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

Chapter No. 6 - Absolute Love, Absolute Freedom
16 October 1980 am in Buddha Hall, Pune, India

The first question:

Question 1

OSHO,

SITTING FRETFULLY, SQUIRMING ENDLESSLY, DOES THE SPRING STILL COME AND THE GRASS GROW BY ITSELF?

Anand Daniel,

THE SPRING still comes. It does not depend whether you are sitting silently or fretfully, whether you are sitting or not sitting at all. It does not depend on you; it comes on its own accord. And the grass goes on growing, but if you are not sitting silently you will miss it. It will come, but you will not be able to feel it. It will come, but you will not be able to experience it. The grass will grow, but you will not grow.

The sun rises, the night disappears, but the light is only for those who have eyes and only for those who open their eyes: otherwise you will remain in darkness. The sun will be there, the light will be there, but you will not be bathed in its light; you will remain the same.

The whole question is whether you are closed or open. Silence opens you; the inner noise keeps you closed to existence, within and without both. The outside is a beautiful world: the whole sky with the stars, the flowers, the birds singing, the clouds floating, the rivers, the mountains. And the inside world is even far more beautiful, because the outside is the manifest part of the inside and the inside is vaster than the outside. The unmanifest is unlimited, the manifest is bound to be limited. The unmanifest contains all the future possibilities; the manifest contains only that which has become actual in the past. The unmanifest contains all the universes that will ever happen in the coming eternity. Of course, it is far bigger than the outer.

Between the two is the mind. Between the within and the without there is a wall -- a China Wall -- of thoughts, desires, memories, expectations, frustrations. And because of the thick wall and the constant noise that is bound to be there... each memory hankering to be listened to, each desire nagging you to be fulfilled, each imagination forcing you to be realized, each expectation torturing you, goading you so that you can succeed in fulfilling it. The noise is great; there is great conflict. The desires are antagonistic to each other.

If you want to be powerful, of course you will have to choose a few desires and you will have to leave a few desires. There are desires to be famous, desires to be wealthy, desires to be powerful, and desires to be healthy, and desires to be loved, and desires to be creative; they all cannot be fulfilled simultaneously. And whenever you choose. the unchosen desires will nag you; they will try to drag you towards themselves.

This chaos cannot allow you to see either the beauty that surrounds you or the beauty that resides in you. it cannot allow you to see the rainbows on the circumference and it cannot allow you to see the source of all joy, of all truth, of all beauty within you -- the kingdom of God within you.

You ask me, Daniel: SITTING FRETFULLY, SQUIRMING ENDLESSLY, DOES THE SPRING STILL COME...?

Certainly... the spring comes, but not for you. You are not available, you are not there. You are so much occupied, so much engaged, you can't see out, you can't see in. Your eyes are covered with layers of desires and thoughts.

The grass certainly goes on growing, because the grass is sitting silently doing nothing -- but you are not sitting silently, doing nothing. If you can sit silently doing nothing like the grass. you will also grow.

That's the way how the ignorant becomes enlightened: becoming silent... just now... just a moment of silence, a pause... and you can hear the songs of the birds and you can suddenly feel the silence. Then there are no more five thousand sannyasins here: the Buddha Hall is empty, and that emptiness is a great experience. It is ecstatic!

The spring is felt suddenly -- it can be felt right now! Then nothing distracts you. This noise of the plane is not a distraction; it will even deepen your silence, it will become a contrast to the silence, it will help define the silence.

The outer noise is not a distraction; but the mind inside remaining continuously in an insane state is the only distraction.

And there are foolish people who renounce the world in search of silence. The world does not disturb you; what disturbs is your mind -- and they don't renounce the mind. When a Hindu becomes a monk he still remains a Hindu. Do you see the absurdity? He has renounced the Hindu society, but he still carries the idea of being a Hindu! If you have renounced the Hindu society... then this idea of being a Hindu was given by the same society, how can you carry it?

Somebody becomes a Christian monk, but he still remains a Christian -- a Catholic, a Protestant... The mind is so stupid; if you look at its stupidities you will be surprised, amazed! How can you be a Catholic if you have renounced the world? But people renounce the world, they don't renounce the mind -- and the mind is a byproduct of the world! The child is raised by the Hindus, then he becomes a Hindu, because the parents are cultivating Hindu ideology -- or Christian, or Mohammedan, or Jain.

Just the other day I was talking about how Jainism destroyed the beautiful concept of the Upanishadic ashrams. When I passed around the Buddha Hall going back, I looked particularly at my Jain sannyasins -- they were not looking happy! Even my sannyasins! But whenever I criticize Hinduism and I have seen the same sannyasins -- so joyous. Of course Hindus feel offended. Even my sannyasins somehow deep down go on carrying their mind.

I don't teach you to renounce the world, I teach you to renounce the mind. And that's what is meant by this immensely beautiful Zen saying:

SITTING SILENTLY, DOING NOTHING,

THE SPRING COMES AND THE GRASS GROWS BY ITSELF.

All that is needed on your part is just to be absolutely silent And that's exactly the meaning of the word upanishad: sitting silently, doing nothing, by the side of a Master -- that means by the side of spring -- allowing the spring to possess you, to take you along with it like a tidal wave.

Your inner being is not something that has to be developed; it is already perfect. No spiritual development is needed, only it has to be discovered. And once silence falls over you, you start discovering it. It is the noise and the dust that the mind creates that goes on hindering the discovery.

The second question:

Question 2

OSHO,

MY PARENTS ARE SO DISAPPOINTED IN ME, THEY WORRY ALL THE TIME. THEY HAVE MADE MY BEING HERE POSSIBLE, SO HOW CAN I TURN FROM THEM? WHAT DO I OWE TO MY PARENTS?

Prem Shunya,

THE TROUBLE with the family is that children grow out of childhood, but parents never grow out of their parenthood! Man has not even yet learned that parenthood is not something that you have to cling to it forever. When the child is a grown-up person your parenthood is finished. The child needed it -- he was helpless. He needed the mother, the father, their protection; but when the child can stand on his own, the parents have to learn how to withdraw from the life of the child. And because parents never withdraw from the life of the child they remain a constant anxiety to themselves AND to the children. They destroy, they create guilt; they don't help beyond a certain limit.

To be a parent is a great art. To give birth to children is nothing -- any animal can do it; it is a natural, biological, instinctive process. To give birth to a child is nothing great, it is nothing special; it is very ordinary. But to be a parent is something extraordinary; very few people are really capable of being parents.

And the criterion is that the real parents will give freedom. They will not impose themselves upon the child, they will not encroach upon his space. From the very beginning their effort will be to help the child to be himself or to be herself. They are to support, they are to strengthen, they are to nourish, but not to impose their ideas, not to give the shoulds and should-nots. They are not to create slaves.

But that's what parents all over the world go on doing: their whole effort is to fulfill their ambitions through the child. Of course nobody has been ever able to fulfill his ambitions, so every parent is in a turmoil. He knows the death is coming close by every day, he can feel the death is growing bigger and bigger and life is shrinking, and his ambitions are still unfulfilled, his desires are still not realized. He knows that he has been a failure. He is perfectly aware that he will die with empty hands -- just the way he had come, with empty hands, he will go.

Now his whole effort is how to implant his ambitions into the child. He will be gone, but the child will live according to him. What he has not been able to do, the child will be able to do. At least through the child he will fulfill certain dreams.

It is not going to happen. All that is going to happen is the child will remain unfulfilled as the parent and the child will go on doing the same to his children. This goes on and on from one generation to another generation. We go on giving our diseases; we go on infecting children with our ideas which have not proved valid in our own lives.

Somebody has lived as a Christian, and his life can show that no bliss has happened through it. Somebody had lived like a Hindu and you can see that his life is a hell but he wants his children to be Hindus or Christians or Mohammedans. How unconscious man is!

I have heard:

A very sad, mournful man visited a doctor in London. Seating himself in a chair in the waiting room and glumly ignoring the other patients he awaited his turn. Finally the doctor motioned him into the inner office where after a careful examination the man appeared even more serious, sad and miserable than ever.

"There's nothing really the matter with you," explained the doctor, "you are merely depressed. What you need is to forget your work and your worries. Go out and see a Charlie Chaplin movie and have a good laugh!"

A sad look spread over the little man's face. "But I am Charlie Chaplin!" he said.

It is a very strange world! You don't know people's real lives; all that you know is their masks. You see them in the churches, you see them in the clubs, in the hotels, in the dancing halls, and it seems everybody is rejoicing, everybody is living a heavenly life, except you -- of course, because you know how miserable you are within. And the same is the case with everybody else! They are all wearing masks, deceiving everybody, but how can you deceive yourself? You know that the mask is not your original face.

But the parents go on pretending before their children, go on deceiving their own children. They are not even authentic with their own children! They will not confess that their life has been a failure; on the contrary, they will pretend that they have been very successful. And they would like the children also to live in the same way as they have lived.

Prem Shunya, you ask: MY PARENTS ARE SO DISAPPOINTED IN ME...

Don't be worried at all -- all parents are disappointed in their children! And I say all, without any exception. Even the parents of Gautam the Buddha were very much disappointed in him, the parents of Jesus Christ were very much disappointed in him, obviously. They had lived a certain kind of life -- they were orthodox Jews -- and this son, this Jesus, was going against many traditional ideas, conventions. Jesus' father, Joseph, must have hoped that now he is growing old the son will help him in his carpentry, in his work, in his shop -- and the stupid son started talking about kingdom of God! Do you think he was very much happy in his old age?

Gautam Buddha's father was very old and he had only one son, and that too was born to him when he was very old His whole life he has waited and prayed and worshipped and did all kinds of religious rituals so that he can have a son, because who is going to look after his great kingdom? And then one day the son disappeared from the palace. Do you think he was very happy? He was so angry, violently angry, he would have killed Gautam Buddha if he had found him! His police, his detectives were searching all over the kingdom. "Where he is hiding? Bring him to me!"

And Buddha knew it, that he will be caught by his father's agents, so the first thing he did was he left the boundary of his father's kingdom; escaped into another kingdom, and for twelve years nothing was heard about him.

When he became enlightened he came back home to share his joy, to say to the father that, "I have arrived home," that "I have realized," that "I have known the truth -- and this is the way."

But the father was so angry, he was trembling and shaking -- he was old, very old. He shouted at Buddha and he said, "You are a disgrace to me!" He saw Buddha -- he was standing there in a beggar's robe with a begging bowl -- and he said, "How you dare to stand before me like a beggar? You are the son of an emperor, and in our family there has never been a beggar! My father was an emperor, his father was too, and for centuries we have been emperors! You have disgraced the whole heritage!"

Buddha listened for half an hour, he didn't say a single word. When the father ran out of gas, cooled down a little... tears were coming out of his eyes, tears of anger, frustration. Then Buddha said, "I ask for only one favor. Please wipe your tears and look at me -- I am not the same person who had left the home, I am totally transformed. But your eyes are so full of tears you cannot see. And you are still talking to somebody who is no more! He has died."

And this triggered another anger, and the father said, "You are trying to teach me? Do you think I am a fool? Can't I recognize my own son? My blood is running in your veins -- and I cannot recognize you?"

Buddha said, "Please don't misunderstand me. The body certainly belongs to you, but not my consciousness. And my consciousness is my reality, not my body. And you are right that your father was an emperor and his father too, but as far as I know about myself I was a beggar in my past life and I was a beggar in a previous life too, because I have been searching for truth. My BODY has come through you, but you have been just like a passage. You have not created me, you have been a medium, and my consciousness has nothing to do with your consciousness. And what I am saying is that now I have come home with a new consciousness, I have gone through a rebirth. Just LOOK at me, look at my joy!"

And the father looked at the son, not believing what he is saying. But one thing was certainly there: that he was so angry but the son has not reacted at all. That was absolutely new -- he knew his son. If he was just the old person he would have become as angry as the father or even more, because he was young and his blood was hotter than the father's. But he is not angry at all, there is absolute peace on his face, a great silence. He is undisturbed, undistracted by the father's anger. The father has abused him, but it seems not to have affected him at all.

