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

Chapter No. 2 - Living in your own Light
12 October 1980 am in Buddha Hall, Pune, India

The first question:

Question 1

OSHO,

WHAT IS GOD?

Prem Sukavi,

GOD is not a person. That is one of the greatest misunderstandings, and it has prevailed so long that it has become almost a fact. Even if a lie is repeated continuously for centuries it is bound to appear as if it is a truth.

It is not only that God created existence in the beginning. He continuously creates it, the creativity is a continuum. It has never stopped. In fact there was no beginning and there will be no end. God is more creativity than a creator. Each moment He is at work.

God's creativity is continuous; there is no rest. If He rests for a single moment life will stop. He is our breath. If your breath goes on a holiday, you are gone. Even if for a few minutes your heart does not beat, you are gone. God is the heartbeat of the universe. There has never been a holiday and there will never be. And He is constantly nursing you. The very idea that somewhere in the past He created the world, creates a distance. He becomes almost invisible, inconceivable. When you think that millions of years ago He created the world, it doesn't seem relevant to you, you don't seem to be related to Him. He may have created Adam but He has not created you. You don't feel connected.

No, God has not only created Adam -- He is continuously creating: He has created you. And not that He stopped one day when you were born; He has been continuously creating you. He has been your childhood, He has been your youth, He will be your old age. He is your life and He will be your death. He is all! He is the breath going in and He is the breath going out. He is within and He is without and He is continuously nursing you.

Once this idea takes form in your being, God becomes very close. It is a continuous contact. Even when you are asleep, He is breathing in you. Even when you never think of Him, He thinks of you.

There is a sufi saying, that if God stops thinking about you for a single moment you will disappear. Because you are a thought in His cosmic mind, you are His dream. He maintains you.

Let this idea sink deep in your heart, and suddenly you will see that God is not far away, He is very close by. And when you are eating, you are eating Him; when you are drinking, you are drinking Him. When you are in love, you are in love with Him, He is in love with you. Then there arises a kind of intimacy, a dialogue. That dialogue, that intimacy is prayer.

God is a presence, not a person. Hence all worshipping is sheer stupidity. Prayerfulness is needed, not prayer. There is nobody to pray to; there is no possibility of any dialogue between you and God. Dialogue is possible only between two persons, and God is not a person but a presence -- like beauty, like joy.

God simply means godliness. It is because of this fact that Buddha denied the existence of God. He wanted to emphasize that God is a quality, an experience -- like love. You cannot talk to love, you can live it. You need not create temples of love, you need not make statues of love, and bowing down to those statues will be just nonsense. And that's what has been happening in the churches, in the temples, in the mosques.

Man has lived under this impression of God as a person, and then two calamities have happened through it. One is the so-called religious man, who thinks God is somewhere above m the sky and you have to praise him. to persuade him to confer favors on you, to help you to fulfill your desires, to make your ambitions succeed, to give you the wealth of this world AND of the other world. And this is sheer wastage of time and energy.

And on the opposite pole the people who saw the stupidity of it all became atheists; they started denying the existence of God. They were right in a sense, but they were also wrong. They started denying not only the personality of God, they started to deny even the experience of God.

The theist is wrong, the atheist is wrong, and man needs a new vision so that he can be freed from both the prisons.

God is the ultimate experience of silence, of beauty, of bliss, a state of inner celebration. Once you start looking at God as godliness there will be a radical change in your approach. Then prayer is no more valid; meditation becomes valid.

Martin Buber says prayer is a dialogue; then between you and God there is an "I-thou" relationship -- the duality persists. Buddha is far closer to the truth: you simply drop all chattering of the mind, you slip out of the mind like a snake slipping out of the old skin. You become profoundly silent. There is no question of any dialogue, no question of any monologue either. Words have disappeared from your consciousness. There is no desire for which favors have to be asked, no ambition to be fulfilled. One is now and here. In that tranquility, in that calmness, you become aware of a luminous quality to existence. Then the trees and the mountains and the rivers and the people are all surrounded with a subtle aura. They are all radiating life, and it is one life in different forms. The flowering of one existence in millions of forms, in millions of flowers.

THIS experience is God. And it is everybody's birthright, because whether you know it or not you are already part of it. The only possibility is you may not recognize it or you may recognize it.

The difference between the enlightened person and the unenlightened person is not of quality -- they both are absolutely alike. There is only one small difference: that the enlightened person is aware; he recognizes the ultimate pervading the whole, permeating the whole, vibrating, pulsating. He recognizes the heartbeat of the universe. He recognizes that the universe is not dead, it is alive.

This aliveness is God!

The unenlightened person is asleep, asleep and full of dreams. Those dreams function as a barrier; they don't allow him to see the truth of his own reality. And, of course, when you are not even aware of your own reality, how can you be aware of the reality of others? The first experience has to happen within you. Once you have seen the light within you will be able to see it everywhere.

God has to be freed from all concepts of personality. Personality is a prison. God has to be freed from any particular form; only then he can have all the forms. He has to be freed from any particular name so that all the names become his.

Then a person LIVES in prayer -- he does not pray, he does not go to the temple, to the church. Wherever he sits he is prayerful, whatsoever he is doing is prayerful, and in that prayerfulness he creates his temple. He is always moving with his temple surrounding him. Wherever he sits the place becomes sacred, whatsoever he touches becomes gold. If he is silent then his silence is golden; if he speaks then his song is golden. If he is alone his aloneness is divine; if he relates then his relating is divine.

The basic, the most fundamental thing is to be aware of your own innermost core, because that is the secret of the whole existence. That's where the Upanishads are tremendously important. They don't talk about a God, they talk about godliness. They don t bother about prayer. their whole emphasis is on meditation.

Meditation has two parts: the beginning and the end. The beginning is called dhyana and the end is called samadhi. Dhyana is the seed, samadhi is the flowering. Dhyana means becoming aware of all workings of your mind, all the layers of your mind -- your memories, your desires, your thoughts, dreams -- becoming aware of all that goes on inside you.

Dhyana is awareness, and samadhi is when the awareness has become so deep, so profound, so total that it is like a fire and it consumes the whole mind and all its functionings. It consumes thoughts, desires, ambitions, hopes, dreams. It consumes the whole stuff the mind is full of.

Samadhi is the state when awareness is there, but there is nothing to be aware inside you; the witness is there, but there is nothing to be witnessed.

Begin with dhyana, with meditation, and end in samadhi, in ecstasy, and you will know what God is. It is not a hypothesis, it is an experience. You have to LIVE it -- that is the only way to know it.

The second question:

Question 2

OSHO,

YOUR DISCOURSE ON THE ISA UPANISHAD WAS SO BEAUTIFUL. I HAVE HEARD IT SAID THAT THE UPANISHADS ARE COMMENTARIES ON OR EXTENSIONS OF THE VEDAS. IS THIS TRUE? I BOW TO YOU.

Anand Santamo,

THE UPANISHADS are not commentaries on the Vedas, neither are they extensions of the Vedas. Of course, Hindus go on insisting that they are commentaries or extensions of the Vedas, but that is a falsehood perpetuated by the priesthood for their own reasons.

In fact, Upanishads are rebellions against the Vedas. Another name for the Upanishads is vedanta. The priests have been saying that vedanta means the culmination of the Vedas; the word can be interpreted that way, but in fact it means the END of the Vedas and the beginning of something absolutely new. Vedas are very ordinary compared to the Upanishads.

The Upanishads say that there are two kinds of knowledges: the lower and the higher. The lower knowledge is the realm of the priesthood, the scholars, the pundits, and the higher knowledge is the world of the Buddhas, of the awakened ones. The priest is a businessman; his whole effort is to exploit people in the name of religion. He oppresses people, dominates people, and of course he goes on saying, "It is for your own sake." He makes people afraid of hell and greedy for heavenly joys. This is a psychological trick. He knows people are afraid, he knows people are greedy, so these are the two things that he goes on manipulating: fear and greed. And this is done by all the priests of all the religions in all the traditions all over the world.

Upanishads are rebellions against the priesthood. Upanishads are not at all commentaries on the Vedas -- Vedas are very mundane, ordinary. Yes, once in a while you can find a sutra in the Vedas which is beautiful, but that is only one percent at the most. Ninety-nine percent is just rubbish, while the Upanishads are hundred percent pure gold -- they are statements of those who have known.

The Vedas are full of prayers asking for worldly things: better crops, better cows, more money, better health, fame, power, prestige. Not only that, the Vedas are continuously praying "Destroy the enemies", "Destroy those who oppose us." They are full of jealousy, anger, violence. They have nothing to do with the Upanishads.

Upanishads are not commentaries and they are not the culmination of the Vedas either. Upanishads are a totally new beginning. The very word UPANISHAD is of immense importance. The word UPANISHAD is derived from the Sanskrit root SHAD. SHAD has many meanings and all are significant. The first meaning is "to sit".

The Zen people say:

Sitting silently, doing nothing,

The spring comes and the grass grows by itself.

That is the meaning of SHAD: just sitting silently in deep meditation; not only sitting physically but sitting deep down psychologically too. You can sit physically in a yoga posture, but the mind goes on running, chasing; then it is not true sitting. Yes, physically you look still, but psychologically you are running in all the directions.

SHAD means sitting physically and psychologically both. because body and mind are not two things, not two separate entities. Body and mind is one reality. We should not use the phrase "body and mind"; we should make one word, "bodymind". The body is the outer shell of the mind and the mind is the inner part of the body. Unless both are in a sitting posture, not running anywhere -- into the past, into the future -- not running anywhere, just being in the present, now and here... that is the meaning of shad; it is the very meaning of meditation.

It also means "to settle". You are always in a chaos, in a state of turmoil, unsettled, always hesitating, confused, not knowing what to do, what not to do. There is no clarity inside -- so many clouds, so much smoke surrounds you. When all these clouds have disappeared, when all this chaos has disappeared, when there is no confusion at all, it is called settling.

When one is settled absolutely, clarity arises, a new perspective. One starts seeing what is the case. Eyes are no more covered by any smoke; for the first time you have eyes to see that which is.

The third meaning of shad is "to approach". You are confused, you are living in darkness, you don't know who you are, you don't know the meaning of your life, of your existence. You have to approach somebody who has arrived home, who has found the way. You have to approach a Buddha, an enlightened Master -- a Lao Tzu, a Zarathustra, a Jesus, a Mohammed. You have to approach somebody who is afire with God, aflame, who is radiating godliness, in whose presence you feel bathed, refreshed, in whose presence something starts falling from your heart -- the whole burden, anguish, anxiety -- and something starts welling up within you: a new joy, a new insight. Hence the meaning "to approach".

UPA-NI-SHAD is made of three words. SHAD is to sit, to settle, to approach -- to approach a Master, to sit by his side in a settled, silent state. And from the prefix UPA which means near, close, in tune with, in harmony, in communion... When you are settled, sitting silently by the side of the Master, doing nothing, running nowhere, then a harmony arises between you and the Master, a closeness, an intimacy, a nearness, a possibility of communion, the meeting of the heart with the heart, the meeting of the being with the being, a merging, a communion. And NI meaning down, surrendered, in a state of prayer, in a state of egolessness.

This is the whole meaning of the word UPANISHAD: sitting in a settled state, unconfused, clear, approaching the Master in egolessness, surrendered, in deep prayerfulness, openness, vulnerability, so that a communion becomes possible.

This is UPANISHAD -- what is happening right now between you and me. This sitting silently, in a deep, loving, prayerful mood, listening to me not through the intellect but through the heart, drinking, not only listening -- this communion is UPANISHAD! We are living UPANISHAD, and that is the only way to understand what Upanishads are. It has to become an alive experience for you.

The Vedas consist of all kinds of knowledge of those days. They are a kind of Encyclopedia Britannica, of course very primitive, at least ten thousand years old -- at least -- it is possible they are far more older. Scholars are not decided; there is great controversy about the time when Vedas were composed. The possibility is they were not composed at one period, they were composed at different periods. There are people who say they are at least ninety thousand years old; so from ninety thousand years to ten thousand years, a long stretch of time.

The Vedas are called SAMHITAS; SAMHITA means a compilation, encyclopedia. They contain all kinds of things, all kinds of information of those days. Upanishads are pure religiousness, nothing else. Each single word is a finger pointing to the moon. They are not compilations of all kinds of knowledge; their whole insistence is for immediate experience of that which is. The emphasis is on direct experience, not borrowed -- not from scriptures, not from others. It has to be your own truth; only then it liberates.

Jesus says: Truth liberates. Certainly truth liberates, but it has to be your own. If it is somebody else's, then rather than liberating it imprisons. Christians are imprisoned. Jesus is liberated. Hindus are imprisoned, Krishna is liberated. Buddhists are imprisoned Buddha is liberated. Liberation comes by experiencing the truth on your own; it has not to be just an accumulation of information, it has to be an inner transformation.

The emphasis of the Upanishads is for immediate and direct experience of godliness. And why borrow when it is possible to drink directly from the source? But information seems to be cheap. transformation seems to be arduous. Transformation means you will have to go through a great inner revolution; information requires no revolution in you, no radical change in you. Information simply is an addition: whatsoever you are you remain the same, but you become more and more knowledgeable.

Knowledgeability is not wisdom; knowledgeability is, on the contrary, a hindrance to wisdom. The more knowledgeable you become, the less is the possibility of attaining your own experience, because knowledge deceives -- it deceives others, it deceives you. It goes on giving you the sense as if you know, but that "as if" has not to be forgotten. That "as if" can easily be forgotten and one can be deceived.

Remember one very significant saying in the Upanishads: Those who are ignorant, they are bound to be lost in darkness; and those who are knowledgeable, they are bound to be lost in a far more and far bigger darkness than the ignorant ones.

The ignorant person is at least sincere: he knows that he does not know; at least this much truth is there. But the knowledgeable covers up his wounds, his ignorance, his black holes. He covers them by scriptures and he starts pretending that he knows. He is harming others, but that is secondary, far more significant is that he is harming himself He will be lost in a far deeper darkness.

