THE DISCIPLE, AND

WHEN YOU SAID THE DISCIPLE HAS TO MELT INTO THE MASTER SO THAT

THEIR HEARTS BEAT TOGETHER, I THOUGHT THAT YOU WERE SIMPLY

BEING POETIC. THE OTHER EVENING WHEN YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT

THIS RELATIONSHIP, I SUDDENLY GOT THAT YOU MEAN WHAT YOU SAY

SO POETICALLY.

I WOULD LIKE TO TAKE YOU HOME WITH ME IN MY HEART, MY BELOVED

MASTER, AND I AM A SLOW LEARNER WITH A FRIGHTENED HEART AND

ONLY SIX WEEKS.

WILL YOU COME WITH ME THIS TIME?

Prem Dheera, the first time you were right, when you thought I was simply being poetic.

The second time you were wrong, when you started thinking that I mean what I say so poetically -- I don't mean. If I start going into everybody's hearts it will be impossible to put me together again!

You can love me wherever you are.

You can feel me wherever you are.

But poetry is poetry; don't make it something pragmatic and practical. When I talk about melting and about merging and about having a heart-to-heart communion, don't take it that that's actually what I mean. Those are only indications towards a very subtle phenomenon in which I remain I, you remain you. In fact, you become more yourself than you have ever been before.

If love cannot give you individuality, uniqueness, that love is impotent. The power of love consists of giving you freedom and authentic individuality and being. That's the way to take me with you.

When you become an individual, peaceful, silent, utterly free from all kinds of bondage, then your freedom, your uniqueness, your love all indicate that you are taking me home.

You should not take me as a person.

You should take me as the values which I am teaching to you. If you take those values with your heart, you are taking me; hence I say again, the first time you were right when you thought I was being poetic. Poetry should never be understood literally; it is symbolic, but it is significant. Just because it is only symbolic does not mean it is insignificant. Its significance certainly does not consist in being factual. It is something much more than fact, it is truth itself.

Ordinarily we don't make any distinction between fact and truth. Factually you cannot take me in your heart -- that is an impossibility. But truthfully, you can take me in your heart. That will mean my fragrance, my joy, my meditativeness, my ecstasy, my presence but not my person.

If you can understand this there is no problem -- I can come with you.

Just one thing to be remembered: what kind of vehicle are you using?

A Frenchman, a German and a Russian were boasting about the modes of transportation at their disposal.

"I drive a Renault to work," said the Frenchman. "On Sundays I drive my Peugeot. And when I go abroad, I drive a Citroen."

"I drive a Volkswagen to work," said the German. "On Sundays I drive my BMW, and when I go abroad I drive a Mercedes."

"As for me," said the Russian, "I take the bus to work. On Sundays I drive around in my little Moskvitch. And when I go abroad, I drive a tank."

So just be careful if you are taking me in you heart, that you don't drive a tank -- I am a peaceful person and I don't want to go to war! But as far as my presence is concerned you are absolutely allowed to take me with you.

My whole effort here is not to create an illusion in you, but on the contrary to destroy all possibilities of illusion. Man has lived under all kinds of illusions; he is surrounded by hallucinations. When you fall in love with someone it is very rarely a true experience.

More often it is only an illusion, an idea, a projection. When you see someone as beautiful it is more your biology that is creating the illusion of beauty. Once your biological infatuation is finished the beauty will disappear; the same woman will not look beautiful at all.

From the very beginning the woman has known the psychology of man better than man understands woman's psychology. In fact, man has been continuously saying that woman is a mystery. I don't see any mystery anywhere. I have known more women than perhaps anybody else in the world, and I have known men also. None of them is a mystery.

Everything is absolutely clear, but you don't want to see it clearly -- you want to go on having illusions. Illusions are sweet, nice, beautiful. The truth, the bare, naked truth is not so sweet.

Gautam Buddha continuously says that when you see a beautiful woman, don't forget that she is just a skeleton, just as you are a skeleton, covered with a bag of skin. Maybe someone has a little longer nose and somebody has a little smaller nose, and somebody has round eyes and somebody has a different shape, but inside it is the same blood, bones, flesh. Beauty seems to be only skin-deep.

If you have X-ray eyes you will be surrounded with skeletons all around.

Just recently it happened in Europe that one woman was driving a crane and she struck an electric pole. The shock was so tremendous, she fell down in a coma. She did not die, but after a few hours she came back to consciousness with a strange phenomenon: her eyes had become X-ray eyes. Now she is suffering from a tremendous migraine... but doctors are using her in the hospital as an X-ray machine. She has opened a new dimension.

Because of too much electricity the eyes have changed. Now they can see deep down inside you, and she is completely horrified. She cannot open her eyes because she cannot see your face; she can see only your skeleton. She cannot see your skin and your beautiful nose. She is the first woman who sees people as they actually are, without any illusions.

Asked, "Do you feel some difference between beautiful people and ugly?" -- she laughed.

She said, "There is no one who is beautiful and no one who is ugly. All are skeletons and horrible."

A man was admitted to a psychiatric hospital because he thought he was Ronald Reagan.

But this caused a problem for the staff because they already had a Ronald Reagan on the books and the director thought it might cause trouble. But then he hit upon a brilliant idea. On his first night at the hospital, one of the staff put him in the same cell as the other Ronald Reagan in the hope that this confrontation would bring one or both to their senses.

The next morning he called the new man to his office and asked how his first night had been.

"Oh, doctor," replied the man, "I have been living under a delusion for many years."

"That's an amazing insight," said the doctor excitedly. "Please go on."

"Well," continued the man, "for as long as I can remember, I thought I was Ronald Reagan, but I'm not."

"That's very good," said the doctor. "So who are you?"

The man looked at the doctor, smiled sweetly and said, "I'm Nancy."

People go on changing their illusions.

I want you to come out of all the illusions and just see reality as it is. It is simple and it is beautiful. In the beginning you may be shocked because your delusions are destroyed.

But as you will become more and more accustomed and in accord with existence and reality, you will feel a tremendous freedom and a great sense of authenticity.

Gautam Buddha's statement is on record that to experience truth in the beginning is bitter, in the end it is very sweet. But illusions are totally different, just the contrary: in the beginning they are very sweet; in the end they turn out very bitter. In fact, this should be the criterion: something that is sweet in the beginning, be aware of it; it is illusion. Soon you will be awakened out of it and it will hurt and it will feel very bitter. It is better to experience truth, which is bitter in the beginning but in the end proves to be the sweetest experience possible.

So when I am talking to you, I have to be poetic for the simple reason that there are things which cannot be said in prose. There are things which can only be hinted at in a poetic way. But poetry can always be misunderstood because poetry is symbolic and you cannot take it as actual. The moment you take poetry as literal and factual, you are creating an illusion which will sooner or later be destroyed by the reality.

No illusion can live for long.

Every illusion has a very small lifespan.

I don't want you to get into any kind of illusory relationship with me. I have been talking about the master and the disciple relationship from different angles, emphasizing many things; this also should be remembered, that all that has been said to you about it is poetic and symbolic.

You cannot merge or melt actually, but you can merge and melt by dropping your ego.

That's exactly the intention, that you drop the ego; that between the master and the disciple there will be only two persons -- the master and the disciple -- not four persons, the ego of the master and the ego of the disciple and then the master and the disciple behind their egos.

That is happening in almost all your relationships. On every bed where you find a couple, just look closely, you will find four persons: two real persons and two unreal persons.

Those two unreal persons are created by both projecting something onto the other.

Naturally there is going to be disillusionment. Every relationship comes into a state of disillusionment; then it really hurts. Never create any relationship with projection.

Avoid your ego, avoid your mind.

Just see clearly without any thoughts disturbing your vision and you will never create a relationship. You will have relatedness, you will have deep intimacy but there will be no relationship, no binding; otherwise every relationship becomes a kind of marriage. And the moment something becomes a marriage it has turned into an imprisonment. Certainly, the master disciple relationship cannot be allowed to turn into a marriage; that will destroy its whole purpose.

The whole purpose is to give you freedom, to help you to be free from all kinds of chains which you have mistaken for ornaments; to take you out of your imprisonment which you have taken as your home; to make you aware that your religion, your nation, your race, your caste, your ideology, all are different kinds of imprisonments, and they all turn you into prisoners.

They decorate their chains with flowers, they make their chains with gold, but it does not matter whether the chains are made of gold or of steel -- chains are chains, and they destroy your dignity. They destroy your humanity, they reduce you into a slave. The whole of humanity is living in many kinds of slaveries.

The slavery has become multidimensional: you belong to a race, you belong to a nation, you belong to a religion, you belong to a political party... And all these are causes of your slavery; all these are destructive to your spirituality.

An authentic human being does not belong to any religion, does not belong to any nation, does not belong to any race. He is simply part of existence. Why belong to small trivial crowds when you can belong to the whole universe? And with belonging to the whole universe there is an immense difference.

When you belong to the whole, it gives you freedom because the whole is unlimited and there are no limitations, no boundaries.

The whole can never become a prison to you.

The awakened man lives in the whole, belongs to the whole universe. He does not belong to small cages howsoever beautiful they may be.

I want my people to belong to the whole. That's the only way I can help you, and I can show my love to you and my respect to you. It has not been the case in the past: no master has been respectful towards his disciples. He has asked that the disciples should be respectful towards him; that they should be grateful towards him; that they should be surrendered to him. These are very subtle games of the ego.

If you love, if your love is real, you will not ask for surrender. If your love is real you will have tremendous respect, it does not matter whether you are master or disciple.

Respect, reverence for life, does not need any special qualification. You will be respectful to the trees and to the birds and to the stars too.

A master who is not respectful to his disciples has no right to have any respect from the disciples either; it is a mutual understanding and awareness. The master is not in any way holier-than-thou or higher-than-thou. He may be more experienced in certain ways, he may be richer in his inner world, but that does not create any hierarchy. All hierarchies are created by the ego, and to be a master, to be an awakened person, the first thing is to drop the ego then you cannot create any hierarchy.

There is a beautiful story about Gautam Buddha's past life...

He loved to relate about his many past lives. At least twenty-four past lives he has related in his discourses to his disciples -- beautiful stories. It does not matter whether they are historically true or not. There is no way to find it out, and there is no reason to be worried about whether they are historical or not -- they are significant.

He says, "In one of my past lives, when I was as unconscious as you are, when I was as miserable as you are, when I was searching for a master as you have come to me searching for a master, I heard about a man who had become enlightened. Immediately I rushed and when I reached a great crowd had already arrived.

"I touched the feet of the man who had become enlightened and the most surprising thing was that I had no thought of touching the feet -- it simply happened. Just the presence of the man was so immense, I found myself touching his feet without my will, without my thought, without my preparation, without even my readiness. I had just come to see out of curiosity whether he was really realized or not, and what had happened.

"As I came close to him something transpired and I touched his feet. I stood back and even a greater miracle happened: that man touched my feet.

"I said to him, `What are you doing? You are awakened, enlightened; I am an ignorant man in search of a master, and masters don't touch the feet of the disciples.'

"And the awakened man said, Ì don't belong to that category of masters. I am ready to touch everybody's feet because I know they are all going to become enlightened one day or other. And there are only seven days in a week! Somebody becomes enlightened on Monday and somebody becomes enlightened on Sunday -- it does not matter. One thing is certain, that everybody carries inside him a buddha. And I can see in you that it is not going to be long before you will be enlightened. I can see the seed has already died and that new sprouts have started growing within you. Seeing your great future, I touched your feet, and also to remind you that when you become an enlightened man, remember that one enlightened man has touched your feet when you were just a disciple.'"

Gautam Buddha used to relate this story again and again to his disciples saying, "I have as much respect towards you as you have. I have found the truth; you are searching for it.

It is not much of a difference. I have arrived; you are arriving."

I don't want to create any kind of illusory relationship between me and you. I want to stand alone and I want you also to stand alone, and in our aloneness we shall meet.

In our aloneness, in our freedom we shall have reverence and we shall have love, but our love will not be a bondage, and our respect will not create a hierarchy.

Question 3

BELOVED MASTER,

PLEASE SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THE DISCIPLE'S ALONENESS AND

COURAGE.

Anand Taral, the first thing to realize is that whether you want or not, you are alone.

Aloneness is your very nature.

You can try to forget it, you can try not to be alone by making friends, having lovers, mixing in the crowd... But whatever you do remains just on the surface. Deep inside, your aloneness is unreachable, untouchable.

A strange accident happens to every human being: as he is born the very situation of his birth begins in a family. And there is no other way, because the human child is the weakest child in the whole of existence.

Other animals are born complete. A dog is going to remain a dog his whole life, he is not going to evolve, grow. Yes, he will become aged, old, but he will not become more intelligent, he will not become more aware, he will not become enlightened. In that sense all the animals remain exactly at the point of their birth; nothing essential changes in them. Their death and their birth are horizontal -- in one line.

Only man has the possibility of going vertical, upwards, not just horizontal. Most of humanity behaves like other animals: life is just growing old -- not growing up. Growing up and growing old are totally different experiences.

Man is born in a family amongst human beings. From the very first moment he is not alone; hence, he gets a certain psychology of always remaining with people. In aloneness he starts feeling scared... unknown fears. He is not exactly aware of what he is afraid of, but as he moves out of the crowd something inside him becomes uneasy. To be with others he feels cozy, at ease, comfortable.

It is because of this reason he never comes to know the beauty of aloneness; the fear prevents him. Because he was born in a group he remains part of a group, and as he grows in age he starts making new groups, new associations, new friends. Already, existing collectivities don't satisfy him: the nation, the religion, the political party... He creates his own new associations: Rotary Club, Lions Club. But all these strategies are just to avoid one thing: never to be alone.

The whole life experience is of being together with people. Aloneness seems almost like a death. In a way it is a death; it is the death of the personality that you have created in the crowd. That is a gift of others to you. The moment you move out of the crowd you also move out of your personality.

In the crowd you know exactly who you are: you know your name, you know your degrees, you know your profession; you know everything that is needed for your passport, your identity card. But the moment you move out of the crowd, what is your identity, who are you? Suddenly you become aware that you are not your name -- your name was given to you. You are not your race -- what relationship has race with your consciousness? Your heart is not Hindu or Mohammedan; your being is not confined to any political boundaries of a nation; your consciousness is not part of any organization or church. Who are you?

Suddenly your personality starts dispersing. This is the fear: the death of the personality.

Now you will have to discover freshly, you will have to ask for the first time who you are. You will have to start meditating on the fact: Who am I? -- and there is a fear that you may not be at all. Perhaps you were nothing but a combination of all the opinions of the crowd, that you were nothing but your personality.

Nobody wants to be nothing.

Nobody wants to be nobody.

And in fact everybody is a nobody.

There is a very beautiful story...

Alice has reached Wonderland. She came to meet the king and the king asked, "Alice, did you meet a messenger coming towards me?"

She said, "I met nobody."

The king said, "If you met nobody, why has he not arrived yet?"

Alice was very much puzzled. She said, "You are not understanding me rightly. Nobody is nobody."

The king said, "That is obvious that nobody is nobody, but where is he? He should have reached here by this time. It simply means nobody walks slower than you."

And naturally Alice was very much annoyed and forgot that she is talking to the king.

She said, "Nobody walks faster than me."

Now the whole conversation goes on with that "nobody." She understands that he is saying, "Nobody walks slower than you."

"... and I am a fast walker. I have come from the other world to Wonderland, a small world -- and he is insulting me." Naturally she retorts, "Nobody walks faster than me!"

The king said, "If that is right then why has he not arrived?"

And this way the discussion continues.

Everybody is a nobody.

So the first problem for a disciple is to understand exactly the nature of aloneness. It means nobodiness; it means dropping your personality which is a gift to you by the crowd.

As you move off out of the crowd you cannot take that gift with you in your aloneness. In your aloneness you will have to discover again afresh, and nobody can give you the guarantee whether you will find anybody inside or not.

Those who have reached to aloneness have found nobody there. I really mean no body.

No name, no form, but a pure presence, a pure life, nameless, formless. This is exactly the true resurrection, and it certainly needs courage. Only very courageous people have been able to accept with joy their nobodiness, their nothingness. Their nothingness is their pure being; it is a death and a resurrection both.

Just today Hasya was showing me a small, beautiful cartoon: Jesus hanging on the cross, looking at the sky, is saying, "It would have been better if alongside God the father I had Allah the uncle. It would have been better; at least if God was not listening, Allah might have helped."

Having just God for his whole life he was very happy proclaiming, "I am the only begotten son of God." And he never talked about God's family, his brother, his wife, his other sons and daughters. In the whole of eternity what has he been doing? He does not have a TV to waste time, to pass time. He does not have any possibility of having a movie hall. What does this poor fellow go on doing?

It is a well-known fact that in poor countries the population goes on exploding for the simple reason that the poor man has no other free entertainment. The only free entertainment is to produce children. Although it is in the long run very costly, right now there is no ticket, no problem, no standing in the queue...

What has God been doing for the whole eternity? He has created only one son. Now on the cross he remembers that it would have been better if God really had a few brothers, sisters, uncles. "I could have asked help from somebody else if he is not listening to me."

He is praying and he is being angry saying, "Why have you forgotten me? Have you given up on me?" -- but there is no answer.

He is waiting for the miracle. The whole crowd that has gathered to see the miracle by and by started dispersing. It was too hot, unnecessarily. Nothing is going to happen; if something was going to happen it would have happened.

After six hours there were only three ladies left who were still believing that a miracle may happen. One was Jesus' mother -- naturally, mothers go on believing that their child is a genius. Every mother, without exception, believes that she has given birth to a child which is a giant.

Another woman who loved Jesus was a prostitute, Mary Magdalene. That woman, although she was a prostitute, must have loved Jesus. Even the disciples, the so-called apostles, who became second to Jesus in importance in the history of Christianity, all twelve escaped just out of fear of being caught and of being recognized -- because they were always hanging around with Jesus, everywhere. You never can believe the crowd: if they were caught, they might have been crucified, if not crucified at least beaten, stoned to death. Only three women were left.

The third was another woman who loved Jesus. It was love that remained in the last moments in the form of these three women. All those disciples must have been with Jesus just in order to get into paradise. It is always good to have good contacts, and you can't find a better contact than the contact with the only begotten son of God. Just behind him they will also be able to enter through the gates of paradise. Their disciplehood was a kind of exploitation of Jesus; hence there was no courage. It was cunning and clever, but not courageous.

Only love can be courageous.

You are asking about aloneness and courage. Courage comes out of love... Do you love yourself? Do you love this existence? Do you love this beautiful life which is a gift? It has been given to you without your being even ready for it, without your deserving it, without your being worthy of it.

If you love this existence which has given life to you, which goes on providing every moment life and nourishment to you, you will find courage. And this courage will help you to stand alone like a cedar of Lebanon, high -- reaching to the stars but alone.

In aloneness you will disappear as an ego and personality and you will find yourself as life itself, deathless and eternal. Unless you are capable of being alone your search for truth will remain a failure.

Your aloneness is your truth.

Your aloneness is your divineness.

The function of the master is to help you to stand alone. Meditation is just a strategy to take away your personality, your thoughts, your mind, your identity with the body, and leave you absolutely alone inside, just a living fire. And once you have found your living fire, you will know all the joys and all the ecstasies that human consciousness is capable of.

The old woman watched her grandson eat his soup with the wrong spoon, grasp his knife by the wrong end, eat the main course with his hands, and pour tea into the saucer and blow on it.

"Has not watching your mother and father at the dinner table taught you anything?" she asked.

"Yes," said the boy, chewing with his mouth open, "never to get married."

He has learned a great lesson: Remain alone.

It is really very difficult to be with others, but we are accustomed from our very birth to be with others. It may be miserable, it may be a suffering, it may be a torture but we are accustomed; at least it is well known.

One is afraid to step into the darkness beyond the territory, but unless you go beyond the territory of the collective mask, you cannot find yourself.

Groucho Marx has made a beautiful statement for you to remember: "I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set I go into the other room and read a book."

The teacher of a class of ten-year-olds is too shy to conduct the sex-education class and so she asks her class to make this a homework project.

Little Hymie asks his father who mumbles something about a stork. His grandmother said he came from a cabbage patch and his great-grandmother blushes and whispers that children come from the great ocean of existence.

The next day, little Hymie is called by the teacher to report on his project. Little Hymie says to the teacher, "I'm afraid there is something wrong in our family. Apparently nobody has made love for three generations!"

In fact, very few people have loved at all; they have pretended, have been hypocrites deceiving not only others but have deceived themselves too.

You can love authentically only when you are.

Right now you are only a part of a crowd, a cog in the wheel. How can you love? --

because you are not. First be; first know yourself.

In your aloneness you will discover what it is to be. And out of that awareness of your being love flows, and much more.

Aloneness should be your only search.

And it does not mean that you have to go to the mountains, you can be alone in the marketplace. It is simply a question of being aware, alert, watchful, remembering that you are only your watchfulness. Then you are alone wherever you are. You may be in the crowd, you may be in the mountains; it makes no difference, you are just the same watchfulness. In the crowd you watch the crowd; in the mountains you watch the mountains. With open eyes you watch existence; with closed eyes you watch yourself.

You are only one thing: the watcher.

And this watcher is the greatest realization. This is your buddha nature; this is your nature of enlightenment, of your awakening. This should be your only discipline. Only this makes you a disciple: this discipline of knowing your aloneness. Otherwise, what makes you a disciple? You have been deceived on every point in life. You have been told that to believe in a master makes you a disciple. That is absolutely wrong; otherwise, everybody in the world is a disciple.

Somebody believes in Jesus, somebody believes in Buddha, somebody believes in Krishna, somebody believes in Mahavira; everybody believes in somebody but nobody is a disciple, because to be a disciple does not mean to believe in a master. To be a disciple means to learn the discipline of being your self, of being your true self.

In that experience is hidden the very treasure of life. In that experience you become for the first time an emperor; otherwise you will remain a beggar in the crowd. There are two kinds of beggars: poor beggars and rich beggars, but they are all beggars. Even your kings and your queens are beggars.

Only those people, very few people who have stood alone in their being, in their clarity, in their light, who have found their own light, who have found their own flowering, who have found their own space they can call their home, their eternal home -- those few people are the emperors. This whole universe is their empire. They don't need to conquer it; it is already conquered.

By knowing oneself you have conquered it.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

The Invitation

Chapter #24

Chapter title: Virtue is the currency of heaven

2 September 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive

code:

8709020

ShortTitle:

INVITA24

Audio:

Yes

Video:

Yes

Length:

116

mins

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

HOW IS IT THAT GOING INTO SOMETHING CONSCIOUSLY HAS SUCH A POWER TO REVEAL ALL THE THREADS WHICH MAKE UP THE TANGLE?

Devageet, the reality is just the opposite. All our tangles in life are created by our unconsciousness, so the moment you become conscious those tangles disappear. It is not the power of consciousness that makes them disappear. It is the power of unconsciousness that creates them.

All the tangles of life, of love, of relationship are created by our unconsciousness. We don't know what we are doing, and by the time we become aware it is too late. What has been done cannot be undone. Our unconsciousness is very supportive to the ego -- they have a co-existence. Coming of consciousness will not only disperse all the tangles, it will also disperse you as an ego. It is a very complicated and complex phenomenon.

In your unconsciousness you do something. It is almost certain that once you have done something wrong that has created misery in you, around you, you will come to your senses. But you cannot undo it because the ego comes in between. You cannot even say,

"I am sorry." Just a simple apology may disperse the tangle but the ego won't allow even that. And you are almost a victim; you are not doing things. Your unconsciousness, your unawareness goes on forcing you to do things.

Just last night I answered Prem Shunyo's question very lightly and very lovingly and very joyously. I joked about it, but she was pissed off -- I could see her face. Milarepa was angry.

You don't know what you are doing. What you are doing is almost beyond your hands; you are reacting. If Prem Shunyo had heard what I was saying... I was simply saying,

"Don't take it seriously." I was laughing about it, but she could not laugh. You all laughed because it was not your problem. The more you laughed the more you made her serious.

In each person's life the time of change comes. And one of the greatest things to remember is that when you change a certain pattern of life, you have to change naturally.

It is not in your hands. Biology makes you capable of sex at the age of thirteen or fourteen; it is not your doing.

At a certain age, as you are coming closer to forty or forty-two, the biology's purpose is finished. All those hormones that have been propelling you are disappearing. To accept this change is very difficult. You suddenly start thinking as if you are no longer beautiful, that you need a face-lift.

I have heard about a woman who was saying to the plastic surgeon, "I need a face-lift."

The surgeon looked at her and he said, "There is nothing wrong; it is just age. Don't be worried about it. Why unnecessarily go to the trouble? But the woman was insistent, so the doctor said, "Okay, but it will cost five thousand dollars."

The woman said, "That much money I don't have. Can't you suggest something cheaper?"

The doctor said, "Yes. You can purchase a veil."

It is one of the Western problems. In the East no woman is worried. Things are accepted as they come. Acceptance has been the basic foundation of Eastern life. The West is continuously imposing on nature, demanding how things should be. Nobody wants to become old, so when the time of transition from one stage of life comes, a very strange phenomenon happens -- and that is what is happening to Shunyo. I did not say it because I did not want to hurt her.

It is going to happen whether I say anything about it or not, just as a candle comes to the very end, has only a few seconds more before it will be gone. At the last moment the candle suddenly becomes bigger with all its power.

Nobody wants to go.

It is a well-known fact to medical science that people at the time of death suddenly become completely healthy; all their diseases disappear. This is the last effort of their life

-- to resist death. The people who are related to them feel very happy that suddenly all diseases have disappeared. The person has become calm and quiet, but they don't know that it signifies death. The diseases have disappeared because their function is fulfilled: they have killed the man. Now it is the last spurt of life.

The same happens with every biological change in life. When sex is becoming irrelevant, you start thinking of sex more than ever, and suddenly a great spurt... That is what is giving her the idea that it seems she is sexually repressed -- because so much sexuality is suddenly overwhelming the mind.

The mind can only understand logically, rationally one thing: from where is this sexuality coming? -- it must be coming from the repressed unconscious. That is what Sigmund Freud and their followers have been teaching to the whole world. They are right on many points; they are wrong on many points. Particularly about this point, the transition when you are no longer young and the hormones in you are going to disappear, and the interest in sex is going to die -- before dying it will explode with its full force.

If you go to a psychoanalyst, he will say that you are sexually repressed. I cannot say that, because I know that this sudden overwhelming sexuality will be gone by itself, you don't have to do anything. It is the signal that life is passing through a change. Now, life will be more calm and more quiet. You are really entering into a better state.

Sex is a little childish. As you become more and more mature, sex loses the grip over you

-- and it is a good sign. It is something to be happy about; it is not a problem to be solved.

It is something to celebrate.

In the East no woman ever feels the trouble of the transition from youth to old age. In fact, she feels immensely happy that now that old demon is gone and life can be more peaceful. But the West has been living under many illusions. One is the illusion that there is only one life. That creates immense trouble. If there is only one life and sex is disappearing, so you are finished. Now, there is no more opportunity; there will not be any more excitement in life. Nobody is going to say, "You are beautiful and I love you and I will love you forever."

So first, the illusion of one life creates a problem. Second, the psychoanalysts and other therapists have created another illusion that sex is almost synonymous to life. The more sexual you are, the more alive you are. So when sex starts disappearing one starts feeling like a used cartridge: now there is no point to live; life ends with sex ending. Then people try all kinds of bizarre things: face lift, plastic surgery, false breasts. It is stupid, simply stupid. People start trying wigs; they start trying dresses which are sex-provoking.

Almost all Western women are starving -- they call it dieting! The idea in the West is that a woman is beautiful if she is not fat. And nature has some other idea: the woman has to be a little fat because for nature the woman is a mother. A mother needs extra fat for the child, because when the child is in her womb he will need food. And when the child is in the womb, the mother starts feeling nausea; she cannot eat, she starts throwing up. She needs emergency fat in her body so she can feed the child because the child needs food; he is growing fast.

Science says that in the nine months in the mother's womb, a child grows so fast that he will never grow so fast again in his seventy years. In nine months he passes through almost the whole evolution of man, from the fish... all the stages. His requirements have to be fulfilled by the mother -- And she cannot eat... you can imagine. It is troublesome to have a child in your belly. I don't think any man is ready to be pregnant: he will commit suicide; without any doubt he will jump from a fifty-storey building, "I am finished...

pregnant...?"

Just think, the idea that you have a child in the belly, and you will go crazy. But how to get rid of it...

The mother goes through immense suffering, great sacrifice; hence, in the East we have not created the idea of a skinny woman. Of course, the skinny woman looks more sexually attractive, younger. The fat woman looks less sexually interesting, because she loses proportions. Her waist is no longer very small. Her body has gathered so much fat that nobody will feel attracted towards her. She does not have the necessary attraction for the human mind.