He wiped his tears from the old eyes, looked again, saw the new grace...

Shunya, your parents will be disappointed in you because they must have been trying to fulfill some expectations through you. Now you have become a sannyasin, all their expectations have fallen to the ground. Naturally they are disappointed. but don't become guilty because of it, otherwise they will destroy your joy, your silence. your growth You remain undisturbed, unworried. Don't feel any guilt. Your life is yours and you have to live according to your own light.

And when you have arrived at the source of joy, your inner bliss, go to them to share. They will be angry -- wait, because anger is not anything permanent; it comes like a cloud and passes. Wait! Go there, be with them, but only when you are certain that you can still remain cool, only when you know that nothing will create any reaction in you, only when you know that you will be able to respond with love even though they are angry. And that will be the only way to help them.

You say: THEY WORRY ALL THE TIME.

That is their business! And don't think that if you had followed their ideas they would not have worried. They would have still worried; that is their conditioning. Their parents must have worried and their parents' parents must have worried; that is their heritage. And you have disappointed them because you are no more worrying. You are going astray! They are miserable, their parents have been miserable, and so on, so forth... up to Adam and Eve! And you are going astray, hence the great worry.

But if you become worried you miss an opportunity, and then they have dragged you again back into the same mire. They will feel good, they will rejoice that you have come back to the old traditional, conventional way, but that is not going to help you or them.

If you remain to be independent, if you attain to the fragrance of freedom, if you become more meditative -- and that's WHY YOU are here: to become more meditative, to be more silent, more loving, more blissful -- then one day you can share your bliss. To share first you have to have it; you can share only that which you have already got.

Right now you can also worry, but two persons worrying simply multiply worries; they don't help each other.

You say: THEY WORRY ALL THE TIME.

It must have become their conditioning. It is the conditioning of everybody in the world.

A rabbi was being hosted by a family, and the man of the house, impressed by the honor, warned his children to behave seriously at the dinner table because the great rabbi is coming. But during the course of the meal they laughed at something and he ordered them from the table.

The rabbi then arose and prepared to leave.

"Anything wrong?" asked the concerned father.

"Well," said the rabbi, "I laughed too!"

You don't be worried about their seriousness, about their worrying about you. They are trying unconsciously to make you feel guilty. Don't let them succeed, because if they succeed they will destroy you and they will also destroy an opportunity for them which would have become possible THROUGH you.

You say: THEY HAVE MADE MY BEING HERE POSSIBLE.

Be thankful for that, but there is no need to feel guilty.

SO HOW CAN I TURN FROM THEM?

There is no need to turn from them, but there is no need either to follow them. Go on loving them. When you meditate, after each meditation pray to the existence that "Something of my meditativeness should reach to my parents.

Be prayerful for them, be loving to them, but don't follow them. That won't help you or them.

You say: WHAT DO I OWE TO MY PARENTS?

You owe this: that you have to be yourself. You owe this: that you have to be blissful, that you have to be ecstatic, that you have to become a celebration unto yourself, that you have to learn to laugh and rejoice. This is what you owe to them: you owe to them enlightenment.

Become enlightened like Gautam the Buddha and then go to your parents to share your joy. Right now what can you do? Right now nothing is possible. Right now you can only pray.

So I am not saying turn away from them, I am saying don't follow them, and this is the only way you can be of some help to them. They have helped you physically, you have to help them spiritually. That will be the only way to repay them.

The third question:

Question 3

OSHO,

WHY IS IT I FEEL FULLY ALIVE ONLY WHEN I AM IN LOVE? I TELL MYSELF THAT I SHOULD BE ABLE TO SPARK MYSELF WITHOUT THE OTHER, BUT SO FAR NO LUCK. IS THIS SOME STUPID "WAITING FOR GODOT" GAME I AM PLAYING WITH MYSELF? WHEN THE LAST LOVE AFFAIR ENDED I SWORE TO MYSELF I WAS NOT GOING TO LET THE SAME OLD DEADENING PROCESS HAPPEN, BUT HERE I AM AGAIN FEELING HALF ALIVE, WAITING FOR HIM TO COME.

Prem Idama,

ONE REMAINS in the need of the other to that point, up to that experience, when one enters into one's own innermost core. Unless one knows oneself one remains in the need of the other. But the need of the other is very paradoxical; its nature is paradoxical.

When you are alone you feel lonely, you feel the other is missed; your life seems to be only half It loses joy, it loses flow, flowering; it remains undernourished. If you are with the other, then a new problem arises because the other starts encroaching on your space. He starts making conditions upon you, he starts demanding things from you, he starts destroying your freedom -- and that hurts.

So when you are with somebody, only for a few days when the honeymoon is still there... and the more intelligent you are, the smaller will be the honeymoon, remember. Only for utterly stupid people it can be a long affair; insensitive people it can he a lifelong thing. But if you are intelligent, sensitive, soon you will realize that what you have done. The other is destroying your freedom, and suddenly you become aware that you need your freedom because freedom is of immense value. And you decide never to bother with the other.

Again when you are alone you are free, but something is missing -- because your aloneness is not true aloneness; it is only loneliness, it is a negative state. You forget all about freedom. Free you are, but what to do with this freedom? Love is not there, and both are essential needs.

And up to now humanity has lived in such an insane way that you can fulfill only one need: either you can be free, but then you have to drop the idea of love... That's what monks and nuns of all the religions have been doing: drop the idea of love, you are free; there is nobody to hinder you, there is nobody to interfere with you, nobody to make any demands, nobody to possess you. But then their life becomes cold, almost dead.

You can go to any monastery and look at the monks and the nuns: their life is ugly. It stinks of death; it is not fragrant with life. There is no dance, no joy, no song. All songs have disappeared, all joy is dead. They are paralyzed -- how they can dance? They are crippled -- how they can dance? There is nothing to dance about. Their energies are stuck, they are no more flowing. For the flow the other is needed; without the other there is no flow.

And the majority of humanity has decided for love and dropped the idea of freedom. Then people are living like slaves. Man has reduced the woman into a thing, a commodity, and of course the woman has done the same in her own subtle way: she has made all the husbands henpecked.

I have heard:

In New York a few henpecked husbands joined hands together. They made a club to protest, to fight -- Men's Liberation Movement, or something like that! And of course they chose one of the most henpecked husbands the president of the club.

The first meeting happened, but the president never Turned up. They were all worried. They all rushed to his home and they asked him, "What is the matter? Have you forgotten?"

He said, "No, but my wife won't allow me. She says, 'You go out, and I will never allow you in!' And that much risk I cannot take."

I have heard about the doors of paradise there are two boards -- there are two doors in fact. On one board is written: "Those who are henpecked should stand here." This is the door for them, and the other is for those few rare human beings who are not henpecked. St. Peter has been waiting and waiting that some day somebody will turn who will stand on the other door which is not meant for the hen-pecked ones, but nobody ever stood on that gate.

One day St. Peter was surprised: a very small, thin, weak man came and stood there. Peter was puzzled, amazed. He asked the man, "Can you read?"

He said, "Yes, I can read -- I am a Ph.D., a professor of philosophy!"

Then Peter said, "This door is meant only for those who are not henpecked husbands. Why you are standing here when the whole queue is standing at the other door?"

He said, "What can I do? My wife has told me to stand here! And even if GOD says to me, I cannot leave this place unless my wife allows!"

Man has reduced woman into a slave and the woman has reduced man into a slave. And of course both hate the slavery, both resist it. They are constantly fighting; any small excuse and the fight starts.

But the real fight is somewhere else deep down; the real fight is that they are asking for freedom. They cannot say it so clearly, they may have forgotten completely. For thousands of years this is the way people have lived. They have seen their father and their mother have lived the same way, they have seen their grandparents have lived in the same way... this is the way people live -- they have accepted it. Their freedom is destroyed.

It is as if we are trying to fly in the sky with one wing. Few people have the wing of love and a few people have the wing of freedom -- both are incapable of flying. Both the wings are needed.

Idama, you say: WHY IS IT I FEEL FULLY ALIVE ONLY WHEN L AM IN LOVE?

It is perfectly natural, there is nothing wrong in it. It is how it should be. Love is a natural need; it is like food. If you are hungry, of course you will feel a deep unease. Without love your soul is hungry; love is a soul nourishment. Just as body needs food, water, air, the soul needs love. But the soul also needs freedom, and it is one of the most strange things that we have not accepted this fact yet.

If you love there is no need to destroy your freedom. They both can exist together; there is no antagonism between them. It is because of our foolishness that we have created the antagonism. Hence the monks think the worldly people are fools, and the worldly people deep down know that the monks are fools -- they are missing all the joys of life.

A great priest was asked, "What is love?"

The priest said, "A word made up of two vowels, two consonants and two fools!"

That is their condemnation of love. Because all the religions have condemned love; they have praised freedom very much. In India we call the ultimate experience MOKSHA; MOKSHA means absolute freedom.

You say: I TELL MYSELF THAT I SHOULD BE ABLE TO SPARK MYSELF WITHOUT THE OTHER, BUT SO FAR NO LUCK.

It will remain so, it will not change. You should rather change your conditioning about love and freedom. Love the person, but give the person total freedom. Love the person, but from the very beginning make it clear that you are not selling your freedom.

And if you cannot make it happen in THIS commune, here with me, you cannot make it happen anywhere else. This is the beginning of a new humanity. Of course it is only a seed now, but soon you will see it will grow in a vast tree. But we are experimenting upon many things. One of the dimensions of our experiment is to make love and freedom possible together, their coexistence together. Love a person but don't possess, and don't be possessed. INSIST for freedom, and don't lose love! There is no need. There is no natural enmity between freedom and love; it is a created enmity. Of course for centuries it has been so, so you have become accustomed about it; it has become a conditioned thing.

An old farmer down South could barely speak above a whisper. Leaning on a fence by the side of a country road he was watching a dozen razorbacks in a patch of woodland. Every few minutes the hogs would scramble through a hole in the fence, tear across the road to another patch of woodland, and immediately afterward scurry back again.

"What's the matter with them hogs anyway?" a passing stranger asked.

"There ain't nothing the matter with them," the old farmer whispered hoarsely. "Them hogs belongs to me and before I lost my voice I used to call them to their feed. After I lost my voice I used to tap on this fence rail with my stick at feeding time."

He paused and shook his head gravely. "And now," he added, "them cussed woodpeckers up in them trees has got them poor hogs plumb crazy!"

Just a conditioning! NOW THOSE WOODPECKERS ARE DRIVING THEM HOGS PLUMB CRAZY -- because when they do the knocking they rush, thinking that it is food time.

That's what is happening to humanity.

One of the disciples of Pavlov, the founder of the conditioned reflex -- the discoverer of the theory of the conditioned reflex -- was trying an experiment on the same lines. He bought a puppy and decided to condition him to stand up and bark tor his food. He held the pup's food just out of reach, barked a few times, then set it on the floor before him. The idea was that the pup would associate standing up and barking with getting his food and learn to do so when hungry.

This went on for about a week, but the little dog failed to learn. After another week the man gave up the experiment and simply put the food down before the dog, but the pup refused to eat it. He was waiting for his master to stand and bark! Now he had become conditioned.

It is only a conditioning, it can be dropped. Just you need, Idama, a little meditativeness. Meditation simply means the process of unconditioning the mind. Whatsoever the society has done has to be undone. When you are unconditioned you will be able to see the beauty of love and freedom together; they are two aspects of the same coin. If you really love the person you will give him or her absolute freedom -- that's a gift of love. And when there is freedom, love responds tremendously. When you give freedom to somebody you have given the greatest gift, and love comes rushing towards you.

You ask me: IS THIS SOME STUPID "WAITING for GODOT" GAME I AM PLAYING WITH MYSELF?

No, Idama.

WHEN THE LAST LOVE AFFAIR ENDED, I SWORE TO MYSELF I WAS NOT GOING TO LET THE SAME OLD DEADENING PROCESS HAPPEN, BUT HERE I AM AGAIN FEELING HALF ALIVE, WAITING FOR HIM TO COME.

