Talks on the Isha Upanishad
English Discourse series
Book Chapters: 16
Year published: 1984
Source: www.oshoworld.com

Chapter No. 10 - The Eternal Religion
20 October 1980 am in Buddha Hall, Pune, India

The first question:

Question 1

A FRIEND ASKS: IF EVERYTHING IN NATURE IS PURPOSELESS, WHY MAN ALONE SHOULD LIVE WITH A PURPOSE?

Undoubtedly, if you can give up all purposes, there can be no greater purpose than this. If you can be natural, it is of the highest.

But man has become so unnatural that just to return to nature he will need to have a purpose -- purpose to be natural. This is unfortunate. And what I am saying is just this: give up everything, let go. But, at the moment, purposes have gripped us so powerfully that even giving them up will have to be turned into a purpose. We will have to give them up, and to give them up we will have to make efforts, although giving up needs no efforts. What efforts are involved if you have to give up something?

It is true that there is no purpose anywhere. But why? The reason is not that nature is purposeless; the reason is that what is, is, and there is no purpose be side it, outside of it.

A flower has bloomed. It has not bloomed for anyone, nor has it bloomed for being sold in the market. It has not bloomed so that a passer by may stop and enjoy its fragrance. Neither has it bloomed to win a gold medal or a decoration like padmashree. The flower has just bloomed, because blooming is its own joy. Blooming is the purpose of blooming; it is its own significance. So you can say that it has bloomed with out any purpose. And a thing can only bloom fully if it blooms without any purpose, because where there is a purpose there is necessarily some impediment.

If a flower has bloomed for some passer by to see it, then what will happen if there is no passer by to see? In that case the flower will not bloom; it will wait for the passer by to come. But if a flower refuses for a long time to bloom, it is just possible it may not bloom even when the passer-by comes. Because by then the habit of not blooming, the habit of remaining enclosed will have become too strong.

A flower blooms fully because it has no purpose whatsoever.

Man should be like this. But the difficulty with man is that he has ceased to be natural, he has become utterly unnatural. And if he has to go back to his naturalness, his spontaneity, this going back will again be a purpose.

When I talk about purpose it is like this- If you have a thorn in your foot, it has to be taken out with the help of another thorn. Now someone comes to me and says, "There is no thorn in my foot, so why should I take it out?" I would tell him, "Since the question does not arise why should you put the question at all?" The question simply does not arise, as there is no thorn in the foot. But in case it is there, another thorn will be necessary to take it out."

The friend may also say that since one thorn was such pain why should I ask him to push another into his foot? It is true that the first thorn is causing pain, but it cannot be taken out without the other. Of course, you have to see that you don't lodge the second thorn in your flesh out of a sense of gratitude to it, that it was good enough to help you get rid of the first one. That would be harmful. Once the thorn is out, both the thorns have to be thrown away together.

Once our unnatural life becomes natural again, it is necessary to put aside the natural with the unnatural, because to be completely natural even the thought of the natural will come in the way. Then whatsoever will be, will be.

No, I do not say that a purpose is necessary. But I talk of purpose because you have already collected any number of purposes in your life. You have any number of thorns in your flesh, and these thorns can be removed only with the help of other thorns.

The same friend asks if mind (MANA), intellect (BUDDHI) mind stuff (CHITTA) and ego (ahankara) are separate entities or they are different names for the same thing. He also wants to know if they are different from the atman or the soul, or they are one with it, and whether they are conscious or unconscious. He also wants to know what is conscious and what is unconscious, and their specific places in life.

The first thing is that in this world matter and consciousness are not two separate things. What we call matter is consciousness asleep and what we know as consciousness is matter awakened. In reality matter and mind are not different; they are different manifestations of the same thing. Existence is one, and that one is God or brahman or whatsoever you want to call it. When that one is asleep it appears as matter, and when awake it is mind, or consciousness. So don't treat matter and mind as separate entities; they are only utilitarian terms. They are not really different.

Even science has come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as matter. How amusing it is that fifty years ago Nietzsche declared that God is dead, and fifty years from now science will have to declare that God may or may not be dead but matter is certainly dead. As science goes deeper and deeper into matter it finds that matter is no more and only energy remains, only energy is.

What remains after the explosion or splitting of the atom is only particles of energy. And what we know as electrons, protons and neutrons are particles of electricity. In fact, it is not correct to call them particles, because particles connote matter. The scientists had to find a new word, which is quanta, which has a different connotation altogether. Quanta is both a particle and a wave. It is difficult to comprehend how a thing could be both a particle and a wave simultaneously, but quanta is both. Sometimes it behaves as a particle -- which is matter; and sometimes it behaves as a wave -- which is energy. Wave and energy are behaviors of the same quanta.

When science dug deep it found that only energy is, and when spirituality delved deep it found that only spirit or atman or soul is. And soul is energy. The time is just around the corner when a synthesis of science and religion will be achieved, and the distance that separates them will simply disappear. When the gap between matter and God has proved to be false, the gap between science and religion cannot exist for long. If matter and mind are not two, how can religion and science be two? The separation of science and religion was dependent on the separation of matter and mind.

To me, only one is; two simply don't exist. There is no place for duality; so the question of matter and mind does not arise. If you like the language of matter, you can say that everything is matter. And if you like the language of mind or consciousness, you can say that everything is consciousness. I for one prefer the language of consciousness. But why do I prefer it? Because, in my view, one should always prefer the language of the higher, which has greater possibility; one should not prefer the language of the lower, where possibility is less and less.

We can, for instance, say that only the seed is, and not the tree. And it is not wrong to say so, be cause the tree is only a transformation of the seed. But there is a danger involved in this statement. The danger is that some seeds may say, "If we are seeds all the way up, then why seek to become trees? We will remain as we are; we will remain seeds. " So it is better if we say that only trees are, and not seeds. Then the possibility for the seed to become a tree remains.

I prefer the language of consciousness, so that what is asleep can awaken, this possibility should be available.

There is a similarity between the materialist and the spiritualist; both of them accept only one -- either matter or mind. But there is a difference too. While the materialist accepts the primary thing and is thus deprived of the ultimate, the spiritualist accepts the ultimate which includes the primary in it. It is all inclusive; it does not exclude. I love the language of spirituality; and therefore I say that everything is consciousness. Consciousness asleep is matter, and consciousness awakened is consciousness. All is consciousness.

The second thing the friend wants to know is whether mind, intellect, mind stuff, and ego -- mana, buddhi, chitta and ahankara -- are separate entities or they are one. They are not separate entities, they are many faces of the same mind. It is like you ask whether the father, the son and the husband are separate individuals -- and I say no, he is one and the same man. We know that the same person is a father in relation to his son, a son in relation to his father, and a husband in relation to his wife. The same man can be a friend to one and an enemy to another. He may be beautiful to one and ugly to another. And the same man may be a master to one and servant to another. But he is one and the same man. In case you don't know his house and some person tells you that he saw his master there, and another day another person tells you that his servant lives in that house, and yet another day a young man says that his father lives there, and again a woman informs you that her husband is the owner of that house, then you will conclude that many people -- a master, a servant, a father and a husband -- live in that particular house. But the fact is that the same person is playing different roles in relation to different persons.

Our mind behaves in many ways. When it feels arrogant and says, "I am everything and others are nothing before me," then mind appears as ego. That is one way of mind's behavior. It is ego when it says, "I am everything." When it declares, "Everyone is just zero before me," then mind is ego.

And when the mind thinks, cogitates, it is intellect. But when it does not think or cogitate, when it simply moves about, rambles without any sense of direction, when it is unfocused, it is called mind stuff, or chitta. Intellect is mind with a direction, as is the mind of a scientist sitting in his lab and thinking how to split the atom. When the mind moves about with out any purpose and aim, when it kind of dreams and daydreams, when it thinks of becoming a billionaire or the president of a country, when it is unfocused, then it is chitta or mind stuff. Then it is just waving and wavering, it is incoherent and unorganized. And when it follows a well laid system of thought it is intellect.

These are the many ways of the mind. But it is all mind.

And the friend also wants to know if mind, intellect, mind stuff and ego are separate from the soul or the atman.

Do you think that when there is a storm in an ocean the ocean and the storm are separate? When the ocean is agitated and disturbed, we call it a storm. Similarly when the soul is agitated and disturbed, when it is restless, it is called mind. And when the mind is quiet it is again soul. Mind is the restless state of the soul, and soul is the quiet and tranquil state of the mind.

In other words, when consciousness is disturbed and agitated, when it is stirred and tempestuous, it is mind. That is why so long as you are in mind you can not be aware of the atman, or the soul. And for the same reason the mind ceases to be when it is in meditation. But what does it mean to cease? It means that the waves raging in the sea of the soul have quieted down. It is only then that you know you are a soul. So long as you are disturbed and restless, you know your self only as a mind.

The restless mind appears in many forms -- some times as ego, sometimes as intellect and sometimes as mind stuff. These are the different faces of the same restless mind.

The atman and mind are not separate. The atman and the body too are not separate; because the substance, the essence, the reality is one, and all these are transformations of the same. And if you know the one, all conflicts with the body or the mind, all strife comes to an end. Once you recognize the one, then it alone remains. Then the one abides in Rama as well as in Ravana. Then you will not worship Rama and kill Ravana. Then you will either worship both or kill both; because the same dwells in both -- Rama and Ravana.

Essence is one, its expressions are infinite. Truth is one, its forms are many. Existence is one; its faces and gestures are myriad.

But you cannot understand it if you approach it as a philosophy. You can understand it only if you approach it experientially, if you know it as an experience. All this I say just to explain it to you; this explanation cannot become your knowing, your experience. You will have to know it for yourself. And when you will enter into one and know it you will exclaim, "My God, what I had known as body is you; what I had known as mind is you, and what I had known as atman is also you!"

On knowing, only one remains. And this one is so vast, so immense that all gaps between the knower and the known and knowledge disappear. There the knower and the known become one. One of the rishis, the seers of the Upanishad asks, "Who is there who knows? Who is he who is known? Who is he who saw? Who is he who was seen? Who is he who experienced? And who is he who was experienced?" No, not even this much separation remains that you can distinguish the knower from the known, that you can say there are two. Even the experiencer ceases to be. All distances, all gaps, all separations simply vanish.

But thought cannot live without creating gaps and distances. Thought is bound to create distances. It will say this is the body, this is mind, this is soul and this is God. It will differentiate between the body and mind, between soul and God. Thought will bring in gaps and divisions which are not.

Why? Because thought cannot encompass and contain the total, the whole, in one piece. It is a very small opening through which things can only be seen piecemeal. If there is a big building with only a small opening in its wall and I try to look through it, will I be able to see the whole house? No, at first a chair will be seen, then a desk, and then the master of the house, and so on and so forth. Through a small opening the house can be seen only in fragments, never the whole of it altogether, because the opening is very small. But then I break open the wall and enter the house, and now the whole house is seen together.

Thought is a very small aperture in the mind through which we try to find truth. Through thought, truth is seen in fragments; truth is fragmented. But when you drop thoughts and enter a thought free space, which is meditation, then the total is observed. And the day the whole, the total is seen, we exclaim, "Jesus, it was all one seen in infinite forms!"

But this is possible only through experience.

Another friend wants to know how many years I took to enter meditation.

Entry into meditation happens in only a moment, though one may have to wait at its door for lives. Entry is a matter of a moment. Even "moment" is not the right word, because a moment is too long. If I say that it happens in a thousandth part of a moment, that too will be wrong, because even the thousandth part is time. In fact, meditation is entry into timelessness, into the timeless. When time ceases, entry into meditation happens, meditation happens.

So if someone says that it took him an hour or a year to get into meditation, he is wrong -- because when one really enters meditation, time ceases to be, time is no more there. Meditation transcends time, it is beyond time. Of course you can spend any number of lives outside the temple of meditation, making a round of the temple for umpteen times; but that is not entry into its inner sanctuary.

I too, spent many lives going round the temple of meditation, but it was not entry. When I entered, it happened in no time, it happened without time, it happened timelessly, it happened in timelessness.

The question that you have raised is rather difficult. If one were to keep an account of the time spent on the outskirts of the temple, it will come to countless lives. Even calculation is difficult, because it is an enormously long time; it is incalculable. But if you take just the event of entry into consideration, then it can not be said in terms of time, because it happens in between two moments. It happens when a moment has passed and the next moment has yet to arrive; it happens in the gap between two moments. It always happens in the gap between two moments.

That is why it cannot be said how much time it took me to enter meditation. It takes no time at all. It cannot take time, because you cannot enter the eternal through time. What is beyond time cannot be known through time.

I understand what you say. You can loiter around the temple as much as you like. That is a kind of going in circles; one can do so. For instance, I draw a circle with a center, and ask someone to reach the center. But even if he keeps moving on the circumference for lives and lives, he will never reach the center; howsoever fast he may run, he cannot make it. Even an airplane will be of no avail. Whatever he may do -- he may spend any amount of energy he has, but if he keeps to the circumference, he will never, never reach the center. And wherever he is at the circumference, he will always be distant, equidistant from the center. So it is meaningless to know how much one ran. He is still at the circumference where his distance from the center is always the same. And strangely enough it is the same distance from him as it was when he had not even begun the race.

If one is to reach the center he can do so only by quitting the circumference. He will have to stop running and take a jump. And when he will have reached the center and you will ask him how long it took him to run in circles to reach the center, what will he say? He will say that he did lots of traveling, lots of journeying on the circumference, but he could not reach. If you ask him about the length of his journey before he made it, he will again say that any length of journeying was useless, he could not reach through journeying. He will say that he reached only when he abandoned all journeying and took a quantum leap.

So it is not at all a question of length of time and space in meditation. Meditation does not happen in time. We all have spent lots and lots of time. And we all have wasted any amount of time. And the day meditation will happen to you, you too will not be able to say how much time it took. No, it is not at all a question of time.

Someone asked Jesus, "How long can one stay in that heaven of yours?" Jesus said that it was a difficult question, and then he said, "There shall be time no longer." Jesus said to him again, "If you want to know how long you can stay in the kingdom of God you are really putting a difficult question, because there shall be time no longer. So how can time be calculated?"

It is good to understand that what we know as time is inalienably connected with our sorrow, with our unhappiness, with our misery. And there is no time in bliss; bliss is timeless. The measure of time is the measure of your misery. The more unhappy you are the longer the time is. If someone in your family is on the deathbed, awaiting his end, and it is night, that night will become much too long. Although the night will make no difference for the wall clock or the calendar on the desk, but for the man sitting at the bedside of his dying beloved, it will become so long that it will seem endless. The man wonders if the night is going to end at all, if the sun will rise and another day begin. And it seems to him that though the night is long the clock shows the same hour, and he wonders if the clock has stopped or its hands are going slow. Even if it is about time, close to morning for the date leaf of the calendar to drop, the man feels that the night is getting longer and longer; it is endless.

Bertrand Russell has said somewhere that if he was presented in a court of law for all the sins he had committed and also for the sins that he had intended to commit, but could not, even the strictest of magistrates would not convict him for more than four to five years' imprisonment; but Jesus says that sinners will suffer in hell for eternity. This is very very unjust. He says that even if the sins he had only intended to commit -- he had only thought of them -- were added to the list of sins he had actually committed, the most punishing court would not punish him for more than four to five years in prison. "But the court of Jesus would have me suffer in hell for eternity, which is too much."

Russell is dead, otherwise I would like to tell him that he failed to understand what Jesus meant to say. What Jesus is saying is this: that if one was to live in hell for a moment, the moment would seem to be eternity itself. Misery is by nature such that it seems endless, it seems it will never come to an end.

Misery lengthens time, while happiness shortens it. That is why we say that happiness is transient, momentary. It is not necessary that happiness should last only a moment, but it feels momentary because in happiness time is short; it shortens. It is not that happiness is always fleeting. It may have a longer span in time, but it always feels fleeting because in happiness, time shrinks. Even as you meet your beloved, the time for separation arrives; he seems to be leaving you the moment he arrives. No sooner the flower blooms than it begins to wither away. So the experience of happiness is always brief, because the nature of time in happiness is such. The clock remains the same and so does the calendar; they are not affected by your happiness; but for you happiness shortens time psychologically.

And time in bliss disappears altogether; it is neither shortened nor lengthened. In bliss time simply does not exist. When you will be in bliss, time will cease to be for you. In fact, time and misery are two names for the same thing. Time is another name for misery. Time and misery are synonymous. Psychologically time means misery; and that is the reason why we say that bliss is beyond time. What is beyond time cannot be found through time.