The East has accepted that a woman has to be a little more fat than a man, a little more rounded.

Just the other day somebody brought me a book of pictures taken by one famous photographer and on the front page was Sophia Loren. In the East she cannot be conceived of as very beautiful: she must be dieting -- and dieting is nothing but the rich man's idea of starvation.

The poor people starve by themselves. The rich people starve in a costly way under professional guidance. The fear that you will not be attractive, that you will no longer be looked at by people... You will pass through the street and nobody will look at you; who is going...?

It is a great need of man, and particularly women, to have attention -- attention is nourishment. A woman suffers immensely when nobody pays attention to her. She has nothing else to attract people by; she has only her body. Man has not allowed her to have other dimensions where she can become a famous painter, a dancer or a singer, a learned professor. Man has cut all other dimensions from the woman's life where she can be attractive and people will pay respect even while she becomes old.

I have to remind you of the meaning of `respect': it means looking back. When somebody passes by: re-spect. It has nothing to do with honor; it has something to do with your being suddenly aware that a beautiful thing has passed.

Woman is left only the body by man, so she is so much concerned with the body that it creates clinging, possessiveness, fear that the person who loves her, if he leaves, perhaps will find another person. And without attention she starts feeling almost dead: What is the use of life if nobody is paying attention to you? She does not have an intrinsic life of her own.

Man has taught woman that her life depends on others' opinions about her. You can see all over the world that beauty competitions are arranged only for women, and the woman does not even revolt against these ideas. Why not for men? Just as you choose a Mrs. or Miss Universe, choose a Mr. Universe. No, nobody bothers about the man's body. He can grow fat; he can become a Winston Churchill. Still he attracts attention because he has power.

In the same book just beside Sophia Loren is Winston Churchill -- ugly, as fat as you can conceive, the whole face sagging. He needs a face-lift -- not Sophia Loren -- but he will not bother; there is no need. He can have power, he can be the prime minister. He can be this and he can be that...

Man has managed over the centuries to have all the other dimensions of attracting people, and he has left to woman only one dimension: her body. He has made woman just a vegetable. And naturally, the vegetable starts being worried if there are no customers.

It is not a coincidence that in the most sexually perverted country, France, while being in love with a woman, you say, "I want to eat you." Are these people cannibals? Is the woman a vegetable or what? "I want to eat you" shows a great respect for the woman!

When nobody says to her, "I want to eat you," she thinks, "I am now finished. Life has come to an end!"

But here with me you have to learn something. The first thing is a deep acceptability of all the changes that nature brings to you. Youth has its own beauty; old age has its own beauty too. It may not be sexual, but if a man has lived silently, peacefully, meditatively, then old age will have a grandeur of its own.

Just as the snow-covered peaks look beautiful, the white hairs of old age also have their own beauty -- and not only beauty, but wisdom too, which no young man can claim, because all his behavior is stupid. He is running behind this woman, running behind that woman.

The old man has stopped all this running business. He has settled in himself. He is no longer dependent on anybody else. The old woman should follow the same way. There should be no difference between men and women.

That is why I was simply laughing and joking about Prem Shunyo's question because I did not want her to become serious about something which is natural. And if Milarepa feels angry, he simply proves what I have been saying, that he is crazy.

Now he is running after younger women. This shows that you are not maturing, not learning that what you call love is not love, but biological slavery. Love happens only when you are beyond biological slavery; then love has a beauty. Biological slavery and the biological relationship are so ugly that for centuries people have decided to make love in darkness without light, so they don't see what they are doing.

Particularly the woman is very sensitive when you make love to her; she immediately closes her eyes. Just to see this nasty thing that is happening...

I have heard that when Henry Ford died he was received with a great welcome in heaven and even God thanked him: "You have done great service to humanity by creating so many cars -- you are a great creator."

Henry Ford said, "That's okay, but you are not that great a creator. You have put man's body in such a stupid way that the loveliest part people think about, dream about is so close to the dirtiest part. Could you not find somewhere else in the whole body?

Why has love to be sandwiched between the ugliest parts? You don't have any sense, no aesthetics. The exhaust pipe is so close to the most lovely part that I cannot believe that you are a great creator" -- and he was right.

God has committed many mistakes. This is one of the major mistakes. The loving part could have been anywhere else: you have a six-foot-long-body, so much territory! And what kind of a stupid god... where he puts the loving parts?

Not only is it to be accepted when life is going through a biological change, but it has to be rejoiced that you have passed over all that stupidity, that now you are free from biological bondage; it is only a question of conditioning.

When you ask me questions you should remember that I never in any way want to hurt you. Even sometimes if I have to avoid the truth, I avoid it but don't hurt you. If you get hurt about something that must be your own mind. But perhaps you are just a victim in that too -- it is unconscious.

Devageet, you are asking, "How is it that going into something consciously has such a power to reveal all the threads which make up the tangle?"

They have been made in your unconsciousness. They have been made in the darkness of your being. And when you bring light, naturally you see all the tangle: how you have created your misery, your suffering, your anguish, yourself. Seeing it is enough -- all those tangles disappear.

A conscious man never creates any tangle; he lives more intensely than anybody else. But his life is without any tangles for the simple reason that in consciousness you cannot create tangles.

Abbie's wife had just died and he was standing over the grave and sobbing uncontrollably. His best friend put his arm around him and said, "Abbie, time is a wonderful thing. Believe it or not some day you will want to start a new life again and be with people, maybe even get married again. Listen to me: Time heals wounds."

Abbie looked at him and replied, "I know, I know... but what am I going to do tonight?"

Such is the unconsciousness of man. The wife died in the morning and he is worried about what he is going to do in the night -- tonight! And you are talking about time: that some day wounds will be healed. What about tonight?

I have heard an ancient story, Arabic, that a man's father died and all the old people of the neighborhood came and said, "Don't be worried, son. If you have lost your father, we are here. Don't think for a single moment that you are fatherless. We are all your fathers. You can come always to us in any difficulty, any problem."

He was very much consoled, seeing the concern of his neighborhood people. He had never thought that they would be so considerate.

And then his mother died and all the old women came and said, "Don't be worried. We are still alive. You can look at us as your mother and whatever your mother was doing for you, we can do. There is no problem about it."

He was very much consoled. And then his wife died, and not a single wife from the neighborhood came to say don't be worried we are here. Whatever your wife was doing, we will do...!

The man was very angry. He stood in front of his house, watching if anybody would come or not -- and nobody came. Finally, he started shouting, "You nasty people. When my father died all the old people came. When my mother died all the old women came.

And now my wife has died and no young woman is coming -- what kind of neighborhood is this?

"... absurd, illogical! I am waiting from the morning for somebody to turn up, but nobody has come."

One has to accept life. But your unconsciousness does not allow you to accept life as it is.

You wanted something else.

It is perfectly good when sex disappears. You will be more capable of meditating. You will be more capable of being alone. You will be more capable of being blissful, without any misery because the whole game of sex is nothing but a long misery -- fighting, hate, jealousy, envy. It is not a peaceful life.

It is peace, silence, blissfulness, aloneness, freedom which give you the real taste of what life is.

Two women are talking in a tearoom at four o'clock over two large, gooey ice cream sundaes and little sugary cakes. They have not seen each other since high school days and one is bragging about her very advantageous marriage.

"My husband buys me whole new sets of diamonds when the ones I have get dirty," she says, "and I have never even bothered to clean them."

"Fantastic," said the other woman.

"Yes," says the first, "we get a new car every two months."

"Fantastic," says the other.

"And our house..." pursues the first woman, "Well, what is the use of talking about it, it is just..."

"Fantastic," finishes the other.

"Yes, and tell me, what are you doing nowadays?" asked the first woman.

"I go to the charm school," says the other.

"Charm school! Why, how quaint. What do you learn there?"

"Well, we learn to say, fantastic, instead of bullshit."

In your unconsciousness everything is bullshit. And when you become conscious, it is really fantastic: all tangles disappear, all problems disappear. But you need not go to a charm school to learn it, because in a charm school deep down the woman is saying,

"Bullshit."

And she is just repeating like a parrot, "Fantastic," but she means bullshit. Not in a charm school, but in a school where your unconsciousness slowly, slowly disappears leaving a luminous being within you -- then there is no tangle in life.

I have lived a very strange life. Anybody else would have found so many tangles in it, so many troubles. I have also passed through all kinds of tangles, troubles, problems, but I have remained unscratched; I have enjoyed the journey. Whatever life brought to me, I have enjoyed it. I have tried to make the best out of it, whatever it is.

There is no point in crying and weeping over spilled milk. Any situation can be made a learning, a step towards maturity, can be turned into a beneficial opportunity. That is what I call intelligence; otherwise, what is the difference between intelligent people and unintelligent people.

Devageet, it is true consciousness has tremendous power, but it is not used in revealing and dispersing the tangles of your life; they simply disappear as you become conscious.

Gautam Buddha used to say that when the lights are on and from the windows people can see that the master is awake, thieves don't come close. When the lights are put off, only then do thieves come close to the house to see whether the master has gone to sleep and it is the right time to enter. He was saying this about consciousness. He used to call sex, greed, lust for power, position, respectability all thieves. They come to you only when they see that there is no light in the man; inside it is all dark.

Once you are radiating consciousness and light, those thieves don't come close to you.

But consciousness has its own power. It is simply in the presence of consciousness that tangles disappear. The power is not used for dispersing the tangles and problems; the power is to bring blissfulness. The power is to bring peace, silence, at homeness, at easeness and a tremendous ecstasy, a divine drunkenness.

Life becomes for the first time self-oriented; you don't have to beg from others for anything. Nobody can give you blissfulness; nobody can give you ecstasy. Nobody can give you the sense of immortality and the dance that comes with it. Nobody can give you the silence, which becomes a song in your heart.

What can people give to you? In fact, the power of consciousness gives you so much that you become capable of sharing with people. For the first time, you can give to people.

They are living in darkness; they haven't seen any light. They don't have any idea what a conscious being is. They don't have any conception, comprehension of the power of consciousness, how many flowers shower, how much fragrance becomes natural to you.

You can give, and you can give them a taste and you can give them a direction, so they can also find the same power which is dormant in them.

A conscious man awakened can help millions of people to move towards the source of joy, real and authentic life, to pure love which knows nothing of hate, which knows nothing of jealousy, which has nothing to do with body and biology -- which is just a spiritual communion, a feeling of deep compassion for your innermost being.

Yes, the power of consciousness gives you many things. The treasure is inexhaustible, but your problems and tangles that have been created by unconsciousness -- for them no power is needed, just the presence of consciousness is enough.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

CAN YOU SAY SOMETHING ABOUT VIRTUE?

Fantastic! Here, we are not concerned about virtue at all. Virtue is for people who are unconscious; it is a training for them to say, "Don't say bullshit, say fantastic!"

Virtue is a training a discipline imposed on unconscious people. All the religions talk about virtue as being against sin. They have made fixed categories. Some things are condemned as sin and some things are praised as virtues. The virtuous man will have immense reward after death, and the sinner will be condemned to hellfire for eternity.

This is the strategy of fear and greed, because man can be easily manipulated by these two things -- fear and greed. Heaven is nothing but greed exaggerated; so hell is fear exaggerated, and human beings are afraid of eternal hellfire. Out of fear they somehow try to avoid whatever is sin. And the trouble is anything that gives you joy, anything that gives you pleasure is sin.

Out of fear they lose all contact with life, they become dry and dead before their death.

There is only one consolation: that they are declared saints, they are worshipped. Just their ego is satisfied greatly; otherwise they are suffering deep down immensely.

That is why your saints cannot laugh: laughter needs a little juice. There is no juice in them; everything is dry. They are deserts where nothing grows green. So on the one hand the pressure of fear...

I have seen pictures of the Middle Ages: there were Christian preachers who made so much fuss about hell and its tortures that just to be in the church listening to their sermons many ladies used to faint. Just the idea that they were going into such detail...

what would be done to you? The people thought the preachers were great according to how much they could infect people's psychologies. The greatest preacher was one in whose congregation almost everybody fainted.

A deep fear psychology, a deep guilt psychology on the one hand, and on the other hand greed to be fulfilled as a reward. You will be getting everything in paradise: all those things which are sins here on the earth, they will also be available to you.

Mohammedans are against alcohol, but in their paradise there are rivers of alcohol. You don't have to go to a small pub, you can drink, you can drown, you can swim. All the rivers, they don't consist of water -- pure wine. Here it is condemned: you should not fall in the trap of love. A woman is condemned and in the heaven -- in every religion's idea of heaven -- women are freely supplied. Of course, according to your virtue you will get. If your virtue is great perhaps, Sophia Loren -- it all depends on your virtue.

A strange game has been played with the human mind. Thousands of girls... I say girls, because they don't grow in age. They don't have to feel like Prem Shunyo; they are fixed for eternity at the age sixteen. In fact, they are prostitutes, eternal prostitutes, but they are thought to be rewards for saints. How many other saints have used those rewards, because since the beginning the same staff has been working, not even a shift change. I have never come across anything about a shift change or any staff change in the holy scriptures -- the same young women.

They remain always young. They don't perspire; they do not need deodorants. They must be certainly made of plastic, because only plastic does not perspire. A real skin is bound to perspire if it is alive, because through every pore of the skin you are breathing in. And perspiration is a natural way of keeping you at the same body temperature.

If it is too cold you start shivering. You may not be aware why you are shivering. You think it is because of the cold; it is to keep your body temperature continuously the same.

Shivering gives you inner heat. In the hot season you perspire. You perspire so that your water, perspiration is taken away by the heat; it evaporates so the heat does not affect your temperature. It simply evaporates your perspiration. It leaves you without increasing your temperature; otherwise, if there was no perspiration, your life span would not be very big.

The life span can be measured in many ways: in years, seventy years, but as body temperature from ninety-eight to one hundred and ten -- just twelve degrees is your span of life. If there was no perspiration, your temperature would be as high as the heat is around you. The moment you pass one hundred and five, you would start getting dizzy.

The moment you pass one hundred and seven, you would be falling into a coma. The moment you pass one hundred and ten, you would have passed away.

It is perspiration that saves you; it is your life savior. But those poor plastic girls... and eternal promise for all joys!

The Hindu heaven has certain trees, which they call kalpavriksha, wish-fulfillment trees.

You don't have to order a cup of tea or a woman or a car; you don't have to order anybody; you don't have to call any bearer or give a call to some agency. You just sit under the wish-fulfilling tree -- and they are all over heaven, everywhere -- you just sit underneath and you say whatever you want, and immediately, instantly, it will be provided.

There is a beautiful story of a man, who by some accident stumbled into heaven. He had no idea where he had reached. He was sitting under a kalpavriksha. He was feeling very hungry. He had been traveling a lot and that is how he had stumbled somehow by accident into heaven.

He said, "I am feeling hungry but I don't see any hotel anywhere, any restaurant, nothing.

I don't see even a single man. But I am feeling very hungry, if I could get some good food... Immediately beautiful women appeared from nowhere with all kinds of sweets and delicious foods. He was so hungry that he did not pay attention to where all these things were coming from.

He started eating, feeling perfectly well. He was tired. He went to sleep. Before going to sleep, he thought that sleeping on the ground, uneven with stones, if someone could arrange just a mattress, and suddenly -- he could not believe -- again beautiful women appeared with a beautiful bed and they put him on the bed. But he was so tired that he still did not think what was going on.

When refreshed, he awoke. He thought, my God, there is nobody here who has brought the food, and I have not said to anybody; I just thought about it! And he looked at the beautiful bed, "Who has brought this? I had simply thought about lying down on the ground. It seems there must be ghosts around." That was the natural conclusion, because he was not aware that he was in heaven, under a kalpavriksha.

"There must be ghosts all around, my God" -- and immediately ghosts appeared, because whatever you would say... The moment he saw the skeletons of ghosts dancing all around, he said, "My god, they are going to kill me" -- and they killed him. The man never came back.

Religions have used fear to prevent you from living, and greed to help you so that you can be patient and hope that great things are ahead. Just the small things you are leaving, and for eternity you will enjoy all the pleasures that you want -- and you don't have to pay for them.

Virtue is the currency of heaven.

The more virtuous you are, the bigger a bank balance you have in heaven. I don't teach you virtue because your virtue is false, because deep down there is greed.

I teach you only awareness.

Out of awareness whatever you do is virtue according to me. And out of unawareness whatever you do is sin according to me. And according to me, your sins are not going to take you to hell. Your sins immediately give you hell -- here, just now. And your virtues are not going to give you an eternity of paradise. Your virtues give you joy, blissfulness, the moment you act with full awareness.

The punishment and the reward is immediate: the reward follows your action. But it depends where your action will lead you. It can be unconscious action, then hell herenow.

It has nothing to do with geography; it is something to do with your psychology.

Acting consciously, you are in paradise wherever you are. Once you have learned, you will not ask, "What is virtue?" You will ask, "What is awareness? What is consciousness?" You will ask, "What is meditation?" -- because that is going to make you conscious and make you alert.

What brings misery is sin.

Whatever brings joy is virtue.

Alfred North Whitehead has made a beautiful statement: It requires a very unusual mind to make an analysis of the obvious.

To me, it is absolutely obvious that virtue or sin, heaven or hell are secondary. The primary is your alertness, your awareness, but people won't ask the obvious. These are by-products, and by getting entangled with by-products you will be in trouble.

There is a tale concerning Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson on board a train...

They passed a flock of sheep and Watson said, "A sizable flock, Holmes."

"Ah, exactly seven hundred and eighty-four in number, my dear Watson," said Holmes sleepily.

"Good heavens, Holmes," said Watson. "Surely you can't have counted them."

They are in a train; the train has passed the sheep. The flock is left far behind and it must have taken a single moment to pass.

"Not directly," said Holmes. "I made use of a simple trick any school child knows. I merely counted the legs and divided by four."

Just don't get into nonsense; otherwise, you will always feel what Leonardo da Vinci has confessed in his letters: I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have. Now, Leonardo da Vinci is one of the greatest geniuses, and whatever he has done is incomparable. There is nobody else who even comes close to him. But even such a great man feels a little guilt, "I have not reached the quality it should have."

This is the atmosphere that religions have created in the world. They don't allow anybody to be at ease, even the greatest genius. They go on telling you that you are still not doing right; you are still far away from the goal. You are still unworthy; you are always unworthy. They will not leave you at peace so that you can enjoy life and love life and be grateful to God, and be grateful to the universe -- which both mean the same to me.

God is not a person. It is this whole universe -- these trees, these clouds, the sun, the stars, you and everybody, whether asleep or awake, whether committing sins or virtues, you are part of one organic universe.

If you commit a sin... The word `sin' has been contaminated by the religions; otherwise it simply means in its roots, forgetfulness, unawareness. It means exactly what I am saying to you. Sin is your unawareness. Any action done in unconsciousness is sin. But religions have completely destroyed the original meaning of the word. Whatever you are doing consciously is virtue and there is no ready-made list of what are virtues, because in a different situation, the same thing may become sin. The thing that was virtue in one condition, in one context, may not be virtue in another context; it all depends. But how are you going to know whether in this context it is virtue or sin.

Those dead categories that have been given to you like the ten commandments, fixed forever, they don't take account of the fact that life is continuously changing and you are moving every moment into a new situation -- and a new situation needs a new response.

So I don't give you, I can't give you any ready-made list to avoid these things, that these are sins and avoid them because they will lead you to hell. I cannot exploit you and your fears and I cannot say to you that these are the commandments, if you follow them yours is the kingdom of God, because in life things go on changing.

It happened...

I had a friend; he was a professor in the university -- a very learned professor of Sanskrit.

He wanted to go to Tibet because many scriptures in Sanskrit on Buddhism had been burned by the Hindus in India. But their translations exist in Tibetan still, so he wanted to translate them back into Sanskrit.

It was a great idea and he was well versed in Sanskrit. He had been learning Tibetan for years and now he was ready. But he was a brahmin by caste, a very orthodox brahmin.

In India it is perfectly good to get up at five o'clock, early in the morning and have a good bath in the nearby lake or in the nearby river, and then do your prayer, meditate. Only after that can you enter into the mundane world of your profession, your life, your family.

In Tibet, the Tibetan holy book says that only one bath a year is allowed; Tibetan monks are the dirtiest people to find. I have been harassed by Tibetan monks.

When the Dalai Lama came for the first time -- escaped from Tibet with thousands of Lamas -- I was taking a camp in Bodhgaya and all the Lamas first came to pay respect to the place where Gautam Buddha had become enlightened. I was taking a camp just there in the compound of the memorial temple for Buddha. I had never come across Tibetan Lamas. But such are habits, they die very hard. They use, I think three or four layers of clothes, one on top of another. Their clothes are greasy, dusty and they will not take any bath because their holy scripture says once in a year is compulsory.

When my friend reached Tibet, he continued to follow his pattern of life in India. He could not manage to be there more than three days, because he had to take a bath early in the morning, five o'clock, according to the brahmin religion. Without taking a bath you cannot eat; that is a sin -- and in India it is certainly right. But in Tibet the whole context is different. To take a bath in ice-cold water, five o'clock in the early morning is to freeze yourself to death. Food is not a problem. You will not be able to eat food. In three days he got so tortured by this morning bath.

One day he tried; it was too much. The whole day he was feeling as if his blood was frozen. And for another two days he could not eat because he could not take the bath. So he had taken only one bath in Tibet and one day he had eaten and two days he remained without food. But he thought, How long will it be because I cannot survive without food, neither can I survive with the bath. It is better to go home, forget all about those scriptures; it is none of my business.

He came back. I was surprised when I saw him back "... so quick you managed to translate."

He said, "Forget all about translations. Congratulate me that I am alive." And when he told me I said that this is stupidity.

In Tibet you should look at the context, not at your Hindu idea of virtue and sin -- that is stupidity. Mohammedans have been allowed by their founder, Mohammed, four wives, and it is perfectly virtuous to have four wives.

Mohammed himself married nine wives. Obviously he was a prophet, no ordinary man, but, it was perfectly right in those times because the Arabs were continuously fighting and killing. But only men were killed; it was against their culture to kill any woman. The women were raped, but not killed.

So there was a strange situation; there were four times more women than men. If he had insisted that monogamy was virtue, as is being insisted all over the world -- polygamy or even bigamy is a crime, is a sin -- he would not have been right. Because if monogamy had been virtuous, what would have happened to the three women who are left without men? They would corrupt the whole of society. They will become prostitutes and the whole society would become an ugly scene. So Mohammed is perfectly right; I support him.

But not now in India, where women and men are equal as they are everywhere, nature keeps a balance, an exact balance. To keep the balance nature has to take care: it gives birth to one hundred and fifteen boys when it gives birth to one hundred girls, because fifteen boys will pop off before the time of marriage -- boys are weak and fragile.

The ordinary idea that women are weak and fragile is just male chauvinistic imposition.

Nature knows better: fifteen boys per hundred are going to die. Girls don't die; they have a greater resistance against diseases. They are not so often sick and they live longer than men, five years longer all over the world.

So by the time the marriageable age comes, there are a hundred boys and a hundred girls.

Monogamy seems to be absolutely right in this context, but Mohammedans go on insisting that it is part of their religion... So even in India they are allowed to have four wives. It is such an ugly situation because it means three men will remain without wives.

So the Mohammedans abduct women from other religions.

Hindus particularly are very touchy people. If a woman has been forcibly taken by the Mohammedans to their homes, even if they have not touched her she will not be accepted back in the Hindu fold, she has to go to the Mohammedans. She has fallen below the dignity of a Hindu.

So Mohammedans have been continually stealing women from other societies. They have to, because what to do with the three men that are without women? Those three men will start relationships with others' wives and that will create a mess. And the Indian constitution, which, in the name of religion, doesn't want to interfere in any religion, cannot do anything to prevent Mohammedans from this polygamy. And those four women that they marry, they use as economic, financial help; they work and the husband rests. This is great!

The Mohammedan priests go on insisting on no interference, because a man with four women can create four children per year, very easily, but a woman with four men cannot create four children; she will create only one child. The population of Mohammedans goes on increasing as nobody else can increase the population the way they can. So you will not be surprised that India has been divided; Mohammedans have taken Pakistan and made it separate. The country has been cut into three parts: one side is Pakistan, given to Mohammedans; another side is Bangladesh, given to Mohammedans. And still, within forty years, in India Mohammedans are again number two to Hindus.

Again they can ask for another country. And you will also be surprised that India is a Hindu country but the number of Mohammedans in India is more than in any Mohammedan country in the world -- not even Arabia, or Egypt, or Iran, or Libya, or Palestine... No Mohammedan country has so many Mohammedans as India has.

India is the greatest Mohammedan country in the world if you take the number of the Mohammedans. And the number goes on growing four times more. Hindus are simply puzzled what to do because soon they will be outnumbering Hindus. They have taken Pakistan, they have taken Bangladesh, and it is not far away when they will be the majority and Hindus will become the minority in their own country.

Situations, contexts should be taken into account and that is possible only if you are living a very alert and conscious life; otherwise you will follow dead, ready-made things which may have been relevant at some time. Those times have changed and they have become irrelevant, but the list continues to be the same.

So I don't give you any list. I have been asked by priests, Hindus, Mohammedans, Christians, that I should make a clear-cut statement: what are sins, what are virtues and what are my fundamental principles of religion?

I said, "My first fundamental and the last fundamental is that religion cannot be a fixed thing. It has to be spontaneous. It has to come out of your awareness. Nobody can decide it. No catechism can be given according to me.

I can only teach you awareness and then you find out with your awareness, with your own light where to go, what to do.

Anything done with awareness is virtue.

Anything done with unawareness is sin.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

The Invitation

Chapter #25

Chapter title: Just go and tell everybody

2 September 1987 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive

code:

8709025

ShortTitle:

INVITA25

Audio:

Yes

Video:

Yes

Length:

103

mins

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

SINCE MY ARRIVAL HERE I HAVE BEEN LIVING INTENSELY, AND I SEE

THAT THE PRESENT IS ONLY POETRY.

I THANK YOU DEEPLY FOR YOUR BEING HERE WITH US. I AM LEAVING IN

A FEW DAYS AND I FEEL THAT YOU WILL BE EVERYWHERE I GO, BUT I AM

SCARED OF THE NOISE OF THE WORLD. I DO NOT WANT TO LOSE MYSELF

THERE.

CAN YOU TELL ME SOMETHING?

Dhyan Giovanna, once you have tasted the inner silence, the noise on the outside does not matter; it is not a disturbance at all. The only disturbance comes from your inner noise, the chattering noise inside, the continuous rush of thoughts -- that is the real marketplace. What is outside, is outside; you can pass through the marketplace in absolute silence. If your inner being is not disturbed, then what is happening outside cannot have any impact on you.

The fear arises only because we are not certain of our own silence -- our silence is very vulnerable. And in the beginning, it is natural -- it is nothing to be worried about. All that is needed is that the inner silence should be more crystallized. In fact, going into the outer world can be of immense help because it becomes a test. Use it as an opportunity to test your silence. And once you start feeling silent in the crowd, then you will be overjoyed --

then you can be certain that this silence is yours; otherwise sometimes one is deceived.

In the mountains you can be silent, in the deep forest you can be silent, in the middle of the night under the stars you can be silent -- but that is not your silence. It is just the outer silence penetrating you. In fact, there is no difference -- outer silence penetrating you, or outer noise penetrating you -- both are the same; you are under the impact of the outside.

Hence I don't give any value to the silence that you feel coming from the outside. This silence will not be much help; when noise comes, you will be overwhelmed by the noise.

The silence has not to be of the mountains, of the stars, of the silence of the deep night, nor the silence of this commune. Here everybody is silent -- at least, trying to be silent!

With so many people trying to be silent, one can just become part... But it is the same: you can become part of a commune and feel silent; in the crowd you can become part of the crowd and you will feel noisy. In fact, you are not yet. All your experiences are dependent; you don't exist as an individual. That is the fear; otherwise it does not matter.

I used to have a friend who was condemned in the whole city -- he was a thief, and you can say he was a master thief. For almost six months he would be in jail, and six months outside. Nobody in the city even wanted to talk to him.

From the jail he used to come directly to my house. He was a very lovable man. And whenever he would come from the jail to my house, naturally everybody in the family was disturbed. My father again and again insisted to me that this friendship was not good.

I said, "Why do you believe in him and not in me? Am I your son, or is he your son?"

And he said, "What kind of argument are you giving me?"

I said, "I am saying exactly the right thing. You don't believe in me, you believe in him.

You are afraid I will be affected by him -- you are not giving even a single thought that I may affect him. Why do you think I am so weak?"

He said, "I have never thought from this angle -- perhaps you are right."

Slowly, slowly that man became accepted by my family. It took a little time; there were many reasons for them to reject him. The first reason was that he was a Mohammedan; second, he was a thief.

I had to sit outside the dining room because they would not allow him in the dining room.