But just by swearing, just by deciding, you cannot change yourself. You have to understand. Love is a basic need, as basic as freedom, so both have to be fulfilled. And a man who is full of love AND free is the most beautiful phenomenon in the world. And when two persons of such beauty meet, their relationship is not a relationship at all. It is a relating. It is a constant, riverlike flow. It is continuously growing towards greater heights.

The ultimate height of love and freedom is the experience of God. In God you will find both: tremendous love, absolute love, and absolute freedom.

The fourth question:

Question 4

OSHO,

WHY ARE YOU NOT GETTING BORED WHILE YOU ARE TELLING THE SAME STORIES AND THE SAME JOKES?

Divakar Bharti,

THE FIRST thing to be understood is that Divakar Bharti is an Indian, and Indians are absolutely unable to understand jokes! They don't have any jokes in India. I have not come across a single Indian joke. Indians are serious people -- spiritual people, religious people! They talk only of great things: God, heaven, hell, the theory of karma and rebirth.

When you tell a joke to an Indian he feels offended... you see? He feels offended, insulted! You look at his face -- he feels embarrassed. Talk about something esoteric -- bullshit him! -- and then he is perfectly happy. He never laughs, he cannot; laughter is beyond him. He has forgotten laughter.

That's why, Divakar, the question has arisen in you. Otherwise each joke, in a different context, is different. The joke in itself may be an old one -- and in fact, there are no new jokes in the world. The proverb that there is nothing new under the sun may not be right about other things, but about jokes it is absolutely right. If Adam and Eve come back to the earth they will recognize only the jokes and nothing else! The same jokes, but the context goes on changing, and in a different context the same joke has a different meaning.

But because you cannot understand the jokes you must be feeling bored.

G.C. Lichtenberg has a profound statement. He says: A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.

I have heard:

It is said: The gravest fish is an oyster, the gravest bird is an owl, the gravest beast is a donkey, and the gravest man is an Indian fool.

There are fools of all kinds, they come in all shapes and sizes, but the Indian is the best! Each race reacts, responds differently about jokes...

If you tell the German a joke, he laughs once, just to be polite. If you tell the same joke to a Frenchman he also laughs once because he understands immediately. If you tell the same joke to an Englishman he laughs twice: first to be polite, and second when in the middle of the night he gets it. If you tell the same joke to an American he laughs, but not loudly, and says that "I have heard it before!" If you tell the same joke to a Jew, instead of laughing he says, "It is an old joke, and what is more, you are telling it all wrong! "

And I don't feel bored because I cannot feel bored -- it is simply impossible for me. I have completely forgotten how to feel bored! You can go on telling me the same joke again and again and I will always find some new meaning, some new nuance, some new color, some new dimension to it, but I cannot feel bored because I am no more. To feel bored you need the ego; it is the ego that feels bored. When the ego is no more there it is impossible to feel bored.

A simple-minded old woman had a cow that fell sick. In her distress she called the rabbi to pray for its recovery.

To comfort the poor woman, the rabbi walked around the cow three times intoning, "If she dies, she dies, but if she lives, she lives." Happily the cow recovered.

Some time later the rabbi became ill and the woman, recalling how he had cured her cow, visited him. She walked around his bed three times, solemnly repeating, "If he dies, he dies, but if he lives, he lives." Whereupon the rabbi burst out into sidesplitting laughter which soon led to his recovery.

I cannot feel bored -- I am no more there. And I don't remember what I have said to you yesterday, so how I can say the same joke again? It is never the same, it cannot be.I never remember what has been said by me, and I have been telling to people thousands of things for all these last twenty-five years.

I never read any of my books, I never listen to any of my lectures -- why should I feel bored?

But Divakar, you are in a wrong place here. This is not the place for serious people like you! You should find some old Hindu monastery.

The little red man woke up, opened up his little red curtains and looked out at the little red sunrise. He showered in his little red bathroom, put on his little red clothes and left his little red house. Getting into his little red car, he drove through the little red town to his little red office block. There he went up in the little red elevator to the tenth floor, walked along the little red corridor and entered his little red office. He sat down at his little red desk and read his little red newspaper. Deciding that his life was too boring to live any more, he took out a little red knife and slashed his little red wrists.

Ten minutes later his little red secretary entered his little red office and found her little red boss covered in little red blood. She grabbed the little red telephone and phoned the little red hospital. Soon a little red ambulance arrived. The little red attendants rushed into the little red office, put the little red man on a little red stretcher and raced across the little red town to the little red hospital. Quickly they carried the little red man into the little red operating theater and placed him on a little red table.

One minute later the door to the little red operating theater opened and in walked a little green man. "Sorry!" he said. "I seem to have walked into the wrong joke!"

This is not a place for you -- little red world, and you are a green man here! You have walked in a wrong joke, Divakar -- walk out!

The last question:

Question 5

OSHO,

HOW DO YOU ALWAYS FIND NEW NAMES TO GIVE TO YOUR SANNYASINS?

Prem Pramod,

TWO WOMEN were looking into new arrivals in a bookshop. One woman was very much interested in one book; the title of the book was: How to Torture Your Husband. She told to the other woman, "Look at this book! I am going to purchase it! Are you also interested in it?"

The other woman said, "NO, I have my own system!"

I also have my own system, but I cannot tell YOU! Certainly I have given more names than anybody may have ever given in the whole history -- almost two hundred thousand sannyasins are there in the world! -- but my system is such that I can give names to the whole humanity.

One Red Indian boy was asking his father, "Father, what is the way how you give names to new children? Your name is Black Horse, my mother's name is Buffalo, my uncle's name is White Cloud -- how you manage to find out what is the true name for the new arrival, the new child?"

The father said, "It is not difficult -- we have a system. Whenever a child is born, the eldest member of the family -- the grandfather, the grandmother or the father -- goes out of the house, and whatsoever he sees first... For example when my grandfather went out he saw a black horse; that's how I am named Black Horse. But why you are asking Two Dogs Fucking?"

That was his name!

I have my own system, but I cannot tell you!

Just the other night I gave sannyas to a beautiful woman; her name is Diotima. I called her Dhyan Diotima. Diotima is a mythological name: in Greek mythology Diotima is the priestess of love or goddess of love. But it can be derived from another root also, diota; and diota means a jar with a neck and two handles.

So I told the woman that "This is your situation right now: a jar with a neck and two handles. That's what a woman is all about! But through meditation you can become a priestess of love; that transformation is possible. Otherwise you will remain just a jar with a neck and two handles!"

It is not very difficult, and the more names I have given the easier it has become, because I have become more proficient! I can find some way, either from the root of the word... and there are different roots; even in one language a word .means many things. Sometimes a word has different roots in different languages: in one language it means one thing, in another language it means another thing. And it is very easily possible to play with words, and names are nothing but a game.

I give you a new name only to make you feel that names are not important. Your old name can simply disappear because it was only a label, it can be changed. You are not the name. To insist this fact, to emphasize this fact upon your consciousness, that the name is not your reality...

Every child comes into the world without a name, but we have to give a name; it has some utility. It is absolutely false, but in a vast world with millions of people it will be difficult to manage if nobody had any name; it will become almost impossible to manage. Some names are needed; false they are, but they work, they have a utility. They have no reality, but utility certainly they have.

But ordinarily you grow with your name; in fact, you become conscious only later on. Your name is deeper than your consciousness, hence there arises an identity with the name. You start feeling, "This is my name, this is me."

When you become a sannyasin I want to destroy that identity, because this is the beginning of destruction of all identities. First I destroy the identity with the name, then I will destroy the identity with the body, then the identity with the mind, then the identity with the heart. When all these identities have been destroyed you will be able to know who you are: the unidentified, the nameless, the formless, the indefinable. And that is only a pure witness in you; nothing can be said about it, no word is adequate to explain it.

Hence I change the name -- to give you a break, to give you the idea that name is just a given thing. Your old name disappears, a new name becomes your reality, but now you will not get so much identified because you are now more mature. The first name was given when you were a small child; you were not aware. Now you are a little bit aware. And by becoming a sannyasin you are becoming committed to more and more awareness, to a life of witnessing in which all identities have to be dropped.

A man is absolutely free only when there is no identity left. You are neither a Christian nor a Hindu nor a Mohammedan; you are neither an Indian nor a Japanese nor a German; you are neither a man nor a woman. You are just a pure consciousness, and that consciousness is eternal. The Upanishads are talking about that consciousness.

The only thing to be learned in the communion with the Master is that witness, that watcher, that seer, that watcher on the hills who is beyond everything. Everything falls short of it which is transcendental. To know that transcendental reality of you I start by changing your name; that is just taking one brick out of your false edifice. And then if you allow me to take one brick, I will go on taking other bricks. I change your clothes just to give you a discontinuity with the past.

You have to become discontinuous to the past. Unless you die to the past you cannot be reborn, you cannot be here-now. The past has to be completely dropped and forgotten -- it was a dream, nothing more -- and out of the past arises the future. If the past is dropped, the future disappears. Then the ONLY reality is now and here. And to be here and now, absolutely here and now, is to know all that is worth knowing, is to really live an authentic, sincere life, a life full of truth and bliss and godliness.

Chapter No. 7 - Each Moment -- Miracles!
17 October 1980 am in Buddha Hall, Pune, India

The first question:

Question 1

OSHO,

CAN AN ENLIGHTENED PERSON BE WRONG? THIS REFERS TO WHAT YOU TOLD US ABOUT J. KRISHNAMURTI, WHO KEEPS ON SAYING THAT ONE DOES NOT NEED A MASTER, WHICH IS ACTUALLY NOT RIGHT PLEASE COMMENT.

Prem Pantha,

AN ENLIGHTENED person can never be wrong. Neither J. Krishnamurti is wrong, but he never considers the situation in which you are. He considers only the space in which he is, and that freedom is part of enlightenment.

The enlightened person has reached the highest peak of consciousness; his abode is on Everest. Now it is his freedom to speak according to the peak, the sunlit peak where he is, or to consider the people who are still in the dark valley, who know nothing about the light, for whom the peak of the Everest is only a dream, only a perhaps". This is the freedom of the enlightened person. Krishnamurti speaks in terms where he is.

I speak in terms where you are, I consider you, because if I am speaking to you, you have to be taken in consideration. I have to lead you towards the highest peak, but the journey will begin in the dark valley, in your unconsciousness. If I talk about my experience, absolutely inconsiderate of you, I am right, but I am not useful to you.

An enlightened person is never wrong, but he can be useful or he can be useless.

J. Krishnamurti is useless! He is perfectly right; about that there is no question, because I know the peak and what he is saying is certainly true -- from the vision of the peak. Those who have arrived, for them the journey becomes almost a dream phenomenon. For those who have not arrived the journey is real, the goal is just a dream. They are living in two different worlds. When you are talking to a madman you have to consider him; if you don't consider him you cannot help him.

Once a madman was brought to me. He had this crazy idea that one afternoon when he was sleeping, a fly has entered his mouth. And because he used to sleep with open mouth, nobody can deny the possibility. And since then he was very much disturbed because the fly was roaming inside him, jumping inside him, moving in his belly, going to his bladder, circulating in his bloodstream, sometimes in his head, sometimes in his feet. And of course he could not do anything because he was continuously occupied, obsessed with the fly.

He was taken to the psychoanalysts and they said, "This is just in your mind -- there is no fly! And no fly can move in your bloodstream, there is no possibility. Even if a fly has entered it must have died! And now six months have passed; it cannot be alive inside you."

He listened, but he could not believe it because his experience was far more solid. He was taken to the doctors and everybody examined him and they did everything, but finally they will say, "It is just a mental thing. You are imagining." He will listen what they were saying, but he could not trust because his experience was far more certain than their words.

His family brought him to me as a last resort. The man was looking very tired because he was being taken to one person, then to another, then all kinds of physicians -- allopaths and homeopaths and naturopaths -- and he was really tired. In the first place the fly was tiring him, and now all these "pathies", medicines. And everybody was insulting him -- that was his feeling, that they were saying that he was just imagining. Is he a fool or he is mad, that he will imagine such a thing? They were all humiliating him -- that was his feeling.