That's why it is very difficult for pundits, scholars, the so-called learned people, to become enlightened; it is a miracle if it happens at all. Sinners are more easily ready to go through the transformation because they have nothing to lose -- except their chains. except their ignorance. But the knowledgeable person is afraid to lose his knowledge; that is his treasure. He clings to it, he protects it in every possible way. He finds rationalizations, excuses why the knowledge has to be protected. But, in fact, by protecting his knowledge he is simply protecting his ignorance. Hidden behind knowledge is his ignorance. The knowledge is just a mask which covers his original face. You cannot see his original face, he himself cannot see it. He is wearing a mask, and looking in the mirror he thinks, "This is my original face."

It is very difficult for the knowledgeable to drop his knowledge and to become ignorant again. Unless he gathers that much courage of becoming ignorant again, of becoming like a child again -- innocent, not knowing anything, what Dionysius calls AGNOSIA, moving into a state of not knowing...

It is certainly very arduous for the knowledgeable person -- his whole LIFE he has been accumulating knowledge. He has wasted his whole life, he has invested his whole life in knowledge. How can he drop it? So he protects it, he fights for it.

And this is the most amazing thing in the world: the prisoner is fighting so that you cannot take him out of the prison! And of course he is very clever and very cunning, so he can play with words and he can quote scriptures, but all his quotations are parrotlike; he has no understanding.

The Upanishads emphasize direct experiencing. The Vedas belong to the priests, to the scholars, to the brahmins, who are the oldest priests in the world. And of course, because they are the oldest they are the most cunning in the whole world. No other religion can defeat the Hindu priest, obviously: he has lived for so long, he has become very clever in exploiting, he has become very cunning in rationalizing, in protecting.

Upanishads are a totally different dimension. Of course they don't speak the language of rebellion -- they are very soft -- but the rebellion is there. Because Upanishads could not create the revolution Buddha had to speak in a harsher tone.

Buddha speaks the same truth as the Upanishads, but his way has changed. Seeing that Upanishads have failed to have any impact -- because the priests started managing : Upanishads also and they started saying that Upanishads are nothing but commentaries on the Vedas -- Buddha had to be more alert. He was not so soft as the Upanishads. Of course his message is the same, but two, three thousand years have passed since the Upanishads were composed and one thing Buddha had become absolutely clear: that you have to be very harsh, very hard. He has sharpened his sword.

Twenty-five centuries have again passed, the same period. Upanishads and Buddha are divided by twenty-five centuries; between me and Buddha again twenty-five centuries have passed. I have to sharpen my sword even more, because Buddha has also failed.

The ignorance of man is so deep and the priests are so cunning that one has to be really hard. If one has compassion one has to be cruel, only then this whole stupidity that exists in the name of religion can be destroyed and man can be freed. Man needs freedom from all cages, from all fetters.

The third question:

Question 3

OSHO,

WOULD YOU PLEASE SAY SOMETHING ABOUT SINCERITY?

Yoga Punya,

MAN can live in two ways: either he can live according to the dictates of others -- the puritans, the moralists -- or he can live according to his own light. It is easy to follow others, it is convenient and comfortable, because when you follow others they feel very good and happy with you.

Your parents will be happy if you follow their ideas, although their ideas are absolutely worthless because their ideas have not made their lives illumined, and it is so apparent. They have lived in misery, still they want to impose their ideas on the children. They cannot see a simple fact: that their life has been a failure. that their life has not been creative, that their life has never tasted of bliss, that they have not been able to discover truth. They have not known the splendor of existence, they have no idea what it is all about. Still their egos insist that the children should be obedient, they should follow their dictates.

The Hindu parents will force the child to become a Hindu, and they will not even think for a single moment what has happened to them. They have followed those same ideas their whole life and their life is empty; nothing has flowered. But they enjoy the idea that their children are obedient and they are following them. They have lived in misery, in hell, and their children will live in misery and hell, but they think they love their children. With all good intentions they destroy the future of their children.

The politicians try in every possible way that the society should live according to their ideas, and of course they pretend to others and to themselves that they are doing public service. All that they are doing is destroying freedom of people. They are trying to enforce certain superstitions which were enforced on them by their parents, by their leaders, by their priests.

The politicians, the priests, the pedagogues, they are all trying to create a false humanity; they are creating insincere human beings. They may not have intended to do so, but that's what has happened. And a tree is to be judged by fruits; it does not matter what was the intention of the gardener. If he was sowing seeds of weeds and hoping, intending, desiring that roses will come out just because of his good intentions, roses are not going to come out of the weeds. He has destroyed the whole field. To impose a certain structure of character on anybody is to make him insincere, is to make him a hypocrite.

Sincerity, Yoga Punya, means to live according to y our own light. Hence the first requirement of being sincere is to be meditative. The first thing is not to be moral, is not to be good, is not to be virtuous: the most important thing is to be meditative -- so that you can find a little light within yourself and then start living according to that light And as you live it grows and it gives you a deep integrity. Because it comes from your own innermost being there is no division.

When somebody says to you, "Do it, it SHOULD be done," naturally it creates a division in you. You don't want to do it, you wanted to do something else, but somebody -- the parents, the politicians, the priests, those who are in power -- they want you to follow a certain route. You never wanted to follow it so you will follow it unwillingly. Your heart will not be in it, you will not be committed to it, you will not have any involvement with it. You will go through it like a slave. It is not your choice, it is not out of your freedom.

The first disciples of Jesus had chosen him; it was THEIR choice and they had chosen a very risky path -- to be with Jesus was dangerous. It has always been so: to be with anybody who gives you freedom is dangerous because he will make you so independent that you will continuously be in a fight with the society, with the establishment, with the vested interests. You will be in a constant struggle your whole life. Of course, that struggle is worth and it is not a curse, it is a blessing, because only through that struggle you grow, you expand. Your consciousness becomes more and more clear; it becomes a peak. You have to pay for it; it is not cheap. Hence the risk.

The few people who followed Jesus were taking a dangerous path: they could have been crucified, and they were tortured in many ways. But today to be a Christian has no risk, hence it is bogus.

The people who followed Buddha were living dangerously, and to live dangerously is the only way to live. But they were sincere people: they followed their own inner voice against the whole society, against the whole tradition, convention. They followed a rebel and became rebels in their own right. Buddhists were burned alive just as early Christians were burned alive, thrown to the lions and to the wild animals, tortured in every possible way. But still they attained to the ultimate experience of godliness -- they paid for it. But to be a Buddhist now is very convenient there is no problem about it, anybody can be a Buddhist. And the same is true about all religions.

Right now to be with me is dangerous. You will be continuously in trouble; wherever you will go you will be opposed. You will be opposed by the Christians, by the Hindus, by the Mohammedans, by the Jains, by the Buddhists. You will be tortured, you will be condemned, you will not be accepted anywhere. But you will become sincere, you will have some authenticity. And you will suffer all these tortures joyfully because you have chosen them.

Even to choose hell is beautiful, rather than to be forced to live in heaven. If you are forced to live in heaven it is hell, and if you choose hell it is heaven -- because it is your own choice. It brings your life to its highest peak.

Sincerity means not living a double life -- and almost everybody is living a double life. He says one thing, he thinks something else. He never says that which he thinks, he says that which is convenient and comfortable, he says that which will be approved, accepted. he says that which is expected by others. Now what he says and what he thinks become two different worlds. He says one thing, he goes on doing something else, and then naturally he has to hide it. He cannot expose himself because then the contradiction will be found, then he will be in trouble. He talks about beautiful things and lives an ugly life.

This is what, up to now, humanity has done to itself. It has been a very nightmarish past.

The new man is an absolute necessity now because the old is utterly rotten. The old is continuously in conflict within himself; he is fighting with himself. Whatsoever he does he feels miserable. If he follows his own inner voice he feels he is going against the society, against the powerful people, against the establishment. And that establishment has created a conscience in you; that conscience is a very tricky procedure, a strategy. It is the policeman inside you, implanted by the society, who goes on condemning you that: "This is wrong, this is not right. You should not do it, you should feel guilty for it -- you are being immoral."

If you follow your voice your conscience is at daggers with you; it will not give you any rest, it will torture you, it will make you miserable. And you will become afraid -- afraid that somebody may find it out. And it is very difficult to hide because life means relationship -- somebody is bound to know, somebody is bound to discover. You are not alone.

That's why the cowards escaped to the monasteries, to the Himalayan caves, just for a single reason: that there they will not be found out at all. But what kind of life you can live in a cave? You have already committed suicide. To be in a cave is to be in a grave -- and alive! If you are dead and in a grave, that seems right -- where else you can be? But alive AND in a grave -- it is real hell!

In the monasteries people are living a miserable life; that's why they have such long faces -- not that they are religious. Those long faces are a simple outcome of a cowardly life. If you are in the world living with people you cannot hide for long; you can deceive a few people for a time being, but not forever. And how can you deceive yourself? Even if you are not found out by others you know that you are living a double life -- and the guilt...

And everybody is guilty, and the priests want you to be guilty because the more guilty you are, the more you are in the hands of the priests. You have to go to them to get rid of your guilt. You have to go to the Ganges to take a bath, you have to go to Mecca, to Kaaba, so that you can get rid of your guilt. You have to go to the Catholic priest to confess so that you can get rid of the guilt. You have to do fasting and other kinds of penances and other kinds of austerities so that you can punish yourself These are all punishments! But how can you be happy? How you can be cheerful and blissful? How can you rejoice in a life where you are constantly feeling guilty and punishing yourself, condemning yourself?

And if you choose NOT to follow your inner voice and follow the dictates of others -- they call morality, etiquette, civilization, culture -- then too that inner voice will start nagging you, it will continuously nag you. It will say you are being untrue to your nature. And if you feel that you are being untrue to your nature then your morality cannot be a rejoicing; it will be only an empty gesture.

This is what has happened to man: man has become schizophrenic.

MY effort here is to help you to become one. That's why I don't teach any morality, any character. All that I teach is meditation so that you can hear your inner voice more clearly and follow it, whatsoever the cost. Because if you follow your inner voice without feeling guilty, immense is going to be your reward, and looking backwards you will find that the cost was nothing. It looked very big in the beginning, but when you have arrived at the point where sincerity becomes natural, spontaneous, when there is no more any division, no more any split in you, then you will see a celebration is happening and the cost that you have paid is nothing compared to it.

You ask me, Yoga Punya: WOULD YOU PLEASE SAY SOMETHING ABOUT SINCERITY?

Sincerity is the fragrance of meditation.

The fourth question:

Question 4

OSHO,

AT THIS MOMENT THE CHRISTIAN BROADCASTING COMPANY, NCRV, IN HOLLAND, HAS STARTED A SERIES OF EIGHT PROGRAMS ON SPIRITUAL MOVEMENTS ENTITLED: Not To Be Believed. THE PRODUCER-MINISTER, SIPKE VAN DER LAND, WHO HAS BEEN HERE WITH HIS CREW TO FILM YOU AND LIFE AT THE ASHRAM, CALLED THE FIRST PROGRAM: Bhagwan, Sex Guru from Poona. AT THE END OF THE FILM HE COMMENTS: "BHAGWAN NEVER LOOKS AT YOU, HE LOOKS OVER US. WHAT KIND OF MASTERSHIP IS THIS, IN WHICH SOMEONE PULLS PEOPLE TOWARDS HIM WITHOUT PAYING ANY ATTENTION TO THEM? JESUS HUMILIATED HIMSELF TO BE EQUAL WITH US AS A SERVANT, BUT NOT BHAGWAN. BHAGWAN RAISES HIMSELF ABOVE HUMANITY -- HAUGHTY, A STRANGE RULER"

COULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT ON THIS?

Prem Pushpa,

THE CHRISTIAN, the Hindu, the Mohammedan, they cannot understand me -- they are determined not to understand me. It is against their vested interests. They are afraid of me and they will try in every possible way to confuse people.

Because it is a Christian broadcasting company they must have come with prejudiced ideas, they must have come with a closed mind. They had come already with conclusions, hence whatsoever they say only shows something about them, nothing about me. And remember, their title is right: NOT TO BE BELIEVED!

They have received many letters -- I have received many letters too -- and there have been many comments in the newspapers in Holland. And almost all the newspapers have asked one question: that their whole program about me does not give any indication about the title, BHAGWAN, SEX GURU FROM POONA. Their whole program has nothing to do with the title. People are meditating. people are sitting silently listening to me, people are working... It has no relationship at all with the program. What they have filmed and what they have tried to project is totally irrelevant! But they were not even aware, it seems, that the title has no relevance with the program -- it has nothing to do with sex!

And what this director has replied? -- because the newspapers asked the director, "Why you have given such a title, which has no reference with the program at all? It shows a prejudiced mind!" So he has answered that, "That was our very purpose, that's our very purpose of a Christian broadcasting company: to expose everything that is not Christian." They are not concerned with truth -- as if truth is Christian! Truth is neither Hindu nor Christian nor Mohammedan.

And he should be reminded that Jesus was not a Christian himself! Christianity never existed in those days. Jesus was born a Jew, lived a Jew, died a jew! I may be a little bit of Christian -- in fact, more Christian than Jesus! -- hut Jesus cannot be Christian at all. First they should condemn Jesus -- why he was not Christian; that will serve their purpose more accurately.

And they should make a film on Jesus. Jesus was moving with a prostitute, Mary Magdalene -- must have been a sex guru! He was always in the company which this director would not approve of -- gamblers, drunkards, prostitutes. He himself was a drunkard! He should make a film on Jesus.

And there are rumors that he was a homosexual! I don't know how far they are true, but there is a possibility... because he was constantly moving with those twelve boys! And religious people are known, very well-known, to be homosexuals. Homosexuality is a religious phenomenon! When you keep men separate from women and women separate from men, homosexuality is a natural byproduct.