I have wandered enough, as much as any of you have done; and the interesting part of it is that this wandering is so long that it is difficult to say who has wandered less and who more. Mahavira and Buddha attained enlightenment twenty-five hundred years ago; Jesus had it twenty hundred years ago, and Shankar only ten hundred years ago. But if someone says that Shankar had to wander less by ten hundred years, he is saying it wrong, because wandering is in finite.

For example, you were in Bombay and you came here to Nargol by traveling a distance of a hundred miles. But for the star that is at an infinite distance from us, you did not travel at all. In relation to that star you are where you are. It makes no difference for that star if you have moved a hundred miles from Bombay. If you take that star into consideration you have not moved at all. Your distance from that star remains the same at Nargol as it was in Bombay. That star is so far away that these petty distances don't make a difference.

The journey of our lives, of our births and deaths is so long, so infinitely long, that it makes no difference whatsoever if one attained enlightenment twenty-five hundred years ago, another five hundred years ago, and still another only five days or five hours ago. The day we reach that center we exclaim, "Aha, Buddha is just now arriving and Mahavira also is only entering, and so also Jesus, and us too!"

But this is rather difficult to understand, because in the world we live in, time is very important to us. Time has great importance in our world. That is why the question arises how long it takes one to enter meditation. But don't raise this question. Don't talk about time. And stop wandering. Wandering will take time. Don't loiter around the temple; enter it.

But we are afraid of going inside the temple; we are afraid of what may happen there. Out here every thing is known and familiar. Our friends, relatives, wives, husbands and kids, houses and workshops are all here -- outside of the temple. Whatsoever we think to be our own is outside of the temple. And the temple has a condition that one can enter it all alone; no two persons can pass through its door together. So the question of taking with you your homes and houses, your wives and children, your property and wealth, your position and prestige, simply does not arise. Everything has to be left behind.

That is why we say that it is better we wander around awhile more. And so we wander and wander. We are waiting for the moment when the doors of the temple will open up a little wider and we will enter it with everything we have. But the doors of the temple never open up for more than one person at a time. Only one person can pass through it. And you cannot take even your position or prestige with you, because then you will be two -- you and your prestige. You cannot carry even your name with you, because then it will be two -- you and your name. You cannot carry any baggage with you; you can carry absolutely nothing. You have to go there totally naked and alone; then only you can enter.

For this reason we keep sauntering outside the temple, we pitch our camps on the outside, and we console ourselves saying that we are close to God, we are not away from him. But whether you are at a distance of a yard or a mile or a thousand miles from the temple, it makes no difference. If you are outside of it, you are outside. And if you want to go in, it can hap pen in a thousandth part of a second. It is wrong to say a thousandth part of a moment, really you can enter even without the moment.

Let this question be the last one for the moment. If you have any more questions, we will take them up in the evening. You ask whether what is known as knowledge or knowing abides only in a thought free state and it disappears in a state of thought.

Knowledge or knowing happens when thought is not. When you are free of thought you know. But having known it once, it abides in every state. It abides even in a state of thinking. Then there is no way to lose it. But its attainment is possible only in a thought free state. To attain it you have to be free of thought. Why?

The reason is that the waves of thought do not allow the mind to become a mirror. For instance, if you have to take a picture with your camera, you will have to be careful that the camera does not shake and that light does not enter it. But once the picture is taken, you can very well shake the camera and allow any amount of light to enter it. Then it does not matter. If the camera is shaken at the moment of taking the picture, everything will be ruined. Once the picture is taken, however, the matter ends. Then you can do whatever you like with the camera, you can shake and dance with it, it will make no difference to the picture.

Attainment of knowledge happens in a state of mind when nothing moves, when everything is quiet and still. Then only the picture of knowing is obtained. But after it is obtained you can do anything, you can shake and dance; it makes no difference. Knowledge is certainly attained in a thought free state; but after it is attained, thought creates no difficulty. If you think that you will achieve it through thought, then it will never happen. Thought will impede it, impede its realization. But it becomes impotent after you have realized knowledge. Then it is powerless and ineffective; it cannot do anything.

It is interesting to know that stillness of mind is primarily needed for the realization of knowledge, but once it is realized nothing is needed after it. But that is what comes later. And what comes later should not be brought in first, otherwise it will harm you. It will harm you in the sense that you may think that if thought is not going to be a problem later why should it be a problem right now? And that will really be harmful. Then we will shake the camera and everything will be in a mess. Even a shaking camera can take a picture, but it would not be a true picture, an authentic picture. Even through thought what we come across is knowledge, but it is never true knowledge, authentic knowledge, because the mind is all the time unsteady, shaking and trembling. So it distorts everything.

For instance, the moon is up in the sky and the sea below is in waves. Even the waving sea will reflect the moon but it will reflect it in fragments; instead of one moon there will be a thousand and one pieces of it scattered all over the sea. And if one has not seen the real moon in the sky he cannot have a correct picture of it from its reflections on the sea. He will see a thousand and one fragments of the moon instead. He will come across myriad silvery strands of the moon suffusing the sea, but from them he cannot have an idea of the real moon. A restless sea, a sea in turmoil cannot reflect the moon correctly. But once we get a correct image of the moon, we will see and recognize it even in the scattered waves of the ocean. We will say, "It is you."

So it is essential that for once we have a correct image of truth or God. Once we know him authentically, we can see him in every image. But without this, we cannot see him anywhere. In fact we meet God everywhere, but we cannot recognize him, we cannot say that this is he.

I would like to explain it with an anecdote, and then we will sit for meditation.

A Hindu sannyasin lived near Sai Baba for long. A Hindu sannyasin... and Sai lived in a mosque. No one knew for sure whether he was a Hindu or a Mohammedan. Nothing is certain about such people. When someone made inquiries about him, he just laughed, but laughing does not say anything except that the inquirer is stupid.

Being a Hindu sannyasin he could not live in the mosque, so he chose to live in a temple outside the village. And he loved and adored Sai Baba, he was intimate with him. So every day he cooked food for Sai Baba, took it to the mosque, fed him and then returned to his temple and ate his own meal.

One day Sai Baba said to him, "Why do you come such a long way every day? You can feed me at your own place, because I happen to pass your place several times." The sannyasin said with surprise, "Do you really pass by my place? I never saw you passing." Sai Baba then said, "You should watch carefully. I pass your temple several times every day. Tomorrow I will go there, so you feed me there. You need not come here."

The next day the Hindu monk cooked food and waited for Sai Baba to come. He waited long enough, but he did not turn up. Then he was worried because it was already 2 p.m. He thought that Sai Baba must be hungry like himself, and so he took the dishes with food and ran to the mosque. He said to Sai Baba, "I waited and waited for you, but you did not turn up." Sai Baba said, "I had been to your place today, but you snubbed me and turned me away." The sannyasin said, "What do you say, that I turned you away? Only a dog had appeared." Sai Baba said, "That dog was me." This made the Hindu sannyasin very miser able and he wept a lot. He then said, "How stupid of me that you went to my place and I could not recognize you. I will not miss recognizing you tomorrow."

But the sannyasin did not recognize him again, though Sai Baba visited his place. Had he come in the form of a dog, he would not have failed to know him. But this time he was a leper who met the monk in the street. The monk told the leper, "Keep off my way. I am carrying food for Sai Baba, so keep off!" The leper grinned and moved away.

This day too the monk had waited for Sai Baba till 2 p.m. And then he had rushed to the mosque as before and said to Sai Baba, "You did not turn up again; I waited for you like anything." Sai Baba said, "I had been to your place today also, but the sea of your mind is so restless, it is full of so many ripples, that you cannot know me as the same everyday. You get shaken. Today a leper turned up and you told him to move away. Isn't it very strange that when I go to you you turn me away and then you come here and complain that I did not turn up?"

The sannyasin began to cry, and he said, "How unfortunate that I could not recognize you!" Then Sai Baba said, "How can you know me in other forms when you have not known me really?"

Once a glimpse of reality becomes available, the false just ceases to be. Once we have a glimpse of God, then God alone is, and nothing else. But that glimpse will be possible only when everything within us is still and quiet. And then there is no question. Then everything is his. Then thoughts, feelings and desires, all are his. Then anything and everything is his.

But to have this glimpse, this recognition, it is essential in the primary stage, in the first place, that thoughts, feelings and desires, all should come to a standstill.

Question 2

OSHO,

WE INDIANS KNOW THAT WE HAVE BEEN CAUGHT IN SERIOUS DISEASES FOR CENTURIES, BUT WHEN SUCH A GREAT DOCTOR LIKE YOU REFUSES US, WHAT WILL BECOME OF US?

Prem Vinod,

I AM NOT refusing anybody, but I have to refuse your diseases, certainly. I cannot accept your diseases -- no physician can do that. And those who accept your diseases are your enemies. Your diseases have to be mercilessly destroyed, whoever you are -- Indian, German, English. Diseases come in all forms, sizes and shapes. You may be a Hindu or a Christian or a Jew; it does not matter.

The whole past of humanity has been full of many fundamental errors, but they have existed for so long that they have become almost part of you. Hence the feeling, Vinod, that I reject you. I am simply rejecting the disease. but you are identified with the disease. You think your diseases, the sum total of your diseases, is what you are. That's not true -- you are not just your diseases. You are something beyond all that has happened to you in the whole past. All that has happened is only a conditioning; it can be dropped, it has to be dropped. Hence I condemn it, but your ego feels hurt. I cannot help; I cannot have any compassion for any kind of disease.

But when diseases exist tor a long time and they are given from one generation to another generation they become very respectable. You forget that they are diseases; you start thinking that they are specialties to you.

For example, T.M. Ramachandran has asked: "OSHO, WHY DO YOU SAY THAT NOTHING HAS BEEN HAPPENING IN THE EAST? GREAT, GREAT THINGS HAVE BEEN HAPPENING IN THE EAST AS WELL. IS NOT HINDUISM AND ITS WAY OF LIFE THE GREATEST RELIGION IN THE WORLD?"

And what is this HINDU WAY OF LIFE? It is utterly life-negative! Even to call it a way of life is not right. It can be called a way of death, but not a way of life. How anything life-negative can become a philosophy of life?

Hinduism teaches you to reject life, to renounce life. You worship the escapist people; you call them saints, mahatmas. Those who have gone against the world, those who have rejected the world, those who have condemned the world and all that it contains, they are thought to be people of God.

God exists in the manifest world as the unmanifest center of it all. The moment you reject the flower you also reject its fragrance; if you escape from the flower you are escaping from the fragrance too -- and God is the fragrance of existence. Those who go against life are going basically against God.

You have heard the proverb: Man proposes and God disposes. Hinduism does just the opposite: God proposes, man disposes. It is God's proposition -- this existence, this life, but man disposes it.

George Gurdjieff, one of the greatest Masters of this century, used to say that, "Your mahatmas are all against God" -- and he is absolutely right, one hundred percent right, because your mahatamas are denouncers. They negate. They make you feel guilty of love, of life, of laughter. They make you feel guilty if you are joyous, if you are cheerful. They make you feel guilty if you enjoy food, if you enjoy friendship, if you enjoy any kind of relationship. They make you feel guilty for all that you enjoy and they impose things upon you for which there is no enjoyment in you.

All that you can do with these negative attitudes is nourish your ego. Hence your mahatmas are the most egoistic people in the world. But when one starts thinking of diseases as if they are something great, then it becomes very difficult for him to listen to the physician.

I don't reject anybody, Vinod. To me it is all the same whether you are a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian. Your diseases are a little bit different but not basically, because all the religions that have existed in the past have used one similar strategy, and that is to create guilt. That has been the technique of the priest to dominate you: make people feel guilty of small joys -- and of course those joys are natural and spontaneous.

And when a person becomes guilty of his own nature he starts rejecting himself, he starts dying. It is a slow kind of suicide. He becomes sad, he becomes drained off His life loses flavor. And then of course, trembling, he has to go to the priest, because the priest knows the way how to go beyond this guilt. The priest creates the guilt in the first place -- it is his trade secret -- and then you have to go to the priest because there is nobody else who can guide you. That is the business of the priest: to guide you about spiritual affairs. And you are feeling so sad, so miserable; you need help, you need somebody to support you. You need somebody to teach you ways, means, methods so that you can get rid of your guilt.

But the priest goes on creating more guilt in you. He creates so much fear of life in you that Hinduism became obsessed with the idea how to get rid of birth and death, how to get rid of AAVAGAMAN -- coming and going into existence.

Life is so beautiful!

Rabindranath, one of the great poets of all the times. was on his deathbed. A friend told him -- a very religious friend. of course -- that, "Pray to God that this should be your last life, you should be freed."

Rabindranath opened his eyes... his last moments. but he became angry and he said, "Shut up! I am praying to God that 'Your life has been such a beautiful gift to me that give it to me again and again. I would like to come back to see the sunrise, the sunset, the starry night, the flowers, a bird on the wing, the green trees, your rivers, your mountains, your people... I would like to come again and again and again! It is so vast and inexhaustible, and it has not been a misery to me.'"

Rabindranath is against your whole tradition of the so-called Hinduism. He is one of the most insightful persons that was born into this unfortunate country. He lived joyously, he lived a life of celebration. He loved poetry, created poetry He loved painting, he created many paintings. He sang, he danced.

This is true prayer! And because of this I say Rabindranath is not a Hindu. He was so much against renunciation that he dared even to write a poem against Gautam the Buddha. The poem is of immense beauty and of great meaning too.

Buddha has left his young wife and a child who was just one day old. Buddha was only twenty-nine years of age and he escaped -- that was the ancient Hindu way. He escaped into the forest to find out God.

Rabindranath describes his renunciation and describes that when he become enlightened he came back home to share his experience.

Yashodhara, his wife, asked him one question which he could not answer. He stood before Yashodhara with his eyes looking at the earth, ashamed. Only Rabindranath could have dared such a poem. What was the question that Yashodhara had asked? She had asked a very simple question: that, "Now that you have become enlightened, please answer one of my questions that has been haunting my days and my nights for all these years that you have been away. Since you left I have been tortured by this question and I have been waiting, because only you can answer it.

"The question is: whatsoever you have found in the deep silence of the forest, was it not possible to find it here in the palace with me, with your child, with your old father who has almost gone blind crying and weeping for you? And just look at me! I have become so old within these six years, just waiting every moment for you, waking up in the night again and again, maybe -- you had left in the night, you may have come again -- dreaming about you. Ask your son; he has been continuously asking me, 'Where is my father?' The whole kingdom is sad, the palace is sad; it has become a cemetery. Just answer one of my questions: Whatsoever you have found in the forest, was it not possible to find it here?"

And Buddha stood ashamed. He could not answer.

This is a parable invented by Rabindranath, but has great significance. Rabindranath is saying God can be found now and here. There is no need to go into the forest; there is no need to renounce the wife, the children, the old parents. There is no need to go against life. Going against life is like trying to go upstream, fighting with the river -- an unnecessary fight. Relax, rest, enjoy... and God can be found anyWHERE because he is EVERYWHERE.

Hinduism is life-negative; that's why it has respected the ascetics. Now, the ascetics are nothing but masochist people, absolutely ill, psychologically ill. The ascetic is the person who enjoys torturing himself, and Hindus have respected the ascetics. The more you torture yourself, the greater a saint you are. So if you lie down on a bed of thorns, thousands will gather to worship you. If you fast for months, then your name and fame will spread to all the corners of the country.

And one of the strangest things is, nobody ever asks, "What this man has contributed to life?" Lying on the bed of thorns is not a contribution; it does not make life more beautiful. it does not enrich existence in any way. Just by fasting for months is not any creative act -- it is destructive, it is really suicidal.

Hinduism is suicidal. That's why it was possible for twenty-two centuries for this country to remain in slavery -- for the simple reason nobody is interested in life, so what does it matter who rules it? It is all dream, it is all MAYA. Let anybody rule it!

This country has lost its soul, because only people who love freedom can have souls. This country only TALKS about the soul, but slaves can't have souls. But slaves can always rationalize; in fact they have to rationalize, just to console themselves.

And Hindus have become great rationalizers; they rationalize everything: "It is late, nothing can be done about it. God has decided so Not even a leaf falls from a tree without the will of God, so how can the country be a slave without the will of God? He must have chosen; we have simply to accept the fate."

And when one starts accepting the fate one becomes lazy, sloppy, lousy, because then nothing is left for you to do.

It was the morning after, and he sat groaning and holding his head.

"Well, if you hadn't drunk so much last night you wouldn't feel so bad now," said his wife tartly.

"My drinking had nothing to do with it," he answered. "I went to bed feeling wonderful and woke up feeling awful. It was the sleep that did it!"