I looked at the man and I said, "It is so clear that the fly is inside!"

For a moment he was puzzled. He could not believe me, because nobody has said that to him -- because nobody has considered him. And they ALL were right and I was wrong -- there was no fly, but the madman has to be considered.

And I said, "All those fools are just wasting your time; you should have come first here. It is such a simple thing to bring the fly out; there is no need to bother. Medicines won't help -- you are not ill. Psycholanalysis will not help -- you are not crazy."

And immediately he was a changed man! He looked at his wife and said, "Now what do you say? This is the right man," he said, "who really knows. And all those fools were trying to convince me that there is no fly. It is there!"

I said to him that, "It is simple -- we will take it out. You lie down."

I covered him with a blanket and told him to keep his eyes closed and "I will do some mantra, some magic, and we will bring the fly out. You just keep quiet so that the fly sits somewhere. Otherwise the fly is continuously running -- where to catch it?"

He said, "That looks logical. I will keep absolutely still!"

And I said, "Don't open your eyes. Just remain silent, breathe slowly, so the fly settles somewhere, so we can catch hold of it!"

Then I rushed into the house to find a fly. It was a little bit difficult because for the first time I was trying that, but finally I succeeded -- I could get a fly in a bottle. And I came to the man, I moved my hand on his body, and I asked him, "Where the fly is?" And he said, "In the belly." And I touched the belly and I said, "Of course it is there!" And I convinced him that I perfectly believe in him and then I uncovered his blanket and showed him the fly.

And he said to the wife, "Now see! And give this bottle to me; I will go all to those fools and take all the fees that they have taken from me! I have wasted thousands of rupees, and all that they did was they told me I am mad! And now I don't feel the fly anywhere, because it is in the bottle!"

He took the bottle, he went to the doctors.

One of the doctors who knew me, he came to see me. He said, "How you managed? Six months a fly can live in the body? And that man has taken his fee back from me, because he was making such a fuss that I said, 'Better give it back to him!' And he proved that he was right!"

I said, "It is not the point who is right."

Gautam the Buddha defines truth as "that which works". This is the ancientmost pragmatic definition of truth: "that which works"! All the devices are truth in this sense: they work; they are only devices. The Buddha's work is UPAYA; UPAYA exactly means device.

Meditation is an UPAYA, a device. It simply helps you to get nd of that which you have not got in the first place -- the fly: the ego, the misery, the anguish! It helps you to get free of it, but in fact it is not there. But it is not to be told...

And Krishnamurti has been doing that: he has been telling crazy people that the fly does not exist and you don't need any doctor. I say to you: the fly exists and you need the doctor! Because just by telling to you that the fly does not exist is not going to help you at all.

For thousands of years you have been told the ego does not exist. Has it helped you in any way? There have been people who have told, in this country particularly, that the whole world is illusory, MAYA, it does not exist, but has it helped India in any way? The true test is there: whether it has helped, whether it has made people more authentic, more real. It has not helped at all. It has made people more deeply cunning, split, schizophrenic; it has made them hypocrites.

All the religions have done this, because they don't consider you. And you are far more important than the ultimate truth, because the ultimate truth has nothing to do with y ou right now. You are living in a dreamworld; some device is needed which can help you to come out of it. The moment you are out of it, you will know it was a dream -- but a person who is dreaming, to tell him that it is all dream is meaningless.

Have you not observed in your dreams that when you are dreaming it looks real? And every morning you have found that it was unreal. hut again in the night you forget all your understanding of the day -- again the dream becomes real. It has been happening again and again: every night the dream becomes real, every morning you know it is false, but that knowing does not help. In the dream one can even dream that this is a dream.

And that's what has happened in India: people are living in maya, deeply in it, and still talking that "This is all maya." And this talk too is part of their dream; it does not destroy the dream. In fact it makes the dream more rooted in them, because now there is no need to get rid of it -- because it is a dream! So why get rid of it? It does not matter.

In a subtle way all the religions have done this: they have talked from the highest peak to the people for whom that peak does not exist yet. The people are living in darkness, and you go on telling them that darkness has no existence. It is true -- darkness has no existence, it is only the absence of light -- but just by saying to people that darkness has no existence is not going to bring light in.

That's what Krishnamurti is doing; it has been done by many people. Nagarjuna did it -- Krishnamurti is not new, not at least in the East. Nagarjuna did it: he said, "Everything is false. The world is false, the ego is false, nothing exists. Because nothing exists you are already free. There is no need for any meditation, there is no need for any Master. There is no need to find out any device, strategy, technique, because in the first place there is no problem. Why go on looking for solutions? Those solutions will create more problems; they are not going to help."

Nagarjuna did it; before Nagarjuna, Mahakashyap did it, and it has been a long tradition. Zen people have been saying the same thing for centuries. Krishnamurti never uses the word "Zen", but whatsoever he is talking is nothing but Zen -- simple Zen.

Zen says no effort is needed, nothing has to be done. When nothing has to be done, what is the need of a Master? -- because the Master will tell you to do something. Nothing has to be done -- what is the need of the scriptures? -- because the scriptures will tell you to do something, to know something. Nothing has to be done, nothing has to be known. You are already there where you are trying to reach.

And I know this is true, but to talk about this ultimate truth to people who are living in tremendous darkness is futile .

Prem Pantha, no enlightened person can ever be wrong, but only few enlightened persons have been of help. The majority of enlightened people have been of no help at all, for the simple reason because they never considered the other.

In fact, George Gurdjieff used to say, "Don't consider the other." It was one of his basic teachings: "Don't consider the other. Just say what is absolutely true." But the absolute truth is truth only when experienced; people are living in relative truth.

My approach is different from Krishnamurti's. I know that one day you will come to that point where nothing is needed -- no Master, no teaching, no scripture -- but right now the scripture can be of help, the methods can be of help, and certainly a living Master can be of immense help.

The function of the Master is to give you that which you already have and to take away that which you don't have at all.

The second question:

Question 2

OSHO,

JESUS, BUDDHA, KRISHNA, ETC., CERTAINLY WERE ENLIGHTENED MASTERS. BUT BUDDHISM, HINDUISM, CHRISTIANITY AND WHATSOEVER HAS DEVELOPED FROM THEM, HAVE NOT MUCH TO DO WITH THE IDEAS OF THE MASTERS. OSHO, I AM SURE YOU ARE AN ENLIGHTENED MASTER TOO, BUT WHAT CAN WE DO, OR WHAT AT ALL IS POSSIBLE TO DO, TO PREVENT OSHOISM?

Hermann,

NOTHING can be done at all, and don't waste your time. Whatsoever has happened was natural. Christianity was bound to happen, it was inevitable. When a man like Christ walks on the earth he will leave footprints on the sands of time, and people will worship those footprints. Christianity is nothing but worship of the footprints; it leads you nowhere. But it is bound to happen.

It is as inevitable as the birth of a child brings the death in; you cannot avoid the death. If the child is born, the death is going to happen. And of course we have known that so many people were born before and so many people have died, so when YOUR child is born you may try to do something so he need not die. That is impossible -- birth brings death.

When a living Master is there, sooner or later the Master will be gone and there will be a dead teaching left. That dead teaching becomes Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism; it will become Oshoism too. Nothing can be done about it -- in fact, your very concern is the beginning of it, even the fear. That means Christianity has not happened yet, but the anti-Christian has arrived.

And I am alive! Oshoism will happen, Hermann, when I am gone, but to you it has already happened and you are trying to find out ways how to prevent it. And why you should bother? Who are you to decide for others? You are not a sannyasin, you are not part of my commune, you have no communion with me, you have not tasted of the wine that is available here -- and you are worried about others, that these people will worship the bottles when the wine is gone! (AT THIS POINT A CUCKOO BURSTS LOUDLY INTO SONG.)...

Look...! It always happens exactly at the time -- even birds agree with me! The bird was saying, "Hermann, you are a fool!" You drink right now! and who are you to bother about the future? And why you should prevent people from Oshoism? If they want it, then that is their business! Why you should take the responsibility? Why you should prevent people from their freedom? If they want to worship something dead they are entitled to it!

But to me you are far more foolish than those people. At least they will be worshipping a bottle -- and you are missing the wine! You drink the wine and leave the bottle! If people want to play with the bottle they will play; they are collectors. There are collectors who collect bottles of wine, and sometimes it helps too.

I have heard one case:

In the First World War two brothers separated. The father divided all his property, because he was getting old and he was worried about the younger son -- because he was a drunkard and he will destroy the whole thing, and even the eldest son will suffer because of the younger. So he divided them equally.

And a miracle happened. In the First World War the value of money went so low, as it always goes in wartime: things become very costly and money loses its purchasing capacity. The drunkard had one habit of collecting bottles. He finished with the whole money, he drank and he enjoyed. And the other son was so miserly that he was clinging to the money that he has got, but money was going down every day.

And the miracle was this: that a moment came when the money became almost useless, almost valueless, and the younger son sold all his bottles and he had more money than the elder brother. He enjoyed the wine and he sold the bottles! And the elder was a fool -- he was just clinging to the money.

Life is very mysterious, and the ways of God are very strange. And God is always for the drunkards! He loves these crazy people.

Hermann, if you really feel that I am an enlightened person, then what are you doing here? Drink out of my enlightenment! Others are drinking. And I don't think that you think that I am enlightened, because the way you say:

OSHO, I AM SURE YOU ARE AN ENLIGHTENED MASTER TOO...

You are not sure. When people are not sure, only then they use the word "sure"! If you are sure, then take the jump in! Then why you are standing on the bank? And while the river is alive, do something so that you can quench your thirst. And leave it to others.

Oshoism is bound to happen -- I am not worried about it. It is a natural phenomenon. Don't become obsessed with it. Christianity has happened, Buddhism has happened, Jainism has happened, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, all kinds of "isms". They are not unnatural, otherwise they would not have happened.

There are people who can connect themselves only with dead Masters -- and you seem to be one of those people, you can also connect with dead Masters. Now you are much concerned about Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, because they are dead. Now a few are Christians -- they are concerned with the dead. Now a few are anti-Christians -- they are also concerned with the dead...

Bertrand Russell has written a book: WHY I AM NOT A CHRISTIAN. Why bother about it? There are people who are writing books why they are Christians and there are people who are writing books why they are not Christians. Both are wasting their time!

Friedrich Nietzsche became so obsessed with anti-Christianity that in the last years of his life, when he became mad, he started signing his name as "Antichrist Friedrich Nietsche". Friedrich Nietzsche became secondary; that anti-Christ attitude became more primary. And he was not really anti-Christ, he was only anti-Christian, but when you start moving in a certain direction, if you are logical, you will reach to the logical end. First he started condemning Christianity, and then slowly slowly he found it that Christianity is a byproduct of Christ, so naturally he started condemning Christ, and for EVERYTHING! Sometimes he will go to such absurd lengths to condemn Christ and he will find such rationalizations, such excuses, that one has to say one thing: that he was really imaginative and really logical.

For example, Jesus at the last moment prays to God on the cross that, "Forgive these people, my father, because they know not what they are doing." It is one of the most beautiful utterances, but Friedrich Nietzsche became so obsessed with anti-Christianity that he cannot accept even such a beautiful statement. And if you are not interested to accept anything as beautiful, if you are bent upon to find something wrong, you can always find. He found something wrong even in this. He said, "This means Jesus thinks only he knows and everybody else is ignorant."

Look at his approach. Jesus is praying to God, "Forgive these people. They are crucifying me only because they know not what they are doing." Friedrich Nietzsche condemns it -- even this beautiful statement is condemned. He finds a logical reason, that this shows only an egoistic approach, that "I know, and all these people are fools, ignorant. They know not, so forgive them." This asking, praying to God to forgive the people, is an egoistic approach; it is not love, it is ego, according to Friedrich Nietzsche.