In a Jaina family, no Mohammedan can be allowed in the dining room. Even for guests or customers, separate plates, glasses, saucers, cups -- everything is kept, but it is kept separate; it is used only for them. And I insisted that when I invited him for food, I was going to eat with him -- I could not insult him. He may be a thief, he may be a Mohammedan, it doesn't matter; I respect his humanity. So the only way was that I would also have to sit outside the dining room. And my friend used to say, "Why do you unnecessarily continue to fight with your family?"

And slowly, slowly my respect towards him changed him. He was angry with me, saying,

"Your respect prevents me from being a thief, and I don't know anything else. I am uneducated."

He was an orphan, and there was no other way for him except either to beg or to steal, and certainly stealing is better than begging. Begging degrades you very badly; by stealing, at least you are using your intelligence, your courage.

He was angry and said, "Now my life has become really a problem, and you are the cause. I cannot steal because I cannot betray your trust, your love and your respect. And nobody is ready to give me employment."

So I took him to my father and I said to him, "Now my friend wants employment. You are against his stealing, now give him employment; otherwise you will be responsible for his stealing. The poor fellow is ready to do any work, but nobody in the whole city is ready to give him work because he is a thief. People say to him, `Bring certificates from where you have been working. Who has ever employed you ever in your whole life?' And he has no certificates."

I told my father, "Listen, somebody has to give him work the first time; otherwise, how can he get a certificate? You give him employment, and then you can give him a certificate. And I guarantee that he will not steal and he will not do anything wrong."

On my guarantee my father employed him. All other friends of my father said, "What are you doing, giving a job to a thief? He will deceive you." But my father said, "My son has given his guarantee, and I have to give the man an opportunity because my son's reasoning is right: If nobody gives him an opportunity, then everybody is pushing him towards the jail. And the whole society is responsible for pushing him towards the jail.

He wants to work, but if nobody is willing to give him work.... What do you want -- that he should commit suicide or what?"

Once a person goes into jail, then it becomes his only place, his home. Then within a few days he is back, because there is nobody outside to give him any protection, any dignity, any respect, any love. It is better to be in the jail.

He proved tremendously trustworthy, and finally my father had to accept. He said, "You are right. I was thinking that I was taking an unnecessary risk. I had not thought that your reasoning was going to work. He is a professional thief -- his whole life has been just going in and out of the jail. But you were right."

My father was a very sincere man and very truthful; he was always willing to accept his mistakes, even in front of his own son. He said, "You were right, that I trusted more in him -- I thought he would spoil your life. I did not trust that you might transform his life."

Giovanna, it all depends how much you trust your silence, how much you trust yourself, how much the silence is arising from your inner sources. Then there is no problem -- you can go in the noisy world and you will remain silent. And it is possible that you may change a few people you come in contact with. Why trust that they will be able to change you? Why accept your weakness?

Go in the world with courage and with strength, and the noise of the world will not be a disturbance. And your silence will help people to become silent. Talk about your experience of meditation to your friends, to your family. It is always helpful to provoke in people an invitation, to provoke in people a longing, that they have been missing something that you have attained. And the more you spread your experience and share your experience with people, the more you will be protecting yourself; they will not be able to influence you.

Start spreading your fragrance and your silence and your experience. That becomes a subtle protection around you, and that also becomes a tremendously transforming force.

Rather than going with fear, go with blissfulness, spreading the experience that has happened to you.

You say the present is pure poetry -- that is so valuable; share it. And trust that the higher value is always victorious. The noise cannot win over silence, and misery cannot win over blissfulness, and darkness cannot win over light. These are fundamental rules of existence.

Just follow these fundamentals and you will be enriched in the marketplace even more than you can be enriched here. Because there, you will become stronger -- you will find the challenge to become stronger. And each time you come, you will come here to refresh yourself, to go deeper, to find greater peaks of consciousness and then go into the world.

Make it a point that the world has not to be renounced. The world needs people who are silent.

In the past, the silent people have deserted the world; they have escaped to the mountains.

In my opinion, they were cowards and escapists. They have not helped the world to evolve more, to become more mature, to become more peaceful; they simply escaped just out of fear that the world would destroy them.

I want my people to go into the world and destroy the world's noisiness, the world's ugliness, greediness. It is a challenge, and it is very exciting. Always remember: the best defense is attack! Attack people with your peace, with your love, with your silence, with your joy -- that's the best defense, and that is a great service to humanity too.

Sid Levensky, aged eighty-three, goes into the confessional at Saint John's Cathedral. The priest asks him, "Have you anything to confess?"

"Yes," says the old man, "my wife died two months ago. Two days after she passed on I met another woman. She is twenty-two years old. I have been sleeping with her since the day I met her. Sometimes we do it two or three times a day."

"And how old are you?" asks the priest.

"Eighty-three," Sid replies.

"Oh dear!" says the priest, "Go home and say ten Hail Marys."

"I can't do that," says the old man, "I'm Jewish."

"Then for God's sake, why are you telling me all this?" asks the priest.

"Oh, it's not just you," replies Sid, "I'm telling everybody!"

So just go and tell everybody!

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

I HAVE BEEN AROUND YOU FOR EIGHT MONTHS NOW, YET I FEEL I RARELY REALLY LET YOU IN.

WHAT CAN I DO, OSHO?

Prem Arpana, as far as I am concerned, I would suggest that you don't do anything. It is your effort, your desire that is preventing me being within you because all desire, longing, closes the doors.

And you are asking, "What can I do?" If you can do nothing, that will be the best -- you just leave this idea. What are you going to do with me inside you? I am perfectly happy wherever I am! And I can help you from the outside more easily.

And this eight months, you say, "I feel I rarely really let you in." It means sometimes, not really, but you let me in. Why are you engaged in this unnecessary mind game? There is no need. It happens, but it happens only when you are not waiting for it; it happens only when you are not making any effort for it.

It is one of the most difficult things to understand, that there are things which happen not by your doing, but by your not doing, your sleep -- if you make an effort, then it is impossible. People have been doing all kinds of things: chanting mantras, repeating numbers from one to a hundred and back, from one hundred... ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven... to one. And again, going up, coming down, going up, coming down.

In fact, all this effort keeps them awake. But these are the suggestions of so-called wise people, who are all around, ready to give advice like, "Repeat the name of God." That will keep you awake! The only thing that can bring sleep is to forget all about it -- do something else, anything will do. Just lying down, what is the harm? Have a good rest, why be worried about sleep? And when you are at ease, with no worry, no chanting, no mantra, no God -- you are just resting -- you will find slowly, slowly sleep is coming, enveloping you. You will not know when you have fallen asleep.

Do you know exactly at what time you enter from waking into sleep? You have been sleeping every day for your whole life, but do you remember, any night, even a single time, the exact moment when you entered into sleep? Even if you look at your watch, sleep will be gone. That much effort on your part is enough to disturb it. Sleep comes only when you have completely forgotten about it.

And this is a vicious circle: people who are suffering from sleeplessness cannot forget it for a single moment, and that creates sleeplessness. And the more they are suffering from sleeplessness, the more difficult it becomes for sleep to come.

There are many things in life which need absolute relaxation on your part. They will come when the right moment is there, and the right moment means when you have forgotten them completely.

It happens often that you remember somebody -- seeing him, you know him, you know his name, it is just on the tip of your tongue. But why is it not coming out? The more you try...

It becomes a very weird experience -- you know, you perfectly know, you are absolutely certain that you know the name, you know the person. There is not the slightest doubt in you, but somehow it is stuck just on the tongue -- it does not come out. It becomes a very strange feeling.

And then you start doing something else. How long can you go on sitting with this strange, weird feeling? You just go in the garden, start digging a hole, planting a tree, or pruning the trees... and suddenly it is there. When you had forgotten completely to remember it, it suddenly comes -- surfaces to your consciousness. But it surfaces only when you have forgotten to remember it.

These eight months you must have been trying hard to feel me inside you. In the first place, there was no need. You have to feel yourself; that is the basic thing that you have not done. You don't know your own inside -- how can you feel me inside you?

Just first do the homework: feel yourself, your interiority, your inner being. And the moment you feel your inner being, you will be so overwhelmed with joy, relaxation, at ease, that there is a possibility you may feel me also within you. You may feel stars, you may feel the sun, you may feel the whole existence within you. But first, feel your within.

Let me say it this way: If you can feel your within, the without also comes within. You become so expansive, your consciousness becomes so vast, it spreads all over existence.

It is one of the most beautiful, most blissful experiences.

And I have no objection if you feel me within yourself -- from my side, I am absolutely willing to come in. But you don't know that the doors of your inner subjectivity are closed. First, get settled inside. Before you invite the guest, please become the host; otherwise, what am I going to do in an empty house? I am a lazy man. Unless you are there to take care of me, I am not coming!

Max Levensky is dragged out of bed at three a.m. one morning and is hauled before the KGB. He is accused of being anti-Soviet and is then interrogated.

"What is the definition of a communist?" demands the KGB man.

Max replies immediately, "Someone who has read the works of Marx and Lenin."

"And what," continues the interrogator, "is the definition of an anti-communist?"

Max thinks for a moment and then says, "Someone who has read the works of Marx and Lenin and understands them."

You just try to understand yourself, and then everybody will be coming in -- Marx and Lenin...! But the first thing first. The only thing that can be said is: the basic need is to know yourself, be yourself, and everything else will follow. The understanding of yourself opens the doors of all the mysteries of existence.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

YOU OFTEN TELL US THAT WE SHOULD NOT JUDGE OURSELVES OR OTHER

PEOPLE.

I AM A TEACHER AND BECAUSE OF MY JOB I HAVE TO JUDGE THE

STUDENTS.

NOW THAT I AM GOING BACK TO ITALY, I AM WORRIED ABOUT HOW I SHALL MANAGE WITH MY JOB. CAN YOU GIVE ME SOME HELP?

Kalo Shreeman, my saying that you should not judge does not mean that you cannot say to a student, because you are a teacher, "The answer you have brought is not right."

It is not judging the person, it is judging the act. And I am not telling you not to judge the act -- that is a totally different thing.

For example, somebody is a thief -- you can judge that stealing is not good. But don't judge the person, because the person is a vast phenomenon and the act is a small thing.

The act is so small a piece... that small piece should not become a judgment about the whole person. A thief may have many beautiful values: he may be truthful, he may be sincere, he may be a very loving person.

When I say don't judge a person, I am not saying that you are not allowed to say that somebody is committing a mistake. Somebody is falling into a well -- I am not saying that you should just stand silently without judging. This judgment, "Don't go that way" --

perhaps that man is blind and you have to prevent him; otherwise he will fall into the well. But preventing him, seeing that he is blind, does not mean that you are condemning him. The moment you start thinking in terms of condemnation then judgment enters, and I am against that kind of judgment.

One student is doing something which is not right. You are a teacher, your very function is to put the student on the right path. It is your love, it is not your condemnation; it is your compassion, not your judgment. But most often what happens is just the opposite: people start judging the person rather than the action. Actions have to be corrected -- and particularly in a profession like teaching, you have to correct; you cannot allow students to go on doing wrong things. That will be very cruel, uncompassionate.

I have been a teacher myself, but I have never judged a single student as far as his person, his being is concerned. But that does not mean I have not corrected them if they were wrong. For example, I was sitting one day with the vice-chancellor. He loved to talk with me whenever he could get a chance and could find me, because I was very rarely present.

And most often I avoided passing by his office because he used to tell his peon that if he saw me, to just bring me in. He loved to talk; he enjoyed a good argument.

I was talking with him, and a girl came crying. So he said to me, "Just a moment," and he asked the girl, "What is the matter? Why are you crying?" She said a certain boy, a student in her class had been harassing her for almost the whole year. "He throws small pebbles at me in the class, he writes letters to me." And the vice-chancellor said, "Don't be worried, I will call him and put him right; such things cannot be allowed. He will be punished, you don't be worried. And if he does not stop, I will expel him from the university."

I was listening, and I said, "Just wait a minute. I want to ask the girl a few things."

He said, "Of course, you can ask. If you can help in the matter, it will be very good."

I asked the girl, "Are you really hurt by his throwing pebbles at you and writing love letters to you? Be honest! The day he does not write a love letter to you, don't you wait for it?"

The vice-chancellor said, "What are you talking about?"

I said, "You just keep quiet. When I am talking, you just be a gentleman -- keep quiet."

The girl stopped crying. I said, "Do you understand? If no young man harasses you, will you feel good? Don't you know there are girls who are not harassed by anybody, and they are suffering?"

The vice-chancellor said, "What are you saying?"

I said, "You keep quiet, I am going to solve the matter completely. I will talk to that boy also."

He said, "You need not talk, because the way you are talking..."

I said, "Now I have taken the matter in my hands." I asked the girl, "Are his love letters not written well? Then I can teach him how to write love letters! Because every girl wants love letters -- I don't see that there is anything unnatural in it."

Now the vice-chancellor was boiling! He said to the girl, "You go away."

I said, "She can go only when you answer a few questions in front of her. When you were a student, just remember those old days -- those beautiful days. Have you not written love letters to girls?"

He looked at me, he looked at the girl, and he said, "My God, what..." For a moment he was silent.

I said, "Be honest!"

He said, "Yes I have written..."

I said, "And just a moment before, you were expelling that boy from the university and you had forgotten completely."

Every young man will write letters, and if somebody does not write, the function of the teacher is to help him: "Are you a dodo or what?"

As far as my classroom is concerned, from the very first day I entered after the long summer vacations, my first thing was... because in India the girls sit on one side, boys sit on another side, and in between there is a big space. My first thing was, "Just get mixed."

They would look very embarrassed....

I said, "Just get up, and you can choose whomsoever you want, but get mixed! I cannot tolerate this stupidity because this is the cause -- you have to throw stones, you have to write letters... What is the need? Just sit next to each other, and if you want to say something, whisper. Whisper -- I can stop; I can give you time. For fifteen minutes you do whatsoever you want to do. I will keep my eyes closed and meditate, so that after fifteen minutes we can concentrate on the subject matter. This is more primary."

Students were very much afraid of me. With hesitation they would mix up; still they would sit so that they would not touch each other. I said, "What nonsense -- do you think each other untouchable? Sit relaxed. And if you want to nudge the girl, or the girl wants to nudge you, it is perfectly okay; nature demands it. And because you are prevented, then you start ugly behavior. Now, taking the air out of the girls' bicycles -- that I don't think is natural! That is sheer stupidity. Harassing them on the road, saying ugly dirty words -- I don't think that is right, nor is it worthy of you.

"If you want to say something, write a beautiful love letter. If you don't know how to write, I am here -- I am available. Anybody, male or female, can come to the common room where I sit. I will teach you how to write love letters."

My class was the most silent class, and I told the vice-chancellor, "Sometime you can come and you can see -- nobody is doing anything to anybody because they are allowed; I accept it as my responsibility that they should be allowed to be as natural as possible.

Every girl should feel that she is loved, desired, that there are people who look at her with loving eyes. Every boy wants to be loved. And this is the time when they should pass through these experiences."

I said to the girl, "What do you want? Tell me exactly. Do you want the boy to be expelled?"

She said, "No."

"Do you want him not to write letters to you?"

She said, "No." The vice-chancellor said, "Then why have you come here?"

I said, "It is very simple -- she simply wants your attention. She wants to say to the world that she is being loved, somebody is writing love letters, and without telling others there is no joy in the thing. The whole world should know that she is no ordinary girl --

exceptionally beautiful -- people are throwing stones."

The vice-chancellor said to the girl, "Now you go, because listening to such things... he can even spoil me. You just leave the room, and if you don't want to do anything against that boy, never come again." And when the girl had gone, he said, "You should not do such a thing, because if people come to know..."

I said, "In fact, you are afraid of your wife, it is not about people. And I am going to tell your wife that this old man is teaching... in front of me, he has been teaching that love letters are natural."

He said, "You were saying natural!"

I said, "You were listening silently! Do you agree with me or not?"

He said, "I agree, but don't go to my wife -- that is the only woman I am afraid of."

I said, "Then you have to behave."

Just don't judge so quickly, and don't judge the person. Judge actions, and correct them, and don't correct them according to tradition, convention, according to so-called morality, according to your prejudices. Whenever you are correcting somebody, be very meditative, be very silent; look at the whole thing from all perspectives. Perhaps they are doing the right thing, and your prevention will not be right at all.

So when I say, "Don't judge," I simply mean that no action gives you the right to condemn the person. If the action is not right, help the person -- find out why the action is not right, but there is no question of judgment. Don't take the person's dignity, don't humiliate him, don't make him feel guilty -- that's what I mean when I say, "Don't judge."

But as far as correcting is concerned: unprejudiced, silently, in your awareness, if you see that something is wrong and will destroy that person's intelligence, will take him on the wrong paths in his life, help him.

The job of the teacher is not just to teach futile things -- geography, and history, and all kinds of nonsense. His basic function is to bring the students to a better consciousness, to a higher consciousness. This should be your love and your compassion, and this should be the only value on which you judge any action as right or wrong.

But never for a single moment let the person feel that he has been condemned. On the contrary, let him feel that he has been loved -- it is out of love that you have tried to correct him.

Conrad was six years old. Although he was six, he had never spoken a word. His parents took him to the psychiatrist, but it didn't help. But one evening at the dinner table, Conrad looked down at his plate of food and said, "Take away this muck, it tastes terrible!"

His parents were elated and wept with joy. "You can talk!" cried his mother. "How come you've never spoken before this?"

"Up to now," said Conrad, "everything has been fine!"

Don't judge people -- try to understand them. Now he is saying such a beautiful thing:

"What is the need to speak when everything is going fine? Only for the first time something is terrible!"

A guy lying in a hospital bed, coming around from an anesthetic, wakes up to find the doctor sitting beside him. "I have got bad news and good news for you," says the doctor.

"Would you like the bad or good first?"

"Aaagh," groans the guy, "tell me the bad."

"Well," says the doctor, "we had to amputate both your legs above the knee."

"Aaagh," groans the guy, "that's really bad."

After recovering from the shock, he asks the doctor for the good news.

"Well," said the doctor, "the man in the next bed would like to buy your slippers!"

Just don't be serious! Don't think that you are a teacher so you are in a very serious job.

Look at life with more playful eyes... it is really hilarious! There is nothing to judge --

everybody is doing his best. If you feel disturbed by somebody, it is your problem, not his. First correct yourself.

I have my own way of looking at things.... I was a teacher for nine years, and I never judged a single student. I have never examined a single examination paper, because I told the vice-chancellor, "If I really examine, nobody is going to pass. And if I am going to pass a few people, why should the others not be passed? So things are clear -- you can decide -- either I can pass everybody, or I can fail everybody."

He said, "You always bring strange ideas! I have been a teacher my whole life; this idea never happened to me."

I said, "This is exactly what I am going to do, so you can decide."

He said, "It is better you don't take any examination papers. I will inform the in-charge that you should not be given any papers to examine."

I said, "That's perfectly right, because that saves me the trouble of judging people unnecessarily."

Only once they appointed me as a superintendent of the whole examination. I said, "You are doing something wrong -- you don't understand me." That was my first encounter with the new vice-chancellor. I said, "You don't know me. The old man knew me; he never committed any mistake like this."

He said, "What are you saying? Is it a mistake?"

I said, "It is a mistake because you don't know me. But give it a try!"

So he said, "Okay."

He came two or three times to see what was happening, and he was feeling terrible when he heard me telling the students, "Listen, if you have brought notes hiding in your pockets, I have no objection. Just don't be caught. Do it cleverly, watchfully, because it is not a sin -- but you should not be caught. To be caught is the crime."

The vice-chancellor was standing there, listening. And I said to them, "I will try my best to catch you. So you decide. I give you two minutes -- if you are afraid of being caught, just bring everything that you are hiding and put it on the table, and I will not say anything to you. But after that, if you are caught, then your whole year is spoiled."

Immediately, students started bringing their notes -- one boy had written answers on his shirt, inside. So he said, "What am I supposed to do? I have no notes but I have written many things on my shirt, inside -- should I give the shirt?"

I said, "You have to give it."

The vice-chancellor was standing there. He said, "What is going on?"

I said, "You keep quiet. I told you beforehand, if I am the superintendent things will be going according to me."

I told the boy, "You take your shirt off, put it here."

He said, "But it is too cold."

I said, "That's not my problem -- why have you...."

So he had to take off his shirt. And the vice-chancellor said, "This is too much."

I said, "I cannot help...." And nobody was doing anything -- they had even brought books, whole books. They were hiding them behind their coats, shirts, pants, everything came out!

And I said to them, "Now you can start answering your questions. And don't be worried, if you cannot answer something, I am here; I am here to help you. You can just raise your hand and I will come and try to help you."

Nobody raised his hand. I said, "What is the matter?" They were afraid, because this has never happened -- a superintendent telling them, "I will help you." I said, "This is just human. You are in difficulty, and I am sitting here doing nothing...."

That was the first and the last time.... The vice-chancellor said, "You are a strange person.

That boy is shivering -- how can he write?" It was a cold morning... the examinations used to be early in the morning, seven o'clock.... Somebody's pants had been taken, because people used to write on their pants -- people do all kinds of things.

They had their ways, and I knew. I have also been a student, and I knew all kinds of things. That was very easy, to write on your pants -- nobody will be able to see. But I told them, "It doesn't matter, even if you have to sit naked... sit naked! Next time you will not do such a thing. But I am not uncompassionate to you; if you are in need of some answer that you cannot find, I will give it to you; you just have to raise your hand. Because according to me, all examinations are absolutely absurd."

If it were up to me, I would allow the students to have all the books available. Only a very intelligent student can find out the answers from the books in three hours. And you will be able to judge their intelligence in a better way; otherwise somebody has just crammed five answers, and he knows nothing else, and he comes first in the class. And somebody else knows everything, just has missed those five questions, and he is a failure.

This is not a good examination; they should be allowed to have the whole library available to them. They can go to the library, they can find the answer, they can write it.

In three hours, they have to find as beautiful answers as possible. And only intelligent students will be able to find them.

In the Soviet Union they have changed this old idea of examinations. Now books are available -- all the books concerned are available in the hall where the students are given their examination; they can consult any book. It is far better, because the ultimate concern is to know the intelligence of the person, not his memory. So students need not memorize anything -- they have to understand things. In examination time they can either just from their intelligence give the answer, or they can look in the books. But if in a five hundred page book you have to find one answer, you need some intelligence -- mediocres will not be able to find the answer, they will become so nervous...

And there is no need that a person should have to wait for one year. I told the vice-chancellor, "If I am going to be the superintendent I will follow my ideas, I don't care what is conventional. The conventional is not necessarily the right thing. I will give them all the available material; they can find out. Only the intelligent people will be able to find out. And those who have not been successful should be given a chance again after one month. What is the problem that they should wait for one year?"

Finally, there is no need of any examinations if every teacher goes on giving marks in his diary every day to the students. And every year, all the notes from all the teachers are collected. And based on those counts the students are moved, either upward or downward. Because there are many who deserve to go back -- they have somehow slipped, they should not be allowed... they should be put back; they should earn better marks and go ahead again.

And this should remain available: if a teacher finds that an intelligent student has unnecessarily to wait six months more for examination, he should recommend that the student be moved right now to a higher class, because he has enough intelligence. There is no need for him to wait six months more. Teachers should be the decisive factors. In that situation, nobody fails, nobody passes -- people simply move. A few move faster, a few move a little slower; everybody according to his pace. Nobody is condemned as a failure, nobody is praised as first-class, nobody is praised as a gold medalist. All these things teach people unnecessary ambition, and ambition is poison.

You are a teacher; you should try in every way to change the very structure of teaching, particularly your teaching. And slowly, slowly things move. You should tell other teachers, "There are many things wrong with the education system itself, which nobody bothers about. And you are judging students; the first thing should be a right system of education." The whole system is rotten, old, out of date; it has to be completely changed.

So I am not saying don't judge. Particularly systems, conventions, traditions -- judge them! But don't judge individuals. If their actions are wrong, help them to get free of those wrong actions. If they are going in wrong directions, help them to find right paths.

And this should be your love, this should not be your judgment.

"Young man," said the judge, looking sternly at the defendant, "it is alcohol, and alcohol alone, that is responsible for your present sorry state."

"I am glad to hear you say that," replied Paddy, with a sigh of relief. "Everybody else says it is all my fault!"

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

The Invitation

Chapter #26

Chapter title: You have your problem -- I'm going home

3 September 1987 am in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive

code:

8709030

ShortTitle:

INVITA26

Audio:

Yes

Video:

Yes

Length:

133

mins

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

THE HARMONY I FEEL WITH YOU, THE VISION OF LOVE AND FLOWERING, TREMBLES WITHIN ME. I FEEL A GIVING OF EVERYTHING TO THIS

WONDERFUL GIFT OF LIFE. SOMETHING IS HAPPENING THROUGH ME OR

WITH ME OR IN SPITE OF ME -- AND I KNOW THIS IS HOME.

BELOVED MASTER, BELOVED MYSTERY, WHO AM I?

The mystery of life always happens in spite of you. In the beginning there is no other alternative possible. Only in the end does it start happening through you. But it can happen through you only when you are not. Then you become a hollow bamboo which can be turned into a flute and the song can pass through it.

In the beginning you are -- you are too much.

So when the first experience of mystery starts happening it is in spite of you. And it is good to understand that life is far bigger than you can conceive and its power is immense beyond our any conception; just we are waiting patiently, searching patiently, knowing perfectly well that we don't know the way, knowing perfectly well that we have lost our original eternal home -- knowing perfectly well that we are unconscious. All our efforts, our search, our seeking is groping in the dark.

It is good to remember our situation. Do your best. In spite of your darkness, blindness, unconsciousness, whatever you can do, do. But remember, it is not going to happen through your doing. It is going to happen because you are longing for it so deeply that existence cannot resist, cannot remain indifferent to you.

So although you are not prepared, nobody is prepared. Nobody knows the way, nobody knows where the home is, nobody knows in which direction to move, what discipline to follow.

But there are two kinds of people: those who are not aware of their situation of darkness and blindness, and those who think that they are not blind, that they are not in darkness; that they know the way, that they know where they have to go, that they know what they have to do.

These are the people to whom existence cannot happen; they are too much. And all that they know is absolutely false, they have not experienced it. But their falsity is so much identified with their being, it is their ego which says, "You are not blind. There is no darkness and all that is needed you know it through the scriptures, through the old masters, through reading, learning, studying." But all that is borrowed; it is not going to help.

No two persons reach the end on the same route. Hence Gautam Buddha may have reached through a certain path and Chuang Tzu may have reached through another path, but their paths are no longer useful for you. In fact, it is impossible to find their paths either. Their paths disappear just as the birds flying in the sky don't leave any footmarks.

So you cannot find out from where the world has reached to the heights, and you cannot follow because there are no footprints. All there is, is what is written in your scriptures...

and you try. The Buddhist tries the way Buddha may have followed. In the first place there is no way to find what way he has followed, because the way is inner and nobody is capable of giving an expression to it. So what is written is a faraway echo in the minds of the disciples.

It is a strange story to remember that the man who remembered the most of what Buddha has said in forty-two years... And Buddha continuously resisted their efforts to write it down because he did not want to leave any scripture behind nor did he want to leave any statue of himself. He wanted to disappear just as if he has not come. One of his names is Tathagata. It has two meanings; both are significant. One is: the man who taught the philosophy of suchness. The other is more literal but has a tremendous significance.

Literally the word `tathagata' means just came, just gone, leaving no mark behind, just like a breeze comes you feel it and the coolness of it, and it is gone. Neither do you know from where it comes nor you know where it goes.

So for his whole life Buddha did not allow his statements to be compiled. And in the end he said to them, "No statue, no memorial should be made of me because I want to disappear as if I had never been. Because whatsoever is left behind becomes the hindrance for people; it does not help them."

There is a great insight, very profound -- and such egolessness, such simplicity, such humbleness that he wants to disappear silently without any footprints, because nobody can follow anybody else. Nobody can become wise by reading and studying scriptures.

So that greater part of humanity which believes that they know, they are the ones to whom the mystery is not going to happen. But if you are searching, knowing perfectly well that you know nothing -- you don't even know that your ignorance is absolute; it is not that a little bit you know and a little bit you don't know -- in this humbleness, in this acceptance that I don't know, the mysteries start happening. They happen in spite of you.

You cannot manage -- they are not manageable, they are not under your control -- but once they start happening they make their way through you.

Slowly, slowly the ice of your ego melts and a passage is made. Existence starts singing its songs, sending its music, giving you directions; helping you to find the doors of all that is mysterious and is not available to the mind but only to the man of heart, to the man of humbleness -- to the man who is perfectly aware that he knows nothing.

And it is good that you ask, "Beloved Master, beloved mystery, who am I?"