He has also said in one interview to a newspaper, that "Bhagwan's sannyasins say that, 'We feel immense energy, that we feel the presence of Bhagwan transforming us.' " And he says, "I lived there for a few days -- I didn't feel anything!"

When Jesus was crucified there were at least one hundred thousand people present. Did they feel anything? If they had felt anything Jesus would have been saved. Those one hundred thousand people could have easily saved him, because there were only a few policemen; they could have been destroyed, killed by the masses. But nobody could feel any energy, nobody could see any godliness in Jesus. In fact, people were mocking and laughing at him.

They were waiting for him to show some miracle and they were shouting that, "You have been showing miracles, we have heard. We have heard that you used to walk on water, we have heard that you have given eyes to the blind people, we have heard that you have cured incurable diseases, we have even heard that you raised Lazarus from death, you revived him again -- now show us the miracle!"

And these people came back home very frustrated because no miracle happened. Jesus died like any ordinary man. And remember, these were simple people -- not journalists!

This director of NCRV, if he was present there, would have become very frustrated because he would have gone there with the whole crew to film some miracle, and it was not happening!

Do you think Hindus felt the energy of Buddha? Do you think Jains felt the energy of Buddha or Buddhists felt the energy of Mahavira? Mahavira and Buddha were both contemporaries, lived in the same part of the country, Bihar, moved in the same villages and towns continuously for forty years, many times stayed in the same village and once at least stayed in one house -- half was occupied by Buddha and half by Mahavira -- and still their disciples were not able to feel the energy of the other. What was happening?

Could not the Jews feel the energy of Jesus?

It is a simple phenomenon to be understood: to feel the energy you have to be in a certain state. It is like -- he will understand this better -- it is like carrying a radio set with you, but if you don't put it on no music will flow through it. Even if you put it on, and you don't fix the needle at a certain point it will not receive. One needs openness, and the needle has to be at a certain point; a deep harmony is needed. Whether it is with Jesus or Buddha or Mahavira, it does not matter: whomsoever you are attuned with you will feel the energy.

But he is like a man who stands before the sunrise with closed eyes and he says, "There is no sun, because I cannot see. And the people who are saying it is are all false -- not to be believed! -- because I cannot see, and I have been standing here for hours."

You have to open the eyes to see the sun. And the sun is a gross phenomenon: the energy of a Master is a very subtle phenomenon -- unless you are in deep love you will not feel it.

And he says: BHAGWAN NEVER LOOKS AT YOU.

In a way he is true! I never look at you because you are two: the false and the real. I am not concerned with the false. I don't look at your mask. I DON'T look at the accidental in you I look to the essential, I look to the very core of your being. I am not concerned with your masks and the personality; my whole concern is with the center of your being.

And why should I look at you? He must have felt it, because I perfectly remember I never looked at him! -- because there was nothing to look at, just an empty man, a container without any content. Why should I waste my time looking at such people? It is only out of compassion that they are allowed, and this too is not going to happen very long any more. In the new commune I am going to prevent all these people coming in.

I certainly look, but my ways of looking are my ways I look behind the mask, because that is where my work is.

He says:... HE LOOKS OVER US.

That is true, because I look at the transcendental self in you and that is something over you, above you, surpassing you. You are far more than your body, far more than your mind, and I look to that "far more". And that is the real thing and that has to be brought into your focus. I am not a psychoanalyst -- I am not concerned with the superficial but with that which SURPASSES YOU. I AM concerned with your beyond.

And he says: WHAT KIND OF MASTERSHIP IS THIS IN WHICH SOMEONE PULLS PEOPLE TOWARDS HIM WITHOUT PAYING ANY ATTENTION TO THEM?

Ego needs attention, ego feeds on attention, ego wants that attention should be paid to it; it is constantly hankering for attention. While he was here he must have been hankering for attention.

It has been one of the problems here: whenever people come here -- journalists of all kinds -- their whole effort is that the commune should pay great attention to them. They want a private interview with me, they want to ask me questions directly. I am not a politician! Of course, if they go to the president or the prime minister of any country they will give them great attention. I am not interested at all in what they write, in what they show on the television. I am not concerned at all with whether they write negatively or positively, whether they make a film supporting me or condemning me. It is all the same to me.

I exist here for my sannyasins, my whole energy is for them; it is not to be wasted on stupid people. So he must have felt that no attention is being paid to him -- and I deliberately never pay any attention to such people. They come with closed minds, they come with great egos -- and we are not here to nourish their egos. In the new commune they will be debarred; that will be the only attention we will pay to them!

And he says: JESUS HUMILIATED HIMSELF TO BE EQUAL WITH US.

What I am going to say has nothing to do with Jesus; it has something to do with what this man, the director of NCRV, is saying. So remember it.

He says: JESUS HUMILIATED HIMSELF TO BE EQUAL WITH US...

That simply means he knew that he is not equal with you! "He humiliated himself to be equal with us." He was NOT -- I am, so why should I humiliate myself? For what? I am simply equal, there is no need to humiliate!

HE HUMILIATED TO BE EQUAL WITH US AS A SERVANT!...

I am neither a master nor a servant. I don't possess you, I don't own you. If Jesus tried to be a SERVANT TO you, that MEANS somewhere deep down he must HAVE been self-conscious THAT he possesses you, THAT HE owns you -- otherwise why? Neither are you a servant to me, why I should be a servant to you? We are all friends here! There is no need to be a servant or to BE humiliating oneself.

And do you think this is true? Jesus called himself the only-begotten son of God -- the ONLY. How he can be equal to you? You are born out of sin, he was born out of a virgin mother. I am not born out of a virgin mother! My mother is here, you can ask her. And I am not the only-begotten son of God, because there is no God at all, so there is no question of my being the only-begotten son of God. This is all sheer bullshit!

The Christian God must be homosexual because the whole trinity consists of three men -- no women at all! On the earth Jesus is born out of a virgin mother. That is nonsense, absurdity -- illogical, unscientific! Secondly, he is the only-begotten son of God; God must have carried him in his womb. Because he is not a woman, and there is no woman in Christian trinity -- unless the Holy Ghost functions in double ways!

This is not right about Jesus. He dragged the money-changers out of the temple violently; that is not the way of a humble man. With a whip in his hand he chased them out of the temple. I have not done anything like that! I never enter a temple -- I never think any temple is worth entering in. And this whip -- is this a way of a humble man? And driving the money-changers out of the temple!

He cursed a fig tree because they were hungry... Jesus and his disciples were hungry and the fig tree was without figs. He became very angry; he cursed the fig tree. The fig tree died immediately! This is how a humble man behaves? Then why he was crucified if he was so humble?

And doing all those so-called miracles -- walking on the water, raising the dead -- is this the way of a humble man? Those are all strategies to prove superiority, all those miracles.

This man, the director of NCRV, is talking sheer nonsense. He knows nothing about Jesus, he knows nothing about me.

And he says:... BUT NOT BHAGWAN. BHAGWAN RAISES HIMSELF ABOVE HUMANITY -- HAUGHTY! A STRANGE RULER.

I have never ruled anybody. I never come out of my room to rule anybody! What kind of ruling he has seen here? I never order anybody, I don't give any commandments to anybody. And I have never said that I am above humanity. What I am saying is that EVERYBODY is above humanity! Humanity is only a bridge, not a place to live but something to be surpassed.

And "Bhagwan", the word "Bhagwan", creates misunderstanding in Christian minds, because they immediately translate it as "God" Bhagwan simply means "the Blessed One", and I am certainly a Blessed One -- I cannot deny it! Just to be humble have I to falsify, start lying about myself? I AM blissful, I AM the Blessed One -- and you can be blissful and you can also be the Blessed One. What has happened to me can happen to you, because this is your birthright too.

But he had come with a particular idea. In a way it is good that people are becoming so much afraid of me. It is good: it shows that the impact is making them tremble. Holland is becoming one of my most important orange countries. Christians are becoming afraid -- it is good. Make them as much afraid as possible! Make everybody afraid of you! Let them all tremble -- before they collapse! It is good...

Chapter No. 3 - By Following Nobody Knows
13 October 1980 am in Buddha Hall, Pune, India

The first question:

Question 1

OSHO,

IS THIS A NEW PHASE OF YOUR WORK -- TWO COMPLETE DISCOURSES WITHOUT A SINGLE JOKE?

Premananda,

THANK YOU for reminding me! I had just forgotten all about jokes! Here are two jokes for the two discourses:

A young man was driving home from work one night in the pouring rain when he noticed an attractive woman standing on the footpath, soaking wet. He stopped and offered her a ride home. When they arrived at her apartment, she invited him in for a drink.

After a few drinks, one thing led to another and very soon they were in her bedroom making love. Suddenly he realized that it was quite late and his wife would be furious with him.

Before leaving he asked the young woman for a piece of chalk. He placed it behind his ear and then proceeded to drive home.

At home his wife screamed at him "Where have you been?"

"You will never believe this, darling," the man replied. "I was driving home from work this evening in the pouring rain and I stopped to pick up a woman who was standing on the footpath. I drove her home, she invited me, we had a drink, and I have spent the last two hours making love!"

"Don't bullshit me!" the wife snarled. "You have been down at the pool hall again with the boys! I can see the chalk behind your ear!"

And the second:

A jealous husband hired the very best detective in town to spy on his wife. The detective reported back after a few days, his arm in a plaster cast.

"What happened?" the husband asked eagerly.

The detective began: "At two o'clock, Saturday afternoon, I saw your wife walking hand-in-hand with another man."

"Where did they go?" the husband demanded.

"They checked into a hotel and were given a room on the second floor."

"And then?" the husband urged.

"Then I climbed up a tree and sat on a branch watching them through the open window. They sat on the edge of the bed, kissing and hugging. Then he took off his clothes..."

"And then, what happened then?" the enraged husband blasted.

"Well, then she took off her clothes..." the detective continued warily.

"Tell me, tell me what happened next!" yelled the husband in a rage.

"Well, sir, you see, at that moment the branch I was sitting on broke. I fell to the ground and could see no more!"

You get...? You missed it! Think over it later on!

The second question:

Question 2

OSHO,

COULD YOU PLEASE TELL ME YOUR OPINION ABOUT J. KRISHNAMURTI, WHO IS SAYING THAT YOU WON'T BE FREE AND THEREFORE NOT HAPPY AS LONG AS YOU FOLLOW ANY TRADITION, RELIGION OR MASTER?

Wolfgang,

GAUTAM THE BUDDHA has divided the enlightened persons into two categories. The first category he calls the ARHATAS and the second BODHISATTVAS. The ARHATA and the BODHISATTVA are both enlightened; there is no difference between their experience, but the arhata is not a Master and the BODHISATTVA is a Master. The ARHATA has attained to the same truth but he is incapable of teaching it, because teaching is a totally different art.

For example, you can see a beautiful sunset, you can experience the beauty of it as deeply, as profoundly as any Vincent van Gogh, but that does not mean you will be able to paint it. To paint it is a totally different art. Experiencing is one thing, helping others to experience it is not the same.

There have been many ARHATAS but very few BODHISATTVAS. The BODHISATTVA is both enlightened and skillful to teach what has happened to him. It is the greatest art in the world; no other art can be compared with it, because to say the unsayable, to help people come out of their sleep, to find and invent devices to bring what has happened to him to those who are thirsty for it and help them to get it... it is a rare gift.

Krishnamurti is an ARHATA, he is not a BODHISATTVA. His enlightenment is as great as anybody else's enlightenment; he is a Buddha, a Jesus, a Lao Tzu. In enlightenment there are no degrees; either one is enlightened or one is not. Once a person is enlightened he has the same flavor, the same fragrance as anyone who has ever become enlightened or will ever become enlightened. But to relate the experience, to communicate the experience is not possible for all.

Once Buddha was asked, "How many people have become enlightened amongst your disciples?"

He said, "Many." He showed..."Look!" Manjushri was sitting by his side and Sariputra and Modgalyayan and Mahakashyap. He said, "These four people are right now present here -- they have become enlightened."

The inquirer asked, "If they have become enlightened why they are not so famous as you are? Why nobody knows about them? Why they don't have thousands of followers?"

Buddha said, "They have become enlightened but they are not Masters. They are ARHATAS, they are not BODHISATTVAS."

The ARHATA knows it but cannot make it known to the others; the BODHISATTVA knows it and can make it known to the others. Krishnamurti is an ARHATA. Because of this he cannot understand the beautiful world of a Master and his disciples.

You ask me, Wolfgang: COULD YOU PLEASE TELL ME YOUR OPINION ABOUT J. KRISHNAMURTI, WHO IS SAYING THAT YOU WON'T BE FREE AND THEREFORE NOT HAPPY AS LONG AS YOU FOLLOW ANY TRADITION, RELIGION OR MASTER?

He is right. If you follow a tradition, religion or Master -- remember the word "follow" -- you will not be free and you will not be blissful, you will not know the ultimate truth of life: by following nobody knows it. What can you do by following a tradition? You will become an imitator. A tradition means something of the past, and enlightenment has to happen right now! A tradition may be very ancient -- the more ancient it is, the more dead.

A tradition is nothing but footprints on the sands of time of the enlightened people, but those footprints are not enlightened. You can follow those footprints very religiously and they will not lead you anywhere, because each person is unique. If you remember the uniqueness of the person then no following is going to help you, because there cannot be a fixed routine.

That's the difference between science and religion: science depends on tradition. Without a Newton, without an Edison, there is no possibility for Albert Einstein to have existed at all. He needs a certain tradition; only on that tradition, on the shoulders of the past giants in the world of science, he can stand. Of course when you stand on the shoulders of somebody you can look a little farther than the person on whose shoulders you are standing, but that person is needed there.

Science is a tradition, but religion is not a tradition: it is an individual experience, utterly individual. Once something is known in the world of science it need not be discovered again, it will be foolish to discover it again. You need not discover the theory of gravitation -- Newton has done it. You need not go and sit in a garden and watch an apple fall and then conclude that there must be some force in the earth that pulls it downwards; it will be simply foolish. Newton has done it; now it is part of human tradition. It can be taught to any person who has a little bit of intelligence; even schoolchildren know about it.