You can always rationalize. You are not responsible -- whatsoever had to happen had tO happen. What can you do about it?

India has remained the poorest country in the world, and nobody thinks that Hinduism is the cause of it. If you believe in fate you will not endeavor to become rich, you will not make any effort to be scientific, you will not create technology, industry. You will simply wait: whenever God changes his will, things will change. As far as YOU are concerned, nothing can be done about it.

A newly-rich dame had bought a summer place in the Himalayas and hired a village woman to do the housework.

"I am a person of few words," she haughtily told the old woman. "If I beckon with my finger, that means 'come'."

"Very well, madam," replied the old Indian woman. "I am a person of few words myself. If I shake my head from side tO side, that means 'I am not coming'."

Just watch -- what you are talking about? A great religion, the greatest religion, and what it has given to you? Poverty, starvation, illness. The whole country is living undernourished, sixty percent of people are starving, and nothing is being done. Problems go on increasing, and Hindus simply go on sitting, worshipping the elephant god, Ganesha, or the monkey god, Hanuman, or the holy mother cow, and hoping that these elephants, monkeys and cows are going to help! It has become now so deep-rooted that something drastic is needed.

That's what I am trying to do. Naturally I will offend the unintelligent crowds; I can only be understood by the very intelligent few.

Barfly: "What's that drink you are mixing?"

Bartender: "I call it a rum overture."

Barfly: "What's in it?"

Bartender: "Sugar, a dash of clam juice, and rum."

Barfly: "How is it?"

Bartender: "Stimulating. The sugar gives you energy and the clam juice gives you drive."

Barfly: "And the rum?"

Bartender: "Ah, that! That gives you ideas about what to do with all that energy and drive."

I am mixing a rum overture! You need some drive and you need some ideas what to do with that drive and energy.

I am not rejecting anyone, Vinod, but I have to reject a these life-negative attitudes.

India has become a country of hypocrites for the simple reason: whenever you deny nature it is bound to happen. because the nature will assert, is bound to assert. You can repress it for a time being but not for ever, and whatsoever is repressed will take revenge with you. It will come back. with vengeance it will come back.

So on the one hand you will see the Hinduist morality the puritanism, and on the other hand you will see the Hindu obscenity.

The KAMA SUTRA of Vatsyayana was the first book on obscenity in the whole world. Only in this century Havelock Ellis, Sigmund Freud, Kinsey, Masters and Johnson, these people have started thinking about sexual postures, sex energy and what it is all about and what can be done about it. But Vatsyayana's KAMA SUTRAS are three thousand years old. Vatsyayana was a Hindu, and Hindus have respected him. They have called him maharishi, the great seer. On the one hand the so-called moralists and on the other hand the KAMA SUTRAS of Vatsyayana and the KOKA SHASTRA of Pundit Koka. Pundit Koka was a Kashmiri Hindu brahmin of the highest caste and his book is fifteen hundred years old, and one of the ugliest in the world. And he was an ordained Hindu.

And who has created the temples of Konarak, Puri and Khajuraho? On the one hand Hindus have been teaching BRAHMACHARYA, celibacy, as the highest goal for humanity on the other hand they were making sculpture so obscene that it is incomparable. Nowhere else in the world exists any temple like Khajuraho temples. And it was not only one temple, it was a whole city of temples. At least one hundred temples still survive; there must have been a thousand temples -- ruins are there -- and each temple has thousands of obscene postures. They must have taken hundreds of years to make. And if you see Khajuraho you will not believe...

These people who publish magazines like PLAYBOY and PLAYGIRL should come and learn from Khajuraho! Whatsoever they are doing is just ordinary. They cannot compete with Hindu fantasy -- for the simple reason because they cannot compete with Hindu repression! Once you repress something natural then it starts coming into your mind, it starts moving towards your head. It may disappear from the sex center, which was a natural phenomenon, but now it enters m your head.

This has driven the whole Hindu culture towards a very schizophrenic existence. It seem almost impossible how to relate these two phenomena going together.

Pundit Koka of Kashmir... and he is not alone. In the name of Tantra almost ninety-nine charlatans have been bringing sex from the back door. In the tradition of Tantra you will find only one percent authentic Masters; ninety-nine percent are just pseudo, tricky people. In the name of Tantra they are bringing the whole sexuality from the back door.

Pundit Koka says that if you really want to move deep into the phenomenon of sex then you have to find a woman of the lowest caste. She has not to be your wife, because with your wife you will not be able to enter into a really fantastic world of sexuality. Her topography is known to you, her geography is known to you; there is nothing to explore. So find a woman who is not your wife.

Secondly, the woman has to come from the lowest caste because they are more alive people. The higher the caste, the people are more and more bloodless. If you go to the lower castes then people are more alive, more wild. Hence I say to you that Coca-Cola must have originated with Pundit Koka -- Cola must have been his girlfriend. That's why it is so juicy! It is a discovery of the great tantrikas -- Coca-Cola!

I am not rejecting Hindus, Jews, Jains or anybody. I have no antagonism with anybody. I don't belong to any tradition, hence for me all the traditions are the same; but because I don't belong to any tradition I can see clearly the diseases. When you belong to a tradition you cannot see; your eyes are clouded, you are prejudiced.

Repression brings hypocrisy, and you can see it in India everywhere. People will talk that the world is illusory and the same time they will be as greedy about money as nobody else in the world is. This is strange -- but not really. If you go deep into it, because they are denying something natural... The world is given to you by God. If you deny it you will have to become obsessed with it; every denial becomes obsession. "Renounce the money!" these people go on saying...

If you go to Vinoba Bhave, who represents Hindu tradition, and you take a few notes in your hand, he will immediately close his eyes -- he does not see money. Now poor paper, just printed, and makes the Hindu MAHATMA SO afraid that he closes his eyes! It cannot be the currency notes; it must be some deep fear, some greed. He does not touch money.

On the one hand these people go on saying that gold is nothing but dust, but they will not touch gold.

I had asked Vinoba when I met him... He was very eager to meet me, so I said, "Okay, now it is your responsibility. If you want to meet me then I am no more responsible. Whatsoever happens, transpires, transpires!"

I asked him, "If you say that gold is just dust, why don't you touch gold? You touch dust!"

In fact, Vinoba Bhave believes in naturopathy -- mud packs, mud baths. He is very at ease with mud, enjoys it! Then what is wrong with gold? I take gold baths, gold packs! If It is the same, why bother? But it is not the same. If he is afraid of touching gold and is not afraid of touching dust, then he is being cunning, deceptive -- not only to others but to himself too. Then don't call gold just dust; then gold has some speciality which dust has not got.

You will find Hindus more greedy than anybody else, more full of sexuality than anybody else, more full of sexual fantasies than anybody else, more full of attachment than anybody else. And still you go on saying that Hinduism is the greatest religion in the world? What nonsense you are talking about? Hindus are the most dishonest people for the simple reason they have not been honest to accept the realities of life.

A man met a friend he had not seen for years and asked him how he was feeling.

"Awful," replied the friend. "In addition to my high blood pressure I have got arthritis and bronchitis."

"I am sorry to hear it. What about your job?"

"Oh, I'm still at the same thing I've been doing for the past twenty years -- I'm selling health foods."

This man must have been a Hindu! -- selling health foods, and suffering from high blood pressure, arthritis and bronchitis.

We all know the legend how Diogenes, the great Greek mystic, used to go about with a lantern looking for an honest man, even in the bright daylight. Some modern cynics ask why the cynic philosopher didn't go about in broad daylight without his lantern. Others ask why he didn't look in a mirror. Naturally enough, the legend appears in jokelore. One story tells how Diogenes had spent several hours after dark searching crime-ridden New Delhi for an honest man, and was very weary. A passerby, recognizing him, asked, "What luck?"

"Everything considered, not so bad," reported Diogenes. "I still have my lantern!"

In Delhi that is really luck if you can save your lantern, even in the bright day! Some politician is bound to grab it!

The Indian politician is the worst kind of politician in the world, for the simple reason because he belongs to a very ugly, ill, canceric civilization. Hinduism is on its deathbed, or maybe it is already dead and people are worshipping a corpse, because it stinks!

I would like to change this whole situation. Hindus, if they are courageous enough, will disconnect themselves from their past; that will be a resurrection. And they can prove, certainly, a great blessing to the whole world, because for centuries they have not worked; their potential has remained unactualized. It is like a farm which has not been cultivated for centuries. If you cultivate it right now it will give you the best crop possible, because for centuries it has been accumulating potential.

Hindus can assert a new era in the world. If they resurrect, if they drop out of their old past, if they disconnect themselves from their tradition, if they can have a new birth. then they may prove the greatest intelligent people in the world. Their contribution can not only transform THIS country, it can be a boon, a blessing to life on earth, because they have genius -- gone wrong -- they have intelligence -- gone astray. If it comes to the right dimension it will be good for their own health, it will be good for the health of the whole world.

And the same is true about other races too. Any race that remains clinging with the past remains clinging with corpses. One has to live in the present because the future is born out of the present. And India is living in the past. Out of past nothing is born; clinging to the past is wasting your time.

Everything in India is past-oriented. People are reading the story of Rama, and these are the days all over the country they will be playing the drama of Rama. Every year they go on playing the same drama; for thousands of years they have been doing it. They are not even bored by it! It seems they have lost all intelligence. They go on seeing the same thing, repeating the same thing, as if there is nothing else to do. And they go on talking about the golden age -- in the past, it is always in the past.

Remember this: a child always thinks good days are to come; the old man always thinks good days, golden days are past. The child is future-oriented, the old man is past-oriented, and the young man, if he is really young -- which is very rarely so... Physically there are so many young people in the world; they constitute the majority. But many of them either are still in their childhood psychologically, and many of them have already passed into old age psychologically.

If somebody is really young he lives in the present. Now is the only time for him and here is the only place for him. He does not waver between past and future, because both are non-existential; that which exists is the present. The young person lives in the present, and the same is true about civilizations.

The young civilization lives in the present, and if a civilization continuously lives in the present it remains young. That is the whole secret of remaining young. The new civilization, just born, immature, childish, lives in the future, and the old civilization lives in the past. You can immediately see and decide and categorize any civilization, to what category it belongs.

India lives in the past; it is getting old, shrinking. It has lost the joy of life, the youthfulness, the freshness. Countries like Russia, China live in the future. Their golden age is to come, when the classless society, the utopia conceived by Karl Marx will happen, when there will be no class, no poor, no rich, no one dominated and no one dominating, no bourgeoisie, no proletariat. When the classless society and the stateless society will be born, somewhere far away in the future, then humanity will have a golden age.

Countries like India live in the past; the golden age has passed long before. Man is falling down. There is great enthusiasm in China because the future seems to be very alluring; there is no enthusiasm in India. India became free before China, but China has been able to solve many problems which are of a vaster dimension than Indian problems because China has the greatest population in the world. But it has been able to solve those problems, it has been able to become a strong country.

India has remained poor; its problems have increased, and there seems to be no possibility that it can solve its problems the way it is moving. Its golden age has passed; there is no enthusiasm, there is no spirit. People are simply dragging.

America is young, lives in the moment, hence there is great exploration going on about everything: science, religion, philosophy, art, new forms of art, new methods, new ways to reach to the moon, to the Mars and finally to the stars, new methods, quicker methods to enter into meditation, into samadhi. In every dimension America is interested to explore; the young man's adventurous spirit is there. They are going to the farthest corners of the world to explore all possibilities.

India is old, dying; China is still born, just now growing towards a future; America is young.

Future can give you better possibilities than the past, but still future is non-existential; sooner or later you will get tired of it. Russia is more tired than China because for sixty years they have been waiting and waiting, and now the hope is turning into a hopelessness. Now it is becoming more and more clear that that stateless society is never going to happen. In fact, the state has become more powerful than ever before. Even czar was not so powerful as Joseph Stalin was. Czar was thrown hv revolution. but in Russia now there is no possibility of any revolution. The state has become such a vast, powerful, technically equipped organization that nobody can revolt against it, nobody can organize any revolution against it. Even to talk anything against it is dangerous, even to think may be dangerous in few years, because now they are discovering that every child can be fixed with an electrode in the head and that electrode will go on informing the government computer what the person is thinking, what he is trying to do in his brain. Even brain waves can be traced, subtle indications can be discovered, and before the man has even uttered a single word he will disappear.

And those electrodes can do another work also: they can implant any idea in the person and you will never be aware that you are carrying an electrode inside your brain, because within your skull there is no sensitivity. If a stone is inserted inside your skull you will not feel that there is a stone. There are no sensitive nerves in the brain.

A person carried a bullet in his brain for nine years, absolutely unaware. By accident, through X-ray, it was discovered that in the First World War he had got hit by a bullet, and then the wound healed and the bullet remained inside for nine years, and he was not aware at all.

And electrodes are very small things; just they can be inserted when the child is born in the hospital. And of course in Russia every child is born in the hospital, so every child can be inserted with an electrode and that electrode will function in two ways -- it will inform the government what the person is thinking, and it can do one thing more: the government can manipulate the person through the electrode; it can insert through radio waves, through remote control -- ideas. And the person will think, "These are MY ideas"; he will never think that these ideas are coming from some other source.

In Russia revolution is absolutely impossible, hence people are becoming more and more hopeless seeing that Marx had said state will wither away -- once capitalism is gone there will be no need for the state -- but the state has become more and more stronger. Marx' prediction has gone absolutely wrong: just the opposite has happened.

The same is going to happen to China. Right now they are very enthusiastic, but soon they will settle into the same slavery as Russia has settled.

The people who are past-oriented like the Hindus are living with a long, long dead past -- and carrying it. It is a mountainous weight; they are crushed under it. And there is no hope in the future. The Hindus think that the best days were in the beginning; they don't believe in evolution, remember -- they believe in involution. Evolution means we are reaching to higher peaks. Hindus believe we are deteriorating, coming lower, every day, the highest age was in the beginning; now we are at the lowest, KALI YUGA, the last. This is the very low state of humanity and there is no hope.

A country to be really alive, to be really adventurous, exploring, enjoying, celebrating, has to be constantly young, neither in the past nor in the future. I am against both the Hindu approach and the communist approach. I would like the whole humanity to be young and to remain young forever, and the way to remain young is to go on dying to the past and don't bother too much about the future. Future will take its own course. When it comes, if we are here we will respond to it; otherwise our children will respond to it. Why bother about it too much?

Live right now. Live as deeply and passionately as you can, because that is the only way to discover God. That's the only source to uncover the hidden secrets of life. God is not against life, God is the innermost core of life. Hence I teach a life-affirmative religion. I don't teach Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Christianity; I only teach a kind of religiousness. The world is fed up with all these isms".

There are three hundred religions and at least three thousand sub-sects of those religions. The world needs one universal religiousness.

My sannyasins don't belong to any religion at all; they simply belong to a new phenomenon: a religionless religiousness The essential of religion, of all the religions, will be saved, but the peripheral will have to be dropped, the non essential will have to be simply burned.

And the non-essential has grown too much in Hinduism it is ninety-nine percent non-essential. And the same is true about other religions too, more or less. because Hinduism is the oldest one. Christianity is only two thousand years old, Mohammedanism only fourteen hundred years old Sikhism only five hundred years old -- of course, they are not that old so they have a little more life. But Hinduism, Jainism are very ancient -- Jainism perhaps even older than Hinduism, hence more dead, hence more in the grave, not even on the deathbed Hinduism is on the deathbed at least Jainism is already in the grave!

We need a rejuvenation, not of something old but of the essential which is eternal. I call that eternal religiousness SANATAN DHARMA: AIS DHAMMO SANANTANO -- the eternal religion. It has nothing to do with Hinduism; it is non-temporal. Meditation is the most significant part of it, and out of meditation, the transformation of your whole character.

I am not against anybody. but I have to say the truth as it is. I cannot compromise -- truth is always uncompromising. I cannot be polite either, because that politeness will not help. I have to be mercilessly hammering, continuously, on all that is wrong and all that is ill. Chunk by chunk all the non-essential, ritualistic religion has to be destroyed. When only the essential is left you will see the youngness of it, the freshness of it the fragrance of it.

And the world is now in a great need, because man as he exists now cannot exist any more. Either he has to commit a global suicide or he has to come out of the past like a snake moving out of the old skin. He has to be reborn.

Only a new man can survive; the old man is incapable of survival in the future. Science has grown so much that unless we bring religion also to the same par there will be no balance. Religion is lagging far behind and science is growing every day so speedily that if we don't bring religion also to the present, science and religion cannot meet. And in that meeting is the only hope.