You are Swami Satyadharma. This much you should remember; otherwise in the ordinary life you will get lost. Once you forget that you are Swami Satyadharma then you don't know where you are going and what you are doing.

I have told you two small stories...

One is about George Bernard Shaw. He is traveling in a train from London to some place and the ticket checker comes. Bernard Shaw looks into everything, opens this suitcase, that suitcase, all the pockets, and the ticket is missing. He starts perspiring and looks very much afraid and concerned.

The ticket checker says, "I know you; everybody knows you. The ticket must be somewhere; there is no problem. You will find it. Don't get so nervous and excited in your old age" -- he was ninety.

The ticket checker said, "I will not disturb you, I am going. You just relax."

George Bernard Shaw said, "You don't understand. It is not the question of the ticket.

Who is bothering about the ticket? The question is where am I going? Can you tell me where I am going? Without the ticket... now I have got into a tangle. I am not searching for the ticket for you -- I don't care about you or anybody. But the problem is: Where am I going?"

The ticket checker said, "My God, that is impossible for me to figure out where you are going. Now I can understand why you are feeling so nervous. Your hands are trembling."

The second anecdote is about Mulla Nasruddin in the same situation as George Bernard Shaw. The ticket checker is asking for the ticket and he is looking everywhere. Other passengers are puzzled that he looks into every pocket but he leaves one pocket. He does not touch that one.

Finally, the ticket checker said, "You have looked everywhere but you don't look into this pocket."

He said, "Don't talk about that pocket. That's my only hope and I don't want to destroy that hope. If it is not there I'm finished. Then it is nowhere else. So I cannot open that way. I will look everywhere possible..."

He had thrown all the clothes and everything out of the suitcases. The ticket checker was at a loss, the passengers were at a loss. But Mulla was absolutely reluctant, "Whatever happens, I am not going to touch that pocket. That I will leave because at least there is a hope that perhaps the ticket is there. If the ticket is not there then I am completely finished."

The problem is the same: I don't know where I am going. So as far as the world is concerned, you are Swami Satyadharma -- and there are two Swami Satyadharmas here.

Remember, you are not the other one. To make it clear, the other one is German; so don't get mixed.

Just as you call me Beloved Master, beloved mystery, I call you beloved disciple, beloved mystery. Behind Swami Satyadharma everything is a mystery. Satyadharma is just a facade for the outside world, just a utilitarian identity; it is not your reality; but behind it is a mysterious being. You are becoming aware of gifts of existence, of mysteries. Something is happening through it; just allow it.

Your function is not to prevent, not to be reluctant. Join your hands with whatever is happening. That's what I mean by let-go.

Let existence cleanse you.

Allow it total power over you.

Don't be worried that you will be destroyed, because you will be destroyed. There is no need to worry; it is absolutely certain. When things are certain there is no worry. It is only the uncertainty that creates worries.

You will be destroyed.... That which will remain undestroyed in you is your authentic self. That which is destroyed is your personality, your false self; it needs to be destroyed.

You can use that destroyed part in the world because they won't understand if you say that you are a mystery. Even your family, your wife, your children, your parents will think you have gone mad if you say, "I am a mystery." Nobody is a mystery and only you are a mystery? -- where did you lose yourself?

So as far as the outside world is concerned you are Swami Satyadharma -- not the other one; that you have to remember! This is a problem for sannyasins because they have the same names, many. You can get lost and start thinking, Who am I? And naturally, you are a mystery, but a German mystery or an Italian mystery... this much you should remember: that you are not a German mystery.

For the outside world, completely keep your old false identity, your name, your profession, your qualifications. But inside you will know that it is only utilitarian, not real, useful; useful in the society, but when you are alone you are not Swami Satyadharma and you are not Italian or German or English.

You are not even your body.

You are not your mind.

You are just the pure mystery behind.

Now there is no way to describe it, you will have to experience it, and you are moving rightly towards that experience. Just don't in any way knowingly out of fear hinder the process. There is no fear: only the false will die and the real will remain always and always. That is the definition of the real: That which remains.

The false is just useful. In the crowd of the world you need a name. The reality is nobody has a name, but it will be a very difficult world if everybody drops the name because it is false. Then you won't have any address. The postman cannot find you anywhere because everybody is a mystery! You will create troubles because you are not the husband and you are not the wife and you are not the father and you are not the child -- everything outside will be disturbed, will become a chaos.

Outside keep everything as it is.

Inside don't be identified with it.

This is the whole secret of finding yourself without being condemned by the society as mad.

A traveling salesman was just on the point of checking into a hotel when he caught sight of a stunning young woman who was without doubt giving him the full come-on treatment. He strolled over to her and nonchalantly exchanged a few words with her, behaving as though he had known her all his life. Then they both walked to the reception desk and booked in as man and wife. After a one-night stay, the salesman went to collect his bill and check out. He was appalled to be presented with a bill for one thousand pounds.

"Look here, this is out of the question. I have only been here for one day," he cried.

"Yes sir," replied the receptionist, "but your wife has been here a month."

So don't get into such trouble. On the outside remain exactly what you are, Swami Satyadharma.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

YOU ADVISE WATCHING PATIENTLY THE UNTANGLING OF THE GORDIAN

KNOT THAT TIES ME TO THE PAST. SOME PART OF ME IS HAPPY TO DO

THAT; ANOTHER PART WANTS YOU TO SLASH THE KNOT ASUNDER. IS

THIS LAZINESS OR MASOCHISM OR A MIND TRIP?

It is not masochism, Prem Rajiva, nor is it a mind trip. You are sincerely wanting to get out of the entanglement. You want to be free of all entanglement; you want to come out of the prison. What you are calling the Gordian knot, you want it to be slashed.

It is a sincere and authentic desire, but the trouble arises because this desire is also from the mind. So one part of the mind is ready to cut the Gordian knot and another part of the mind is always against. It is not a special question about the Gordian knot that divides you.

Mind's functioning is through duality. The right word used for that is `dialectics'. Karl Marx has used that word as a foundation of communism. He calls his philosophy dialectical materialism. He says the society evolves through dialectics, and by dialectics he means it will be helpful to you for your development -- and what he says has some truth in it.

The meaning of dialectics is that one part functions as the thesis, another part functions as the antithesis and out of the conflict of the two comes the third part, a synthesis.

Synthesis on its own accord becomes again thesis and creates antithesis, and their conflict brings a new synthesis. This is how step by step evolution happens.

And he is right, although he used his philosophy to support a political ideology. That is fictitious, but the idea of dialectics in itself is absolutely correct.

He says that the proletariat, the poor are the thesis, and the rich, the capitalists are the antithesis. Now there is going to be a class struggle, a revolution, a fight between thesis and antithesis that will create the dictatorship of the proletariat as the synthesis. On its own then it will become the thesis and it will create its antithesis as democracy of the proletariat. And out of the conflict between the two will arise another synthesis.

Every man's capacity to think is limited. That synthesis never becomes thesis. He has come to the end of his row; he has arrived at a state where there is no class, no government. He has achieved the utopia. Now there is no need of any conflict, any revolution. But I don't see that evolution is going to stop anywhere. So he has used a very significant principle of philosophy for his political ideology. And as he reaches to his ultimate goal he forgets all about dialectics. That is not only his fault -- everybody's. The religions say God created the world, and when you ask them who created God -- finished.

They have come to the end of their row.

The Jainas in India say that man has been evolving, not in his physiology as Darwin thinks -- that in physiology he is evolving from apes or monkeys or gorillas -- but Jainism says man is evolving through different animal consciousnesses, not physiologically but in his soul. It seems more accurate than Charles Darwin. Charles Darwin does not have any evidence.

The whole thing seems to be hypothetical because nobody has seen any monkey, because if in the past, thousands of years ago, some monkey became a human being, why are other monkeys not becoming human beings now? They are now more evolved as man has evolved. Now they will be jumping every day! Suddenly you see a monkey, and he jumps and becomes a man and says, "Hello, where are you going? I am coming too."

Nobody has encountered any monkey becoming a man. And the difference between a monkey and man is so great that it cannot be possible to take a jump suddenly. Monkeys know how to jump, but that does not mean they can jump and become a human being.

They can jump from one branch to another branch -- that's perfectly okay -- but they cannot jump from one state of consciousness into a totally new state of consciousness, because it needs a new brain, a different size of brain; it needs a different structure of the body. Just to stand on two legs a monkey will need so much bodywork that he will not survive.

It has happened in Lucknow...

A boy was found who had been raised by wolves in the forest, and just the other day a girl was found. She was the same age, thirteen, and she had been raised by animals. So the boy and girl walk on all fours -- naturally, they have imitated their parents.

It has happened in Calcutta too. They tried to make him stand on two legs, thinking that the man should be restored to humanity -- they killed him. Just the effort to make him stand on two legs was so difficult because he now had a fixed structure. For fourteen years he had walked on all fours; now suddenly he could not stand.

And the same happened in the Lucknow case: in six months they had killed the boy. I put the whole responsibility on the stupid idea that these people should be restored. They were perfectly beautiful; there was no need. This boy who was killed in Lucknow by the scientists and the doctors... They were giving him all kinds of medicines and injections and bodywork and massage. And the boy was so strong that they needed four or five people to catch hold of him; otherwise he used to run faster on his four feet than any runner. He could have come first in any Olympic race anywhere; he was a wolf.

It would have been more humane to leave him back in the forest. But this is how the unconscious mind functions. Now a girl has been found in Europe and they have immediately started working on her to restore her. They will kill her. I can predict it --

because this "restoration" is not possible; it would take a lifetime.

As for the Lucknow boy, in six months the whole success for the scientists and the doctors was that he learned one word: the name Ram that they had given to him. That was their whole success -- and they enjoyed very much, that they had done "great service." All they did... There are five billion human beings, what is the point of taking a beautiful wolf back into humanity, and rejoicing that he has learned the name Ram?

And thousands of people were coming -- he had become an exhibition -- to ask him,

"What is your name?" And he would say, "Ram" -- with anger. According to his mind, it was purely torture because traction was being done.

Suddenly a monkey cannot become... And Charles Darwin also was looking for a middle link. The monkey must have become first a middle link between man and monkey, and then from middle link he may have moved to monkey. He never could find any middle link; his hypothesis remains hypothesis.

All these philosophers go on using some idea. Once they get attached to it they extend it into a philosophy, into a whole system. That's what Marx did. But dialectics is a natural phenomenon, particularly as far as man's psychology is concerned: mind functions through dialectical ways.

You will never find mind without any split.

I keep coming across very intelligent people.... I wanted one of our sannyasins who is a very intelligent legal expert, to come here -- and there is no problem in coming. His wife is also as educated as he is. They were both colleagues in law college, his wife was a magistrate. He has been in the commune. The wife had also come, but because they had a small child she went back and took a job as a magistrate. Now that her husband has gone back to join her, she has dropped out of her job. So I told both of them they could come here. He informed me that ninety percent he wants to come, but ten percent of his mind thinks of security, safety; the child, his education, old age, the future...

I have come across such people all my life, and I have asked them only one thing: If you are intelligent enough, then why are you choosing the ten percent part of your mind against the ninety percent? You are not realizing at all that you are choosing ten percent of the mind -- and you are afraid to choose the ninety percent.

And mind is never going to be a hundred percent for anything. That is not the way mind functions, it is out of the question. Mind's function is always to be divided on every question: a thesis, antithesis, and then you have to find out the synthesis, and you have to function according to the synthesis.

So there is no problem about your being a masochist; you are not on a mind trip either. It is simply the way of the mind that it never functions as a total unit. In fact, if you see the dialectics in life you will find it in many places. You walk, that is dialectical. If both your legs move together one hundred percent you will fall down. Fifty percent remains static, fifty percent moves. Then the other fifty percent becomes static and the static part starts moving. That's how you walk; that is dialectical philosophy. That's how a bird flies; that's how you use your hands.

Even your mind is not one single piece; it has two hemispheres. Your right hand is connected with the left side of your mind and your left hand is connected with the right side of your mind. So if something goes wrong with the left side of the mind, for example paralysis, then your right hand will be paralyzed.

Both have different functions. The right side of the mind thinks and the left side of the mind feels, and thinking and feeling are just like two legs. They cannot join together; otherwise there will be no progress in life. You will remain static.

So it is simply a matter of not understanding the nature of mind. You have one part of the mind ready -- let it go and do its job. That is the moving leg, and the other part is the static part. And you think that you would like me to slash the knot asunder. I cannot do that because I love you.

Once I started doing things for you, you would become dependent on me. And that is the last thing that I will tolerate. I would not like you to be dependent on me. I can give you the way, I can show you the way, but I will not walk for you. You will have to walk yourself, because I want you to be absolutely independent and free. Today I am here, tomorrow I may not be here.

If you become dependent on me, as has been happening all over the world for centuries --

people become dependent on the masters, and the masters enjoy the dependence. Neither are the masters authentic nor are the disciples intelligent -- and humanity has remained static.

Are you aware of the fact that for centuries there has been no evolution? If monkeys have become human beings at some time, what have human beings done? -- they are stuck. At least some daring human being should take a jump and start flying, do something! But you know perfectly well that if you try flying, there will be no evolution, only multiple fracture.

It has happened to a few people under LSD or under impact of some drug -- particularly LSD gives these ideas that you can fly. And one woman flew out from an eighty-storey building, from the eightieth floor. She simply flew out of the window. And you know what would happen... so it happened.

LSD is a very harmless drug, but it should be used under medical supervision, because it gives such ideas, great ideas, and the mind is no longer functioning so there is no opposition; there is a

one hundred percent surety -- and that is very dangerous. A one hundred percent surety is not favorable to evolution. It is good that the mind should be divided for and against, discuss, argue, and slowly slowly progress.

But one thing is strange, that for at least one million years there has been no evolution as far as man is concerned. You cannot call this evolution: one person becomes a Gautam Buddha or one person becomes a Bodhidharma or one becomes a Tah Hui -- you cannot call that evolution. The whole of humanity is stuck somewhere.

What is the problem? The problem is, humanity is not moving with the part of the mind which is for evolution; it is staying with the part of the mind which is not for evolution.

You have to learn only one thing, that you have already a part of your mind ready, happy to do that. So do it! Don't bother about the other part of the mind. That mind is pulling you back; it represents your past. And the mind that is feeling happy and excited to do something, it represents your future. Choose the future.

Don't depend on somebody else, because that dependence is dangerous. It is not only one question that can be solved, there are a thousand and one questions -- and your evolution depends on your own readiness to risk, your own acceptance of danger.

You are in a right position; there is no problem. Just listen always to the part of the mind that is for the future, that is for the unknown, that is for evolution, and the other part will come following behind.

Once you are decisive, the other part of the mind will immediately follow you. It will remain against you until you are decisive. And the decision has to come from looking at the fact of which mind is for the future and evolution, which mind is going to give you a better life, a better understanding, a better consciousness -- choose that and the Gordian knot will be slashed without any effort on your part or without any need from outside help.

A woman leaned over her side of the fence and asked the little boy next door how he was getting on with his new stepfather.

"Great," he replied, "every morning he takes me out in the boat to the ocean, puts me in the water and then I swim back to the beach."

"But is not that a bit dangerous for a little boy?" asked the woman.

"Oh, that's easy. The hard part is untying the knot and getting out of the bag."

It is certainly a little harder... but if you can manage to do it, it will give you a sudden quantum leap for a higher consciousness.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

YOU OFTEN TALKED ABOUT PSYCHOANALYSIS AND RELATED THERAPIES.

WOULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT ON MORE RECENT DEVELOPMENTS LIKE

FRITZ PERLS' GESTALT THERAPY AND -- THE LATEST FASHION -- VOICE

DIALOGUE? CAN THESE THERAPIES HELP A PERSON WHO IS ALREADY

MEDITATING TO SEE HIMSELF AND HIS GAMES MORE CLEARLY?

Tilo, in the first place psychotherapies like Fritz Perls' Gestalt therapy and others are already old; they are not new. The only new thing which is the latest fashion is Voice Dialogue -- but they are all just mind games.

They cannot contribute anything to a man who is already meditating -- no psychotherapy has the quality of meditation, because no psychotherapy has produced a single enlightened being. Their founders were not enlightened and the enlightened beings in the East never bothered about any psychotherapy. They have not even bothered about psychology or mind itself, because for them the question was not to solve the problems of the mind, for them the question was how to get out of the mind which is easier. Then the problems all are finished, because once you are out of the mind, the mind has no nourishment to go on creating problems; otherwise it is an unending process.

You get psychoanalyzed, whether old or new fashions it doesn't matter; they are just variations of the same theme. Your mind feels a little fresh and good after a psychological session, because you have unburdened yourself. A little understanding of mind also comes -- that keeps you normal.

In fact, all psychotherapies are in the service of the establishment; their function is not to let people go abnormal. Somebody is going outside the herd and the norms of the herd and doing things which it is not supposed that you should do...! They may be harmless but the society cannot tolerate such people. They have to be brought to the normal, to the average standard.

The psychotherapist's work is to clean your mind. It is a kind of lubricating your mechanism -- it functions a little better and you start becoming a little more understanding about the functionings of the mind, although that does not make any revolutionary change. And it is possible you may solve one problem, but you have not removed the cause.

Mind itself is the problem.

So you can remove one problem, mind will create another problem... It is just like pruning the trees: you prune one leaf and just out of self-respect and dignity the tree will grow three leaves in the place where there used to be one. That's why gardeners go on pruning; that gives trees more foliage, more leaves.

The same is the situation with the mind: you can remove one problem by understanding it

-- and it is costly -- but the mind is still there which has created the problem, and psychoanalysis does not go beyond the boundaries of the mind. The mind will create a new problem, more complicated than the one that you have solved. Naturally, because the mind understands you can solve that kind of problem, it creates something new, more complicated, more foliage.

Meditation is a totally different thing than psychoanalysis or any therapies which are confined to the mind. It is simply a jumping out of the mind: You have your problems --

I'm going home.

Because mind is a parasite it does not have its own existence. It needs you inside in it, so it can go on eating you, your head. Once you jump out of it, the mind is just a graveyard.

All those problems that were too big drop, they simply drop dead.

Meditation is a totally different dimension: you simply watch the mind and in watching you come out of it. And slowly, mind with all its problems disappears; otherwise the mind is going to create strange problems.

The other day in England a court released a murderer. It is a very strange case, and it may give impetus to many people to murder. The murderer was in the second world war fighting in Japan. And he pleaded in the court that in the night he dreamt that the Japanese were chasing him, and they were just about to get hold of him. He became so frightened and he wanted to survive, so he caught hold of the neck of one Japanese and killed him by pressing on his neck. And as the Japanese was killed, he awoke from the dream and the Japanese was no one but his wife.

The court was in a difficulty what to do, because he had not done it consciously, in awareness. Now to punish him does not seem right, even in a traditional England, where anything new takes years to be accepted. When the whole world will accept it then England will try!

The judge must have been a man of great understanding, but he has also opened a door of dangers. Now anybody can kill his wife and say, "What can I do? Japanese were following..." It is a precedent that you have released one man, acquitted completely from committing any crime.

Now you are able to commit crime. You just have to pretend that you are asleep, and there is no way for the court to find out whether you were really asleep and the Japanese were really following you in your dream. The poor woman was fast asleep, he jumped up and killed her -- and perhaps he is right... But now there will be cases which will not be right. Perhaps what he is saying is true; he has been in the war in Japan and that may have come as a dream from his unconscious; and out of fear, to protect himself, he started fighting with the Japanese. And there was nobody else in the room except the wife close to him just on the bed, so he jumped, caught hold of the Japanese...

Mind is your only problem.

All other problems are just offshoots of the mind.

Meditation cuts the mind from the very roots.

And all these therapies -- Gestalt and Voice Dialogue and Fritz Perls -- we can use them for those who have not yet entered into meditation just to have a little understanding of the mind so they can find the door from where to get out.

We are using all kinds of therapies which are helpful, but not for the meditators. They are only helpful in the beginning when you have not yet become accustomed to meditation.

Once you are meditative you don't need any therapy, no therapy is helpful then. But in the beginning, it can be helpful, and particularly for the Western sannyasins.

I don't suggest it much for Eastern people that they should do therapy groups. For example, Japanese have been found not to understand that in an encounter group if people are fighting it is just playful fighting. They really start fighting and they can become dangerous; they can kill somebody.

Different cultures... Japanese have been writing letters to me saying that in the therapies they are telling us that you hate your mother, your father -- and it is absolutely wrong!

We will kill the therapist! Japan has a totally different culture. The very idea that you hate your mother -- and the person will commit hara-kiri. He will kill himself because it is so shameful.

I have come to know such stories of hara-kiri that you cannot believe. One famous historical case happened three hundred years ago. A very well-known master of martial arts forgot, when he went to meet the emperor, to bow down. In Japan you have to bow down even to your enemy when you go to fight.

Both bow down to each other because one never knows who will be left alive. At this moment enmity and friendship don't matter. At this moment when one person is never going to be seen again and will not even be able to ask for forgiveness, they give respect.

And it is authentic, it is not formal.

Going to the emperor and forgetting to bow down... And he forgot because he was a great master and thousands of people who were learning under him were all bowing down to him. So he had become accustomed to people bowing down to him, and then he would respond by the same gesture. It was such bad manners that when he was made aware that he had committed a great crime because he had not bowed down to the emperor, he committed suicide.

That is the routine process. There is no other way except that to show that you really feel repentant. It is not so easy as in the West where you can just say, "I'm sorry" -- that is very formal and very easy. Japanese take things very seriously. The only way you can say, "I'm sorry" is by hara-kiri -- one feels so ashamed of himself that he cannot allow himself to live anymore.

The more strange thing is that his three hundred intimate disciples committed hara-kiri because their master had behaved in a shameful way. They were not at all concerned, but because their master has fallen in grace, how can they stand in the world with grace and dignity? Three hundred disciples committed hara-kiri. This is a historical fact, and this kind of thing has been happening in Japan for centuries.

So one sannyasin has written to me, "The therapist goes on insisting, `You must hate your mother...' Either I will kill the therapist or I will kill myself if he is right. Because I don't see that I have ever hated my mother."

And in fact the situation is different. In Japan almost one-third of the girls don't marry; they remain with their mother. In the rest of the world the situation is different. And what psychoanalysis has found does not apply to the Japanese. It applies only to the Western mind and its upbringing.

Sigmund Freud is right only about the Western mind and its tradition. When he says that every girl hates her mother because she loves the father, the whole thing is based on their understanding of sex, that one loves the opposite sex. So girls love the fathers, the boys love the mother. But the girls cannot express their love, particularly they cannot be sexually related with the father, and the mother is related sexually. So they become jealous of the mother -- the mother is their enemy. The boys become enemies of the father and because of that the boy cannot make love to the mother.

The Japanese cannot even think of this; even Indians cannot think of this -- just a totally different upbringing. Indians cannot believe what kind of nonsense this is. And for the Japanese things are very difficult. If you insist and you convince him that he hates his mother or he hates his father -- and the whole psychoanalysis depends on these kinds of things: who you hate, why you hate... And they go on digging deeper and they prove to the person that from very childhood there has been a jealousy and that is creating all the problems.

"Why can't you love your wife?" -- the psychoanalyst will come to the conclusion that you wanted to love your mother -- and your wife is not your mother -- and the wife does not love you because she wanted to love her father and you are not her father. So you are bound to fight continuously. You have fallen in love with the girl because something in her resembles your mother. And the girl has fallen in love for the same reason: something in you resembles her father.

So you have married your mother; she has married her father. This is psychoanalysis.

And because neither she is behaving like your mother nor you are behaving like her father, problems arise.

But to say to a Japanese, "You have married your mother," is simply out of the question.

To say to an Indian, "You have been secretly loving your mother and you wanted a sexual relationship with her..."; he cannot even think..."Are you in your senses or..."

In India the tradition is that the son loves his mother almost like a goddess. He loves his father and respects his father next to God. And the difficult thing is that even the people in the East who are teaching or who are in the profession of psychoanalysis, as professors or as practitioners, they have all learned from the West and they don't understand that the East has a totally different orientation.

And Sigmund Freud or Jung or Adler or Assagioli or Fritz Perls have no idea. Not even in their dreams have they thought that people can be different from the Western people.

In the East psychoanalysis is not of much help. For the Westerners, I like them to go through groups just to clean the mind. With a clean mind, to enter into meditation is easier. But if you don't enter meditation and you simply depend on cleaning the mind, then you will be cleaning the mind for your whole life and you will not go anywhere else.

Because of its different orientation the East should find seats in the universities for meditation, not for psychoanalysis.

One of the great Indian psychologists who was the head of the department in the Hindu university of Varanasi belonged to a village near my village; and moreover, he was father-in-law to one of my friends who had studied with me. He was one of the most respected professors of psychology, but he was condemned by everybody because people, thinking that he would be able to help them with their mind problems, would go for psychoanalysis, and psychoanalysis brings... They would ask, "Whom do you hate?"

And the Indian would find himself at a loss because everything comes down to sex -- and the Indian cannot accept that idea. It is not the same orientation as in the West.

This man's name was Laljiram Shukla. And because his son-in-law was my friend, the son-in-law was continuously telling him that he must meet me at least once. He was an old man. I was just out of the university. He invited me to come to Varanasi because his son-in-law was continually praising me. It became a psychological problem for the psychologist that the son-in-law was more interested in me, and not interested in him and was continually praising me. It became a challenge to him.

I was not aware what the situation was. When he invited me I thought perhaps it was because of my friend; he may have talked about me, so I went. I was a guest in his house, and I immediately became aware of a certain tension.

I asked my friend, "What is the matter?"

He said, "The problem is that I have been talking about you not knowing that he was feeling very offended. But he never showed it, and now, because you are here -- and many other professors have become interested; all his students, nearabout twenty postgraduates, they are all coming in the morning to meet you -- he is feeling very much wounded."

So in the morning he exploded. He started arguing with me, and because I told him, "All your education is from the West; all that you are talking is simply nonsense in the East --

what do you know about meditation? All your knowledge is about the mind, and that too of a certain mind, the Western mind. You are betraying the East by teaching people all kinds of nonsense, which does not make any actual impact on them, because that is not their problem.

"I have never seen anybody, I have looked in so many people's minds... In the East nobody is jealous of the father, nobody wants to make love to the mother, but without these things the psychoanalyst will say, Ìf you want to be cured you will have to cooperate.'"

And I argued with him -- I had to because he was so angry with me that I could not understand why he had invited me. And because he could not answer, I asked him directly, "I ask you, have you ever in your childhood wanted to make love to your mother? Have you ever thought in your childhood to kill your father because he was your competitor for the same sex object, the mother?"

He cooled down, and he said, "Never. I never thought about these things."

I said, "What are you doing now? Imposing on people ideas which are not their problems, are you helping them or destroying their integrity? You are telling them that their problems are things which are not their problems."

In the East for centuries the problem has been how to get beyond the mind -- the only problem, the single problem. But for the Western mind, because it has developed in a different way, it has never thought about transcending mind. I have looked into Jewish sources, into Christian sources; there is not a single statement in the whole history of the West where somebody has made an effort to go beyond the mind.

They have used the mind to pray, they have used the mind to believe in God; they have used the mind to become religious, virtuous, but they have never even thought that there is a possibility of going beyond the mind.

In the East that has been the only, single search. The whole genius of the East has been working for one thing, no other problems: how to go beyond the mind. Because if you can solve your problems wholesale just by going beyond, then why go for retail solving of problems. The mind will go on creating; it is a very creative force. You solve one problem, another problem arises. You solve that problem, another problem arises.

It is a good business for the psychoanalyst, because he knows you are never going to be cured. You are not going to be cured of the mind; he cures your specific problems. Your mind is there, the source. He never cuts the roots, he only cuts leaves, branches at the most, but they go on growing again -- the roots are there.

Meditation is cutting the very roots of problems.

I repeat: the mind is the only problem, and unless you go beyond the mind, you will never go beyond problems.

It is strange that even today, the Western psychologists have not even pondered over the fact that the East has created so many enlightened people. None of them has bothered about the analysis of the mind.

Just as in the Western literature -- religious, philosophical, theological -- there is no idea of going beyond the mind, in the same way in the Eastern philosophical literature there is nowhere any mention that psychoanalysis or psychology is of any importance. The West has lived with the mind and the East has lived beyond the mind, so their problems don't seem to be the same.

Ugly things can happen when you impose. For example, Erhard was running the movement of EST -- and it looks stupid to the Eastern meditator. What he was trying to do is so hilarious, but people felt very good. You will also feel very good if you do it, without paying him the two hundred and fifty dollars fee for you to become enlightened.

And how you become enlightened is a very simply process.

You are not allowed to go to the bathroom, so your bladder goes on becoming more and more filled with... and it starts hurting -- and you are not allowed to go to the bathroom.

And the session continues from the morning till night. The whole day to contain yourself, to resist the temptation...!