Jesus has said, "If somebody slaps you on one cheek, give him the other too." Now this is one of the greatest statements ever made by anybody, of tremendous beauty, of deep love, of non-violence -- but Friedrich Nietzsche condemns it. He says, "This is humiliating to the other person. This is insulting the other person's integrity, his humanity. When somebody hits you on one cheek and you give him the other you are showing him, 'Look how saintly I am, holier-than-thou, and you are just an animal.' You are insulting him!" Nietzsche says it will be far better to hit him back, because that means you have accepted him on equal terms; you are not lowering him. And if you listen to his logic you can find there is something in it.

Logic is a game; it can be played from both the sides. Logic is a prostitute -- it can be with anybody, whosoever is ready to pay.

Nietzsche remained his whole life concerned against Christianity and against Christ. Now this is sheer wastage! There are people who are praying to Christ and there are people who are condemning Christ, but both are concerned with the dead person. And if you are concerned, I think praying is far better than condemning, because the person who is praying may get something out of it, but the person who is condemning is not going to get anything out of it.

My approach, Hermann, is that if you happen to meet a Jesus, a Buddha, a Krishna, don't miss the opportunity. And don't become concerned about others -- respect them. They have their own life and they have to decide about it. And millions will always decide to be with a dead Master because that is convenient, comfortable. A living Master is always uncomfortable, inconvenient.

Just think of yourself, Hermann, to be with Jesus when he was alive: there were thousand and one difficulties...

One day Jesus is a guest in a house and Mary Magdalene came -- and she was a prostitute! -- and she started washing Christ's feet with a very costly perfume, with a very costly oil. Judas could not tolerate it -- he was a socialist! He is the real founder of communism in the world; Karl Marx, et cetera, are just offshoots.

He immediately said to Jesus, "This is not right! This perfume, this perfumed oil is so costly that if we sell it we can feast all the poor of this town for at least three days. And this is sheer wastage -- you should not allow such a wastage. A man like you should immediately stop.

"Secondly" -- now he is far more religious than Jesus -- "a prostitute should not be allowed to touch your feet; it is prohibited. A man like you, a man of God, should not allow a prostitute to touch him."

And Jesus said, "Look at her heart. Thousands of people come to me, but rarely I see such love, such surrender. How can I say to her, 'Don't touch me'? That will be ugly!"

Now to be with this man who is going against the whole tradition of religion is dangerous. To be with this man who is allowing the woman to destroy a precious thing which can feed the poor people... and what Jesus says?

Jesus says, "When I am gone the poor people will still be with you, so there is no hurry; you can feed them later on. While the bridegroom is here, celebrate!"

Now, Hermann, will you be ready to say yes to Jesus...? Immediately your rational mind will say, "This is not right! He is not concerned about the poor people at all. He is not concerned about the tradition of the sages at all. He is very unsocialistic, he does not understand anything of economics, he is not compassionate to the poor."

Do you think Mother Teresa of Calcutta would have agreed with him? Impossible! She would have said that "This can help many orphans. We can open a school for the poor children or we can purchase medicine for the ill, and what are you doing?"

Do you think Jesus can get a Nobel Prize? I don't think -- impossible. You will rather agree with Judas -- he is more rational, more socialistic than Jesus.

To be with Buddha would have been difficult for you, Hermann, because to be with Buddha means surrender, total surrender. The ego has to be put aside.

It is very easy to be with dead Masters because to be with dead Masters is very nourishing to the ego -- that you are a follower of Jesus, follower of Buddha, follower of Krishna. But to be with Krishna would have been really impossible -- he had sixteen thousand wives! Hermann, would you agree with this man? What kind of enlightened man is this Krishna? Sixteen thousand wives! And they were not all married to him -- many he had stolen -- they were married to other people! How can you agree with this man?

And he persuaded Arjuna to go into war, and the reasons that he gave were that, "The soul is eternal, so don't be bothered. You can kill -- the soul is not killed, only the body, and the body is dead anyway. So there is no violence involved, because the soul is immortal and the body is mortal. You are only separating the immortal from the mortal, there is nothing wrong in it -- just separating the essential from the non-essential.

Do you think you would have agreed?

That's why people create Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Mohammedanism -- it is easier, very easy, because then you can manage the dead Master according to your ideas. You can put your ideas in his mouth, you can ignore the ideas that go against you, you can interpret. manipulate, rationalize... you can do thousand and one things because the Master is no more there.

So many people need dead Masters, that is their need. And remember one economic law: wherever there is demand there will be supply. Because people need dead Masters, that's why the Pope is needed -- a representative of a dead Master. The Shankaracharya is needed -- a representative of a dead Shankara. Ayatollah Khomaniac is needed -- a repre-sentative of a dead Mohammed. People need, that's why these things happen, and nothing can be done about it.

My concern is not at all about the future. I accept the way things are; they cannot be otherwise. My insistence is: while I am here, if you are really interested in transforming your life, then the opportunity is available. Don't miss it.

The third question:

Question 3

OSHO,

I ALWAYS FEEL THAT I HAVE TO ASK YOU A LOT OF THINGS. I FEEL A BURDEN INSIDE. BUT EVERY TIME I FORM A QUESTION IT LOOKS RIDICULOUS AND STUPID.

Atmananda Bharati,

IT IS RIDICULOUS and it IS stupid -- you are perfectly right in not asking. And even if you ask, do you think I answer? I never answer any question, I simply destroy the question! It is not answering it, it is destroying it. It is hitting the question from all sides. It is a kind of murder: murdering the question, and, if possible, the questioner too! So nothing is left, because if the questioner is left he will again ask.

You see here are five thousand people. Many are killed already! They don't ask; they have understood that I never answer any question. I just play around the question a little bit, and if you are acquainted with me and I know that you will not escape, then I start hitting you. If I think you will escape, then for a few days I behave very politely!

I never answer anything. I am an ancient Jew...

Once a rabbi was asked by a Christian priest, "Rabbi, will you please give me a straight answer to a plain question? Why is it that the Jews always answer a question by asking one?"

The rabbi reflected for a moment, then replied, "Do they?"

The prosecutor was questioning a Jew witness.

"Do you know the man who has just testified?"

"How should I know him?" said the Jew.

"He said you borrowed five thousand dollars from him. Did you?"

"Why should I borrow money from him?" said the Jew.

Visibly annoyed, the judge interrupted, "Why do you answer every question put to you with another question?"

"Why not?" said the Jew.

In a lawsuit for damages the Jewish lawyer for the plaintiff had long experience with juries. He gave force to his words by all kinds of body movements, waving his arms, hammering with his fists, his face expressing a raging storm of feelings. Finally he sat down, his voice drained, his body exhausted.

Defense counsel arose, who was also a Jew, and began to mimic his opponent. He swung his arms freely in front of the jury, twisting and distorting his face, pointing with fingers, tearing his passion to tatters -- without ever uttering a word.

After a few minutes he smoothed his hair and straightened his tie and said quickly to the jury, "Now that I have answered every argument of my learned opponent, let me discuss with you the facts in this case."

You see my hands go on making all kinds of gestures? That is just an old Jewish tradition!

You ask, Atmananda Bharati: I ALWAYS FEEL THAT I HAVE TO ASK YOU A LOT OF THINGS.

Everybody feels, because the mind is like a tree. Just as on a tree leaves grow, on the mind questions grow. And my effort here is not to prune the leaves, because pruning simply makes the foliage thicker. My effort here is to cut the roots, very roots, so the tree dies.

Everybody comes here with a lot of questions, but whether you ask them or not they are worthless. I answer them just to keep you engaged here, to keep you occupied. And side by side the real work goes on: in meditations, in therapy groups, I have put people to cut your roots. I go on answering so that you feel that your philosophical inquiry is satisfied, and you remain occupied with questions and answers. And I have put my people... meanwhile they are cutting your roots. Sooner or later your roots are gone, then leaves disappear on their own accord.

When ALL questions disappear, the answer is found, never before it. The answer is never found by questioning; the answer is found by dropping all questions, questioning as such, because the answer is your own experience of silence, joy, godliness. That is the answer. Unless that is found, questions will go on arising.

But it is good that you yourself have started feeling that:

EVERY TIME I FORM A QUESTION IT LOOKS RIDICULOUS AND STUPID.

All questions are ridiculous and stupid.

The fourth question:

Question 4

OSHO,

IN THE MAHABHARATA. YUDHISHTIRHA WAS ASKED A QUESTION: "WHAT IS SURPRISING?" (kim ashcharayam) BY A YAKSHA. IF YOU WERE IN HIS PLACE, WHAT WOULD BE YOUR ANSWER?

Alkhilesh Bharti,

THE MOST surprising thing in life is that nobody seems to be surprised! People take life for granted. Otherwise everything is a mystery, everything is simply amazing! It is a miracle that a seed becomes a tree. that as the sun rises in the morning the birds start singing. It is a miracle! Each moment you come across miracles and still you don t look surprised. This is the greatest surprising thing in life

My answer would have been that people take life for granted -- this is the most surprising thing. Only children don't take it for granted. That's why children have beauty. a grace, an innocence. They are always living in wonder; everything brings awe. Collecting pebbles on the seashore or seashells... watch the children, with what joy they are running, with what joy they are collecting -- just colored stones, as if they have found great diamonds. collecting flowers, wild flowers, and look into their eyes... or running after butterflies, watch them. Their whole being, each cell of their body is mystified. And that's the most important quality that make life worth living.

The person who loses his quality to be surprised is dead. The moment your surprise is dead, you are dead. The moment your wonder is dead, you are dead. The moment you become incapable of feeling awe, you have gone impotent.

To be born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad is the quality that makes life worth living -- not only worth living but worth dancing, worth celebrating.

An old farmer visited a circus for the first time. He stood before the dromedary's cage, eyes popping and mouth agape at the strange beast within. The circus proper began and the crowds left for the main show, but still the old man stood before the cage in stunned silence, appraising every detail of the misshapen legs, the cloven hoofs, the pendulous upper lip, and the curiously mounded back of the sleepy-eyed beast.

Fifteen minutes passed. Then the farmer turned away in disgust. "Hell!" he exclaimed. "There ain't no such animal!"

Rather than feeling surprised people would like to deny: "There ain't no such animal!" That makes you at ease again; otherwise a restlessness arises in you.

I have heard about a general, a great military general who was posted in Paris. He took his small son one morning to the garden, just for a morning walk. He was very happy that the child was very much fascinated by the statue of Napoleon mounted on a horse, a big marble statue. And the child said, "Daddy, Napoleon is so beautiful, so great! Can you bring me every day when you come for a morning walk just to have a look at the great Napoleon?"

The father. being a general, was very much happy that the child is also becoming interested into people like Napoleon: "This is a good sign! Sooner or later he will also become a great general."

After six months he was transferred, and he took his son for the last time to the garden so that he can say goodbye to Napoleon. And the son went there, tears in his eyes, and he said to the father that, "I had always wanted to ask one question, but I become so fascinated with the great Napoleon when I come to the garden that I always forgot to ask the question. Now this is the last day and I would like to inquire. Who is this guy, always sitting on top of poor Napoleon?"

I was reminded of this story just few days before... In a press conference, Morarji Desai was asked, "If people want you to become the prime minister of India again, will you be ready?"

And he said, "Yes, if people want me to ride on a donkey, even then I will be ready."

I was reminded about this story. There will be a problem: how people will know -- "Who is this guy riding on poor poor Morarji Desai?" And how they will make a distinction who is who?

That's why in India in a marriage procession when the bridegroom goes to the house of the bride he rides on a horse. A small child asked his father, "Why the bridegroom always rides on a horse? Why not on a donkey?'

The father said, "You don't understand. If he rides on the donkey, then how the bride is going to find who is the bridegroom? A donkey riding on a donkey will be very difficult to make distinctions!"

Morarji Desai riding on a donkey... it will be really a great joy to see a donkey riding on a donkey!

If you look at life you will find everywhere immense surprises.

He was fifty and had spent the best years of his life with a woman whose constant criticism had driven him mad. Now, in poor health and with his business on the verge of bankruptcy, he made up his mind. He went to the dining room, fastened his tie over the chandelier, and was about to end it all. At that moment his wife entered the room.

"John!" she cried, shocked at the scene before her. "That is your best tie!"