The meeting of science and religion will create the new man, the new synthesis.

The third question:

Question 3

OSHO,

YOU HAVE SPOKEN MANY TIMES ABOUT ZEN MASTERS, AND TODAY YOU SAID THAT J. KRISHNAMURTI IS ZEN AND ZEN MEANS NO TEACHING. CAN YOU EXPLAIN THIS POINT?

Anand Alok,

ZEN CERTAINLY MEANS no teaching at all, no doctrine. That s what J. Krishnamurti has been saying for fifty years or more. He never mentions the name Zen, but that does not make any difference; what he says is exactly, essentially the same.

But on one point there is a great difference. Zen says there is no teaching, truth cannot be taught. Nobody can give you the truth; truth has to be discovered within your own soul. It cannot be borrowed from the scriptures. It is not possible even to communicate it, it is inexpressible; by its very nature, intrinsically, it is indefinable. Truth happens to you in a wordless silence, in deep, deep meditation. When there is no thought. no desire, no ambition, in that state of no-mind truth descends in you -- or ascends in you. As far as the dimension of truth is concerned both are the same, because in the world of the innermost subjectivity height and depth mean the same. It is one dimension: the vertical dimension.

Mind moves horizontally, no-mind exists vertically. The moment the mind ceases to function -- that's what meditation is all about: cessation of the mind, total cessation of the mind -- your consciousness becomes vertical; depth and height are yours.

So either you can say truth descends. as many mystics like Patanjali, Badnarayana, Kapil and Kanad have said. It is avataran -- coming from the heights to you. Hence whenever a person becomes self-realized he is called an avatara. Avatara means truth has descended in him; the word avatara simply means descending from the above, from the beyond.

But the other expression is as valid. Adinatha, Neminatha, Mahavira, Gautam Buddha, these mystics have said that truth does not come from the beyond, it arises from the deepest source of your being. It is not something coming down but something rising up, welling up.

Both expressions are valid to me, two ways of saying the same thing: that the dimension is vertical. Either you can talk in terms of height or in terms of depth. But truth never comes from the outside, so nobody can teach you.

As far as this point is concerned, Krishnamurti is absolutely Zen. Truth cannot be taught, cannot be transmitted. Zen Masters -- Bodhidharma, Lin Chi, Bokuju, Baso -- they all have been emphasizing one point: that Zen is transmission beyond scriptures, beyond words. On this point J. Krishnamurti is in absolute agreement with Zen.

But there is one thing more in Zen which is missing in J. Krishnamurti, and because of that he has utterly failed. He could have been of great help and upliftment to humanity, but he has utterly failed. In fact, I don't know another name in the whole history of humanity who has so utterly failed as J. Krishnamurti. No other enlightened person has been such a failure. The other thing that is missing is the cause; it is a little bit delicate and you will have to be very attentive about it.

Zen says truth cannot be transmitted, hence it can only happen in a Master-disciple relationship. It cannot be taught so there is no question of a relationship between a teacher and a taught -- because there is no teaching so there is no teacher and no taught. But it is a transmission. Transmission means heart to heart: teaching means head to head.

When the disciple and the Master meet, merge, melt into each other, it is a love affair, it is a deep, orgasmic experience, far more deeper than any love, because even lovers go on carrying their egos and egos are bound to clash, conflict. The Master and the disciple exist without egos. The Master's ego has evaporated -- that's why he is a Master -- and the disciple surrenders his ego to the Master.

And remember, by surrendering the ego the disciple is not surrendering anything in particular, because ego is just an idea and nothing else. It has no substance; it is made of the same stuff dreams are made of. When you surrender your dreams, what are you surrendering?

If you come to me and you say, "I offer all my dreams to you," YOU are offering, but I am not getting anything! And you may be thinking that you are offering great dreams of golden palaces and beautiful women and great treasures... you are offering great dreams, but I am not getting anything.

When you offer your ego to the Master you are offering something as far as you are concerned, because you think it is very substantial. very significant. When you surrender you think you are doing something great. As far as the Master is concerned he is simply laughing at the whole thing, because he knows what is your ego -- just hot air! nothing much to brag about.

But device, a simple device, can help immensely. It is a device. The Master says, "Surrender the ego." When he says, "Surrender the ego," he is saying, "Give me that which you don't have at all but you believe that you have. Give me your belief -- I am ready to take it. Let this excuse help you." You may not be able to drop it on your own, but in love with the Master you may be able, you may gather courage to risk. Love encourages you to risk. In love you can go to any lengths. When you are in love with the Master and he says, "Give me your ego," how can you say no?

To be with a Master means in a state of saying yes, yes, and again yes! It is an absolute yes, unconditional yes. So when he says, "Give me your ego," you simply give your ego to the Master. To you it is very important; to him it has no meaning, no substance, no existence, but he accepts it.

The moment you drop your ego the meeting starts happening. Now two zeros start moving into each other. Two lovers enter into each other's bodies; that is a physical phenomenon and the orgasm that happens is a physical thing. The Master and disciple are lovers of the spiritual plane: two zeros, two egoless beings enter into each other. In that merger something is transpired. Not that the Master gives you something, not that you take something, but because of the meeting something happens, out of the meeting something happens -- something which is greater than the Master and greater than the disciple, something more than the meeting of these two, something transcendental.

That part is missing in Krishnamurti. He says truth cannot be taught, but he has missed the other point. Yes, it cannot be taught... but he is a logical person and that is his problem. He is trying to put his enlightenment very logically; he does not want to bring any illogicality in it, any paradox in it.

Now Zen people don't bother about logic; they live the ultimate paradox. They go on saying there is no teaching and truth cannot be taught, and still Zen Masters are there and Zen disciples are there. And people have raised questions, skeptical people have always raised questions that: "What is this? On the one hand you say truth cannot be taught, and on the other hand why you initiate, why you accept people?"

And the Zen Masters have always laughed, because this paradox cannot be explained. If you want to know it really you have to become a disciple, you have to become a participant, you have to become part of the mystery; only then you will have the taste of it. It is a taste; no explanation can help. If you have tasted sugar you know it is sweet, but no explanation can give you the idea of sweetness. If you have seen the light you know what it is, but to the blind man you cannot explain; it is utterly futile.

Zen Masters have never bothered, hence their statements are very paradoxical.

One Zen Master, Ikkyu, was staying in a temple, just an overnight stay, but it was a cold night and he was shivering. In the middle of the night he got up and found one of Buddha's statues, a wooden statue, and burned it, and was very happy with the fire and the warmth.

The priest of the temple, seeing the light and the fire inside the temple, could not believe what is happening. He was a little suspicious when he had allowed this Ikkyu to stay for the night in the temple, but he had not thought that he will do such a thing -- "He will put the whole temple on fire!" He rushed in and he found he had burned one of the most beautiful statues of the Buddha. And he was, of course, angry and he shouted at Ikkyu that, "What you have done? And you think you are a Buddhist? And you are wearing the yellow robes of the Buddhist monk! And I have even heard that not only that you are a Buddhist monk, you are a great Master and you have many followers! And what have you done?" The statue was completely burned!

Ikkyu took his staff and started searching in the ashes for something. The priest asked, "What are you looking for?"

He said, "I am looking for Buddha's bones."

In the East we call the bones "flowers". When a man dies we collect his bones after the body is completely burned; those bones are called "flowers".

So he said, "I am looking for Buddha's flowers."

Even the priest could not resist laughing. He said, "You are crazy! How can you find flowers in a wooden statue?"

Now was the turn of Ikkyu to laugh, and he laughed and he said, "Then you are not so stupid as I thought! Bring... there are two more statues in the temple and it is still a long night. And why don't you also join? It is so warm, and we will burn those two other statues also. When there are no bones in it, certainly it is not a real Buddha -- just wood."

The priest became so much afraid of this madman, he threw him out. It was dangerous to keep him inside the temple -- he may burn other two statues! The temple had only three statues.

In the morning when the priest opened the doors he saw Ikkyu bowing down just in front of the temple before a milestone. He had put a few flowers -- must have gathered some wild flowers -- he has put those flowers on the milestone and was going his morning prayers and meditations. And he was repeating the famous Buddhist mantra: "BUDDHAM SHARANAM GACHCHHAMI -- I go to the feet of the Master, Buddha. SANGHAM SHARANAM GACHCHHAMI -- I go to the feet of the commune of my Master. DHAMMAM SHARANAM GACHCHHAMI -- I go to the feet of the ultimate truth that my Master realized."

The priest came, shook him and said, "What are you doing? You are really absolutely mad! This is a milestone, this is not Buddha! You have burned a Buddha statue in the night, and now before a milestone you are doing your prayers and saying: BUDDHAM SHARANAM GACHCHHAMI, SANGHAM SHARANAM GACHCHHAMI, DHAMMAM SHARANAM GACHCHHAMI?"

Ikkyu said, "It is not a question whether it is a statue or not; the question is my heart. It is morning time, I am doing my prayer. Any excuse will do. In the night I burned one excuse -- that was only an excuse, it was not Buddha. This is another excuse, and this is far simpler because I can find the milestone anywhere. I need not be dependent on any temple, on any statue."

The priest said, "You are very illogical!"

And that's what has been told to the Zen Masters down the ages -- since the days of Mahakashyap. the first Zen Master, the first Patriarch, it has been again and again said that, "You are paradoxical. On the one hand you deny: that there is no teaching, on the other hand you become disciples, Masters. On the one hand you say there is no prayer, on the other hand you pray to Buddha."

You have to be very very alert to understand the paradox. The prayer has to be out of your overflowing love; it has nothing to do with the statue or the stone. Those are just excuses. And Buddha is everywhere -- to Buddhists Buddha means God. The stone is as much Buddha as the statue. The whole existence is full of Buddhahood, godliness, and the Master has experienced it.

The disciple accepts the Master so that he can come closer to him. In saying yes to the Master he becomes attuned to the Master. The word "attunement" is beautiful; it means "at-onement". He becomes one with the Master. In that oneness something that cannot be given through words is transpired through the being -- something like bringing an unlit candle close to a lit candle. There is a certain point when the unlit candle comes within that limit -- suddenly the flame from the lit candle jumps into the unlit candle. The lit candle loses nothing at all, but the unlit candle gains infinitely.

Now the reverse process is happening: when the disciple comes to the Master he gives his ego and thinks he is losing much -- and the Master gets nothing. When the Master gives something he gives infinitely, he gives his light. but he loses nothing; his light remains the same. From one lit candle you can light millions of candles, and the lit candle loses nothing at all although the unlit candles gain infinitely.

This point is missing in J. Krishnamurti, hence whatsoever he is saying is Zen, but he is not doing Zen -- saying but not doing.

I am saying and doing both, and only doing can bring fulfillment, flowering. Just saying is not going to help. Whether you say positively something about truth it is useless, or you say something negative about truth. Even saying that truth cannot he told is meaningless. What is The point for fifty y ears saying again and again that truth cannot be told? Then why bother? Say once "Truth cannot be told" and every day repeat "Ditto" -- that's enough -- and go home! There is no point in saying it again and again. unless by saying it you are encouraging the people towards some other phenomenon.

Truth cannot be said, this is one part. The second part is: but truth can be transpired. It can be shared -- not told but shared. And for that sharing the love affair of the disciple and the Master is a must; without it it is not possible.

The fourth question:

Question 4

OSHO, WHAT DO YOU HAVE UP YOUR SLEEVE?

Prem Shraddan,

NOTHING MUCH just few jokes for you! The first:

A man who had lost all his money at the gambling tables in Las Vegas begged a dime from another patron to use the men's room. One of the stalls was not locked, so he saved the dime, and then used it to play a slot machine. Luckily he hit the jackpot.

With the money he tried another machine, and again he won. Fortune continued to smile on him as he went and played the crap tables and roulette wheels, running his winnings up to a million dollars.

He told his extraordinary story all over Las Vegas -- at bars and parties. Always expressing gratitude to his benefactor, he said he would split the million with him. After several weeks, among a group of men at a bar, one of them exclaimed, "I am the man who gave you the dime!"

"I am not looking for you," the lucky man answered. "I am looking for the guy who left the door open!"

The second:

Jim Smith ran into an old friend on the street who was sporting two black eyes. After greeting each other, Jim asked, "Say, where did you get those shiners?"

"At church," was his friend's reply.

"How?" Jim asked, somewhat astonished.

"Well," began his friend, "I was sitting behind a big, fat lady in church. When she stood up I noticed her dress was caught in the crack of her butt. I reached over and pulled it out and she turned around and socked me in the eye!"

"Wow!" said Jim, amazed. "But how did the other eye get black?"

Sighing, his friend said, "When I realized that she did not like what I had done, I put it back!"

And the third:

Johnny the Sperm and all his little friends were preparing for their big thrust out into the world. They were exercising and building up their strength. Johnny said to the other sperms, "Listen, fellows, I want to be number one -- I want to be the first to become a human being!"

They were all hanging around when suddenly the bells of Jerusalem rang, "Gong!... Gong!... Gong!" Johnny took the lead -- he was number one! But suddenly all the other sperms saw him turn around and start racing back towards them.

'Hey, Johnny!" they yelled. "What's wrong?"

"False alarm, boys," Johnny called out to them. "It's a blowjob!"

Chapter No. 11 - No Mind At All
21 October 1980 am in Buddha Hall, Pune, India

The first question:

Question 1

OSHO,

WHEN ANSWERING THE FOLLOWING YOU WOULD BE SPEAKING TO ABOUT HALF A MILLION RADIO LISTENERS IN EUROPE; MOST OF THEM MAY NOT HAVE HEARD ANYTHING ABOUT YOU YET.

IF ONE OF THE LISTENERS TO THIS PROGRAM IS DEVOTED TO SOCIALISM, WHAT WOULD YOU TELL HIM?

IF ONE OF THE LISTENERS IS A PRACTICING CATHOLIC, WHAT STORY WOULD YOU HAVE FOR HIM?

IF ONE OF THE LISTENERS IS A POTENTIAL SEEKER, WHAT MESSAGE WOULD YOU HAVE FOR HIM? HOWEVER, IF YOUR MESSAGE IS SILENCE, HOW WOULD YOU CONVEY THIS SILENCE ON RADIO?

Gotz Hagmuller,

FIRST: I AM NOT for socialism, because to me freedom is the ultimate value; nothing is higher than that. And socialism is basically against freedom -- it has to be, it is inevitable, because the very effort of socialism is to bring something unnatural into existence.

Men are not equal, they are unique. How can they be equal? All are not poets and all are not painters. Every person has unique talents to him. There are people who can create music and there are people who can create money. Man needs absolute freedom to be himself

Socialism is dictatorship of the state; it is a forced economic structure. It tries to equalize people who are not equal; it cuts them in the same size, and they have different sizes. Naturally to few people, to very few people it will fit, but to the majority it will be a crippling phenomenon, paralyzing, destructive.

I appreciate freedom in every sphere of life so that everybody is allowed to be himself The society is not the end but only a means; the end is the individual. Individual has a greater value than the social organization. THE society exists for the individual, not vice versa. Hence I believe in LAISSEZ-FAIRE.

Capitalism is the most natural economic structure; it has not been forced, it has grown. It has not been imposed, it has come on its own. Certainly I would like poverty to be eradicated from the world -- it is ugly -- but socialism cannot do it. It has failed in Russia, in China; in every country it HAS failed to eradicate poverty. Yes, it HAS succeeded in one thing: it HAS made everybody equally poor; it HAS distributed poverty.

And man is so foolish that if everybody else is also as much poor as you are you feel more at ease; you don't feel jealous. The whole idea of socialism has arisen out of jealousy. It has nothing to do with understanding man, his psychology, his growth, his ultimate flowering; it is rooted in jealousy. Few people become rich; those few people are targets of everybody else's jealousy -- they have to be pulled down. Not that you will become richer by pulling them down; you may become even more poor than before because those few people know how to create money. If they are destroyed you will lose all capacity to create richness.

That's what has happened in Russia: the rich people have disappeared, but that has not made the whole society rich; everybody has become equally poor. Of course people feel happier in that way because there is nobody who is richer than them. Everybody is equally poor, all are beggars; it feels good. Somebody rising higher than you, and your ego is hurt.

People talk about equality, but something fundamental has to be understood: men are not psychologically equal. What can be done about it? Albert Einstein is not equal to any Tom, Harry, dick -- he is not! You can sooner or later start equalizing people as far as intelligence is concerned; Shakespeare, Milton, Shelley are not equal to other people; they have a dimension of their own.