In such a situation who is listening to what nonsense he is talking? You are trying to hold yourself so that in some unaware moment... And then it starts happening, because how long can you do it? Particularly women don't have any control on the bladder; man has a little control, but women don't have.

So one woman starts pissing -- and when one starts... And Erhard used to say, "That is great!" And she feels certainly immensely relieved. First you created the tension and the tension became too much; it became anguish, agony. And now, she feels so released: It is enlightenment." She says, "I have got it" -- and then follows a chain... Somebody else starts getting it, somebody else starts getting it -- they used to fill the whole hall with urine. And they have paid two hundred and fifty dollars -- you can do it on your own!

If this is enlightenment, just close your room, and if you need some help it can be very easy; your friend can tie you so you cannot go to the bathroom. Then, contain yourself as long as you can and there comes a moment when you cannot contain. Then the bladder simply takes over. You are simply surprised by what is happening. And such a great relaxation and relief follows, such peace that you have never known -- peace that passes understanding!

These idiots have been creating new fashions in psychology, in psychoanalysis, therapies

-- and earning millions of dollars, and cheating people. It is not enlightenment. And if this is enlightenment then there is no need to be enlightened. It is perfectly good to go to the toilet... forget all about enlightenment.

The East has never bothered about the mind, has not even taken any note of it, has ignored it. From Patanjali to Gautam Buddha, to Shankara, to Ramakrishna, to J.

Krishnamurti -- the whole tradition does not bother about the mind. The mind is mentioned only for one purpose: how to transcend it.

Hundreds of methods have been found which can help you to transcend the mind, and once you are beyond the mind all its problems look as if they are somebody else's problems. You attain to a state of a watcher on the hills, and all the problems are in the valleys. And they don't have any impact on you; you have gone beyond them.

The West has remained utterly mind centered. In the West the only thing they have thought about is matter and mind. And matter is the reality and mind is only a by-product; beyond mind there is nothing.

In the East matter is illusory, mind is a by-product of all your illusions, projections, dreams. Your reality is beyond matter and mind, both.

So we divide reality in the East into three parts: matter, the outermost; the soul, the innermost; the mind is in between the two. Matter has a relative reality; it is not absolutely real, just relatively real. The mind is absolutely unreal, and the soul is absolutely real.

This is a totally different categorization of humanity. In the West the categories are simple: matter is real, mind is just a by-product, and there is nothing beyond mind.

So remember, Tilo, if you are meditating then nothing else is needed. If you are not meditating, then these psychotherapies may be helpful as a stepping-stone for meditation.

It was sunrise, and the young athlete was doing push-ups on the beach when a drunk appeared.

The drunk weaved his way to within a few yards of the perspiring young man, sat down on the sand and laughed and laughed.

"What the devil are you laughing about?" asked the annoyed young man.

The drunk laughed and said, "Don't look now, but somebody stole your girl."

Unnecessarily doing push-ups...

The West is unnecessarily making tremendous effort in analyzing the mind -- utterly useless unless they accept a transcendental state. And that's why again and again they get cheated by frauds. For example, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is cheating the whole of the West by any stupid thing. First it was transcendental meditation, then people became fed up with it because it was not meditation; it was mind repeating a mantra. You were not going beyond the mind, so what is transcendental in it?

So his earnings became very low; he had to invent something new. So he has invented spiritual yogic flying. First he started by spiritual levitation: you can meditate and become so light that you will start rising upwards! -- and you can find idiots everywhere... And people were paying four hundred dollars for learning spiritual levitation. In the first place what are you going to do by... even if you levitate, what purpose is going to be served by it? In the second place nobody was levitating; people were hopping.

Trick photography was being used and spread. People were shown to have levitated, and they had levitated with their mattress also -- that was strange. The mattress also has become yogic, spiritual...!

He was continually asked, "Give a public demonstration of your levitation" -- and he could not. A case was brought in the Supreme Court of America by seven of his own disciples, who had been working hard on levitation and found that it was absolute nonsense -- they were just hopping! So they had brought a case against him, demanding ninety million dollars. He has been cheating the whole world, and he has accumulated tremendous money.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi dropped that idea because he could not give a public demonstration. He came with a new idea, and this new idea is yogic flying -- even greater. And what is the purpose of yogic flying? -- if one person can learn to fly, then ninety-nine persons in the world will become meditative and silent and peaceful.

A big business, because it means for five billion people to become peaceful -- no war, no conflict, just blissfulness -- millions of people will have to learn yogic flying. Again, he was aware that he would be asked to give a public demonstration. He has given one demonstration in Europe, and now another is planned in America soon. And what people saw was, it was the same hopping, but now it is hopping not only in one place, you go on hopping...

Every frog knows it! And it is so stupid that people are paying millions of dollars to learn what the frogs know without any difficulty. They are giving public demonstrations and they don't even see that they are being absolutely stupid. A few have become so expert that now there are hurdle races; small hurdles are places and they hop over the hurdles.

They are great spiritual people.

But I don't see the connection. Even if they can hop, and go on crossing the hurdles, in what way is this going to create peace in the world...? Nor can it create peace in the person who is hopping. It will create more retardedness in him. The very idea that he has accepted this stupid thing shows that he has no intelligence at all. And what peace, how can peace be attained by these kinds of things?

He is now proposing to the world that if millions -- he has calculated exactly how many millions of people are needed to learn hopping to prevent the third world war.

I don't believe that man is so stupid that he gets caught by such frauds. People are learning. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has opened an academy in Switzerland where thousands of people are learning hopping.

The West is being exploited by all kinds of frauds for the simple reason that the West has not looked into the matter of meditation itself. So any idiot goes and says anything, and gathers followers because they don't know what meditation is. Neither will chanting a mantra nor hopping nor levitation...

These things have nothing to do with meditation. Meditation has only one meaning, and that is going beyond the mind and becoming a witness. In your witnessing is the miracle -

- the whole mystery of life.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

The Invitation

Chapter #27

Chapter title: Still time to change the trains

4 September 1987 am in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

Archive

code:

8709040

ShortTitle:

INVITA27

Audio:

Yes

Video:

Yes

Length:

107

mins

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

I AM ALSO GETTING OLD. WOULD YOU TELL ME A FEW LAWS FOR MIDDLE

AGE ALSO?

Amrito, everybody is getting old. Since the day you were born, you have been getting old

-- each moment, each day. Childhood is a flux, so is youth -- just old age never ends, because it terminates! That is the unique quality of old age, that it brings you to ultimate rest. But you want a few laws for middle age... You are a man of medicine, you should know better.

As far as I am concerned, I have never been a child, never a youth, and never become old and never will die. I know only one thing in me that is absolutely unchanging and eternal.

But just for your sake...

There are many laws about middle age, because all over the world people become old.

And many thinkers have been thinking, What is this old age? The first law is De Never's Lost Law; obviously about old age, the law can be the last: Never speculate on that which can be known for certain.

You know perfectly well you are getting old, now don't speculate on that, that will make you more miserable.

The law is beautiful, never speculate on that which can be known for certain. In fact, in life, except death nothing is certain; everything can be speculated upon, but not death.

And old age is just the door to death.

Middle age is when you begin to exchange your emotions for symptoms.

Lendel's Law: You know you are getting old when a girl calls "No," and all you feel is relief.

Old age is when you start to turn out the lights for economical rather than romantic reasons!

Old age is that period of life when your idea of getting ahead is staying even.

Old age is when you can do just as much as ever, but would rather not.

Old age is a mysterious experience, but all these laws have been found by the Western mind. I have not been able to discover anybody in the whole literature of the East talking about old age. On the contrary, old age has been praised immensely, because in the East it has been thought that you are not old. If your life has simply moved on the horizontal line, you are only aged. But if your life, your consciousness, has moved vertically, upwards, then you have attained the beauty, the glory of old age. Old age in the East has been synonymous with wisdom.

These are the two paths: one is horizontal, from childhood to youth, to old age and to death; another is vertical, from childhood to youth, to old age, and to immortality. The difference in quality of both the dimensions is immense, incalculable. The man who simply becomes young, and old, and dead, has remained identified with his body. He has not known anything about his being, because being is never born and never dies; it is always, it has been always, it will be always, it is the whole of eternity.

On the vertical line the child becomes young, but the youth on the vertical line will be different from the youth on the horizontal line. Childhood is innocent, but that is the point from where these two different dimensions open up. The youth on the horizontal line is nothing but sensuality, sexuality and all kinds of other stupidities. The youth on the vertical line is a search for truth, is a search for life -- it is a longing to know oneself.

A man on the vertical line cannot be called young if he is not meditative, and the same is true about old age. On the horizontal line, old age is simply trembling, afraid of death; I cannot think of anything except a graveyard, and darkness which goes on becoming darker and darker. It cannot conceive of himself except as a skeleton.

On the vertical line, old age is a celebration; it is as beautiful as man has ever been.

Youth is a little foolish -- is bound to be; it is inexperienced, but old age has passed through all the experiences -- good and bad, right and wrong -- and has come to a state where it is no longer affected by anything concerned with body or mind.

It is a welcome! old age on the vertical line is keeping its door open for the ultimate guest to come in. It is not an end, it is a beginning of a real life, of an authentic being.

Hence, I continuously make the distinction between growing old and growing up. Very few people have been fortunate to grow up; the remainder of humanity has only been growing old. And naturally they are all moving towards death. Only on the vertical line does death not exist; that is the way to immortality, to divinity. And naturally, when one becomes old on that dimension, he has a grace and a beauty and a compassion and love.

It has been noted again and again... There is a statement in Buddhist scriptures that as Buddha became older, he became more beautiful. This I call a true miracle. Not walking on water -- any drunkard can try that. Not turning water into wine -- any criminal can do that. This is a true miracle: Buddha became more beautiful than he was in his youth; he became more innocent than he was in his childhood -- this is growth.

Unless you are moving on the vertical line, you are missing the whole opportunity of life.

But here our whole effort is to block the horizontal line and open the blocked vertical line. Then every day you are coming closer to life, not farther away. Then your birth is not the beginning of death, your birth is the beginning of eternal life. Just two different lines and so much difference.

The West has never thought about it; the vertical line has never been mentioned because they haven't been brought up in a spiritual atmosphere where the real riches are inside you. Even if they think of God, they think of him outside. Gautam Buddha could deny God -- I deny God. There is absolutely no God for the simple reason that we want you to turn inwards. If God is -- or anything similar -- it has to be found inside you; it has to be found in your own eternity, in your own ecstasy.

To think of oneself as a body-mind structure is the most dangerous idea that has happened to people. That destroys their whole grace, whole beauty, and they are constantly trembling and afraid of death, and trying to keep old age as far away as possible. In the West, if you say to an old woman, "You look so young," and she knows she is no longer young, she will stand in front of the mirror for hours to check whether any youthfulness has remained anywhere. But she will not deny it, she will be immensely happy. In the East, nobody says to an old woman, "You are young"; on the contrary, old age is so respected, loved, so that to say to somebody, "You look younger than your age,"

is a kind of insult. .

I am reminded of one incident that happened life...

I was staying in Chanda -- a far corner of Maharashtra -- with a very rich family, and they were very much interested in an astrologer. They loved me and I used to go at least three times per year. That was their quota, and I used to stay there for at least three or four days each time. Once when I went there, without asking they had arranged with the astrologer to come and to look at my hands and tell some things about me. When I came to know about it, everything was fixed; the astrologer was sitting in the sitting room. So I said,

"Okay, let us enjoy that too!"

I showed him my hand; he pondered over it and he said, "You must be at least eighty years old."

Of course, one of the daughters of the rich man freaked out, "This is stupid. What kind of astrology..."

At that time I was not more than thirty-five -- even a blind man could have measured thirty-five and eighty! She was really angry, and she told me, "I am finished with this astrologer. What else can he know?"

I said, "You don't understand. You are more Westernized -- educated in the Western style. You have been to the West for your education -- you can't understand what he was saying."

She said, "What was he saying? It was so clear there is no need to understand; he was simply showing his stupidity. A thirty-five-year-old young man, and he is saying that you are eighty years old."

I said, "Be patient."

And I told her a story about Emerson...

A man asked Emerson, "How old are you?"

Emerson said, "Nearabout three hundred and sixty years."

The man could not believe... and he had always believed in Emerson that he is a man of truth! What had happened -- a slip of the tongue? Or had he become senile? Or is he joking?

To make things clear he said, "I did not hear what you said. Just tell me how much...?"

Emerson said, "You have heard it -- three hundred and sixty years."

The man said, "I cannot believe it. You don't look more than sixty years."

Emerson said, "You are right in a way: on the vertical I am three hundred and sixty, and on the horizontal I am sixty."

Perhaps he was the first Western man to use this Eastern expression of horizontal and vertical.

Emerson was immensely interested in the East, and he had a few glimpses which bring him closer to the seers of the UPANISHADS. He said, "Actually I have lived sixty years; you are right. But in sixty years I have lived as much as you will not be able to live even in three hundred and sixty years. I have lived six times more."

The vertical line does not count years, it counts your experiences. And on the vertical line is the whole treasure of existence -- not only immortality, not only a feeling of divineness, but the first experience of love without hate, the first experience of compassion, the first experience of meditation -- the first experience of the tremendous explosion of enlightenment.

It is not a coincidence that in the West, the word ènlightenment' does not have the same meaning as in the East. They say that after the black ages, dark ages, came the age of enlightenment. They refer to people like Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jaspers as very enlightened geniuses. They don't understand that they are misusing a word, dragging it into the mud. Neither is Bertrand Russell enlightened nor Jean-Paul Sartre nor Jaspers.

Enlightenment does not happen on the horizontal. Even in his old age Jean-Paul Sartre was still running after young girls. Bertrand Russell changed his wife so many times, and he lived long on the horizontal -- almost a century. But even in his old age, his interests were as stupid as young people.

The East understands that the word ènlightenment' has nothing to do with genius, has nothing to do with intelligence, it has something to do with discovering your real, authentic being. It is discovering God within you.

Amrito, you need not be worried about laws. Those laws are all on the horizontal line. On the vertical line there is love, no law; there is the growing experience of becoming more and more spiritual and less and less physical, more and more meditative and less and less mind, more and more divine and less and less of this trivial material world in which we are so much enmeshed.

On the vertical line, slowly you feel desires disappearing, sensuality disappearing, sexuality disappearing, ambitions disappearing, will to power disappearing... your slavery in all its aspects disappearing -- religious, political, national. You become more of an individual. And with your individuality growing clear and luminous, the whole humanity is becoming one in your eyes -- you cannot discriminate.

There are great experiences on the vertical line; on the horizontal line there is only decline. On the horizontal line the old man lives in the past. He thinks of those beautiful days, those Arabian nights when he was young; he thinks also of those beautiful days when there was no responsibility and he was a child running after butterflies. In fact, for his whole life he has been running after butterflies -- even in old age.

Mulla Nasruddin was passing along a street...

And he saw a beautiful young woman so he gave her a good nudge. The woman was shocked, because Mulla was old; all his hairs were pure silver white. The woman said,

"You should be ashamed -- all your hairs are pure white. You are the age of my grandfather -- you should have been dead by now. You are showing your ugliness....

Mulla said, "Listen, my hairs are white, that's true, but my heart is still black -- dark black."

On the horizontal line, that's what happens -- your hairs will become white, but you don't become white. In fact, on the contrary: as you grow old, you become more and more infatuated by desires, because now you know that ahead there is only death. So you enjoy as much as possible, although enjoying becomes difficult, physically you have lost the energy. So the old man on the horizontal line becomes cerebrally sexual; he is continuously thinking of sex.

Psychologists have been watching thousands of people, and they have concluded that every man thinks of a woman at least once in three minutes. Just check it! That will show you on what line you are -- horizontal or vertical. And each woman thinks of a man one time in seven minutes. That is the difference that creates conflict. The moment the husband comes and asks, "Dear, what about it?" and she says, "I have a headache, don't torture me any more..." The difference is that she thinks of it only one time in seven minutes, that means one day in seven days...!

The man thinks of the woman one time in three minutes, that is average. In old age those three minutes shrink into one minute. The old man has nothing else to do but to think --

and what else is there to think about? He imagines beautiful women.

One day Mulla Nasruddin was sitting on his balcony watching the beautiful sunset...

And suddenly he shouted to his servant, "Bring my glasses, bring my glasses quickly!"

The servant said, "What calamity has happened?" He brought his glasses.

Mulla said, "You idiot, when I say quick it mean quick. We missed the opportunity."

The servant said, "I don't understand, what opportunity?"

He said, "Such a beautiful woman was going by, but my eyes can't figure out whether she is a woman or a man, whether she is really beautiful or I am imagining. Glasses were needed, but by the time you brought the glasses she was gone."

The servant said, "You are under the wrong impression; she was not a woman! He is my brother who has come to see me. Nobody else has passed."

The old man is continuously thinking of the past -- this is the psychology. The child thinks of the future because he has no past; there is no question of thinking of the past --

no yesterday. He thinks of days to come, the whole long life. Seventy years gives him space... He wants to become big enough quickly to do things that all the big people are doing.

The old man has no future -- the future means death; he does not even want to talk about the future. The future makes him tremble. The future means the grave -- he talks about the past.

And the same is true about countries. For example, a country like India never thinks of the future. That would mean it had become old; it is symptomatic. It always thinks of the past. It goes on playing the life of Rama and Sita; for centuries the same story... every village performs that drama. It goes on thinking about Buddha and Mahavira and Adinatha and RIGVEDA and the UPANISHADS.

Everything has passed. Now the country is simply waiting to die; there is no future.

According to the Indian idea -- and that is the idea of the old mentality, the mind of the old man -- the best age was millions of years ago; it was called satyuga, the age of truth.

After that man started falling.

You can see the psychological parallel; there are four ages: childhood, the young man, middle age, the old man. According to these four he has projected four ages for life itself.

The first age was innocent, just like a child -- very balanced. They give the example that it has four legs just like a table, perfectly balanced. And then the decline starts....

In India, the idea of evolution has never existed, but on the contrary just the opposite idea. The word is not even used in the West -- you may not have even heard of the word -

- but in India they have been thinking about involution, not evolution: "We are shrinking, we are falling down."

In the second stage of the fall one leg is lost; the table becomes a tripod. It is still balanced, but not as much as it was with four legs. In the third stage it loses another leg; now it is standing only on two legs, absolutely unbalanced. And this is the fourth stage: even two legs are not available; you are standing on one leg -- how long you can stand?

The first stage is called satyuga, the age of truth; the second is simply named by the number; treta is the third, because only three legs are left. The second is called dwapar.

Dwa is exactly what two is in English; this `two' comes from the Sanskrit dwa; moving through many other languages it becomes twa, and then finally it becomes two. And the fourth age they have called kaliyuga, the age of darkness.

We are living in the age of darkness. This is the mind of the old man: ahead there is only darkness and nothing else. The child thinks of the future, of the golden future; the old man thinks of the golden past. But this happens only on the horizontal line. On the vertical line, the past is golden, the present is golden, the future is golden; it is a life of tremendous celebration.

So rather than being worried about the laws of old age, think about which line your train is moving on. There is still time to change trains; there is always time to change trains because from every moment that bifurcation is available. You can shift, shift from the horizontal to the vertical; only that is important.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

CAN YOU SAY SOMETHING AGAIN ABOUT COMING TO THE MASTER AND

GOING BACK TO THE WORLD?

Again?

Chetan Dhyan, it seems you have heard it before. Where were you that time? And are you certain you will be able to hear this time?

I can say... in fact I am saying everything again and again and again, but you are not ever at home so you don't know. You think I am saying new things every day -- from where can I get new things? I have stopped reading; for twelve years I have not touched a single book. I don't meet people, so I can't gather gossips or gospels. I don't go anywhere. I just talk to you and go to sleep!

In sleep do you think I can find new things every day? My sleep is dreamless, contentless

-- just a pure silence. It is another name for meditation to me.

Nirvano just takes care that once in a while I sleep, or else the body suffers; otherwise the whole night I am awake. I have divided the day into two parts because there is nothing to read. I have read so much, and now I am utterly bored when I come to look at books. I already know what these idiots will be writing. And there is no other source....

The only thing is that you feel what I am saying is new, that you have never heard it before. You have been here, but I will not refuse your question. I will repeat it again! But before I say anything about it, to wake you up I will tell you a story. I use stories and jokes to keep you awake! If I start talking about pure philosophy there will be complete silence and people will start snoring!

For centuries people have been snoring whenever religion, spirituality, philosophy and meditation were discussed. And all the great masters have been in immense agony because of their compassion -- what to do with these people? But I have found a way: there is no need to say to you, "Wake up!" I simply tell you a joke when I see you are slipping into sleep. Then you just straighten up, open your eyes, look all around -- I don't allow anybody to snore!

A man from Warsaw in Chelm on a business trip, was walking down the street when he was stopped by Yossel the chimney sweep. "Zalman!" cried Yossel. "What has become of you? It's so long since I have seen you. Just look at yourself."

"But wait," replied the stranger, "I'm..."

"Never mind that," said Yossel. "I can't get over how much you have changed. You used to be such a big man, built like an ox. And now you are smaller than I am. Have you been sick?"

"But wait," replied the stranger, "I'm..."

"Never mind that," said Yossel. "And what has become of your hair? You used to have a fine head of black hair, and now you are completely bald. What has happened? You know, I don't see how I ever recognized you. Zalman, what has become of you?"

"I have been trying to tell you," the man replied. "I am not Zalman."

"Oy," replied Yossel, "You have gone and changed your name as well!"

If one does not want to listen, what to do! You will find some way out.

Your question is beautiful. You say, "Can you say something again about coming to the master and going back to the world?"

The moment you have found a master, wherever you are the master will be with you.

Finding the master means drinking from his well.

Finding the master means becoming yourself -- so attuned with the master, so in accord, in such a deep harmony, that you only appear two, but you have become one. The bodies are two, but the inner flames of your life have become one. Once you have found the master, there is no way to go anywhere where you can be without the master.

If going to the world you find yourself alone, without the master, that simply means only one thing, without any doubt -- you have not found the master yet.

There is a beautiful story about Mahakashyapa, one of the most significant disciples of Gautam Buddha -- perhaps just second to him, or maybe just equal to him. He never asked any question, he never bothered Buddha about any problem. Finally, Buddha became concerned, "What is the matter? Everybody is asking, everybody is receiving the answer, and this Mahakashyapa never asks anything. And if he does not ask there is no point in answering him -- what am I going to answer?"

He called Mahakashyapa. With tears, Mahakashyapa came to him and he said, "The only thing is that I am afraid of enlightenment."

Buddha said, "You are strange. You have left your kingdom and you have become a sannyasin, and now you are afraid of enlightenment?"

He said, "That's true, that's why I don't ask anything, because I am afraid if I become enlightened you will send me away to spread the message, the word. I have been watching; those people who have become enlightened have been sent away, and I cannot live a single moment without... Just leave me alone. I don't want any enlightenment, I just want to be with you. And I can be with you only if I am unenlightened; once I am enlightened I know you will send me."

Buddha said, "I promise you, I will not send you. But just out of that fear, don't prevent yourself from becoming enlightened -- you don't know what it is!"

Because of the promise of Gautam Buddha, Mahakashyapa became enlightened on the second day. All this time he had been becoming silent, peaceful -- no question, no answer; the chattering of the mind had gone away. For twenty years he had been sitting in deep closeness with Buddha, and his love for him was so much that he was ready to drop the idea of enlightenment.

You will find very few disciples who will be ready to drop the idea of enlightenment.

They will say, "This is stupid. For enlightenment we have come to a master, and then for the master we drop the idea of enlightenment! It does not make sense."

But once Buddha promised him, the next day he became enlightened. And Buddha called him, "Mahakashyapa, now you have to go and spread the word."

Mahakashyapa said, "And what about your promise?"

Buddha said, "A promise was given to an unenlightened man! You are no longer the same man; that man has gone. To you I have never given any promise."

Mahakashyapa said, "That's true. That man is gone, but be kind enough... Forget about the promise because you are tricky, you are getting out of it. Let me be here."

But Buddha said, "What will you do here? Don't you know that once you have become enlightened, wherever you are I am with you? I am you. What is the difference between my enlightenment and your enlightenment? Just a day ago you were an unlit candle; today you have your own flame -- and the flame is the same. Today you are a buddha yourself."

Mahakashyapa touched his feet and said, "I will go, but just allow me one thing, that wherever I am I can bow down towards your direction and touch your feet. Your feet will not be there, but I can touch the ground and kiss the ground. This much you will have to allow me."

Buddha said, "I can allow you. There is no harm in it, but what will others think? They will think you are crazy. First you are going to talk about meditation, enlightenment --

they will think you are a little strange -- and when they see you kissing the earth and touching the earth with your head then it will become certain to them that you are really mad."

Mahakashyapa said, "That you can leave to me. That is my problem; you should not interfere in it. First you tricked me into enlightenment -- for twenty years I was so happy.

Now I am more happy and more blissful. For twenty years I was happy in spite of my ignorance, now I am happy, simply happy -- there is no ignorance, there is no darkness. I am grateful to you. I know you are within me now, but whatever the world thinks I will continue to touch your feet -- at least from far away, just in your direction."

And his whole life he continued. People were amazed seeing him every morning, every evening, "What are you doing?" But he was such a luminous figure, nobody could think that he was mad. In fact, they had never seen such a man of genius, intelligence, awareness, love, compassion, blissfulness -- twenty-four hours in ecstasy. So they could not think that he was mad, but what was he doing?"

He said, "I bow down to my master's feet. He must be a thousand miles away, just in the direction... I cannot forget my gratitude towards him. If he had not tricked me I would have remained unenlightened forever.

"Just for me to become enlightened, my master was even ready to lie. He promised me --

knowing perfectly well that he was not going to keep his promise -- and he is a man of his word; I have never seen him going against his word. But his compassion was so much, and his love was so much, how can I forget him?

"It does not matter where he is I bow down in gratitude morning and evening, and that is my most precious time. I am blissful, I am ecstatic, I am enlightened."

But I want you to know that he said to people again and again, "Even my great ecstasy is less than the ecstasy I feel when I bow down to my master. Whatever I am is his compassion and nothing else."

Chetan Dhyan, you need not be worried if you have found the master in me. Then wherever you are you will find me very close, nearby -- just following you like a shadow.

But if you get lost into the world, that will also be a good experience, to understand that you have not found the master. In any case, these are the only two alternatives -- either you will find me in your gratitude, in your love, in your peace, in your silence, in your meditations, in your joy, or you will forget about me in the crowd. In both of the ways it will be a beautiful experience and a beautiful test.

I want everybody here... those who are essential to run the commune should remain here; otherwise, people should come and go. They can manage it to be here for three months --

be here three months and go back into the world.

The day you can start finding me wherever you are is the greatest day of your life.

Question 3

BELOVED MASTER,

LOVING TO HEAR YOU LAUGH, LOVING YOUR JOKES, LOVING YOU --

BELOVED MASTER, WOULD YOU SPEAK TO US ABOUT LAUGHTER?

Anand Svabhavo, when you are hungry you don't want somebody to speak on food!

When you are in a river drowning, you don't want somebody else to talk about the art of swimming. There are right moments and right situations, and there are things which can be talked about, yet misunderstood.

Laughter is a mystery. It is better to experience it than to hear someone talk about it. But one becomes curious, "What is laughter?"

Laughter is the most intelligent factor in you.

Buffaloes don't laugh, and if you meet a buffalo laughing you will go mad! Then it will be impossible to bring you to sanity. No animal laughs. Laughter needs a very sensitive intelligence. It means that you can understand the ridiculousness of a certain situation.

What are jokes? They are a very clever arrangement. They take you in a direction logically, rationally, you start expecting that now this is going to happen, this is going to happen... and it goes on happening according to your expectations. Then comes a sudden turn and something happens which you could never have imagined. That brings laughter to you.

It is a very internal process of your rational expectation. If what you were expecting happens, there will be no laugh. But if you see something that you could not have conceived and everything went well up to the end -- and then suddenly something happens that makes you immediately forget all your reason, logic, mind...

Laughter is the only ordinary experience when you are no longer a mind, and I use it to give you glimpses of no-mind, of meditation, of a transcendence of mind. Perhaps I am the first man in the whole history of mankind who has been using jokes as a preparation for meditation. Jesus would not laugh; Buddha will not laugh; Lao Tzu is not heard to have ever laughed... They were serious people, and they were doing serious work!

It will be good to understand a small incident which began the tradition of Zen. Those are the people who understand -- the only people on the earth, a small stream who have understood the meaning of laughter because their origin is in laughter.

It was again Mahakashyapa...

He was sitting under his tree -- he was sitting under his tree for twenty years. It had almost become his tree; nobody else used to sit under that tree. Everybody knew that that was the place for Mahakashyapa and not to disturb that man. "He never asks, he never says anything, he never talks -- why disturb him? Just leave him alone." It had become an accepted fact. But one day he laughed -- and that day was his day of enlightenment.