But in religion you have to discover again and again. No discovery becomes a heritage in religion. Buddha discovered, but that does not mean you can simply follow the Buddha. Buddha was unique, you are unique in your own right, so how Buddha has entered into truth is not going to help you. You are a different kind of house; the doors may be in different directions. If you simply follow Buddha blindly, that very following will be misleading.

Traditions cannot be followed. You can understand them and understanding can be of immense help, but following and understanding are totally different things.

So Krishnamurti is right when he is against following, but when he starts saying that you need not even understand, then he is wrong. Then he is speaking the language of an ARHATA and he is unaware of the world of the BODHISATTVA. Understanding is possible -- you can understand Buddha.

What he is doing for forty years? What efforts has he been making for forty years? How Wolfgang came to know Krishnamurti's ideas? He is trying to explain, he is trying with great effort to make you understand. You cannot follow Krishnamurti, but you can certainly understand his vision, his perspective, and that will be an enrichment. It will not bring you enlightenment, but it can be used as a stepping-stone.

Krishnamurti says he is fortunate that he has not read any religious scriptures. That is not right. In the first place it is not factual -- he has been taught when he was young all the ancient scriptures, not only of one tradition but of all the traditions, because he was brought up by theologists, Theosophists -- great synthesizers of all the paths and all the religions and all the traditions. Theosophy was one of the greatest efforts ever made to bring all the traditions closer to each other: Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Christianity, Judaism, Jainism, Buddhism, Taoism. Theosophy was trying to find out the essential core of them all, and Krishnamurti was taught in every possible way all that is great. He may have forgotten about it, and I know that he must have forgotten because he will not lie, he will not say anything deliberately untrue. But he lived in a kind of hypnosis for twenty-five years.

He was taken possession by the Theosophists when he was only nine years of age, and then he had been brought up m a very special way. Many secret methods have been tried upon him: he has been taught while he was sleeping, he has been taught while he was in deep hypnosis, so he does not remember it at all.

Only recently Russian psychologists are trying to find ways how to teach children while they are asleep, because if we can teach children while they are asleep much time can be saved. And one thing more: when a child is asleep he can be taught more easily because there is no distraction. His unconscious can be taught directly, which is easier. When we teach a child through his consciousness it is difficult, because ultimately the teaching has to reach to the unconscious, only then it becomes yours. And to reach to the unconscious through the conscious it takes long time, long repetition. You have to go on repeating again and again and again, then only slowly slowly it settles to the bottom of the conscious, and from that bottom slowly it penetrates into the unconscious.

But in deep sleep, or more precisely in hypnosis -- hypnosis means sleep, deliberately created sleep -- you can reach directly to the unconscious; the conscious can be bypassed, and a thing can be put into the unconscious. The conscious will not know anything about it.

Krishnamurti was taught all the great scriptures in a deep hypnosis; he has completely forgotten. Not only that: he has been even manipulated to write while he was in hypnosis. His first book, AT THE FEET OF THE MASTER, was written under hypnosis, hence he simply shrugs his shoulders when you ask about that first book -- which is really a rare document of immense value. But he simply says, "I don't know anything about it, how it happened. I can't say that I have written it."

Krishnamurti has been experimented upon by Theosophists in many subtle ways, so he is not aware that he has been acquainted with all the great scriptures and all the great documents, and what he goes on saying has reflections of all those teachings They are there, but in a very subtle form. He cannot quote the scriptures, but what he says is the very essence of the scriptures.

A tradition has to be understood, and if you can understand many traditions, of course it will enrich you. It will not make you enlightened, but it will help you towards the goal, it will push you towards the goal. Don't be a follower of any tradition -- don't be a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan. But it will be unfortunate if you remain unaware of the beautiful words of Jesus, it will be a sheer misfortune if you don't know the great poetry of the Upanishads.

It will be as if a person has not heard any great music -- Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Wagner. If one has not heard, something will be missing in him. It will be a misfortune if you have not read Shakespeare, Milton, Dostoevsky, Kalidas, Bharbhuti, Rabindranath, Kahlil Gibran. If you have not been acquainted with Tolstoy, Chekhov, Maxim Gorky, something in you will remain missing. The same is true if you have not read Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu, Gautam Buddha, Bodhidharma, Baso, Lin Chi, Socrates, Pythagoras, Heraclitus. These are very different, unique perspectives, but they will all help you to become wider.

So I will not say that traditions are useless; I will say they become dangerous if you follow them blindly. Try to understand, imbibe the spirit. Forget the letter, just drink of the spirit. It is certainly dangerous to belong to a religion because that means you are encaged, imprisoned into a certain creed, dogma. You lose your freedom, you lose your inquiry, your exploration.

It is dangerous to live surrounded by a small philosophy. You will be a frog in the well; you will not know about the ocean. But to understand is a totally different phenomenon. The very effort to understand all the religions of the world will make you free of creeds and dogmas.

That's what's happening here. I am talking about all the religions for the simple reason so that you don't become addicted with one standpoint. Life is multidimensional. Certainly Moses has contributed something to it which nobody else has done. Unless you understand Moses you will miss that perspective, that dimension; that much you will be poorer.

And the people who listen to Krishnamurti, they start following him! There are Krishnamurtiites who have been listening him for forty years or even fifty years. I have come across old people of the same age as Krishnamurti w ho have listened to him for fifty years, since 1930, and they have reached nowhere. All that they have learned is a kind of negativeness: "This is wrong, that is wrong." But what is right? About that there seems to be not even a glimpse in their being.

Don't become part of a religion, but visit, be a guest to all the religions. In the temple there is a beauty, in the mosque also, a different kind of beauty, in the church again a different experience. And this is our whole heritage; the whole humanity's past belongs to you. Why choose?

The follower chooses. He insists to be a Christian; he will avoid Upanishads, he will avoid Dhammapada, he will not bother about Koran. He is unnecessarily crippling himself, paralyzing himself.

I also say don't follow, but I will not agree with the statement that: don't try to understand. Trying to understand is not following; your understanding becomes more clear, more sharpened.

Krishnamurti goes on reading detective novels. Is hc following those detective novels? Is he trying to become a detective? If he can read detective novels, what is wrong in reading the Upanishads? And detective novels are just ordinary, juvenile, childish. Upanishads are the Himalayan peaks of human consciousness. Don't follow them -- there is no need to follow anybody.

My sannyasins are not my followers, they are just my companions. The word satsang, the word upanishad, means the company of a Master. The disciple is a companion a fellow-traveler, and of course if you are traveling with somebody who knows the territory, who has explored the territory, your journey will become easier, your journey will become richer, your journey will have less unnecessary hazards; you will be able to reach the goal sooner than alone.

Traditions become dangerous only when you cling to them; then certainly there is danger. Traditions are group efforts to keep the unexpected from happening. If you become a part, then it is dangerous, because then the tradition becomes a hindrance to you for exploring. The tradition insists for belief -- believe in it and believe without inquiry. That's what people are doing, what Christians and Hindus and Mohammedans are doing -- believing into something they have never inquired. And to believe into something without inquiring is very disrespectful towards truth and towards your own self.

No, belief is not going to help -- only knowing can free you.

And he says the same about a Master. It is true about ninety-nine so-called Masters, but it is not true about the one, the real one He is ninety-nine percent right, because wherever there are real coins there are bound to be false coins too. A tradition is dead; a religion is a philosophy, a belief, a dogma. If you believe in it, it appears significant; its arguments appear to be very great. The moment you stand by the side and look with a detached view, you can see the foolishness, the stupidity. You can see that there are assumptions which have not been proved, not been established.

One morning a great philosopher was seen walking down the street touching every pole that he passed. Someone asked him, "Hey, professor, why are you touching all those poles?"

The philosopher grinned and said, "And why are you not touching all those poles?"

It is difficult to answer why you are not touching!

The philosophers have their own arguments; you may not be able to argue against them. They may silence you; they may bring great proofs, logical arguments, rationalizations. They may silence you, but that is not going to help.

After giving a speech at Columbia University, the noted philosopher, Bertrand Russell, was answering questions from the audience. One student's critical question brought him to a full stop. For a whole minute he said nothing, his hand over his chin. Then he peered at the student and rephrased the question, making it more precise. He asked the student, "Would you say that this is still your question?"

The student answered delightfully, "Yes."

Again Lord Russell thought, this time even longer, and twice seemed about to speak. Then he said, "That's a very good question, young man. I don't believe I can answer it!"

But there are very few philosophers like Bertrand Russell who will accept that they can't answer. They will invent answers, they will go on and on creating proofs, inventing proofs. For every kind of nonsense you can find proofs, you can argue.

Religions are all based on theologies, and the very word "theology" is a contradiction in terms. "Theo" means God, "logy" means logic -- logic about God. In fact, there is no logic about God; there is love but no logic. You can approach the phenomenon God or godliness through the heart, through love, but not through logic.

By following a tradition or religion, what are you doing? Your approach is bound to be through the head. Following is always from the head: you are convinced logically, hence you follow, but it is not a love affair.

Love attain is possible only when you find a loving Master. You cannot fall in love with Jesus now, you cannot fall in love with Buddha now; they are no more there. Those dew-drops have disappeared into the ocean. You can fall in love only with a living Master. Buddha must have been very beautiful, but love can happen only between two living hearts.

Krishnamurti is right about ninety-nine percent so-called gurus, but one has to take the risk. If you become too cautious you will never be able to find the true one. To find the true one you will have to pass through many untrue ones.

An American seeker reached to the Everest after a long, arduous journey around the world in search of a Master. And finally he found a great, ancient old man sitting silently on top of the Everest.

The American seeker said, "Ah, great guru, I have devoted my entire life to the quest for truth, honesty, love and justice. I have traveled to the four corners of the earth to experience every agony and every passion. Now I come to you to ask: where do I go from here?"

The guru said, "Go back and do it all over again, my son."

"Thank you, thank you! What can I ever do to repay you?"

And the guru said, "Got any American cigarettes on you?"

He is right about ninety-nine percent gurus, but he is wrong about one percent, and that one percent is really what matters. He is wrong about Buddha, he is wrong about Lao Tzu, he is wrong about Jesus.

But to find a living Master one has to search, and in fact, all those false gurus help you in a way because experiencing them you become aware of that which is false. And to know the false as false is the beginning of knowing the true as the true, the real as the real. If you are absolutely clear about the false, suddenly you become clear about what is real, what is authentic. So even the false gurus are serving, in indirect way, to the real seekers.

Wolfgang, a Master is one who will not tell you to follow him. but he will certainly tell you to be silently with him. It has nothing to do with following. A real, authentic Master does not want to create pseudo replicas, carbon copies; he helps you to discover your original face. He will not impose any structure on you; on the contrary, he will help you to get rid of all imposed structures. He will not condition you; he will only uncondition you and then leave you to yourself He will not recondition you.

When you move from one false guru, then it happens: the new false guru will uncondition you and then recondition you. If you become a Hindu from being a Christian you will be unconditioned first so that you can get rid of your Christianity, and then Hinduism will be imposed on you.

That is what is happening to Hare Krishna people: now they are being conditioned as Hindus. They have lived in one kind of prison called Christianity, now they will be living in another kind of prison called Hinduism. It is the same, it makes no difference; only the prison is different. You get out of one prison and immediately you enter into another.

The real Master will take you out of one prison and will prevent you from entering into another prison. Certainly it is difficult to find a real Master, but that does not mean that one should not try to find; that does not mean that it is impossible -- difficult of course, but not impossible. And when you have come to a Master who simply imparts his love, his being, his presence, who shares his joy, his laughter with you, and there is no desire to condition you, to force you into a certain pattern, then his presence can be of immense catalytic significance; he can be a catalytic agent. In his presence something can start happening in you which may not happen alone for centuries, maybe for lives.

J. Krishnamurti is a beautiful man but one-dimensional, very linear, one line; he follows one track. Hence you will not find any contradictions in him. For fifty years he has been repeating simply the same thing again and again. unknowingly he has conditioned people; just by repeating the same thing again and again for fifty years he has hypnotized people. He has created a great difficulty for those people: he is not a Master himself, he cannot impart his experience -- he is an ARHATA, not a BODHISATTVA -- and he has prevented those people from going into search for some other living Master. He has created a real mess in many people: they would have been in search of a Master but he has prevented them. His logic is clear, appealing, very appealing to the egoist, particularly to the so-called intelligentsia, very appealing, because the so-called intellegentsia is always afraid of surrender, of dropping the ego -- they are egoist people. And when he says, "There is no need to follow, there is no need to go to any Master, there is no need of any initiation," they feel very happy. Their ego is saved but their ego is there.

Now the ego even has the support of Krishnamurti, and all his arguments will be used by the ego. And that's what has happened to thousands of people who have listened to him. He has not been a blessing, because of his linear logic.

In the ancient days people like Krishnamurti used to remain silent. That was the way of the ARHATA -- because he knows that he cannot impart, he has no skill, he remains silent. He does not go around the world telling people, that "I cannot impart and nobody else can do it either."

This is for the first time an ARHATA has been trying to teach people, and of course it is a contradiction. The ARHATA is not supposed to teach, and when an ARHATA starts teaching he will teach against teaching, and the people who will become interested in him will be egoists.

You can find the very cultured egos around Krishnamurti, and they are there because he has become their rationalization: there is no need to surrender. And the irony is, the amazing fact is that Krishnamurti himself passed through many initiations, he had many Masters.

In fact, I had no Master and he had many Masters, but maybe that's why he is against Masters and I am not against! -- because I had had no experience of the false. I have never been with any Master, I have worked on my own. It took long, many lives, but I have never been initiated by anybody. Maybe that's why I have a soft corner for the Masters!

And he has been forced and regimented in every possible way by the Theosophists. And they had many secrets available to them and he was initiated into all kinds of ceremonies and into all kinds of secret mysteries, esoteric, which are not available to the public. He must have become tired.