A young man vacationing in the upper Midwest woods decided to write to his girl, but, having no stationery with him, walked to the trading post. The attendant was a young, well-stacked girl with a sensual appeal.

"Do you keep stationery?" he asked.

"Well," she smiled, "I do until the last few seconds, and then I go wild!"

Just watch around!

A soldier disembarked in New York after two long years abroad and was met by his beautiful wife.

Alone at last in their room at the hotel, they were disturbed by the sudden clamor in the corridor and a cry of "Let me in!"

The rattled soldier jumped out of bed and panted, "It must be your husband!"

His distracted mate reassured him. "Don't be foolish!" she said. "He is thousands of miles away somewhere in Europe!"

One just needs a clear perspective, and each moment you are in for a great surprise.

She was very nearsighted and very pretty, but too vain to wear glasses on her honeymoon and unable to wear contact lenses. When she returned from her honeymoon, her mother immediately got in touch with the oculist. "You must see my daughter at once," she pleaded. "It is an emergency!"

"There is nothing to be excited about," he reassured her. "She is nearsighted, that's all."

"That's all?" repeated the mother. "Why, this young man she has got with her is not the same one she went on her honeymoon with!"

The only thing that is most surprising is that you don't look surprised. And this is how your life becomes a life of boredom, a life of sadness.

Bring your surprising quality back as you had it in your childhood. Again look with those same innocent eyes. Dionysius calls it AGNOSIA, a state of not-knowing, and Upanishads call it DHYANA, SAMADHI, a state of not-knowing. It is not ignorance.

Ignorance and knowledge belong to the same dimension: ignorance means less knowledge, knowledge means less ignorance; the difference is of degrees. AGNOSIA, SAMADHI, is not ignorance; it is beyond ignorance and knowledge both. It is a pure state of wonder. When you are full of wonder, existence is full of God.

The last question:

Question 5

OSHO,

I SPENT THIRTEEN YEARS IN DIFFERENT NUNS' CONVENTS, AND WAS BORN IN A FAMILY COMPOSED OF ONE PRIEST, TWO NUNS, ONE MONK AND ONE MISSIONARY. WITH SUCH A NUMBER, ANY JOKES YOU TELL ON THESE PEOPLE PROVOKE A HEALING LAUGHTER FOR WHICH I AM GRATEFUL. COULD YOU TELL US SOME MORE GOOD ONES?

Kavisho,

THIS IS really surprising -- such a great family, and you still survived! Not only that, you have arrived here! That's what makes me hopeful about humanity. That s why I never lose hope.

Two men met at a bar and struck up a conversation After a while one of them said, "You think you have family problems? Listen to my situation. A few years ago I met a young widow with a grown-up daughter and we got married. Later my father married my stepdaughter. That made my stepdaughter my stepmother, and my father became my stepson Also my wife became the mother-in-law of her father-in-law. Then the daughter of my wife, my stepmother, had a son. This boy was my half-brother because he was my fathers son, but he was also the son of my wife's daughter which made him my wife's grandson. That made me the grandfather of my half-brother. This was nothing until my wife and I had a son. Now the sister of my son, my mother-in-law, is also the grandmother. This makes my father the brother-in-law of my child, whose stepsister is my fathers wife.

"I am my stepmother's brother-in-law, my wife is her own child's aunt, my son is my father's nephew -- and I am my own grandfather. And you think you have family problems!"

Kavisho. feel grateful to God: to be born in such a family is rare. It is a unique opportunity!

A Catholic nun in a small residential hotel complained to the desk clerk that the man in the adjoining room kept annoying her with indecent songs.

"You must be mistaken," replied the clerk politely "Mr. Pritchard never sings any songs."

"I know," replied the Catholic nun, "but he whistles them."

Grandma was in her eighties. She tired easily, had little appetite, and waS sometimes confused mentally. Her son called the doctor, who arrived shortly and was shown up to Grandma's room. Half an hour later he came down.

"There's no need to worry" he explained. "I have given her a thorough examination and there is nothing really wrong with her except her age. She will be all right."

Son and daughter-in-law, much relieved, went upstairs to see her. "Well, mother," asked her son, "how did you like the doctor?"

"Oh, so that was the doctor?" she said. "I thought he acted rather familiar for a clergyman!"

The young couple moved from their small town to the big city, leaving behind family and relatives, mostly elderly. Their young son still continued to include them in his nightly prayers. One night he seemed to have forgotten Uncle Joseph. Strangely enough, the next day they learned that Uncle Joseph had passed away.

Some months later he again skipped a name in his prayers -- Aunt Mary. The next day they learned that Aunt Mary had passed away.

Thereafter they listened most carefully to his nightly prayers to discover if any blessings were left out. Sure enough, several weeks later, after "God bless Mommy" he omitted "God bless Daddy." This panicked his father, who did not dare go downstairs all night or even leave the bedroom, but stayed in bed worrying about his child's supernatural powers of prophecy.

The next morning they got word from their former home town that their friendly priest had died.

And the last, Kavisho:

A salesman is forced to share a room with a rabbi in a crowded hotel. He enters the room and finds the rabbi kneeling in a corner, rocking on his heels while murmuring his prayers.

"Hi!" says the salesman. "I'm your new roommate."

The rabbi nods without interrupting his prayers.

"Well then, which bed shall I take?"

The rabbi points to one bed, continuing to pray.

The salesman nervously unpacks his bag, then all of a sudden says, "Say, rabbi, do you mind if I bring up a girl?"

The rabbi, still praying, holds up two fingers.

Chapter No. 8 - Knowing Nothing About Everything
18 October 1980 am in Buddha Hall, Pune, India

The first question:

Question 1

OSHO,

IS THERE SOMETHING WRONG WITH ME? I FEEL PROUD TO BE A POLACK!

Prem Kavita,

THERE IS nothing wrong to be a Polack. Polacks are as beautiful as anybody else, or a little more, a little more juicy.

A sign outside a police station read: Man Wanted For Rape. Next day three Polacks applied for the job.

But it is certainly wrong to feel proud. Whether one feels to be proud as an Indian or as a Polack or as an Englishman, it does not matter. These are just excuses. The real thing is that the ego wants some support. The ego cannot stand on its own feet; it needs crutches. It claims that "My country is the best country in the world, my religion the most superior, my culture the most evolved," and so on, so forth.

Anything can be used as a prop for the ego, and that's certainly wrong, particularly for the sannyasin, because the w hole effort of sannyas is to drop the ego in all its possible forms, subtle or gross, manifest or unmanifest, direct or indirect.

One has to be constantly aware of the tricks of the ego; its ways are subtle. If you throw it out from one door it enters from the other door -- and in a new disguise. Unless you are really alert it is going to grab you from the back.

Many times you feel the misery that is created by the ego and many times you have dropped it, but it again creates new temptations. And because the temptations are new you think it is not the old ditch you are falling in. It is the same ditch -- of course painted with fresh colors, changed a little bit here and there, renovated...

Beware nf the ego! Pride is not good for a sannyasin. That's the only difference between a sannyasin and a non-sannyasin. The old idea of sannyas was to renounce the world; my idea of sannyas is to renounce the ego, because even if you renounce the world the ego will go on hidden within you wherever you go. In fact, when it starts taking on spiritual colors it becomes far more difficult to get rid of it.

Just like if your chains are made not of ordinary steel but of purest of golds, studded with diamonds -- then you will not like to drop them. To you they will appear like ornaments, and if somebody says, "These are chains," you will be offended, you will be angry.

A Hindu is offended if you say to him that to be a Hindu is to be in a prison. A Mohammedan is angry if you say to him that to be a Mohammedan means to be a slave. The same is true about the Christians and the Jains and the Buddhists.

But to be proud simply means you are thinking yourself separate from existence. Secondly: you are thinking of yourself as special.

To be a sannyasin means to be just natural. You are no.t higher than anybody and you are not lower than anybody. You are simply part of the same existence. How can one be lower or higher? It is not only a question of being on equal terms with human beings; you are on equal terms with the trees, with the rocks, with the stars. Simply there is nobody inside you who feels separate. This is true equality, and the true equality is always rooted in equanimity, equilibrium.

To feel higher in any way is simply a proof that deep down you are suffering from an inferiority complex. it is just a compensation. The politician feels higher than others because he has power, political power. The wealthy feels higher than others because he has power, economic power. And the so-called spiritual person also feels higher than others because he has again the same kind of thing: power -- spiritual power, purity, morality. virtue. But these are nothing but properties.

In MY vision a sannyasin is utterly ordinary. and in that very ordinariness the extraordinary explodes.

The second question:

Question 2

OSHO,

THE OTHER DAY IN DARSHAN YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT WOMEN AND TRANSFORMING THEIR ENERGY. YOU SAID THAT IN THE PAST MASTERS SUCH AS JESUS MAHAVIRA, AND EVEN GAUTAM THE BUDDHA WERE NOT ABLE TO UNDERSTAND AND TRANSFORM WOMEN'S ENERGY AND ALLOW IT TO COME TO A PEAK. YOU SAID THAT THIS TIME HERE WITH YOU IT WILL BE POSSIBLE FOR WOMEN AS WELL AS FOR MEN TO FLOWER AND COME TO A PEAK. SOMEHOW I WAS TOUCHED BY THIS VERY DEEPLY. CAN YOU SAY SOMETHING MORE ABOUT THIS DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MAN AND WOMAN AND HOW YOU WORK WITH US IN DIFFERENT WAYS?

Anand Maria,

THE DIFFERENCE between man and woman is not much; the difference is simple. It is like a man by your side is standing on his head: what is the difference between you who is standing on his legs and the man who is doing a headstand, a SIRSHASANA? In fact, none. You are both the same -- but in a way there is a difference. The difference is that the man who is standing on his head is upside-down. That's the only difference between man and a woman.

What is conscious in man is unconscious in women, and what is unconscious in women is conscious in men. Man is man only in his consciousness; in his unconsciousness he is woman, feminine. That's why whenever you feel a man in any way moving closer to his unconscious he becomes softer, feminine, loving, tender.

That's why the people who are condemned by the society, the sinners, are more loving people than your so-called saints. Your so-called saints are hung up in the conscious; they don't allow their unconscious, they repress it. They disassociate themselves from their unconscious, they condemn it. They create a distance between themselves and the unconscious; they define themselves only through the conscious. That's why they look so hard.

Look at the faces of your so-called saints -- the moralists, the puritans, the people who are continuously carrying the load of "holier-than-thou", just look at their faces, and you will find hard lines, stiffness, uptightness -- a quality which cannot be called soft, tender, loving.

Watch the so-called sinners, the condemned people, and you will be surprised that they have more tender hearts. They are more loving people, more companionable. You can enjoy the company of the sinners, you cannot enjoy the company of the saints. If you put four saints together they will be constantly quarreling -- quarreling about stupid things: how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, how many hells there are... Buddha says there is only one hell, Mahavira says there are seven Sanjaya Vilethiputta says there are seven hundred.

If you put a dozen saints in one house there will be no peace at all in that house; they will be constantly barking at each other. Sometimes I am fascinated by the idea that dogs may be reincarnations of saints -- barking at anything, and particularly at few things. For example, all dogs are against uniforms. They will bark against the postman, the policeman, the sannyasin. Maybe they are angry at their own past life!

But sinners are very friendly for the simple reason... I am not telling you become sinners, I am simply making a point so that you can understand why sinners look so soft, loving, human, and why saints look so inhuman. The reason is the sinners are closer to their unconscious and man's unconscious is feminine.

The same happens with intellectual women, particularly the women who belong to Liberation Movement. They are harsh, ugly, hard, and constantly argumentative. They become unloving, they become very egoistic. They are a new version of female saints, for the simple reason again because they have gone against their natural unconscious spontaneity. They are living in their heads. They have dropped the very idea of the unconscious, they are not allowing their instincts. They are lopsided; they have lost their balance.

The balanced man is neither man nor woman; he is a mixture of both, a synthesis rather. His masculinity compensates his femininity. They are not at daggers with each other; they are dancing in tune, in deep harmony, together. There is great accord.