One thing I agree: that there should be freedom for everybody, and EQUAL freedom for everybody, to be himself To put it more precisely: freedom means that everybody is free to be unequal! Equality and freedom cannot go together, they cannot coexist. If you choose equality, freedom has to be sacrificed and with freedom all is sacrificed. Religion is sacrificed; genius, the very possibility of genius, is sacrificed; man's higher qualities are sacrificed. Everybody has to fit with the lowest denominator, only then you can be equal.

It is like you are going to climb a mountain -- if all have to be equal, then the person who is the laziest will become the criterion; everybody has to move according to the laziest. The first will not be the criterion but the last. This will be a great calamity. If the last becomes the decisive factor, then what about those who are like Everest?

And my observation is that every individual is born with some specific talent, some specific genius to himself He may not be a poet like Shelley or Rabindranath, he may not be a painter like Picasso or Nandalal, he may not be a musician Like Beethoven or Ravi Shankar, but he must have something. That something has to be discovered. He has to be helped that he can discover what he has brought to the world as a gift from God.

Nobody comes without a gift; everybody brings a certain potential. But the idea of equality is dangerous, because the rose has to be the rose and the marigold has to be the marigold and the lotus has to be the lotus. If you start trying to make them equal then you will destroy all; the roses, the lotuses, the marigolds, all will be destroyed. You can succeed in creating plastic flowers which will be exactly equal to each other, but they will be dead.

And that is what is going to happen if socialism becomes our way of life in the whole world: man will be reduced into a commodity, he will be reduced into a machine. Machines are equal. You can have millions of Ford cars exactly equal to each other. They go on coming through the assembly line, absolutely the same as the other. But man is not a machine, and to reduce man to be a machine will be destroying humanity from the earth.

Do you think in Soviet Russia Gautam Buddha is possible, Jesus Christ is possible, Lao Tzu is possible? And what to say about Buddha, Jesus and Lao Tzu? I ask you: is even Karl Marx possible? Even Karl Marx is not possible, because Karl Marx has an intelligence of his own and he will not be tolerated. He is not an ordinary person; certainly he is not a part of the so-called proletariat. He was part of the most refined bourgeoisie.

His whole life he never worked. From morning to evening he was sitting in the British Museum studying. In fact, British Museum has never come again across another scholar of the same caliber. He was so much intrigued with his studies, so much fascinated, that when the closing time will come he had to be forcibly thrown out every day, because he will insist, "Just wait a little more -- let me finish this book! Don't disturb me! What does it matter if you close the museum half an hour late? If I don't do this work, tomorrow I may have completely lost the track of it. Let me finish it!" He had to be forced, physically forced

And it happened many times that he was found almost in a state of coma; studying continuously he will become so dizzy he will fall unconscious, he will fall in a swoon, and he had to be carried on a stretcher to his home.

Now this man is no more possible. In the first place British Museum is not possible in Russia.

I have heard:

An American journalist -- must be somebody like Gotz Hagmuller -- was visiting Russia. He asked a professor... thinking that a professor will answer him intelligently, but whatsoever he asked the professor always started his answer, "Yes, just the other day I read in PRAVDA..."

The Russian word PRAVDA means the truth. What irony! It should mean the lie! The PRAVDA is the most Lying newspaper in the world, but it means the truth.

He will always start. "T have read in the PRAVDA...

Disgusted, the journalist finally asked, "Have you not got any opinion of your own?"

The professor said, "Yes, I have got my own opinions, but I don't believe in them!"

In Russia there is no freedom of thought, because freedom of thought means the beginning of inequality. Freedom of thought means man is not a machine, and then two men cannot be equal.

The idea of equality is absolutely unpsychological. I can accept it only in one sense: that everybody should be given equal opportunity to be himself -- and that means to be unequal. You have to understand this paradox: everybody has to be given equal opportunity and freedom to be himself, and that simply means everybody has to be given equality to be unequal.

The poverty can be destroyed -- there is no need for socialism -- the poverty can be destroyed only by a higher capitalist system. Karl Marx has predicted that the first country to go communist or socialist will be America; his prediction proved absolutely wrong. He had never thought that a country like Russia or China is ever going to become communist; Russia and China are economically very backward. In the days of Karl Marx, Russia was living in the world of feudalism; even capitalism has not happened there.

If Karl Marx comes back he will be absolutely unable to understand how it happened that Russia became the first communist country, the first socialist society. He was hoping America will become the first communist country. Why he was hoping that? -- because if capitalism grows and reaches to a peak of producing wealth to the maximum, poverty will disappear naturally, because when wealth is too much nobody wants to hoard it. You don't hoard air -- it is available. It is freely available, it is so much there. You don't hoard anything which is not in scarcity.

People are money-minded, greedy, because money is scarce. If you don't hoard it, if you don't cling to it, somebody else will snatch it away from you. Before somebody else does it you have to do it. Otherwise you will be a loser. And the only way to destroy poverty is to create so much wealth that greed becomes irrelevant. When wealth is enough, the poverty will disappear. Of course there will be still people who will have more wealth and people who will have less wealth, but that is natural and nothing is wrong in it. Somebody will be more intelligent and somebody less intelligent, and somebody will be more healthy and somebody less healthy, but we can create a society where everybody can attain to his maximum. Even then inequality is bound to remain, and there is no need to destroy that because that creates variety. and variety brings richness. It is good that people are not equal.

Poverty should go, but the only way for it to go is to produce more wealth, to industrialize society more scientifically, to bring more and more technology, and with a deep understanding of nature so your technology and industry don't destroy nature. They should become part of ecology, they should not go against it. That is the highest scientific development. It cannot happen through socialism; it can happen only through capitalism.

The word "capitalism" has become very derogatory, but I am not worried about that. I believe in capitalism and not in socialism, because to me capitalism is the only hope for freedom, for growth, for individual uniqueness. It is a respect for the individual; socialism is disrespectful of the individual. Socialism does not believe in the soul of man; it cannot believe because if you believe in the soul of man then you cannot behave as if man is a machine. You have to give respect to the uniqueness of every individual. Not to give that respect means committing suicide.

The second thing you ask: IF ONE OF THE LISTENERS IS A PRACTICING CATHOLIC, WHAT STORY WOULD YOU HAVE FOR HIM?

It is good to be a Christ, it is ugly to be a Christian -- Catholic or Protestant, it doesn't matter. It is good to be a Buddha, but ugly to be a Buddhist. When you can be a Christ, why settle for less? When Christ-consciousness can flower in you, when you can become a Buddha in your own right, when you can experience what Buddha and Christ have experienced, then why just be a follower, an imitator, a carbon copy? I am against carbon copies.

My effort here is to help you to discover your original face, so whether you are a practicing Catholic or a Protestant or a Hindu or a Mohammedan, it is all wrong. Love Christ, but don't be a Christian. Love is a totally different phenomenon. If you become a Christian you are addicted with Christ, you become dependent on Christ. If you are a Christian you are bound to be anti-Buddha, anti-Mahavira, anti-Lao Tzu, anti-Zarathustra, anti-Patanjali.Just choosing Christ and becoming anti to all the other great awakened individuals who have walked on the earth is becoming poor, unnecessarily poor. When you can claim the whole heritage of humanity, when all the Buddhas, all the awakened ones can enrich your being, why narrow down your consciousness? Why become focused and obsessed with Christ or Buddha or Mahavira or Krishna?

A Catholic means he is obsessed with Christ, a Hindu means he is obsessed with Krishna, a Jain means he is obsessed with Mahavira, and obsession is a psychological disease

One should be open, one should be available, to the stars, to the sun, to the moon, to the wind, to the flowers, to the birds. One should be available to all, because this whole belongs to us.

Love Christ, because love is not excluding others; love is an inclusive phenomenon. If you love Christ you have to love Buddha too, because that is another aspect of being a Christ. If you love Christ you have to love Mahavira too, because that is again another aspect of the same fulfillment. Buddha, Christ, Mahavira, Mohammed, Bahauddin, Kabir, Nanak -- different aspects of the truth.

Truth is multidimensional. Why choose one dimension? Why become linear? Why be so miserly, even in your spiritual love? Why not be open and available, vulnerable to all, so they can all dance in your being?

I would like my sannyasins to be lovers of all. Enjoy all kinds of flowers! Don t become addicted with the rose, because the lotus has its beauty just as the rose has its beauty. And where is the problem? Cannot you enjoy the rose and the lotus together? Just one thing has to be understood: if you love beauty you can enjoy all, if you love truth you can enjoy all the awakened ones.

But a practicing Catholic does not love truth -- he believes. No believer is a seeker of truth; all believers are non-seekers. They have already believed without inquiring, without going in the exploration, without adventuring into the unknown territory. They have already become prejudiced.

And what do you mean by "a practicing Catholic"? What you can practice in the name of Catholicism? Whatsoever you do will be nothing but an effort of conditioning yourself according to your belief It will be a state of autohypnosis, and autohypnosis is not going to help you to become awakened.

Religion is not a question of practicing at all. If you practice you will miss religion and its beauty. Religion is the experience of a spontaneously flowing consciousness. Practicing means imposing something upon yourself, cultivating a character. Religion has nothing to do with cultivating a character. It is an inquiry into "Who am l?" It is going inwards, reaching to the very rock bottom of your being, to the ground of your being, discovering your center. And from that discovery an explosion happens and your old character simply disappears like a nightmare, and a new quality arises in you. You are more alive, more rejoicing, more full of love, more full of celebration. And this state of celebration makes you aware that existence is not dead. Because you are alive you can contact the living sources of God is not a person but only the experience that the whole existence is an alive phenomenon; it is not matter alone. It is throbbing with life! It is overflowing with life; that it has a heartbeat. The moment you know that the universe has a heartbeat you have discovered God. But first, please, discover your own heartbeat, discover your own center.

Religion is not a question of practicing, it is a question of discovering. It is not a question of belief. Beliefs are all against truth; they make your mind prejudiced. Belief means you don't know, still you pretend to know. Belief is a lie, it is hypocrisy.

So whether somebody is a practicing Catholic or a Hindu or a Mohammedan, all practicing people are dangerous. They are false, pseudo; they are not authentic, they are not real. The real person is a seeker.

And the third thing you ask: IF ONE OF THE LISTENERS IS A POTENTIAL SEEKER, WHAT MESSAGE WOULD YOU HAVE FOR HIM?

My whole message is ONLY for him, the potential seeker. These are the qualities of a seeker. First: he will not be a Christian, a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a communist; he will not be an atheist or a theist. To seek, this basic requirement has to be fulfilled: you have to put aside all your beliefs, because if you carry your beliefs then your beliefs will distort your vision. Beliefs are like colored glasses: they will make the whole existence of the same color as your glasses. It will not be the true color of existence; it will be imparted by your glasses. You have to put aside all your glasses. You have to contact reality directly, immediately. There should be no idea between you and existence, no A PRIORI conclusion.

A real seeker has to be in the state that Dionysius calls AGNOSIA -- a state of not-knowing. Socrates said at the very end of his life, "I know only one thing, that I know nothing." This is the state of a true seeker.

In the East we call this state meditation: no belief, no thought, no desire, no prejudice, no conditioning -- in fact, no mind at all. A state of no-mind is meditation. When you can look without any mind interfering, distorting, interpreting, then you see the truth. The truth is already all around; just you have to put your mind aside.

The seeker has to fulfill only one basic thing: he has to drop his mind. The moment the mind is dropped, a great silence arises -- because the mind carries your whole past; all the memories of the past go on hankering for your attention, they go on crowding upon you, they don't leave any space within you.

And the mind also means future. Out of the past you start fantasizing about the future. It is a projection out of the past. You have lived a certain life in the past: there have been a few moments of joy and many many dark nights. You would not like to have those dark nights; you would have your future to be full of those joyous moments. So you sort out from your past: you choose few things and you project them in the future, and you choose a few other things and you try to avoid them in the future. Your future is only nothing but a refined past -- a little bit modified here and there, but it is still the past because that's all that you know.

And one thing very significant to be remembered: those few moments of joy that you had in the past were basically part of those long dark nights, so if you choose those moments those dark nights will come automatically; you cannot avoid them. The silver linings in the dark clouds cannot be chosen separately from the dark clouds. In the dark night you see the sky full of stars; in the day those stars disappear. Do you think they evaporate? They are still there, but the context is missing. They need darkness; only then you can see them. In the night, you will be able to see them again. Darker the night, the more shining are the stars.

In life everything is intertwined with each other. Your pleasures are intertwined with your pains, your ecstasies mixed inevitably, inseparably with your agonies. So your whole idea of the future is sheer nonsense. You cannot manage it, nobody has ever been able to manage it, because you are trying to do something which cannot be done in the very nature of things. It will be simply a repetition of your past.

Whatsoever you desire is not going to make any difference. It will be again and again a repetition of your past, the same past, maybe a little bit different, but not because of your expectations -- a little bit different because life goes on changing, people go on changing, existence goes on changing. So there will be few differences but not basic differences, only in the non-essential parts. Essentially it will be the same tragedy.

Dropping the mind means dropping the past, and with it of course the future disappears. Dropping the mind means you are suddenly awakened into the present, and the present is the only reality there is. Past is non-existential, so is future. Past is no more, future is not yet, only the present is. It is always now -- only the now exists. And the meditator starts merging and melting with the now.

And that's what silence is. It can be conveyed, Gotz Hagmuller, to your radio listeners. Just these pauses... these wordless moments... when you start feeling the now, the here... when suddenly you become aware that five thousand people are sitting here, but as if there is nobody at all. The Buddha Hall is absolutely empty.

When we are in the present... silence descends. You can hear the birds chirping, but they don't disturb the silence -- they enhance it, they beautify it.

Take my message to your people. First: freedom is the ultimate goal and socialism goes against it, hence I favor a state of laissez-faire. Secondly: nobody can practice religion. Religion really means your spontaneity, your nature. You cannot practice it, you have to allow it. You have to remove all the barriers that prevent the flow of your nature. It is like a stream prevented by rocks: remove the rocks. There is no question of practicing; it is already there. It is your nature! When the hindrances are no more there you start flowing, just like a river moving towards the ocean.

Each consciousness moving towards God, towards the ultimate ocean, is religious. Religion is neither Christian nor Hindu nor Mohammedan. These are all political games played in the name of religion. A religious person is simply religious, natural, spontaneous, living out of his own light.

Buddha said to his disciples, and this was his last message on the earth: "Be a light unto yourself" -- live according to your own light, not following and practicing somebody else's light, because that will make you only a carbon copy, and howsoever beautiful the carbon copy is it is still a carbon copy.

Discover your originality, and it cannot be done by practicing. Practicing means imposing some ideas from others, trying to act as others would like you to act. Act as you would like to act. Take the risk -- it is dangerous.

To be religious is to live in danger -- it is not security. To live in religion means constantly exploring the unknown and ultimately the unknowable.

And thirdly: be a seeker, never be a believer. If you cannot say, "I know God," please don't say, "I believe in God," because that is falsifying. That is even not being true about God, not even being sincere with God. With whom you are going to be sincere then? If you don't know, say, "I don't know." At least that is true. Don't pretend that you know because pretensions are dangerous. They will deceive others and they can deceive yourself too.

And only a seeker can become a meditator. Meditation means absolute silence. It is only in silence that one comes to know, one comes to love, one comes to dance in tune with existence.

The second question:

Question 2

OSHO,

WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO HERE EXACTLY?

Govind Narayan,

IT IS A VERY DIFFICULT QUESTION to answer. In the first place I am not trying to do anything; the very word "trying" does not fit with me. If somebody asks you, "Are you trying to love this woman?" what you will say, Govind Narayan? TRYING TO love? Either love is or love is not. Trying to love simply means you don't love, hence you are trying. But what can you manage by trying? Empty gestures. You may say to the woman "I love you" thousand and one times in thousand and one ways, but deep down you will know that it is only an effort; your heart will not be with it.

I am not trying to do anything, I am just being myself Then whatsoever is happening is happening -- it is a happening. What is happening here, remember, it is not being done by me. You cannot make me responsible for whatsoever is happening here -- I am not responsible at all! It is happening, certainly, but neither I am doing anything nor my sannyasins are doing anything. But in this non-doing something transpires.

But Govind Narayan is not a sannyasin; he must be a casual visitor, hence the question has arisen to him. And he will not understand what I am saying, but he may understand this:

TU JISM KE KHUSHRANG LIBASON PAI HAI NAJAN

TU JISM KE KHUSHRANG

TU JISM KE KHUSHRANG LIBASON PAI HAI NAJAN

MAIN RUH KO MOHTAJE KAFAN DEKH RAHA HUIN

KYA PUCHHTE HO HAL MERE KAROBAR KA

AAINE BECHTA HUN MAIN ANDHON KE SHAHAR MAIN.