And one fact has to be remembered always: he was not willingly there -- he had been chosen and adopted. He belonged to a very poor brahmin, the son of a very poor brahmin, so poor that he was not able even to educate his children. And when Annie Besant and Leadbeater found these two brothers, Krishnamurti and Nityananda, swimming in a river by the side of Adyar where is the head-quarters of the Theosophical Movement, world headquarters near Madras... Leadbeater had a certain sensibility to find out talents; he discovered many talented people. He had a certain sense to see immediately the possibility, the potential. He immediately told Annie Besant... they had gone for a morning walk and he saw these two children; Nityananda must have been eleven and Krishnamurti was nine. And he said, "These two children are of immense value -- they can become world teachers!"

So they searched. They found out they belonged to a very poor man; the mother is dead, the father is just a very poor clerk in an office. It is difficult to educate, to feed the children rightly. When he heard that Annie Besant wants to adopt them he was very happy; he willingly gave the children to Annie Besant.

And of course, Nityananda and Krishnamurti both were taught like princes or even better than that. They had the most learned tutors; they went through private education in India, in France, in England, in America, all around the world. They were kept away from the public so they don't become polluted, they don't become contaminated. They were prevented from meeting ordinary people. They were brought up as special people, chosen ones -- chosen to be world teachers. And great discipline was imposed on them. Of course it was all unwilling; they had not chosen the path themselves. There must have been a resistance -- naturally obviously. deep down they must have resisted.

Nityananda died, and my feeling is he died because of too much rigorous discipline -- fasting, getting up early, three o'clock in the morning. And he became ill; still the discipline continued. They were hard taskmasters, they wanted to make supermen, and of course when you want to make somebody a superman the discipline has to be hard, arduous.

Nityananda died. That too has been a wound in Krishnamurti's mind, in his heart: that his brother was almost killed by the discipline. And twenty-five years of rigorous training must have created an antagonism, a resistance.

So when the time came for them to be declared -- the Theosophists gathered from all over the world and Krishnamurti was to declare himself the new incarnation of Gautam the Buddha, the World Teacher -- when he stood on the platform to declare, everybody was shocked, people could not believe because he simply denied. He said, "I am nobody's Master I don't accept any disciples, I don't teach any discipline, and I dissolve this whole organization that has been created around me."

A certain organization was created around him -- six thousand members all over the world. The organization was called "The Star of the East". He dissolved the organization, he distributed the money back to the donors. because it had great money. He shocked everybody: they had worked so long on him and he simply escaped at the last moment.

And that wound has remained in him, and he cannot forgive all those Masters, their disciplines, their teachings -- he cannot forgive, hence he is against. And he himself is an ARHATA, he cannot be a Master. And his whole past of his life is full of resistance.

My experience is totally different, just the opposite: I had nobody to impose anything on me; whatsoever I have done I have done on my own. Hence I don't see any antagonisms in me against Masters, against disciplehood.

But certainly about ninety-nine percent I will agree with him: Muktananda, Reverend Moon, Prabhupad, all kinds of stupid people, exploiting -- exploiting the great search that has arisen in humanity's heart.

Man is on a new borderline, he is going to enter into a new territory. A new step has to be taken. Hence the great inquiry all around the world about truth, about meditation, about the inward. The outer has failed: the science has proved illusory, all its promises have gone down the drain; and man knows now absolutely that "What we have been doing up to now was basically wrong -- the journey has to be inward."

Now there are charlatans, people who can exploit this opportunity, but this is understandable; nothing can be done about it. The seeker has to pass through all these exploiters, deceivers, hypocrites, and has to be aware so that he can find one day the true man -- the man who can uncondition you and will not recondition you again, who will leave you in absolute freedom to be yourself

Beware of the false Masters -- and there are many and of many kinds. They come in all sizes and in all shapes and they can be very attractive, because they fulfill your expectations.

The real Master will never fulfill your expectations; he has no desire to manipulate you. Fulfilling your expectations means a deep desire to manipulate you. You have to be alert, watchful. If somebody is trying to fulfill your expectations, know perfectly well he himself is not free -- he cannot impart freedom to you.

In India, as in other countries and other traditions too, people have expectations, certain expectations. For example, a Christian expects that the enlightened person should be similar to Jesus; now that is absolutely impossible. Jesus cannot be repeated, need not be repeated. To repeat Jesus you will need the whole context and that context is no more possible. Jesus existed in a Jewish world, with all the expectations, desires, hopes and promises. Now that world has disappeared; two thousand years have passed. So much water has gone down the Ganges, nothing is the same any more. How can Jesus be repeated?

But the Christian expects from a true Master to be just like Jesus. No true Master can be just like Jesus. Jesus was not like Moses himself -- that was the trouble. That's why Jews were so much antagonistic: they were expecting him to be just like Moses. Moses lived in a totally different world; he belonged to the Egyptian context, he grew out of that context, he makes sense only in that reference. Jesus cannot be a Moses, it is impossible. And Jews were expecting him to be just a Moses, and because he was not they killed him.

Now Christians are doing the same: they expect the true Master to be a replica of Jesus, an imitation of Jesus. No true Master can be a replica; only some fool can imitate, only some mediocre person can be a carbon copy. This is such a deep insult of one's own being -- to copy somebody else -- that no man of intelligence can ever do it. But the same is true about other traditions.

The Buddhists are waiting for Buddha to come, and he has to be exactly like Buddha. And the Jains have their expectations and the Hindus have their expectations. The Hindus cannot accept Mahavira as an enlightened Master because he is not like Krishna, and the Jains cannot accept Krishna as an enlightened Master because he is not like Mahavira. Jains cannot accept Buddha as an enlightened person because he is not like Mahavira, and Buddhists in their own turn cannot accept Mahavira because he is not like Buddha. No tradition can accept the enlightened persons of other traditions because the expectations differ.

For example, Jains think that the enlightened Master should be naked. Now Jesus does not fulfill that, Mohammed is not naked, Zarathustra is not naked, Krishna is not naked. On the contrary, Krishna loved beautiful clothes, he loved ornaments.

In those days in India men used to wear ornaments, and that seems to be really logical and natural. If you watch nature you will see it: look at the peacock. The female peacock is unornamental; it is the male peacock which is ornamental. Don't be misguided, when you see the beautiful peacock with its rainbow-colored feathers, remember it is the male, not the female. The female is beautiful just by being female; it needs no ornamentation. It is enough to be famale! The poor male needs some other gadgets.

When you listen to the beautiful sound of the cuckoo, remember it is the male, not the female. The female need not have such a beautiful singing voice; just to be female is enough. The female simply sits hidden in a mango grove, and the male goes on pouring his heart, writing love letters!

The whole nature is a proof that the female looks ordinary and the male looks very beautiful. It is strange that why man has started behaving in a reverse way, why women try to be beautiful, use ornaments and lipstick and false eyelashes and whatnot! It is crazy! Let the man use all these things! He is poor, he needs something. The woman is perfectly beautiful as she is. Just to be feminine has a grace, a beauty; there is no need for any other addition.

In Krishna's time things were perfectly natural: men used to wear ornaments. If you have seen Krishna's statues, pictures, you will see: he is wearing silk robes, colorful robes, with a crown with a peacock feather on it, and with a flute, trying to do what the male cuckoo goes on doing, and he is standing in a dancing pose.

Now Jains cannot accept him as an enlightened person; this is not the way of being enlightened. He looks like an actor! According to Jain mythology he has gone into seventh hell -- seventh is the last. Only the very dangerous people are thrown into the seventh. Even Adolf Hitler will not reach the seventh; he will be somewhere, at the most third, not more than that. Krishna is in the seventh and Krishna will not be freed in this phase of creation.

Jains have cycles: one cycle means one creation; then the whole creation becomes dissolved, disappears into nothingness, and then another creation begins, another cycle. Krishna will be released only when the second cycle begins, not in this cycle. When all these suns and moons and stars and this whole universe dissolves through the black holes when all is gone and left -- nothing is left -- then the second cycle starts. Krishna will come back only after the first creation is gone, not before that; it will take eternity. They are very angry at Krishna -- what kind of enlightened person he is.

These expectations! Jains cannot believe that Jesus is enlightened, because according to them an enlightened person cannot be crucified -- impossible. In fact, they have this myth that when Mahavira walks on the road... and he is a naked man without shoes, and you know the Indian roads. And Mahavira walked twenty-five centuries before; just try to imagine what kind of roads -- he must not have been walking -- roadless roads!

The story is: when he walks on the road, even if a thorn is there it immediately turns upside-down because the enlightened person is finished with all his karmas, he cannot suffer any pain any more. Pain is suffered because of your past karmas; you must have committed some sin in the past. He is finished with all the sins, he is completely free from all karmas, so no pain is possible. What to think, what to say about crucifixion?

Jains cannot believe Jesus to be enlightened. For them according to them, it is not the Jews who are crucifying him, it is not the Roman governor who is crucifying him; it is his past bad deeds, past karmas which are creating this pain for him, this agony for him.

If you just watch all these expectations you will be able to understand that no enlightened person can ever go according to your expectations; he has to live his life authentically. And if he wants to exploit you he will fulfill your expectations. If he wants to exploit the Jains he will go naked, he will fast, and they will be happy -- he is a great man. If he wants to fulfill the expectations of Christians he will become a Mother Teresa of Calcutta: serve the poor the crippled, the ill. If he wants to fulfill the expectations of the Mohammedans he will become an Ayatollah Khomaniac -- take the sword -- because that's what Mohammed did. And remember, Mohammedans believe that it was out of compassion, because if somebody is going into hell, even if he can be prevented by a sword he should be prevented. And anybody who is not a Mohammedan is going to hell, so convert everybody into a Mohammedan, by whatsoever means it has to be done but it HAS TO be done. So Ayatollah Khomaniac is the most perfect Mohammedan Master right now!

These fools can pretend because they have to look at the crowd, what are their expectations; they can fulfill their expectations. But a true living Master is bound to be totally free from your expectations. He cannot adjust with you; if you have to be with him you have to adjust with him.

And that's why egoists find it difficult to be with a Master, and they enjoy the company of Krishnamurti -- for the simple reason because he is not asking you to dissolve your ego or surrender or to adjust in any way. He is not asking anything to you. He is not giving you any insight, he is simply making clear the standpoint of an ARHATA. But the ARHATA has never been helpful to anybody, and he cannot be helpful.

And now there have arisen many new kinds of gurus; they are mushrooming all over the world. Religious gurus are there and then there are psychoanalysts and therapists. They are taking the place; they are becoming very important. And of course they understand something about the mechanism of the mind and they can help you a little bit, but they themselves are in a deep mess.

Conversation between two psychiatrists:

"Most of my patients are disturbed. Let me ask you some questions -- to give you an example. Which has smooth curves and sometimes is uncontrollable?"

"A baseball pitcher, of course."

"Next, what wears a skirt and has lips that bring you pleasure?"

"Obviously, a Scotsman playing a bagpipe."

"You know the answers, but it's amazing what strange replies I get from my patients!"

These psychoanalysts, now they are the New Age gurus. They know certain tricks about the mind, but they have no idea of the innermost core of your being. You have to be very careful and cautious because there has never been such a tremendous desire for transformation, hence there are bound to be many people who will not miss this opportunity to exploit you.

In that sense Krishnamurti is right, but only about ninety-nine percent. And to me that is nothing to be compared with the remaining one percent. Those ninety-nine percent can be ignored, that one percent should not be forgotten because that is the only hope: a Master who can make you free, who does not make you a slave; a Master who can make you unconditioned and does not recondition you; a Master who does not give you any doctrine, dogma, a creed to believe in, but shares his joy, his celebration with you.

The last question:

Question 3

OSHO,

PLEASE TELL A JOKE WHICH I CAN LAUGH AT FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE.

Prem Raquibo,

THERE IS NO JOKE LIKE THAT; it is impossible. It cannot happen in the very nature of things, because a joke can be laughed only when you hear it for the first time. You cannot laugh at it for the rest of your life, unless you are so stupid, so utterly stupid, that each time you hear it you have completely forgotten that you have heard it before. And you will be telling it to yourself. because who is going to tell you your whole life? I can tell you only once, then you will have to tell it to yourself. Either you have to be utterly stupid or mad!

I have heard about a man who was sitting in a waiting room on a railway station, and the train was late -- as Indian trains always are. In India they say the timetable exists so that you can know how much the train is late. Otherwise how you will know how much it is late? Late it is GOING to be! And in India they say a ticket is valid for twenty-four hours. It is valid for twenty-four hours because nobody knows when the train will come. If it comes in twenty-four hours, that too is a miracle!

So he was waiting, sitting in his chair, and the other people in the waiting room were a little bit getting puzzled. Finally one person became so curious he could not contain his curiosity. He said, "Sir, I should not interfere, but what is going on?" -- because the man was sitting there with closed eyes; his lips were moving. Sometimes he will giggle and sometimes he will frown; sometimes he will laugh loudly and sometimes he will make a gesture of his hands as if he is throwing something away. What was going on?

The man asked, "What you are doing? It is none of our business and we should not interfere, and it is absolutely private what you are doing, but excuse me... if you can enlighten me a little bit?"

The man said, "There is nothing private about it -- I am telling jokes to myself!"

The man said, "That's... that I can understand. Sometimes you giggle and you laugh loudly -- you must be having fun. But sometimes you frown and you make such ugly face. and you throw something, push away something by your hands."

He said, "Yes, when I hear a joke which I have heard before!"

He is telling jokes to himself!

Now, Raquibo, one joke for your whole life...? It has never happened! You can laugh only at the first time, because the whole art, the secret of a joke is the unexpected ending. That is the whole secret -- the unexpected turn. The joke first moves in a certain line, and then takes such an unexpected turn that logically you are shocked for a moment. You were moving along the joke expecting certain things to happen, and then what happens is not the logical thing. Something illogical happens -- and it is that illogical makes the joke beautiful, that makes you burst into a laughter.