So the difference is not much; the difference is very little. Of course it has become very big because for at least ten thousand years man has dominated the scene. He has repressed the woman in himself and because of that he has repressed the woman on the outside too. He had to -- both are part of one logic.

If you allow your own inner woman freedom to meet with the man inside you, to have a deep togetherness, an orgasmic quality, so that as far as your consciousness is concerned it is no more split as man and woman... It is one, it is human, it is whole. It is no more a conflict; it is a concord. It has attained to the highest synthesis possible. When this happens one is whole; whether one is man or woman does not matter.

But for centuries man has dominated, and the only way to dominate is to destroy the outer woman, to reduce her into a slave, to reduce her into a commodity, sellable, purchasable, something of the marketplace. This is the ugliest thing that has happened in the past. Because of this the whole past of humanity is rotten, unbalanced, insane. And if the man represses the woman on the outside, of course he cannot allow the woman inside either: he has to repress that too.

And the woman has been told that she has to be womanly; that means she has to reject all that is masculine in her. She has been forced to go to the very extreme of being a woman and the man has to be completely denied. And this has been taught as if it is something of great value -- as culture, as religion, as civilization. The woman has to be shy; the woman has to be in every possible way dependent on man. She has to be a servant, not a companion, not a friend.

This idea affected everything, even religion. And the people like Jesus, Mahavira, Gautam the Buddha, these great persons who are the very salt of the past humanity, the few people who had flowered, even they could not go against the social structure absolutely. I can understand why they could not go against the social structure -- because they had to work with a society which was not of their making; it was already there.

Buddha had only forty years to work. Now you cannot transform everything in the society. He had to decide whether he has to work and create something or he has just to fight. If he was to fight for every single inch, then no work would have been possible. He had to compromise. He accepted many things which I know were accepted very unwillingly.

And the same is true about Mahavira, Lao Tzu, Zarathustra, Jesus, Mohammed. But they had to function in a particular society, which was given, already there, and it had existed for thousands of years. And they decided it is better to work silently and help few people to become enlightened rather than fight with the society and waste your whole time, and not help even few people to become enlightened. That was the choice before them.

Buddha was not willing to allow women to be initiated as sannyasins for the simple reason because the Indian society has been very repressive; it has created great walls between men and women. To destroy those walls would have been releasing a chaos. It would have released so much repressed energy that Buddha was not thinking that he will be able to help anybody; everything will go berserk. Hence he postponed as long as he could.

When the women became very insistent, and particularly when his own stepmother asked to be initiated, he could not refuse. He owed much to this woman, because his own mother died the very day he was born. He was brought up by this stepmother with such care, with so much love. He had never felt that she is a stepmother; he had never missed his mother. And when this stepmother asked to be initiated -- and she was getting very old, and death was com-ing close -- he could not say no. Very unwillingly he said yes.

But when he said yes to his own mother, then other women also said, "Now you have accepted one woman as a sannyasin, then why debar us?" And it was logical. The door opened...

And Buddha said very sadly that, "My religion would have lived at least for five thousand years and helped thousands of people to become enlightened, but now it will exist only for five hundred years."

And that's how it happened, because once the women came in, the repressed male sannyasins started getting infatuated. They had lived in compartments and suddenly they were free -- suddenly the women were there, and beautiful women. Almost from all royal families the first sannyasins had come. It almost always happens: when a man like Buddha arrives on the earth it is the most intelligent ones who come first to him. It is natural, because only they can understand.

You can see it here happening: the most intelligent people of the world from every nook and comer of the world, have arrived here. But the Indian masses go on ignoring as if it has nothing to do with them. They are not yet at the level of that intelligence where they can understand what is happening here. What to say about ordinary masses...

Just the other day the Poona magistrate has given his judgment concerning the case of one madman who had thrown a dagger at me, obviously intentionally to kill me. He has freed him, and the reason that he has freed him, the most basic reason that he has given, is really worth consideration. I laughed at it, I enjoyed it!

The reason that he has freed him is that if it was an attempt to murder me, then I would not have continued my discourse! Who can continue talking when somebody is trying to murder you? But he does not know me. I would have continued even if I had died -- I would not have finished before ten!

But he cannot understand, and I can understand him -- he cannot understand. When somebody is trying to kill you, can you go on speaking the same way? His argument seems to be very valid. So what to say about the ordinary masses? -- even an educated magistrate thinks in the same way.

Once Buddha allowed women to enter in his commune, the repressed male sannyasins started losing their grip on their own consciousness. It happened because of repression. That's why Jesus and Mahavira were also of the same opinion.

I can allow for the simple reason that twenty-five centuries have passed and in these twenty-five centuries much has happened, particularly in the West. That's why my appeal will be far more in the West than in the East, because in the East nothing much has happened. Karl Marx has not happened in the East, Friedrich Nietzsche has not happened in the East, Sigmund Freud has not happened in the East, Carl Gustav Jung has not happened in the East, Albert Einstein has not happened in the East...

The West is far more ready. The West has gone through a great revolution about sex. about the discrimination between sexes. The West has dropped the old nonsense. That's why it is possible for me to allow man and woman together to be here. And you can see the difference: when Indians come here they create trouble.

For these six years I have been here, at least more than three to four hundred thousand westerners have visited the place. Not a single westerner has tried to rape any Indian woman. What to say about rape -- they have not even bothered about Indian women, they have not even thought about Indian women! But so many Indians have tried molestations, efforts to rape; all kinds of things they have done. And they go on asking me why Indians are not easily allowed in the ashram. They come for wrong reasons, even the well-educated.

Just a few days before the manager of the Ambassador Hotel came to see -- rich, well-educated -- and when he found Padma working in her department alone, he immediately grabbed her breasts! And the man had asked Sheela the first thing, that, "Why I don't see many Indians here?" And when he was caught red-handed Sheela told him, "Now you know the reason why so many Indians are not there in the ashram! We have to throw them, just as we are throwing you out!"

One government officer, one S.D.O. had come to investigate the morality of my sannyasins, and Sheela was showing him around the ashram. When he found that Sheela and he were alone he asked Sheela, "Can I kiss you?" And he had come to investigate the morality of the ashram! And because Sheela reacted and shouted at him he had written a very nasty and wrong report about the ashram, and he has been one of the causes that we could not get the Saswad land for the commune. He created every possible trouble. And he was sending messages that "If Sheela comes to me, then I will help you!"

Now these are the people...! Buddha had to work with these people, and Jesus, and Mahavira. They can be forgiven. They wanted to help man and woman both, but the trouble was the society.

To me there is a possibility. I can choose from all over the world people who are ready to drop this stupid division between sexes. Of course the approach will be different: the woman will start with love and end with meditation, and the man will start with meditation and end with love. Only this much difference will be there. To the man love will come as a consequence, as a fragrance of meditation. To the woman meditation will come as a consequence, as a byproduct, as a fragrance of love.

Rut whether the man or the woman when they reach to the highest peak of consciousness, to the Everest of consciousness, they will have both exactly balanced: meditation and love.

The third question:

Question 3

OSHO,

HOW ABOUT TELLING US A LITTLE ESOTERIC BULLSHIT?

Prem Shraddhan,

BULLSHIT is simply bullshit! Even if you make it esoteric it does not change its quality -- it still stinks! You can give it a beautiful cover, a beautiful packet, but the content will be the same. You can wrap around it something beautiful, but that will be only a wraparound. When you will dive deep into it, then you would know -- you have fallen into a ditch full of bullshit!

A sannyasin and newly-arrived non-sannyasin are sitting together in Vrindavan. "Hey, Swami," says the non-sannyasin, "you have probably been around this place for a while. Can you tell me what Osho is teaching you?"

The sannyasin ponders over this for a while, then says, "It's like this: imagine two guys walking along a road; they both fall into a ditch. One of them gets dirty, the other does not -- which one of them is going to have a shower?"

"The dirty one, of course!" says the non-sannyasin.

"No. The dirty one sees the clean one and he thinks himself to be clean. The clean one sees the dirty one and he thinks HE is dirty, so the clean one is going to wash himself. Now imagine they fall into a ditch again -- who is going to shower now?"

"Now I know," answers the non-sannyasin, "the clean one!"

"No. The clean one realizes while showering that he was clean, and the dirty one realizes while the clean one is taking a shower, so now the right one showers! Now imagine they both fall into a ditch again -- who is going to shower now?"

"From now on, of course, always the dirty one!"

"No. Have you ever seen two guys fall into a ditch three times, and one always comes out dirty and the other always clean?"

A Catholic priest was walking along a cliff by the sea when he heard the shouts of someone in difficulty. He saw a man who obviously could not swim struggling for his life in the water.

"Save me, save me, father! I am drowning!" cried the young man.

"Are ye Catholic or Protestant, son?" asked the cleric.

"Protestant, father!" gasped the young man as he went under the water. The priest began to walk on.

"For God's sake, father, save me!" screamed the terrified boy surfacing again.

"What religion are ye, son?" shouted back the priest.

"Protestant, father!" spluttered back the answer. The priest again began to walk on as the unfortunate youngster went under for the second time.

"For the love of God, save me, father!" screamed the boy in desperation.

"What religion are ye, son?" came the demand again.

After a moment's hesitation the young man shouted, "I'm a Catholic, father!"

The priest immediately threw off his clothes, dived into the sea and swam strongly to the boy, catching him by the hair as he went under for the third and last time.

"What religion are ye, son?" asked the priest again, as he help the young man's head above the water.

"Catholic, father!" came the response.

The cleric smiled, let go the young man's hair, and as he sank said, "Good, die in faith!"

The fourth question:

Question 4

OSHO,

WHY THE SO-CALLED AUTHORITATIVE SCHOLARS, THEOLOGIANS AND PHILOSOPHERS ON RELIGION ARE AGAINST YOU?

Pritama,

IT IS NATURAL. They philosophize about God, I know. They think about light, I see. They read the scriptures, I have read the universe. We cannot agree.

It is like a blind man collecting information about light. How he can agree with the man who has eyes? Although he collects information about light, but information about light is just information; it is not an experience. The experience is bound to be totally different. The experience is qualitatively different; it is not only a question of quantity. It is not that I know more than that they know or less than that they know; it is not a question of more or less. I simply know, and they have been collecting information from others. Their knowledge is borrowed, and of course the man who lives with borrowed knowledge, whose whole life depends on borrowed knowledge, is bound to be afraid of the man who has experienced it.

They have always been against; it is nothing new. If they were not against me, that would be surprising. That will be almost unbelievable! Their being against me simply proves that man has not learned anything, as if the evolution of man has stopped long before. They still behave in the same way they behaved with Jesus, with Buddha, with Krishna. Their behavior has not changed, and I don't see that it is going to change ever -- because of their vested interest. Men like me are dangerous to their business!

It is a question of life and death for them. Their whole profession depends on borrowed knowledge, and my insistence is to help you to know it on your own. And the moment you know, all that is borrowed fades away, becomes irrelevant, meaningless, loses all significance. And with it disappear all the priests, all the theologians, all the philosophers, all the scholars, the pundits...

Right now you respect them, you honor them, because you feel ignorant and you think they know. And blind are leading the blind! You are far more honest -- at least you recognize your blindness, your scholars are far more cunning; they don't recognize that they are ignorant. Deep down they know it, but they don't show it. They go on hiding it in every possible way. And people like me start exposing them -- how can they tolerate it?

And it has always been a known fact that scholars are one-dimensional. They have to be one-dimensional if they want to be scholarly. If a man tries to know everything about God... and remember, "about". By knowing God he will become multidimensional, because God means the whole existence. By knowing God he will know the whole, but by knowing ABOUT God he has to become one-dimensional. He has to focus his mind, he has to go on narrowing his consciousness; he has to pinpoint it. Naturally he knows more and more about God, but less and less about everything else. His knowing becomes only inclusive about God and excludes everything else.

That's why authorities always behave foolishly. As far as their own field is concerned they are great experts. If you ask any question about something which is not part of their expertise they are at a loss -- they are as foolish as no fool ever can be, because fools have a little bit of multi-dimensionality. But the scholars are absolutely one-dimensional, they are fixed on one point; they are specialized people.