TU JISM KE KHUSHRANG LIBASON PAI HAI NAJAN

MAIN RUH KO MOHTAJE KAFAN DEKH RAHA HUIN

KYA PUCHHTE HO HAL MERE KAROBAR KA

AAINE BECHTA HUN MAIN ANDHON KE SHAHAR MAIN.

Roughly it can be translated:

Don't ask me, sir, what I am doing here.

You are proud of the dreamlike psychedelic colors

of the body and the mind,

but I can see death knocking at your doors.

You are lost in a dreamworld, and I can see

death approaching every moment closer and closer.

Don't ask me, sir, about my business here.

I sell mirrors in the city of the blind!

AAINE BECHTA HUN MAIN ANDHON KE SHAHAR MAIN.

I sell mirrors in the city of the blind!

And this is certainly a city of the blind! This whole earth is full of blind people -- blind because they cannot see death approaching, blind because they cannot see that life is evaporating every moment, blind because they cannot see the momentariness of all that they are accumulating, blind because they don't know from where they come, why they come, to where they are destined, blind because they are not even aware who resides at the innermost core of their being.

When Alexander the Great came to India... and he came at a very right, ripe moment... Buddha had left his body only three hundred years before; his vibe was still alive. People were still filled with the joy, with the silence that they have experienced in Buddha. He had gone, the flower has disappeared, but the fragrance was still in the air, still lingering. It lingered on at least for five hundred years.

Alexander was very much surprised; he had never felt such quality. He came across many people he had never come across in his whole life. They were strange -- they talked a strange language, they lived a strange life. He was mystified.

He met a naked fakir and he was so much impressed by the man's beauty, his grace, his silence, his bliss, that suddenly he felt his own poverty. And he was the conqueror of that time, the conqueror of the then known world, the greatest conqueror ever. And he felt his beggarliness before this naked beggar, because he could see he was empty. And this naked man was overflowing with meaning, with joy, with splendor.

Alexander begged from this beggar that, "Give me some gift that can be of help to me!"

The beggar pulled out a small mirror -- so goes the story -- from his bag, and gave the mirror to Alexander the Great. Seeing that it is just an ordinary mirror, and very cheap too, Alexander said, "Do you think this is such a great gift? From a man like you I was expecting something really miraculous!"

And the naked fakir laughed and he said, "It is more than you could have ever expected. Keep it safe for the day when the question arises in you 'Who am I?' and then look into it."

Alexander could not resist the temptation. That very night when he was alone, he looked into the mirror and he was surprised: he saw his original face.

This must be a story, because no mirror can show you your original face -- unless that mirror means meditation. Meditation can show you your original face. The story simply says that the beggar gave him the secret of meditation; it is a metaphorical way of saying. Meditation is a mirror. All the mirrors can only show the physical face, but meditation can show you your spiritual face.

And that's what I am doing here:

AAINE BECHTA HUN MAIN ANDHON KE SHAHAR MAIN.

I am selling mirrors in the city of the blind.

And it is really a city of blind people, mad people, dead people; all kinds of strange people have gathered on the earth. It seems the earth must be a dumping place of the universe because scientists say at least there are fifty thousand planets on which life exists, so they must need some place to dump. They must be using earth as a dumping place -- because it is so full of mad people, so full of dead people, so full of mediocres, stupids...

A couple of jazz musicians, real gone, were watching a crater erupt.

"Man," cried one, "dig that crazy cigarette lighter!"

A young woman who had been completely broke for many weeks found a ten-dollar bill in the gutter. Overjoyed, she rushed into the nearest supermarket and spent it all on groceries. As she was walking out with her parcel she collided with a drunk and landed on the pavement amidst a mess of milk, coffee powder, broken eggs and tomato sauce.

Seeing her dream of a feast shattered, she burst into tears and began sobbing bitterly. The drunk staggered to his feet and gazed in fascinated silence at two eggs floating in a pool of tomato sauce. Then he looked at the woman and spluttered, "Don't worry, lady, it would not have lived anyway -- its eyes were too far apart!"

A drunk was staggering down the road in the middle of the day, obviously much the worse for wear, and almost collided with a Catholic priest who was on his way to visit an elderly parishioner.

"'Scuse me, Rev'rend," slurred the drunk, "but can you direct me to Alcoholics Anonymous?"

The priest's contemptuous expression brightened visibly and he shook the drunk warmly by the hand. "My son," he intoned, "I am pleased to see that even in your intoxicated state you can see the error of your ways, and have had the good sense to go and join Alcoholics Anonymous."

"Join? The hell!" said the drunk. "I am going to resign!"

A young boy was chasing crows away from some young plants in a field, shouting, "Fuck off! Fuck off!"

A priest was walking by, called the boy over and remonstrated with him for the use of bad language.

"Remember," he pontificated, "God is everywhere and hears every word you utter. Do not offend his ears with such language! Besides, if you shout, 'Shoo, shoo!' loudly enough, they will fuck off just as quickly!"

The third question:

Question 3

OSHO,

IT IS SAID THAT ZARATHUSTRA HAD LOUDLY LAUGHED WHEN HE WAS BORN. IS IT TRUE?

Narendra,

IT MUST BE TRUE, because a man like Zarathustra comes in the world with great insight. He must have seen the world immediately -- he must have seen the whole crazy scene! It depends how much intelligence you have got. Few people take their whole life to realize that they have been living in a madhouse. He must have seen at the first moment that "This is a crazy place I am entering into!"

And it is not only Zarathustra -- every child, the moment the child becomes capable of focusing properly, he starts smiling, because he is then able to see what his father looks like!

A recent story tells about a baby who was giggling and laughing minutes after he was born. The obstetrician noticed he had unusual muscle control, his tiny left fist being tightly clenched. When the doctor pried it open he found a contraceptive pill.

Zarathustra must have laughed! Whether he laughed or not... I am not concerned about history, but to me his laughter is very significant. The world is in such a mess! Ordinarily children are born crying -- that too is their judgment! They are saying, "My God! So this is the world I am born into?"

Zarathustra has a different attitude, from the other extreme -- he laughed. He must have been a man like me, hence I have very deep love for Zarathustra.

A rabbi and a Hindu monk, who was obviously a teetotaler, happened to be seated together in the dining car of a train. When the rabbi ordered a martini, the Hindu monk was shocked.

"I would rather commit adultery!" he scoffed.

"I didn't know they gave you a choice here," replied the rabbi.

The army recruit from the country was being given his physical examination. "Well, that's everything but the urine test," said the doctor. "I want a specimen of yours in one of those little bottles on that shelf down at the other end of the room."

"What did you say, Doc?" asked the young man.

"Just urinate in one of those little bottles down there," repeated the doctor.

The recruit still looked doubtful. "Do you mean all the way from here?" he asked.

A rambling man thought up a new scheme for winning sympathy. He rang the doorbell, then got down on his knees and started nibbling on the grass. "What are you doing there?" asked the lady when she opened the door.

The tramp rose weakly to his feet, clutched his stomach in mock pain and moaned, "Ma'am, I am so hungry I just had to take to eating grass."

"Why, you poor man, stop eating that dry old grass!" cried the woman sympathetically. "Go around in the back where the grass is greener and longer!"

A man won a turkey in a raffle and brought it home, but his wife was annoyed. "Who wants the bother of plucking it?" she said in a huff.

"If that's the way you feel," he replied, "I will pluck it and cook it myself."

So he busied himself plucking it and when he was finally through he trussed it and put it in the oven. But he forgot to light the gas. After washing up he settled down to read. Half an hour later he heard a muffled voice say, "What are you going to do about it?"

Without taking his eyes off the newspaper he said, "Do about what?"

The voice answered, "I am getting cold. Either put my feathers back or light the gas!"

If Zarathustra laughed, what is wrong in it? He must have seen the whole stupidity, that he has to live with these people, and he started with a laughter.

The noted agnostic lecturer, Robert G. Ingersoll, said once: "No man with a sense of humor ever founded a religion."

He is wrong -- Zarathustra did. Of course, about ninety-nine percent religions Ingersoll is right; his statement is significant. He says, "No man with a sense of humor ever founded a religion." It is true about Jesus, about Buddha, about Mohammed, about Krishna -- it is absolutely true; these people don't seem to have any sense of humor -- except about Zarathustra. Maybe Ingersoll had never heard about Zarathustra.

He is the only man known who started his life with laughter -- must have had an immense sense of humor. To begin your life with laughter is not an easy matter. He must have prepared for it for many lives; he must have come ready.

Christians say Jesus never laughed in his whole life; maybe they are right. I don't want to believe it because that means a great condemnation of Jesus, but if Christians say, then, of course, who I am to disagree with them? They are the authoritative people, at least about Jesus -- they own Jesus!

Protestant Church in Germany has banned my books in the churches, in the churches' libraries. It has been given to all the priests, to all the churches, that my name, even my name, should not be mentioned in any sermon. Nothing should be quoted from my books, even to refute it, because people become interested!

This may be one of the reasons why Jesus has succeeded to change almost half the humanity to Christianity, because people are sad. Zarathustra has not found many followers, you know? His followers are only confined in Bombay -- just only few thousand. Why Zarathustra has failed? Maybe that laughter is the cause: he has the sense of humor.

People are serious, sad, miserable, hence the cross of Jesus seems to be very appealing, because their life is also on the cross. They can understand Jesus and his agony -- they are passing through it. Their whole life is nothing but carrying a cross. They can find a deep affinity with Jesus, his crucifixion -- they are also crucified. But what affinity they can find with Zarathustra? Why Zarathustra failed?

Buddhists have found millions of followers; the whole Asia is Buddhist. Christians have found millions of followers; half the earth is Christian. Mohammedans are next to Christians -- and Mohammed has no sense of humor at all. With a sword in his hand he is very serious, really serious. He is much concerned about your welfare -- if you don't listen him he is ready to fight with you, but he is determined to convince you because he is determined to save your soul. Even if he has to use the sword he has to save you. How can he allow you to fall into hell? It is for your own sake.

Zarathustra is the only person who has not been able to find followers. I can see the point: with a sense of humor, who is going to listen to you?

I am trying again something like Zarathustra. My effort here is to prove Ingersoll wrong. I am trying to found a religion based totally on the sense of humor!

Shakespeare and others have punningly described the foolish pretender to philosophy as foolosopher. By the same wordplay the philosophy of foolosophers is called foolosophy.

Bertrand Russell was always critical of foolosophers, for their lack of both common sense and a sense of humor. He tells how he was once near death with pneumonia delirious for three weeks. After he revived, the doctor said to him, "When you were ill you behaved like a true philosopher: every time you came to yourself you made a joke."

Russell wrote afterward, "I never had a compliment that pleased me more."

He himself was a serious man. In his delirious state he must have forgotten all his philosophy and seriousness, must have become more relaxed, must have forgotten that he is a philosopher and he has to be serious -- must have joked.

To me sense of humor should be the foundation stone of the future religiousness of man. There is no need to be so serious. Man is the only animal who has the sense of humor. You have never seen buffaloes laughing, or the donkeys. Only the man can have the feel of the ridiculous, of the absurd. It needs great intelligence to have sense of humor; on the lower planes it does not exist. and even all human beings don't have it; those who exist on lower planes of intelligence are bound to be serious -- serious like the donkeys. Donkeys are very serious people, always thinking about serious things, it seems, much disturbed with all the problems of the world.

I have watched donkeys very closely; from my very childhood I have been very much interested in donkeys. If Pavlov could find many things about man by studying dogs, if Skinner can find many things about man by studying white rats, if Delgado can find many things about man by studying monkeys, I feel why these people have missed the donkey? He comes closest to human beings -- a serious philosopher, a pundit, a scholar, a theologian! Who has ever heard a donkey laughing?

Zarathustra seems to be of the highest caliber, of the most refined intelligence At the first sight of the world he laughed He could not contain himself, he could not resist the temptation Seeing where he has landed.

The old professor of philosophy who was retiring addressed his class: "Men, I have two confessions to make before I go," he said "The first is that half of what I have taught you is not true The second is that I have no idea which half it is!"

A pious old gentleman heard a tough kid on the street swearing at his playmate "Don't you know," he admonished the youngster, "it is wrong to use such four-letter words? God will punish you."

The youngster looked at the man with scorn. "God can't hear me," he said. "He's way up in heaven."

"Young man, God is everywhere."

"Is he over in my house?"

"He certainly is."

"Is he in my yard?"

"Of course."

"You're crazy -- we haven't got a yard!"

Children are far more clear: you cannot befool them so easily. And at the first moment when the child opens his eyes his clarity is absolute. No priest has come in, no politician has corrupted him yet. He has not been conditioned by Catholics and Protestants and Hindus and Mohammedans. He has not been told all kinds of lies and beliefs and superstitions. His eyes are clear, he can see through and through.

Zarathustra did the right thing -- that he laughed.

Once Diogenes asked alms from a man with a philosophic bent of mind. "Before I give you a DRACHMA," said the man, "convince me why I should do so."

"If I thought you were amenable to reason," Diogenes told him, "I would recommend that you go and hang yourself."

Who is amenable to reason? It is an irrational world, and Diogenes is right. the man was asking, "Convince me -- why should I give you anything? Why? Diogenes answer is right that: "If I thought that you can understand reason, then the only thing I would suggest for you will be go and hang yourself, because what you are doing in this irrational world? Such a reasonable man!"

The laughter of Zarathustra looks irrational, but it is not irrational. Seeing the irrationality all around he must have been perceptive, very perceptive.

The story is strange. There are many miracles talked about people like Jesus, Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, but they are almost the same. The miracle of walking on water is repeated in thousands of stones; it is nothing special to Jesus. The miracle of curing the people from their incurable diseases is nothing new to Jesus. It is the same miracle being done by so many people around the world, in every tradition, in every religion. Even the miracle of raising the dead is not new; that too is a common miracle attributed to many people.

But this miracle of Zarathustra is simply unique; no other person has been attributed with this miracle. Nobody has ever thought about it. And it is far more significant than raising the dead, because raising the dead is not going to help. Lazarus has to die finally, has to die sooner or later, so what does it matter -- this week or the next week? He may have lived few years more -- so what? Curing a man from his illness does not matter much, because still death will come, other diseases will come. Even if he starts seeing -- he was blind before -- what does it matter? So many millions of people have eyes -- what has happened to them?

In fact, there is a Sufi story about Jesus, not related by the Christians in their scriptures They must have all avoided it The Bible is not exactly true; much has been edited out of it Anything that was going to create a trouble for the theologians, for the priests, for the popes, has been edited out, left out But there are always few people who will not miss such an opportunity; they will collect all those rejected parts -- because they are far more important than the accepted ones.

This story is a rejected story by the Christians, but the Sufis have preserved it, and they have done a great service to humanity.

Jesus enters a town and he comes across a man who is lying in the gutter shouting ugly words, completely drunk. Jesus comes close to him to help him, looks at his face and recognizes that this man is well-known to him. He was very ill, Jesus saved him, dragged him almost from the door of death.

He shook the drunk and asked him, "Do you recognize me?"

He said, "Yes, I recognize you perfectly well. You are the man who created the trouble! I was going to die -- why you saved me? And now why you have come again? Are you gong to do something more?"

Jesus could not believe the way the man was behaving, as if Jesus has done something wrong to him. Jesus said, "Why you are so angry?"

The man says, "I am angry because I was going to die and the whole thing was going to be finished, and you saved me! Now I don't know what to do with my life. You see, I am lying down in the gutter -- you are responsible! Now I am simply trying to forget myself and my problems and my anxieties by drinking as much as I can. And I know it is poison, but what else to do? Why you saved me? I have been looking for you -- it is good that you have come by yourself Answer me!"

And Jesus could not answer him. The man is asking a relevant question: "Why you saved me? For what? For this gutter? For drinking and trying to forget my miseries?"

Jesus moved, very humiliated, shocked.

He saw another man who was running after a prostitute He prevented the man -- he forgot the first man -- just old habits! He prevented the second man and said, "What are you doing? Has God given you the eyes just to lust after women? Even to THINK of lust is sin -- you will suffer in hell!"

And the man said, "Stop all this nonsense! It is YOU who cured me of my blindness! I was perfectly happy with my blindness because I had never seen a woman, so I was never disturbed I never cared who is passing, man or woman, it was all the same It is you who cured me Now what should I do with these eyes? These eyes feel attracted towards beauty And remember, at the last moment on the day of judgment, I will point you -- that you are responsible I was an innocent blind man. You gave me eyes, and I had not asked even! I was just sitting, you came and touched my eyes and you cured me! You did not even ask me!"