Logic is not fun, it is a serious thing. And when you start hearing a joke, of course your mind starts functioning logically. You start expecting logically that this is going to happen, this is going to happen, and then something comes at the end which you could not have imagined. It is so illogical, so ridiculous. it is so absurd! The shock... and the whole energy was getting into one direction, mounting up to a climax, and then suddenly everything goes berserk. The whole energy explodes into laughter. It is a certain tension that is released. The logic creates tension and the joke releases it. That is the punchline which does the trick.

But this can happen only once. If you know the punchline, then it is very difficult for you to enjoy it because you will be expecting it. You already know it; now it has become part of your logic. So there cannot be any mounting energy, there cannot be any tension; you will sit relaxedly.

A man entering middle age had been bothered for some time by his prick. It had grown very crooked and had sprouted warts and hairs in the most inappropriate places. His condition had worsened over the years and he decided to seek medical advice.

The local doctor examined his tool thoroughly and stated that amputation was the only possibility for a specimen such as his.

The poor fellow went to another doctor for a second opinion. He also gave the thing a very thorough examination, then stated that it had to come off.

Now in a state of panic, the man went to a specialist for a final opinion. He examined the prick at length, leaned back in his armchair for a while in contemplation, then said, "No, sir, I think that amputation is unnecessary." The patient sighed with relief "Yes," continued the doctor, "in no time at all it will fall off by itself!"

Chapter No. 4 - Surrender is of the Heart
14 October 1980 am in Buddha Hall, Pune, India

The first question:

Question 1

OSHO,

MY FRIEND, WHO HAS A PH.D. IN COMPUTING, AND WHOSE THESIS WAS ON "ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE", SAYS THAT MAN IS A BIOCHEMICAL COMPUTER AND NOTHING MORE. THE BUDDHA HAS SAID THAT ALL THINGS ARE COMPOSITE AND THERE IS NO SELF, NO SOUL, NO SPIRIT, NO "I", WHICH SEEMS TO AGREE WITH MY FRIEND'S VIEWPOINT. COULD YOU PLEASE HELP ME, BECAUSE I FEEL THAT THERE IS SOMETHING MISSING FROM THESE VIEWS BUT I CAN'T SEE IT MYSELF.

Prem Hamid,

MAN certainly is a biocomputer, but something more too. About ninety-nine point nine percent of people it can be said that they are only biocomputers and nothing more. Ordinarily one is only the body and the mind, and both are composites. Unless one moves into meditation one cannot find that which is something more, something transcendental to body and mind.

The psychologists, particularly the behaviorists, have been studying man for half a century, but they study the ordinary man, and of course their thesis is proved by all their studies. The ordinary man, the unconscious man, has nothing more in him than the bodymind composite. The body is the outer side of the mind and the mind the inner side of the body. Both are born and both will die one day.

But there is something more. That something more makes a man awakened, enlightened, a Buddha, a Christ. But a Buddha or a Christ is not available to be studied by Pavlov, Skinner, Delgado and others. Their study is about the unconscious man, and of course when you study the unconscious man you will not find anything transcendental in him. The transcendental exists in the unconscious man only as a potential, as a possibility; it is not yet realized, it is not yet a reality. Hence you cannot study it.

You can study it only in a Buddha, but even then studying is obviously very difficult, just very close to the impossible, because what you will study in a Buddha will again be his behavior. And if you are determined that there is nothing more, if you have already concluded, then even in his behavior you will see only mechanical reactions, you will not see his spontaneity. To see that spontaneity you have also to become a participant in meditation.

Psychology can become only a real psychology when meditation becomes its foundation. The word "psychology" means the science of the soul. Modern psychology is not yet a science of the soul.

Buddha certainly has denied the self, the ego, the "I", but he has not denied the soul and the self and the soul are not synonymous. He denies the self because the self exists only in the unconscious man. The unconscious man needs a certain idea of "I", otherwise he will be without a center. He does not know his real center. He has to invent a false center so that he can at least function in the world, otherwise his functioning will become impossible. He needs a certain idea of "I".

You must have heard about Descartes' famous statement: "COGITO ERGO SUM -- I think, therefore I am."

A professor, teaching the philosophy of Descartes, was asked by a student, "Sir, I think, but how do I know that I am?"

The professor pretended to peer around the classroom. "Who is asking the question?" he said.

"I am," replied the student.

One needs a certain idea of "I", otherwise functioning will become impossible. So because we don't know the real "I" we substitute it by a false "I" -- something invented, composite.

Buddha denies the self because to him "self" simply is another name for the ego, with a little color of spirituality, otherwise there is no difference. His word is anatta. Atta means "self', anatta means "no-self". But he is not denying the soul. In fact he says when the self is completely dropped, then only you will come to know the soul. But he does not say anything about it because nothing can be said about it.

His approach is via negativa. He says: You are not the body, you are not the mind, you are not the self He goes on denying, eliminating. He eliminates everything that you can conceive of, and then he does not say anything what is left. That which is left is your reality: that utterly pure sky without clouds, no thought, no identity, no emotion, no desire, no ego -- nothing is left. All clouds have disappeared... just the pure sky.

It is inexpressible, unnameable, indefinable. That's why he keeps absolutely silent about it. He knows it that if anything is said about it you will immediately jump back to your old idea of the self If he says, "There is a soul in you," what you are going to understand? You will think that, "He calls it soul and we call it self -- it is the same. The supreme self maybe, the spiritual self; it is not ordinary ego." But spiritual or unspiritual, the idea of my being a separate entity is the point.

Buddha denies that you are a separate entity from the whole. You are one with the organic unity of existence, so there is no need to say anything about your separateness. Even the word "soul" will give you a certain idea Of separateness; you are bound to understand it in your own unconscious way.

Hamid, your friend says that: MAN IS A BIOCHEMICAL COMPUTER AND NOTHING MORE.

Can a biochemical computer say that? Can a biochemical computer deny the self, the soul? No biocomputer or any other kind of computer has any idea of self or no-self. Your friend is doing it -- certainly HE is not a biochemical computer. No biochemical computer can write a thesis on artificial intelligence! Do you think artificial intelligence can write a thesis about artificial intelligence? Something more is needed.

And he is absolutely wrong in thinking that Buddha says also the same thing:

... THAT ALL THINGS ARE COMPOSITE AND THERE IS NO SELF NO SOUL, NO SPIRIT, NO "I".

He is wrong to think that Buddha agrees with his viewpoint -- not at all. Buddha's experience is of meditation. Without meditation nobody can have any idea what Buddha is saying about. Your friend's observation is from the standpoint of a scientific onlooker. It is not his experience, it is his observation. He is studying biochemical computers, artificial intelligence, from the outside. Who is studying outside?

Can you conceive two computers studying each other? The computer can have only that which has been fed into it; it cannot have more than that. The information has to be given to it, then it keeps it in its memory -- it is a memory system. It can do miracles as far as mathematics is concerned. A computer can be far more efficient than any Albert Einstein as far as mathematics is concerned, but a computer cannot be a meditator. Can you imagine a computer just sitting silently doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself...?

There are many qualities which are impossible for the computer. A computer cannot be in love. You can keep many computers together -- they will not fall in love! A computer cannot have any experience of beauty. A computer cannot know any bliss. A computer cannot have any awareness. A computer is incapable of feeling silence. And these are the qualities which prove that man has something more than artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence can do scientific work, mathematical work, calculation -- great calculation and very quick and very efficiently, because it is a machine. But a machine cannot be aware of what it is doing. A computer cannot feel boredom, a computer cannot feel meaninglessness, a computer cannot experience anguish. A computer cannot start an enquiry about truth, it cannot renounce the world and become a sannyasin, it cannot go to the mountains or to the monasteries. It cannot conceive of anything beyond the mechanical -- and all that is significant is beyond the mechanical.

A policeman starts chasing a car after noticing that the driver is a computer, a robot -- wearing a hat, smoking a cigar and driving with one hand hanging out of the window.

He finally succeeds in stopping the car. He approaches it and sees to his surprise that there is a man sitting next to the computer.

"Are you mad?" exclaims the officer, "letting your computer drive?"

"Excuse me, officer," replies the man, "I asked him for a lift!"

Yes, in stories it is possible, but not in reality.

Mr. Polanski enjoys playing with cuckoo clocks. One rainy Sunday morning he takes his cuckoo clock apart and puts it back together again.

At twelve o'clock the family gathers, waiting for the pretty little bird to sing its song... nothing happens. They wait till one o'clock -- no cuckoo. At two o'clock they are still waiting for the bird to appear. Finally, at three o'clock, the little door opens and the cuckoo comes out.

"Dammit!" it squeaks. "Do any of you guys know the time?"

The second question:

Question 2

OSHO

YOU SPOKE YESTERDAY ABOUT KRISHNAMURTI AND MASTERS, AND THAT WE CAN UNDERSTAND, WE CAN KNOW, WE CAN SURRENDER AND WE CAN FALL IN LOVE WITH THE MASTER, BUT WE SHOULD NOT FOLLOW AND BELIEVE IN THE MASTER. IS IT POSSIBLE TO SURRENDER WITHOUT BELIEVING? MY HEART SAYS TO ME THAT TO SURRENDER AND TO BELIEVE IS THE SAME. I CANNOT FEEL THE DIFFERENCE. WHAT IS SURRENDER AND BELIEF? I WANT TO BELIEVE. I NEED TO BELIEVE! IF YOU SAY THAT MEDITATION IS THE SOURCE AND I DO MEDITATION, I BELIEVE YOU, I TRUST YOU.

Dhyan Anna,

SURRENDER is not possible at all if you believe, because belief is of the head and surrender is of the heart. Belief means you are convinced logically, intellectually, that what is being said is right. The ARGUMENT appeals to you. Belief has nothing to do with the heart; it is absolutely of the mind, a mind phenomenon. Belief is not a love affair.

Belief means intellectually you are convinced because you cannot see any argument which can destroy it; all the arguments that you can manage prove it. But deep down there is bound to be an undercurrent of doubt. Belief cannot destroy doubt, it can only cover it up. It can cover so perfectly that you MAY forget about the doubt, but it is always there. Just scratch a little bit any believer and you will find the doubt there. That's why believers have always been afraid of listening to anything that goes against their belief.

The Catholic Church goes on prohibiting the Catholics: not to read this, not to read that. They go on putting books on their black list which are banned for the Catholics. The Vatican library has thousands of tremendously beautiful documents with it -- for thousands of years they have been gathering -- of all those scriptures that they have burned, banned, prohibited. But they have kept a few copies in the Vatican library just as a historical past, and what has been done in the past and what has been destroyed in the past -- some proofs of that. Anything that went against Christianity was destroyed.

The same has been done by Mohammedans, by the Hindus, by almost all the believers of the world. Why this fear? -- because they are all aware of the fact that the believer is not free of doubt; the doubt is there and anybody can raise the dust again. Somehow they have managed it to settle, somehow they have covered the wound, but the wound has not healed; it is there, and underneath the cover it goes on spreading.

People believe in God, but does that mean their doubt has dropped? If the DOUBT IS no more there, what is the need of belief? Belief is an antidote, it is a medicine. If you are healthy no medicine is needed: if there is no doubt in you no belief is needed.

Belief is very superficial; it divides you. The believer is only the superficial part of you and the remaining part, the major part, the nine-tenths of your being, remains full of doubts. There is turmoil within every believer and he is afraid, really afraid to come across something which may disturb his belief -- and anything can disturb his belief.

Communists are not allowed to read anything against communism. In Russia, government does not allow anything that goes against communism. Why this fear? The fear is because they know that if things against communism come into their country, people will start thinking again; their doubts will arise.

Anna, the first thing you have to understand is: believing is of the head and surrender is of the heart. Surrender is not a belief, it is not an intellectual conviction -- it is just the ultimate in love. You CANNOT give any proofs for your surrender; you can give thousand and one logical proofs for your belief, but for your surrender you cannot supply a single proof. And whatsoever you say will look absurd to yourself; it will fall short. Surrender has a transcendental beauty, and belief is so ordinary and the proof is so mundane.

That is the trouble why people feel a little embarrassed if you ask about their love. If you ask a man why he has fallen in love with a certain woman he will feel a little embarrassed. You are asking something which cannot be answered, hence the embarrassment. Why...? He can manage to say something, but neither he will be convincing you nor he himself will feel that it is worth saying. He can say the woman is beautiful, that's why... but these are all rationalizations, not reasons for his surrender.

Surrender has no reasons, no motives at all. Surrender simply means a happening, not a doing. Belief is a doing -- you do it, you make every effort -- but surrender happens from the beyond. You are simply possessed by it.

Lovers know it, how they become possessed. If you say, "Because the woman is beautiful," the other person can say, "But nobody else has fallen in love with her. And she has been beautiful even before you had met her, and she is beautiful, but I have not fallen in love with her. How come you have fallen in love with her?"

In fact, that is a rationalization, it is not true. Somehow he is trying to save his face. He does not want to say that he does not know why it has happened -- it has simply happened. He does not want to accept that he is living something irrational, that he has allowed something illogical to happen to him.

The reality is: the woman looks beautiful because you have fallen in love with her, not vice versa. It is not because of her beauty that you have fallen in love. otherwise the whole world would have fallen in love before you. Just the opposite is the case: she looks beautiful to you because you are in love. Love beautifies.

And falling in love with a man or a woman is the lowest kind of love. When you fall in love with a Buddha or a Christ or a Krishna it is the highest kind of love, the crescendo. It is just far out! It is outlandish! You cannot even give any reasons for your ordinary love -- what reasons you can give when you fall in love with a Master? There are no reasons at all.

Just the other day Vivek was telling me a joke. She said, "Osho, do you know why the Jews have short necks?"

And I said...(OSHO SHRUGS HIS SHOULDERS)

And she said, "Yes, that's why!"

When you love, what you can say except shrug your shoulders? And if you go on shrugging your shoulders the whole day you will have a short neck!