A great king, Prasenjita, asked his wife... His wife was a disciple of Gautam Buddha, a lay disciple, not a sannyasin, but immensely interested in Gautam Buddha and hoping that one day her husband would allow her to become a sannyasin. Prasenjita was not interested in sannyas; he was interested in increasing his kingdom, to make it bigger and bigger. He was always fighting, invading new areas.

By chance, Buddha had come into the capital of Prasenjita, and the wife was insisting,

"You have to come with me to welcome him because it doesn't show culture, refinement if you don't come. A man of the caliber of Gautam Buddha happens in millions of years.

Kings and queens are a rupee a dozen! You can find them anywhere; they are not worth much. You will be forgotten, but Gautam Buddha's name will remain till the last man has become enlightened. You may be remembered if you go to Gautam Buddha and touch his feet. Just this small act on your part will make you historical".

And that is true -- who would have heard about Prasanjita? There were hundreds of other kings at that time, and we don't know anything about them, but Prasanjita is known. And because the wife was insistent, he said, "Okay, but I have to present something to him."

He had a very beautiful diamond. Other kings were jealous of that diamond; perhaps that was the best diamond available in those days. So prasenjita said, "What else can I offer to him? I will offer this diamond."

The wife said, "You don't understand, a diamond or a stone is equal to him. It will be better that you take a lotus flower, because to him the lotus flower represents a revolution

-- it comes out of dirty mud. And it is the most beautiful flower on the earth, most fragrant, the biggest flower. It comes from the dirt, it crosses the water and stands on top of the water. This is a great revolution: dirt turning into such a beautiful...

"So velvety are the flowers, leaves and petals that when dewdrops in the night gather on the big petals and big leaves, they are so velvety that the water cannot touch them. They remain on the lotus leaves, but the lotus leaf remains untouched by them. The lotus flower remains in the water but the water does not touch it -- that gives it another significance that a man should live in the world untouched by it. He should live in the world but not allow the world to enter him; he should live in the dirty world, but he has the possibility of becoming a lotus flower."

So the lotus became a symbol for the transcendence from the trivial matters of the world.

Gautam Buddha is represented in thousands of temples sitting on a lotus flower. That lotus flower represents his philosophy -- it has become a symbol. So she said, "In our beautiful pond at the palace I will find the best and biggest lotus flower -- you take the lotus flower."

The husband did not think that a lotus flower had any value in comparison to his diamond which could purchase a whole kingdom. So he said, "Okay, I will take both, and I will see which he prefers. This is my first meeting, so let me judge the man."

He touched the feet of Buddha and wanted to give the great diamond. Ten thousand disciples were present. They could not believe the radiance of the diamond, its clarity, purity, its perfection -- and it was so great. There was complete silence, because everybody was watching what Buddha was going to do now, because it was against his disciplines to have anything more than three changes of clothes and one begging bowl --

that had to be the only possession for any sannyasin. Now what was he going to do...?

Was he going to refuse the king? -- that will be insulting. Was he going to accept it? --

but that will be against his discipline. So there was great silence and great curiosity.

Buddha saw the diamond and told prasenjita, "Drop it!"

Very reluctantly, he dropped it, because now there was no way... He has presented, and the man is saying "Drop it." Under the impact of Buddha and those ten thousand people -

- in which there were nearly two dozen enlightened people -- he dropped the diamond.

Then he brought from the other hand the lotus flower, thinking that perhaps his wife was right.

Buddha said, "Drop it!"

prasenjita could not believe what kind of man he was, "I have brought presents and he goes on saying, `Drop it.'"

The third time, when he had dropped the lotus flower, his hands were empty, but Buddha said loudly, "Drop it!"

He said, "I don't have anything to drop."

That was the moment when Mahakashyapa for the first time in twenty years started laughing, madly. prasenjita was very much offended, but Gautam Buddha called Mahakashyapa gave him the lotus flower, and told him, "From you will start a totally new and unique, fresh stream."

That fresh stream has developed into Zen -- but it was born in the laughter of Mahakashyapa.

prasenjita said, "I don't understand what is happening... why this man laughed."

Gautam Buddha said, "He laughed because you could not understand my third request to drop it. I wanted you to drop your ego. I am not concerned with lotus flowers, not concerned with diamonds. I only am concerned with one thing, your ego. Unless you drop it, you have not dropped anything. And I cannot accept your diamond or your lotus flower, because that will enhance and nourish your ego.

"That's why Mahakashyapa laughed because the poor emperor does not understand the language of a mystic -- but he understood it. In ten thousand sannyasins he was the only one who understood what I meant -- and he laughed. I have chosen him to be the first for a new stream of seekers, so he is the founder of Zen."

Zen was founded in laughter, and for twenty-five centuries the tradition has continued to produce enlightened people. Most of the traditions have died but Zen still brings flowers.

Perhaps, rooted in laughter, it is rooted in the highest consciousness.

Anand Svabhavo....

Rabinovich sits down in a cafe and orders a glass of tea and a copy of PRAVDA.

"I'll bring the tea," the waiter tells him, "but I can't bring you a copy of PRAVDA. The Soviet regime has been overthrown and PRAVDA isn't published anymore" -- PRAVDA is the mouthpiece of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

"All right," says Rabinovich, "Just bring me the tea."

The next day Rabinovich comes to the same cafe and asks for tea and a copy of PRAVDA. The waiter gives him the same answer.

On the third day, Rabinovich again orders tea and PRAVDA. This time the waiter says to him, "Look, sir, you seem to be an intelligent man. For the past three days you've ordered a copy of PRAVDA, and three times now I've had to tell you that the Soviet regime has been overthrown, and PRAVDA isn't published anymore."

"I know, I know," says Rabinovich. "But I just like to hear it."

Two Jews sat in a coffee house discussing the fate of their people.

"How miserable is our lot," said one. "Pogroms, plagues, quotas, discrimination, and Adolf Hitler... Sometimes I think we'd be better off if we'd never been born."

"Sure," said his friend. "But who has that much luck -- maybe one in fifty thousand?"

Try to get it!

It was at the office Christmas party. As they lay on the office reception couch in the darkened room, their breath came hot and fast.

"Oh, Melvin, oh Melvin," she said passionately, "You've never made love to me like this before. Is it because of the holiday spirit?"

"No," he panted. "It is probably because I am not Melvin!"

It is possible, when you have a hearty laugh, mind stops, because mind cannot laugh. It is structured seriously, its function is to be serious, miserable, sick. The moment you laugh, it does not come from your mind, it comes from the beyond, from your very inner spirit.

According to me, all the religions have missed one of the dimensions of the greatest importance, a sense of humor. And they have made the whole world serious.

I want my people to fill the world with laughter, joy, songs, and dances. We are not seeking for any paradise -- we are seeking how to create the paradise, herenow, because we are not interested in things after death. If we can create a paradise herenow, certainly we will be able -- even if we meet in hell -- to create the paradise there.

All my people are condemned by all the religions, so I hope we will be reaching hell. But they are to be warned, "Don't send my people to hell, because they will turn the hell into a far better paradise than you have with your old, dirty and dry saints who cannot even smile!"

I trust absolutely that when a million sannyasins enter into hell with their guitars and songs and dances and jokes the whole quality and the whole atmosphere of hell is going to be changed -- I think even the devil will join you! He will become a sannyasin: Swami Anand Devil!

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes Osho.

The Invitation

Chapter #28

Chapter title: Opening the doors of light and beyond

4 September 1987 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

Archive

code:

8709045

ShortTitle:

INVITA28

Audio:

Yes

Video:

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Length:

92

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Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

WHO IS THIS GHOSTWRITER WHO IS MAKING THE GOLDEN RULES?

Amrito, as far as I am concerned there is only one golden rule, that there are no golden rules. What are known as golden rules are only gold-plated. These so-called golden rules are obviously made by people who have gold. You can see that these rules are not golden but only gold-plated...

Women have a much better time than men in this world; there are far more things forbidden to them.

Many a romance begins when a girl sinks into his arms -- and ends up with her arms in his sink.

Bachelor: A man who comes to work each morning from a different direction.

Milligan's Law of Home Economics: Two can live as cheaply as one, for about half as long.

You've heard of the three ages of woman: youth, middle age and, "You are looking wonderful."

Golding's Law of Typecasting: The world is divided into two types of people, those who divide the world into two types of people, and those who don't.

The meek shall inherit the earth, but not its mineral rights.

Women are entirely to blame for men's lies; they keep insisting on asking the most awkward questions.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

Klein's Law of Possibilities: Nothing is impossible for people who don't have to do it themselves.

In this world there are only two tragedies: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

Middle age: Later than you think and sooner than you expect.

Old age is not so bad when you consider the alternative.

Percy's Law of Laziness: The world is divided into two sorts of people, those who are willing to work and those who are willing to let them.

Karl Marx says, "To do is to be do."

Albert Camus says, "To be is to do."

And Frank Sinatra says, "Do be do be do."

Question 2

BELOVED MASTER,

IS IT POSSIBLE TO EXPERIENCE LOVE AND MEDITATION AT THE SAME

TIME?

Taglish Bharti, love and meditation are not two things; hence, the question itself does not arise.

Love is a meditation and meditation blossoms in love. Of course when I use the word

`love' I don't mean the love that ordinarily is understood by the word, I don't mean the biological infatuation -- anyway it is not love. It is simply your chemistry, not you which feels attracted, and under the chemistry's illusion you think you are in love. But that kind of love every animal, every bird knows perfectly well.

Only man seems to be deluded, and deluded so much that all the animals in the world except man have a certain season when they are infatuated -- their season of reproduction, a very limited period in the year when biology overtakes them, makes them completely blind; forces them almost against their will. Have you seen two animals making love? And have you ever seen them smiling? They look so bored that how to get out of it seems to be the only problem that is troubling them.

The whole year they look more relaxed, more at ease, more in tune with nature and with themselves, but when the reproduction season comes they all start looking sad, serious, saintly. They forget their playfulness; they forget their freedom. Suddenly they feel themselves under a kind of hypnotic trance; in fact, it is a chemical trance.

That's why scientists are able to change sexes very easily. A man can become a woman, a woman can become a man -- just a very small change, a change in the hormones, in the chemistry of their bodies. Just a few more hormones and the woman will start growing a mustache and beard.

Now there are many people in the world who have changed their sexes. Sometimes it has happened automatically because man consists of both, man and woman. Something is contributed by your father, something is contributed by your mother, so you are both: your father and your mother, part man, part woman. Whichever is more in percentage, perhaps sixty percent man and forty percent woman, then you are man or it may be otherwise, then you are a woman.

This percentage of hormones can be changed just by giving you injections. And in the developed countries there are already men who have been born as women, and women who have changed to men. But in the beginning the very idea came to mind because once in a while there was an accidental case. For example, in the very beginning of this century in London there was a case. A man fell in love with a woman and he married the woman. But after the marriage he was very much amazed that the woman slowly started changing into a man.

After a year he was so much ashamed because the whole town was laughing at him: his woman had turned completely into a man. He went to the court for divorce. The court was puzzled; there had never been a case like that before the court. And the man was perfectly reasonable. He said, "I married a woman; I have never married a man. Why should I marry a man? Obviously the marriage is canceled; in fact, I don't need any divorce, but just not to be illegal, I am asking for divorce."

His wife was sent for a medical examination. There was no need because she had a mustache and beard; her breasts had disappeared. There was not much need, but not taking any chances the judge said, "Let her be medically examined. If the doctor's report says she has become a man then there is no question, your divorce is accepted."

That gave the idea to the scientists that perhaps the woman has a very small difference between her male hormones and female hormones. Perhaps she is fifty-one percent woman, forty-nine percent man, and by some change, climate, food, some medicine... it can be anything that has altered the proportion between man and woman in her. The difference was very slight, very borderline, and she became a man.

This opened a door of great research, and it was found that every man can become a woman and every woman can become a man.

This reminds me that in the East, from the very beginning, almost ten-thousand-year-old statues are available in which Shiva and his wife, Parvati, are represented as one personality: half man, half woman. It is a beautiful aesthetic and artistic sculpture, and that's how it has been thought always: a beautiful metaphor, but nobody has thought of it as a reality.

The people who created that statue must have come to know that every man is carrying a woman within him and every woman is carrying a man within her -- and this change is not impossible.

My own feeling is that in the future many more people will be changing -- because why not have both the experiences in one life? Most intelligent people will change -- the unintelligent always are afraid of any change -- otherwise, you have lived as a woman for thirty years, now it is time, why not have a look from the other side? Why go on living on this bank? The scenery from the other side is also very beautiful.

Only then will the old idea of the poets that the woman is a mystery will be solved. You can become a woman and know what the mystery is. You can become a man and know what the mystery is. There is no mystery at all; it is just a poetic conception. The difference is only biological, chemical, hormonal.

I don't call that kind of infatuation love; I call it lust. And to be confused between lust and love has created your problem.

You are asking, "Is it possible to experience love and meditation at the same time?" Lust and meditation you cannot experience at the same time.

Lust is against meditation.

It is desire, an ugly desire.

It takes you towards unconsciousness.

Meditation is the greatest longing, the only longing which cannot be called a desire. And it takes you upwards towards more consciousness.

Now both things you cannot do -- going upwards towards more conscious being and going downward towards more unconscious being; you cannot do them both at the same time.

But love and meditation are both reaching towards higher states of being. Meditation is a state of thoughtlessness, a state of silence, serenity, tranquility -- a state of blissfulness.

There is no reason why love should be against it. Out of blissfulness love will flow. In fact, only a meditative person can be a loving person, and only a loving person can be meditative, because both are going beyond the unconscious mind, the dark mind, the blind mind, and opening the doors of light and the beyond.

They are different names and their different names have a certain meaning and significance. Meditation is possible even if you are alone. In fact, it is possible only when you are alone, in your aloneness, utter purity... no crowd of thoughts or emotions or feelings, just a flame of being conscious.

Meditation is the discovery of your own self.

But once you have discovered the treasure a tremendous need arises in you to share it.

That sharing is love. Meditation is like the sun and love is like the radiation reaching to faraway flowers to open, for birds to sing, to make the whole living world alive, fresh, rejuvenated. Exactly what the sun is doing to the whole solar system, meditation does to the whole human world: it radiates love.

And if meditation does not radiate love then one is in some fallacy. What he is thinking is meditation is not meditation. It may be concentration, it may be contemplation, but it is not meditation.

Concentration is of the mind, one pointedness of the mind. Contemplation is also of the mind, not one pointedness but one subject matter. If you are thinking about light you go on thinking about light, higher and deeper and more possibilities and implications of light; but you keep track of one dimension.

So we can define contemplation as thinking in one single dimension, not going astray, not going here and there; not allowing many different sorts of thoughts but one singular path, moving in the same direction. Science depends on concentration and philosophy depends on contemplation. Religion depends on meditation.

Meditation is when mind is not functioning at all, when mind is absolutely silent and still, as if absent. In this absentness of mind your authentic being surfaces. Your mask disappears and your original face is encountered for the first time.

For the first time you know who you are.

And this experience of oneself is the experience of one's divineness. Out of this divineness radiates love. It is not addressed to anyone in particular; it simply radiates to friend and to foe, to the familiar and to the stranger; it does not know any discrimination.

When the sun rises it does not rise only for roses and not for marigolds. It does not rise only for rich people and not for the poor. It does not rise only for the strong and not for the weak. It rises unaddressed. It radiates in all directions. Whoever has eyes will be able to see it. Having eyes simply means whoever is receptive, whoever is sensitive will be able to see it. The sun does not rise only for the blind.

Only a blind man can pass a man of meditation without feeling his love. I mean spiritually blind, one who does not have any idea of who is within his being; who knows himself according to others, what they say. His knowledge of himself is nothing but a collection of opinions of other people. He does not know himself directly, immediately; and because he does not know himself he remains closed; otherwise it was not possible to crucify Jesus.

Those who crucified Jesus must have been spiritually blind. The man was absolutely innocent, and he was full of love. He had not harmed anyone; in fact, he was trying to help everyone. But it is a strange world. Here there are more blind people than those who have eyes. And because the people who have eyes and receptivity are in a minority they remain silent. It is very unfortunate that the blind are very articulate and those who have eyes, seeing that the majority are blind, remain silent. They go on seeing that Socrates is being poisoned by the blind and they don't protest.

In my eyes the people who poisoned Socrates or crucified Jesus or murdered Mansoor or assassinated Sarmad, they were less responsible than those who knew that what was happening was absolutely wrong but remained silent out of fear.

There is a beautiful incident...

When Al-Hillaj Mansoor, a Mohammedan mystic, was being very primitively assassinated... Jesus' crucifixion is far more sophisticated; Socrates' poisoning is even more sophisticated, but nobody has suffered as much as Al-Hillaj Mansoor. First they cut his legs -- they killed him piece by piece, just to torture him as much as possible, to the optimum -- then they cut his hands. Then they destroyed his eyes with hot iron rods --

they went on piece by piece.

Thousands of people had gathered to watch. Al-Hillaj Mansoor's master, Junnaid, a famous teacher, was also present. Of course he was absolutely against what was happening, but the weakness of the good... Seeing the majority he remained silent. He knew that Mansoor was born after thousands of years; he was one of the rarest flowers.

Junnaid had been a teacher of thousands, but none of his students, none of his disciples had reached to the same heights as Mansoor -- all this he understood.

People were throwing stones before the assassination began. He did not want people to know that he was not throwing stones, so instead of throwing a stone he threw a roseflower, just to show that he had thrown. Now in thousands of stones, who can find out what he had thrown? People saw that he had thrown something.

But Mansoor could see. When thousands of stones were falling on him, hitting him, and blood was flowing all over his body, he could see that a roseflower also fell on his face.

And he knew that this roseflower could only be thrown by his master Junnaid. He shouted from his cross, "Junnaid, these thousands of stones are not hurting me so much as your roseflower; it has created a wound in my very soul."

This statement is tremendous: "Thousands of stones have not hurt me. These are people who don't know me -- but you know me; I had grown under your shadow. Still, instead of protesting, you are so cowardly that you are afraid that if you don't throw something people may start suspecting that you may be a friend..." And tears came to his eyes.

And Mansoor said, "These tears are not for these stones; these stones are not worth my tears. These tears are for the man who has thrown the roseflower to me."

And still Junnaid remained silent....

The good man is responsible. The silent man, the man who has understood is responsible for all that has happened in the history of man against the people who were just pure love, pure silence, pure godliness.

But perhaps nothing can be said to those good people either, because if they had come out there would have been another assassination and nothing else. That's what Junnaid said afterwards, and he was right. Other disciples asked him, "It was very shameful when he called out your name. You behaved as if you were not Junnaid. It is shameful that you did not protest when your greatest disciple was being tortured -- tortured brutally."

No, even animals don't torture in that way. If you want to kill someone, kill. But to cut him piece by piece is so condemnable.

The other disciples said, "You should have protested."

Junnaid said, "Do you think it would have saved him? I have also thought about it. It is not that I have not felt the tragedy, I have felt as much hurt as Mansoor. I loved him, but I knew that if I had come out and protested, then instead of one man, two men would have been assassinated. Nothing would have been achieved by it."

But still I feel it would have been better that two men were assassinated instead of one. I differ from Junnaid, because there may have been a third man who would have come out, and three men may have provoked courage in many more. It is not that in that vast crowd there was only Junnaid who saw that it was absolutely inhuman and ugly -- and there was no crime. The crime was simply that Al-Hillaj Mansoor had said, "I am God," ana'l haq, and simultaneously he said, "It is not that only I am God -- you are also. I know it; you still have to know it. That's the only difference."

So he was not speaking because of his ego, he was speaking because of his experience.

He was not denying godhood to anyone. He was simply saying, "Your God seems to be asleep; my God is awake. One day it was also asleep and I was as ignorant as you are.

One day you will be also as awake as I am. It is only a difference of time."

Such a compassionate man. Why has humanity behaved so badly with these people? One of the reasons, fundamental reasons is that their height hurts people's egos. Their silence, their love, their beauty, their grace, their blissfulness... Everything hurts people, because they are living in dark holes, in misery, in suffering, in anguish, and somebody is standing on the hilltop, sunlit, surrounded by fragrant flowers. They cannot forgive such a man.

This is something to be deeply understood and remembered, that up till now man has proved by and large barbarous. All talk of civilization is nonsense. All talk of culture, Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, is simply bullshit. Because the way we have behaved with our best sons and daughters is not cultured, is not human. It is subhuman or perhaps even below animals.

No animal murders another animal of his own species. No lion will kill another lion, howsoever hungry; he would rather die than kill. But man is the only animal again. He is unique in many ways: he is the only one who kills people of his own species -- not only kills but eats.

Just a few days ago in Palestine the people demanded from the government, "We should be allowed to eat the dead people because there is a shortage of food -- and it seems utterly uneconomical not to eat the dead people." Their demand was ugly but more ugly is that the Palestinian government has accepted their demand, saying that it is okay. The government cannot supply food. On what grounds can it deny them?

First they will start eating people who died naturally and then they will start eating people who have been killed on purpose. That has happened in Buddhist countries: in China, in Japan, in Korea, in Taiwan. You will find hotels where it is written, "Here only the meat of the naturally dead animals is available." Now so many natural deaths of animals don't happen anywhere in the world that they can supply food for the whole country. How many animals do you see dying naturally?

Those boards are absolutely false, as false as you will find in India. Every restaurant, hotel, sweetshop... they will all have a board saying, "Only pure ghee is used here." And everywhere vegetable ghee made by vegetables, not by milk, and sometimes even by rotten vegetables, not even the best quality vegetables, is available. From where can they get so much pure ghee? You cannot even get pure milk.

I was a postgraduate student and the man who used to supply the milk to all the students in the hostel was known as a very saintly man; he was really called Santa Baba, because everybody thought, He is so honest; he is supplying pure milk. He always used to come with his son, carrying the milk.

I heard him many times. If somebody asked "Santa Baba, is the milk really pure?" He would immediately put his hand on his son's head and say, "If I have mixed water in the milk my son will die."

Naturally people thought... I heard it many times. I started thinking that there must be some clue to the mystery, because I used to take his milk and I knew it was not pure. It was so thin that it was more water than milk. One day I took him aside and I said to him,

"No need of your son... and no need for you to put your hand on his head. You just tell me one thing. Is it really true?"

For a moment he was silent and then he said, "It is not true."

I said, "You are every day offering your son."

He said, "It is very simple. I never mix water into milk; I always mix milk into water. So I am not making any wrong statement."

You cannot get anything pure.

I have heard about Mulla Nasruddin, that he wanted to commit suicide. So he went and got poison with great difficulty from a chemist. He had to bribe him because from where would he get the prescription for poison? Without the prescription the chemist said, "I cannot give you anything; you have to have a doctor's prescription."

He said, "Who is going to give me the prescription? I want to commit suicide. You take these one hundred rupees or two hundred rupees, because I am going to die. What am I going to do with the rupees afterwards?"

So he bribed him, went very happily home, mixed the poison in the milk, drank it, slept, waited and waited and waited, and there was no death coming, not even sleep! Many times he woke up, looked all around -- whether he was in hell or heaven... but his wife was snoring by his side.

He said, "My God, how long is this poison going to take? The chemist was saying the moment you put it on your tongue you are gone..."

And it was becoming morning. The whole night he had been waiting. Morning came and his wife was still snoring by his side. He rushed to the chemist -- he was just opening the doors of his shop -- and asked him, "What is the matter?"

He said, "What can I do? You know, in this country you cannot find anything pure.

Everything is mixed. In a way it is good; nobody can commit suicide -- at least by taking poison."

A man of love is really the only man who is cultured, who is civilized. And such a love arises only as a fragrance of meditation; hence my insistence on meditation. Unless we turn people towards meditation on a vaster scale -- as it has never been done before --

there is not much hope for the future, for future humanity.

But I am not a pessimist, not a single inch. I am an absolute optimist. I will believe to the very last moment when the world is committing suicide in a world war, to the last moment I will trust that man will wake up. Seeing such a tremendous tragedy ahead, how can people remain asleep?

Now there are only two alternatives: either suicide or meditation. Life has brought us to such a point where there are not many roads; just two roads, two possibilities, simple choice. Either humanity chooses to commit suicide under the leadership of Ronald Reagan, or humanity chooses to meditate, to be silent, to be peaceful, to be human, to be loving.

Only through meditation can we defeat the politicians -- and the politicians need to be totally defeated. Their power has to be destroyed forever. Their nuclear weapons and their atomic weapons have to be thrown in the Atlantic and in the Pacific. And if they want to jump with them they can jump also, because they are the greatest criminals in the world.

Ordinary criminals may murder somebody and you take them to the gallows. Adolf Hitler kills eight million people, alone. Joseph Stalin kills one million Russians, his own people, without any difficulty. All these politicians continue creating more and more weapons to destroy humanity. And they are the leaders, they are the guides of people.

With these blind politicians dominating the world there is no hope.

I invite the whole humanity, because this is a decisive moment, this is the time when a great revolution is needed, a revolution against all politicians, without any discrimination of whether they are socialist, communist, fascist, capitalist; whether they believe in democracy or they believe in dictatorship -- it does not matter.

For the first time all politicians are standing together to destroy humanity, and if we can make man free from the political jargon... The only way to free man is to make man loving, peaceful. So he simply drops the weapons and he says, "They are not needed. We are not going to kill each other. And if you have so much urge to fight, then the presidents and the prime ministers can have boxing matches -- and we all will enjoy. It will be really great."

What is the need to destroy so many innocent people for a few idiots who cannot come to a solution; seeing perfectly well that the time is becoming shorter and shorter and any accident is possible -- and there will be no humanity at all.

I have heard that the third world war happened, and a monkey sitting on a tree says to a female monkey, "Darling, should we start it all again?" And he has an apple in his hand.

"Eat it again"... and God will throw you out of the Garden of Eden and the beginning of another humanity....

But that humanity will again end up in some Ronald Reagan -- it won't be different. The only difference that can be called a difference is the difference of consciousness. And meditation is nothing but a science of creating that difference.

You are asking, "Is it possible to experience love and meditation at the same time?"

And I am saying to you: Love is only possible if meditation is possible. They are both two wings of the same bird. And if you want the bird to fly high in the sky of consciousness, both the wings are needed, love and meditation, but not your kind of love.

You should remember the difference between your kind of love and the love I'm talking about.

The husband and wife were having a terrible argument. Finally the wife threw up her arms and exclaimed, "Why did I have to marry you to find out how stupid you are?"

"You did not have to," replied the husband angrily. "You should have known it the minute I asked you."

Who is going to ask you except a stupid person! That very moment it was clear, there was no need for so many years to wait to find out. I am not talking about this love.

The new fully-automatic airplane was making its first cross-country flight. A recorded announcement said, "This is the first all-automatic jet. There is no pilot, no crew. Press a button and we take off. Press another button and dinner is served. Press another button and we land. Nothing can go wrong... can go wrong... can go wrong... can go wrong...."

And we are sitting on a volcano of nuclear weapons -- and everything can go wrong! Just press a button...

Your question is not only a personal question. It has now become a question for the whole of humanity, the whole earth. But unfortunately, in five billion people it is difficult to find even a few hundred people who are sincerely interested in finding what meditation is -- not by studying about it but by experiencing it.

Time is running short. Every moment we are coming closer to a situation which may be deliberately created or may be just accidental. We have known the experience a few days ago. In France something went wrong; in Russia something went wrong. You cannot trust machines. Man has not trusted man but he has trusted machines more.

You will be surprised to know that in Japan, which is the most technologically advanced country in the world today -- it has left America far behind... Its currency is now the most valuable; the dollar rates second. In America the greatest rich man has only four and a half billion dollars. In Japan the richest man has twenty-one billion dollars. And Japan is the only country where thousands of robots, mechanical men, are functioning and working in the factories. They are cheap, because they don't get temperamental, they don't go on strike, they don't ask for wages. The question of a pay rise does not arise.

They work twenty-four hours a day with no shift change.

But suddenly, last month a strange thing happened -- that's what I call an accident. In one factory five persons were killed by the robot mechanical men; something went berserk.

Those robots simply grabbed the people who were passing by, gave them a good hug --

finished. Engineers could not believe what was happening, "Is it some kind of love that has arisen in the heart of the robot?"

And not only one, five robots in one factory -- just in one day. And from that day people are keeping far away. Even engineers are looking from far away because to come close if the robot falls in love with you... Then just a good hug, and you are finished. I am not talking about this kind of love.

Man also does this kind of love, not only robots. If you watch men... How many men have killed how many women although they are alive? How many men have been killed by women although they are alive, but just alive, breathing, surviving? But they don't know any life. Love has destroyed their life. This is not the love I am talking about.