Jesus was now really shocked. He didn't go into the town. he left the town. When he was coming out he saw a man preparing to hang himself by a tree. Again he forgot -- old habits die hard! He reached to the man and said, "What are you doing?"

And this man was nobody else but Lazarus! He said, "So you have come again! Get lost! I am committing suicide -- enough is enough! And how you came to know? Last time my sisters invited you, Martha and Mary, they invited you. And I was dead -- at last I was dead, resting at peace, and you came and resurrected me A.nd now again you are back! You won't allow me any peace? How long I have to live, and why should I live? What is the point of it all?"

All these miracles are meaningless, but Zarathustra's miracle of laughing at the moment of his birth is really significant.

A great Zen Master lay critically ill. As his doctor prepared to leave he said cheerfully, "I will see you in the morning."

Although the dying Master knew his hours were numbered, he could not resist quipping, "Of course. But will I see you?"

Chapter No. 12 - A Mystery to be Lived
22 October 1980 am in Buddha Hall, Pune, India

The first question:

Question 1

OSHO,

FOR DAYS NOW I HAVE BEEN ON FIRE INSIDE. I FEEL THE UNKNOWN IN PART OF ME, AND I AM AFRAID TO JUMP. EVERYTHING IS CUCKOO, AND IT'S BEAUTIFUL AND SCARY AT THE SAME TIME.

PUSH ME, OSHO!

ON FIRE,

Vivek,

CRAZY, BABY, CRAZY! That's what I am here for, to put you on fire. And once it starts happening, nothing else is needed to be done. Then it goes on growing by itself, in spite of all your fears; they cannot prevent the fire. They are natural -- they come from your past, but the past is impotent when it confronts the present. The fire is present, the fire is now, and the fears come from the past; they are already dead. They belong to the non-existential, and the non-existential cannot do anything to the existential.

They are like darkness. The darkness can be very old, ancient, millions of years old, but just a small candle is enough to dispel it. It cannot say that, "I am very ancient, so how you can dare? You are just a small candle and you have come into existence this very moment, and I am so old, so ancient." But there is no time for darkness to say all that. The moment the candle is lit, the darkness starts disappearing. The problem is how to light the candle; once it is there, then there is no problem at all. If the candle is not there then darkness is very real, too real -- although it exists not. It is only an absence.

Vivek, once the fire is inside, even just a small part of you is on fire, that will do -- it will spread. It is not a fire that dies. Once it is there it is going to consume you totally; that is inevitable.

My work ends the moment the fire is on. Then the fire will do...

You say: FOR DAYS NOW I HAVE BEEN ON FIRE INSIDE. I FEEL THE UNKNOWN IN PART OF ME, AND I AM AFRAID TO JUMP.

It is natural to be afraid to jump. And to jump in fire is like killing yourself In a sense it is suicide: the ego is going to die. Hence the fear, because we have existed as an ego; that is our identity. To drop it means death. The mind cannot conceive what else will be left once the ego is gone. The mind knows only the ego; it knows nothing behind, beyond. It knows nothing of the transcendental. The mind is part of ego, and when the ego starts dying the mind starts dying, and it creates all kinds of fears, anxieties. It is just a self-defense.

But once the fire is on, the mind is finished. It may take a little while for the fire to spread to the whole jungle of your being, but the mind cannot do anything to prevent it.

The moment the mind becomes impotent, the work of the Master is finished. Then he simply watches. Then he enjoys the disappearance of your ego, your mind, your whole so-called personality.

You say, Vivek: EVERYTHING IS CUCKOO.

In the beginning it will look like that, because mind is our logic and the fire is going to destroy our logic -- because life is more than logic. In fact, life is illogical; it has to be because it contains contradictions. Logic is a choice; you go on choosing that which is consistent with your idea. Life is far more than that.

If you believe that life consists only of days, then you will ignore the nights. You will not take any note of the nights because they will create confusion. Then what will happen to your idea, your prejudice, that life consists of only of days? You have to cling to your idea; the nights seem so be confusing. You have to deny, you have to keep closed to the nights. You have to say they are illusory, they are dream-stuff, they are unreal; the real is the day. This is how mind tries to be consistent and logical. If it accepts the night, then the logic starts disappearing. then the contradiction has happened, then the consistency is lost.

If you accept only the flowers or only the thorns you will avoid the opposite, and life consists of polar opposites. Life cannot be consistent, remember it; only death is consistent. Hence logic is more in tune with death than in tune with life. Life is vast, it is so vast it can easily take in the contradictory; in fact, it rejoices in contradictions. On the same rose bush it grows flowers and thorns. How can it be logical? Logic will say, "Either grow thorns or grow flowers."

Logic means either/or, and life means both/and. Hence the moment the mind starts slipping, dying, one feels as if one is going mad.

In the East we have continuously observed the phenomenon; we call it a kind of spiritual madness. In Bengal the mystics have been called Bauls; BAUL means the mad one. In the Sufi tradition the mystic is called a MAST; MAST means a mad one. And Jesus, Bahauddin, Francis, Eckhart, Kabir, Chuang Tzu, these are all mad people -- for the simple reason because they have not chosen; they have accepted life as it is in its totality.

Science up to the time of Albert Einstein remained very consistent, very logical. Albert Einstein is the first mystic in the world of science; a scientific mysticism he introduced, and he disturbed the whole edifice of the old science. After Albert Einstein, science, particularly physics which was his field of work, is no more the same -- because he accepted contradictions. In fact he said that, "When I had started my work I had thought that life and logic are synonymous -- my work was to solve problems logically -- but as I went deeper I became aware that life is not synonymous with logic: it contains contradictions. And in fact because of those contradictions it is beautiful, because of those contradictions it has a certain tension; that tension gives it aliveness, it gives it possibilities to be dynamic, moving."

And at the end of his life he said, "Now I cannot say that life is a problem. To call life a problem is a logical statement, because a problem means something that can be solved through logic, if not today then tomorrow. Sooner or later logic will find a way and the problem will be dissolved."

Einstein said, just two days before he died that, "Life is no more a problem for me, it is a mystery."

And the difference between mystery and problem is immense, qualitative. A problem can be solved logically; a mystery cannot be solved logically or in any other way. A mystery has to be lived, accepted as it is; there is no way to solve it. Life is a mystery; it is a mystery because it is contradictory. And thousands of contradictions are there, but those contradictions give it variety, vastness.

So in the beginning when mind starts losing its grip upon you, it feels as if one is going cuckoo. But to be a cuckoo is really far more beautiful than to be a pundit, a professor, a theologian, a priest, a politician. Have you not heard the distant call of the cuckoo, how beautiful it is? And cuckoo is crazy! The beauty of the cuckoo's song is transcendental. It should not be so -- looking at the mundane life, looking at the ordinary life. The cuckoo goes on singing as if it lives in another world.

My sannyasins ALL have to be cuckoos! They have to learn the song: the Song of Solomon, the song of love, life, laughter.

The only thing beautiful in the Old Testament is the Song of Solomon; everything else is ordinary. Of course Jews and Christians are very much embarrassed by the Song of Solomon; they would like it not to be in the Old Testament. It does not look religious: it praises life, it is very fleshy, it is very alive. It praises love -- it is sheer poetry. But they cannot deny it -- it is there. All that they can do is either ignore it or give it some esoteric meanings, which are all nonsense.

It is a very simple song; it is not a parable and it is not metaphorical. It is very direct, immediate. It says exactly what it says; it is like two plus two are four.

Vivek, read the Song of Solomon -- it will help your inner fire. It is one of the greatest documents in the world, one of the most beautiful. Even the Bhagavad Gita, compared to the Song of Solomon, has not that beauty. It sings the song of the earth; it is rejoicing in the ordinary. And the moment you rejoice in the ordinary you transform the ordinary.

There are two things in the Old Testament: one is the Song of Solomon and the other are the Ten Commandments. About the Ten Commandments, Vivek, remember this:

Two men were wrangling vehemently about something when one of them said, "The trouble with you, Bill, is that you don't agree with anybody on anything. I'll bet you don't even accept the Ten Commandments."

"That's not true," disagreed the other. "If you make only one small change in them I'll agree with all of them."

"That's certainly surprising," said the first man. "What's the small change you want made?"

"Just strike out the word 'not' all the way through."

And that's what the Song of Solomon is: the small word "not" has been striked out all the way through.

And you ask me, Vivek: PUSH ME, OSHO! ON FIRE...

That I am doing without ever taking anybody's permission! I never come from the front door because nobody would allow me from the front door. I never knock, I never ask, "May I come in, sir or madam?" I enter as a thief, I enter from the back door. And certainly I have to enter as a thief because you are asleep; knocking on the door won't help. You will rationalize in your sleep, "It must be the wind, or an airplane passing by, or something else." You will rationalize, turn over, go under the blanket and start dreaming again. Maybe knocking on the door can trigger a few dreams in you; that's all it will do. You are so fast asleep, I have to come from the back door.

In India we have one thousand names of God; one whole scripture is devoted just only to the names. Nothing else is written in that scripture: Vishnu Sahasranam -- One Thousand Names of God. Just names are counted from one to one thousand. The most beautiful name that I love is Hari; Hari means the ultimate thief.

Just two days ago I was giving sannyas to a beautiful sannyasin. I have given her the name Haridasi -- surrendered to the ultimate thief And when I told her that, "Your heart is stolen," for a moment she was transported into another world. Her hand suddenly went on her heart and I said, "It is not there!" And she understood the point immediately. She lost few heartbeats; tears of joy came to her eyes. She could not speak a single word; her voice was choked. It is bound to happen when your heart is gone!

I go on doing things in my own way. And with you, Vivek, I am not worried. You are on fire, your heart is stolen long before. And I am pushing you, and I am absolutely certain that the thing that you are all here for is going to happen to you. Fortunately you are not a Polack, otherwise there was a danger...

Have you heard about the new Polish parachutes?

They open on impact... but they are having great difficulty with them because most Polacks miss the ground!

The second question:

Question 2

OSHO,

YEARS AGO YOU SEDUCED US, THE BLIND, INTO BUYING YOUR MIRACLE MIRRORS. WE BOUGHT THEM, THINKING THEY WERE CHEAP AND GOOD-LOOKING. BUT SOON THEY SHOWED US OUR UGLY FACES AND WE WERE SCARED. BUT BEFORE WE BROKE THOSE MIRRORS, YOU ENCOURAGED US TO GO ON LOOKING, TO GO ON WATCHING, TO GO ON WITNESSING, AND IN BARGAIN, YOU EXTRACTED FROM US THE PRICE OF OUR VERY LIFE.

HOWEVER, LOOKING BACK, OSHO, I FIND I HAVE NOT PAID A THING TO YOU. IT HAS ALL BEEN A GRACIOUS GIFT FROM YOU -- FOR NOTHING. HOW SHALL I SAY THANK YOU, OSHO, FOR ALL THIS, AND FOR PERSEVERING WITH US AND MAKING US STICK ON UNTIL WE REALLY SAW OUR ORIGINAL FACES IN THE MIRACLE MIRRORS OF MEDITATION?

STILL I CANNOT KEEP WONDERING, OSHO, WHY AND HOW SO MANY KEEP ON MISSING YOU. ARE THEY SCARED OF THE SUPER-SALESMAN?

OSHO, WHAT ARE THEY WAITING FOR? WHOM ARE THEY WAITING FOR, WHEN THIS GIFT OF GIFTS IS INCESSANTLY SHOWERING ALL OVER?

Ajit Saraswati,

THE WORK OF A MASTER is really the work of seduction: he seduces you into the unknown. There is no other way, only seduction can be helpful. You cannot be convinced of the unknown; whatsoever you can be convinced about is bound to be the known. The unknown is unknown. You have not tasted of it, you have not even heard anything about it, you have no idea what it is.

I can convince you of that which you have already some idea, but the unknown is absolutely unknown -- and not only unknown, it is unknowable too. There is no way to know it because it is the intrinsic quality of the knower himself It NEVER becomes the known; at no point it becomes the known. The deeper you go into it, the more and more you realize that it is not only the unknown but the unknowable because it is the center of the knower himself How the knower can himself become the known? That is impossible; the knower will always stand beyond the known, surpassing the known.

Hence the work of a Master is actually of seduction. He allures you, he fascinates you; he promises you bliss, truth, freedom -- he gives it many names. He makes you afire with longing. A moment comes when the longing is intense and passionate, that you take the jump. It is really mad! No logical person can do it.

Hence I have to destroy slowly your clinging with logic. I have to shift your energy from the head to the heart, because the heart is illogical and from the heart there is a possibility, a bridge, a rainbow bridge towards the unknown and ultimately towards the unknowable.

Hence the word "seduction" actually describes the whole work of all the Buddhas. But the people who are too much clinging to logic cannot be seduced. If they ask first to be convinced, then there is no way. If they ask for proofs, then there is no way. If the Master himself is a proof, then there is a way. If the presence of the Master is enough to give you the joy that can take you into the adventure, if the very presence of the Master gives you courage to go into the uncharted, only then the journey ever begins.

One thing is certain: once the journey begins you cannot come back. A journey begun is already half the work done; once it begins it has to reach to its climax. Only the beginning part is the most difficult part.

Hence I have to talk about the miracle mirrors and I have to praise those miracle mirrors of meditation; I have to go on saying what great ecstasies they are going to give to you. You are not interested in meditation, you are not interested in looking at your original face, but you are certainly interested in being ecstatic.

But when you for the first time take the mirror in your hand it gives you agony, not ecstasy, because you have to encounter all that is ugly in you, because the ugly is on the surface. But once you have seen the ugly you cannot rest at ease with it. That's the only hope, because nobody can rest at ease with his ugliness. Once seen, you have to destroy it, you have to remove all the masks that are ugly, you have to peel the whole skin that is ugly. And behind the surface there is tremendous beauty. Behind the masks -- and there are many masks -- your original face is nothing but God's own face. In your originality you are not separate from God; in your personality you are separate.

"Personality" comes from the Greek word PERSONA; it means the mask. In your individuality you are one with God. Then you have the beauty of a Buddha, Krishna, Christ, the same grace. But before one can reach to it one will have to peel one's ugly layers like one peels an onion. And when you peel an onion tears come to your eyes, it is painful. And your false masks have remained with you so long that they have almost become your faces. Removing them is not like removing clothes, it is actually like peeling your skin -- it hurts. Hence only the courageous can be interested in inner transformation.

You ask me, Ajit Saraswati: OSHO, WHY AND HOW SO MANY KEEP ON MISSING YOU?

They are cowards, they don't have any guts. They don't want to risk anything, and without risk nothing can be gained in life. The higher the peak you want to reach, the greater the risk.

The way of inner search belongs only to the gamblers, not to the businessmen. And people are very calculating, they are constantly calculating, they are always thinking in terms of calculation. Not even for a single moment they are ready to risk anything. They want every kind of security, guarantee, safety, then only they will budge an inch. And in the spiritual inquiry there is no safety, no security. In fact, that's why it has such tremendous beauty: it is an adventure.

The adventure cannot be secure; it is going beyond the boundaries of the known. When you are living within the boundaries of the known, things are secure; you know everything, you are efficient. When you move beyond the known you are taking a risk. You may lose the known, and who knows whether you are going to gain anything in this adventure or not?

You ask me: ARE THEY SCARED OF THE SUPER-SALESMAN?

They are simply scared of truth. Because they have lived in so many lies for so long they are afraid: if truth comes in all their lies will collapse. And they have invested not only this life but so many previous lives in those lies. Their investments are great, and truth is going to shatter. They are not bold enough to allow the truth to come in, to accept the fact that it truth destroys the lies it is better that those lies should be destroyed sooner than later, because if you don't destroy them today then tomorrow one day more is lost, then next life one life is more lost, and your investment becomes bigger and bigger with the lies. It is better to finish it quickly; the sooner you do the better. But for that a certain kind of youthfulness is needed.

And in this country particularly there are only two categories Or people: children and old people, the youth does not exist. From childhood people simply move into old age. The time of youth, youthfulness, rebellion, adventure, never happens.

And with me only young people -- young in the spirit, I mean -- can have any communion. And not only with me: it has always been so. With Buddha, with Jesus, with Lao Tzu, it was always the case: only very few youthful adventurers went with these dangerous people. They attained great treasures, but those treasurers are not certain, not guaranteed; there is no insurance.