Anna, you ask me: IS IT POSSIBLE TO SURRENDER WITHOUT BELIEVING?

Not only it is possible without believing, it is only possible if there is no believing. With belief there is no possibility -- belief is a false substitute. Surrender happens out of trust, and trust and belief are not synonymous.

That is where Anna is confused: she thinks trust and belief are the same -- they are not. Belief is of the head, trust is of the heart. Belief has arguments about it, trust has no arguments. Belief is intellectual, trust is supra-intellectual. You cannot say a single word in favor of your trust, and if you say you can be immediately refuted very easily. Any fool can destroy your argument for trust, because in fact there is no argument possible.

You say, Anna: MY HEART SAYS TO ME THAT TO SURRENDER AND TO BELIEVE IS THE SAME.

It is not the heart, Anna, it is the head. You are confused. You don't know what is the heart and what is the head -- and this is the case with almost everybody. People live through their heads. Even if they love, they love via the head. They say, "I think I am in love." I think -- that comes first and then comes love. It is not a question of thinking at all; whether you think or not does not matter. If you are in love, you are in love. Love does not come via the head.

You say: My heart says to me that to surrender and to believe is the same.

No, it is your head which is telling you that both are the same: to believe is to surrender. This is the language of the head -- belief is the language of the head. Surrender belongs to a totally different dimension; it has nothing to do with belief. That's why belief can be disturbed, but surrender cannot be disturbed.

And this has been my experience of working with thousands of sannyasins: almost always it happens that whenever a man comes to me his approach is intellectual. There are a few exceptions, it is not an absolute rule; but it can be said that almost ninety-nine percent men are head-oriented, and when a man comes to me he comes through logical conviction. Listening to me, trying to understand me, if he feels convinced he becomes a sannyasin.

But his sannyas has not much value. Any day he can drop the sannyas. Anybody can destroy his belief because it is based on logic, and logic is just a game. If you come across a person who is more logical than you he will destroy your proofs.

I have never come across a single proof which cannot be destroyed. In fact, to prove anything is difficult. to disprove is very easy. If you say, "The sunset is beautiful." it can be argued it is not, and more easily. Anybody can object, anybody can say, "Give me the proof! What do you mean by beauty? What is beauty? And how can you prove that this sunset is beautiful?" And you will be at a loss. You know it is beautiful, but that knowing is not of the head, that knowing is of the heart -- and heart Cannot argue, it simply knows.

The problem is: the head has all the questions and the heart has all the answers. The head has all the doubts and the beliefs and the heart has only the trust. That is the flavor of the heart.

There is a beautiful story of Chekhov,. a parable:

In a village there was one man who was thought to be an utter idiot, and of course he felt very offended. He tried in every way to convince people, but the more he tried the more it became known that he is a fool.

A mystic was passing through the village, and the idiot went to the mystic and said, "Somehow save me -- my life has become impossible! The people of this place think I am an idiot. How can I get rid of this? -- because it is torturing me day and night. It has become a nightmare! I am afraid even to face anybody in the town, because wherever I go people start laughing. I have become a laughingstock! Only you can show me the way. What should I do?"

The mystic said, "This is very simple. From tomorrow morning you start asking people such questions which cannot be answered."

He said, "For example, what?"

The mystic said, "If somebody says, 'Look, how beautiful is the rose!' you immediately raise the question: 'Who says? What is the proof? What is beauty?' If somebody talks about time, immediately ask, 'What is time?' If somebody asks about God, ask him, 'Give me the proof!' Somebody talks about love, don't miss the opportunity -- just go on asking! Don't make any statement from your side. You simply ask the questions and make people feel embarrassed, because these are the questions nobody can answer!"

And within seven days the man was thought by the villagers as one of the greatest geniuses, because now he was not making any statement so he was not available for you to refute. He was simply denying others.

That is the whole art of atheism: just go on saying no, and nobody can convince you. Yes comes from the heart, and the head is very efficient in saying no. And nobody can prove... nothing can be proved by the head. And higher the value, the more difficult it is to prove.

When men come to me they come through the intellect; their sannyas is not very reliable. But when women come to me... and of course, again there are exceptions, but very few, the same proportion. Ninety-nine percent women are going to remain sannyasins.

That's why I have given my commune totally to be disciplined, to be controlled by the women sannyasins -- for the simple reason because their approach to me is through the heart; they are more reliable. One percent men are reliable, one percent women are not reliable -- they can drop sannyas. But ninety-nine percent women are reliable: they come through the heart. Nobody can refute their hearts. Their approach is through trust and love.

Anna, you have to understand the difference between the head and the heart. It will take a little because the society has made everybody confused. Everybody is in a mess -- nobody knows where is the heart and where is the head.

Just be here -- she is new -- soon you will be able to feel the difference clearly.

You say: I CANNOT FEEL THE DIFFERENCE.

Yes, right now it will be difficult, but become a little more silent. In silence the distinction will come very loud.

You say: I WANT TO BELIEVE. I NEED TO BELIEVE!

That's why it is difficult for you to make the difference. You are desperately in need to believe, you are afraid not to believe, because you don't know anything about trust. Once you know of trust, who bothers about belief? Who cares? Belief is nobody's need. It is the strategy of the priests imposed on you that belief is a need -- it is NOT a need. Trust certainly is a need, is a nourishment, but belief is just artificial food, maybe very colorful, but not nourishing.

You say: IF YOU SAY THAT MEDITATION IS THE SOURCE AND

I DO MEDITATION, I BELIEVE YOU, I TRUST YOU.

Please, trust but don't believe. And of course, meditation is the way, the source -- that's why I have given you the name Dhyan Anna. Dhyan Anna means meditation, prayer. Through meditation you will come to prayer Prayer is the highest form of love, of trust. Through meditation one finds the heart, and prayer arises. And through meditation ultimately one finds the being. And the moment you have found the being there is nothing more to be found... you have come home.

The third question:

Question 3

OSHO,

YOU CAN READ IN THE BIBLE THAT JESUS WARNED ABOUT OTHER MASTERS COMING IN THE FUTURE. DO YOU THINK HIS WARNINGS WERE ALSO INCLUDING YOU? YOUR MESSAGE IS VERY DIFFERENT FROM IMPORTANT PARTS OF THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS. HOW IS IT POSSIBLE THAT ENLIGHTENED MASTERS CAN SAY SO MANY CONTRARY THINGS?

Dieter,

ONE THING of great import has to be understood first. Jesus became enlightened only at the last moment on the cross. Hence his statements that he has made before that experience are not of an enlightened person -- close, very close, approximate, but as far as truth is concerned there is nothing like approximate truth.

This thing has not been told to Christians at all, that Jesus became enlightened at the very last moment. On the cross he became enlightened, on the cross he became a Christ.

To me the cross is important not for the same reasons as it is for Christians. To them the cross is important because Jesus was crucified, and the cross has become the symbol of crucifixion. To me that is absolutely wrong -- that is a kind of life-negation, that is worshipping death, that is making too much fuss about crucifixion.

I call Christianity "Crossianity" because it is not concerned with Christ, it is more concerned with the cross. I also love the symbol of cross, but for a totally different reason: not because of crucifixion but because Jesus became enlightened on the cross, he became aware of the immortality of his ultimate being. To me it is not crucifixion, not death, but the beginning of eternal life.

At the last moment Jesus says to God, "Have you forsaken me?" And that shows that he was still living in the mind, expecting, desiring, hoping -- even from God. There were a few expectations that at the last moment some miracle would happen. Not only the people who had gathered there were expecting a miracle looking at the sky -- that a divine hand will appear and Jesus will be raised to ultimate glory; he will be saved at the last moment -- but Jesus himself was also waiting.

He says, "Have you forsaken me?" What does it mean? It is a complaint, it is not a prayer. It is frustration, it is disappointment. And disappointment is possible only if there was some deep desire, some longing to be fulfilled. God has failed him -- he has not come to his rescue. He was hoping.

And these are the signs of an unenlightened person. These are symbolic of the ego, of the head, of the mind, of the very process of the mind.

But he was a man of great intelligence too: immediately he recognized that what he is saying is wrong, the very desire is wrong. One should not expect anything from the universe, one should not feel disappointed. one should not feel frustrated. This is not trust! This is not a love affair! This is not an absolute yes, it is a conditional yes: "You fulfill these conditions, then of course I will be grateful. But because conditions have not been fulfilled I am angry." There is anger in his voice; there is anxiety, disappointment.

But he understood the point, and immediately he corrected it. A single moment... and he is no more Jesus, he becomes Christ. Suddenly he looked at the sky and said, "Forgive me! Let thy kingdom come, let thy will be done -- not mine. Let thy will be done!"

This is surrender. He has dropped the mind, he has dropped the ego and all the expectationS. "Let thy will be done." In this egoless state he became enlightened. But unfortunately it happened at the very last moment, and he had no time left.

Buddha lived for forty years after his enlightenment, hence whatsoever he says has a totally different significance than what Jesus says in the New Testament. It is poetry, beautiful, but still he is groping in the dark, making every effort to reach to the light, but he reached to the light at the very last moment. He could not say a single word. He died enlightened, but he could not live enlightened. He died too early -- he was only thirty-three. If you understand this, then your question will be very simple.

You ask me, Dieter: YOU CAN READ IN THE BIBLE THAT JESUS WARNED ABOUT OTHER MASTERS COMING IN THE FUTURE.

That is the fear of an unenlightened person, the fear that somebody may replace him, that somebody may come and may convince people of other things. That fear is perfectly understandable in an unenlightened person, because he is jealous. There is fear that once he is gone his teaching may be destroyed. He is too much concerned about the future.

The unenlightened person lives in the past or in the future, and Jesus did both the things in the New Testament. He is talking continuously about the past; he is trying to prove that "I am the Messiah you have been waiting for. I am the man who has been predicted by the prophets of old. The Old Testament has simply prepared the way for me!" He is too much concerned about the past. He is too much concerned in convincing the Jews that he is the expected Messiah. Who cares?

People have asked me, "Buddha, we have heard, is going to come back after twenty-five centuries. Twenty-five centuries have passed. Are you the Buddha?" Why should I be? I am just myself! Why I should be the Buddha? He did his thing, I am going to do my thing. I am not anybody's carbon copy! Why should I be a Buddha? If he wants to come, that is up to him, but I am nobody's incarnation.

Hindus have asked me that "Krishna says, 'Whenever there is need I will come.' Are you that one?" I am not, absolutely not! I am just myself. If Krishna has to fulfill his promise he will come!

Jesus is too much concerned about the past. In fact, that concern brought him the whole trouble. If he had not bothered about being the Messiah Jews may not have crucified him, because then they started asking about the signs that the Messiah has to give, and then they started asking that "You have to fulfill this and you have to fulfill that -- only then we can accept you, that you are the Messiah." And then he went into unnecessary argumentation, but his whole effort was to prove that "I am the expected Messiah." This is concern for the past, and only an unenlightened person is concerned about the past.

And he is very much concerned about the future also. He warns about other Masters coming in the future. "And beware of them," he says, "because they will distract you; they will distract you from the path" -- the path that he has shown. He is making sure that no follower is taken away from the fold even when he is gone. This is too much businesslike!

And the reason is that he became enlightened at the very last moment and he had no time to correct. to change his statements. His statements were made in an unenlightened state.

That's why you find his approach towards God very childish. He calls God ABBA -- papa, daddy! There is no daddy -- daddy is dead! It is childish. It is the need of a child, because the child cannot be without the father. hence God becomes the father.

And a strange thing has happened: now Christian priests are called fathers. A monastery is defined by someone: a place where unwed fathers live They don't have any wife, they don't have any children, and they are fathers. What kind of fathers are these? But if God can be a father without a wife, then of course they can also be fathers without wife. Catholic priests being called fathers. Catholic nuns being called mothers, sisters, Mother Superiors! People who have renounced life, renounced families, are still clinging to some ideas of the family. Now God becomes the father, but the father is needed.

Jesus remained a little childish in his approach towards God. Buddha has a maturity, tremendous maturity. He is so mature that he can say there is no God. Existence is enough, more is not needed. There is no creator, creation is enough. Creation itself is divine creativity; it is the process of creativity.

This fear of Jesus simply shows the fear of a Jew businessman! He is afraid his customers may to go somebody else. H is making sure that even in the future the customers never leave the shop! He will be gone, that much is certain, sooner or later he will be gone, but he is making sure that his priests will go on dominating the world; his representatives, his popes, will go on and on always dominating the world.

The very idea to dominate the world, to change the whole world into Christianity, is in some subtle sense an ego trip, an ego number. But it is understandable from an unenlightened person; you cannot expect more than that.

And you ask me: DO YOU THINK HIS WARNINGS WERE ALSO INCLUDING YOU?

The future is absolutely unknown. Nobody knows the future; not even the enlightened person knows about the future. That is the beauty of the future: it is unpredictable. Yes, few inferences can be made, but they are only inferences.

But all the religions have tried to prove that their founders are all-knowing, omniscient. Jains say Mahavira is omniscient: he knows whole past, whole present, whole future. And that is sheer stupidity, because it is a well-known fact -- Buddha has mentioned it, they were contemporaries -- that Mahavira is known to have begged from a house where nobody had lived for years: and he was standing in front of the house with his begging bowl!

And he was told by the neighbors that, "That house is empty and has been empty for years! And you are an omniscient person -- can't you see that there is nobody in the house?" And he knows all about the future -- he does not know about this house in front of him! In fact, if people have not lived in that house for many years, even an unenlightened person will be able to infer, looking at the situation of the house -- the dust that has collected, the doors that are closed for years -- that nobody lives here. You can see easily whether people live in this house or not. Where people live the house has a different quality, aliveness; where nobody lives the house is dead.

Buddha also mentions, just jokingly, about Mahavira, that once he was walking on the road early in the morning. It was a winter morning, too much mist was there, and he stepped on the tail of a dog! And when the dog barked, then he became aware that there is a dog. And he knows all about the past and all about the future!