In the beginning, just two thousand years before there was only one knowledge without any divisions; it was called philosophy. In the days of Aristotle it was called philosophy; philosophy meant all knowledge. So if you look in Aristotle's books -- who is the father-figure of the western philosophy -- you will find everything, things which have nothing to do with philosophy at all.

For example, how many teeth a woman has. Now what it has got to do with philosophy? And even about that he is wrong! And he had two wives, not only one -- he could have counted very easily. And as far as a woman s teeth are concerned you need not even say her to open her mouth -- it is always open! You can count very easily; there is no trouble. And having two wives and committing such a mistake! He says that women have less teeth than men. The logic is: how women can have anything equal to men? He never bothered to experiment.

But his books contain everything. It contains biology, religion, philosophy, mathematics, logic, language, aesthetics -- everything possible. It contains physics... That's how the name "metaphysics" was born, because in Aristotle's books, after physics comes religion. Metaphysics simply means "the chapter next to physics". After the chapter on physics there is a chapter on religion, hence it was called metaphysics.

If Aristotle comes back he will be absolutely puzzled. If he goes to Oxford there are three hundred sixty-five subjects taught. He would not be able to believe -- three hundred sixty-five subjects! And they are every day growing more and more -- branches of branches of branches.

I have heard a future story:

A man goes to his optician. He is suffering from pain in one of his eyes, and he tells the doctor.

The doctor asks, "Which eye, right or left?"

And he says, "Left."

And the doctor says, "Sorry, but I have specialized only in the other eye. You have to go to somebody else."

A man's son came back from the medical college, and he asked, "In what you have specialized?" He was an old physician, old kind of physician who used to treat every kind of disease.

The son said, "I have specialized about nose."

And the father asked, "Which nostril?"

Yes, it is going to happen one day -- right nostril or left nostril, and you will have to go to different experts.

This is the way of specialization: one becomes narrowed, one starts knowing more and more about less and less. And a moment comes, is bound to come -- at least logically it can be conceived that it will happen one day... If this is the process of science -- knowing more and more about less and less -- then one day somebody will declare. "I know all about nothing."

The process of experiencing is totally different: it is knowing less and less about more and more. And a moment comes: one knows nothing about everything. That's what Dionysius calls AGNOSIA, that is the State of meditation: one knows nothing about everything. He has become absolutely multidimensional. He is simply aware, not a knower. There is no knowledge, he is simply wise.

Now how the expert can agree with the wise man? The expert cannot agree with the Buddha, impossible; their dimensions are totally different. One knows more and more about less and less, the other knows less and less about more and more. One reaches ultimately to know everything about nothing, the other reaches ultimately to know nothing about everything -- they are following diverse paths. But the Buddha experiences and the expert only accumulates information.

A very pretty secretary, wearing a sweater and mini-skirt, passed through a chemistry lab.

"Get a load of that!" said one of the scientists to the other.

The other glanced at the well-stacked figure and replied indifferently, So what? She's nine-tenths water!"

"Sure," said the first, "but what surface tension!"

A great scientist riding on a bus had noticed a clock on a building that showed nine-thirty. Farther on he saw another clock; this one showed nine-fifteen. Good heavens!" he cried. "I must be going the wrong way!"

A story is told about a professor of English who was indisposed and stayed home one day. "What happened?" one of the students asked his daughter.

"He is terribly upset," she disclosed. "Last night an owl in one of the trees kept repeating 'To who? To who?' instead of 'To whom?'"

The newlywed wife was a professor of philosophy, and it always almost happens with the professors of philosophy, that she suffered from insomnia. She kept waking up her husband whenever she heard noises downstairs.

Finally he said, "Go to sleep, dear, please. Burglars don't make noises!"

So she started to wake him up every time she heard nothing.

That is logical! That is philosophical!

Before beginning a postmortem the doctor wanted to check the chest. The cadaver was wheeled into the X-ray depart-ment and placed properly in the apparatus by the pretty technician, then she put the photographic plate into the control panel. As she stuck her head out from behind it she said automatically, "Please take a deep breath and hold it!"

A technician is a technician! They function automatically. Experts function very unconsciously. They know not what they are doing, they know not what they are saying. They know nothing because their whole consciousness is full of dead facts and informations. They can TALK about love, but they have never loved. They can talk about God...

And remember the meaning of the word "about": about means around. Around and around they go, but they never touch the center of it. It cannot be touched just by knowing about God. You can quote the Bible, the Koran, the Gita, the Vedas; that is not going to help, unless you can speak out of your own inner communion.

And Jesus said unto them, "Who do you say I am?"

And they replied, "You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground of our being, the charisma manifested in conflict and decision in the humanizing process."

And Jesus said, "What?"

Now this language! Even the Polack Pope would have understood -- this is the language of the Christian theologian: "You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground of our being, the charisma manifested in conflict and decision in the humanizing process."

And Jesus said, "What?!"

You ask me, Pritama: WHY THE SO-CALLED AUTHORITATIVE SCHOLARS...?

They are not authoritative; they are quoting others. What authority they can have? Authority should come from your own authentic experience. That is the only source of authority; there is no other source of authority.

A Ramakrishna can speak authoritatively, a Raman can speak authoritatively, but not Vivekananda; he is just a scholar. Mahavira can speak authoritatively, but not Gautam Ganadhara, his disciple, who is just a brahmin pundit collecting information, taking notes, compiling what Mahavira has said. Jesus can speak authoritatively, but not the popes.

And the irony is that these people are thought to be authoritative because they can quote exactly the words of the scriptures. But the words of the scriptures can be quoted by a computer more efficiently, more accurately! It can be done by a mechanical device; no consciousness is needed for that, no awareness is needed for that. One need not be a Christ to repeat the Beatitudes: "Blessed are the meek for theirs is the kingdom of God." This can be repeated by a record, a gramophone record!

Have you seen the most famous gramophone company, His Master's Voice symbol? -- the dog wagging its tail. A gramophone record can do it, and that's what these popes are doing -- His Master's Voice -- the shankaracharyas are doing, ayatollahs, imams are doing -- just repeating.

A small child was teaching to his parrot all the four-letter words. The mother when heard was shocked. She came running in and she said, "What are you doing? Have you gone mad? You are destroying the parrot -- you are teaching him four-letter words!"

And the child said, "No Mummy, I am just telling him, 'Please remember, these words are not to be repeated by you!'Just the way you have taught my father and my father has taught me, I am teaching him and I am telling him, 'Remember to tell your children not to repeat these words. These are very ugly and dangerous words.'"

You can teach a parrot and he can repeat anything, but a parrot is not an authority. Machines can do. computers can do even a far better way.

So, Pritama, don't call these people authorities -- they are not. They are befooling others and perhaps themselves. They are not real philosophers; they are more "foolosophers" than philosophers! Philosophy, the very word, means love for wisdom, and they have nothing to do with wisdom at all.

Wisdom happens only through meditation; it never happens by collecting information. It happens by going through a transformation. Wisdom is the flowering of your consciousness, the opening of the one-thousand-petaled lotus of your being. It is the release of your fragrance, the release of the imprisoned splendor.

Real philosophy has nothing to do with thinking; on the contrary it has everything to do with transcending thinking, going beyond and beyond thinking, going beyond mind, reaching to the pure space of no-mind. Out of that space something flowers in you. You can call it Christ-consciousness, Buddhahood, or whatsoever you like. That is true philosophy.

The better word for philosophy will be philosia -- not only love for wisdom but love for seeing the truth. SIA means to see, PHILO means love -- love to see. That's exactly the Indian word for philosophy, darshan; darshan means philosia. Don't translate it as philosophy. Doctor Radhakrishnan and others have done a great disservice to the East by translating darshan as philosophy. It is philosia.

In the East our interest has always been to SEE the truth, because by seeing the truth, as the Isa Upanishad says, you become the truth itself Only by becoming the truth you have authority; then the truth speaks through you. You are just a medium, a vehicle, a hollow bamboo flute, and God starts singing through you.

That miracle has to happen here to my sannyasins. That's what my only teaching is: become a hollow bamboo flute. Don't hinder. Let God flow through you naturally, spontaneously. And if you allow your nature and spontaneity, just as every river reaches to the ocean you will also reach to the ultimate ocean of God.

The last question:

Question 5

OSHO,

YOU ARE TALKING AND TALKING AND I HEAR FLOWERS AND SILENCE AND LAUGHTER EVERYWHERE.

COME NOW! ADMIT IT! ARE NOT YOU IN THE TRADITION OF GAUTAM BUDDHA'S GREAT ITALIAN DISCIPLE, MAHA-GOSSIPA?

Yoga Nishant,

I AM nobody's disciple, and I am nobody's Master either. I am not your Master, just a friend on the way, a fellow-traveler. And I am nobody's disciple, because nothing can be learned from anybody, and I am nobody's Master because nothing can be taught.

I can allow you to be with me. Something can happen which is neither done by me nor done by you. Nobody can claim that "I am the doer of it." It can simply happen, just as in the morning the sun rises and the flowers open and the birds start singing. The sun cannot say "I have opened the flowers." The sun cannot say that, "I have managed this whole orchestra of the music that suddenly has arisen on the earth." Neither the birds can say that, "It is because of our singing that the sun has risen."

You must have heard an old story of a woman who had a hen, and she believed that it is because of her hen that the sun rises, because early in the morning just before the sunrise the hen gives a joyous shout. And she was very proud because she was the only one who had a hen in the village.

And nobody seemed to be grateful to her, so one day out of disgust she said, "I am leaving this village, and then you will know! The sun will never rise in this place because I am taking my hen away."

And she left the village, she reached another village, and of course when the hen shouted with joy in the morning, the sun rose there and the woman was tremendously happy. She said "Now, now those fools will realize. Sun has risen in THIS village, it cannot rise there! Now it will be always night there!"

Neither the birds can say nor the flowers can say that, "The sun has risen because of us," nor the sun can say. It is a synchronicity. This word is very beautiful; it is coined by Carl Gustav Jung. You understand the law of causality: in the law of causality one thing functions as a cause and the other thing happens as an effect. Wherever the cause is produced, the effect is bound to follow. It is a mechanical process. You heat the water to a certain degree and it evaporates; heating is the cause and evaporation is the effect.

Synchronicity is a non-causal relationship. Things happen, but you never know who is the cause and who is the effect. They happen simultaneously.

That's the beauty that happens whenever you are with a Buddha. The Buddha is not a Master, you are not a disciple; you are not learning anything from Buddha, the Buddha is not teaching anything to you. It is just being together. It is a love affair! Being together... and something happens, something which is beyond both. Something is triggered. At the most it can be said that the Buddha functioned as a catalytic agent, but whatsoever happens happens in you; he has not caused it.

Hence I say I am not anybody's disciple nor I am anybody's Master. But, Nishant, you have found the right name for me: I am an Italian, Maha-Gossipa! Remember me not as the man who has given you a great gospel but as a man who has given you many gossips. My gospel is my gossip!

At a local businessman's club four members got together after a few drinks and began to confess their secret vices.

"I must own up," said the leading banker, "that I gamble. Every week or so I place a bet on the horses, not too much, but I have been doing it for years."

"Well, I will come clean of my weakness," said the prominent executive. "No one in town has ever seen me drunk, but twice a year I drive to another town where I am not known, rent a motel room for a few days, get stoned, and return home feeling better than ever!

"I am not ashamed to admit that my weakness is women," said another important businessman. "I have to be very discreet, of course, but with a cautious secretary it can be managed easily enough. I have never yet been found out."

The fourth member of the group, who had been listening intently, said nothing. He was the rabbi of the village. The others expected him to reveal something, but he shrugged his shoulders as is the way of all the Jews of all the ages. He simply shrugged his shoulders.

"Well," asked one of them, "Rabbi, how about you?"

"I would rather not confess," he said shaking his head. They looked at him with suspicion. What could he be covering up? Each of them accused him of being a poor sport, especially since they had all opened up.

Finally the rabbi gave in. "All right," he said reluctantly, "if you must know my weakness, it is scandal -- and I can hardly wait to get out of this place!"

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