Love should enhance life, make it richer and more beautiful and more blissful. Lovers should give more freedom to each other, more individuality, more dignity. But what is happening for centuries is just the opposite. Lovers are trying to dominate each other, to destroy each other, to enslave each other. I am not talking about that love. That love cannot go with meditation.

"My wife thinks she is a chicken," the husband explained to the psychiatrist.

"That's a serious delusion," was the reply. "How long has this been going on?"

"Three years," mumbled the husband.

"Three years?" said the shocked shrink. "Why did you not bring her in before now?"

"Well," replied the embarrassed husband, "frankly, we needed the eggs."

This is going on with almost every couple; they are driving each other crazy. This is not love. If this is love then what is hate?

The very idea of domination, the very desire to be powerful over others shows a poverty of soul. It shows that you don't have power over yourself; hence the desire to have power over others.

That's why I say the politician is the poorest person in the world, because his desire is to have power over millions of people. This desire shows his poverty. He has no power over himself and he wants to have power. But it does not matter... he may have power over one person or one million people or one billion people -- it does not matter. His inner feeling of inferiority, that he has no power within himself will remain the same. He can deceive the world but he cannot deceive himself.

That's the difference between the politician and the religious person. The religious person searches for power over himself, and the politician searches for power over others. The politician is bound to be violent, destructive, ugly, barbarous.

Only a man who wants to be the power over himself, who wants to know where the source of his life is, from where he is getting his energy, where the life and energy source within him are...

The search for it is meditation.

Finding it is enlightenment.

And once you have found it you have so much, in such abundance, that you cannot help sharing it. You become a rain cloud which wants to shower on the thirsty earth. And you must have smelled the sweet fragrance that comes from the thirsty earth, from the first rain cloud's shower on it, in gratitude, in thankfulness.

A man of meditation like Gautam Buddha showers his love -- he is a rain cloud, or better to call him a love cloud, who showers his love to all those who are thirsty, to all those who are aware that love is showering.

But the majority are so foolish, they immediately open their umbrellas. They protect themselves from love, they protect themselves from Gautam Buddhas, they protect themselves from Socrates... Strange people. Something is basically wrong, and that is, they don't know themselves and they don't know their thirst and they don't know what nourishment they need.

Love is the nourishment that is missing in the world.

Yussel Moscowitz had lost all interest in life, so he went to see his psychiatrist. The usually patient shrink decided to use shock tactics this time and said sharply, "What would happen if I cut off your left ear?"

"I could not hear," replied Yussel with a sigh.

"Then what would happen if I cut off your right ear?" barked the shrink.

"I could not see," said Yussel, beginning to show signs of boredom.

The psychiatrist became alarmed. "This is serious. Why do you say you could not see if I cut off your right ear?"

"Because," said Yussel with a yawn, "my hat would fall over my eyes. Both the ears gone, how can I see?"

The people you think are psychiatrists, psychologists, psychoanalysts, the people who are helping humanity to become more sane, are the most insane people in the world. The statistics are very clear. From no other profession do so many people go mad as from the profession of psychiatry. The proportion is double that from any other profession.

In the past the professors used to be champions of going mad; now they are number two.

Number one is the psychologists. They commit suicide four times more than any other profession -- and these are the people who are helping humanity to be sane, normal, healthy, intelligent. These are the people supposed to teach you how to live and how to live joyously. These are the people who claim that their function is to teach the art of living.

But if these people are going to teach the art of living it is going to be a really dangerous art of living. It will not be the art of living, it will be the art of at the most vegetating.

The professor asked the young girl in his psychology class, "Which part of the body expands to ten times its natural size under an emotional impact?"

Blushing, the girl replied, "I would rather not answer that."

The professor called on the boy sitting next to her who promptly replied, "The pupil of the eye."

The professor turned back to the girl and said, "Your confusion shows three things. One, that you did not do your homework; two, that you have a dirty mind; and three, that one day you will be sadly disappointed."

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

The Invitation

Chapter #29

Chapter title: The crescendo of the insanity of centuries 5 September 1987 am in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

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INVITA29

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Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

SINCE BECOMING OLD TWO DAYS AGO, I HAVE DISCOVERED A WHOLE

NEW WORLD, THE WORLD OF WOMEN'S GOSSIP. I AM NOW ACCEPTED AS

ONE OF THE GIRLS -- WELL ALMOST, BUT I GUESS I WILL NEVER KNOW

THAT. MY QUESTION IS: IS THERE NO END TO GRATITUDE?

Devageet, I have told you that the woman has three ages. She never becomes old; it is only the man who becomes old.

The woman passes through childhood, through youth and, "How wonderful you are looking."

I think somebody has told you, "How wonderful you are looking." That has given you the wrong conception of "Since becoming old two days ago..."

All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher.

From today you will be known as a philosopher....

Remember: Old age is when the candles cost more than the cake.

And also remember: Old age is when getting it up gets you down.

You have certainly entered into the age when people will call to you, "How wonderful you are looking."

The eyes of the dead are closed gently; we also have to open gently the eyes of the living.

I will try my best to be gentle with you because you must be dreaming: women never become old; it has never been heard of.

You are not aware of a very fundamental law: When you are up to your nose, keep your mouth shut.

And never forget that money can't buy happiness, but it can buy you the kind of misery you prefer.

In old age certainly one wants to be happy, but nothing can buy happiness. In old age people have money, but money can buy only the misery you prefer, not happiness.

So I think, Devageet, it is better still to wait. Two days is not a long time, you can come back. It is dangerous to be old. Start falling in love with someone, and old age will disappear. That is one of the strategies to drop old age....

A man in love is incomplete -- that's true -- until he has married. Then he is finished.

So just don't get married. Always remain in love, and you will be young. The moment you are married then I cannot help.

The only thing to remember about women is: A man who moralizes is really a hypocrite, and a woman who moralizes is invariably ugly.

Just avoid the moralizing women!

It is simply human to err -- and that's what you have done, fallen into a human error -- but the law is: To err is human, but to make a real mess of things you need a computer.

One who dares to be a fool should remember that that is the first step in the direction of wisdom.

You have the intrinsic capacity to become wise, but only two-day-old, not very old.

If you have really become old, you will come to know sex is hereditary. If your parents never had it, chances are you won't either.

Socialism is when the state owns everything; capitalism is when your wife does.

And this is a tremendously significant maxim to remember as far as old people are concerned: Whenever you feel the urge to exercise, just lie down and wait until it passes.

If you have really become old just have a look at your passport. If you actually look like your passport photo, you are not well enough to travel.

Devageet, you are perfectly young. Just to avoid women you are trying to play that you are old. That is not new. In my commune every sannyasin plays old. This is a very different world: outside men are chasing women; in my commune women chase men.

Outside women have headaches; in the commune men have headaches. They look so much worried and afraid that some woman is going to get them -- and most often the woman succeeds.

It is good that you understand that two days ago you became old. Remain old!

A big Yorkshire farmer found it necessary to go to London for several months and decided to leave one of his best workers in charge: "I want you to take care of things, Harry, as if I were here myself, understand?"

Harry nodded.

Four months later the boss farmer returned to find everything in shape. Harry, pointing things out said, "The chicks have been laying plenty of eggs, the wheat has grown double strong, the vegetables are better than they have ever been, and as for those monthly spells your daughter used to have, I have even got those stopped."

Devageet's old age is the same. Let him remain old but don't believe his old age. He can get anybody's monthly problem stopped. He is simply pretending to be old.

Question 2

BELOVED OSHO,

AM I MOVING RIGHTLY OR AM I JUST A HOPELESS NUTCASE?

Premnath, your question is very significant, because in this world everybody is moving rightly except the nuts -- at least that's what the whole humanity believes.

The reality is just the contrary: the whole of humanity is a nutcase, and only a few nuts escape from this madhouse you call the world.

It happened once...

Kahlil Gibran's one friend became mad. He was a very great poet, thinker of a high caliber, a genius. When Kahlil Gibran heard he came back to Lebanon. He was born in Lebanon, he was brought up in Lebanon, he was a Lebanese. But then he went to America and he spent his whole life in America.

Hearing about his friend in Lebanon he came back to see him; he went to the madhouse.

His friend was sitting alone in the park of the madhouse on a bench. He looked at Kahlil Gibran but did not pay much attention, did not even show that he has recognized him.

Kahlil Gibran said, "Don't you recognize me?"

He said, "I recognize everybody. But what are you doing here? With great difficulty I have been able to leave that mad world and enter into this peaceful place. What are you doing here?"

And Kahlil Gibran writes in his diary, "It shocked me, but he was making a very significant point. He was saying that only the madhouse seems to be sane, and outside the madhouse everybody is insane."

At least in the madhouse nobody worries, nobody is ambitious to become a president or a prime minister, nobody is concerned to become the richest man, nobody has any ambition. People are enjoying moment-to-moment life. You may not like their way of doing it, you may not like their way of enjoying it, but that is your problem not their problem. In the madhouse nobody has any problem except the doctors who are running here and there worried and concerned. The mad people don't have any worry in the world; they are just at ease as they are. They are in a tremendous acceptability.

It happened in one madhouse...

The old doctor retired and a new doctor came. So there was a farewell party and a welcome party also for the new doctor. The old doctor who was retiring spoke first.

There was not a single clap. Nobody laughed, nobody seemed even to hear him or what he was talking about. There was utter silence as if there was nobody present. And when the new doctor stood up people clapped, enjoyed, a few people started dancing...

The new doctor said, "This is strange. The old doctor who has served them his whole life is retiring, and they remain completely silent; they did not even clap once."

So when the meeting was over he asked a madman, "What is the matter? Why did you misbehave with the old man? You clapped for me and you don't know me at all."

They all said, "The reality is, you look just like one of us. We were so happy to find you.

That man was a problem. He was continuously worried -- and here nobody is worried; things are running very smoothly."

No war, no murder, no suicide -- and it is one of the strangest things that mad people rarely fall sick. If they are sick they become healthy. Mad people are healthy people, because all the problems that can create mental tension and can affect your body are no longer there. Their bodies are natural, and they become innocent like children.

The new doctor was very much shocked when he heard the real reason for their clapping and joyous shouts and why a few started dancing. When he heard that they thought that he was one of them, he looked a little crazy.

In fact, one of the great psychologists, Adler, has created a psychology around will to power. And one day he was in his class. He said to his disciples who he was preparing for the new psychology, "The people who become teachers are the people who want to dominate others, and that is the easiest way to dominate; small children cannot do anything much about it. The people who become politicians suffer from inferiority complex. To hide that they try to magnify their ego as much as they can -- until it bursts."

And he was explaining about every kind of profession -- why people choose a certain profession. One young man stood up and he said, "You have left one profession out completely, the profession of the psychologist."

Adler was silent. He could not answer because the answer was clear. The student said,

"Perhaps you cannot say it, but I will have to say to complete the list. The people who tend to become psychologists are people who are psychologically sick."

In fact, neurotics, psychotics, all kinds of nuts, enter into the world of psychology. That is the most beautiful hiding place they can find. They become experts about madness, but deep down they are mad people. I have studied the lives of psychologists and I have been really surprised that these people should have been in madhouses. They are treating mad people, and they are the most highly paid profession in the world.

You are asking, "Am I moving rightly or am I just a hopeless nutcase?" Everybody is a nutcase but nobody is hopeless. The world has unfortunately been growing for thousands of years in such a way that it has turned everybody into a nutcase. There are two kinds of nuts: normal and abnormal.

The normal nuts run the whole world. They are doctors, they are professors, they are engineers; deep down the madness is there, but within limits. Everybody is on the boundary line. Just a small incident, a small accident, and they can go beyond the boundary line: the wife dies, the business goes bankrupt -- anything can happen and the boundary line can be crossed, they immediately become nutcases.

The psychologists of the whole world are only trying to do one thing: to make abnormal nuts normal, somehow to bring them back within the boundary line. It does not help the nutcases, but it helps the world to go on running in its common way.

But why has it happened that so many people in the world are either mad or just on the boundary line? There is not any qualitative difference, but only a quantitative difference, a difference of degrees. We have been brought up with mother's milk, with all kinds of superstitions; they have gone deep into our unconscious.

I used to live in a city for a few months. Just in front of me there was a municipal water tap. And the man had the idea that while he was filling his pot with the water, if a woman passed by, that water had become dirty. He would immediately throw the water and he would start filling it again.

One day I was watching. "What is the matter?" I asked the man. He said, "According to my religion women are -- even their shadow is dirty, and I cannot drink dirty water."

I managed to find a woman and paid her so that I could tell her, "Tomorrow you go on walking and let us see how long his religion lasts."

But that man was also a man of great courage, because the whole day... The woman got tired, but I was paying her so she managed to continue. She went away for some time to eat; she sent her daughter to replace... The evening came but the man continued to throw away the water because the woman had come.

Finally it was too much. He threw the pot and came directly to me, because he understood what was happening. And he said, "You will drive me crazy!"

I said, "You are crazy. Nobody can drive you crazy. The very idea you are carrying that even the shadow of the woman makes things dirty... You are born of a woman, so you are dirty. For nine months you have been within the womb of a woman, and you have not even thought for a single moment what kind of a stupid idea you are carrying. Nobody can drive you crazy. I am trying to drive you sane. So remember, from tomorrow this superstition is not going to happen again; otherwise... I get paid enough, and I am alone --

I will keep a woman constantly on duty so that whenever you are on the tap she has just to walk there. Or she can just stand there, why walk?"

The man said, "Then something will have to be done."

And he did; he changed neighborhood. That very night he escaped from the neighborhood. I tried to find where he had gone. I was in search, but the city was big.

Somebody who knew him told me, "Don't waste your time. He has left the city itself because he knows you will not leave him easily; wherever he goes, you can appoint a woman to walk... And without the water he cannot cook his food, he cannot eat his food, he cannot drink water. You were killing him."

But he was not thought mad, because in the neighborhood in which he was living everybody had that superstition. He was just poor; others had their own running water.

That poor man did not have his own bathroom, his own running water, so he was using the corporation water. But they all believed that he was right, I was wrong.

That's why I should disturb people's religions -- these are religions. If you just watch what kind of religions people have been brought up in, you will be surprised that they have turned the whole humanity into an insanity.

I had once a friend who was a professor, and I have been his student also. For my postgraduate studies I was his student, and then when I also became a professor in the same university we became colleagues. But our friendship was old, since my student days. He had the idea that to see a woman is the greatest sin. Now he was a well-qualified professor.... He used to walk with his umbrella covering his eyes, so that he could see only two or three feet ahead. And he used to run so fast -- his bungalow and the department were not very far apart. With his umbrella touching his head he would run almost to his house and lock his house from inside.

In the class I was the only male; there were two female students. There were only three persons in his class. He could not look at women; it was against his religion which believed that celibacy is the foundation of religion.

So he used to teach with closed eyes. Seeing him teach with closed eyes, I thought this was a good opportunity to have a good sleep. So I was also sitting with closed eyes.

Those two girls wondered... and they felt strange also: the teacher is asleep -- with closed eyes he is speaking; the only male student is listening with closed eyes....

The professor thought that I must be following the same ideology of celibacy. He was very happy, because in the university he was laughed at. Now at least there were two persons belonging to the same idea. He took me aside one day and he said, "You are doing it perfectly well. But how do you manage on the road? -- because I don't see you carrying the umbrella."

I said, "To tell you the truth I don't belong to your madness. I'm simply sleeping; this is my time to sleep. My whole life I have slept from twelve to two without any exception."

Even in school I used to disappear for those two hours. In the university I used to disappear, and when I became a professor I asked the vice-chancellor, "These two hours are absolutely sacred to me. You can give me periods before or after, but these two hours you cannot touch."

He said, "What is the matter?"

I said, "The matter is that these two hours are devoted to sleep. If you give me a period I will sleep -- and I will tell all the students to fall asleep, to just keep quiet and silent and enjoy."

So he gave me periods after two o'clock.

I told the professor -- Bhattacharya was his name -- "You are under a wrong impression. I don't believe in such idiotic ideas, because with your closed eyes you are seeing the woman more. What are you seeing with your eyes closed? And in fact, why have you closed the eyes? You must have seen the woman first, then only can you close your eyes.

And if in seeing a woman your celibacy is disturbed, it is not much of a celibacy. What will you do in a dream?"

He said, "You are right. In a dream I cannot do anything. Neither is the umbrella there...

and the eyes are already closed -- the women are inside. Do you have any suggestion?"

I said, "Because of this umbrella and because of these closed eyes your dreams are disturbed by women. If you drop this idiotic discipline that you have imposed upon yourself... Women have their own business. Who is bothering to come into your dreams?"

He said, "No, my father followed the same ideology, my forefathers..." -- he was a brahmin from Bengal -- "and I cannot drop it, although I know the whole university thinks me mad."

But others have their own madness. It may be different, may not be detectable if everybody has it, but to be sane there is only one possibility and that comes out of meditation; otherwise, whatever you do is going to be insane because it will be coming out of your unconsciousness. You will not be doing it in your alertness, in your awareness.

According to me the madman is one who has fallen completely unconscious, who has lost even the thin layer of consciousness that you have. But even the thin layer of consciousness does not prevent you from behaving insanely.

You just watch yourself. Just watch your thoughts -- and you will be amazed what kind of thoughts go on in your mind. Watch your actions, what kind of actions you go on doing. Are they actions or are they only reactions?

A sane man behaves differently. A Gautam Buddha is surrounded by a crowd which is abusing him, using ugly words, obscene words, because he is against the organized religion of the Hindus and he is against the Hindu holy scriptures, the VEDAS. He has criticized them as hard as it is possible, and they need it. It is not that he is wrong. He has condemned the whole priesthood, that these are the exploiters, parasites. Naturally, brahmins were enraged.

And this was a brahmin village through which he was passing. And the brahmins surrounded him and said every kind of bad thing that they could manage. He listened silently. His disciples became angry, but because Buddha was present it was not courteous to say anything before the master. The master was standing so silent, and listening as if they are saying very sweet things.

Finally Buddha said to them, "If your things that you wanted to say to me are finished, I would like to reach to the place where people must be waiting for me. But if your things are not finished, after a few days when I will be returning I will inform you. And I will have enough time to listen to all that you want to say."

One man said, "Do you think we are saying something? We are condemning you. Do you understand or not? Because anybody else would become angry, and you are standing silently..."

The statement that Buddha made to these village people is immensely significant. He said, "You have come a little too late. If you had come ten years ago when I was as insane as you are, not a single person would have gone alive."

Ten years ago he was a prince, a warrior, one of the best archers of his time, a great swordsman, and those brahmins... he could simply have removed their heads with a single blow, without any difficulty. Because those brahmins know nothing about swords or arrows or being a warrior. He would have just cut them -- almost like vegetables.

He said, "You have come late. Ten years ago if you had come... but now I am no longer insane. I cannot react and I would like to ask you one question. In the last village people came with sweets and fruits and flowers to receive me, but we take food only one time a day, and we had already taken the food. And we don't carry things, so we had to tell them, `You please forgive us, we cannot accept sweets, flowers. We accept your love, but these things you will have to take away.' I want to ask you," he said to this angry crowd,

"what must they have done with their sweets and flowers that they had brought as presents to us."

One man said, "What is the problem in it? They must have distributed the sweets in the village."

Buddha said, "That makes me very sad. What will you do? -- because I don't accept what you have brought, just the same way as I did not accept the sweets and the flowers and other things that the people brought to me in the other village, if I don't accept your obscenity, your ugly words, your dirty words, if I don't accept, what can you do? What are you going to do with all this garbage that you have come with? You will have to take it back to your homes and give it to your wives, to your children, to your neighbors.

"You will have to distribute it, because I simply refuse to take it. And you cannot make me angry unless I accept your humiliation, your insult. Ten years ago I was not conscious; if somebody had insulted me he would have lost his life immediately. I had no idea that insulting me is his problem, and that I have nothing to do with it -- I can simply listen and go on my way."

This is what I call sanity. Do you think humanity is sane? It only appears... just superficial sanity, mannerism, etiquette, culture, civilization, just skin-deep. Scratch a little deeper and the barbarous comes out.

If you really want, Premnath, to be a sane being, sannyas is the way for sanity, for dropping all those unconscious layers of your mind which force you to behave unconsciously. And in your unconsciousness you are doing things for which you yourself will repent when you will become a little alert and aware, "What have I done?"

The insane person can only react. The sane person acts, the sane person responds -- he never reacts.

The way is simple and you are at the right place where your mind can become calm and quiet, so much so, as if it is absent. You should be certain of your sanity only if you can attain a state of no-mind. Only then can you be certain that nothing can drive you mad, because the mind that was possible to become insane is no more -- you have transcended it.

I am reminded of an old story...

Once there was an old couple who lived deep in the forest, and they never saw anybody else. One day the old husband was walking on a lonely path when he saw something shining on the ground. He bent down to pick it up and it was a mirror. But he had never seen a mirror before and when he saw his own face reflected in it, he thought it was his father's face. Obviously he had never seen his own face, but he had seen his father's face.

So he took it home and placed it up in the attic for safekeeping, and every evening he would go up and say good night to his father. But his wife became suspicious about what he was doing in the attic every evening. So one night she followed him. She saw him looking at the mirror and saying good night to it... but she had never seen a mirror before either! So she pushed over to him, grabbed the mirror out of his hand, looked into it and said, "You old idiot! You mean every night you come sneaking up here just to say good night to this ugly old woman?"

But this is how our mind functions. You don't know your original face -- and there is no mirror which can show you your original face. What you know as your face is only the face that you have seen reflected in the mirror; it is a reflection.

You must have seen in big cities or in exhibitions or in circuses, there are mirror halls where different kinds of mirrors are arranged: in some mirrors you become so tall, and in some mirrors you become such a pygmy; in some mirrors you become so fat, and in some mirrors you become so thin....

I don't think the mirror that you are using can be perfect. It is very difficult to have a perfect mirror. If by chance you have a mirror which makes your face look beautiful or ugly, then you will carry that idea with yourself.

But you don't know your original face, how it is, directly. It is only in the state of no-mind that you become aware of your originality, and that is the only sanity as far as I am concerned -- as far as any awakened human being has ever been concerned.

It is by going beyond the mind and entering into the no-mind that you will attain sanity; otherwise, Premnath, you will remain either a normal nutcase -- or if you are a little courageous, a little adventurous, you may go beyond the border, and you will be stamped a madman. And once you are stamped by the society as a madman you may come back to being normal, but nobody will ever think that you are normal.

I used to live with one of my father's sisters while I was in the college studying. The husband of my father's sister had a brother. He used to come just to chitchat with me, and I saw every possibility that he could go beyond the border; just a little push was needed.

So one day I was talking to him and I told him, "If you are really religious" -- and he was a very religious fanatic -- "then you should touch your wife's feet every night before you go to bed."

He said, "But where is it written?"

I said, "It is not written. Great principles remain unwritten, they are transferred from master to disciple."

But he said, "People will think that I am mad or something. Nobody touches the feet of his wife."

I said, "Every woman should be taken as your mother; only then you can be celibate."

He said, "That's right."

That night he went home. He touched the feet of his wife and the wife shrieked and the whole house gathered saying: "What are you doing?"

And he said, "Every woman is a mother."

They said, "That's right but that does not mean that you have to touch the feet of your wife. Don't be stupid!"

But he became stubborn -- he was a fanatic. He said, "I will touch... She is my wife, not yours -- and what is wrong in it? I am just paying my respect."

His other brothers came to me asking, "What kind of thing have you told him?"

I said, "I was just checking whether he could cross the line or not. I will pull him back.

Don't be worried."

But it was really difficult to pull him back. I had to convince him, "Just for society's sake... You have deep respect, you can touch your wife's feet when she is asleep in the night. Show your respect; it does not matter whether she is asleep or awake."

He said, "That's right. I am getting into trouble; everybody thinks I am mad."

He stopped touching the feet but everybody continued to think that he was a little cuckoo.

People had never thought that he was cuckoo before when he was doing the same things.

Now he is doing the same things and people are suspicious. Once a suspicion has entered, then it is very difficult to remove it from the mind of the society.

And in fact people enjoy it that you are mad and they are not mad. They provoke your madness once they know that you are vulnerable. Only one person is not vulnerable to any provocation: he who knows the secret of meditation.

A couple went to see a new movie, and the two seats in front of them were occupied by a man and his dog. When the film was over the dog applauded enthusiastically. The man behind leaned forward and said, "That's simply astonishing."

"Yes, it is," said the dog's companion, "Especially since he hated the book."

Just all around you, if you watch clearly, you will find all kinds of nuts....

The Queen of England was visiting The Royal Military Hospital, and insisted on making a round of the wards. She came into a room with three beds and asked the first soldier,

"What is wrong with you?"

Embarrassed, the soldier replied, "Syphilis, Your Majesty."

Trying to appear natural, the Queen asked, "And what treatment do you get for it?"

"Wire brush and Dettol," the soldier replied.

"Is there anything you would like to make your stay more comfortable?" the Queen asked.

"No, Ma'am, I'm a soldier in the Queen's Own Regiment, and that's enough for me."

Deeply touched, the Queen moved on to the next bed, where the soldier lay on his stomach. "What is wrong with you, soldier?" she asked.

"Piles, Your Majesty," grunted the soldier.

"What is your treatment here?"

"Wire brush and Dettol, Ma'am."

Wincing the Queen asked if there was anything she could do to make him more comfortable. He answered that he was simply grateful to be a soldier in the Queen's Own Regiment, and that was more than enough.

The third soldier told her hoarsely that his problem was a sore throat.

"What is the treatment for that?" she asked.

"Wire brush and Dettol, Ma'am," came the reply.

"Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?"

"Yes, Ma'am. Next time I would like my treatment first."

It is such an insane world you have just to be watchful and alert and you will see ridiculous, hilarious things happening everywhere. It is unbelievable that sane people should do such things.

But remember: everybody is vulnerable. We are born in a wrong society, in a wrong world, with wrong conditions. And unless you are really interested to get rid of your past and past impacts, impressions on your mind, it is not going to leave you easily. The madness continues.

And as you grow your madness also continues to grow. It is not strange that after sixty, people start thinking you are senile; you have been always. Just now the senility has grown to a point where it is apparent. It cannot come suddenly from nowhere. It has been growing with you.

Nobody wants to talk to old people for the simple reason that they are irritable, annoyed easily, expect too much, and to you they look a little insane. Perhaps their mind is tired; not only are they retired, their sanity also is retired.

Three old men were sitting on a bench in a public park. One was seventy-five, the second was eighty and the third was ninety. They used to meet there every evening. The whole day they waited for the evening, because they were the only friends. Everybody else was far below their age. And there was such a generation gap that there was no question of making friends with anybody else.

All the three persons were retired, but that evening the first seventy-five-year-old man was looking very sad, ashamed. The second old man asked, "What is the matter with you? Why are you so sad, so ashamed? What have you done?"

He said, "Don't ask. A beautiful lady was taking a bath -- she was a guest in our house, and I was peeping from the keyhole and my mother caught me red-handed. It is so shameful."

Both the other old men looked at each other and laughed, and they said, "Don't be stupid, everybody does such things in childhood, everybody gets caught. There is no need to feel so ashamed about something that happened in childhood."

He said, "What are you saying? It happened this morning! And I don't know how I am going to go back home. I wanted to die at that very moment."

The second man said, "I can understand your problem. I have also my problems. They are bigger than yours. It is now the seventh day that I have not made love to my wife. The moment I say, `What about it?' she simply turns to the other side and says, Ì have such a headache and I am so tired. Just go to sleep.'"

The third old man laughed and said to the first old man, "Just ask him what kind of love he makes to his wife."

And he asked, "What kind of love do you make?"

He said, "Love? I take her hand into my hand and press it three times. And then we say good night and go to sleep. What more can I do at this age?"

The oldest said, "Your problems are childish, stupid. I am facing the real problem. This morning my wife slapped me, and I said, `Why are you slapping me?' She said, `What are you doing?' I said, Ì'm preparing to make love.' She said, `You idiot, neither do you sleep the whole night nor do you let me sleep. This is the third time you are making love.' So I think I'm losing my memory."

Just watch people....

If you are alert and silent and sane you will be simply surprised what goes on happening all around.

My whole effort here is to create a commune of people who are completely free from past conditions, fanatic religions, fascist political ideologies, and who start responding to life out of silence and peace, awareness, consciousness, not through a mind which has no eyes. It is blind. It reacts immediately like any mechanism. But it has no eyes to see directly and deeply into any problem.

Even the greatest people that you know in the world behave very childishly, and they are creating millions of problems for other people because they have power. The whole power is in insane hands; not a single powerful man in the world is even interested in meditation -- and except meditation there is no way out. We are really coming to the crescendo of the insanity of centuries.

In all of our lifetimes we are going to see the ultimate madness exploding by the time this century comes to an end -- and it is not long. It is now nineteen eighty-seven; the year two thousand is less than thirteen years away. In these thirteen years things will go on becoming more and more insane.