Nobody knows about the future or about the past. The enlightened person knows only himself, and that's enough. Knowing himself, essentially he knows everybody -- essentially, remember, not in details. Essentially he understands everybody because he knows himself. Knowing himself he knows your potential, your possibility. Knowing himself he knows that you are in darkness. Knowing himself he knows how he has reached to his light, and he can help you to reach to the same light.

But the enlightened person knows only himself and nothing more. He knows himself totally. absolutely, his whole being is full of light, but that does not mean that he knows everything about the whole existence and past and future, all. That is sheer nonsense! Because of this nonsense so many problems have arisen for religion.

The Bible talks about the earth as if it is flat. That was the problem: that in the Middle Ages the scientists who discovered for the first time that the earth is a globe, circular, round, got into trouble because they were going against the Bible, and the Bible is omniscient. How can you dare to say something against Moses, against Jesus and all the prophets? -- because they talk about the earth as flat.

The Bible thinks that the sun goes around the earth, and one can understand why, because we all see the sun moving, in the morning rising and in the evening setting. We see the arc of the sun going around: it is a common inference.

When for the first time Galileo discovered that this is wrong, this is only apparently so, it is a visual illusion, the truth is just the opposite -- the EARTH goes around the sun, not the sun around the earth -- he got into trouble. He was very old when he discovered it, seventy or more, and very ill. When his book was published he was called by the Pope. He went there, and he must have been a man of great understanding... I love that man. Many have condemned him for this same thing, but I don't condemn him. I respect him for the same thing for which he has been condemned for three hundred years or more.

The Pope asked him that, "Have you written this?"

He said, "Yes, I have written."

The Pope said, "This goes against the Bible. Are you ready to change it? Otherwise you will be killed or burned alive!"

He said, "I am perfectly ready to change it. You need not take so much trouble of burning me -- forgive me. I declare that it is the sun who goes around the earth, not The earth. But remember, my declaration will not make any change -- the earth still will go around the sun! Who bothers about Galileo?" He said, "Neither the sun will listen nor the earth will listen. But if it is offensive to you, I am perfectly ready to change it!"

People have thought that he was cowardly; I don't think so. He had a sense of humor! He was not a coward, but he was not stupid -- that much is certain. It would have been stupidity to insist for such a small thing. Why bother about it? He was not suicidal -- that much is certain. If he had been suicidal, if he had carried some idea of suicide in him, then this was a good chance to become a martyr. Then suicide takes spiritual color: one becomes a martyr, a revolutionary.

But he laughed at the whole thing like a joke and he said, "I will change it immediately -- I declare!" But he reminded the Pope that, "My declaration won't make any difference at all -- nobody listens to me."

There is the point which he made clear at the end and he corrected with a footnote. And in the footnote he wrote that. "Although I am correcting it because it goes against the Bible -- and I am the last person to disturb anybody's religion -- but the truth is the earth goes around the sun."

These people... if you try to look into the Vedas, into Gita, into the Bible, into the Koran, you will find thousand and one things which are absolutely wrong, but I can understand why they are wrong. They were writing thousands of years before, and at that time that was the general notion; they were simply talking in that way.

Even today although we know that the earth goes around the sun, our language still carries the old idea -- sunrise, sunset -- and I think it is going to remain forever; we will not change the language. What does it mean now? It means nothing! There is no sunrise and no sunset, because the sun never goes around the earth, so what do you mean by rising and setting? But the language carries the old idea because the language was created in those days.

Neither Jesus knows nor Mahavira nor Buddha nor anybody else about the future, but the followers try in every possible way to make their Master omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent! And these are all ego trips. And if the Master himself is yet unenlightened he will pretend himself.

Jesus certainly says that, "Be alert, cautious. because there will be many who will come and who will speak in such a way, in such a convincing way that you can be distracted from the right path." He is simply afraid. Otherwise, the right path should not be afraid at all.

The truth is going to win. It is not Jesus or Krishna or Buddha or Mahavira who are going to win: it is always the truth which wins. So why be worried? But to keep people imprisoned these warnings help; these warnings make people afraid.

He knew nothing about me, he cannot know. I don't know anything about the coming Masters in the world, and I will NOT make you beware of the coming Masters. I would like you to enjoy all the Masters you will find in the future. Don't miss a single opportunity. Enjoy the truth from whatsoever source it comes. The question is of being with truth, not with me. If you are with truth you are with me. Truth is nobody's possession; it is neither mine nor Christ's nor Buddha's.

In Buddha's time Buddha was the most clearcut expression of truth, that's why people were with him. In Jesus' time few people were with Jesus because they could see something beautiful in him. And this has been always so. It you are with me you are not with ME -- you are with truth. Because you feel truth being imparted, communicated, showered on you, that's why you are with me. So wherever you find truth in the future when I am not here, nourish yourself from it. Don't cling to persons. Persons are insignificant, truth is significant.

And you ask, Dieter: YOUR MESSAGE IS VERY DIFFERENT FROM IMPORTANT PARTS OF THE TEACHINGS OF]ESUS.

It is bound to be so, because two thousand years have passed. HOW I can be exactly the same as Jesus and WHY should I be? There is no need. In two thousand years much has changed: the language, the people's understanding, the people's approach. Man has become more mature. Jesus speaks in a very childish way.

Of course, the people, the Masters who will come after me will be speaking in a far more better way than I am speaking, obviously, because they would have learned more. As time passes better and better expressions will be available. But we start clinging and that creates trouble.

Jesus spoke in HIS context, I am speaking in MY context. He could not speak in the way twentieth century will understand. I cannot speak in the way that Jesus had chosen because those people are no more here for whom he was speaking. A different humanity is here; a far more mature, far more ripe humanity is here.

Man has come of age. Now to talk about God as the father is foolish; after Sigmund Freud it is foolish. Jesus had no idea of Sigmund Freud; I have lO take care of Sigmund Freud too, because Sigmund Freud will say that talk about God as father is simply a projection, and he is right. It is your longing to belong to a father figure, it is your childish desire to be dependent on somebody -- you don't want to be independent. Now after Sigmund Freud I cannot speak in the same way as Jesus spoke. But the ultimate experience is the same, the expression will be different.

What Jesus experienced at the last moment on the cross I have experienced, but that experience is of absolute silence. To bring it into language, to create methods to help others to experience it, certainly I am in a far better position than Jesus or Buddha or Mahavira. Naturally, the Masters who will follow me will be in a far better position than me. They will have a far more accurate approach towards truth, because the man is continuously growing. Man is not deteriorating, man is growing, man is reaching to higher peaks.

And you ask: HOW IT IS POSSIBLE THAT ENLIGHTENED MASTERS CAN SAY SO MANY CONTRARY THINGS?

They only APPEAR contrary -- because the language changes, expressions change, ways and methods change; otherwise they are not contrary. And a man like me is BOUND to be not only contrary to Jesus and Buddha and Mahavira: I am going to be many times contradictory to myself for the simple reason that I am trying to bring all the religions in a higher synthesis; different approaches have to be joined together. I am creating an orchestra.

Buddha is a solo flute-player. Of course when you are playing flute solo it has a consistency, but it is not that much rich as when the flute becomes part of an orchestra. Then it has a totally different kind of richness, multidimensionality. But then you have to be in tune with others; you have to be continuously alert not to fall out of step. Somebody is playing a tabla and somebody is playing the sitar and you are playing the flute; all the three have to be in harmony. And of course they are three different instruments, VERY different from each other, but to bring them into harmony can create a higher kind of music.

Jesus is a solo player, Buddha too, Mahavira too. In the past it was bound to be so because they all lived into small worlds. Buddha never went out of Bihar, just a small province of this country; Jesus was confined, Krishna was confined. Now the whole world has become a small village, a global village. You can see it -- the whole world has gathered here! Buddha was not so fortunate; he was surrounded by Biharis. Jesus was surrounded by Jews. Krishna was surrounded by Hindus. They could only be solo players; they were bound because their listeners, the people they were working with were of a certain tradition.

Now I am working with all the traditions together. Jews are here and Hindus and Mohammedans and Christians and Parsis and Sikhs and Jains and Buddhists. All traditions have gathered here. It is a unique experiment in the whole history of humanity; it has never happened in this way.

Even people who are moving into different countries are still carrying their solo instruments. For example, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, although he works in the West. But the method that he calls Transcendental Meditation is a very old Hindu method of chanting a mantra; it is neither transcendental nor meditation; it is just an old rubbish of chanting a mantra! Any word will do; you go on repeating it continuously. It creates a state of autohypnosis and nothing more. Although he is working in the West, but he is using only an autohypnotic method invented thousands of years before by the Hindus.

Now there are Zen monks working in America, there are Zen centers in America, but what they are doing there is the old method of Buddha. There are Sufis working in the West, but they are using the method invented by Jalaluddin Rumi, one thousand years old.

I am using ALL the possible methods, and when all these methods meet of course there is going to be great contradiction. If you don't understand you will see only contradictions and contradictions. If you understand then you will understand the harmony of all these instruments together.

People are doing Vipassana and doing the Sufi dancing and doing Yoga and doing Tantra and using Zen methods, zazen and other methods. And not only the old methods -- they are doing all that is happened into this century after Sigmund Freud, all the psychological methods, all the psychotherapy groups.

This is a meeting of the whole world. It is a universal religiousness that I am creating here. It is bound to be multidimensional if you understand. If you don't understand, if you still cling to a certain tradition, then it will look contradictory to you.

The last question:

Question 4

OSHO,

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EXPERIENCING AND INDULGING?

Deva Tapodhana,

THE DIFFERENCE between experiencing and indulging is that of awareness; there is no other difference. no other distinction. If you are not aware, it is indulgence; if you are aware, it is experiencing -- the SAME thing. It may be eating food, it may be making love, listening to music. enjoying the night sky full of stars -- whatsoever it is. If you are not consciously there, if you are not a witness to it, if you remain unconscious, mechanical, robotlike, then it is indulgence. If you are aware, then it is experiencing. And experiencing is beautiful, indulgence is ugly. But remember the distinction that I am making.

In the past all the religions have labeled things; I am not labeling things. They have labeled things: "This is indulgence and this is experiencing." I am not labeling things -- things cannot be labeled. Things are the same.

Buddha eating his food and you eating your food: as far as the outer, objective viewpoint is concerned both are doing the same. You are eating, Buddha is eating. What it is? Buddha is experiencing, you are indulging. The difference is not in the act, it is in your awareness. Buddha eating is eating as a witness, and he will eat only that much which is needed because he is totally aware. He will enjoy food, he will enjoy more than you can enjoy, because he is more aware. You will not enjoy the food: you simply go on stuffing it, you don't enjoy. And you are not there at all to enjoy, in fact; you are somewhere else, always somewhere else. You are never where you are -- somewhere else. You may be in the shop, you may be in the field, you may be in the factory, you may be talking to a friend: physically you are eating, but psychologically you are not there.

Buddha is there totally: physically, psychologically, spiritually. When he is eating he is simply eating.

A Zen Master, Rinzai, was asked, "What is your sadhana? What is your spiritual practice?"

He said, "Nothing much, nothing much to brag about; it is very simple: when I feel hungry I eat and when I feel sleepy I go to sleep."

The man said, "But that's what we all do!"

Rinzai said, "There you are wrong -- take your words back -- because I have lived like you, I have both the experiences. I have lived like a robot -- the way you are I have been -- so I know the difference. You eat when you are not hungry, you eat because it is time to eat, you eat because the food is delicious, you eat because you are invited to eat. You don't care what is the need. You sleep because it is a habit; whether you need it or not is not the point. And while you are eating you are not only eating, you are doing thousand and one other things -- maybe making love in your fantasy. And when you are asleep certainly you are not doing only one thing, sleeping -- you are dreaming. The whole night your mind goes on and on creating dreams upon dreams."

So I don't label, Tapodhana, anything as experiencing and indulging. The question is of awareness.

Two drunks in a tavern see a bug fall down on the bar. The first drunk says, "A bug."

The other nods and says, "A bug."

The first peers again and says, "Ladybug."

The other drunk says, "Damn good eyesight!"

A talkative drunkard at a circus looked mystified at a contortionist as the performer went through his act. Unable to control himself, he cried, "What is the matter? You look like I am drunk!"

There is a story about a small youngster who was abandoned by his parents in Yellowstone National Park. He was raised by a pack of wild dogs. Years later he was found walking on all fours, eating raw meat and living in the open. He was put in school where in one year he breezed through grammar school, high school and college. The day after he got his Ph.D. he was killed -- chasing a car.

Even if you get your Ph.D. you are going to chase the car -- unconscious habit! Knowledgeable you can become, but that is not going to transform you; you will continue to indulge. You can escape from the world, but that will not make any difference: you will still indulge.

Learn how to be aware.

A train is speeding through the countryside when, from a distance, the driver notices what looks like a couple involved in passionate lovemaking, lying right on the tracks.

The engine driver pulls the whistle... once, twice, then again and again, but there is no response from the couple. The engine driver starts to panic and, as a last resort, slams on the emergency brake. The lovers continue in their play, oblivious.

Finally the train screeches to a halt just a few feet away from the couple. The engine driver is furious. He gets out of his cabin and storms over to them.

"What the fuck are you doing?" he screams at them. "Did not you see the train coming? Did not you hear the whistle? You should be at home, behind bedroom doors!"

The man on the tracks looks up at the driver very coolly and says, "Listen, mate, she was coming. I was coming, and you were coming... but you had the brakes!"

Chapter No. 5 - Bound in Deep Togetherness
Chapter No. 6 - Absolute Love, Absolute Freedom
Chapter No. 7 - Each Moment -- Miracles!
Chapter No. 8 - Knowing Nothing About Everything
Chapter No. 9 - Both and More
Chapter No. 10 - The Eternal Religion
Chapter No. 11 - No Mind At All
Chapter No. 12 - A Mystery to be Lived
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