You say:... BEFORE WE BROKE THOSE MIRRORS, YOU ENCOURAGED US TO GO ON LOOKING, TO GO ON WATCHING, TO GO ON WITNESSING, AND INTO THE BARGAIN, YOU EXTRACTED FROM US THE PRICE OF OUR VERY LIFE. HOWEVER, LOOKING BACK, OSHO, I FIND I HAVE NOT PAID A THING TO YOU.

There is no need to pay anything to me, because whatsoever I am giving to you is not mine, it is God's. It is as much yours as it is mine. What I am giving to you has been given to me. This is the way I am thanking God -- by giving it to you.

And, Ajit Saraswati, the only way to feel thankful is to share it with others. Spread it far and wide. Whatsoever you have experienced, share it. And don't be worried about what people will think of you -- they will think you are mad! But If you talk to one hundred people at least there is a possibility of one person coming along with you. That's more than enough; it is a great reward. If you can transform one person even, that is enough. Millions are bound to remain in darkness; nothing can be done about it because that is their choice, it is their freedom. If they decide to remain in darkness; who are we to force them into light? We can go on trying, but ultimately it is going to be their decision.

The only way to show our gratitude to the Master is to help others. If it has been a gracious gift to you, give it to others as a gracious gift. Give it without any idea of giving only then is it gracious. Give it without any idea of reward only then is it gracious. Simply give it for the sheer joy of giving It.

You also say: HOW SHALL I SAY THANK YOU, OSHO?

It has not to be said. You need not say it, but I am hearing it. Your very silence is enough. It can be said only through silence; there is no other way to say it. Words are very inadequate.

And lastly, you ask: OSHO, WHAT ARE THESE PEOPLE WAITING FOR? WHOM ARE THEY WAITING FOR, WHEN THIS GIFT OF GIFTS IS INCESSANTLY SHOWERING ALL OVER?

Ajit Saraswati, this world has been driven crazy -- crazy not in the sense of a spiritual madness, crazy in the sense that people have become split, people have become schizophrenic, people have been reduced to the lowest state of intelligence, because all the oppressors, the exploiters the leaders, the gurus, they all wanted it in this way. Man should not be allowed to be free, man should not allowed to be rebellious, man should not be allowed to be intelligent Intelligent people are dangerous for the status quo, for the establishment. The establishment wants people to be slaves, machine-like, robots, and they have succeeded. They start destroying a child the moment the child is born; they start crippling him, paralyzing him.

It is a very strange world: first they cripple you, then they provide crutches for you. And when they provide crutches for you they say, "Look what great service we are doing you!" First they make you blind and then they give you glasses so that you can see a little bit. First they make you dependent and then they start telling you how to be free.

We are living in a very strange world. Up to now humanity has lived in an insane way. It is ridiculous and absurd, and it is time that this should be finished.

That's what my effort here is: through my sannyasins to bring a new kind of man in the world, which will be DIVINELY mad but not schizophrenic -- a new man centered in his being. That is the meaning of the word "individual": he will be indivisible; you cannot split him.

A woman approached a psychoanalyst and asked him, "Can you split me into two?"

The psychoanalyst could not believe his ears. People had been coming to him who suffering from a split personality, and this woman was asking, "Can you split me into two?"

He said, "What is the matter with you? Why do you want to be split in two?"

The woman said, "I feel so lonely!"

If you watch around yourself you will be surprised how an insane humanity we have created.

After several rounds of drinks at the cocktail party, a woman turned to her husband, "Henry, don't you dare take another drink. Your face is getting all blurred already!"

A big three-hundred-pound man was being led to the gallows. He looked at the trap and asked the hangman, "Are you sure that thing is safe?"

A researcher in sociology making a survey of homosexuality rang the bell of an apartment. The man who answered the door responded to his question, "Homosexual? I never heard of that word. Wait, I will ask my wife."

Turning his head, he called, "Ernest!".

The morning after she left on her honeymoon, a bride returned home. She related: "I took off my clothes. Then he took off his clothes. Then he put on my clothes and left!

A rabbi was telling a story:

"One day a poor woodcutter found a baby in the forest, but he didn't know how to feed him. So he prayed to God and a miracle happened -- the woodcutter grew breasts and could feed the baby."

"Rabbi," interrupted a listener, "I don't like this story. Why such a weird thing like breasts on a man? If God is almighty he could have just dropped a bag of gold to give the woodcutter enough money to buy food for the baby."

The rabbi meditated on this for a while, then said, "Why should God spend such a lot of money when he can just do a miracle?"

In a deserted bar two people were seated at opposite ends of the room. The Jew and the Jap had been drinking for some time without noticing each other, when suddenly the Jew go off his stool, walked over to the Jap, and punched him on the nose. The dazed Japanese, struggling to his feet, asked the Jew why he did that.

"That was for Pearl Harbor," replied the Jew, and walked back to his stool.

After a few more drinks the Jap got off his stool and walked over to the Jew. He punched him very hard on the nose. The Jew, from his crumpled position on the floor, asked what that was for.

"That was for the Titanic," stated the Jap.

"But that was an iceberg!" complained the Jew.

"Well," responded the Jap, "Iceberg, Greenberg, Silverberg... they are all the same!"

When the flood was finally over and the animals were going out of Noah's ark, the elephant turned around to the flea who was behind him and said, "Stop pushing me!"

This is the world we are living! People have been driven to the lowest intelligence possible, and to raise their intelligence back is an arduous task.

It is a miracle if somebody listens to me, understands to me and starts transforming himself. It is happening to you, AJit Saraswati -- you are blessed. Very few are so blessed in the world.

The third question:

Question 3

OSHO,

WHAT IS NOSTALGIA?

Sahajo,

NOSTALGIA is THE LONGING to go back to the good old days when you were neither good nor old.

The fourth question:

Question 4

OSHO,

AREN'T YOU EVER AFRAID THAT INSTEAD OF THE CREATION OF A NEW KIND OF MAN, THIS IS THE CREATION OF A NEW KIND OF SHEEP?

Dick,

I AM NOT AFRAID AT ALL, because even if a new sheep is created it is better than the old sheep -- at least it will be new! And to be new is good, to be new is fresh, to be new opens new possibilities. Hence I am not afraid.

But you must be attached with the old kind of sheep, hence you are afraid. I can only try to give birth to a new man, but the birth cannot be absolutely guaranteed. I will do my best. It does not matter to me whether I succeed or fail. What matters is whether I tried my best or not -- and I am trying my best. And that's all that I am interested in.

I am enjoying my work. Who cares about the result? The people who care too much about the result simply waste their energy, because caring about the result takes much of their energy. Then they become worried about the result -- that is a distraction -- then the end becomes far more important than the journey itself.

To me the journey itself is enough, the search itself is more than enough. To me the means and the ends are not separate, they are inseparable. Hence what I am doing I am enjoying; what happens, that is not at all a question to me.

But why are you worried? You must be interested in keeping people in their old traps. I can do only one thing... You have heard the old proverb -- this is a new edition of that old proverb:

You can lead a hippie to water, but you cannot make him bathe.

I will lead the hippie to the water -- that much I can do -- I will persuade him, but then it is up to him to take a jump into the river or not. And who I am to throw him into the river? I can show him the way to the river, I can even lead him to the river, then it IS HIS freedom. If he chooses to remain the same I am not going to disturb his freedom, I am not going to do anything against him.

I love every person as he is. I love my work; it is not work to me at all because I love it -- it is just a play. But with you, Dick, there seems to be some problem inside you. Your question has nothing to do with my work, it has something to do with your prejudices.

You ask me: AREN'T YOU EVER AFRAID THAT INSTEAD OF THE CREATION OF A NEW KIND OF MAN, THIS IS THE CREATION OF A NEW KIND OF SHEEP?

I am trying to create the new man. Even if out of one hundred, one new man is created, that will bring the whole consciousness of humanity a step forward, a step upward. There is a possibility many will become only new kind of sheep, but then too it is not bad, that too is a gain. It is better to be alive, young, fresh, new, even though you are a sheep.

But you must be somehow deeply interested in keeping people in their old patterns; your investment must be there. Your prejudices must be those of a Christian, a Jew, a Hindu, a Mohammedan.

Two musicians were walking in a street when a large bell from a building being demolished fell nearby with a loud clang. "What's that?" asked one.

"I'm not sure," said the other, "but I think it was B flat."

People have their own languages, their own prejudices, and they cling to their prejudices. Even though their prejudices have been a sheer misery for them, still they cling.

If you are an old sheep, Dick, at least become a new sheep -- orange! It will not be a very great revolution, but even a little change is good. Just for that little change... and a little change may open doors for greater changes.

Two hobos sat with their backs against an old oak tree. Before them flowed a rippling stream. It was a delightful day, yet one of them was disconsolate.

"You know, Slim," he said, "this tramping through life is not what it used to be. Things are getting tougher every year. I used to hop a freight chugging up a steep grade very easy, but these diesels go like mad. And I'm getting tired of spending my nights in a cold barn and on park benches, wondering where my next meal is coming from. And odd jobs are getting scarcer all the time..." His voice trailed off as he sighed.

His companion turned to face him. "If that's the way you feel, why don't you hang it all up and find yourself a real job?"

The first tramp raised his head and opened his mouth in amazement. "What!" he cried. "And admit I'm a failure?"

Even a tramp, a hobo, a beggar does not want to accept that he is a failure.

Dick, the way you have asked the question simply shows that you are an old sheep -- Catholic, Protestant -- and you are afraid of the new sheep. You are not concerned about the new man. The old sheep is worried, because what is going to happen to the old prejudices, the old conclusions, the old ideology? It seems as if it will be a deep discontinuity with the past, as if one dies and is reborn.

But those who are ready to drop the old are not sheep. The very courage to drop the old is enough to prove that they are lions! The very courage that they are ready to come out of their old skins. their old prejudices old idiologies, religions, philosophies, shows one thing very clearly, categorically: that they are not sheep. And that very courage is the hope for the birth of a new man.

You just put your old prejudices aside, and then try to understand what is happening here. Get a little bit involved, participate in what is happening here. You have lived according to your old beliefs. If you are contented, I will be the last person to disturb you; but if you are contented, why you are here? For what? You must be discontented.

This is one of the strangest things about man: even if he is discontented he goes on believing, pretending that he is contented. And whenever there is an opportunity to change -- and he is LOOKING for an opportunity to change, this Is the strangeness -- when he finds the opportunity to change, he clings with the past.

A doctor was consulted by a prizefighter who was troubled with insomnia.

"Have you tried counting sheep?" asked the doctor.

"Yes, but it doesn't help. Every time I get up to nine I jump up!"

An old prizefighter! The moment he gets to nine he cannot resist. Instead of giving him a good sleep it will disturb him -- he jumps up. People function mechanically, unconsciously. Your question has come out of your unconsciousness, Dick.

The tavern was near an army camp, and the pretty barmaid was popular with the enlisted men, especially since she preferred them to the overbearing officers.

One night a polite young private was sitting next to a cocky first lieutenant who tried to date her. When the lieutenant went to the men's room she put her face close to the private and whispered, "Now is your chance, soldier!"

The private looked at the tempting red lips and then cried, "That's right!" And he hastily drank the officer's beer.

You are here but not really here. And the way I talk must be so difficult for you to understand. If you have been listening to the sermons by the priests in the churches or m the temples or in the mosques, then what I am saying here will look very irreligious, will look very strange to your Ideas of what spirituality should be. But I cannot talk the way your are accustomed to hearing. You may be waiting for some esoteric bullshit!

Kohn was home from seeing his doctor and meets his friend who asks, "Wha-wha-what is wrong wi-with you?"

"I've got prostatitis," replies Kohn.

"Wha-what... wha-wha-what is that?"

"I piss the way you talk!"

The new man can only be created with everything new: the way I talk, the way my people live, the way they behave, all has to be totally different from the old man. The new man cannot believe in your rotten morality -- your morality has only created hypocrites. The new man can live only authentically; he cannot be concerned with your moral and immoral ideas. He can live only meditatively. He cannot be thought as a man of character, the way you have become accustomed to think of religious people.

The new man will not be a man of character, the new man will be utterly characterless . But when I say "characterless". please don't misunderstand me; I am not talking the way you understand. To me the characterless man is the only man who has character. Characterless I call him because he does not follow any dictates from the outside. He lives according to his own light, he lives meditatively. His character does not come from his conscience.

Conscience is an agency implanted in you by the society, it is not yours. Don't call the conscience as yours -- it is not yours. It belongs to the Christian church, it belongs to the Hindu religion, it belongs to the Jain philosophy, it belongs to the communist ideology. It has nothing to do with you; it is implanted by others in you. It is a very subtle strategy to dominate you from within. On the outside they have put a policeman, the magistrate, the court, and in the inside they have created a conscience.

The real man, the new man, will live according to consciousness, not according to conscience. Of course, whatsoever HIS consciousness feels right he will do, whatsoever the risk, whatsoever he has to pay for it. Even if he has to pay with his life he will be ready to pay it, because there are higher things than life itself. Consciousness is far more higher than life. But he will not follow conscience.

The man of conscience is known as a man of character -- that's why I call the new man characterless, because he will not have any conscience, he will function out of consciousness. His commandments will be coming from his own center, and when they come from your own center they give you freedom. And out of freedom life takes a new flavor, a new beauty. You DO the right, but now the right is not decided by others. It is no more a slavery, it is absolute freedom.

The new man will live out of meditation, out of consciousness, out of his own inner light. The new man will be an individual, not part of any collectivity.

My sannyasins here are not a collectivity. Each of my sannyasins is related to me directly. It is not a church, it is not an organization: it is a love relationship. And because they all love me, of course they start feeling love for each other too; that is secondary. Their love towards me is primary, then their love for other sannyasins is secondary; they are fellow-travelers. But nobody is bound to follow me or to follow anybody else. It is a commune of fellow-travelers. fellow-seekers.

There is no qualitative difference between me and my sannyasins. The only difference is a very slight one, very small one: I am aware of my inner world, they are not aware, but they have the inner world as much as I have it. I don't have it more, they don't have it less. They have the whole kingdom of God within themselves. I am not special in any sense. I am not claiming that I am the son of God, I am not claiming that I am an AVATARA of God, I am not claiming that I am a teerthankara. I am simply saying one thing: that I was asleep, now I am awake; you are asleep and you can be awake also. I have known both states -- the state of being asleep and the state of being awake -- and you know only one state, of being asleep.

But remember, the person who is capable of sleeping is capable of awakening. The very fact he can sleep is an indication that he can be awake! There is no difference at all.

I will go on trying to help people to be awake. The awakened man will be the new man. He will not be Christian, he will not be Hindu, he will not be Mohammedan; he will not be Indian, he will not be German, he will not be English. He will be simply an awakened being.

But, Dick, it is possible that there may be a few people who will only turn into a new kind of sheep, but that too is not bad. As far as being the old sheep is concerned, it is better than that. So if your are an old sheep, become a new sheep, and from there the journey starts, a possibility. If the old sheep can become a new sheep it is a radical change. The sheep deciding to be new -- it is a revolution. And if this much is possible, then much more is possible too.

The fifth question:

Question 5

OSHO,

WHAT IS YOUR DEFINITION OF A POLITICIAN?

Nartan,

IF A MAN DODGES CARS, he is a pedestrian. If he dodges taxes, he is a businessman. If he dodges responsibilities, he is an executive. And if he dodges everything, he is a politician.

And the last question:

Question 6

OSHO,

ONCE YOU TOLD A JOKE FOR PURNA WHO WAS LEAVING. I AM STAYING. WILL YOU TELL A JOKE FOR ME TOO?

Anand Donna,

Okay,

A JEWISH RABBI DECIDED to sit in with the priest in his confessional box to learn the principles of the Catholic religion. Two women came, one after the other, and confessed to having had intercourse with their boyfriends, not only once but three times. For penance the priest told them to say three Pater Nosters and put ten dollars in the poor box.

The priest was called away urgently to give last rites to a dying man. He told the rabbi to stay and hear the confessions for the rest of the people. "Just remember to get the ten dollars," he said before leaving.

The first confessor was a young girl who told the rabbi that she had had intercourse with her boyfriend.

"Three times?" questioned the rabbi.

"Oh no, Father, just once," replied the girl.

"Are you quite sure it wasn't three times?"

"No, Father, only once," insisted the young girl.

"Well," suggested the rabbi, "I tell you what. just say three Pater Nosters, put ten dollars in the box, and the church will owe you two fucks."

Chapter No. 13 - Prayer Simply Happens
Chapter No. 14 - Without Women -- No Buddhas
Chapter No. 15 - Everybody has his Uniqueness
Chapter No. 16 - It is Already the Best