Just the other day I received a letter from Oregon, from a doctor, a dental surgeon, "I am very ashamed by the way the American government treated you and the commune. You had brought a new colorfulness to the state of Oregon. Rather than rejoicing in that colorfulness, they destroyed the whole commune."

Many intelligent people in America feel the same way, but the old problem -- those intelligent people feel but they remain silent, because they know the majority is absolutely insane. They are so insane that they destroyed the commune illegally, they imposed crimes on me of which I have not even dreamt.

They blackmailed me through my attorneys, because they made my attorneys afraid that if they were going to insist on trial, then my life might be at risk because the American government would not like to be defeated by a single individual: "You know and we know that we don't have any evidence, so your victory is certain. But remember, your victory would mean the assassination of Osho."

It was made so clear by the government attorneys to my attorneys, that they came to me and said, "We have never seen such a thing happening. It is absolutely insane, absolutely illegal, criminal. Now they want you to accept any two crimes, the smallest crimes, but accept that you are guilty of two crimes so that they can save the face of America and American democracy and American justice. And once you have accepted two crimes then there will be no trial and you will be freed."

I was very stubborn. I told my attorney, "It is better to fight the case because they don't have any evidence and they cannot have any evidence."

But the attorney said, "The question is of blackmail. They are threatening us that they will withdraw the bail and they will put you in jail. And they can go on postponing the case for ten years, fifteen years, and in these ten or fifteen years they will harass you, torture you. And we are afraid they may even take your life, because they have made one thing clear, that the government is not ready to be defeated by a single individual."

With tears in their eyes they begged me, "Don't insist on a fight. We know that you have not committed any crime, and they know it. And we had not gone to negotiate with them; they came to us to negotiate."

This is very strange -- that the government should come to the criminal to negotiate... for what? If I have committed the crime I should be punished. What negotiations? Is it a business?

But the reason was clear: they knew they could not prove anything against me. And the Attorney General of America later on accepted -- when I had left America -- that I had not committed any crime; they didn't have any proof, any evidence, any witness. But you will not believe that even knowing this, they blackmailed my attorneys. They cried and I had to accept, because they told me, "It is absolutely futile. It is hitting your head against the wall for no meaning. It will destroy your whole movement, it will destroy all your sannyasins, and you will leave millions of people who love you. It is better to accept two crimes."

I said, "I am not a serious man. I can accept all of their thirty-four crimes. There is no problem, but don't ask for any proof, because I don't have any evidence either."

They said, "No, nobody is going to ask for evidence."

And what happened? As I accepted two crimes the judge immediately ruled that I am punished with four hundred thousand dollars -- that is nearabout sixty lakh rupees -- for two crimes which I have not committed, which they have forced in a blackmail way threatening my attorneys that my life is at risk, "just to save my life!" But they never mentioned that once I accepted then sixty lakh rupees will be the fine. They did not mention that. This was the second trick.

First they blackmailed, "This way there will be no trial and we will release Osho immediately." But with the judgment the judge came -- four hundred thousand dollars.

My people who were present in the court immediately collected that much money within ten minutes, because the attorneys were concerned to get me out of America as quickly as possible. And as I was coming out of the jail, immediately another summons for some other case that they had created in another court... They were waiting outside the jail to give me the summons.

As I was coming to the airport I received the news that they had put a bomb under my chair. They were waiting that if I didn't accept, and I wanted to go with the trial, then they would just explode the bomb and finish the whole thing, so there would be no person and no question of any trial.

Now that bomb cannot arrive inside the jail and under my chair without somebody who is not part of the government, who is not part of the high authorities of the jail... The jail had no interest in killing me. The idea must have come from Washington -- it must have come from Ronald Reagan.

These people who are in power are lying, blackmailing -- doing every kind of act that is inhuman. But perhaps they are doing it in their insanity, in their unconsciousness.

And there is no great movement in the world to counter the forces of violence, madness, except our movement for meditation.

The responsibility is great on each of you. Not only for your own sake, but for the sake of preventing the mad powers from destroying this beautiful planet -- this planet which has produced a Gautam Buddha, a Jesus Christ, a Zarathustra; this planet which has given birth to a Krishna, to a Mahavira, to a Lao Tzu. And these are just the beginnings of spring; there are higher possibilities in the future.

If man goes on living on the earth, we will be producing even higher peaks than we have produced in the past. Those high peaks in the past were produced in spite of all the hindrances of the society. If the society is supportive, we can create so many beautiful people around the world that it can turn from a desert into an oasis.

And that's what the dental surgeon reminded me of in his letter: "We miss you; you turned a desert into an oasis, and we feel ashamed that the American government did something absolutely wrong. You brought a message which could have saved not only America but the whole of humanity."

They are missing now because that small commune in Oregon had become suddenly more important than Washington itself. All the eyes from all over the world were concentrated on the commune: "What is happening there? Why are people so happy?

Why are people so loving? Why is there no fighting? Why is there no murder? Why is there no suicide? What has happened to those people? Their jealousies, their conflicts seem to have disappeared, they have entered, it seems, into a new state of consciousness."

But as far as I am concerned I have no complaint against anybody. My own feeling is it was good that they destroyed the commune. It helped my people to spread all over the world. And wherever my one sannyasin is, he will create the right atmosphere. And a few people are bound to gather around him to create small communes all over the world.

Now I'm not interested in creating a big commune, because any big commune is going to be destroyed by the power that is any government. It does not matter whether it is the Indian government or the American government. If I create a big commune again, which is possible now... The moment you have a power, although your power is of love and peace and silence, the powerful people in New Delhi will start getting disturbed.

I don't want to repeat history.

Only idiots repeat history.

So my new idea is that we will not create a big commune that unnecessarily comes into conflict with the powers. We will create small communes all around the earth so nobody will be worried, because a few people cannot be dangerous to the vested interests, but those few people can make the whole world afire with love, with peace, with silence, with blissfulness.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

The Invitation

Chapter #30

Chapter title: Avoid the priests

5 September 1987 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium

Archive

code:

8709055

ShortTitle:

INVITA30

Audio:

Yes

Video:

Yes

Length:

83

mins

Question 1

BELOVED OSHO,

WILL YOU GIVE ME A FEW MORE LAWS TO COME OUT OF MY CONFUSION?

Devageet: When all else fails, read the instructions.

Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.

Moscow is the city where, if Marilyn Monroe should walk down the street with nothing on but shoes, people would stare at her feet first.

When people agree with you, you must be wrong.

Women's minds are cleaner than men's; they change them more often.

After thirty-five a man begins to have thoughts about women. Before that age he had feelings.

I have told Devageet, "You must cut your sex life to half." He inquired of me: "Which half? thinking about it or talking about it?"

The human race never solves any of its problems -- it only outlives them.

Assumption is the mother of all screwups.

What you resist, you become.

No matter how many excellent decisions you make in a working day, people will only remember the single bad one.

No man is lonely while eating spaghetti -- it requires so much attention.

You can always find what you are not looking for.

In any organization there will always be one person who knows what is going on. This person must be fired.

Don't ever prophesy, for if you prophesy wrong nobody will forget it, and if you prophesy right nobody will remember it.

One can survive everything nowadays except death.

Evil, what is evil? There is only one evil: to deny life.

If you can keep calm while all those around you are freaking out, then you don't understand the problem.

Inscription on the tombstone of Peter the Pessimist: I knew this would happen one day.

A KGB agent comes across a Jew reading a Hebrew grammar book on a bench in Gorky Park. "Hey, Jew," he says, "Why are you bothering to read that? You know we will never let you go to Israel."

"Well," says the Jew, "I'm reading it in case they speak Hebrew in heaven."

"And what if you go to hell?"

"Ah," sighs the Jew, "Russian I already know."

So if you really want to get out of confusion, Devageet, read Russian. That's where you are bound to go!

A woman was filling out an application form at the bank when she came to the space for age. She hesitated a long time. Finally, the clerk leaned over and said, "The longer you wait, the worse it gets."

Question 2

BELOVED MASTER,

YOU ARE THE ONLY HOPE. PLEASE GIVE ME A PUSH.

Taglish Bharti, almost everybody needs a push, because almost everybody is just on the border.

Enlightenment is not far away; you are not to go miles in search of it. All that you need is to open your eyes and just see clearly where you are, because in that very place and in that very moment you are already enlightened.

Enlightenment is not something that you can make a goal of, it is your reality. It is really foolish to search for it, because the one who is searching for it, is himself the enlightenment. It is not an achievement, it is a discovery or to be more correct, it is a rediscovery. You knew it at a time when society had not corrupted your mind, when you were still so small that you were incorruptible, so innocent that the society was not capable of teaching you anything to condition your mind. It is the layer upon layer of conditionings that is hiding your light.

You don't have to go anywhere.

You just have to put aside all the conditionings; but it is very difficult. It is difficult because you think those conditionings are tremendously important.

Just today I saw where one newspaper had published one of my talks in which I have said that Adolf Hitler, Krishna and Manu are not much different from each other. Obviously the editor was bombarded from all over the country with letters condemning it: "You should not publish such a thing. Krishna and Manu cannot be compared to Adolf Hitler."

Before I go deeper into it, I would like to tell you something about Adolf Hitler. I received a letter from the president of the neo-fascist party, asking me that I should stop speaking against Adolf Hitler, "because it hurts our religious feelings."

Even I was shocked. It rarely happens that I am shocked. I said, "My God, religious feelings are hurt?!"

And the president says in the letter, "Perhaps you are not aware that Adolf Hitler was a reincarnation of an Old Testament prophet, Elijah."

Now somebody is hurt because I have said something against Adolf Hitler. And what have I said? -- that he has killed millions of people single-handed, just because of a prejudice against Jews. A childish prejudice, because Jews believe -- and they have suffered for that stupid belief for almost four thousand years -- that they are the chosen people of God. Moses gave them this idea: You are the chosen people of God.

Naturally, they have been hated by everybody else. Nobody can accept, "You are the chosen people of God." And particularly Adolf Hitler was very angry. His people, the Nordic Aryans and Germans, they are the chosen people of God. How dare Jews say that they are the chosen people of God?

Of course, these two chosen people of God cannot live together; one has to be demolished! Hitler alone killed almost six million Jews and millions of other people wherever he invaded. And this is the reincarnation of a Jewish prophet, Elijah -- and he is killing Jews in millions!

And the president of the neo-fascist party is threatening me, that I will have to suffer dangerous consequences if I speak again against Adolf Hitler. And when I said that I don't see much difference between Krishna, Manu and Adolf Hitler, Hindus must have felt the same: their hearts are hurt, their religious feelings are hurt.

But Krishna is responsible for the great war in which India suffered so much. Millions of people died in the war, and he was the man who provoked Arjuna to fight. It was a family war, between cousin-brothers, Arjuna and Duryodhana. They were fighting for the kingdom, and when Arjuna saw millions of people in the battle field who were all related to each other -- because it was a family quarrel... some relatives were on this side, some relatives on that side; some friends on this side, some friends on that side.

Even the grandfather of Arjuna, who loved Arjuna immensely, was on the opposite side.

He loved Arjuna and he hated Duryodhana, but he loved the father of Duryodhana, Dhritrashtra, who was a blind man. Feeling compassion for the blind man he wanted his son to become the king -- but he loved Arjuna. Now it was a very strange, tangled situation. Dronacharya, the teacher of both Arjuna and Duryodhana -- he taught them the art of archery -- was the greatest archer of those days, and he loved Arjuna because he even surpassed his master in archery. Duryodhana was far behind, but still Dronacharya had chosen to fight on the side of Duryodhana because there was more possibility of winning. Duryodhana was a cunning man and he had one hundred brothers. Dronacharya had many wives, and being old there was nothing else to do.

Those one hundred brothers had thousands of relatives and friends. They were really powerful, they were all cunning, and they were bent upon having the kingdom.

Arjuna had only five brothers. And those five brothers were deceived by Duryodhana and his brothers into a game of gambling. And in that gambling they lost everything, even their wife. The five brothers only had one wife. Then Duryodhana sent all the brothers for thirteen years to hide in forests and mountains, saying if they were found they would be killed.

So for thirteen years they had been wandering, hiding themselves in mountains and forests, and being chased. Somehow they survived. Now was their only chance.

Duryodhana was already in power, he had the kingdom in his hands and the armies and everything -- the treasure -- and in thirteen years these people had become utterly poor, weak; they had lost contact with friends, families.

But when Arjuna saw the situation -- he was certain about his archery, and he was certain that he could win. But a great question arose in his mind: What is the point? If I have to kill my own brothers and if I have to kill my own grandfather who has loved me, and if I have to kill my own master who has created a great archer out of me... What is the point, even if I win, of killing millions of my own people? Whether they are on this side or on that side, they will be killed.

It is simply a massacre without meaning. I don't care about such a kingdom. And what is the point of sitting on a golden throne when your own people, all of whom you have loved, for whom you would have liked to live... Surrounded by their corpses, sitting on the golden throne...

Arjuna thought, I would feel so embarrassed, so ashamed that I am afraid I would commit suicide. I would not be able to tolerate that situation. If I am defeated then two million people are going to die. If I win, that victory is not worth it.

He decided not to fight. It was Krishna who persuaded him. The whole of SHRIMAD

BHAGAVADGITA is a persuasion. Arjuna goes on arguing against war and violence, and Krishna goes on insisting, "It is your duty, it is your destiny. It is God's decision that you should fight. And this so-called ideology that you are talking about of nonviolence, of no war, of not killing is nothing but hiding your cowardice, your escapism."

So finally he managed to persuade him to be for the war. And that war destroyed this country forever. After that war -- and it is called The Great Indian War, Mahabharata --

after that great war India became poor, lost nerve, was invaded by all kinds of small tribes, barbarians, nomads; it has remained a slave country for two thousand years, such a vast country.

It is going to be the greatest country in the world as far as population is concerned, and it has been dominated by small nations, small tribes. People simply lost nerve, they simply dropped the very idea of fighting. Mahabharata, the great Indian war, was such a deep wound that India lost its guts.

If I have compared Krishna with Adolf Hitler, I don't think I have done anything wrong.

But the prejudices are such that people are not ready to see their conditionings.

Krishna was a non-vegetarian; Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian. Krishna had sixteen thousand wives, and only one out of sixteen thousand was his real married wife. The remaining were all other people's wives, whom he forcibly snatched from their families, from their small children, from their husbands, from their old parents.

He destroyed sixteen thousand families and I don't think he would even have recognized those sixteen thousand women. He treated women almost like cattle. Any woman that caught his eye was immediately taken away by his soldiers to his palace.

Hitler remained a bachelor his whole life. Just for three hours before he died he married.

And the only thing he did with his wife after the marriage was to commit suicide because the enemy was dropping bombs on Berlin. He had lost the war. And the woman was insisting for years, "We should get married." But he had been saying, "Wait till I am victorious; I don't have time for anything else. Once I'm victorious and I have proved that the nomad Nordic Germans are the highest and holiest and the God-chosen race... I have no time for anything else."

When he saw that now there is no question of any victory, he is finished, the whole of Germany is gone, his capital is being bombed, he is being searched -- and he was hiding in an underground basement -- he allowed the woman... He told his secretary, "Find any priest and bring him immediately; I want to be married. Let this woman's desire be completed."

A priest was brought in the middle of the night. They were married and after the marriage he took poison, and the wife took poison. And he had ordered his people that after they were dead to immediately pour petrol over them and burn their bodies completely. They didn't even want the enemy to get any trace of their bodies.

Adolf Hitler had no habits like smoking or drinking. He used to get up early in the morning and he used to go to bed early in the evening. He was almost a mahatma, a great soul.

But Hindus will be hurt, because they think Krishna is the reincarnation of God himself; they are hurt because of a conditioning. If they have a little intelligence to see, then they can see that both persons have perpetuated war, violence, cruelty, destructiveness.

Manu has for five thousand years ruled over India, particularly its morality, its caste system, and the harm that he has done to this country is incalculable. Millions of women have burned themselves alive because of Manu, because he prescribes that every wife who is sincerely faithful to her husband should jump in the funeral pyre when her husband dies; she has no right to live anymore. Because of him millions of women down five thousand years have burned themselves alive. This is so ugly.

It is because of Manu that one fourth of India has remained untouchable. They are called the sudras; they are not accepted as human beings... subhuman beings. Even their shadow is thought to be untouchable. If a sudra passes by you and his shadow falls on you, you have to immediately take a bath to purify yourself.

These sudras have been killed for any small reason: if they have entered into a street which is prohibited to them, if they have heard even words of Hindu scriptures, the VEDAS. They were killed because it is prohibited that they should be educated and they should know anything about the VEDAS; because the VEDAS would become dirty if these poor people know anything about them.

These sudras have not been accepted in society. They cannot live inside the city; they have to live outside the city. They have remained utterly poor, and they have been doing all the dirty work of the society. They don't have any dignity, any respect. They are not accepted in any way to be human beings. You don't see them. They live outside the city in their small bamboo huts, which any time -- and this has been happening even today, any day... Hindus, high-caste Hindus, go to their villages, burn their bamboo cottages, burn living beings, rape their women and kill all of them. And it is because of Manu.

And if I have put Manu and Krishna and Adolf Hitler in the same category, then anybody who says I am wrong I am ready to accept the challenge. Rather than writing to that newspaper editor -- and that coward editor immediately has written an editorial asking for forgiveness, that it was his fault that he published my statement. It is not his fault. My statement is my statement, and I stand by it. And anybody who thinks that I am wrong I am ready for any public discussion on the point.

But just conditionings, nobody is ready to look at the actual facts. No Christian will be hurt by this because it is not his conditioning. No Mohammedan will be hurt by this because it is not his conditioning.

Your only problem in life is the religion in which you were born, the society in which you were born, the family in which you were born. But it is unfortunate there is no other way, at least up to now; this is the only way.

And because you are born in a certain religion, in a certain ideology, in a certain morality, you become so conditioned and so attached to all these ideas which are not yours. You become absolutely incapable of seeing what is right and what is wrong. This is the problem which keeps you unenlightened; otherwise there is no other problem.

Taglish, not only do you need a push, everybody needs a push, and really a hard push.

Unless you are shocked and awakened from your deep sleep, from your unconscious acceptance and identity with others' ideas, you will never become an individual; you will never come to know your own light, you will never come to know your own innocence and the flowers that blossom in your innocence.

You have to get rid of all your knowledge; you have to get rid of all your so-called religions. You have to be as innocent as a small child. You are born just as human beings, not as Mohammedans, not as Hindus, not as Christians. All these are prisons in which you have been put from your very beginning, so you have completely forgotten that they are prisons. They appear to be cozy homes; they are not.

It needs tremendous courage to drop out from these prisons. But I think every man, every woman has the courage. Just an invitation is needed, and an encouragement is needed.

And a support from a commune, from friends is needed so that you are not alone; there are other people also on the same path in the same rebellion.

Taglish, remember one thing. If you really want to be alive, contemporary, fresh, and you want to have a future not full of darkness and death but full of eternity and blissfulness, then you will have to take a little risk. A risk of dropping all kinds of borrowed knowledge, all that has been given to you by others, so that you can find what is your own.

I am reminded of one great mathematician, P.D. Ouspensky. He was world-famous when he met Gurdjieff, his master. Gurdjieff was not known outside of a small circle of seekers. He was made famous, world-famous, because of Ouspensky. But the day Ouspensky arrived to meet Gurdjieff, he had already written a very important book.

Perhaps there are only three books which can be said to be really important.

One is written by Aristotle. The name of the book is ORGANUM. It means the first principle of wisdom. The second book is written by Bacon, who is the father of all modern science. His book's name is NOVUM ORGANUM, new principle of wisdom.

Aristotle is thought to be the father of Western logic, mathematics and related sciences, and Bacon is certainly the most important figure who has created the whole of science, the whole technology that has made the West strong, rich, affluent, healthy.

And the third important book is Ouspensky's TERTIUM ORGANUM, the third principle of wisdom. This seems to be the most important of the three. And the first thing Ouspensky had written inside the book, not out of any egoism but out of sheer truthfulness, "Before the two ORGANUMS existed, TERTIUM ORGANUM, my book, had already existed, because it is more fundamental than those two, Aristotle's and Bacon's books."

It is certainly one of the most well-written books I have come across, and I have seen more books than perhaps any living human being.

When Ouspensky reached Gurdjieff, Gurdjieff was nobody and Ouspensky was a world-famous mathematician. Gurdjieff gave Ouspensky an empty paper and a pencil and told him, "Go into the other room" -- no other introduction -- "and first write down on one side what you know on the fundamental questions of life, and on the other side write what you do not know -- because this will be decisive. Whatever you know I will never discuss with you. You know it, there is no need. Whatever you do not know I will teach you."

There were at least twenty disciples sitting in that dark room, doing nothing, just silently sitting. Ouspensky had not expected such an introduction. The man who brought him had been resisting for almost nine months saying, "Unless the master says `yes,' I cannot introduce you." And after nine months of waiting he was brought into his presence, and this was the behavior that he got.

He said, "It is strange," but he went into the other room -- there was nothing else to do.

And for the first time in his life he started thinking, Do I know it, do I know anything about God? -- and I have been writing about God. Do I know anything about the human soul? -- and I have been writing about it. Do I know anything about consciousness? -- and I have been writing about it.

He could not write a single word on the side where he was supposed to write what he already knew. He came back after half an hour and returned the paper empty. And he said, "Forgive me, I tried hard. But really I don't know anything. You will have to teach me from ABC."

This is the way to drop your conditionings. This is the way to realize your ignorance.

What your ignorance is finally turns out to be your innocence. It looks like a death when everything that you know and that you have been attached to is taken away. But on the other side it is a resurrection.

So if you really want to wake up and if you also want to become part of the great hope for humanity and the future of man, then die to the past, so that you can be reborn to the future. Less than that will not do; more than that is not needed.

Question 3

BELOVED OSHO,

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO LOVE MYSELF?

Prem Kabir, one has to begin not by loving oneself, because you don't know who you are.

Who are you going to love?

If you start by loving yourself, you will love only your ego, which is not your self, which is your false personality. Almost everybody loves his personality; everybody loves his ego. Even the ugliest woman, if you say to her, "How beautiful you are," will not refuse to accept it.

I have heard...

Two old men meet on a street corner. "Where have you been for the past eight weeks?"

"In jail," says the second man.

"In jail? How come?" says the first man.

The second old man replies, "Well, about eight weeks ago I was standing on a street corner and this beautiful young girl rushes up with a policeman and says, `He is the man, officer. He is the one who attacked me.' And you know, I felt so flattered, I admitted it."

How many things you have admitted that you know perfectly well are not true. People say you are so loving, so sincere, so truthful, so beautiful, so honest -- and you never deny. This is not the love I have been talking about.

Yes, I would like you to love yourself, because unless you love yourself you cannot love anybody else. You don't know what love is if you have not loved yourself. But before you can love yourself you have to know yourself; hence love is secondary, meditation is primary.

And the miracle is, if you meditate and slowly, slowly get out of the ego and out of your personality and realize your real self, love will come on its own. You don't have to do anything, it is a spontaneous flowering. But it blossoms only in a certain climate, and that climate I call meditation. In the climate of silence -- no-mind, no disturbance inside, absolute clarity, peace and silence -- suddenly, you will see thousands of flowers have opened within you, and their fragrance is love.

Naturally, first you will love yourself, because that will be your first encounter. First you will become aware of the fragrance that is arising in you and the light that has been born in you, and the blissfulness that is showering on you. Then loving will become your nature. Then you will love many; then you will love all.

In fact, what we know in our ignorance is a relationship, and what we know in our awareness is no longer a relationship. It is not that I love you; it is that I am love.

And you have to understand the difference. When you say, "I love you," what about others? What about the whole existence? The more narrow your love is, the more imprisoned. Its wings are cut; it cannot fly in the sky across the sun. It does not have freedom; it is almost in a golden cage. The cage is beautiful, but inside the cage the bird is not the same bird that you see in the sky opening its wings.

Love has to become not a relationship, not a narrowing, but a broadening.

Love has to become your very quality, your very character, your very being, your radiance. Just as the sun radiates light not for anyone in particular, unaddressed, meditation radiates love unaddressed.

Of course, first it is felt within oneself, for oneself, and then it starts radiating all around.

Then you love not only human beings, you love trees, you love birds; you simply love, you are love.

You are asking, Prem Kabir, "What does it mean to love myself?"

It means meditation.

It means to be yourself.

And nature will bring love as a reward.

Just don't listen to the priests. They are the enemies of love. They have been teaching the world to hate yourself and to hate the world, because they have been teaching either it is a sin that you were born or it is because of the evil acts of your past life that you are suffering in this life. But no religion accepts this life with joy and rejoicing, as a gift, as a reward of which you are not worthy, of which you don't claim any right. You have not earned it.

So the first thing is, avoid the priests. They have taught you life-negative values. And my effort here is to bring back life-affirmation. That's what I call loving yourself, accepting yourself not as a sinner. How can you accept yourself if you think you are a sinner? How can you love yourself if you think you are nothing but full of guilt, nothing but an accumulated past of evil acts of millions of lives?

You will hate yourself. And that's what your priests have been saying: renounce life, hate life, hate pleasure, hate everything, and sacrifice everything if you want to enter into paradise. Nobody has ever returned from paradise, so there is no evidence of any paradise anywhere, no proof, it is just a futile exercise which has never been able to come to a conclusion.

The old priest was warning his congregation about sin.

"Sin," he said, "is like a big dog. There is the big dog of pride, and the big dog of envy, and the big dog of greed, and finally, there is the big dog of sex. And you have to kill those big dogs before they kill you and prevent you from getting to heaven. It can be done. I know, because over the years I have done it. I killed the big dog of envy, the big dog of pride, the big dog of greed -- and yes, my children, I killed the big dog of sex."

"Father," came a voice from the back of the church, "are you sure that last dog did not die a natural death?"

You cannot change nature. If you can simply live naturally, transformations come. If they come, then sex disappears -- but not by your efforts. By your efforts it goes on hanging around you. The more you repress it, the more you have it. The more you live it, the more is the possibility to go beyond it.

An old couple were sitting at home one evening listening to the faith healer on the radio.

"Okay folks," he began, "God wants to heal you all. All you have to do is put one hand on the radio and the other hand on the part that is sick."

The old lady got up, shuffled over to the radio and put her hand on her arthritic hip. Then the old man put one hand on the radio and the other hand on his fly.

His wife looked at him with contempt and said, "You old idiot. The man said he would heal the sick, not raise the dead!"

Live naturally. Live peacefully. Live inwardly. Just give a little time to yourself, being alone, being silent, just watching the inner scene of your mind. Slowly, slowly thoughts disappear. Slowly, slowly one day the mind is so still, so silent as if it is not there. Just this silence... in this moment you are not here, as if the whole Buddha Hall is empty.

In this silence within you, you will find a new dimension of life. In this dimension greed does not exist, sex does not exist, anger does not exist, violence does not exist. It is not a credit to you; it is the new dimension beyond mind where love exists, pure, unpolluted by any biological urge; where compassion exists for no other reason -- not to get any reward in heaven -- because compassion is a reward unto itself.

A deep longing exists to share all that treasure that you have discovered within yourself, and to shout from the housetops to the people, "You are not poor! Paradise is within you.

You need not be beggars, you are born emperors." You just have to discover your empire, and your empire is not of the outside world; your empire is of your own interiority. It is within you and it has always been there, just waiting for you to come home.

Love will come, and will come in abundance -- so much that you cannot contain it. You will find it is overflowing you, it is reaching all directions.

Just discover your hidden splendor.

Life can be simply a song, a song of joy.

Life can be simply a dance, a celebration, a continuous celebration. All that you have to learn is a life-affirmative lifestyle.

I call only that man religious who is life-affirmative. All those who are life-negative may think they are religious; they are not. Their sadness shows they are not. Their seriousness shows they are not.

A man of authentic religion will have a sense of humor. It is our universe, it is our home.

We are not orphans. This earth is our mother. This sky is our father. This whole vast universe is for us, and we are for it.

In fact, there is no division between us and the whole. We are organically joined with it, we are part of one orchestra.

To feel this music of existence is the only religion that I can accept as authentic, as valid.

It does not have any scriptures, it need not have. It does not have any statues of God, because it does not believe in any hypotheses. It has nothing to worship, it has only to be silent, and out of that silence comes gratitude, prayer, and the whole existence turns into a godliness.

There is no God as a person. God is spread all over: in the trees, in the birds, in the animals, in humanity, in the wise, in the otherwise.

All that is alive is nothing but godliness ready to open its wings, ready to fly into the freedom, ultimate freedom of consciousness.

Yes, you will love yourself and you will love the whole existence too.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.

Table of Contents

Chapter title: Three tickets for titsburg

Chapter title: Drowned in spaghetti

Chapter title: G-d

Chapter title: Avoid the priests